Air University Review, March-April 1967

Canada in NATO and NORAD

John Gellner

Until about three years ago, examining Canada’s military posture in NATO and NORAD would have been of scant interest. Up to that time Canada did not have, did not want to have, and did not think it needed to have a defence policy of its own. This was an attitude of expediency made possible by the country’s geographic position. For ever since 1871, when the Treaty of Washington removed whatever dangers came from the United States as the result of differences that had arisen during the Civil War, Canada was protected simply by being situated where it was. With the undefended border to the south, two vast oceans policed by the British navy on the flanks, and an impenetrable (in the then stage of technology) belt of arctic wasteland to the north, the country was, until the end of the Second World War, safe even if it did not lift a finger, militarily. After the war the assumption by the United States of the rights and burdens that go with being the paramount power in the world made Canada an indispensable strategic forefield which the United States must keep inviolate in its own interest. Again, Canada was made secure whether or not it looked to its own safety. This happy condition thus has prevailed practically ever since Canada became a separate political entity a hundred years ago. As a consequence, the Canadian military effort, whatever it was at any one time, was motivated by the wish (or the political necessity) to cooperate with allies, especially with Canada’s protectors, rather than by actual need. Under these circumstances, a Canadian military policy tailored to Canada’s own requirements had a hard time developing.

It would not have developed at all had the demands made upon Canada by its principals remained as simple and straightforward and enduring as they were until the end of the Second World War. Canadian policy, then, was to furnish ground, sea, and air forces organized, equipped, and trained to operate with other British and Commonwealth forces, under British direction. This was possible in conditions of conventional war conducted on classical lines which had been modified as a result of new means and new techniques but which as to general doctrine had remained virtually unchanged since Clausewitz and Jomini. It was thus comparatively easy for Canada (as a second) to fit into the military setup of Great Britain (the principal).

Not so after the Second World War. The need to think on quite a different level, that created by the advent of weapons of absolute destruction, a level not precisely defined as yet, led to doctrinal uncertainties, and these, in turn, led to frequent and fundamental changes in military policies. In brief, it has become immeasurably more difficult to wield the sword effectively. And because the principal, for years after Hiroshima, has not been quite sure of his own bearings and is still searching for a steady military course, it has not been easy to be a good second, either. Indeed, the question has arisen whether it is at all possible, let alone practical, nowadays to play the role of military satellite pure and simple, as long as the dominant power has not determined a firm and enduring policy to follow. This question has been asked in Canada, as well. It is being answered by the attempt, initiated three years ago, to develop a Canadian defence policy based primarily on Canadian views and thus attuned not only to Canadian capabilities, the only criterion of the past, but also to Canadian needs. ¹ Although this is a radical change of outlook, it has not yet been fully recognized as such, not even in Canada.

That Canada at long last is beginning to think for itself in the military field does not mean that it wishes to restrict in any way its cooperation with allies, above all with its military principal, the United States. The difference—it became observable in late 1963 and quite apparent when the “White Paper on Defence” came out in March 1964—is that Canada henceforth will consider how it should cooperate. It will no longer be the case of accepting a suggested role virtually sight unseen. Instead, the tendency will be for Canada to offer to its allies what it has in military power and what it thinks will be most useful, not simply what is requested. In practice, this will not make much difference in Canada’s NATO commitments, at least not for the next few years, and it will perhaps not make any difference at all in its NORAD commitments. Still, it is undeniable that there is a change of approach which could have practical consequences. It is this possibility that makes worthwhile our looking at Canada’s present posture in NATO and NORAD and our conjecturing on what it may be in the years to come.

Canada in NATO

With some justification, Canada has been called the midwife of NATO. At any rate, Canadian interest in and support of the alliance has been unflagging. Indeed, Canada has consistently pressed for a bigger and better alliance that would extend its influence and its direct activities into the political, economic, and social fields (as was in fact envisaged, albeit somewhat vaguely, in Article II of the North Atlantic Treaty). Generally speaking, Canada has through the years been disappointed at times because NATO was doing too little, never because it was doing too much.

