As Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President Trump in Washington, troubling signs suggest Canada may be on the verge of making a costly and strategically questionable commitment. Based on recent parliamentary testimony and presidential speechifying, it appears our government is preparing to announce Canada’s participation in what the Trump administration calls the “Golden Dome”—a continental intercontinental ballistic missile defence system. This would be, to put it bluntly, as dumb as a bag of hammers.
The warning signs are there if you know where to look. President Trump, in his characteristic fashion, appeared to let the cat out of the bag during a speech to his generals, mentioning he had spoken with Canadians about the Golden Dome and that they were supportive. Meanwhile, Minister Dominic LeBlanc testified that Trump likes big investments and that substantial commitments seem to move negotiations forward with the United States. Put these pieces together, and a picture emerges of a government prepared to announce billions in spending on a dubious missile defence system, possibly at today’s White House visit.
The fundamental problem with the Golden Dome isn’t just the $175 to $500 billion USD price tag, though that alone should give Canadians pause. The core issue is that this technology simply doesn’t work against the threat it’s supposedly designed to counter.
This is not Israel’s Iron Dome intercepting Hamas rockets. This is not the system defending Kyiv against Russian ballistic missiles. Those threats, while deadly serious, involve entirely different classes of weaponry operating at different speeds and altitudes. The Golden Dome is meant to address something far more challenging: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), specifically the threat posed by nuclear-armed North Korea.
Here’s where the evil genius of nuclear weapons design comes into play. ICBMs now incorporate decades of technological advancement—hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), chaff and decoy devices, and multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) all designed to drop megaton payloads on targets in ways that are exceedingly difficult to intercept. This isn’t some static Cold War technology we’re dealing with. And there are troubling signs that Russia may be transferring advanced warhead technology to North Korea in exchange for troops to fight in Ukraine.
Scientists who have studied this problem extensively have reached a sobering conclusion: The only realistic way to intercept an ICBM is during its boost stage—the first few minutes after launch, before it leaves the atmosphere. That doesn’t require a golden dome of North American-based missiles. It requires weaponizing space itself, creating orbital platforms capable of monitoring North Korea and targeting missiles with lasers or other advanced weapons we haven’t even fully developed yet. The Golden Dome technology being proposed is massively inadequate for the mission it’s meant to accomplish.
Beyond the technical shortcomings, the political contradictions are self-evident. How does a prime minister who has spent months warning Canadians about the threat posed by America’s populist turn place the future of our continental air defence in the hands of a frenemy? Even during the Harper years, when proposals for continental missile defence were discussed with the far more stable Obama administration, there was significant apprehension about the sovereignty implications. Those concerns are magnified tenfold when the partner is Donald Trump and a MAGA movement that shows every indication of being a permanent and powerful feature of American politics.
The Golden Dome also runs 180 degrees opposite to everything this government has told us about diversification. We’ve heard repeatedly about the need to diversify our defence procurement beyond American F-35s, about the importance of strengthening ties with European allies through NATO. Yet here we are, potentially doubling down on continental security integration with the United States—possibly placing American-operated missile systems on Canadian soil at a cost of potentially tens of billions of dollars.
All this represents a fundamental choice between integration and independence. And it’s not that all integration is bad. Shared Arctic security patrols, interoperable fighter aircraft through NORAD are reasonable forms of cooperation. But the Golden Dome crosses a line. It likely leads toward the weaponization of outer space, something Canada has resisted for decades in favour of its peaceful development and international cooperation.
Most concerning is how we’re stumbling into this commitment. There has been virtually no public debate. Like other recent policy shifts—from Supreme Court interventions on Charter rights to various concessions on digital services taxes and softwood lumber—the Golden Dome appears poised to become Canadian policy without the parliamentary debate or public discussion that such a massive undertaking deserves.
If Prime Minister Carney announces Canadian participation in the Golden Dome today, he must answer fundamental questions: What exactly are we getting in return? Are there significant concessions forthcoming from the Trump administration? Or is Carney simply piling another concession onto a growing list that includes abandoned retaliatory tariffs, the dropped Digital Sales Tax, and hundreds of millions spent on spurious fentanyl interdiction? If the answer isn’t a major breakthrough in the trade talks, then the tens of billions of dollars we may ultimately end up paying to build Trump’s “Golden Dome” is wasted taxpayer dollars that would have been better spent on making Canada more independent militarily on its own initiative or toward existing defence arrangements with the Americans that actually enhance our security.
Canada deserves better than a rushed commitment to an unproven, likely ineffective system that contradicts our stated security policy. The Golden Dome may glitter, but it’s fool’s gold.
Generative AI assisted in the production of this story.
Rudyard Griffiths is the publisher of The Hub.
