By Gerry Bowler
Canada has left the North wide open to foreign powers eager to grow their Arctic foothold
Canada is in danger of losing the Arctic because Ottawa has ignored the North for far too long.
The Canadian North makes up 40 per cent of our land mass and includes more than 19,000 islands in the Arctic Archipelago. Yet only about 120,000 people live across this enormous stretch of wilderness. Canada took control of the region in the late 19th century through territorial transfers from the Hudson’s Bay Company and the British Crown, one of the largest land transfers in history.
For decades afterward, the North received little federal attention. The Second World War briefly changed that, prompting construction of the Alcan Highway to Alaska and bringing new airfields and telephone lines.
The Cold War, along with the threat of Soviet bombers crossing the Pole, led to multiple radar lines. Still, Prime Minister St-Laurent admitted in the 1950s that Canadian governments had treated the North “in an almost continuing state of absence of mind.”
John Diefenbaker’s Progressive Conservative administration tried to reverse that neglect. In 1958, he told a Winnipeg audience: “I see a new Canada—a Canada of the North! … We intend to carry out the legislative program of Arctic research, to develop Arctic routes, to develop those vast hidden resources the last few years have revealed.”
Plans for a research and industrial city in Frobisher Bay, new roads and railway lines and wide-ranging surveys were ambitious but ultimately unaffordable. In the years that followed, both Liberal and Conservative governments again set northern development aside.
Foreign interest, however, continued to grow. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service recently reported Russian and Chinese attempts at influence and subversion in our northern territories.
American governments over the past 20 years have shown serious interest in the region’s resources, which include significant oil, gas and mineral deposits, along with control of the Northwest Passage, a shipping route becoming increasingly accessible as Arctic sea ice recedes.
Canada considers those waters national; the United States, the European Union and at times China argue it is an international strait.
For all practical purposes, Canada has what amounts to no meaningful presence north of the tree line, leaving the field open to countries with far more ambition and far better-equipped forces.
Canada is in no position to defend its claims. We have no icebreakers capable of operating through the Arctic winter. We have no submarines that can work under the ice cap. We have no permanent air base for fighter jets.
And to cover two million square kilometres of Arctic territory, we have only 300 troops stationed there. The chance they could detect, let alone repel, a serious intruder is essentially zero. Without these capabilities, Canada cannot properly monitor activity in the region or enforce its sovereignty claims.
In the last federal budget, Ottawa announced a $1-billion Arctic infrastructure fund for new airports, seaports and all-season roads. Our foreign affairs minister has urged NATO to pay more attention to the Arctic, saying it “must be an organization not only that focuses on the eastern flank, but also that looks north.”
These steps are gestures, not strategy. Canadian governments excel at promises but struggle with procurement, and the idea that European allies might fill the gap, considering their weak response to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, is unlikely.
Our northern territory is under threat. We must use it or lose it.
Gerry Bowler is a Canadian historian and a senior fellow of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