Canada has always fulfilled punctiliously its military commitments to NATO. As far as assigned forces are concerned, they amount to an air division and an army brigade group; and in earmarked forces, to the balance of ground troops to make up a full army division, and a number of warships and maritime aircraft. The current cost of the assigned forces stationed in Europe, as listed in the 1966-67 Estimates, is $146,724,000 or a little over 10 percent of the military expenditures proper. ² These forces number approximately 12,000, or about 11 percent of the Regular Force establishment. The share of No.1 Air Division is $71,703,000 and approximately 5500 officers and men.

Because of the totally passive Canadian approach to defence which prevailed in former years, the kind of military contribution made to NATO was until recently not seriously questioned, except by defence critics outside the government and government service. Beginning in late 1951, No.1 Air Division was developed as a day-interceptor force equipped with F-86 Sabres, built in Canada under license. The division was complete by September 1953, with a headquarters in Metz, France, and four wings of three squadrons with 25 aircraft each in North Luffenham, England, in Grostenquin, France, and in Zweibrücken and Baden-Soellingen, Germany. The Luffenham wing moved to Marville, France, in early 1955. From November 1956 onwards, one Sabre squadron in each wing was replaced by a squadron of Canadian Avro CF-100 twin-jet, two-seat, all-weather fighters. This gave the division a round-the-clock air defence capability. In all this, Canada furnished what SACEUR wanted. It must be admitted that, in the military situation in Central Europe during that period, it was a sensible and useful contribution.

The need to rearm No.1 Air Division with more modern weapon systems arose at about the same time that NATO strategy swung sharply toward primary reliance on nuclear weapons. That this was the trend of thought in SHAPE was already pretty clear in early 1957. Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery, then Deputy SACEUR, expressed it with customary bluntness in a contemporary interview: “I want to make it absolutely clear that we in SHAPE are basing all our operational planning on using atomic and thermonuclear weapons in our defence. With us it is no longer: ‘They may possibly be used.’ It is very definitely: ‘They will be used if we are attacked.’” The heads of government of the NATO countries, meeting in Paris from the 16th to the 19th of December 1957, then put actual muscle into an already existing strategic concept when they made the decision to stockpile nuclear weapons in Europe and put intermediate ballistic missiles at SACEUR’s disposal. ³

No.1 Air Division was the first non-U.S. force selected to carry American nuclear weapons assigned to NATO. It was a sensible choice: the division needed rearming. Its primary role, day-interception, had become problematical in view of the potential enemy’s greatly increased offensive capabilities in the confined airspace of Europe. It was an all-professional force of proven high performance, considered the only one that could be rearmed and retrained without being taken out of the line—an important consideration in the eyes of SACEUR, who had no forces to spare. Thus, in 1958, the (nuclear) strike-reconnaissance role for No.1 Air Division was offered to Canada and accepted by Canada, apparently without demur from the Ottawa government.⁴ The carrier recommended was the F-104 Starfighter, which, modified and Canadian-built, became the CF-104. Here, there were objections on the part of the RCAF. They were technical in nature and entirely intramural, and they were overruled in the spirit of cooperating without asking, too much as to the whys and wherefores. By 1959 the necessary decisions had been made. The first operational CF-1O4s were delivered to No.1 Air Division in December 1962. At the same time the four CF-100 squadrons were disbanded. The division was henceforth composed of six strike squadrons of 16 aircraft each, two squadrons each at Grostenquin, Zweibrücken, and Baden-Soellingen, and two reconnaissance squadrons of 15 aircraft at Marville, a total of 126 Starfighters.

