The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Shoring Up Canada's Arctic Sovereignty

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Canada has pledged to spend more on economic development and security of the Arctic, but it has some catching up to do as climate change, technology and changing global geopolitics begin to transform the region. A look at Canada's sovereignty in the region, which is important for future national security and resource development plans, on tonight's The Agenda. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries, In Good Faith, a TVO original podcast.

Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. For many decades, not much changed in Canada's Arctic. But now climate change and Russia's invasion of Ukraine are transforming the region. The far north makes up 40% of Canada's landmass and 75% of its coastline. It's home to 150,000 people, half of whom are Indigenous. And late last year, a federal committee made 26 recommendations to improve security and economic development in the Arctic. For more on the future of sovereignty and development in the Far North,

we are joined on Zoom from Hay River Northwest Territories by that territory's premier, R.J. Simpson. And in studio, P. Whitney Lakenbauer, Canada Research Chair in the study of the Canadian North at Trent University and the network lead at North American Antarctic Defense and Security Network. And Elizabeth Riddell Dixon, Professor Emerita of Political

Science at Western University. And we are delighted to have you two here in our studio. And Premier Simpson, it's good of you to join us on the line from probably the furthest spot north in Canada we've ever had a guest on this program. So thank you so much for joining us and let me put you to work right away. We want to define Arctic sovereignty. Those words, What do they mean to you? Well, when it comes to Arctic security and Arctic sovereignty, I understand that that really is the government of Canada who is responsible for that.

But the way I see Arctic sovereignty, it's having a presence in the North that makes it undeniable that this is Canada. So that means having the infrastructure. It could mean having that military presence. But when you look at places like the Strait of Georgia, Canada. So that means having the infrastructure. It could mean having that military presence. But when you look at places like the Strait of Georgia, no one is saying that's international waters. But when you look at the Arctic, there are claims that it is international waters because

we don't have that presence. And so I think having strong, vibrant communities is key to having sovereignty in the Arctic. Maybe follow up and then I'll get the others in on this as well. What do you think the most serious challenges to Canada expressing its Arctic sovereignty are these days? Well, just the cost of building in the North. We have such an infrastructure deficit in the Northwest territories. We lack all season roads to many communities.

Our airstrips aren't the size or the material required for a lot of planes that the military might be using. We don't have the telecommunications infrastructure in place that we need. So just this general lack of infrastructure and the cost of actually building that infrastructure, especially in the face of climate change, which has just made everything much more difficult in terms of transportation and the ground itself. You know, things, the permafrost is melting and it's just becoming a much different environment. Elizabeth, what would you add to the list of challenges as Canada tries to express its sovereignty in the far north? Well, sovereignty is a legal concept that means that the state, in this case Canada, has the right to form its own domestic and

foreign policies without foreign interference. And so what we have to do though is not just make policies, we actually have to exercise that sovereignty. Are we doing that? Not enough. And so even in recent government documents you see they talk about the need to do a lot more in terms of boosting up our military preparedness, but also in terms of seeing to the economic and social and cultural well-being of our people to promote sustainable development and to protect our environment. But we have to do this, do things in practice, if we're going to retain our sovereignty. And the contrast between how we've done it and what Russia's doing it is quite enormous.

You want to follow up on that, how we're doing it versus Russia? Yeah, I think, first of all, I think as Canadians, we're often obsessed with lines on a map. When I think sovereignty, it's, as Elizabeth just said, the internationally recognized right to control activities in a given area, given jurisdiction. I'm excited about all the things that go on within those lines. So as Premier Simpson is mentioning, it's all the acts of governance by different levels of government in Canada, by Canadians within that space, that makes that indisputably ours. So I think about the right for us to make decisions for ourselves, for Northerners to

make decisions about what their desired future is and destiny is for themselves and for our country. The right to make sure that that's protected. So when I think about some of the pressures that we're facing all across Canada, including in the north, with interference in our democratic systems, with disinformation, misinformation, with certain dual use activities or types of gathering by adversaries, this is the kind of stuff that to me says is imperative, that we just take more attention. So I'm perhaps not concerned that our sovereignty is going to slip away or melt away with the ice as it deteriorates, but I think we do need to show more attentiveness and make those kind of strategic investments that the Premier is alluding to. I should get the Premier on that as well.

