DEFENCE OF CANADA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 28, 12 November 1949, Page 5

DEFENCE OF CANADA

RADAR WARNING PLAN

RECORD ALLOCATIONS

(N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) (Rec. 12.10 p.m.) OTTAWA, Nov. 11. Canada is developing a radar warning system to cover “certain vital approaches” and other strategic areas. Reporting this, in a White Paper tabled in the House of Commons today, the Defence Minister, Mr Brooke Claxton, said that it was impracticable to construct a grid of radar stations similar in density and consequent effectiveness to the installations during the last war in Britain and Germany. The best-informed opinion considered the likeliest kind of attack on Canada would be in the form of diversionary raids, designed to panic North America into diverting a disproportionate amount of effort into passive local defence. „

Canada, to meet this kind of attack, planned a relatively small, but highly trained and efficient mobile ground force, to back the radar warning system, jet interceptor planes and anti-aircraft defences.

The White Paper said that among the Commonwealth countries, Canada’s per capita expenditure on defence was second only to the United Kingdom. Canada’s active and reserve forces were considerably larger in proportion to population, than those of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Other points in the White Paper were: The armed forces strengths are, navy 8867, army 19,931 and air force 19,356; new equipment for the forces will cost 124,000,000 dollars in the current financial year; contracts, totalling 40,000,000 dollars, have' been awarded for the largest peacetime warship building programme in Canada’s history; new jet fighters are to be built in Canada to American design. -