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The second move is likely to cause indigestion for many progressive Liberals. Sources suggest that a proposal to sign on to the U.S. ballistic missile defence program was sent to Cabinet last week.

There is no word on whether it was approved but if it was, the spending implications could show up in the budget, with details to follow in the Defence Policy Review that is sitting on the desk of minister Harjit Sajjan.

The move to join BMD would be a significant policy reversal for a Liberal government. Paul Martin’s foreign minister, Pierre Pettigrew, announced that Canada would not be joining President George W. Bush’s BMD program 12 years ago.

There were concerns that the “Star Wars” system would “weaponize space”, even though interceptors were, and are, ground or ship based.

But the hysteria around Canada losing its foreign policy independence meant more than half of Canadians opposed BMD, alarmed that the nuclear codes were in the hands of reckless, ruthless, uninformed maverick.

Clearly, none of those concerns apply today…

Regardless of his reservations privately, the Prime Minister has made it his mission to accommodate President Donald Trump and in their first meeting in Washington last month, they dropped hints that BMD might be part the deal.

The joint statement from the two leaders said both countries want to “modernize and broaden our NORAD partnership”, as well as relations in cyber and space.

As the Senate defence committee found in its report on BMD two years ago, the decision not to participate has harmed Canada’s position in the continental defence organization, NORAD. The decision on when, where and whether to intercept an incoming missile is not made under the NORAD structure but, rather, by the U.S. alone under its domestic defence body, United States Northern Command. If a missile is heading towards Calgary, the Canadian military representative at NORAD has to leave the room while those decisions are made.