Do you think the current government of Canada, or for that matter any government of Canada, has adequately expressed and enforced our sovereignty in the far north? Well, again, I don't want to speak to what the federal government is doing or what they're not doing in the eyes of the international community, but it's pretty clear that we do lack that type of infrastructure that was just mentioned that really displays that sovereignty to the world, so that the world recognizes that the Arctic is part of Canada. And even a couple of years ago, this might've been a bit of a moot question,

but now there are questions about the Arctic and ownership and territorial expansionist desires of certain countries. So things are changing. How have things changed? And Premier, I'll get you to follow up on this, since the invasion by Russia of Ukraine, how's it different now?

Well, you definitely see the increased attention on the Arctic. I think that Russia's invasion of Ukraine probably is taking a lot of their resources. And so we're not worried necessarily about Russia coming over the North Pole into Canada. But I have noticed the attention on the North in terms of the infrastructure available, the military presence, and the resources of the North, namely critical minerals

that are required for things like advanced computing, defense technology, and the like. There's a large focus on that now. Whitney, do you see evidence that the Russians are less capable of being mischievous in the North in what we consider to be our waters since the Ukraine War? So I wouldn't say less mischievous in our waters because I don't think that's really their prerogative. I think Russia's obsession, if we look at the Arctic

through their lens, is protecting their strategic deterrents. So they have a massive amount of investment in their Northern Fleet based in the Arctic on the Kola Peninsula. Unlike our Arctic ports or waters, these are actually ice open all year round, and they're mainly about getting that deterrent out

into the North Atlantic. So I'm not sure that Russia has covetous designs on its Arctic. I think a lot of its focuses on us staying out of their Arctic. But they're using it as a form of leverage or pressure or coercion as part of their overall global plan.

So what worries me is not that we're going to see conflict emanating from Arctic tensions or dynamics. It's actually the spillover. So what we've seen is a chill coming from Russia's brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, meaning that a lot of these governance systems that we put a lot of faith in, the Arctic Council and others have felt the strains So this notion that we can treat the Arctic as if it's inherently insulated from the pressures of the world I think has really disappeared since 2022. So we are facing new

Questions about how do we engage with outright competitors if not adversaries when it's not the region itself that's going to cause as if not adversaries, when it's not the region itself that's going to cause the conflict, but that this competition is spilling over into it. Going to pursue that more in a moment, but I need a good university professor to tell me what Arctic exceptionalism is. What does that term mean? Arctic exceptionalism is what Whitney was referring to prior to March 22. And that was the idea that the Arctic is a region of cooperation and peaceful relations,

an area that's isolated from the conflicts that are prevalent in many other parts of the world. Has that ever been true? Actually, it was to a large extent in terms of how they got on in the Arctic Council. Now, that was just dealing with issues of sustainable development and environmental protection. But also if you look at the all eight Arctic countries were adhering to the international law, the Sea Convention. And so it was peaceful

and orderly. But of course, after the invasion and relations sever relations were severed with Russia. And it's sad that the Arctic Council is no longer functioning as it did. That immediately the other Arctic seven countries said that they were going to cease operations of the Arctic Council and then a few months later they decide well they would continue operations on projects that didn't involve Russia. But the Arctic Council is the premier body we have, multilateral body for negotiating Arctic cooperation, and it's also the leading organization for exemplifying how you have permanent participants or indigenous peoples right at the table participating fully in the work

of the Arctic Council. So the fact that it is no longer functioning as effectively is serious. You mentioned eight countries and that will come as news to some people. So we happen to have a handy map here. Sheldon, top of page two please. Let's bring up this map of the Arctic. It includes all the nations that border the region. So we're talking Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States.

And for those listening on podcast, I'll just describe what we're seeing here. There's a red line east to west goes through the map, and that is the Northwest Passage, which is obviously incredibly significant in a global context. And I'm gonna get Premier Simpson to tell us why the Northwest Passage is so important to that part of the world. Go ahead. Well the Northwest Passage is a

shortcut for shipping essentially. You know there's not a lot of ways to get around North and South America and the Northwest Passage is one of those ways to go from basically Asia to Europe in a much timelier fashion once it is passable. So right now it's still not a journey that's easily made. Can I ask a bit of an odd follow-up, which is are there people in your neck of the woods that are, I don't want to say cheering on climate change, but who are understanding that if climate change

becomes more serious, that's going to be an even more important part of the world because it won't freeze up part of the year and it will be potentially be more important as a shipping channel for people who live where you do. Yeah I would I wouldn't say anybody is cheering on climate change here in the north. We are warming four times faster than the global average and we're seeing the effects of that. So last month or last year's rather, I was evacuated. My entire town was evacuated twice for two months out of the year.