It is debatable whether forming strike squadrons in NATO for tactical operations with nuclear weapons was ever sensible. Certain it is that by the time No.1 Air Division got its first Starfighters U.S. strategic concepts (and thus, necessarily, those of NATO) had changed so much that maintaining forces of weapons carriers of that kind did not make any sense at all. Already in 1961 the United States had made it clear that it had moved away from the idea of using nuclear arms at once, at any level of conflict in Central Europe. “The current doctrine,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric,⁵ “is that if NATO forces were about to be overwhelmed by nonnuclear attacks from the Bloc countries, NATO would make use of nuclear arms.” This was a long way from Field-Marshal Montgomery’s dictum of 1957. By 1962 the doctrine of flexible response under central control had been enunciated. The NATO Starfighters, which perhaps could be thought to have a military value—at any rate a deterrent one—as long as they were potential first-strike weapon systems, became totally ineffective once they were relegated to a second-strike (or rather umptiethstrike) role. Bunched together at the end of extra-long airstrips, airstrips undoubtedly surveyed to the last hundredth of an inch on the maps used by the strong Soviet nuclear rocket forces only a few hundred miles away, the Starfighters would surely be destroyed on the ground in the enemy’s first, surprise attack. They do not even deter under a strategy of flexible response: they are too obviously sitting ducks. There is no need even to go into the largely theoretical arguments: that limited nuclear war is impossible, especially on the continent of Europe; and that even if it were possible, there would be no reasonable targets (i.e., important ones, yet not likely to lead to escalation if attacked) in that overcrowded area for the 60-kiloton or heavier atomic bombs of the CF -104. Where a war is to be kept nonnuclear as long as possible, there is just no place for a highly vulnerable nuclear weapons carrier of the Starfighter genre.

In the meantime, though, the CF-104 program has run its course. It was the biggest single armament program ever undertaken by Canada in peacetime. The 238 aircraft (200 single-seat combat, 38 two-seat trainer) have cost $463,762,000. The training of pilots for them has been the most expensive ever—an average of just under $440,000 per man to full operational standards. Ground installations and support equipment have been equally costly. It would be no exaggeration to say that Canada has up to now spent something like one billion dollars on its CF-104 force.

Various attempts have been made to give to this “white elephant” some military value. The possibility was studied of putting the aircraft onto hardened sites from which they would be launched by catapult. This might have given the CF-104 force a second-strike capability. Unfortunately, estimates showed that the cost of such a conversion would be unwarrantably high. For a much more modest sum of money, the strike aircraft of No.1 Air Division were adapted to carry conventional bombs. This role has been likened to a bakery’s delivering bread from house to house in a racing car. In any case, it does not solve the problem: the enemy would still be certain to take out the CF-104 bases in his first strike, as he could not know whether the counterattack would be made with nuclear or conventional weapons.

With all this, it is no ground for satisfaction that the still available 166 CF-104 combat aircraft are likely to last No.1 Air Division for a long time. Attrition has been lower than anticipated; it has lately been at the rate of four total losses a year. At the same time, the number of aircraft the division requires will decline. When Marville is vacated in accordance with the French eviction order of 29th March 1966—Grostenquin was abandoned some time ago when France forbade the stationing of foreign nuclear weapons on her territory—No.1 Air Division will operate only six squadrons, four strike and two reconnaissance, from the two remaining bases in Germany, Zweibrücken and Baden-Soellingen.⁶ The squadrons will then be augmented to 18 aircraft each, but this still makes a first-line strength of only 108 aircraft as against an inventory of 166. In theory, then, Canadian CF-104s could be kept flying in European skies for perhaps as much as another eight years—very efficiently, as they have been so far, but without much military purpose.

The CF-104s of No.1 Air Division provided one of the traumatic experiences that have led Canada to re-examine its traditional policy of military cooperation with a minimum of its own initiative. It also illustrates the point made earlier, that in these days it is very difficult for a military satellite simply to follow the leader. For what happened is that No.1 Air Division is now equipped to conform to the one-before-the-last U.S. military policy. And the division is stuck with that equipment. Canada is now engaged in a thorough overhaul of its military establishment, which requires re-equipment for a new primary mission. A new aircraft for the air division is not even included in the “White Paper on Defence” of March 1964, in the listing of priorities for materiel procurement.⁷ No funds would be available for that purpose anyway, not in the foreseeable future. Canada thus finds itself in this instance in a paradoxical situation. It is among the strongest supporters of the NATO idea, including the maintenance of an efficient, powerful, integrated military organization for the defence of Europe. Yet, because of a mistake made in 1958, a mistake quite excusable because it resulted from the country’s traditional defence policy, Canada’s potentially most important contribution to NATO is ineffective—and yet bound to remain as is, even though now recognized as ineffective.

