Given the brouhaha over those mysterious drifting ‘balloons,’ people are finally getting to know what the North American Aerospace Defence Command does, or is supposed to do. Until recently, about the only time it was ever mentioned in Canada was at Christmas – it was the Santa tracker!
One of the few other occasions NORAD rose to prominence was during the Cuban missile crisis, when John Diefenbaker told John F. Kennedy he wasn’t about to jump through hoops at the White House’s command.
Because of NORAD, Diefenbaker, as advised by his top civil servant Norman Robertson, thought Canada was deserving of special consultations on JFK’s military planning. He didn’t get them, and as result, he didn’t put Canadian forces at the level of alert Washington wanted. Kennedy fumed.
For our defence contributions, Canada has long been the butt of jokes at the White House. In the Ronald Reagan administration, they snickered that you could put the entire Canadian military on a football field and still have room for the game. At one point, then-secretary of defence Caspar Weinberger told Mr. Reagan: “Mr. President, the good news is that Canada has now surged ahead of Luxembourg in defence spending.”
On our own side, the balloon fracas has triggered a good deal of bellyaching from Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong and others as to our own defence unpreparedness. There are ample grounds for such criticisms (F-35 fighter jet spending, anyone?) But the griping ignores a long-standing reality: As shown in poll after poll, Canadians don’t want to pay for major defence upgrades. They have other priorities.
Ottawa’s spending on defence, NORAD included, will not be a bone of contention, however, when President Joe Biden makes his first official visit to Canada next month. Just last summer Ottawa committed to spending $4.9-billion over the next few years to modernize the defence command system.
We can expect the visit to be a goodwill exercise, Biden officials on the Canadian file tell me, wherein the President and the Prime Minister will put on a show of pals’ diplomacy. The way the world turns demands it.
An upshot of “balloongate,” as some are calling it, is that Americans now know we have a role to play in helping them ward off threats of invasion from the north: we pay about 40 per cent of the NORAD bills. Not that NORAD performed capably in this crisis. It’s been an embarrassment for both sides, exposing, as NORAD Commander General Glen VanHerck put it, a “gap” in our air defences. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” he said.
How serious the threats were is still not known. Some suggest it’s all overblown – another example of American threat inflation. Mr. Trudeau, however, does not appear to see it that way. “This is a very serious situation that we are taking incredibly seriously,” he said. “The importance of defending our territorial integrity, our sovereignty, has rarely been as important as it is now.”
How long Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau will be calling the shots is anyone’s guess. Mr. Biden is expected to announce he will be running for a second term shortly, and it could come right before the Canadian visit.
His relationship with Mr. Trudeau is made easy by their compatibility on a broad range of progressive issues. To be sure, there is the customary array of bilateral-trade irritants. On the U.S. side, there is opposition to Canadian dairy quotas and to proposed Ottawa legislation that would regulate online streaming and news services.
From the Canadian side, there are renewed fears of protectionism given Mr. Biden’s tough rhetoric on broadening Buy America quotas. His procurement policies are unwelcome, but their effects are mitigated by several factors: there are existing trade regulations in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement; there’s the fact that while Mr. Biden wants domestic sourcing, U.S. suppliers aren’t capable of fulfilling the orders; and there’s also the likelihood of gridlock on Capitol Hill, given the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
On a recent visit to Washington, Canadian members of the Canada-U.S. Inter-Parliamentary Group received assurances that Congress wasn’t looking to penalize Canada – that the thrust should be one of “Buy North American.”
The happy rapport between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trudeau, a far cry from what existed in the previous Republican administration, is badly needed, both to ensure harmonious trade relations, and to get the fumbling over the balloon intrusions behind them.