Arctic security is critical. Is Canada ready to stand on guard?

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings It’s not the border that most Canadians worry about, at least not until they’re reminded just how open it’s, they just shot it. Only days after a US fighter jet downed, a suspected Chinese spy balloon, prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ordered the takedown of an unidentified object flying over Northern. The discovery of Chinese buoys by Canadian forces in the Arctic should be a wake up call. The Department of Defense says it’s taking all appropriate measures to safeguard our sovereignty. Over the past month, we’ve uh, been reminded, it’s fair to say just how important security at our northern border can be when geopolitical tensions. So how well protected is that border? How do we monitor it and how could we do that better? How does a changing climate make Arctic security even more critical? And what keeps the people who don’t need to be reminded to focus on this up at night? I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer is the Canada Research Chair in the study of the Canadian North, a professor at the school for the Study of Canada at Trent University, the author of more than 30 books and countless papers on Arctic security. Hello, Dr. Lackenbauer

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Hi, Jordan. Great to be on the show.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Well, thank you so much for joining us and I guess my first question is, before the events of last month, how often do you think Canadians paid attention to, uh, the security of their Arctic?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Uh, it pops up periodically, but it’s not something that we think about. I think on a, on a day-to-day basis now, I spent a lot of my time up in Canada’s northern territories, so there it’s certainly a more ongoing preoccupation.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer But when we think about the Arctic as really a part of Canada, and part of North America. From the standpoint of defense, we often think about it as a there as opposed to a here. And I think what we’ve seen in the last month is a real internalization and remembering that the Arctic approaches to the rest of North America are very, very important.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When we’re thinking about continental defense, when we’re thinking about the defense of our country. Let’s talk about what that looks like right now. How do we currently monitor our northern border? What is up there? Keeping tabs on everything?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So when it comes to aerospace threats, Bombers flying through the atmosphere or even cruise missiles. We look at these detection systems that take the form of, of radar stations with their big geo-doves, right? Like these giant golf balls that are all sprinkled across, uh, Canada’s Arctic roughly along the 70th parallel, right? We also have modest capabilities to detect things going on within parts of our water. So there’ve been technology demonstration, projects that have shown what we can do to, to monitor those waters. And during the summertime, during the open season when there’s the most volume of traffic, we’ll often have coast guard vessels and even Navy vessels from time to time, patrolling those waters. I think on a day-to-day basis though, we can sometimes forget that we are, we’re really fortunate as Canadians to have the Canadian Rangers who, Canadian citizens living in communities all through our Arctic, who are serving as our eyes, ears, and the voice of their communities if something strange is detected. So longstanding stories historically about rangers seeing submarines or strange individuals showing up in their communities and sending along that information in those people being being apprehended overall. However, I think it’s still fair to say that with some of the emerging threats to North America, that really it’s time to revisit what our capabilities are in the Arctic to be able to detect challenges to North America across all domains.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings How has the system we use to monitor, uh, our northern border changed over the past couple decades? If it’s changed at all?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Yeah. I don’t think it’s changed fundamentally. I mean, really we’re still looking at those terrestrially, so ground-based radar systems like the North warning system, which is using legacy technologies really designed in the 1970s, implemented in the late eighties and early nineties to do a lot of that detection. Now they’re still really useful. A lot of that data that’s being generated is still really important to us, but it begs the question, if we’re facing new threats like hyperkinetic weapons or next generation cruise missiles, that can fly a lot faster than those systems are able to detect. And they’re flying so fast that we really only have seconds or minutes to be able to make decisions on what we’re gonna do about it. If we want to actually be defeating those, those weapon systems coming in, we need to revisit what some of those capabilities are. Now, when we think about arctic security or defense of Canada, we also need to think about outer space, and we have invested quite a bit in satellite, both civilian and military applications of those like radar sat and radar sat constellation, which do give us a picture from outer space of what’s going on in the Arctic. And we’ve also seen the first couple of our, our new Arctic and offshore patrol ships.