Canada makes two other air contributions to NATO, one direct and one indirect. Among the earmarked maritime forces, which will be at SACLANT’s disposal in case of emergency, are the bulk of the country’s maritime aircraft. The total inventory at present is 32 Canadair Argus, 21 Lockheed Neptune, and 71 Grumman Tracker (built by De Havilland of Canada) fixed-wing aircraft, and 25 Sikorsky Sea King helicopters. Of these, all except one squadron of Neptunes and a few Tracker aircraft are on the Atlantic. Canada is already in peacetime responsible for control of the northern sector of the western Atlantic, and the Canadian area commander (CANLANT) comes directly under the Commander in Chief, Western Atlantic (CINCWESTLANT), in Norfolk, Virginia. It is a working organization, and the transition to SACLANT command, if it came to that, can be expected to be smooth. Furthermore, the total Canadian contribution is substantial: it includes, apart from the already-listed ocean patrol and antisubmarine warfare aircraft, a naval force of one aircraft carrier and 28 escorts of various descriptions.

As doubts began to arise in Canada concerning the usefulness in its present form of the main Canadian military contribution to NATO, that of ground and air forces for the Central European sector, interest increased in the alliance’s mobile land force [AMF(L)]. Its commander is now a Canadian, Major-General Gilles Turcot, and the Canadian contribution is one reinforced battalion group of about 1200, all ranks. Canada has already expressed its readiness to furnish a second battalion group, if required. The whole force is air transportable, the goal being deployment on one of NATO’s flanks—the northern, in the case of the Canadian unit—within seven days of an alert. In exercise “Winter Express” in February 1966 the goal was surpassed, deployment being accomplished in 5 days 7 hours. This was done by means of 61 flights of 7 Canadair Yukons and 13 Lockheed Hercules of Air Transport Command, with only a comparatively small part of the equipment (mainly the helicopters of the battalion group) going by sea. Current plans call for a substantial strengthening of Air Transport Command. The Canadian capability to support NATO by swift movements of troops and materiel from home bases in Canada to given danger spots will thus be enhanced. This is considered preferable to the stationing of mobile reserves in Europe.⁸

Having taken a rational look at its own military contribution to NATO, the Canadian government is now very cognizant of the shortcomings in the military posture of the alliance. On one hand, Canada does not wish to rock the NATO boat right now when it has just got such a severe buffeting from France. On the other hand, Ottawa wants to see reform come quickly, so as not to prolong the condition which has given France cause for leaving the military organization. Defence Minister Paul Hellyer put it this way:

What is needed is a look at the real strategic situation in the world today, A look at the change in the balance of power since the treaty was signed. A look at the restored and increasingly powerful Europe, and the part it should play in relation to its North American partners. A look at the military organization. A look at the plethora of headquarters and the allegation that. . . the organization is becoming topheavy with headquarters and their bureaucratic machinery. We also need to take a look at the Council and its real ability to cope with the decision-making requirements. ⁹

It is the kind of searching examination leading to the determination of a strategy, of force requirements and member contributions, agreed to by all treaty partners, which should have been completed and acted upon before France defected. Instead it has merely been promised again and again since the Ottawa ministerial meeting of NATO in May 1963.

In the meantime, Canada will in all likelihood stand pat with its militarily dubious contribution to the forces assigned to SACEUR in the Central Europe sector, while possibly increasing its much more useful contribution to the AMF(L). Canada can make this concession, in order not to make things more difficult in the present disconcerting situation in NATO. The moment of truth will come, however, as soon as the problem of the role and the equipment of No.1 Air Division must be tackled anew. This may happen soon if the re-examination of the military posture of NATO is advanced energetically, and at the latest when the CF-104s of the division come to the end of their life span (their usefulness having ended before they ever entered squadron service). Even though Canada may then find itself in an embarrassing position, such as it would not have encountered in the balmy days when it just went along in the military field with whatever others did, one can only hope that the opportunity for making new decisions will not be long in coming.

