CANADA a =

45 RERSRESOSTES TOTTZERS IGS

NO to NORAD NO to STAR WARS

The NoRAD agreement comes up for renewal in March, 1986. Under pressure from the Reagan administration

and the Pentagon, the Mulroney government agreed to renovation of the DEW LINE and installation of a North Warning System in Canada.

This North Warning System is to be part of NORAD and the STAR WARS program being undertaken by the Reagan administration.

Defence Minister Neilson denies this. He says mem- bership in NORAD and sTAR Wars are ‘“‘quite distinct.” This is not so.

Some time ago the New York Times reported that the u.s. State Department is ‘devising a nuclear war plan and command structure which would integrate offensive nuclear forces with the projected anti-missile shield.”

This plan which includes changes in the structure of NORAD SO as to make it part of the nuclear war strategy of the Pentagon, is being discussed secretly with the Mul- roney government.

This is being done under a program known as Strategic Defence Architecture 2000 (spa 2000).

If the Canadian government agrees with this course, Canada would be sucked into the sTAR WARS program via NORAD. For Canada, the reality is that the sTAR WARS program and NORAD are now inseparable.

In this way, Canada would become a partner in the United States’ first-strike nuclear strategy directed at the Soviet Union and at world peace.

This is the prime aim of the U.s. STAR WARS program which President Reagan told General Secretary Gor- bachev was ‘‘non-negotiable,”’ at the Geneva Summit.

Canada’s capacity to decide on questions having to do with peace and war, life and death, would be placed in the hands of the Pentagon.

Canada would cease to play an independent role in world affairs. To all intents and purposes it would be- come a military appendage of the u.s. war machine.

Peace loving Canadians, all those who want Canada to pursue an independent course in foreign policy, must insist there be no involvement in the U.s. STAR WARS

program; neither through the front nor the back door. Canada must withdraw from NoRAD.

There is no time to lose, as NORAD comes up for renewal in March, 1986. Make your voices heard. Tell your mp, the government, and Parliament that Cana- dians don’t want to be expendable for the profits and glory of u.s. imperialism, for the super-profits of the military industrial compex in the usa and in Canada.

To oppose Canadian involvement in STAR WARS is to oppose renewal of the NORAD agreement. And to oppose NORAD is to Oppose STAR WARS. ‘

Lobby your mp. Pass resolutions in your organization and forward them to the government.

Say no to STAR wars! Say no to NORAD!

Say yes to a Canadian foreign policy of peace, disar- mament and detente.

Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada 24 Cecil Street, Toronto M5T 1N2

A

Peace loving Canadians, all those who want Canada to pursue an independent course in foreign policy, must insist there be no involvement in the U.S. Star Wars pro- gram; neither through the front nor the back door. Canada must withdraw from NORAD.

20 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 18, 1985

Canada being dragged into SDI through back door — Arkin

The parliamentary committee currently reviewing Canadian membership in the North American Aero- space Defence Command (NORAD), learned last week that it has been denied access to crucial informa- tion concerning Canadian involvement -in U.S. nuclear warfare preparations.

The Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence was in Washington to conduct hear- ings pertaining to the government’s planned renewal of the NORAD agreement next March. There they were told by U.S. defence analyst William M. Arkin that documents provided to the committee by the Canadian Department of National Defence had been “censored” to eliminate any reference to eight separ- ate military arrangements between the U.S. and the Canadian government.

Four of the deleted sections have to do with the nuclear weapons.

Members of the committee expressed surprise and shock at being informed by a private USS. citizen that their own government has been withholding important infor- mation.

“There was no question this was an attempt to stifle public debate,” charged New Democratic Party com- mittee member Pauline Jewett. “It’s the cruise missile all over again. We are not being given the information that we should have. It’s a disgrace.”

Reached by the Tribune at this office in the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, Arkin stated that his pur- pose in disclosing the information was “to put it on the public record, so that it could be examined and debated.”

According to Arkin, there are 364 separate arrangements making up a list of agreements with the U.S. known as the Canada-U.S. Arrangements in Regard to Defence Production and Defence Sharing. The list was prepared by the Department of National Defence.

But the parliamentary committee was given a “sanitized” list of 356 agreements which had blacked out the references to a 1962 exchange of notes on U.S.-Canadian consultation before any release of nuclear weapons; a 1963 agreement on storage of nuclear weapons; a 1967 exchange of notes on the conditions under which nuclear anti-submarine weapons would be stored in

Canada for use by U.S. forces; and a 1976 agreement °

between the U.S. bomber forces and NORAD setting up joint military exercises code-named “Snowtime”.

In an interview with CBC broadcaster Peter Gzowski, Dec. 3, Arkin noted that when, earlier this year, he had revealed the existence of contingency plans authorizing the U.S. t~ place nuclear weapons in Canada, the federal government “claimed these plans were invalid and that there were no such agreements between the U.S. and Canada. :

“Tn fact, the Canadian government was wrong,” he said.

Spokesmen for the Department of Defence have similarly dismissed the censorship issue, claiming that the blacked-out agreements were “old, irrelevant and no longer in effect.”

William Arkin

“That’s just absurd,” Arkin told the Tribune, “Sf those agreements are so ‘old and unimportant,’ then

why were they deleted from the list in the first place?

And ngthing is old and unimportant when you’re

debating the future of U.s.-Canadian defence. It’s pre-

cisely these sorts of things that come back to haunt you — like the removal of the anti-ballistic missile ~ (ABM) clause from the NORAD agreement, or changing the name of NORAD from ‘air defence’ to ‘aerospace defence’.” : =

(In 1981, the last time the NORAD agreement was

renewed, Canadian negotiators were persuaded to _

drop an “obscure and irrelevant” clause in the agree-

ment that exempted Canada from participating in any a

ABM program. They were told by Washington that since the 1972 ABM Treaty prevented the construc- tion of such weapons, the clause was unnecessary. It was only in 1983, when President Reagan announced his Star Wars initiative, that Canadians learned the real reason the U.S. had insisted on deletion of the clause.)

Arkin noted that the parliamentary committee had been given a broad mandate to look at the future of Cana- — dian defence co-operation as well as the future of NORAD. “But they can’t do so by saying that they’re only going to — pay attention to the fact that NORAD is spelled with a ‘N’ and Strategic Defence Initiative with an ‘S’ and there- fore the two are not connected.

“What I would conclude from my examination of U.S. defence _co- operation is that, in fact, we don’t have all the information, I don’t believe Par- liament has all the information, and I certainly don’t believe that the Cana- dian people or the American people have all the information (necessary) to assess what the status of U.S.-Canada defence co-operation is,” he said.

Arkin warned that Canadians should

government is and is not telling us. “The foundation for Star Wars is being _ ‘forged now,” he said, “and much ofitis — being slipped by without debate or arranged in back rooms.” Canadians, he said, could wake up in five or 10 years to find themselves locked into Star Wars whether they like it or not.

Arkin maintained that there are a great many other secret agreements, not yet disclosed, which bear heav- ily upon the future of U.S.-Canadian defence arran- gements.

“Canada is intertwined with virtually every aspect of American strategic policy,” he said.

“Now that the U.S. is moving in such a radical direction with SDI, a program which I oppose, the question to be asked is: what are all the agreements and what are the obligations of the Canadians to the. overall American strategic policy? And as Canada debates its policy in the coming years, will Canada be _ able to put a Canadian stamp on U.S.-Canadian° defence co-operation — or does Canada just go along and become a part of whatever American strategy becomes?”

Season’s Greetings for Peace on Earth in 1986 to all our members and friends

Vancouver Peace Assembly

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be extremely wary of what our