How secure is Canada’s Arctic?

Jordan: It’s the border that we think about least, but that’s changing.

News Clip: Due to climate change and an unstable geopolitical environment, the Arctic area faces challenges not seen since the Cold War. It also says Indigenous peoples need to be part of any efforts to secure the area.

Jordan: That clip was from a Senate report last year and two weeks ago the government seemed to agree with a large boost to defence spending, making Arctic security a key focus of the plan. But how secure is our Arctic right now? What do we even mean when we talk about Arctic security? What exactly is Canada’s military planning to do with this renewed focus on the region? I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Professor Andrea Charron is the director of the Center for defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba. Hey Andrea, thanks for joining us.

Andrea Charron: My pleasure.

Jordan: I want to start by asking you, when we talk about protecting our northern borders and we talk about northern sovereignty in this country, what do we really mean?

Andrea Charron: Well, I think it is a particular to Canada. We don’t hear any other Arctic state talking about their arctic sovereignty. Even a country like Iceland, which has no military, does not say that its sovereignty is threatened. So I think it’s really important that we start with maybe a definition of what we mean by sovereignty. So for me it has four elements. You need territory, you need recognition by other sovereign states that you are a sovereign state, you need autonomy to make foreign and defence policy decisions, and you need to be able to show control in the form of regulations, treaties and agreements. So if we walk through those four, nobody in the world is questioning if Canada’s Arctic is part of Canada, that is not up for debate. The gold standard for recognition is a seat in the General Assembly with a vote. That’s why we saw recently the Palestinian people requesting of the Security Council, they get that seat and it was denied. We are no longer a colony, and so even though we take into consideration our allies’ concerns about defence, we make our own foreign and defence policy, and Canada arguably has the most regulations, agreements, access to international protocols to be able to confirm that its Arctic is fully part of Canada.

Jordan: Why do you think people approach it that way as though we’re about to be invaded by a foreign power instead of looking at the picture of maybe let’s just say a northern security as a whole?

Andrea Charron: That’s an excellent question and it is. I think because of the politics of Canada, we tend to use Arctic sovereignty as a catch-all for we have concerns and their concerns particular to the Arctic. And if we use this big umbrella term Arctic sovereignty, then everybody can pile in any concern they have. And governments don’t have to be necessarily specific about what the issue is. So you see successive prime ministers, especially when there are tensions between French and English Canada sort of reflexively pointing to the Arctic because it is peopled mostly by Indigenous peoples. So it’s not a French English divide. It’s 40% of our landmass, but we only have 150,000 people living there. And it’s a place that few Canadians will ever visit and therefore Canadian governments can say we are going to stand strong on arctic sovereignty. And of course everybody’s going to clap and applaud, but have absolutely no understanding of what that means.

Jordan: This is whether you want to call it sovereignty or security or whatever, a stated focus of the defence announcement recently by the federal government. But historically, how seriously has Canada taken Arctic security and what historically have been the concerns?

Andrea Charron: So historically, I think it can be said that Canada has been concerned about security. By that I mean we do not want Canadian laws to be broken by enacting many, many regulations by enacting things like the Northern Canada Vessel Traffic Service and making sure that we were party to the mandatory polar code and give data to the commission on the limits, the continental shelf, all that to say that Canada on paper and via regulations has lots of tools at its disposable. But where we fall short is the infrastructure, the housing access to education and schools and internet and communication systems for people living in the Arctic. And that’s where we’ve always fallen short.

Jordan: What are the concerns today as opposed to let’s say 10, 20 years ago up there? How is the situation evolving in the era of obviously an aggressive Russia and the climate crisis?

Andrea Charron: So we have the sort of three buckets of issues for which we have agencies and departments responsible for each bucket. So we have safety issues, that’s concern about lives and flora and fauna. We have security issues that’s breaking Canadian laws, things like human trafficking, illegal importation or exportation of goods. And then we have these defence issues and that’s usually a threat to the state that is Canada by a foreign entity. We’ve always been concerned about them, but at different times in our history we’ve sort of focused in on particular ones. And in today’s geopolitical context, when we have a resurgent Russia, China, and we have a United States that is really concerned about its ability to defend its homeland and North America, the focus has been on this defence bucket and does Canada have the right capabilities to be able to defend against missiles, against bear bombers, against drones? And this is why you’re hearing a lot in the news about the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD, which has arguably been our frontline of defence, especially for the Arctic for nearly 68 years.

Jordan: So how prepared are we then, NORAD aside in terms of defence infrastructure in the Arctic?

