I know we Canadians developed the Candu nuclear reactor, but can we be regarded as a nuclear power even if we don’t stockpile the weapons?
How long would it take for us to develop a nuclear weapon of our own? Longer than Iran? Do we already enrich uranium? If not, why then does Iran need to develop technology for enriched uranium for peaceful purposes? If Iran is going for ballistic nuclear capability, should Canada as well? What should our response be if Tehran lobbed a nuclear shell on Thunder Bay?
I remember some years back there was a dispute where Canada considered the straits between the arctic isles Canadian waters, and the US considered them international. There was talk of Canada buying nuclear submarines from Britain in order to patrol the straits and enforce its claim. So presumably Canada can’t build its own nuclear subs, indicating at least that it isn’t a full nuclear power.
That’s because subs are notoriously difficult things to build, not because we’re not a “nuclear power.” There’s plenty of expertise in Canada on building nuclear reactors, and I rather doubt it would be that difficult to transfer that knowledge to building nuclear weapons.
I mean, if India was able to produce nuclear weapons using a Canadian reactor in the 60s, surely Canada could do it today.
Canada is not a “nuclear power.” I can’t recall anyone ever claiming it was. A nuclear power is a nation that possesses nuclear weapons.
It’s theoretically possible that Canada could construct nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time. Depending on how enthusiastic the government was in doing it, of course, but if they were really in a rush, I’d imagine it could be done in under 24 months.
Of course, that’s true of many countries - Australia, Germany, Japan, Italy and others could doubtlessly construct nuclear weapons in relatively short order. They choose not to. If they chose to do so, it would be very alarming indeed, since it would suggest something was awry with their governments.
I don’t want to get into a long discussion of the theory of nuclear war, but to make it short, one of the reasons Canada does not possess nuclear weapons is that there is no real reason to do so; a country that attempted a strategic nuclear attack on Canada - or any other Western country - would suffer a retaliatory strike. It is the nature of the balance of nuclear power than using a nuclear weapon would necessitate a powerful counterattack, because that’s really become the very reason for their existence.
Back during the height of the Cold War, Canada DID deploy nuclear weapons, which a lot of Canadians don’t know. NATO planning at the time accounted for many different variations of limited nuclear warfare, so Canada possessed various tactical and semi-strategic warheads, such as Genie air-to-air weapons and Honest John missiles armed with warheads that had a yield up to 40 kilotons - more than twice the power of Nagasaki. If you believed that nuclear war could be limited, it made sense for Canada to have nuclear weapons because we had specific defensive obligations in Europe, so we needed nukes for the part of the front we’d be fighting on.
Eventually, the doctrine of limited nuclear war fell out of favour, as the nuclear powers accepted the fact that nuclear wars would inevitably balloon into full-scale wars of extermination. The role of nuclear weapons thus became a pure deterrent; don’t nuke me, pal, or else I’ll vaporize your whole country. That’s why the Americans and Soviets suddenly became so willing to reduce their arsenals in the 1980s; they were coming to the realization that there was no reason to have a 25,000-warhead arsenal. All you needed was enough warheads to ensure you could always annihilate the major population centres of whatever country nuked you first. That meant they could carry smaller arsenals, which had two benefits; first, it saved a colossal pile of money (nuclear weapons are astounding expensive) and secondly, it made them both more secure, since they retained the nuclear shield while becoming increasingly confident their their rival would not try to use nukes in a tactical, limited exchange.
In this context, Canada’s collection of borrowed tactical warheads were of absolutely no value; all that mattered were the big ICBMs that threatened any potential enemy with doom if they pulled the nuke card first. So our nuclear capability was phased out because it just did not serve a military interest anymore; NATO as a group was moving away from plans to use tactical nukes, so we went with it.
As it stands, Canada is a NATO ally. There are two NATO countries with the ability to glassify any nation on earth (the USA and UK) and so it is effectively the case that a nuclear attack on Canada would be an act of suicide. Were Canada to suddenly announce its intent to build nuclear weapons that would suggest a very frightening turn of events indeed because it would mean Canada was turning away from its allies; why else would Canada need nukes unless we planned to isolate ourselves from the USA and Western Europe? The very act of building a nuke would be a threatening act. I can’t personally see any reason why we’d need one unless we were afraid of an American invasion, which is nuts.
