NEW YORK, February 4. /TASS/. Canada has no plans to acquire nuclear weapons, Defense Minister David McGuinty said.

"Canada has absolutely no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons," The Globe and Mail newspaper quoted him as saying.

According to McGuinty, Canada’s government is committed to the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Meanwhile, retired General Wayne Eyre, who served as Canada's chief of the Defenсe Staff (CDS) in 2021—2024, said at a security conference in Ottawa on Tuesday that the country should keep its options open on the question of acquiring nuclear weapons. "We’ve got a good nuclear enterprise here," he said, adding: "If conditions change, we’ve got the civilian infrastructure. We’ve got the scientists."

According to The Globe and Mail, "it would be a significant geopolitical shift if Canada were to acquire nuclear weapons, upending Ottawa’s 50-years-plus policy of advocating for non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament." Canada signed the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968 and ratified it in 1969, the paper noted.