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Canada Defense Issues

Canada needs an Arctic empire no matter the cost – by Geoff Russ (National Post – March 24, 2025)

https://nationalpost.com/

The region is coveted by the U.S., Russia and China

The Arctic is no longer a distant place of cold and danger, visited by few but mythologized by many. It is a vital front in the world of modern geopolitics and a prize that major world powers now hunger for.

Canada has one option and that is to build an Arctic empire and fully integrate the region into the country. The resources, land, and strategic importance of the vast area cannot be passively surrendered without an effort to secure it for Canada.

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Canada in talks with U.S. about ‘Golden Dome’ defence system – by Adrian Morrow (Globe and Mail – May 21, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canada is in talks with the U.S. over President Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence system even as the two countries are locked in a bruising trade war and Prime Minister Mark Carney is promising to lessen Ottawa’s dependence on Washington.

At a White House event to tout US$25-billion in prospective funding for the system, which would expand the U.S.’s defences against missile and drone attacks, Mr. Trump said that Canada had asked to join.

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Putin, Trump and the Arctic prize: Why a peace deal in Ukraine could change everything – by Donna Kennedy-Glans (National Post/MSN.com – April 2025)

https://www.msn.com/

Arctic nations are shoring up their security and sovereignty in the Far North. It’s even a ballot box issue in Canada. But what’s quietly unfolding in the Russian Arctic also warrants our full attention; the stakes are higher than one might expect.

Russia’s Arctic is resource-rich; the remote region has vast reserves of hydrocarbons, immense deposits of rare earth minerals and metals and provides access to the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s northern coast, a far shorter shipping route between Asia and Europe.

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OPINION: A bold Canadian Arctic strategy isn’t just good policy – it’s good business – by Gary Mar and Mark Norman (Globe and Mail – April 9, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Gary Mar is the president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation. Vice-Admiral (Ret’d) Mark Norman is a former vice-chief of the defence staff.

Canada is an Arctic nation. It’s about time it started acting like it. Unlike the Scandinavian countries and Russia, Canada has reluctantly viewed itself in this manner, instead considering the North as a sort of national park where development is frowned upon.

The economic value of the region has been played down, and the need to defend that value was discounted under a rosy view of a peaceful world anchored to the benevolent hegemony of the United States. That all changed with the second inauguration of Donald Trump in January, and his rhetoric that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

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OPINION: Arctic security must be a top priority for Canada – not an afterthought – by Ranj Pillai and Ken Coates (Globe and Mail – February 24, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Ranj Pillai is the Premier of Yukon. Ken Coates is the director of Indigenous affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Canada’s Arctic policy has long been founded on delayed and partial responses to American challenges. It started with the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897-98, when the arrival of tens of thousands of American stampeders threatened Canada’s tenuous hold on the Far Northwest.

It hit again in 1942, when the United States launched the construction of the Alaska Highway and other Northwest defence projects in a region almost devoid of effective Canadian governance. The pattern continued after the Second World War, as Canada joined in developing radar defence systems during the Cold War and responded, again half-heartedly, after the American oil tanker SS Manhattan navigated the Northwest Passage in 1969 to test using the seaway to take Alaskan oil eastward.

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[Defence] It’s time for Canada to finally grow up – by The Editorial Board (Globe and Mail – January 25, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

It may seem odd to say that Canada, the world’s fourth oldest continuous democracy, needs to start behaving like a grownup, but that is precisely the moment in which the country finds itself.

For too long, when it comes to the two areas of statehood that most require a firm adult hand – national defence and the economy – Canada’s federal and provincial governments have displayed the self-indulgent complacency of a teenager who tries to get away with doing the bare minimum.

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Trump says U.S. will ask NATO member countries to boost defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP – by Steven Chase and Mark Rendell (Globe and Mail – January 24, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the United States will ask members of the NATO alliance, which includes Canada, to increase military spending to 5 per cent of annual economic output – levels not seen since the Cold War.

He told the World Economic Forum that the United States, which has the world’s largest military, should no longer have to shoulder so much of the responsibility for collective defence under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose membership is almost entirely in Europe.

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Canada Moves to Protect Arctic From Threats by Russia and China – by Ian Austen (New York Times – December 6, 2024)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Ottawa says its focus on the Arctic comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has shaken the foundations” of international cooperation in the northern region.

Citing growing interest by China and Russia in the Arctic as global warming makes the region more accessible, Canada on Friday said it would focus on building stronger alliances with other nations in the region, particularly the United States.

“For many years, Canada has aimed to manage the Arctic and northern regions cooperatively with other states as a zone of low tension,” according to a statement by the Canadian government.

