on any one nation<\/a>,\u201d he declared. <\/p>\nIn interviews with nearly two dozen people including Canadian military leaders in the Arctic, government ministers, diplomats, analysts and serving members of the armed forces during a nine-day trip to the Arctic, Reuters found that despite the prime minister\u2019s pledge, the deep ties between the Canadian and American militaries remain unchanged and the challenges to defending the Arctic are formidable. Not only is it highly unlikely that Canada could be completely self-reliant, but the U.S. too depends on Canada for its own security.<\/p>\n
Skis, planes and snowmobiles<\/p>\n
During the months-long exercises, approximately 1,300 members of the Canadian Armed Forces conducted patrols on skis, practiced landing planes on the frozen Arctic Ocean and transported artillery to the most northern point ever in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. It was the largest number of Canadian Armed Forces involved since the exercise began in 2007; the snowmobile patrol finished last week in Churchill, Manitoba.<\/p>\n
A few observers and participants were present from the armed forces of the United States, Greenland, Belgium and France, but it was overwhelmingly a Canadian affair.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s foreign affairs minister Anita Anand told Reuters the government was moving as quickly as possible to make sure Canada can assume full responsibility for defending its Arctic, but did not offer a timeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gravest threat to Canada \u2026 comes from the increased movement of Russian infrastructure further and further north towards the Arctic Circle,\u201d she said, adding that the entire geopolitical landscape has become \u201cmuch more volatile.\u201d She said working with the U.S. on the security and defense of North America via NORAD remains \u201cfundamental.\u201d<\/p>\n
A senior White House official said the U.S. and its allies would continue to ensure the Arctic remains \u201cfree and open for peaceful purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe welcome Canada\u2019s efforts to take responsibility for securing its own territory,\u201d the official said in an email.<\/p>\n
The Russian foreign ministry has said repeatedly that Moscow is doing its best to maintain peace and stability in the region and has cast blame elsewhere for increased militarization in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWestern countries have transformed the Arctic into an area of geopolitical rivalry,\u201d said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry in March. \u201cThis turn of events is not in Russia\u2019s interests. We are open to mutually respectful dialogue with our foreign partners.\u201d <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Whitney Lackenbauer, an Arctic expert at Trent University in Peterborough, said neither the U.S. nor Canada have the capability alone to monitor the vast Canadian Arctic, which comprises roughly 4 million square kilometers and more than 36,000 islands.<\/p>\n
Brig. Gen. Daniel Riviere, Commander of Canada\u2019s Joint Task Force North, said this year\u2019s military exercises proved the military has the ability to move specialized weapons and equipment that might be needed in the unlikely possibility of a land attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to be prepared for the worst,\u201d Riviere told Reuters from his base in Yellowknife, where Canada\u2019s Arctic defenses are headquartered. <\/p>\n
Still, Riviere emphasized that Canada\u2019s military partnership with the U.S. is critical, saying Canadian Armed Forces stand \u201cshoulder to shoulder\u201d with American soldiers.<\/p>\n
On the coastline, Canadian authorities have \u201cfar more presence in Arctic waters\u201d compared to the Americans, according to Neil O\u2019Rourke, Director General for Fleet and Maritime Services at Canada\u2019s Coast Guard. He said Canadian icebreakers are regularly used to escort U.S. ships heading to the Arctic and pointed out that Canada has the world\u2019s second-biggest fleet of icebreakers, after Russia.<\/p>\n
In other areas, Canada lags. Across the country, there are 47 radar sites that form the North Warning System, a network from western Yukon to Labrador.<\/p>\n
Pierre Leblanc, a former commander of the Canadian forces in the north, said the system is increasingly obsolete and questioned if Canada would have the ability to independently respond if any serious threats were picked up. <\/p>\n
The sites are remotely monitored by NORAD and the Canadian military but are managed by Nasittuq, a private Canadian company that won a C$592 million government contract in 2022.<\/p>\n
Nasittuq described the radar network as \u201ca legacy system\u201d in an email and acknowledged that it was \u201caging and limited against modern threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Cambridge Bay site, which also serves as a logistics center, there are no military staff, but a gift store selling branded radar system merchandise. <\/p>\n
\u201cCanada and the U.S. need each other because there\u2019s lots of gaps in the north,\u201d said Troy Bouffard, a former Arctic adviser to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski who represents Alaska. Washington depends on Canada to provide intelligence about potential threats in the Arctic, and the strategically located region also serves as a buffer zone between the U.S. and adversaries like Russia, China and Iran, Bouffard said. <\/p>\n
Much of the airport and radar infrastructure across the Canadian Arctic was conceived, built and paid for by the U.S. during the Cold War. After years of underfunding its defenses in the Arctic, and following numerous complaints by Trump, Canada hit the NATO target of spending 2% of its GDP on defense last year. <\/p>\n
Bigger Problems<\/p>\n
Evan Bloom, a former U.S. diplomat who focused on the Arctic, said that despite bellicose statements from Trump, the working relationship between Canada and the U.S. in the far north remains largely unchanged.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia is carrying out this hybrid warfare that is a threat to Western democracies and China is now also cooperating more militarily with Russia,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are bigger threats than the relationship problems Canada and the U.S. are having.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, for example, NORAD scrambled a half dozen Canadian and U.S. fighters to intercept two Russian airplanes that nearly entered Canadian airspace, said Kevin Knight, head of intelligence for Canada\u2019s Joint Task Force North.<\/p>\n
Knight said the incident was notable for how close Russian aircraft came to Canadian airspace. <\/p>\n
Maj. Matt Wookey, a pilot with the Canadian Air Force who practiced landing a Twin Otter plane on frozen Arctic sea ice, said flying there was different to almost anywhere else in the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is just snow and drifts, and it all looks the same, even the shoreline,\u201d Wookey said. \u201cNothing is built to properly function when the thermometer goes below minus 40, including humans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAMBRIDGE BAY, Nunavut \u2014 Over the past three months, Canadian soldiers conducted a more than 5,000-kilometer snowmobile patrol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7129,17,735,7131,7132,7128,7130,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-13046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-arctic","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-carney","11":"tag-circulated-defense-news","12":"tag-defense-news","13":"tag-dn-dnr","14":"tag-training","15":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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