Canadian military ponders integrated force with U.S. to respond to hotspots

September 29th, 2015

Awake Goy

The Canadian military has been working on a plan to create with the United States a bi-national integrated military force to deploy to hot spots around the world.

The so-called Canada-U.S. Integrated Forces would be the result of an agreement between the two countries under which air, sea, land and special operations forces would be jointly deployed under unified command, outside Canada.

The forces would operate in the same manner as those controlled by the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad), but would be used on expeditionary operations, and not in defence of the homeland, according to a source.

The briefing note, released to CBC News under the Access to Information Act, was written in October 2013. It contemplates how the military could remain globally engaged as Afghan training mission was coming to a close.

Daniel Proussalidis, a spokesman from the defence minister’s office, said in an email to CBC News that the document was not presented to the minister and the government has not considered its contents.

Canada and the U.S. have for long partnered together on military operations, including in the war against ISIS and in Afghanistan.