An increasingly aggressive Russia coupled with China’s growing influence have renewed Canada’s focus on Arctic defence and sovereignty — and how to assert control over its remote northern geography.
The focus is on both increased surveillance — knowing what and who is poking around up there — and having military assets in place to deter any aggressor before they consider operating in Canada’s North.
The conversation is being driven by the climate crisis, opening up new areas of the Arctic for resource extraction and shipping lanes, and has expanded beyond Canada, asserting its sovereignty to both defence and national security concerns.
But despite melting ice and opening shipping lanes, Canada’s North remains a difficult place to operate in, which is why ensuring adversaries think twice before operating in the region is preferable to having to defend it, according to retired Maj.-Gen. Denis Thompson.
“Clearly deterrence is preferable to having to go up and defend it. And that means having credible assets at hand, not necessarily based in the Arctic, but able to operate out of the Arctic,” said Thompson in an interview with Global News.
“That can include aircraft, it can include ships, obviously, submarines and a limited army capability since the Rangers are already in place. I think the big thing from a military perspective is we need to know what’s up there and that speaks to this concept of surveillance from the seabed to space all across our country, including importantly in the Arctic.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s inaugural budget last month included a $1 billion, four-year fund to improve “dual-use” infrastructure projects for both civilians and the military, such as airports, seaports and all-season roads.
But aside from military preparedness and infrastructure, the discussion around Arctic intelligence — and counter-espionage — has become more prominent in recent years.
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Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director Daniel Rogers said the agency is aware of both cybersecurity and traditional espionage threats targeting governments and the private sector operating in Canada’s Arctic.
“Canada is a proud Arctic nation, and the global Arctic has become a theatre of increased interest due to its economic and strategic potential. Non-Arctic states, including the People’s Republic of China, seek to gain a strategic and economic foothold in the region. Russia, an Arctic state with a significant military presence in the region, remains unpredictable and aggressive,” Rogers said in a speech about national security threats in November.
“Both those countries, and others, have a significant intelligence interest in our Arctic and those who influence or develop its economic or strategic potential.”
It’s noteworthy that Rogers namechecked both China and Russia, according to University of Calgary Prof. Rob Huebert.
Huebert said defending Canada’s Arctic includes paying attention to “information” warfare — hostile countries spreading narratives or misinformation aimed at dividing Canadians or Canada from its allies. There are three levels to that “battle” in the North, Huebert said: creating distrust among elements of Canadian society to distract them from outside threats, dividing “political elites” from each other, and dividing Canada from the United States.
In those efforts, countries hostile to Canada have an advantage: U.S. President Donald Trump.
Global News reported earlier this year that polling indicates that Canadians in the north view the current U.S. administration as a greater threat than either China or Russia.
The fact that Trump’s new national security strategy, released earlier this month, makes clear the administration views itself as having a free hand to act militarily in the Western hemisphere is unlikely to diminish those concerns.
“For any of these to work, there has to be a grain of truth within it … You have to look at where the differences exist, and then you have the amplification element … Our adversaries are focusing on how (to) divide Canada from the United States. Now, the United States is taking a whole host of actions under the Trump administration that, of course, makes that job easy,” Hubert said.
“(They) create the circumstances within Canada where you have an individual saying, ‘Well, you know what, we have to really defend ourselves against the threats of the Americans much more than we do on the threats of the Chinese or the Russians.’”
For Thompson, however, it is simply a fact that Canada’s Arctic defence leans heavily on the military might of the Americans, who have what he described as an “eye-watering” number of military assets based in Alaska.
And it remains in the Americans’ interest, Thompson said, in ensuring no hostile powers gain a foothold in what he calls the “gateway to the south” of North America.
“This harkens back to the 1950s” and the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Thompson said.
“(The Arctic) is the way to get to the southern part of Canada and the United States.”
Huebert counselled urgency for the Canadian government to improve its defences in the North, particularly because large-scale military procurement takes a long time between an announcement and the assets being put in service. Canada finally deciding to buy the F-35 fighter jets would be a good start, Huebert suggested.
The most “chilling” aspect of Arctic defence for Huebert is that Canada doesn’t have much time.
“Our adversaries (aren’t) going to wait before they actually threaten us directly until 2035-2040,” Huebert said.
“It’s sort of a World War I scenario, where all of a sudden it wasn’t necessarily that the Russians were thinking about striking right now, but they do something that overextends them in Poland or the Baltics, and then boom, we’re in a fighting war. And again, are we prepared? And is that going to wait until 2035, 2040?”
“And I fear not.”