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer The HMCFS Harry DeWolf and HMCS at Margaret Brook. In the last couple of years, some of the, the listeners will remember that there were some difficulties with the engine, on the DeWolf, so it wasn’t actually able to do what it had hoped to do last summer. So there’s still some some technology issues to sort out, but as those continue to come online, we will have more capability in terms of patrolling the waters in the Arctic.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What about, uh, geopolitically? How has, and I guess I’m referring here mostly to the past, uh, few years or even just the last year, how has the landscape up there changed, uh, in making this a little bit more critical fixture?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer And it’s a key question. I think we held out hope beginning in the early nineties with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the Arctic, and when I’m talking Arctic here, I’m talking about the circumpolar North, that ocean surrounding the North Pole, including eight different circumpolar countries, of which Canada’s the second largest right after Russia. That this would be a region of the world where we could come together and with common interests surrounding environment and northern people. That all of the different Arctic states could cooperate. And some people even talked about Arctic exceptionalism as if somehow the Arctic was different than any other region on the planet in terms of offering possibilities for cooperation and for bridge building between, you know, what had been the Soviet Union and the West.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Right.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer I think what’s happened over the last year is we’ve seen that imagined circumpolar cooperative, run into the harsh reality that the Arctic is not insulated from dynamics in the rest of the world. So when we look at Russia’s brutal further invasion of Ukraine starting last February, a lot of the cooperative forums that have been set up to allow for positive dialogue and cooperation between Arctics states, including Russia, have either been put on pause, or have been pushed to the side,

Jordan Heath-Rawlings right.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Because we can’t see the Arctic become a space that allows Russia to pretend like it can carry out a, a brutal, obnoxious, act like it’s done in Ukraine and still think that the world is gonna play with it in a positive way. That’s how the landscape has changed, you know, theoretically.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I wanna ask specifically about, you know, the actual practical landscape as we keep seeing, uh, articles and reports about rising arctic temperatures, melting, polar ice, all of that stuff. How has the actual terrain changed and what are the implications of that?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So certainly we’ve seen a decline in sea ice. We can’t imagine that this means that the Arctic all of a sudden. One day of the year becomes evenly blue, especially in Canada’s Arctic waters. They can still be very unpredictable and quite treacherous as the ice breaks up and continues to clog those waters. But certainly the science is clear and the indigenous knowledge is clear that the cryosphere, so the ice covered parts of the Arctic have changed dramatically, both in terms of the volume of ice, but also when that ice breaks, which is much earlier in the spring than before.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer And also freezing up later in the fall. Also, when we think about terrestrial systems, so when we think about the ground itself. Rising temperatures mean a lot more instability in terms of permafrost. When you go and visit the north, you’ll find that most buildings in the Arctic are built on piles. So they’re basically up on like building stilts. Yeah, because you have to get down to a permanently frozen part of the ground in order to have your structures actually remain stable. So as that permafrost is becoming more volatile, this is affecting not only buildings, in communities, but also a lot of the roots transportation routes to and from communities, things like airfield and so on. And this affects certainly our ability to access the region or others’ ability to access the region in the case of less ice, perhaps more easily, but also meaning that some of our, our longstanding ways of accessing the region, are now becoming more precarious, they’re becoming more uncertain. And certainly unpredictability is not a good thing. If, if you’re in Inuk, living in one of our northern communities who depends upon the land to go out and catch seals at different times of the year to feed your family or to go out berry picking, to, to compliment your, your family food intake.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I wanna turn now to events of the past month, which have kind of, as you mentioned, uh, driven home, the need to pay more attention to it.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Yes.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When you initially saw the reports of, uh, what was first identified as a UFO, um, shot down in the north last month, what was your immediate gut reaction?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Obviously this was coming in the slipstream, if you will, of the previous balloon. Yeah. That had been identified by Nora, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. So this is the Canada US Joint Command, where we work with our American sisters and brothers, you know, seamlessly in defensive North America. My first thought was, oh my gosh, there’s another one of these coming into Canadian airspace, and what does that tell us about, about what a competitor is doing in what is Canadian sovereign jurisdiction, sovereign airspace. So that was my very first thought is, oh my gosh, are these things kind of flying everywhere?

