Trump’s Golden Dome raises major questions: Can it be built? Should it be built? What’s Canada’s role? [Video]

U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed Golden Dome missile defence system, which Canada has expressed interest in joining, is raising questions about the project’s cost and feasibility as well as concerns about a space-based arms race.

Trump’s plan is modelled after the Iron Dome that protects Israel — a land mass smaller than Vancouver Island — and aims to be more robust and hundreds of times bigger.

The Iron Dome is mainly built to defend against lower-flying threats like short-range rockets, mortars and shells, while Trump and other top U.S. officials say the proposed Golden Dome would block missiles fired from other countries and from space, weaving together existing technologies with future tech that still needs to be developed.

Alistair Edgar, a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., says Trump is talking about space-based detection and interception that would result in more weapons in space.

“Adversaries who don’t like that idea can put their own weapons in space to destroy satellites that we …