Canada and Weapons of Mass Destruction - Biological Weapons

Biological Weapons

Canada had a biological warfare research program in the early to middle part of the 20th century. Canadian research involved developing protections against biowarfare attacks and for offensive purposes, often with the help of the UK and the US. Canada has thus experimented with such things as weaponized anthrax, botulinum toxin, ricin, rinderpest virus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, plague, Brucellosis and tularemia. CFB Suffield is the leading research centre. Canada says it has destroyed all military stockpiles and no longer conducts toxin warfare research. Canada ratified the Biological Weapons Convention on September 18, 1972.

Of particular interest is that Canada's Sir Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin, served as an Army Major in World War II. There have been some claims that he was a key biological warfare researcher. Like many of his peers in senior positions during the Second World War, Banting had served as an Medical Officer with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the Great War. This experience would have made clear to him the depths of cruelty inherent in modern warfare. He is credited with raising the alarm about the potential development of biological and chemical weapons by Germany in London in 1939. His influence on members of Churchill's administration may have contributed to a later decision to conduct germ warfare research at Porton Down. Banting was killed in 1941 in the crash of a Hudson bomber just east of Gander, Newfoundland, while en route to England for work related to his research on the Franks flying suit. This was about a year prior to work on Anthrax that took place at Grosse Ile, Quebec beginning in 1942.