Wouldn’t be a technical problem to build our own nuclear subs. We have as much experience in building full size reactors as anyone, and we have nuclear engineers at Ontario Hydro / Ontario Power Generation who previously were in the Royal Navy designing and operating nuclear subs there.
It more a matter of utility and money. We don’t have much of a use for nuclear subs, and nuclear subs cost a hellacious amount.
As others have said, Canada is unlikely to develop it’s own arsenal anytime soon (having squandared all their resources on Health Care and Education). But they do enrich their own uranium (and have large deposits of uranium ore, IIRC), they did help manage stockpiles during the Cold War, contributed money and scientists to the Manhatten Project and other nuclear weapon development programs(and thus no doubt have plans for US developed weapons lying around) and have a large civilian nuclear program. So if the mood did overtake them, I imagine they could develop a weapon extremely fast, certainly much faster then the Iranians.
Before it got that far, his own cabinet would’ve deposed him. U.S./Canada relations would have to spend decades deteriorating for invasion to be considered; long enough for Canada to see what was coming and start quietly stockpiling. The timeframe rules out any one president (or prime minister, for that matter) charging toward war on his initiative. Even the invasion of Iraq has roots going back to the early eighties; it’s not just solely Bush43’s idea.
I think you’re being wildly optimistic. Mind, I think it’s unlikely we’d decide to invade Canada overnight, but the right group of crazies getting elected could make it happen in months, not decades.
David Letterman would hardly take the destruction of his bandleader’s hometown lightly! He would reply with the wittiest Top Ten List you’d ever heard!
You do indeed recall correctly. Saskatchewan has some of the largest uranium reserves around, and produces a very substantial portion of the global total. There’d be no going begging to Nigeria if we decided to build some nukes.
Who is to say that Canada doesn’t have nuclear weapons? What about newly created ones? You might be able to link to a cite that says they don’t, but what would that prove? As if Canada is going to brag about them if they did possess them. If history tells us anything, it’s that governments lie about what they have, and don’t have. Iran is currently playing this game.
Not at all. Iran is playing a shell game until they have nukes, at which point they’ll be happy to let you know they have some. Nuclear weapons serve no purpose unless people know you’ve got them. Bragging about them is in fact exactly the point of having them. A deterrent doesn’t work if people don’t know it exists.
I mean… I don’t know how else to say this, but the idea that Canada is keeping a secret nuclear arsenal is just insane. Aside from the fact that it simply doesn’t make any sense at all for Canada to do that, AND that fact that Canada is a free country ya know and such a secret would get out, AND the fact that the people responsible would be out of jobs so fast their heads would spin right off their shoulders - if Canada did create its own nuclear weapons the USA, and probably the other major powers, absolutely would know it. Constructing nuclear weapons is a massive industrial enterprise.
The mechanism is in the 25th Amendment, paragraph 4.
I think you’re being wildly optimistic that mere months would be enough to prepare for and stage a successful invasion of Canada. A short-term plan would have to require such a ridiculous amount of overkill (probably including tactical nukes) that the Americans would end up destroying the very infrastructure that they supposedly want to conquer and exploit. At the very least, I’d expect uncooperative Canadians to actively make exploitation as difficult as possible for the invaders, while driving bomb-laden trucks (conventional at first, radiological eventually) across the 3000-mile-wide border and into northern U.S. cities. Coupled with the loss of trade and possible declarations of war from other NATO members, obliged by treaty to assist Canada, and the situation is so crazy that you’d have to assume some kind of mass psychosis of the President, Veep, cabinet, congress and joint chiefs of staff before seriously considering it.
It’d be infinitely easier to just declare martial law in one or several U.S. states (say, California) and declare that all private property in the region is abolished and all the resources of that region will be put to the use of the Federal Government. An internal invasion, as it were.
