Canada has never maintained or possessed their own weapons of mass destruction. Canada participated in NATO’s nuclear mission between 1963 and 1984, which included the hosting of US nuclear weapons on its soil. Canada ratified the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1970.
In 1950, the first US nuclear weapon entered Canadian soil when the US Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) stationed 11 model 1561 Fat Man atomic bombs at RCAF Station Goose Bay in Labrador. Goose Bay was used as an aircraft staging location for both the SAC and the Royal Air Force's V Force. The bombs were landed; crews relieved; aircraft refueled, or repaired; without returning to bases in the continental US. Nuclear weapons designs of the time were easily damaged but precise devices, that required off-aircraft inspection (after landing), and environmental sheltering (at a secure warm/dry location) while their carrier aircraft was on the ground for routine maintenance or repair.
From 1963 to 1984, the US deployed a total of four tactical nuclear weapons systems in Canada, which amounted to several hundred nuclear warheads.
Throughout the Cold War, Canada was closely aligned with defensive elements of United States programs in both NORAD and NATO. In 1964, Canada sent its White Paper on Defence to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to ensure he would not, "find anything in these references contrary to any views [he] may have expressed," although "references" may indicate quotes or glosses in the paper attributed to him, which they wished him to verify as authentic and correct, thus making the gesture a polite courtesy.
Three of the four nuclear-capable weapons systems were withdrawn by the United States by 1972. The single system retained, the AIR-2 Genie had a yield of 1.5 kilotons, and was designed to strike enemy aircraft as opposed to ground targets.
Nuclear weapons
Early history: World War II and into the Cold War
Canada's military relationship with the United States has grown significantly since the Second World War. Although the Dominion of Canada came into being on July 1, 1867, Canadian foreign policy was determined in Britain. Canada entered the Great War in 1914 when Great Britain declared war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Constitutionally, Canada was subject to the British declaration of war, as were other British Dominion countries. Canadian foreign policy became independent in December 1931 (save for the issues of Commonwealth/Dominion war and peace) with the passage of the Statute of Westminster.Statute of Westminster, 1931 - Enactment No. 17 On September 10, 1939, Canada declared war on Germany, a week later than Great Britain.CBC Archives, On This Day, Sept. 10, 1939 Following the German declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941, the U.S. declared war on Germany the same day. This was three days after declaring war on Japan on December 8 following the attack on Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Canada had actually declared war on Japan on December 7, a day earlier than the US and the UK's declaration.
One of the first formal agreements for military cooperation was made in August 1940. Known as the Ogdensburg Agreement, it established the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. Both the United States and Canada are founding members of the United Nations as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1957, they signed the NORAD Agreement, which created the North American Air Defense Command to defend the continent against attacks from the USSR.
In the 1942 Quebec Agreement, the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to develop the "Tube Alloys" Project and created a committee to manage the project which included C. D. Howe, the Canadian Minister of Munitions and Supply. This was the code name for the British Uranium Committee project which had worked on a theoretical design for an atomic bomb. One significant contribution was a calculation of the critical mass of uranium. The mass was less than earlier estimates and suggested that development of a fission bomb was practical. This calculation had been part of shipment of secret scientific and technical research in Great Britain that was shared with the United States to get American support for the war and American production of this new equipment. Materials shared through the Tizard Mission included the cavity magnetron which improved radar, British information related to the German Enigma machines, jet engine designs as well as the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.
Canada's role in the Manhattan Project besides providing raw material, including uranium ore from a northern mine which may have been used in the construction of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, was to provide at least one scientist working at Los Alamos (Louis Slotin), and hosting the Montreal Laboratory which took over from Tube Alloys. Canada would continue to supply fissionable material to the US and other allies throughout the Cold War although Canada never developed indigenous nuclear weapons as did NATO allies France and the United Kingdom.
After briefly allowing nuclear weapons to be temporarily stationed in Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada agreed to a long term lease of the Goose Bay base to the US Strategic Air Command. The Americans were refused permission to stockpile bomb casings for the B-36 at Goose Bay. These bombs would have been armed in wartime with materials brought from the United States. Goose Bay was used as a base for air refueling tankers which were to support the SAC B-47 and B-52 bomber forces.
