Canada faces dual adversaries on its northern frontier: W5 embeds with the Canadian military in the Arctic

W5’s Jon Woodward reports from Canada’s Arctic with Operation Nanook.

This is the first part of a multi-part series by CTV W5, embedded in the Canadian military’s Operation Nanook, as international interest by adversaries in Canada’s Arctic ramps up.

It was a blunt lesson about things in Canada’s North that can kill – and it shook the soldiers who had just arrived to a mess hall in a town 200 km north of the Arctic Circle into stunned silence.

“There are three of them: the ice, the cold, and arrogance,” said Capt. Alex Boom, the Operations Officer for the Canadian Rangers, an arm of the Canadian Armed Forces known for its experience in the rugged wilderness.

“Confidence is killer. This is not your backyard,” Boom continued, before turning to teach what Rangers often call “the Green Army” ways to survive in the treacherous white snow and tundra in Canada’s Arctic.

It’s harsh lessons like these that Canada’s Armed Forces hopes its troops will learn in Operation Nanook, the largest-ever military exercises in the Arctic that took place in February and March in Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories.

Some 450 soldiers, many part-time reservists, from across the country headed north to practice operating in the bitter cold, testing out new winter gear and weapons, and staging drills including diving in the frigid Arctic Ocean, retaking a captured station and detonating C-4 explosives at low temperatures.

Dual enemies on Canada’s northern frontier

But those in command are hoping the exercises also demonstrate that Canada is responding to new pressure on its northern frontier that comes as a warming Arctic thaws sea ice, making our waterways more accessible to adversaries.

“The weather is an incredible enemy force out here, but there is actual enemy considerations or adversaries. The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation maintain an interest in the Arctic Region,” Maj. Andrew Melvin said.

“Both nations are seeking to challenge the existing unipolar world and exert national spheres of influence in the Arctic region,” he said. “Part of this operation is securing northern warning centres and showing our presence in the north.”

The Russians have been embraced by American President Donald Trump in Ukraine, as he has mused about making Canada into the 51st state and plunged the two countries into a trade war.

Those who have his ear, including Steve Bannon, have highlighted Canada’s weaknesses in the North.

“If you think actually securing the Arctic to the degree you need to against the Chinese Communist Party and the Russians and still have the rest of your defence budget and still make your commitment to NATO, you have not run the math,” Bannon told CTV News last month.

Part of Operation Nanook was to build a landing strip on sea ice, but those plans were quickly scuppered thanks to the warm temperatures, said Lt. Col Darrent Turner, in an interview in a briefing room, looking down on flags representing his forces on a large topographical map.

“We came up here to find an ice sheet that we could use, and what we found was open water in February,” Turner said.

“So open water can be traversed. And so that allows possible incursion. That changes the strategic picture… Once a route is opened, they will come. And that is something we need to have an interest in. That is something that we need to have the capabilities to stop, to block,” he said.

A recently released assessment of Arctic security by Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, said the Arctic is an “attractive, strategic and vulnerable destination for threat actors.”

Canada’s Defence Minister Bill Blair has announced three new support hubs in Iqaluit, Yellowknife and Inuvik, and promised there will be more to come as Ottawa ramps up its military footprint in the Arctic.

‘We can’t rely on the environment' to protect us

Those improvements must be only a first step, said Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan in an interview in Inuvik’s airport as she arrived to greet the troops and see a demonstration of the relocated landing strip, this time on a frozen Arctic lake.

“The Arctic is changing, the Arctic is evolving, and we can’t rely on the environment now to protect us as well as it could in the past. This is why we need to invest more, and we need to operate a better defence,” she said.

Whitney Lackenbauer, who is the Canada Research Chair in the study of the Canadian North, and an honorary member of the Canadian Rangers, said the thawing Arctic, amid a time of global uncertainty, has become an urgent focus for Canadians.

“I think this is a real clear signal to the world. We take our Arctic security seriously,” he said in an interview at a feast in a community hall in Tuktoyaktuk, a hamlet on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, as Rangers mingled with locals selling handcrafted goods like fur mittens and sealskin earrings.

Troops from both U.S. and Canada said that despite Trump’s comments and the shifting geopolitics, they were working together professionally.

When W5 asked Col. Rob Donaldson of the U.S. Air Force whether he was here to annex Canada, he replied, “No, absolutely not.”

Jackie Jacobson, a former Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, said in an interview in Tuktoyaktuk, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, that the presence of Operation Nanook was timely.

“Canada? Yes. Fifty-first state? No,” he said.

For tips on Arctic security, or any other story, please email Jon Woodward