Defense Minister David McGuinty said Monday that Canada “will not participate” in a war in Iran, after Prime Minister Mark Carney last week did not rule out the possibility of Canadian military involvement.
Speaking at an unrelated media event in Ottawa, McGuinty said Canada has not yet decided to join its NATO allies in providing aid to Persian Gulf nations attacked by Iran.
“Obviously the situation in Iran is very serious,” McGuinty told reporters. “It’s one we’ve been looking at from the beginning.
“It is important for Canadians to know that Canada was not consulted prior to the action taken by Israel and the United States. Canada was not asked to comment, Canada did not participate and Canada will not participate.”
McGuinty’s comment echoed the Prime Minister’s Office summary of a late Sunday meeting of the government’s incident response group to discuss the situation in the Middle East, which he had attended, McGuinty said on Monday.
“Canada was not consulted, did not participate and has no plans to participate in the aggressive actions against Iran being undertaken by the US and Israel,” the PMO readout said.
In Australia on March 4, Carney said the idea of Canadian participation was “fundamentally hypothetical” but that participation could not be “ruled out categorically” — especially if allies needed protection.
Canada’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Jenny Carignan, told reporters at a defense and security conference in Ottawa last week that she and her NATO counterparts would meet to consider helping Gulf nations defend themselves against a bombardment from Iran.
Get daily national news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
The Canadian Armed Forces will make a recommendation to the government after Friday’s meeting, he said.
“Several NATO members have decided to provide some assistance to Iran’s closest neighbors,” McGuinty said Monday.
“Canada has not taken any such decision,” he said. “It’s something we’re monitoring carefully.”
Several European countries, including France and the United Kingdom, have deployed additional military assets to the region, including air defenses and warships.
McGuinty said Carignan and other NATO military leaders are monitoring the impact of the Iran war on the alliance’s military readiness and munitions supplies, including how it could affect its ability to help in the war in Ukraine.
The House of Commons is scheduled to hold a debate Monday evening on Canada’s approach to the war in Iran and its impact on Canadians abroad. Carney does not participate.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilivre earlier Monday accused Carney of contradicting Canada’s position, which Poilivre said no one understands.
Carney last week retracted his initial statement of support for Israeli and US strikes on Iran, saying the position was taken “regrettably” because of the potential violation of international law.
Asked if he would support US and Israeli strikes, Poilievre said the Conservatives support replacing Iran’s “terrorist regime with a democratically elected and peaceful regime”, although there have been conflicting statements from the US administration about whether regime change is the goal of the war.
“Regarding Canada’s role in that, we are not aware of any specific requests received by the prime minister,” Poilivre added.
“If he has, we encourage him to share that information with all Canadians so we can have a discussion about what we should do.”
Poilivre said Canada should focus on what it can control at home, especially on energy. He said the Conservatives are pushing for an urgent debate on how the conflict will affect global energy supplies and how Canada can help solve the problem.
For now, the federal government is focused on the safety of Canadians in the Middle East and facilitating transit from the region for those who want to leave, McGuinty said.
The situation is serious, he said. “It’s evolving, it’s a recurrence, it’s hard to predict. So we have DND (Department of National Defence) and the Canadian Armed Forces watching it carefully and, in fact, we met yesterday with the incident response group and five or six ministers to review the situation.”
Of the nearly 110,000 Canadians registered with the government in the Middle East, 9,185 have made requests for assistance and 5,267 have asked for help to leave the region, Global Affairs Canada said Sunday.
The government is using multiple modes of transportation, including booking commercial airline seats and ground transportation, to bring people out. Those in Iran are forced to travel to neighboring countries where they can seek consular assistance.
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
(tags to translate)Iran