In 1951 the Pinetree Line was established north of the US-Canada border, and in 1953 Canada built the Mid-Canada Line, which was staffed and operated by the Canadian military. In 1954 the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW) was established jointly by the US and Canada in the Arctic. The Pinetree Line was built to control the air battle between the NORAD interceptor forces and crewed Soviet bombers. Beginning with Ground-controlled interception updated from the Second World War, the system has been computerized and automated with at least four new generations of technology being employed. It was clear, even in the early years of the Cold War, that on paper, Canada and the US were to be jointly responsible for the defence of the continent. In execution, Canadian investment in air defence has decreased significantly with the decline of the intercontinental strategic bomber threat. In the 1950s the RCAF contributed fourteen squadrons of CF-100 interceptors and this was reduced to three squadrons of CF-101s by 1970. Some of this is due to improved technology but more is due to the decline of the bomber threat and reductions in Canadian military spending.
Inventory of Canada's nuclear armaments
Goose Air Base in Labrador was the site of the first US nuclear weapons in Canada, when in 1950 the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command stationed 11 model 1561 Fat Man and Mark 4 atomic bombs at the base in the summer, and flew them out in December. While returning to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base with one of the bombs on board, a USAF B-50 heavy bomber encountered engine trouble, had to drop, and conventionally detonate, the bomb over the St. Lawrence River, contaminating the river with uranium-238. The detonation was near Saint-André-de-Kamouraska. In 1953, Strategic Air Command constructed ten new reinforced concrete buildings as part of a heavily secured weapon storage area located at , surrounded by two barbed wire fences and several armed guard towers. Goose Air Base Weapons Storage Area was the only weapons storage area in Canada constructed to house the Mark 4, AIM-26 Falcon, and AIR-2 Genie nuclear weapons.
The warheads were never in the sole possession of Canadian personnel. They were the property of the Government of the United States and were always under the direct supervision of a "Custodial Detachment" from the United States Air Force (or Army, in the case of Honest John warheads).
Through 1984, Canada would deploy four American designed nuclear weapons delivery systems accompanied by hundreds of warheads:
56 CIM-10 BOMARC surface-to-air missiles. 4 MGR-1 Honest John rocket systems, each with four rockets and four warheads, for a total of 16 W31 nuclear warheads the Canadian Army deployed in Germany. 108 nuclear W25 Genie rockets carried by 54 CF-101 Voodoos. estimates of 90 to 210 tactical (20–60 kiloton) nuclear warheads assigned to 6 CF-104 Starfighter squadrons (about 90 aircraft) based with NATO in Europe (there is a lack of open sources detailing exactly how many warheads were deployed). In practice, each of 36 NATO squadrons (initially six Canadian squadrons Number 1 Air Division RCAF) would provide two aircraft and pilots to a Quick Reaction Alert facility. The 'Q' aircraft could be launched with an armed US nuclear weapon within 15 minutes of receiving the 'go' order. This arrangement was called the NATO Quick Reaction Alert Force. It provided a dispersed force upwards of 100 strike aircraft for use on short notice. Missions were targeted at troop concentrations, airfields, bridges, assembly and choke points and other tactical targets in order to slow the massive tank formations of the Red Army as they poured into the Fulda Gap and on towards the Rhine River.
In total, there were between 250 and 450 nuclear warheads on Canadian bases between 1963 and 1972. There were at most 108 Genie missiles armed with 1.5 kiloton W25 warheads present from 1963 to 1984. There may have been fewer due to attrition of CF-101s as the program aged and as incoming CF-18s became combat-qualified. In addition, between 1968 and 1994 the United States stored the Mk 101 Lulu and B57 nuclear bombs at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland.
This number decreased significantly through the years as various systems were withdrawn from service. The Honest John was retired by the Canadian Army in 1970. The Bomarc missile was phased out in 1972 and the CF-104 Strike/Attack squadrons in West Germany were reduced in number and reassigned to conventional ground attack at about the same time. From late in 1972, the CF-101 interceptor force remained as the only nuclear-armed system in Canadian use until it was replaced by the CF-18 in 1984.
Cold War relationship with the US
Canada's Cold War military doctrine and fate was inextricably tied with that of the United States. The two nations shared responsibility for continental air defence through NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) and both belonged to NATO and contributed forces in Europe. Should nuclear war with the USSR have broken out, Canada would have been in harm's way because of the geographic position between both the USSR and US. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's 1987 Canadian White Paper on Defence acknowledged this reality citing that, "Soviet strategic planners must regard Canada and the United States as a single set of military targets no matter what political posture we might assume." This sums up Canada's Cold War predicament well, as Canada's geo-political relationship with the US meant that Canada would inevitably be widely devastated by any US-Soviet nuclear exchange, whether it was targeted or not. It led to a familiar phrase of the time, "incineration without representation".