It all has to do with Nato.
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1) In Canada, US personnel shall be governed by the terms of
the Agreement between the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty regarding the Status of their Forces (NATO SOFA) dated 19 Jul 51 as implemented in Canada by the Visiting Forces Act and in accordance with existing US -Provincial Attorney General Agreements. All problems of jurisdiction or claims related to Art. VII or VIII of NATO SOFA involving US personnel shall be reported to NDHQ/JAG.
(2) In the US, Canadian Forces personnel shall be governed by the terms of the Agreement between the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty regarding the Status of their Forces, (NATO SOFA) dated 19 Jul 51. All problems of jurisdiction or claims related to Art. VII or VIII of NATO SOFA involving Canadian Forces personnel shall be reported to CDLS (Washington).
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Norad -- From Hansard. -- US Military officers who manned these bases were allowed to carry sidearms, to and from base work, which involved crossing civilian areas, but few if any of them ever did.
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Once the threat had been appreciated, that Stalin was a dictator much along the lines of Hitler, it was realized that the United States was the next likely target. The Americans decided that the attack was likely to come over the Arctic. Therefore, Canada in a very real sense had no choice but to co-operate with the United States in setting up some sort of air defence plan in the Arctic.
I have actually seen a document in which the former prime minister, Mackenzie King, advised his deputy minister of foreign affairs that Canada had to come to an agreement with the United States because American planes were already mapping Canada's Arctic and if Canada did not come to a military agreement on the defence of North America with the United States it would be a serious erosion of our sovereignty.
However, the agreement for the defence of North America, which finally took place in 1957, was not that hard to come by in the sense that Canada, the United States and Britain were already intimate allies in terms of secret intelligence. We shared then, as I hope we still do now, the most intimate military secrets without question. I can give you an example of that actually, Madam Speaker, and I will in a moment.
When the North America air defence system was set up it consisted primarily of three lines: the DEW line, the distant early warning line which was a series of radar stations in the high Arctic that looked over into the Soviet Union as far as they could go. The idea was to spot the masses of Soviet bombers as they approached Canadian territory. Then there was the mid-Canada line which was a series of automatic radar stations that would indicate which direction these masses of bombers were flying, whether they were going to Chicago, New York or wherever. This was followed by the pine tree line with one station up near Barrie, not very far north of Toronto. That line was designed to zero in on the interceptors. We had aircraft stationed at North Bay that were designed to shoot it out with the incoming Russian bombers. That was the situation toward the end of the 1950s.
It was apparent that this was a very expensive thing to put together. What I have to stress again is that this required the most intimate co-operation between the Americans and the Canadians. By 1960 it became apparent that it was going to be very difficult to shoot down the masses of bombers. It was at about that time, in the early 1960s, that the Canadian government under Diefenbaker decided to abandon the famous Avro project which was the fighter bomber that the Canadians had developed which was a superb aircraft, no doubt about it, in favour of Bomarc missiles. Canada, at the pine tree line level, became armed with Bomarc missiles. These were the most modern missiles of their time.
Madam Speaker, I am going to tell you something that you do not know. These Bomarc missiles which were stationed in various places in Canada were equipped with nuclear warheads. At the time, the government denied that there were nuclear warheads on Canadian territory but in fact the archives just down the street will show that Canada actually did have nuclear warheads on the Bomarc missiles. The reason for this was that if the bombers came down in waves then a small nuclear warhead could shoot down 30 or 40 bombers rather than trying to bring them down individually.
I mention this to illustrate how absolute was the exchange of secret intelligence between the United States and Canada at that time and how absolute was the confidence that the Americans had in Canada because it actually permitted another foreign country to have missiles on their soil which were capable not just of shooting down Russian bombers, but also capable of attacking the United States. Given the American isolationist or independence mentality, to have that much trust in another country is quite remarkable.
That leads me to why I am glad to have the opportunity to rise during this debate because now we come to the present. The threat has changed and it is a different threat. It is not the Soviet Union perhaps but there are cruise missiles, biological warfare weapons, nuclear weapons going around the world who knows where. The threat still exists so there is good reason to want to renew this NORAD agreement with the Americans.
AND
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