As security threats mount, the holes in Canada's defences can no longer be ignored

For most of our history Canada's defence policy could be described as: oceans, cold and the Americans. On three sides, thousands of miles of blue water separated us from the nearest predator; on the fourth was the world's friendliest superpower. To boot, most of the territory we had to defend was frozen tundra, uninhabitable to all but the world's hardiest people. If we have remained uninvaded since 1812, it is not for anything we have or could have done ourselves - or even, one suspects, our defence treaties with the Americans - but because nobody was much interested in invading…