Prime Minister Mark Carney says discussions on Canada joining the United States’ new continental air defence system are headed in the right direction.
Carney made the comment to reporters on Feb. 17 in Montreal after unveiling his defence industrial strategy, which seeks to build domestic capacity and reduce foreign dependencies for military supplies.
U.S. President Donald Trump has dubbed the new air defence system the “Golden Dome,” and Ottawa previously said it would consider joining the program. Trump has announced different price tags for Canada’s participation, ranging between US$61 billion and US$71 billion.
Carney said talks with Washington on Canada joining the Golden Dome are “going well” and noted the project is currently under development.
“If it’s in the right interest of Canada, and I think there are certainly many scenarios where it will be in the right interest of Canada, we will be a willing participant,” he said.
Carney said there are many areas of close cooperation on defence between Canada and the United States, such as continental defence under the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD). He said Canada is taking steps to improve its contribution to the program, including through the purchase of an over-the-horizon radar system.
“But we are also exploring the next phase of that defence with the United States,” he added, mentioning the need to protect against increasingly sophisticated threats such as hypersonic missiles.
Carney’s comments on the Golden Dome came after a reporter quoted Trump saying Carney doesn’t want the Golden Dome to be extended over Greenland.
“I apologize, I don’t recognize the comment of the president. It’s certainly not representing my point of view,” Carney said in response.
Trump had made the comment on social media in late January, at the end of the week during which he and Carney delivered speeches at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Carney used thinly veiled criticism to target Trump’s policies in his speech, while Trump said in his address that Carney was not “grateful” for Canada’s relationship with the United States.
Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, had been the source of intense focus and geopolitical frictions between the United States and European countries in the days leading to the WEF meeting.
Trump said acquiring Greenland represented a critical national security action focused on facilitating the deployment of the Golden Dome’s components to defend against possible aerial threats from Russia and China. The United States military currently operates the Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, which supports missile warning and defence missions.
Tensions around the issue subsided when Trump said in Davos that he would not seek to annex Greenland by force. He also said a framework for a deal on the territory had been established after meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
“The truth is, over the last few decades, Canada has neither spent enough on our defence nor invested enough in our defence industries,” Carney said. “We’ve relied too heavily on our geography and others to protect us. This has created vulnerabilities that we can no longer afford, and dependencies that we can no longer sustain.”