Canada in NORAD

The United States and Canada have cooperated in one form or another in North American air defence from the moment a need for it began to be felt. The first concrete steps were taken by a joint body, the Military Cooperation Committee. On its instruction, the USAF and RCAF air defence commands drew up the first common emergency air defence plan in 1950. Four years later a combined planning group was established. In the meantime Canada had gone into the active air defence business, with the activation, from the summer of 1953 onwards, of all-weather interceptor squadrons equipped with the Avro CF-l00. Construction proceeded apace on three radar lines, the U.S.-built Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line, the Canadian automatic unmanned Mid-Canada Line, and the jointly erected Pinetree Line.

Up to 1957, cooperation was close even though informal, and things certainly worked out well in practice. Still, the USAF and the RCAF were equally anxious to see this cooperation formalized by the establishment of a single organization. Agreement between the two governments was reached in August 1957, NORAD Headquarters was activated on 12th September 1957, and a l0-year accord formally signed on 12th May 1958. It has been suggested that the Canadian government was less than eager to enter into the NORAD agreement and that the RCAF was able to “sell” it only because a new Progressive-Conservative administration had at the time just taken over from the previous Liberal one and was not in the picture yet. There is no substantial evidence for this contention. The establishment of NORAD coincided with the flights of Sputnik I and the first Soviet ICBM. It is unlikely that any Canadian government would have closed its eyes to the advantages of unified command in what was obviously a single defence area. In any event, there will be no difficulties from the Canadian side when the agreement comes up for renewal in 1968.

The Canadian Air Defence Command operates as a component command of NORAD. It is now colocated with Headquarters Northern NORAD Region, in North Bay, Ontario. Many of the staff positions in the two organizations are “double-hatted,” including that of the commander. There are now five Canadian active air defence units: two of them, McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo, manned; two Boeing Bomarc missile, unmanned, interceptor squadrons in 41st NORAD Division of Northern Region; and one Voodoo squadron in 25th NORAD Division of Western Region. The total inventory is 62 Voodoos and 56 Bomarcs. Canada mans all the heavy radars of the Pinetree Line apart from those in the Newfoundland/Labrador area (where it mans one) and provides the commanders and operations room staffs of the otherwise civilian-manned DEW Line stations located in Canada. It also operates one SAGE direction center and two Backup Interceptor Control (BUIC) combat centers, as well as a satellite-tracking facility with Baker-Nunn camera at Cold Lake, Alberta. In the 1966-67 Estimates, $125,232,000 is allocated to Air Defence Command or close to nine percent of the military expenditures proper. In personnel, the Command has about 10 percent of the Regular Force establishment of about 110,000. A small, indirect contribution to North American air defence is made by the Canadian Army, which mans the Federal Warning Centers and works generally in the field of national survival under the direction of the Emergency Measures Organization (EMO).

Air Defence Command has shrunk in size in the last years as the bomber threat, which it alone is designed to counter, declined. It now appears to have arrived at the irreducible minimum in both manpower and equipment if it is to carry out its task of surveillance of Canadian airspace to ensure freedom from intruders and if it is to make any kind of useful contribution to the warding off of even a residual threat from enemy manned aircraft. Yet no follow-up to the flying equipment of the Command has so far been seriously contemplated. New air defence weapon systems do not figure in the list of procurement priorities in the “White Paper on Defence” of March 1964. It seems that the Canadian government is content to let things ride for the present and await further developments in the aerospace defence field.

To come back to the Canadian attitude toward NORAD, although there were no real objections to the establishment of a unified command and there will be none to the renewal of the agreement, no great support has been given it either. In the one instance when it was tested in an actual emergency, the Canadian response was unsatisfactory. This was in the Cuban crisis. When on 22nd October 1962, the day of President Kennedy’s crucial address to the nation, NORAD raised its alert state (reportedly to DefCon Three), the Canadian government, although forewarned by a special Presidential emissary, hesitated to allow the RCAF Air Defence Command to follow suit. For 48 hours formal coordination was lost, even though it was maintained on the working level to the limit of the leeway given by the absence of specific orders from Ottawa. When the Canadian government at last came along, the worst of the crisis was over—and so probably would the nuclear exchange have been, had it come to one.

