Should Canada Go Nuclear? No

Bombs away: A Canadian nuclear weapons program to deter Trump is not feasible

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By Julian Spencer-Churchill

Originally published in Policy Options
May 16, 2025

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Since U.S. President Donald Trump started his repeated musings about militarily or economically compelling Canada to become the 51^st state, I have had an alarming number of students and colleagues consult me on the feasibility and advisability of Canada acquiring nuclear weapons to deter him.

Having taught a recurring course for more than 25 years at Concordia University on nuclear weapons, I should not have been surprised by the lack of common and strategic sense raised by this idea.

Our country certainly has the foundational facilities and human technical skills to develop thermonuclear weapons, delivery aircraft, satellites, redundant command bunkers and exo-atmospheric missile-delivery systems.

However, there is no possible way from a political, strategic or technical perspective to develop a successful Canadian nuclear deterrent without creating other serious domestic and international problems. In fact, such a move would almost certainly backfire.

We have the necessary resources

Canada has an abundance of the necessary inputs, including 15 per cent of global production of uranium-238, as well as lithium, beryllium, lead, graphite and 19 CANDU reactors at three sites (which uniquely can be refuelled without shutting off the fission process, thus facilitating the measured production of plutonium-239).

Most of the required mining, refining, milling and waste management take place in northern Saskatchewan, while there are research facilities in six of the 10 provinces.

Marc Garneau, the former transport minister and technology champion, once gave a presentation to my class on Canada’s endo- and exo-atmospheric rocketry, which is mostly designed for meteorological research but which also demonstrates engineering competence.

Too easy to detect

However, there is no chance of hiding a nuclear weapons program.

Manufacturing the infrastructure to produce plutonium or to enrich uranium would be immediately noticeable to the U.S., as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Isotope decay products leading to plutonium create easily detectable Krypton-85 gas. Enrichment centrifuges emit radiofrequency waves that are difficult to shield. All other enrichment methods either consume noticeably large quantities of energy or rely on specialized equipment, such as calutrons.

Although South Africa employed fewer than 20 engineers to manufacture its six warheads within a large dual-use infrastructure, its attempted test was immediately detected by satellites of the U.S.S.R. In addition, Pretoria’s purchase of Israeli intermediate-range ballistic missiles was quickly known by U.S. intelligence.

The nuclear dilemma

There are some other important truths to consider.

First, second-strike nuclear arsenals are the basis of military and national power, and the U.S. wields great influence through the provision of its nuclear umbrella to its allies.

While nuclear weapons cannot occupy territory like an army can, they can shatter the economy of the great powers sufficiently to expose them to conquest by their neighbours.

A United States de-urbanized and de-industrialized by a major city-busting Russian or Chinese nuclear strike would be unable to replace or maintain its navy, which is so vital to assert its sphere of influence over North America. Conventional forces permit more fine-grained applications of deterrence and force, but integration with tactical nuclear forces is doctrinal and theoretical, never having been tested in battle.

Second, U.S. nuclear power does not depend solely on retaliatory capability, which is termed immediate deterrence, but also on having an arsenal so large that potential adversaries do not even try to start a nuclear program, which is called general deterrence.

If Canada were to seek nuclear weapons capability, it would undermine the psychological deterrent effect of a large U.S. arsenal and could even lead to nuclear programs in Brazil, Argentina or Mexico, or a purchased Venezuelan or Cuban arsenal.

Be careful what you wish for

Trump’s 51^st state threats reveal that Canada has an immature national security culture. Much like the Liberal government’s bewildered response to the Quebec referendum in 1995, Canadian political leaders lack a clearly articulated survival strategy for the nation when under stress.

Much recent anti-Americanism in Canada is driven most by economic concerns related to tariff negotiations, highlighting the lack of a sense of proportion of many Canadians.

It is because of centuries of harsh historical experience that Russian, Chinese, French and Polish citizens, for all their jingoism, are more confidently calm when confronting security threats and war.

Grade school history texts celebrate how stalwart Canadians resisted the U.S. invasion in the War of 1812, but Canada was mainly lucky that the U.S. was divided over the issue of war. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s regarded account shows how anglophile New England critically sabotaged the U.S. war effort, with Boston grain merchants clandestinely feeding the Royal Navy ships blockading the port of Boston.

A losing proposition

A formal Canadian nuclear program, designed to assure its citizens, would instead excite anti-Americanism to new heights and would likely provoke a physical and irreversible U.S. intervention.

The manifest lack of political will in Ottawa means that politicians could not credibly threaten retaliation against a U.S. incursion, defeating the purpose of a nuclear arsenal in the first place.

Any weaponized nuclear program would also require a dramatically militarized security regime that would disproportionately undermine Canadian freedoms.

Even possession of a latent pre-assembly capability would make Canada an easy target of nuclear espionage and fillip to nuclear proliferation.

It was low confidence in Canada’s ability to protect from espionage the design plans of the infamous CF-105 Avro Arrow that led to its shredding.

International issues would arise

The foreign relations implications of a Canadian nuclear weapons program raise other important questions.

Would Canadian armed forces that are deployed abroad extend our nuclear umbrella to host nations, such as Latvia?

Where would Canada deploy nuclear weapons? Hudson Bay provides a vast and easily secured ballistic missile submarine bastion. But at only 100 metres deep, submarines would be vulnerable to detection by wake-analyzing satellites and air drones equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD).

Washington would not appreciate nuclear-armed submarines patrolling in collision-prone Lake Ontario. Harsh winters might cause missile-carrying TEL trucks to slide into ditches along an inadequately extensive highway system.

Would CN and CPKC railway unions demand protocols to minimize the exposure of their employees if Canada adopted a rail-mobile option, especially because much of the rail network goes through inhabited areas?

Deploying first-generation ballistic missile submarines into the deep oceans would require a protective surface flotilla, exposing its location.

Washington wants Canada nuclear free

Lastly, in the event of Quebec sovereignty, would Ottawa share a proportional number of nuclear warheads and missiles, or only those portions manufactured in Quebec, such as rocket components and krytron switches?

The approach of purchasing an off-the-shelf readily deployable system, such as acquiring one of France’s four ballistic missile submarines, is improbable. As Mao Zedong once advised Libya, states don’t sell nuclear weapons.

Besides which, France’s ducking of any suggestion that it would use a battalion of parachute troops, supported by its nuclear arsenal, to back Denmark’s defence of Greenland against Trump’s threats to the island means that Paris does not want to involve itself in any U.S.-North American altercation.

The U.S. has historically been unusually respectful of Canadian sovereignty, given that the borders were settled by treaty, rather than through war.

Canada’s freedom of manoeuvre in North America depends on its continued close relationship with its European allies, particularly France, which it uses to counterbalance unilateralism in Washington.

Crucially, America’s goodwill depends on Canada acquiescing to Washington’s security redlines, which includes remaining nuclear-free. Most importantly, it is in Canada’s national interest for the United States to remain the preeminent nuclear power.

This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Julian Spencer-Churchill is associate professor of international relations at Concordia University, director of the Canadian Centre for Strategic Studies and former Canadian Forces captain.

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