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And what did we hear when it, when it developed?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Well, as it developed, I think we heard, different snippets of information coming to us, particularly in Southern Canada. So the idea that this was not the same as that massive giant eight story balloon that was shot down off the Atlantic Coast and recovered that this was something different that this was actually detected. Because remember we were talking about the North warning system and the different surveillance systems that exist within the Canadian and US military partner. Well, after that first balloon was detected, I think people turned up those sensors to be even more , more sensitive to things that might be coming into North American airspace. So we just understood that that was partly why this might have been detected in the Yukon. And then again, information suggested it was a smaller air vehicle and that it was not obviously tied to either China or Russia or some other competitor out there.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer That it really was unclear where it came from.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings We, and again, I use we to refer to those of us who don’t pay much attention to what’s going on up there. Began learning of. Monitoring bouys that were found up there last year. I mean, my first question is what are those and what do we know about them and and what are the implications of that?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So really interesting because we have seen over the last 15 years a dramatic increase in Chinese interest in the Arctic, and one of the forms of that interest is the People’s Republic of China. Increasing investments in ice breakers. They have the long or the snow dragon one and two who conduct polar research both in Antarctic and in the Arctic, and also Chinese interest in potential maritime roots, particularly north of Russia.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings To a lesser extent in North America through what we as Canadians often refer to as the Northwest passage, right?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer Or potentially sailing right over the North Pole. So China’s been pretty active in marine scientific research, and this buoy is a system that the Chinese deployed to do a bunch of experimentation or, or to gather scientific data on an ongoing basis within Arctic waters. So this would be gathering information about salinity, so how salty the water is, potentially information about what is going on in the water column beneath it.So what’s, what’s actually passing through those waters and other ocean related data.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Are there security concerns around that?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So again, depending on where that buoy was deployed, and what it was designed to gather, certainly there would be concerns about that. I mean, if this is primarily being gathered in anticipation of say, submarine activity in a region, that would be, I think cause for quite a few alarm bells. But if this was a buoy that then went from international waters and floated into Canadian waters, really we have to be careful not to accuse them of doing something illegal if it’s actually, you know, adhering to what the rules are that, that we adhere to in other parts of the world. So it’s one of those pieces where I’m still waiting to learn more information about the exact nature of this buoy, but do definitely say it’s a wake up call for Canadians to realize that there are other countries in the world who do have an interest in our Arctic. And while some of these interests may be benign, while they might not be hostile, and might actually help to share science that’ll benefit us. They also can have other purposes and other uses that could potentially, you know, be worrisome for Canadian.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When we talk about that buoy, um, how would we determine that? Do we have the capability to determine where this thing started out or are we kind of flying blind and is the government moving on that?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer I would presume they are. I also think that it, it probably makes sense for our government not to be proactively giving us too much information up front until it’s had time to go and actually do its calculations, do its assessment and figure out, you know, what exactly was going on with it.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Right.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer I’m sure there’s diplomatic activity going on. Through the Chinese embassy asking questions and, and hopefully securing more information. Time will tell how transparent the Chinese embassy folks actually are in the Chinese foreign ministry is with giving us information that, that we should be able to, to access from them. I think in terms of capabilities to detect things like small monitoring buoy, Or even small things floating through the atmosphere. And in the case of these airships, right? Pretty slow, pretty cool. And when I say cool, I mean like if they’re gas filled or air filled, right? They’re harder to detect than something that’s really hot. Or we have satellites that can actually detect, heat signatures of things.