It should be said right away that the Government’s indecision in the Cuban affair did not enhance its standing in the eyes of the nation. On the contrary, the fumble was brought up again in the defence crisis that led to the fall of the Government a few months later. Still, the incident pointed up a possible weakness in the NORAD setup: it is perhaps too ideally equitable and precise to be practical. Thus, the arrangement by which the Commander in Chief NORAD is equally responsible to the President of the United States through the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the Canadian government through the Canadian Chief of Defence Staff is not really workable in all circumstances. He is after all an American officer, commanding a force that is more than 90 percent American and unlikely to be called into action other than as a consequence of a U.S. policy or an inimical policy aimed at the United States. In brief, in NORAD, Canadian participation is indispensable, but almost entirely for reasons of geography. This being so, it would surely be too much to ask of an American commander in chief to act in all circumstances in accordance with Ottawa as much as Washington instructions, or, as he might have done in the Cuban crisis, to react dutifully to the obvious reluctance of Ottawa to give any instructions. To draw a parallel with SACEUR’s position would be quite wrong, for the latter is responsible not to governments directly but to a separate entity, the alliance represented by the North Atlantic Council, of which the United States is a member. In a way, SACEUR is an international officer, comparable to a commander of a U.N. peace force. The American commander in chief of NORAD and his Canadian deputy are not; they are national officers with, supposedly, a dual allegiance. The arrangement stems from the assumption that all problems which might face the organization must of necessity be common to the United States and Canada and could not be dealt with otherwise than in common.  The Cuban crisis showed that this is not necessarily so; Washington and Ottawa might disagree on what constitutes a threat to North America. If this should happen again, the staffing of so many NORAD positions with Canadian officers—many more than the size of the Canadian contribution warrants—could prove a serious handicap. (The reverse is unlikely.) In such a situation, the old informal cooperation of pre-NORAD days could well be more advantageous.

Difficulties with the unified command of North American air defence may arise also if and when the United States decides to put in place an antimissile defence system. In this matter, the Canadian government is taking at present a “wait and see” attitude. It can not do otherwise. Money for defence is scarce; and what there is, is committed for years ahead—perhaps not formally, but just as surely, practically. The public is largely indifferent. It certainly could not be stirred up, under present circumstances, to any effort toward ensuring its safety from missile attack, the possibility of which has not even begun to enter the public mind. The failure of earlier attempts to promote a shelter program is proof of that, as are the conditions under which the Canadian EMO has to operate.

The situation could change radically if one of two things happened in the United States: (1) if point defence systems were installed which were believed to give real protection against missile attack to urban areas; (2) if a U.S. area defence system required the use of Canadian real estate and airspace. In the first case, the pressure may come from below. The public may demand of the Government that it see to it that Canadian cities get the same protection as, say, Chicago and Detroit. In the second case, the Government would have to take the initiative. The situation would be the same as it was at the end of the Forties when a bomber threat began to loom. Then, Canada realized that the United States had to have use of Canadian territory and airspace to counter that threat. The choice was between surrendering sovereignty and letting the United States do the job over Canadian heads, or Canada’s doing it in cooperation with the United States. The latter course was naturally chosen. There is no doubt that it would be chosen again, despite the additional expenditure it would entail (and which the Government would much prefer to avoid at this point) if the United States decided on a North American antimissile defence system.

