This article was first published by the Toronto Star.
The ink has barely dried on Canada’s defence strategy, but thanks largely to an unanticipated threat, it’s already out of date.
Called “Our North, Strong and Free” — or ONSF, as the military quickly abbreviated it — the strategy was published in May 2024. The date is significant: it predates Donald Trump’s wrecking ball of a second presidency, which has become a direct threat to Arctic security via U.S. demands to take over Greenland.
So what were the potential threats Canada was trying to respond to in 2024, and what are they now? What’s changed? Worries persist about Russia and China, but the threats they pose are unlikely to be focused on the Canadian Arctic. Russia has its own Arctic worries — including the Northern Sea Route, which China wants to take full advantage of it as a global commerce throughway and for the access it would provide to Russian natural resources.
The challenge Canada faces is now twofold.
First, we must be able to present ourselves as an Arctic power if we’re to fulfil our role within NATO’s collective-security mission focused on the alliance’s northern and western fronts. Canada will have to make the Arctic mission a core part of our future NATO activities. It’s an important way we can foster new security and economic relations with other European allies invested in Arctic security — especially the Nordic countries, NATO newcomers Sweden and Finland in particular. This would be in keeping with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call at the World Economic Forum for the world’s middle powers to stand together in order to avoid being on the menu for predatory great powers.
Second, we must ensure that we have the capacity to fend off U.S. threats, whatever form they take, to Canadian sovereignty and security in the Arctic. We could face a “Greenlandization” scenario in which Trump asserts that our Arctic is undefended and that we are incapable of defending it, and so America has to step in. Or Trump may decide that Canada, being in the Western hemisphere, is rightfully U.S. territory, as he put it during his cringe-inducing speech at Davos. He may conclude that Canada is a defence freeloader, or that unrestricted U.S. access to Canadian territory is necessary to build his “Golden Dome” missile system. Then there’s the question of natural resources, including the critical minerals locked away in Canada’s Far North. The U.S. could insist it needs access to these, perhaps through preferential deals — or else.
Defending our Arctic and asserting our sovereignty will be a difficult task. Our 2024 defence strategy was promissory in nature. It looked to the future, especially for big-ticket military purchases such as fighter jets, submarines, satellites, drones and icebreakers. But we now need to act with greater urgency and on shorter timelines where possible, something that will require sustained political attention and a willingness to spend money.
The reality is, you can’t defend the Arctic without basic infrastructure in place. This is where the concept of “dual-use” comes into play. The transportation links, telecommunications and energy infrastructure, housing and food that Northern and Inuit communities need are also critical to military operations in the Arctic. Developing them should be a shared enterprise.
There’s also a real need for defence innovation in the Arctic. Canada needs specialized gear suitable for Northern operations, such as vehicles, aircraft, drones and Arctic-capable ships. We need to better monitor the Arctic, too, so as to have a 24/7 picture of what is taking place across its vast expanse. We’ll need permanent bases for Canada’s air, land and sea forces in the Arctic — something we don’t have at present but that would go a long way toward asserting our sovereignty there. Finally, we need specialized military capacity, including a permanent regular-force Arctic brigade to operate alongside the Canadian Rangers as a reserve unit.
Canada needs to behave like an Arctic nation in order to be an Arctic nation: that’s how we can build coalitions of the willing, fend off potential U.S. threats and secure communities in the Far North.
Call it a true nation-building project.
