HMCS Margaret Brooke encounters a polar bear in Davis Strait during ice trials in March 2022.[Sailor 2nd Class Taylor Congdon/CAF Photo]

Most Canadians know that climate change is warming the Arctic. What they may not understand, however, is that the rate of warming in the North Pole region is four times the global average. What most assuredly don’t know is that as the ice melts during the next 25 years or so, the Arctic Ocean will likely become the most efficient shipping route between East Asia and Europe.

Also consider: the portion of the Arctic Ocean outside claimed territorial waters and economic exclusion zones—the so-called 200 nautical mile limit—is equal in size to the Mediterranean Sea; the Arctic Ocean is estimated to hold 30 per cent of the world’s remaining natural gas deposits and 13 per cent of its oil reserves; China views the central Arctic Ocean as a global commons, open to any country to exploit; and lastly, 2.5 million Russians live in the Arctic, while just some 150,000 Canadians do.

Coincidentally, both Russia and China are arming and preparing to drill, mine and fish in the Arctic Ocean. The Chinese are proposing to make their country a “polar great power,” as leader Xi Jinping put it, building icebreakers, mapping the polar seabed and searching for minerals and energy sources. The Russians, even while at war with Ukraine, have stationed weapons, naval vessels, aircraft, missiles and thousands of troops in Arctic bases.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has 22,000 military personnel in Alaska and its 2022 Arctic strategy promised “The United States will enhance and exercise both our military and civilian capabilities in the Arctic as required to deter threats.”

And in Canada? Retired lieutenant-
general Andrew Leslie, a member of Parliament from 2015-2019 in Justin Trudeau’s government and a former chief of the land staff, told the National Post this past May that the Canadian Armed Forces have just 300 people permanently based in the Arctic.

Still, Canada has plans. Its April 2024 defence update, “Our North, Strong and Free,” detailed what has been done and what’s planned to defend the North.

The navy has put to sea four of six new Arctic offshore patrol ships and the government pledged $38.6 billion to upgrade the North American Aerospace Defense infrastructure across the Arctic. The defence update also promised Canada will establish presence, reach, mobility and responsiveness for the CAF in the Arctic with northern operational resource hubs, airborne early warning aircraft, underwater sensors on the coasts and undersea, icebreakers, a satellite ground station in the Arctic, and new helicopters. This past July, the government also announced it was formally launching a process to acquire up to 12 submarines with under-ice capabilities. And the possibility of improved air and missile defence and long-range ground-, air-, and sea-based missiles is to be explored.

It sounds impressive, but regrettably, It is not.

It sounds impressive, but regrettably, it is not. First, the Arctic patrol ships are lightly armed, capable of sailing in the Arctic only in the summer, and have limited ice-breaking capacities. The money pledged to upgrade Norad is to be spent over 20 years, and everything else is promised for the future without funding attached to it. And it all comes at a time when Defence Minister Bill Blair publicly declared that the CAF are in a “death spiral” for want of personnel.

To be clear; Canada isn’t going to be able to match Russian, and future Chinese, strength in the Arctic. But, the prospect of a Russian land invasion of the Canadian North is also unlikely.

Three-quarters of a century ago, Foreign Minister Lester B. Pearson said that Canada’s defence policy in the North was one of “scorched ice.” Fifteen years ago, the defence chief General Walter Natynczyk was asked what Canada would do if the Arctic was invaded. His reply? “The first task would be to rescue” the attackers. He might have added that at the time Canada had no resources capable of such a task. It still doesn’t.

Simply put, -50 C temperatures, huge distances, and the absence of strategic objectives defend the Arctic. There are no deep-water harbours on Canada’s Arctic coast—although one at Nanisivik on northern Baffin Island has been in the works for 15 years, but remains incomplete and over budget, few roads, no rail connections, and essentially nowhere to go and little to capture. There’s no point in a land invasion.

What this means is that any attack would be by aircraft and missiles, striking at any future bases followed by political and diplomatic initiatives. The objectives would be to secure control of shipping lanes and gain unhindered access to exploit natural resources in the central Arctic Ocean and, possibly, on Canada’s continental shelf.

Today, Canada has no defence against such an incursion beyond the paper promises of the 2024 defence update. Even if those pledges are enacted by future governments, it will be years and billions of dollars before adequate defences are in place.

At present, the Arctic Council, which brings all the Arctic countries together (as well as 38 observer nations, including China), relies on the peaceful “exceptionalism” of the area. The council tries to keep the region a non-confrontation zone, limits commercial ocean traffic and controls resource exploitation. There has been some success, but the new tensions between the West and the Russia-China axis have had a significant impact.

Clearly NATO’s Arctic members—the U.S., Canada, the Nordic countries—need to develop a common strategy. They need the ability to monitor oil and gas exploration and development, control fishing in waters near their coasts (China consumes far more fish than any other nation), have icebreakers and shared underwater monitoring and detection systems.

Leslie told the Post that Britain and the U.S. have offered to help Canada in the Arctic, and the commander of Norad has stated he will run exercises in Canada. Regardless, Leslie said “the Liberal government…rest confident in the smug knowledge that the Americans will always defend us.”

Unfortunately, he’s probably right. And that’s no policy for a sovereign country.