The most awkward situation, from the point of view of the workings of NORAD, would be created by an American decision to install a type of antimissile defence in which the Canadian public would have no interest and a participation in which the Government would find impossible, politically, to “sell” to the people. This could happen, for instance, in the event of the limited, West Coast-only, antimissile defence system against a future Chinese threat, which is reportedly being considered. If it came to that and it was made part of general North American defence, the unified setup in NORAD and Western NORAD Region headquarters would be a source of embarrassment, on both the political and the working levels;

In sum, then, while there is no significant opposition in Canada against the NORAD setup and everybody who gives any thought to it agrees that it represents by far the best solution from the viewpoint of technical and military efficiency, at least some observers wonder whether a more informal relationship would not actually work better in practice. Here, again, Canada is in a somewhat equivocal position. It reaps many advantages from its membership in NORAD. On the other hand, complete integration in that organization always carries with it the danger that the bigger, richer, and more heavily engaged partner will drag the smaller one farther than it would want or can really afford to go. NORAD is just now in a comparatively quiescent stage of development, between a declining bomber threat (because largely warded off) and a missile threat which cannot yet be actively combated. In such a period, Canada naturally does not find it difficult to go along all the way. The real problems will arise when the era of marking time will be over—undoubtedly in the fairly near future.

unification

Although it is not really germane to the subject matter of this article, brief mention must be made of service unification in Canada. By the time this account appears in print, the bill abolishing the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army, and the Royal Canadian Air Force and replacing them within a single service, the Canadian Armed Forces, will be before parliament. Indeed—but this is less likely—it may already have been passed. Service unification is a revolutionary development which, again, has sprung from the already discussed fundamental change in Canadian outlook on defence policy. As far as NATO and NORAN are concerned, service unification will almost certainly make no difference in the Canadian standpoint toward or Canadian participation in these two organizations. Canada will still want to cooperate, certainly to the full extent of its contractual obligations, and, beyond that, to the limit of what in its newly acquired intellectual freedom in defence matters it considers it can usefully do.

Toronto, Ontario

Notes

1. Defence Minister Paul Hellyer expressed this as follows in testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. On 3rd June 1966:

“First of all, on the question of philosophy and strategic appraisal, we are now doing this ourselves. . . . we are turning in the direction of doing more independent thinking. I think this is right, because if you depend too heavily on the thinking of others, you might easily and yourself following policies that you did not really agree with if you stop to think them through. Therefore, we are giving more consideration to the larger matters than, I think, has ever been the case in this country before.”

2. Total Defence Estimates amount to $1,572,690,000. Of this, $1,420,315,000 goes to true military, $152,375,000 to other purposes (e.g., pensions, mutual aid, etc.).

3. Paragraphs 20 and 21 of the communiqué of the meeting.

4. During the domestic controversy over nuclear weapons which came up three years later, it was contended that the government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker did not realize that the strike-reconnaissance role implied carrying atomic bombs. It is difficult to believe this, even of a government which on the whole was more unmilitary, if not antimilitary, than most.

5. New York Times, 7th June 1961.

6. Statement of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, 20th July 1966.

7. “White Paper on Defence,” March 1964 (Queen’s Printer, Ottawa), P. 241 (“Priorities”).

8. “White Paper,” p. 21, (“NATO Europe”).

9. Address to the Canadian Club of Ottawa, 1st March 1966.

Contributor

Wing Commander John Gellner, RCAF retired, (LL.D., Masaryk University, Czechoslovakia) is editor of the Commentator, a Canadian political monthly. After earning his doctor of laws degree, he fled from his home town of Brno, Czechoslovakia, following the occupation of his country in 1939. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and served first as an air observer (navigator/bombardier), later as a pilot, mostly in Bomber Command, from bases in Great Britain. Postwar assignments were as student, RCAF Staff College, 1949-50; staff officer, Directorate of Air Intelligence, AFHQ, 1950-52; CAdO (executive officer), No.3 RCAF Fighter Wing, Zweibrücken, Germany, 1952-55; and on the Directing Staff, RCAF Staff College, 1955-58. Since retiring with the rank of wing commander he has engaged in journalism, writing for Canadian, American, Swiss, and German publications and lecturing widely, his particular fields being defense and Central and Eastern European affairs. Gellner is the author of Political and Social Trends in Eastern Europe and North America in NATO and of longer essays published in the “Behind the Headlines Series” of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. As chief editor of the Canadian Heritage Series on early Canadian history, he has so far brought out five volumes.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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