Feb. 23 - Paul Martin, please call home. There seems to be some confusion as to Canada's participation in the Missile Shield Defense program (Missile muddle.)

As the article notes, the amended NORAD agreement makes Canadian participation in the program de facto but there is a loophole if one squints hard enough. Bob explains better than I could.

A generous interpretation is that the Canadian government wants to pretend they aren't protected under the shield in order to placate any one of the xxxx groups lined up to scream hysterically about the weaponization of space, the environment, Canadian sovereignty or the relative merits of Final Fantasy VIII; a less generous interepretation is that they don't know what the hell they're doing.

I expressed a wish long ago that the USA could implement the missile shield without defending a reluctant Canada, and now I read that Japanese inclusion could make that happen. Wouldn't that be interesting!

Via Peaktalk, a CS Monitor headlines nails it: US allies: Australia signs up, Canada signs off (Australia is sending 450 more troops in Iraq in order to protect Japanese engineering teams.) The article points out a key difference: Howard has a majority government and Martin has a minority one, and who really doubted the outcome when Martin decided to form a government with the NDP?

Posted by: Debbye at 07:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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