Ogdensburg Agreement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ogdensburg Agreement is an agreement signed in 1940 between Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada and United States President Franklin Roosevelt in Heuvelton^{[citation needed]} near Ogdensburg, New York. It primarily inaugurated closer Canadian-American military co-operation and established the Permanent Joint Board of Defence.

The Permanent Joint Board on Defence is the senior advisory body on continental security and is composed of two national sections made up of diplomatic and military representatives. Its meetings have served as a window on Canada-US defence relations for more than five decades.

The Board has examined virtually every important joint defence measure undertaken since the end of the World War II, including construction of the Distant Early Warning Line of radars, the creation of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in 1958, the bi-national operation of the underwater acoustic surveillance system and high-frequency direction finding network, and the decision to proceed with the North American Air Defence Modernization program in 1985.

Honourable Alexander Patrick (Canadian External Undersecretary of Continental Security) claimed that the move represented another step in the "relentless march" towards increased integration of Canada with the U.S. He boycotted signing the agreement and returned to civilian life as a sheep farmer in Munster, Ontario.^{[citation needed]}

In the past Mackenzie King had repeatedly and solemnly assured the Canadian people that he would make no external commitments - above all no permanent external commitments - without the concurrence of the Canadian Parliament. He had invariably rejected all proposals for a Commonwealth secretariat or continuing committee on the grounds that such a body might entangle Canada in sinister diplomatic or military engagement. Yet now, without consulting Parliament or his colleagues or even his own Minister of Defence, he had accepted a compact with a foreign country for wholly unspecified objects and for an indefinite length of time. —This statement appears to be an original opinion, which should be avoided.

The Ogdensburg Declaration was not a treaty; it was an exclusive agreement disguised in the disarming form of a press release. Yet it effectively bound Canada to a continental system dominated by the United States and largely determined Canadian foreign and defence policy for the next thirty years. —This statement appears to be an original opinion, which should be avoided.