Canadian military aims to show it can go it alone in the Arctic

Political commentator Scott Reid says Arctic minerals and resources were key discussion points during PM Carney’s Nordic trip.

CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut -- Over the past three months, Canadian soldiers conducted a more than 5,000-kilometre snowmobile patrol in extreme Arctic conditions travelling from Inuvik, Northwest Territories to Churchill, Manitoba, braving blizzards and minus-60 degree Celsius temperatures in military exercises designed to prepare for a foreign threat – and demonstrate Canada’s ability to take care of itself.

That’s a tall order. The political climate has changed since U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to make Canada an American state, take control of Greenland and withdraw from NATO, but the harsh realities of operating in Canada’s frozen north have not.

“There are Canadians up here defending (the country) at all times of the day,” said Travis Hanes, a commanding officer of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, a special unit of the Canadian Armed Forces’ reserve. “They’re stretching their abilities across some of the most inhospitable terrain and climate that you can possibly imagine.”

He spoke to Reuters while recovering from a frostbitten nose after weeks of being on the snowmobile patrol.

To Hanes and many of his fellow Rangers, the idea that any foreign power might challenge Canada’s sovereignty in a region that is about 40 per cent the size of continental Europe is baffling. “We are the landowners and it’s hard to see how someone thinks it could be taken away,” he said.

NATO members Canada and the United States have worked together for decades in the Arctic. They officially formed NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, in 1958 because neither country could independently respond to a threat by the Soviet Union.

Trump’s jibes about making Canada the 51st U.S. state and his growing tensions with NATO, only heightened by the U.S. war in Iran, have prompted Canadians to rethink their reliance on their southern neighbour.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed to ensure that Canada can protect the Arctic without any outside help. As he unveiled a new plan last month detailing how Canada would spend $35 billion reinforcing its military in the far north, Carney said Canada was now taking “full responsibility” for its Arctic sovereignty.

“We will no longer depend on any one nation,” he declared.

In interviews with nearly two dozen people including Canadian military leaders in the Arctic, government ministers, diplomats, analysts and serving members of the armed forces during a nine-day trip to the Arctic, Reuters found that despite the prime minister’s pledge, the deep ties between the Canadian and American militaries remain unchanged and the challenges to defending the Arctic are formidable. Not only is it highly unlikely that Canada could be completely self-reliant, but the U.S. too depends on Canada for its own security.

Skis, planes and snowmobiles

During the months-long exercises, approximately 1,300 members of the Canadian Armed Forces conducted patrols on skis, practiced landing planes on the frozen Arctic Ocean and transported artillery to the most northern point ever in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. It was the largest number of Canadian Armed Forces involved since the exercise began in 2007; the snowmobile patrol finished last week in Churchill, Manitoba.

A few observers and participants were present from the armed forces of the United States, Greenland, Belgium and France, but it was overwhelmingly a Canadian affair.

Canada’s foreign affairs minister Anita Anand told Reuters the government was moving as quickly as possible to make sure Canada can assume full responsibility for defending its Arctic, but did not offer a timeline.

“The gravest threat to Canada…comes from the increased movement of Russian infrastructure further and further north towards the Arctic Circle,” she said, adding that the entire geopolitical landscape has become “much more volatile.” She said working with the U.S. on the security and defence of North America via NORAD remains “fundamental.”

A senior White House official said the U.S. and its allies would continue to ensure the Arctic remains “free and open for peaceful purposes.”

“We welcome Canada’s efforts to take responsibility for securing its own territory,” the official said in an email.

The Russian foreign ministry has said repeatedly that Moscow is doing its best to maintain peace and stability in the region and has cast blame elsewhere for increased militarization in the Arctic.

“Western countries have transformed the Arctic into an area of geopolitical rivalry,” said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry in March. “This turn of events is not in Russia’s interests. We are open to mutually respectful dialog with our foreign partners.”

Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Whitney Lackenbauer, an Arctic expert at Trent University in Peterborough, said neither the U.S. nor Canada have the capability alone to monitor the vast Canadian Arctic, which comprises roughly 4 million square kilometers and more than 36,000 islands.

Brigadier-General Daniel Riviere, Commander of Canada’s Joint Task Force North, said this year’s military exercises proved the military has the ability to move specialized weapons and equipment that might be needed in the unlikely possibility of a land attack.

“We need to be prepared for the worst,” Riviere told Reuters from his base in Yellowknife, where Canada’s Arctic defences are headquartered.

Still, Riviere emphasized that Canada’s military partnership with the U.S. is critical, saying Canadian Armed Forces stand “shoulder to shoulder” with American soldiers.

On the coastline, Canadian authorities have “far more presence in Arctic waters” compared to the Americans, according to Neil O’Rourke, Director General for Fleet and Maritime Services at Canada’s Coast Guard. He said Canadian icebreakers are regularly used to escort U.S. ships heading to the Arctic and pointed out that Canada has the world’s second-biggest fleet of icebreakers, after Russia.

In other areas, Canada lags. Across the country, there are 47 radar sites that form the North Warning System, a network from western Yukon to Labrador.

Pierre Leblanc, a former commander of the Canadian forces in the north, said the system is increasingly obsolete and questioned if Canada would have the ability to independently respond if any serious threats were picked up.

The sites are remotely monitored by NORAD and the Canadian military but are managed by Nasittuq, a private Canadian company that won a $592 million government contract in 2022.

Nasittuq described the radar network as “a legacy system” in an email and acknowledged that it was “aging and limited against modern threats.”

At the Cambridge Bay site, which also serves as a logistics center, there are no military staff, but a gift store selling branded radar system merchandise.

“Canada and the U.S. need each other because there’s lots of gaps in the north,” said Troy Bouffard, a former Arctic adviser to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski who represents Alaska. Washington depends on Canada to provide intelligence about potential threats in the Arctic, and the strategically located region also serves as a buffer zone between the U.S. and adversaries like Russia, China and Iran, Bouffard said.

Much of the airport and radar infrastructure across the Canadian Arctic was conceived, built and paid for by the U.S. during the Cold War. After years of underfunding its defences in the Arctic, and following numerous complaints by Trump, Canada hit the NATO target of spending two per cent of its GDP on defence last year.

Bigger problems

Evan Bloom, a former U.S. diplomat who focused on the Arctic, said that despite bellicose statements from Trump, the working relationship between Canada and the U.S. in the far north remains largely unchanged.

“Russia is carrying out this hybrid warfare that is a threat to Western democracies and China is now also cooperating more militarily with Russia,” he said. “Those are bigger threats than the relationship problems Canada and the U.S. are having.”

Last month, for example, NORAD scrambled a half dozen Canadian and U.S. fighters to intercept two Russian airplanes that nearly entered Canadian airspace, said Kevin Knight, head of intelligence for Canada’s Joint Task Force North.

Knight said the incident was notable for how close Russian aircraft came to Canadian airspace.

Major Matt Wookey, a pilot with the Canadian Air Force who practiced landing a Twin Otter plane on frozen Arctic sea ice, said flying there was different to almost anywhere else in the world.

“Everything is just snow and drifts, and it all looks the same, even the shoreline,” Wookey said. “Nothing is built to properly function when the thermometer goes below minus 40, including humans.”

(Reporting by Maria Cheng; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Claudia Parsons)