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And St-Amand said the assumption that America would try to shoot down any missile, whether it was headed for Houston or Ottawa, is misguided. “We’re being told in Colorado Springs that the extant U.S. policy is not to defend Canada,” he said. In the “heat of the moment,” the U.S. command could go contrary to the policy, but “it would be entirely a U.S. discussion and a U.S. decision,” he said.

A public education campaign should be going on now

Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia political science professor who also testified in Ottawa, disagrees. “The U.S. isn’t going to take the chance of radioactive drift coming across from Vancouver or Toronto,” he said. “Any missile coming towards North America would be targeted by the Americans. We don’t need to be part of U.S. missile defence for that to happen.” He did caution, however, that there is no guarantee that, even in the “implausible” event that Canada is targeted, the missile defence system would work.

Should a North Korean nuclear warhead evade missile defences and strike a North American city, experts in disaster preparedness fear we are not ready. Dennis Mileti, former director of the National Hazards Center at University of Colorado, said he sees no signs that authorities are educating citizens about what to do after a nuclear detonation. More was done in the 1950s and ’60s when the chances of surviving an all-out nuclear war were slim and the recommended protection was laughable.

“We trained children in schools to get under their desks and cover the backs of their necks to protect themselves from shattered glass, which does absolutely nothing to protect them from radiation,” Mileti said. Since then, a lot has been learned about how people can shield themselves from the effects of radiation. But once a nuclear detonation has gone off, “all electronic communications would be out,” he said. “A public education campaign should be going on now.”