The Canadian Coast guard's medium icebreaker Henry Larsen is seen in Allen Bay during Operation Nanook near Resolute, Nunavut, on Aug. 25, 2010.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
For decades, Canada and its allies – the United States chief among them – worked together in a climate of co-operation and mutual interest to manage the affairs of the Arctic. Norway even had a term for it: High north, low tension.
Those happy days are over. Geopolitical tensions in the Arctic are rising in tandem with the temperature of the planet, and Canada risks falling behind.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 ended any Arctic co-operation with Canada, the U.S. and their northern NATO allies – Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. Russia has bolstered its military presence in the Arctic by investing in new bases and building the largest naval fleet in the region, and its open defiance of the international order is raising worries about its intentions.
Seeking new allies, Russia is now co-operating with China in the Arctic and relies on it for funding its expansion in the region. China has declared that it wants to be a “polar great power” by 2030. Last October, it sent a coast guard fleet into the Arctic for the first time.
There’s a reason for all this: the shrinking Arctic sea ice is turning the Northwest Passage, which runs along Canada’s longest coast through waters Ottawa claims as sovereign, and the Northeast Passage, which is controlled by Russia, into viable shipping routes that can connect Europe and North America to China and the rest of Asia much more quickly than routes through the Suez and Panama canals.
The Arctic shipping seasons are still limited to the summer and early fall, but they get longer every year. In the Northwest Passage, the last two seasons saw record transits of cargo ships, tankers and cruise ships: 24 in 2023 and 18 in 2024.
The Northeast Passage, also referred to as the Northern Sea Route, saw 97 transits in 2024, most of them tankers and cargo ships carrying hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian crude oil, iron ore and coal to China.
Ottawa listed all these developments in a reassessment of its Arctic foreign policy released last year, but then things changed again with the return of U.S. President Donald Trump. Ottawa’s once indispensable ally in the North is suddenly making nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin, threatening to annex Canada through economic coercion and refusing to rule out the use of military force to take control of Greenland.
So now, along with fighting Mr. Trump’s unjustified trade war and reviving its armed forces in order to meet its NATO commitments, Canada is also faced with the daunting task of defending its sovereignty and national security in a part of the world when Iqaluit is closer to Mr. Putin’s nearest air force base than it is to Ottawa.
The government has a made a start, thanks to last year’s reassessment of its Arctic needs. But much of what it announced is based on a different, less urgent world.
In one example, Ottawa says it will spend $38.6-billion to modernize NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canada air defence program created during the Cold War to keep Soviet planes and missiles out of Arctic airspaces, but will do it over 20 years. In another, it plans to spend $73-billion to improve defense capabilities, such as installing submarine sensors and buying tactical helicopters, again over 20 years.
The government also says it has begun procurement of eight new icebreakers for the Coast Guard (two are under way) and has vague plans to purchase “up to” 12 conventionally powered submarines and have them in service “no later than 2035.”
None of this meets the moment anymore.
Canada needs first and foremost to confirm that the U.S. wants to continue operating NORAD on the same nation-to-nation terms of the past, and that the Trump White House is still interested in protecting the Arctic from Russian and Chinese incursion.
It must also reach out to its NATO allies in Nordic countries and discuss joint operations absent the United States. As if on cue, Germany and Norway this week invited Canada to take part in a submarine program that could ensure that its has the subs it needs under the Arctic ice by the early 2030s.
Finally, Ottawa needs to move forward quickly with its Arctic defence plans. The country is not on a war footing, but it is no longer living in a conventional peacetime era. The timelines have shortened dramatically. Canada must demonstrate its resolve today, not in two decades.