By Design, By Doctrine: Is It Time to Change Canada’s Military Policy?

By: Donovan Martin Sr, Editor in Chief

For decades, Canada built its security identity around two assumptions that were treated like facts. The first was that the United States would always remain a reliable partner. The second was that the alliances built in the postwar era would always hold when pressure rises. Over time, those assumptions hardened into habit. Habit became doctrine. Doctrine turned into policy. And policy became something leaders stopped defending publicly because it was never seriously challenged at home.

That era is over, and it isn’t over because of theory or dramatic forecasting. It’s over because the language coming from Washington has changed in a way no responsible government can pretend is normal. When a sitting U.S. President openly talks about annexation, about taking territory, or about treating neighboring nations like something to be absorbed rather than respected, it forces a sober question onto the table. Are we prepared for a world where the people we built our national security around no longer see us as an ally?

The honest answer is no, not in any serious way. Canada has no long-range strike capability designed to hold a hostile power at risk. There is no independent deterrent posture strong enough to make coercion expensive. For years, this was framed as moral restraint, and it became a comfortable part of national self-image. In the world unfolding now, it looks less like virtue and more like a vulnerability that everyone pretended would never matter.

Deterrence is not the same thing as aggression, and it has never required hostility to be legitimate. Deterrence is the simple idea that no one should be able to threaten your sovereignty without paying a meaningful price for trying. That is what prevents pressure campaigns from becoming reality. Right now, that price is not clear, and that is the whole issue. A nation can be peaceful without being powerless, but peace without capability is just hope dressed up as policy.

For years, the fallback plan has been NATO and NORAD, and both have been treated like permanent fixtures rather than political arrangements that depend on continued buy-in. NATO looks unshakable until you start asking what happens when unity fractures, not with some dramatic collapse that makes front pages, but in the way alliances actually fail. They fail gradually through election cycles, internal disputes, diverging priorities, and different red lines between members. Eventually, collective defense becomes less of a guarantee and more of a gamble, and security that depends on a gamble is not security.

NORAD is an even sharper reality check. It is not an equal partnership built on interchangeable capacity. It is integration under American leadership, with shared objectives as long as the relationship remains stable. That works when the relationship is healthy and predictable. It becomes dangerous when the relationship turns conditional. Conditional relationships are exactly where sovereignty gets tested, because conditional access to defense systems is not a partnership, it is leverage.

The truth that needs to be said plainly is that if access is restricted, slowed down, politicized, or quietly pulled back, the gap becomes immediate. Air defense, early warning, surveillance, intelligence coordination, aerospace awareness, these aren’t things you rebuild in a weekend because the mood in Washington changed. They take years to build properly, and they take disciplined investment that cannot be replaced by speeches, slogans, or procurement announcements that look good but deliver nothing.

This is the moment where a mature defense posture has to be separated from a sentimental one. A serious posture is not built on friendship, shared history, or comfortable assumptions. It is built on capability, redundancy, and credible deterrence. That does not automatically mean nuclear weapons, and anyone jumping straight to that conclusion is either lazy or trying to shut the conversation down. There are layers of strategic deterrence that do not require nuclear warheads, and pretending otherwise is a convenient way to remain unprepared.

Conventional long-range strike capability matters. Missile defense matters. Sovereign surveillance matters, including space-based tracking and independent command-and-control capacity. Hardening critical infrastructure matters, because a country that can be paralyzed without a single shot fired is not secure. Domestic defense manufacturing matters, because a supply chain that can be cut off by political pressure is not a supply chain, it’s a leash. If all the critical tools of national survival depend on foreign permission, then sovereignty is conditional whether leaders admit it or not.

The public also deserves clarity about what this moment is and what it is not. This is not about hating Americans or treating ordinary people in the United States like enemies. Millions of Americans are decent and fair-minded, and many would reject annexation talk immediately. This is about a U.S. administration showing, in plain language, that alliances can be treated as disposable and neighbors can be treated as targets of opportunity. You do not ignore that because it feels impolite. You plan for it because ignoring it is how countries get cornered.

There are necessary caveats, and they must be said without hesitation. Any shift in doctrine must remain civilian-led, transparent, and democratic, because security without accountability becomes its own threat. The country cannot stumble into militarism, corruption, or procurement theatre where billions disappear into projects that never deliver real readiness. Deterrence is not a press release. It is a measurable capability that works when tested, and it must be treated like an engineering problem, not a branding exercise.

Another caveat is that preparedness cannot become emotional escalation. There is no value in chest-thumping, reckless rhetoric, or symbolic moves that raise tension without improving security. Serious statecraft is calm, disciplined, and boring on purpose. It makes hard decisions without seeking applause, and it measures success by outcomes rather than headlines. The goal is not to provoke, it is to prevent coercion by making it too costly to attempt.

The final caveat is the one many leaders avoid because it is politically uncomfortable. Sovereignty only exists when it can be defended. By design, restraint was chosen, and by doctrine, dependence was normalized. That made sense in a different era, when alliances felt permanent and Washington felt predictable. Under Trump, those assumptions are collapsing in real time, and the price of pretending otherwise will not be paid in speeches. It will be paid in leverage, pressure, and concessions that arrive quietly, one “temporary compromise” at a time.

The question is no longer whether the world is changing. The question is whether leadership will adapt before someone else forces the issue.