The U.S. Northern Command

April 17, 2002

As part of a routine review of its Unified Command Plan (UCP), and in light of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, the United States announced this morning the creation of a "Northern Command" to simplify its internal command structure and to improve homeland defence.

While the creation of a "Northern Command" may have potential implications for existing continental security arrangements, it is too early to speculate on what those might be.

Terrorism is a real threat that is global in nature and that all of us must respond to. We welcome the opportunity to work together with the U.S., as sovereign partners, to find ways of enhancing our security, based on our mutual interests, where it makes sense to do so.

Canada and the U.S. enjoy an exceptionally close, complex and effective defence and security partnership. We have been defending North America jointly since 1940, are partners in NORAD, and are allies in NATO.

Accordingly, we are engaged in informal discussions with the U.S. to see if there are potential ways to improve Canadian security by enhancing Canada-U.S. defence cooperation.

Our objective is to explore whether there are practical steps we can take to improve Canadian security.

To date our discussions suggest that there may be some room to improve coordination in areas such as maritime surveillance and civil support.

At this stage, discussions do not include the possible creation of a new joint command with standing forces attributed to it.

The announcement of the changes to the American UCP has no impact on NORAD. That is a binational Canada-US defence arrangement and is therefore not a part of the UCP.

No decisions have been taken on these issues. And the discussions will likely continue for some time.