Andrea Charron: Well, we don’t have a lot of defence architecture and infrastructure in the Arctic because the threat traditionally has been what we call through the Arctic that is a bear bomber or a missile that might use the Arctic Ocean as an avenue of approach. And so we have a few what we call forward operating locations. We have the north warning system that can see air threats coming into North America, but we’re realizing now with new adversaries and technology, we need to be able to see further into the Arctic and in time and space to give Canada, the United States and allies more options. What we don’t want to depend on is the threat of nuclear retaliation. We are in what we call an era of deterrence by denial, which means we need to be able to see what’s happening to give us more options.

Jordan: So as I mentioned a defence document the government recently released and part of the massive budget spending just a week and a half or so ago is a focus on the Arctic and on defence infrastructure. What does that mean practically on the ground? How much do we know about what the government is planning to do here?

Andrea Charron: Well, it is really ambitious, but it is not particular to the Arctic. It’s really about a rethink of how to defend North America writ large in concert with the United States. It just so happens though that our Arctic is so large, 40% of our landmass and we have the largest coastal zones in the world because of the Arctic Archipelago. A lot of this new sensors and radars that we need are going to be positioned in the Arctic, and so you’ll see announcements about over-the-horizon radar systems, new maritime sensors, new satellite systems, and the idea is that it’s no longer sufficient to be able to look at just the air or the land or the sea. We need to be able to see in all of the domains, so space, cyber, land, air, sea, and also be able to link all of these sensors so that we have a 360 degree picture of what is happening, especially in the Arctic, and then be able to coordinate responses not only in Canada with the various agencies, but also with the United States. And more and more you’re seeing talk about coordinating NORAD efforts and NATO efforts because we have so many NATO allies that are also Arctic states.

Jordan: That sounds incredibly ambitious as you mentioned. Are we equipped to do all of that stuff? I know we are not historically the most technically advanced military out there in the world.

Andrea Charron: Well, we do have some really important niche skills. First of all, our Canadian armed Forces is highly trained. We don’t have enough of them right now, so recruitment and retention is certainly a problem. But for example, Canada has always been known for its space capabilities, and so our expertise in radar systems is really a help to allies, especially when the Arctic and Polar over-the-horizon radar systems come online because they will be able to see much further into the Arctic over Greenland, towards what has been a problematic area for NATO, which is the Greenland Iceland UK gap. So our systems based in Canada are going to be of incredible help to not only Canada and the allies, but it is incredibly technically difficult. It does require partnering with industry. It does require coordinating with allies and it does require being able to spend the money, which is really difficult when you’re talking about such highly technical systems.

Jordan: So far we’ve talked about the Arctic mostly in terms of surveillance and defence in that capacity. As it warms up there, what do we have to consider from a land and people perspective?

Andrea Charron: Yeah, and that’s really important. I’m so glad you mentioned the people because we tend to talk about the Arctic as if it’s devoid of anybody living there and people are our most important asset in the Arctic, and there’s no point having defence if you’re not doing it to defend people. So climate change is a real problem in the Arctic because we know, for example, it’s warming at four times the rate of the rest of the world. This is causing changes in weather patterns, in wind speeds, in permafrost melt, which is devastating for any infrastructure. If you’ve ever looked at a runway that’s been built on permafrost that starts to melt, it looks like an accordion. You can’t land anything on that. There’s still concerns about soil erosion, whole hamlets in the Arctic sliding into the Arctic ocean because the soil just sort of disappears out from under them. So climate change, I would say is the number one threat to the Arctic and to Canada and that in the new defence policy update called Our North Strong and Free puts climate change as the number one threat.

Jordan: What do you do? I mean, aside from trying to solve the climate crisis and stop warming temperatures as quickly as we can, what do you do from a practical point of view to combat rising temperatures in the Arctic and all the effects you just mentioned?

Andrea Charron: Well, one of the things that we’re trying to do, and as we speak right now, they’re trying to agree on a ban against plastics in the world. Certainly anything we can do to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel should help with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s things like trying to wean the Arctic off of diesel power generators because they are very polluting to look for more green options, including potentially using nuclear energy as a source of energy in the Arctic and sort of mobile nuclear reactors. It is also putting on houses on stilts so that it can withstand permafrost changes. And I must say the people in the Arctic have some incredible ideas, but of course they need help with funding to make those projects come to reality.

Jordan: One of our listeners wrote in to us a while ago and asked us about the possibility of increasing the Arctic population as a security strategy to make it less vulnerable to foreign actors simply by making it more populous. Is that a good idea? What would it take to get more people living up there?

