Canada actually did seriously consider Phantoms both in the late 50's and early-mid 60s. The first time they chose F-104s instead because PM Pearson wanted Canada to get tactical nukes and the F-104 was a cheap but very good airframe to use those (same reasoning as the Germans btw, with the same bribery...), and because the F-4 was then a brand new aircraft that was just entering service/hadn't even entered service with the Americans and was at this point quite expensive.
The second time the idea was to get rid of the F-104s (could have been easily done as plenty of countries in Europe or abroad wanted those) now that Canada abandoned the nuke mission overnight (Canadian politics are amazing...) and purchase IIRC around 100 F-4s. This was preferred by the RCAF but Defense Minister Paul Hellyer had other ideas because he and some other politicians and members of the military wanted to turn the Canadian forces which were then geared towards mechanized warfare into lighter units that could be moved by air for NATO flank defense and UN missions as well as defense of Canada.
However this meant that Canada would have to purchase many transport aircrafts and Hellyer also wanted to purchase F-5s because they were cheap enough he could get a lot of them and they were "fine" for the light missions expected (the aircraft actually was pretty much a glorified supersonic trainer with terrible range, payload and avionics completely unsuited for conventional warfare in Central Europe which was a Canadian NATO mission too). Of course he could also easily get a license production in Quebec which was a big deal at the time. But this meant Phantoms were a non-starter because Hellyer really wanted his 100+ F-5s and transports...
Anyway, when it was being considered the Phantom was a perfectly adequate aircraft that would really have been good both for NORAD missions and war in Europe. Another victim of weird Canadian politics and doctrinal change was the Main Battle Tank which was considered soon to be obsolete or unsuited for the light brigade profile of the new Canadian Forces, which meant that the Centurion tank had to soldier on until 1977 without the major refurbishment or replacement that was planned in 1968-69 at the latest (and as early as 1964). The Canucks then considered the M60A1 and the Chieftain, and eventually the Leopard 1 but the latter wasn't procured and delivered until 1979 when the Canadians finally returned to reason.
I have never heard of any "serious" consideration of the F4H-1 as being in the running for the replacement of the F-86/CF-100 in the NATO Air Division.
The politicians of the time had already acceded to the idea that 1 Cdn Air Div. would be re-purposed to a strike/recon role in 4 ATAF and IMO?
They chose the best available aircraft for this tasking. The CF-104 was an absolute beast in this role.
Unless
perfectly vectored by their centralized controllers, the MiG-21 had no chance of catching a 104 down in the weeds on a penetration mission.
When the F-4
really comes under consideration is almost ten years down the road, after the Trudeau "revolution".
When the RCAF (soon to be "CAF") were advised that the NATO tasking was to shift to conventional ground support, this is when they pushed
Hard to retire the 104's and forestall the delivery of the second batch of CF-101's.
Instead, they recommended that a force of 160 license-built F-4E's could fulfill both the NORAD and NATO commitments, with a considerable efficiency (due to supply chain rationalization) improvement.
Our beloved PM (who has left us with the dubious legacy that we
now endure) was having nothing of this however.
Instead we dumped hundreds of millions into indigenous (government "pork-barrel") projects to turn the CF-104 into an effective ground support aircraft.
And how did that work out?
At the same time, they took the
other half of the money (which combined would have funded the above noted F-4 programme) and funneled it off to Cartierville (Canadair) to produce an aircraft that the RCAF never wanted in the first place...
Most of these (CF-116A) sat in Mountainview (mothballed) and were sold off to Venezuela circa 1974.
The remainder served predominantly as lead-in trainers with 419 in CYOD.
434(YOD) and 433(YBG) had a "nominal" role through most of the 1970's with Hellyer's wet dream (i.e. "Mobile Command"). I lived in YOD through the tail end of this era and the guys on 434 were somewhat less than "motivated" about their assigned tasking in a shooting war.
They called it the ERB. (End of Runway Bomber)
This is (obviously) anecdotal and should be taken as such. I did hear it referred to in these terms though and these were front line guys with an assigned tasking if the ballon went up.
Pathetic.