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer We do have capabilities, but I think what this has done in the last month when we’ve listened to the Minister of National Defense, Anita, and, and the chief of the Defense staff General heir and others speak, is that this reinforces the importance of Canadians alongside the Americans and other allies making investments in North American defense modernization. Make sure that we have the whole array, the whole suite of sensor systems that we need. To be able to detect incursion, so things that are coming into Canadian aerospace or into Canadian waters in a timely manner, and that we have the capabilities to be able to respond to them. So there’s been some talk as well that it was actually an American jet that shot down the unidentified object in the Yukon. Not a Canadian jet because unfortunately weather conditions were pretty bad in Cold Lake where our CF18 squadron is stationed and the Americans just happened to get there first. That was not a bad thing. It didn’t affect Canadian sovereignty. That’s why we have Norad. That’s why we have this, this really close partnership with the US for Continental Defense. But to me it does speak to the importance of US investing in getting those F35. And in getting new military equipment, that gives us a full range of options to be able to respond, especially if these kind of incursions into Canadian space are threatening because the Arctic is a really important access point if you’re gonna target North America.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s one of the last things I wanted to ask about, which is, you know, the North American Partnership, as you mentioned, it was a US jet, that shot down that UFO. Obviously Norad plays a huge role, in Arctic Defense. How much do we need to focus on developing our own capabilities? And I say this with all love to Americans, but you know, we’ve seen on Fox News recently, um, the hard turn of America, including talking about, uh, Canada becoming a, uh, a socialist state and et cetera, et cetera. Like , how much can we afford to rely on the US when it comes to protecting our own Arctic sovereignty?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So in that sense, yes, we get the Tucker Carlson’s on Fox News, depending on who’s in the White House. We can have some pretty wonky ideas from time to time. And maybe we’re looking to a future in a few years where we could find that wonkiness returning, dare I say. Um, so Canadians, we wanna make sure that we have the capabilities to be able to look after ourselves as required, and that’s in the Arctic as elsewhere. But I say that with the sense that there’s no closer defense partnership on this planet than exists between Canada and the United States. And I don’t think that makes Canadians naive or makes us exceptionally vulnerable. But that said, when it comes to Arctic defense and Arctic security, I think Canada does have special knowledge. We have a very strong vested interest in wanting to contribute to not only our, only our relationship with the United States, but also with our European allies in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to bring our expertise to the table.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So, in essence, we want to make sure that we are capable of having domain awareness, so understanding what’s going on within Canadian space. And not having to rely entirely upon others to share that information with us. So as we’re going forward in the next, I think 10 to 20 years, and as Canada is making, what are, what are pretty costly commitments to modernizing Nora in modernizing North American defense? I think we’re going to see very important investments made into the Arctic. I think most of our decisions will be made with our American friends and, and closest allies and premier partners through Norad and, and that’s something that doesn’t keep me up at night. I actually see that relationship as a real strength for Canada.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When you look at those 10 to 20 years coming up, what does keep you up at night?

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer So what keeps me up at night is the effects of climate change and environmental change on communities and on people’s living in the Arctic. Yeah, that’s something that is real right now and will only become more significant out to 10, 20 years. I think we also need to be mindful of what our adversaries, what competitors are in challenging our democratic institutions. We’ve seen this played out with the revelations over the last couple of weeks in terms of recent elections. I think Canadians can also look to what went on with the Brexit vote and United Kingdom, what’s going on in the United States with election interference, and start to think about what are other ways that even within our Arctic, our competitors might be undermining Canadian’s, democratic right to decide on our futures.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer And for Northerners, that’s often captured in the phrase, nothing about us without us. How do we ensure that Northerners retain the position of being the primary drivers of what that Arctic agenda is gonna look like in a world that’s becoming more hostile and in a world where Canadian rights are not obviously respected as I think they were in previous decades. I think we just have to be vigilant to this point. We have to be monitoring what other countries are developing in term of capabilities and really thinking about what are the threats that are likely to pass through the Arctic to target the heartland of North America. hat are the threats to the Arctic itself? And then what are the threats in the region and make sure that we’re attentive to all of those different dynamics without losing focus on our commitments all across Canada and indeed around the world.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Dr. Lackenbauer, thank you so much for this. It’s fascinating.

Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer My pleasure. Thanks Jordan.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Dr. Whitney Lauer, Canada research chair, and the study of the Canadian North, that was the big story. For more, you can head to the big story podcast.ca. You can always find us on Twitter at the big story fpn, and you can always email us hello at the big story podcast.ca. If you want this podcast on any podcast player, just hit subscribe. You’ll get every episode. If you want it on your smart speaker, just ask for it by saying Play the Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.