The year before that we were evacuated. So last year was wildfires. The year before that was floods. And we're seeing these drastic climate changes across the North and it's impacting public safety in terms of the evacuations and it's impacting public safety in terms of the evacuations, and it's impacting infrastructure. So when permafrost is melting, roads aren't holding up. And we rely on that, on the permafrost. We rely on the North to be as it is.

And if it changes, if we see these drastic changes, that changes a lot of how we build our infrastructure, how we maintain it, where we can build, and things like that. So I would say that there's nobody cheering on climate change up there. No, for sure. But out of curiosity, when you get evacuated, where does everybody go?

Well, the first time I went up to Yellowknife, so I'm on the south side of the Great Slave Lake, just about 100 kilometers north of the Alberta border. Yellowknife is 200 kilometers north of us on the north shore of the Great Slave Lake. So that was where we went in 2022 and the first evacuation in 2023. However, in August of 2023, Yellowknife was evacuated as well. So we all went down to Alberta, many of us. People went to British Columbia, people went to the Yukon, people were really scattered across Canada. 70% of our

population was evacuated. Wow. Whitney, who in your judgment has the most legitimate claim to the Northwest Passage? Without a doubt, it's Canada. I mean, we have a longstanding position that suggests that this is historic internal waters. It's a position that I think is very well grounded in law. We have what has to date been, I think, a respectful dispute with our key neighbour

and ally, the United States, over the status of the waters. Now they're not claiming rival ownership over the Northwest Passage. I think sometimes people get sensational ideas as if they're challenging that this is part of Canada. What they're saying is it's directions of water or connections of salt water connecting two oceans, the Atlantic, Pacific, or Atlantic. They say there's a right for ships to have uninterrupted transit passage, passage through those waters going through.

You're not allowed to stop. You're not allowed to do anything through there. Be like the equivalent to somebody walking through your backyard and saying they have the right to pass through it. It doesn't mean they own your backyard, but they're saying that they have the right to do this. In 1988, we reached a cooperation agreement with the United States in which we agreed to put aside this legal difference

and behave with respect without neither validating nor repudiating either side's legal position that we cooperate in an amicable way. We've done it ever since. So I look at the Northwest Passage. I think we sometimes get caught up in our own hype that climate change also means that in the short to medium term, the northern sea route north of Russia

is probably the most likely route to become more accessible, still quite treacherous. You're still paying insurance premiums, a lot of uncertainty. It's going to ironically be followed probably by the Central Arctic Ocean. And as the Central Arctic Ocean flushes out all of that multi-year ice, because of the currents in the Arctic Ocean, a lot of it gets pushed between Canada's Arctic islands. So I'm suggesting that when we talk about the Arctic becoming more accessible, we need to be really clear which Arctic are we talking about? And I don't see the Northwest Passage being a major

navigation route, say replacing the Panama Canal, and especially we have President Trump putting all that emphasis on the Panama Canal right now. I think it tells us about where it fits in the overall pecking order. If it's so obvious Elizabeth that the Northwest Passage is ours, why are the Americans and the Chinese giving us such a hard time about it? Well, I would like to say it's ours too, but there are, I mean maybe I could just step back for one second because when people ask me about the Northwest Passage, they often conflate who owns the resources with the right of transit, which is what Whitney was talking about. There's no debate about who

owns the resources. They're Canadian. Canadian kind of owns the living and the non-living resources in the Northwest Passage. The question is, under what conditions can foreign ships sail through the Northwest Passage? And as Whitney was mentioning, we have very different position from that of the United States. And I think there are weaknesses on both sides. The major problem for Canada is that the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, among some others,

don't accept that this is internal waters. And if it's internal waters, we have complete sovereignty, and we can say who comes in and under what conditions. But the US side also has a weakness in that it's easy to argue that there has just not been enough transit through the Northwest Passage to establish a customary norm. But sadly time is not probably not on our side because we're having more transits in fact since 1990 to 2021 the number of transits tripled and this is likely to continue and so if we have more transits over time especially if they don't ask

Canadian consent then one could argue that a customary norm develops but at the moment I completely agree with Whitney that this is not a passage that's going to be used anytime soon for a lot of transit because there are just too many problems, too expensive, too dangerous. Follow up? Yeah, quick one.

I mean, Russia, I don't think is anxious to undermine Canada's sovereignty position because they use it as an analogy to their northern sea route, which they claim to be subject to their jurisdiction. Now, actually, our legal positions are not that similar. The Russian position is much more egregious in terms of what they're claiming and things. Same with China. They've been conspicuously silent on their statement.

