The Conservatives are calling for a parliamentary debate before any sort of Canadian military deployment to the ongoing war in Iran, a day after Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada could get involved if allies ask it for help.
“It should be up to Parliament itself to say yea or nay on whether or not we’re ever going to be deploying our troops into a conflict,” Conservative defence critic James Bezan told reporters on Thursday in Ottawa.
“Let’s have the conversation where it should be, in public so there’s transparency, in the House of Commons.”
The prime minister originally expressed unequivocal support for the U.S. commencing airstrikes on Iran last weekend — then said later he did so with “regret” because the bombing campaign seems inconsistent with international law.
Bezan argued those shifts make no sense — and neither does Ottawa’s insistence on a diplomatic solution to end the airstrikes it had endorsed.
“Mark Carney has been all over the map on this,” Bezan said. Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong’s office said he was not available for an interview Wednesday.
Carney has said Ottawa has no plans to join the military campaign launched by Washington and joined by Israel. When he was asked about it on Wednesday, however, he said he could not categorically rule out a military deployment in response to a call for help from allies.
The MP overseeing defence procurement, Stephen Fuhr, said he had not been part of discussions on any possible military involvement in Iran.
“The region’s very unstable and there’s a conflict going on there, so Canada will make a decision on what that looks like for Canada,” he told reporters.
Details on Canadian troops in Middle East
Lt.-Gen. Steve Boivin, commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command, told reporters at a defence and security conference in Ottawa Thursday that there are about 200 Armed Forces members deployed to the Middle East on six operations.
Boivin disclosed the number after Defence Minister David McGuinty and his department refused to offer a figure earlier in the week.
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Some of those troops have been moved to another country in the region, Boivin said, and some have been brought back to Canada since the war broke out.
Canadian Joint Operations Command is the unit that would be called upon to help the federal government in the event of an evacuation or assisted departure of citizens in the area.
Boivin said Global Affairs Canada has not asked for the military’s help at this time.
“We are always conducting contingency planning. It is a standing task to be prepared for those things,” he said.
Boivin said there are no Canadian Navy vessels or Air Force planes in the region to help with such a mission at this time. He said the military is in the process of sending six liaison officers to the Middle East in case it is asked to help.
Turkey reported Thursday that a NATO defence system had shot down an incoming ballistic missile. Iran insisted it had not launched the missile.
Also Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte played down the idea of an alliance response to Iranian actions, saying no one has been talking about such a move. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand posted Thursday morning that she had spoken with Rutte within the previous 24 hours.
Stephen Saideman, a Carleton University defence expert, said Article 5, NATO’s collective defence clause, is not likely to be invoked in this case because Spain has said it is opposed to the war, while Greece would be unlikely to support using Article 5 to defend Turkey.
“We don’t have to worry about NATO being embroiled in that way. We have to be worried about NATO being divided, because countries within it take different sides,” he said.
Carney backed the U.S. attack on Iran in the first hours of the bombing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon “and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.”
But Washington has shifted its rationale for the war multiple times, with officials variously describing the goal as regime change, preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, setting terms for peaceful coexistence with the existing regime, and responding to actions by Israel.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East said Carney ought to categorically rule out participating in the war. The organization said the war is not popular with Canadians and the prime minister has suggested already it might violate international law.
The Liberals have been criticized further over inconsistencies in their stance on the Iran war since video surfaced of a town-hall meeting that happened at least a week before the American strikes.
Anand said Wednesday she was not aware that her parliamentary secretary, Rob Oliphant, told that town hall Ottawa does not support military action that isn’t sanctioned by the United Nations.
“We do not support an American strike,” Oliphant was recorded telling constituents at the gathering, where Iranian diaspora activists were calling for military action.
“That is the Canadian position. We do not believe in non-UN-sanctioned military action. We don’t do that,” he said.
Younes Zangiabadi, executive director of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, said Carney appears to be grappling with conflicting demands from his caucus, with some MPs pushing for international law and others responding to support for regime change in Iran.
“The Iranian diaspora community is huge in Canada,” he said in an interview.
“The most vocal ones are very much in favour of military strikes against Iran. And through the MPs that represent those constituencies, there’s been a lot of influence on the prime ministers to take a more hawkish position on Iran,” he said, adding that influence also seemed to affect Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau.
“(Carney) got a lot of pushback, including from some within his caucus,” said Zangiabadi, noting that Liberal MPs such as Will Greaves took the rare step of publicly dissenting from government policy.
In a social media post on Saturday, Greaves said Ottawa should not endorse the “illegal use of military force, the killing of civilians, or the kidnap and assassination of foreign heads of government” — references to both the Iran war and the U.S. operation in Venezuela this January.
Zangiabadi said Carney needs to strike a balance between standing up for Canadian sovereignty and respecting calls from members of the Liberal caucus for him to apply these principles to all nations.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 5, 2026.
— With files from Sarah Ritchie
