NEW YORK—Canada could boost its military role in fighting the extremist advances of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria after a formal request from the United States for more help, Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed here Wednesday.

Far from Parliament before an audience of Canadian businesspeople, the prime minister said U.S. President Barack Obama “in the last couple of days has asked for some additional contribution and we’re weighing our response to that.”

At first, Harper appeared to suggest Parliament would be involved in that decision. “We’ll be having some debates in our cabinet and Parliament about what additional steps we may be willing to take,” he said at an onstage question-and-answer session with Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker. He then said “we need to have some additional debate within our government before we reach any final decision, but we’re wanting to see this be successful and we want to be supportive as best we can.”

Harper would provide no details of what Obama is seeking since the U.S. had not publicly released the letter, but said he had “not ruled anything out” when asked if Canada would provide direct military support.

However, a source with knowledge of the file said the U.S. outlined specific ways Canada could support the U.S.-led coalition’s effort but it did not request combat troops. “This is not a request for combat troops; that’s not what we’re talking about.”

It appeared to downplay expectations that a vote in Parliament would be necessary to deploy more military and strategic resources to a bolstered mission. Previously, the Conservative government has put military missions to a vote in Parliament when it involved a combat role (as when Canada extended the military mission in Afghanistan) or a high risk of combat (as in Libya).

Harper said Canada was already the second-largest backer of Iraqi forces, behind the U.S. and expressed strong support of the U.S. president’s “important objective” in the Middle East.

“I do not believe that we can watch a terrorist caliphate, essentially what has become a quasi-state, establish a regime of mayhem over an entire region,” Harper said.

“It is obviously essential — and this is the ultimate purpose of everything being done in Iraq and Syria — that while terrorists and terrorist organizations may continue to exist, that they not have visible and open bases of operations from which to conduct either regional or eventually global attacks. So I think the action is certainly warranted and we are strongly supportive of it.”

Harper said “a lot of that can be done from the air. Obviously, we would like to see well-ordered democratic governments occupy, reoccupy some of that space. The president is right in acknowledging not all of that can be done from afar. A lot of that has to be done by governments in the region.”

The request from the U.S. did not come as a surprise to Canada. There have been discussions amongst allies since the decision taken Sept. 5 to deploy 69 Canadian Forces personnel to northern Iraq in a strategic advisory role, a response to an earlier request from Obama, a source said.

In Parliament, the official Opposition continued to seek details that were not forthcoming from the government side.

New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair said: “If it’s about Canada going to war, we have the right to vote on this question, and they promised it.”

Mulcair questioned why Harper would announce Washington’s appeal for more aid outside Parliament and called on the prime minister to make public the letter spelling out the U.S. demands.

He said the revelation that Ottawa is being pressed for even greater involvement makes a mockery of the 30-day timeline that was to determine whether the current deployment of 69 advisers would end. He said it suggests Canada could be engaged in the fight for much longer.

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Ken Taylor, a former Canadian ambassador to Iran who once helped spirit out American diplomats after the U.S. embassy there was seized, called it a “serious proposal” from the U.S. that Canada should give serious consideration.

“There’s got to be a united response” to the threat in the region, he said, adding the main players have to be ones in the region, like Turkey, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and others.

“The rest is going to be something I think that’s like Afghanistan, a coalition that’s open and quite broadly based,” he said. Taylor said Canada can contribute on-the-ground training of forces and intelligence, without going into a combat boots-on-the-ground role, but cautioned it would be a long-term effort.

“This isn’t going to be something that’s going to be degraded and destroyed in two or three years, in this sense with respect to our foreign service we’ve got to increase young men and women who speak Arabic, we’ve got to concentrate on sophisticated judgment in the Middle East.

“You can talk about a pivot to Asia; we’re going to be in the Middle East for a long time.”

The New Democrats have opposed the ongoing military mission due to the lack of detail.

“We’re willing to listen to what he’s got to say, but he’s got to start being more honest with Canadians,” Mulcair said.

The defence minister’s parliamentary secretary, James Bezan, pointed out in the Commons that the government “has deployed the Canadian Armed Forces around the world in non-combat roles. It has never been the practice to have a vote on such deployments in Parliament.”

He pointed to the deployment of the HMCS Toronto in the Black Sea, troops on the ground in Poland taking part in exercises, and members of the Royal Canadian Air Force plus equipment of the RCAF “involved in air policing missions, all part of NATO’s Operation Reassurance. We never voted on any of that.”

In his freewheeling onstage appearance, Harper expanded on his views on the roots of extremism in Muslim communities and the phenomenon of newly radicalized individuals.

He said it was, in part, up to Muslim communities to fight extremism within their own ranks. Harper said some “errant individuals” will always be drawn to radical political fringes, pointing to the baffling case of a Korean Canadian “kid” who went to Mauritania to commit extremist acts. That Canadian citizen, Aaron Yoon, has since returned to Canada.

He said his government does not use the collection of “meta data” to conduct broad surveillance on Canadians, and believes targeted surveillance and intelligence gathering is the best approach to assessing real risk.

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