Canada is ditching U.S. radar technology for Australia's system in a $2.5 billion deal, the first country to buy it. The shift follows decades of partnership through the Cold War DEW Line, but recent U.S. political mockery of Canadian leaders broke the trust. The move is part of a $38 billion NORAD modernization that diversifies defence suppliers and creates jobs through 2033.
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In the '50s, Canada did something that today you might consider treasonous. We let the American government and a private American company build radar facilities on our land. Dozens of them. One right here on Vancouver Island. It was called the DEW Line, short for Defence Early Warning. They were essentially tiny military bases, secret towns that didn't appear on any maps but watched the skies for danger. Russian bombers specifically. It was codenamed Project 572. It's one of the secrets behind the story of my podcast Mirror Falls. And while it was technically a joint operation, all the technology, most of the people, Most of the operations came from the US. It was the start of a long partnership between our two countries. The kind where one partner pays for dinner and the other owns the restaurant. But that partnership this week collapsed in the most spectacular way. You see, Canada's almost always bought our defence stuff from the States. They're close to us. We have that shared history of military cooperation. But when the US started insulting us, making fun of our leaders, threatening our sovereignty. We told them being the schoolyard bully would make countries like us less likely to want to play with them. I guess they thought we were bluffing. This week, Canada spent $2.5 billion on a new radar system. Like the system in the '50s, this will provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-US border all the way into the Arctic. But we didn't buy it from the US. Instead, we partnered with our new BFFs, Australia. Their technology can detect objects that are invisible to conventional radars because of the Earth's curvature. Things like incoming missiles and aircraft that would prefer to not be noticed. And this is just phase 1, part of a $38 billion plan to modernize NORAD over the next 2 decades. The largest investment in our NORAD capabilities in a generation. Does the US have something similar? Of course they do. But sometimes children need to learn that there are consequences for their behavior. Canada is the first country in the world to pay for Australia's over-the-horizon radar technology, something they spent a half century developing. The steel is Australia's largest ever defense export. And for us, it is a documented billion-dollar reminder that we are building new relationships, diversifying our partnerships, investing in capabilities that we control. We are done with borrowing, licensing, being dependent on a neighbor who thinks that edgelord memes are an appropriate way to conduct foreign relations. Construction of the radar will create thousands of jobs here between now and 2033, and there'll be more to come. A year ago today, we signed a security and defense partnership with the EU, the first non-European country to participate in their massive defense procurement fund. The DEW Line was built because two countries trusted each other, trusted each other enough to share their most sensitive technology. That trust took decades to build. It took weeks to destroy. My guess is it's never coming back.