Andrea Charron: Well, we’ve done this before. The Canadian government was concerned that foreign states might stake a claim in the Arctic, and so they moved Inuit peoples from Northern Quebec where they had trees and were well-established and moved them to Resolute Bay beyond the Arctic Circle with a couple of canvas tents and basically said, good luck to you. We don’t want to be in the business of planting flagpoles that are peoples to show sovereignty. It’s not necessary, but what we do want to do is make the arctic and attractive place to be. But success of governments have not spent what will be eye watering amounts of money on that infrastructure. If you’re a Nunavut and you are pregnant and it is at all a risky pregnancy, you must fly down south months before you’re due to have the baby in a hospital in the South. And it’s incredibly expensive. You often have to come by yourself. It’s really isolating. People may not speak your language. This is the reality. There’s not reliable internet service in the Arctic. So if we are going to get people to want to move to the Arctic, we need the basic infrastructure such as clean water. Most of the hamlets, especially in the Eastern Arctic, are not connected by roads. And currently most of our air traffic goes north to south. It does not link east to west within the Arctic. So that sort of mitigates against development between the territories and with, for example, Alaska in Greenland.

Jordan: Beyond security, what are the benefits to increasing the population and infrastructure in the North? I understand obviously huge benefits to the populace up there for the reasons you just mentioned, but we’ve talked on this show before about how climate change will make the Arctic more accessible and there are rewards to be reaped up there for the countries that can capitalize on it.

Andrea Charron: Well, if we’re talking about Canada’s Arctic, we have to respect that this is Indigenous land, and if we start to, from the South, dictate the types of businesses and population demographics that we can have in the Arctic, then we have undone years of attempts at truth and reconciliation. There is a natural ebb and flow to migration in and out of the Arctic. And with climate change, it might be that we’ve seen more people wanting to move into the Arctic, but again, especially in Canada’s eastern arctic, when you don’t have reliable drinking water, when there is not enough housing, the last thing we want is for the little housing that is there to be scooped up by government employees who have their rents, they have support for their rents, which means they’re paying less out of pocket. That is going to devastate the real estate market, and it’s going to mean more and more people are unhoused or poorly housed and generations of families living in substandard housing.

Jordan: So has the government appeared to consider any of that in the new defence document then when we’re talking about putting more architecture in the Arctic?

Andrea Charron: Well, what you’re hearing now is that the Canadian Armed Forces talks about dual use or multipurpose uses. So if they’re going to put in a communication system, then let’s put in a classified system that can also have an unclassified side to it that might benefit communities. But there’s a limit to what the Canadian Armed Forces can provide when they’re, for example, considering new Ford operating locations. They’re not mandated to bring with them nurses and schools and addiction services and mental health services and clean drinking water and all of these other things that the Arctic needs. So my concern is that too much is being promised as a result of things like over-the-horizon radar systems that are going to have credible benefit to Canada and allies, but they’re not going to fix some of the fundamental problems that we have in our Arctic because of lack of resources and attention to the infrastructure that people living there need.

Jordan: Is it fair to say that because of security issues, because of climate change and clearly because of this renewed focus on the Arctic by our government, that we’re at a bit of an inflection point here, and if that is, then what are the best case and worst case scenarios from this point forward?

Andrea Charron: Well, we’ve had these inflection points before. I often refer to it as sort of Arctic distraction disorder where the government seems to be oriented to the Arctic and you think, well now is a propitious time for them to spend money and encourage development in the Arctic with Indigenous peoples. And then some other issue comes up and the money that’s promised doesn’t seem to materialize. The best scenario, I think, is when we put people first and remember that this is a homeland and that the best way to show you are a strong sovereign state is by having healthy communities that are viable, sustainable, have employment opportunities. They don’t have to leave the Arctic in order to find higher education or work. And that comes with a lot of money on some very unsexy things like schools and internet services that are reliable and roads that connect hamlets and encouraging air flight routes to go between the Arctic hamlets as opposed to back and forth, north and south. But there are 150,000 people in the Arctic, and so that’s not a large population to jump up and down to get the attention of politicians.

Jordan: Andrea, thank you so much for this. I’m glad we were able to get you on here to explain just how complex this is.

Andrea Charron: My pleasure. Thank you very much,

Jordan: Professor Andrea Charron of the University of Manitoba. That was The Big Story. For more from us, head to The Big Story podcast.ca. You’ll find all sorts of episodes there. I believe though I haven’t checked in a while that we’re pretty close to 1700 now, so I promise there’s something you like. If you really want to make sure there’s something you like, you can suggest an episode to us, write to us at hello at The Big Story podcast.ca or call us and leave a voicemail. The number’s 416-935-5935. The Big Story’s in every single podcast player end on every single smart speaker. All you got to do is ask it to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.