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As a result of the Diefenbaker
Conservatives win at the polls in 1957, the Canadian
government made a decision to abandon the Avro Arrow
CF-105 fighter in favour of joint North American defence
with the United States. As Soviet bombers extended their
range of operations and as intercontinental Nuclear
missile became a reality with the launch of Sputnik in
1957, a new approach to defence for the cold war needed
to be considered.
A soviet attack would in all likelihood
come over the arctic, across Canada and into the U.S..
On August 1st, 1957 an agreement was announced that a
new organization was to be formed between Canada and the
United States to be known as NORAD or the North
American Air Defence Agreement. This was intended to be
an integrated system of defensive measures,
installations and systems that would provide early
warning and protection to North America in case of an
attack by the Soviet Union.
It was to be based in
Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and would place
surveillance perimeters in the high Canadian Arctic as
well as in strategic locations around the world. Both
Canada and the U.S. would be required to commit to any
actions taken. The RCAF ad the USAF would be effectively
placed under a single command which would coordinate
it's response and action to perceived and real threats.
The first true test of the system did not
come from the north but from Cuba in 1962 when Soviet
missiles were placed on that island and which directly
threatened the United States. The Kennedy administration
went on alert as soon as it realized that the missiles
were there and then asked the Canadian government t
issue the same orders so that NORAD could track the
situation. Diefenbaker took several days before he would
allow the alert order to be issued which severely
strained the joint command concept.
By the 1980.s technology had changed with
the advent of Nuclear submarines and cruise missiles and
the official title of NORAD was changed to North
American Aerospace Command. President Reagan was looking
to the Strategic Defensive Initiative as an Alternative
to Mutually Assured Destruction theory and asked that
testing be conducted in Canada on the Cold Lake military
base to track cruise missiles as a joint NORAD
operation. The political fallout was intense but the
Canadian Government, while not endorsing SDI or Star
Wars as some called it, did work with the US in
conducting the tests.
By the 1990's with the disappearance of
the Soviet Union and early warning technology being
deployed more and more in space, the NORAD agreement has
become less important as a joint US/Canadian agreement.
Some suggest that NORAD was the
forerunner of other US Canadian deals such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement which has substantially
impacted the economies of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. |