And when they have had research vessels, as way along, sail through Canadian waters, they have gone through the permitting process. So again, there's sometimes ambiguity about what their ultimate designs are. But so far, I don't see Russia and China as primary challengers to Canada's sovereignty position as it stands. I think this is us looking at potential futures and worrying about our position and its ability to withstand those kind of challenges. But I think to date, you know, it's largely been with the United States. And it's one, as I mentioned, that's been managed in quite an amicable way, at least to date.

We maybe have some rogue actors entering onto the scene who put a lot of things into question. All bets are off, I'm going to guess, going forward. Excuse me. Premier Simpson, in your view, what should we be doing to allay any fears that you may have about who's got sovereignty and who can control that Northwest Passage?

Well, I think one of the things we can do is really invest in the North, invest in infrastructure, and we've seen the government of Canada talk about this, their new defense strategy, the foreign policy. There's lots of talk about the North and investments in infrastructure and the need to have a presence there. There's also projects being pushed forward by the government of Nunavut for a port on the Northwest Passage essentially, which would require some infrastructure on our end as well. So I think these are the things that we can do to really advance this. And I'll add to the

conversation about the Northwest Passage. From our perspective, one of our big concerns is any environmental damage that might occur up there. So if we have ships from around the world traveling through that area and there is a spill of some sort, it's a very, very difficult place to do cleanup, to do that type of work. And the Indigenous people of the Northwest Stair stories still rely heavily on harvesting, whether it's Wales, whether it's on land, it's Caribou. There's a big connection to the North. And so part of ensuring that, you know, we have a sovereign Canada is ensuring that we can control what's happening in those waters to ensure that we avoid

any sort of those environmental disasters. But if nations continue to use the Northwest passage without giving us, quote, unquote, the heads up, is there anything we can do about it? You know what, I think that's probably a question for the federal government. You know, like I said before, I'd like to see some more infrastructure in there, some more awareness. I think there's opportunities to invest in the North, better utilize the resources that are there now, like the Canadian Rangers, who really are the eyes and the ears.

There's opportunities to work with my government to ensure that we're working together. There's programs in Australia, in the United States, where they do work with local indigenous communities to help build capacity, help build that situational awareness. So there's a lot that still can be done that I just haven't seen happen to date.

You mentioned the Canadian Rangers, Whitney. You've got some experience with them, right? What is it? Absolutely. I think I'm their biggest fan. I've been very privileged to be their honorary lieutenant colonel since 2014. Why are they important to the sovereignty of our far north?

I love it. It's a very much organic Canadian solution to the question of how do you make sure you have a defense presence across a vast territory when you don't face conventional military threats? As you mentioned, Steve when you don't face conventional military threats. As you mentioned, Steve, we don't face the potential of a land invasion like unfortunately Ukrainians have experienced so directly. It's not the nature of the place, geographic place we fit in this world. So it was after the second world war, wondering how do you make sure you do

have a defense presence? And the premier mentioned this notion of the eyes and ears of the North turned to people who actually reside in an area. It's their homeland. They know it intimately. They know when something's out of the ordinary. They just need to be very lightly equipped with a rifle. These days, it's not because they're going to use it for combat.

That's not a scenario we're envisaging for the North. It's to be able to protect themselves against predators, think polar bears and other things that are up there, and be able to serve your communities, your territory, your nation, if your first nations, let's say, and your country all simultaneously. It's a wonderful Canadian success story I think we should all know more about.

And if you're looking for an example of having a proportionate presence rooted in communities, as you face a whole bunch, as we face as Canadians, a whole bunch of different challenges, not just on the defense side of the spectrum, but all across the security and safety spectrum. It's fantastic to have these proud Canadians serving in the military in a very different way.

Yeah, they're part of the Canadian forces, aren't they? Absolutely. So they are reservists part-time. The Canadian Rangers, we will remember them. Aside from the Northwest Passage, are there other areas, Elizabeth, in the far north where there is a dispute among countries for who owns what, and if so, what? Well I would say that an area that isn't an actual dispute, but it's the question that

people ask me most, is are the Russians coming for our resources? What's the answer? And usually they want to say yes, but actually they're not. What they usually point to is the delineation of Russia's continental shelf. And Russia has delineated all the way across the Arctic Ocean to within 200 nautical miles or about 370 kilometers of our coastline and the coastline of Greenland. However, we have to say that Canada and Denmark did exactly the same thing. They delineated all the way across the Arctic Ocean

to within 370 kilometers of Russia's coastline. And in doing this, all three countries are acting in accordance with international law. And so what you have though are huge overlaps in these delineations. But history shows us that Arctic countries negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and finally reach border boundaries. And the most encouraging case I I think, was the 2010 agreement between Norway and Russia, which dragged on for about 40 years. It involved important interests, petroleum products and fish. And they negotiated and negotiated and finally reached an agreement.