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Trudeau’s ‘vibe bribe’ will get the wrong kind of attention abroad – by Greg Quinn (Read The Line – December 3, 2024)

https://www.readtheline.ca/

Greg Quinn OBE is a former British diplomat who has served in Estonia, Ghana, Belarus, Iraq, Washington D.C., Kazakhstan, Guyana, Suriname, The Bahamas, Canada, and Antigua and Barbuda in addition to stints in London.

In my years in the British diplomatic service, I had a chance to experience politics in many countries, including, of course, Canada. Along the way I’ve drawn some conclusions. One of them is that elections are funny things — they tend to make political leaders forget inhibitions about policies they’d previously opposed while suddenly finding money that had presumably fallen down the back of the sofa.

Which is exactly what appears to have happened in Canada recently with the prime minister’s announcement of the temporary removal of GST/HST, from 14 December this year until 15 February next year, plus a $250 per person give away.

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Opinion: Canada must put up or shut up on defence spending – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – November 30, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Germany recently began updating its inventory of Second World War bunkers, and adding other underground sites to the list, as the threat of a foreign military attack moves from the realm of the improbable into that of the increasingly conceivable.

Sweden, which this year ended decades of neutrality to join NATO, is distributing a 32-page booklet to all households with updated, if sobering, instructions on what to do in the case of war. “Military threat levels are increasing,” the document warns. “We must be prepared for the worst-case scenario – an armed attack on Sweden.”

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Another wake-up call to ready for war as Canada slumbers on – by John Ivison (National Post – November 26, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

A report by the Business Council of Canada notes Canada’s rivals are investing heavily, while Ottawa has failed to spend on military capabilities. On the day that Vladimir Putin said NATO members are now directly involved in the war in Ukraine because they have supplied missiles being used to bomb Russia, Justin Trudeau was announcing a yuletide $6.3-billion GST holiday on Christmas trees, beer and popcorn.

Canada, remember, is the country that can’t afford to hit its NATO spending target of two per cent of GDP for another eight years. The chief of the defence staff, Jennie Carignan, has warned Canadians they may have as little as five years to prepare for emerging threats from Russia and China.

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The pressing need to invest in, and protect, our Arctic territories – by Jesse Kline (National Post – September 25, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

If we hope to prevent our adversaries from encroaching in the North, Canadians will have to start taking the region far more seriously

As southern Ontario’s hot, sticky summer starts to wind down, the last thing on most people’s minds is the vast, frozen tundra of Canada’s Far North. But on Sept. 18, a group gathered in downtown Toronto to hear a broad range of experts discuss Arctic sovereignty and security.

Granted, the Far North has always been a very niche area of interest in Canada, which is curious for a country that prides itself on being a northern nation. But perhaps that’s to be expected when 90 per cent of our population lives within 160 kilometres of the U.S. border, many in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto that have relatively temperate climates.

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New top soldier warns Canada needs to be ready for ‘the threats that are coming’ (Toronto Star – July 19, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

Gen. Jennie Carignan said the military must be ready to face potential threats to Canadian territory within the next five years.

OTTAWA—The shadow of potential war — and the need to avoid it — was invoked early and often at Thursday’s change-of-command ceremony, where Gen. Jennie Carignan became the first woman to take command of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Addressing reporters at the Canadian War Museum, in a large display room packed with forest-green tanks and other war machines, Carignan said the military must be ready to face potential threats to Canadian territory within the next five years.

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No one in Washington believes Trudeau’s empty NATO promises anymore – by John Ivison (National Post – July 12, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

Trudeau has lost his power to seduce and Canada’s standing has been lost, as allies far poorer than this country live up to their promises

Justin Trudeau is so schooled in the art of denial that he now tries to deflect inescapable truths. In Washington Thursday, at the conclusion of the NATO summit there, the prime minister unveiled what his defence minister, Bill Blair, called a “credible, verifiable path to two per cent” spending of gross domestic product on defence by 2032.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the plan is neither credible nor verifiable. Trudeau was asked if he was worried that the political problems that have dogged him this week will now hang over this country for the next eight years.

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Under pressure, Justin Trudeau announces when Canada expects to hit military spending commitments to NATO – by Alex Ballingall (Toronto Star – July 12, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

“Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said this week that it is “shameful” for Canada to keep riding his country’s military coattails.”

WASHINGTON — After enduring criticism over Canada’s level of defence spending during this week’s NATO summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed the alliance’s key metric for military contributions — which several allies have touted as a vital reflection of each country’s agreed fair share — as little more than a “crass mathematical calculation.”

In a heated justification of Canada’s defence policies, Trudeau pushed back against the suggestion that the amount spent on military expenses by his government has been a “political problem” at the summit. He said Canada has “stepped up massively” and committed more than $175 billion to defence — much of it over the next two decades — since he took office in 2015, and expressed skepticism in the relevance of the NATO benchmark that asks all members to spend at least two per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence.

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