Canada and ballistic missile defence

More importantly, NORAD possessed the early warning mission for this system, even though missile defence was excluded from the NORAD mission by virtue of the ABM exclusion clause attached to the 1968 NORAD renewal (with the clause being eliminated in the 1981 NORAD renewal agreement, apparently on a Canadian initiative, as a function of the prohibition on third party involvement of Article IX, ABM [...] The System and Bilateral Defence Questions The BMD system under consideration by the government of Canada is one of several at various stages of research, development, testing and evaluation in the U. S. It is the Ground-Based Midcourse System. [...] Whether or not Canada should consider engagement in U. S. theatre and tactical (land and or sea-based), NATO, or any other missile defence systems in existence, under development, or being considered is outside the parameters of the issue at hand, except in the sense that there are many nations besides the U. S. who have deployed (Russia and Israel), developing mostly in cooperation with the U. S. [...] Initial plans are to deploy six interceptors at the Alaska site (the fifth went into the ground on September 25th) and two in California, alongside the associated infrastructure, with plans to expand the Alaskan site to twenty and the California site to six or so over the next few years. [...] The significance of Iran with regard to a future missile defence deployment system is the track or path of a missile attack from Iran to targets on the eastern seaboard of the U. S. This path follows over the Eastern Arctic and Eastern Canada.