But you never had the Soviet Union or Russia when it succeeded it, using its vastly superior military might to come in and just grab what it wanted. And so I think in this case, it's going to be, at the moment, it's not propitious to talk about nice negotiations since we basically don't have contact with Russia. But down the road, I think the countries will come together and negotiate and resolve this maritime boundary dispute.

Premier, I've got to ask you about the part of the far north that has been so much in the news in the last few weeks, or certainly since Donald Trump started musing about taking over Greenland. Since you're the closest to it, of the four of us here, maybe I can ask you, why do you think he's so interested in Greenland? Well, I mean, I can't get into Donald Trump's mind. Really? You can't, eh? I wish I knew what was coming.

But I think, you know, if it's anything like here, I think there's such untapped potential in terms of the resources of the North. We have critical minerals that basically you either, you can get from here or you can get from China. We have what is needed to power the green technology of the future, power the defense technology, and really any industrial buildup that we want to do in Canada, we need the resources of the North. And so I would expect that it's a similar situation.

If the United States controlled Greenland, which the Danes say is not going to happen. But, you know, I don't expect Donald Trump will back off on this, at least not in the short run. What impact would that have on you and your part of Canada if that were to take place? Well, it wouldn't necessarily impact us. You know, we already have Alaska to the west. I think there could be impacts for Nunavut because there's a lot of familial connections between Greenland and Nunavut. So a lot of people have family members living in Greenland and in

Nunavut. So I could see some issues arising there but for us here in the territory I guess would be less of an issue. Okay, Whitney, how about for you, help us understand why Trump wants Greenland and what impact it would have on us. So I think the Premier's just covered off the critical minerals piece. So part of what we're looking at in the West is how do we ensure that we have value chains, right from mining, exploration, mining all the way through to making sure we have some of the ingredients to build some of those technologies, including the green transition.

That's a big part of what's filling his mind. I think there's become almost a public misconception that China has a controlling interest in Greenland right now. In fact, I think the more interesting story is how Greenland, like other like-minded Arctic states outside of Russia, have actually repudiated a lot of China's designs and ambitions to get an economic foothold in our respective Norths. Also if you look at a map, Greenland's a pretty strategically important location given that on the one hand one side is facing us in North America. So it's pretty key to North American defense.

The Americans have a major strategic base at Pitufik Space Base, formerly known as Tule Air Force Base, very important to US national missile defense, very important to as a bomber resupply place, so really significant military infrastructure. If you go to the other side of Greenland it's important because I was mentioning before that transit route from the Kola Peninsula in Russia sending say submarines through to the North Atlantic you're gonna pass through the East Coast of Greenland. So whoever controls Greenland in that East Coast has a lot of opportunities for surveillance or interdiction in that space.

So I'm sure that when President Trump looks at a map, he says, this is really important to us. How do I make sure that we control it? I think Greenlanders have been unequivocal in saying it's Greenlanders who are going to decide on their future, not President Trump. They have indeed. Last 30 seconds to you. Would it have an impact on us if the United States took over Greenland?

Well I think it certainly would. I mean we have cooperative agreements that aren't well known. And in fact, for example, with mining, that we have the simulators to teach people how to run the big machinery because you don't want somebody to take a multi-million dollar piece of equipment and try and learn on it and potentially crash it and on their side they have actual minds that our people can go over and get trained on and then as the Premier was mentioning earlier they're the familiar ties which are very important so there's lots of levels at which we have connection now.

And we've worked very closely with Denmark Greenland in delineating our continental shelf in other Laudacea areas. So yes, if leadership changed there, it would have a big impact on us. Stay tuned, everybody. Mr. Director, can I get a three shot please so I can thank our guests. Elizabeth Riddell-Dixon from Western University, Whitney Lackenbauer from Trent University, and R.J. Simpson, the Premier of the Northwest Territories. It's really good of the three of you to come on to TVO tonight and help us understand this

issue so much better. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.