‘National will to move forward’: Trump’s annexation threats draw calls for Canada to deepen ties with other Arctic countries

Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and Greenland are prompting calls for Ottawa to turn like never before to improving trade, tourism and defence with other Arctic countries – including the United States.

 

In Greenland, where Canadians already play a pivotal role in mining exploration, there is fresh interest in bolstering links with that island’s closest geographic neighbour. Across Scandinavia, governments are looking for new trade with Atlantic Canada and Northern Quebec.

 

Some conservative Americans say it is time for Ottawa to open its high latitudes to anti-missile defence and work together with the U.S. to open the Northwest Passage to commercial shipping.

 

Canadian entrepreneurs, meanwhile, have begun planning for a web of undersea fibre-optic lines from Alaska to Greenland that could improve communications in this country’s most remote reaches, while also providing networks for defence and scientific monitoring.

It’s about “protecting hundreds of millions of people. Not just the 50,000 in the Yukon or the 40,000 in Nunavut,” said Madeleine Redfern, the former mayor of Iqaluit. “This is infrastructure that is actually protecting our Arctic democracies, including our populations in the south.”

 

Ms. Redfern spoke Wednesday in Toronto at a conference organized by Arctic360, a think tank whose board she co-chairs.

 

Environmental concerns, high costs and worries about ceding northern sovereignty have driven protective Canadian policies toward the North, slowing development of shipping lanes and construction of major new infrastructure.

 

But Mr. Trump’s threats to take ownership of Greenland and annex Canada have come at a time when Russia and China are working more closely in the Far North, conducting joint bomber and Coast Guard exercises. All the while, Arctic temperatures are warming at a rate four times higher than the global average, bringing climatic change at great speed.

 

Together, those developments have brought new urgency to proposals for investment in Canada’s North and co-operation across the Arctic region.

 

“We need the national will to move this forward,” said Mike Kennah, the chief executive of IT International Telecom. The Montreal-headquartered company operates the IT Infinity, an Arctic-class ship equipped to lay subsea cable, and has sketched routes that could connect Prudhoe Bay in Alaska with the northern Canadian communities strung along the Northwest Passage and into Hudson Bay – and then on to Nuuk, in Greenland.

 

Such cable could not only carry more reliable data connections to remote communities, but could also link together defence sites and networks of sensors.

 

It would come at an immense cost: billions of dollars, and a decade or more of work.

 

But a project of that nature would weave together parts of the Arctic at a time when people across northern capitals are seeking new ways to partner on commerce and security. A partnership already exists between the U.S., Finland and Canada to boost construction of icebreakers. Late last year, Canada agreed to a security dialogue with Nordic countries that stands outside of NATO and the U.S.

 

In Greenland, recent surveys have shown that eight in 10 people want better co-operation with Canada and Iceland. Considerably fewer are interested in closer ties with the U.S.

 

Already, Canadian companies have 23 of 78 active mining concessions in Greenland. U.S. miners have just one.

 

There is potential to do “much more,” said Kenneth Hoegh, the Greenland head of representation to Canada and the U.S.

 

Last summer, Air Greenland began seasonal service between Iqaluit and Nuuk, where a new airstrip promises a boom in tourism. (Starting this summer, United Airlines will fly twice weekly from Newark, N.J., to Nuuk.)

 

Canada has promised to open a consulate in Greenland, which in turn is planning an official presence in Ottawa. Canada is only Denmark’s 18th-largest export partner, a statistic that suggests “untapped potential,” said Nikolaj Harris, the Danish ambassador to Ottawa.

 

Denmark “would like to take part in” Canadian discussions about diversifying trade, he said.

 

At the same time, some in the U.S. are advocating bolder efforts to bring North American investment and oversight to the frozen fringe of the continent.

 

Part of that should include the Northwest Passage, said Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. Canada considers the channels that bisect the Arctic archipelago to be its internal waters, while the U.S. calls them international waters, a position it says is consistent with its treatment of contested shipping channels near China and Russia.

 

But there is an imperative to establish co-operation on icebreaking, environmental protection and oil spill recovery, said Mead Treadwell, a former lieutenant governor of Alaska who is an influential force in Arctic business and policy.

 

”We need as nations to have a presence here. We should be working together,” he said.

 

The disagreement between the two countries has gone unresolved while Russia has established rate cards for icebreaker-assisted travel through the Northern Sea Route, the Arctic waters that reach from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait.

“Maybe we should view the Northwest Passage as a North American one, and work together to make sure that our shared geopolitical interests – when it comes to Russia, when it comes to China – are met in this important part of the world,” Mr. Coffey said.

 

That would amount to a compromise position, where those waters are treated neither as an international waterway nor as Canadian waters.

 

The U.S. wants to see Canadian compromise on land, too. Last week Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing the installation of a “next-generation missile defence shield,” an Iron Dome for defence against ballistic, hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles.

 

Canada has in the past stood against such plans.

 

But at a moment of high friction between Canada and the U.S., “North American security, North American energy, those are our ways to get Trump to the table,” said Erin O’Toole, the former Conservative leader who is now with Groupe ADIT, a Paris-headquartered strategic intelligence company.

 

”Churchill called us the linchpin between Europe and America,” he added. “We can play that again in the North.”

 

 

 

 

This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail