Canada can’t afford to sleepwalk on Arctic defense, experts say
Canada’s new defense partnership with Australia expected to strengthen Five Eyes alliance amid growing threats from Russia, China
Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, speaks in Iqaluit on March 18. With him are, from left, Gen. Jennie Carignan, Chief of Defence Staff; Bill Blair, minister of national defence; and Premier P.J. Akeeagok. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
Canadians should be unhappy that their political leaders haven’t taken Arctic and national defence more seriously until recently, says an expert on Arctic security.
There is, therefore, an urgency behind Canada’s newly announced defence partnership with Australia to build a $6-billion advanced radar system in the North for better surveillance and threat detection, said Alexander Dalziel, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based policy think tank.
The partnership with Australia is expected to leverage that country’s expertise in naval and airborne surveillance, particularly in regions where radar detection is complicated by the Earth’s curvature.
There is an increasing interest in the Arctic with a warming climate making the Northwest Passage more navigable and mineral resources more accessible. Russia and China have developed hypersonic missiles and advanced submarine technologies, while U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken explicitly about his desires to annex both Greenland and Canada.
The Arctic over-the-horizon radar system being co-developed with Australia will provide long-range surveillance, tracking potential threats from the Canada-U.S. border up to the Arctic Circle. It’s not expected to be ready until 2028.
A separate polar over-the-horizon radar system is planned to extend coverage beyond the northernmost approaches to North America, including the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is projected to be ready for 2032.
Dalziel said the collaboration will deepen Canada’s long-standing ties with Australia under the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — a security partnership between Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — while supporting North American defence priorities alongside the U.S.
“We really are at the moment in international politics where we should be working with others to share collective problems. Canada and Australia have good dialogue in spades through the Five Eyes alliance,” Dalziel said.
“Bringing the Australians in is the diversification we should be doing, in terms of national defence in the Arctic. If others can provide us with radars and the best technology to get us up to the Norad standards, that’s a good thing.”
Despite the progress, Dalziel warns Canada’s military still lacks a sufficient footprint in the Arctic. He said Canada must act quickly to address emerging threats.
“There is no question that we have been sleepwalking for quite some time, and that won’t work,” he said. “Arctic strategy is an opportunity to build Canada, strengthen our military capabilities, and deepen our ties with NATO.”
The shift toward broader Arctic partnerships, including Australia, marks a significant change in Ottawa’s approach, Dalziel said. Historically, Canada has been cautious about involving foreign allies in the region due to longstanding disputes with the U.S. over control of the Northwest Passage.
Now, the Five Eyes alliance is seen as key to securing Canada’s Arctic.
“This is about making sure we get things done — on time and on budget,” Dalziel said.
There are other reasons Canada maybe have been interested in partnering with Australia on this project.
“Australia is going through their own exercise of bulking up their capabilities,” said Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council and former deputy minister at the Department of Northern Affairs.
He noted Australia’s recently announced plan to arm itself with anti-ship missiles and advanced targeting radars after three Chinese warships were spotted in waters off its mainland in February.
“They’re far enough south that this problem of the horizon and the curvature of the planet is something that they’ll have experience with and they probably have some pretty good technology to offer,” he said.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the plan to spend $6 billion for the Arctic radar system, Nunavut NDP MP Lori Idlout raised concerns that the federal government’s focus on international partnerships could neglect the needs of northern Canadians.
“It’s frustrating that Canada is promising to invest more in another country’s capabilities rather than its own people’s,” she said, comparing the $253 million in funding for Nunavut infrastructure Carney announced against the commitment to work with Australia.
Wernick echoed the need for Canada to strengthen its own capabilities.
“We need to do it for our own purposes, for our own sovereignty,” he said. “We cannot coast on other people’s capabilities to stand on guard, as the national anthem says.”
more like *tisamat* ijikkit at this current point…
Yeah wake up and deal with what is needed long ago ,
Whom has the power to get things done ,
Stop the talks make it reality,
Make our north strong and not free ,
Too political this has been power ranger games been played long enough….
This is why you need to think twice before voting for Lori. She has no capacity to see a larger picture, no interest in the security, health and vitality of the broader state on which she is parasitic.
These are all good points. And, I think MP Lori Idlout’s concerns are very valid. Here we have an elected official who takes the long-term perspective.
The most ink in the article was devoted to Alexander Dalziel, who was described as “a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based policy think tank”.
However, I think it also should be kept in mind that the Macdonald-Laurier Institute is a right-wing think-tank that is connected with the Atlas Network, a massive big-business-funded lobbying group in the United States.
The Atlas Network is funded by Donors Trust and is thus connected to the billionaire Koch Brothers (Koch Industries, a huge private family conglomerate). For further details, the 2016 book “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer provides more details. Also, many insightful articles have been written about the Atlas Network.
Further research into the Macdonald-Laurier Institute also shows that this Ottawa-based right-wing think-tank has been playing a major role in opposing Indigenous Reconciliation efforts (e.g. via UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples).
The Atlas Network is in fact active globally, and its effects are being felt on a global scale. To cite just one example, the following peer-reviewed journal article (written by a university researcher in Sydney Australia) dedicates an entire paragraph to explaining the efforts of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada.
Silencing the Voice: the Fossil-fuelled Atlas Network’s Campaign against Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australia
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/mcs/article/view/8813
All things considered, the key point here is that any statement from the Atlas Network (including any of its any affiliates) needs to be marked as being from a prominent right-wing organization that has a history of lobbying for major industries, including fossil fuels as well as other big businesses (large multinational defence firms being one of them).
Also, the big-business lobbyists behind the Atlas Network are semi-hidden, since they donate via Donors Trust in order to anonymize their donations. This is precisely where the term “Dark Money” comes from.
Other examples of the Atlas Network’s affiliates are the Fraser Institute (active in BC), and the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation (CTF) which continues to lobby for a government-strangling “race to the bottom” in taxation (through a combination of slightly-reduced taxes on ordinary people but big tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations, with the end result being severe cuts to services upon which ordinary people depend, and so the long-term result is that the poor get poorer while the rich get richer).
I think everyone should be aware of the Atlas Network and its many “tentacles”. (The biggest branches are in the United States, for example the Heritage Foundation, which wrote Project 2025, which provides a roadmap of where the United States is headed right now.)
Be wary of arguments that attack the source and do not focus on the content of a given position. For example, “this argument is bad because it is ‘right wing’…” Or, it is bad because it comes from the ‘Macdonald-Laurier Institute.’
Also, don’t let the word count dazzle or fool you, this is lazy argumentation.
While it is true that arguments should deal with the substance of the matter, it is also true that a pattern of action can be a valid reason to pay attention to the possibility of orchestrated disinformation. Your counter argument attacks their method and style of argumentation while not actually addressing any of the connections or claims of partisan activity that they make. The post that you dismiss at least makes reference to sources that can be checked. How does your argument invalidate their sources or show that their concern over ‘big money’ influence on media through ‘think tanks’ is unwarranted?
Mine is not a ‘counter argument’ nor is it related to ‘style’, it demonstrates the original argument against Alexander Dalziel’s points is a logical fallacy. Which is to say nothing that was said relates to the quality or truthfulness of that which it attacked.
The use of fallacies is a common error among those with poorly developed intellectual capacities, unfortunately.
This article is really short on the technical (high-level-overview) details that I was hoping to see, given that we are talking about a radar system costed at 6 billion dollars. For example:
1. We are told that the newest Australian radar system (in 2032) will better handle the effect of the Earth’s curvature. Firstly, we are not given any idea how much better it will be than our current NWS (North Warning System, which itself is an upgrade from the DEW Line of the Cold War era).
2. Given that the accuracy of any radar declines with distance, how accurate will this Australian system be in detecting the latest types of stealth missiles and low-flying remotely steerable hypersonic ones?
3. Has any of the engineering design even been done yet? It looks like so far, we have only vague promises. In fact, it is not even clear whether this would be a “turnkey” project or more just an open-ended design collaboration, or even some type of public-private partnership.
4. How many radar units will there actually be? And roughly where would they be located? (These aspects will all affect the cost heavily.) Without this information, we cannot even guess whether the per-unit cost is reasonable.
5. There is no mention of competing products and no reference to any sort of technical analysis. From what I can see, no real cost-benefit analysis has been done (i.e. not even comparing to the NWS that we already have).
6. How do we know that the 6 billion dollars is a fair price and not an inflated price? For example, does it include the costs of long-term maintenance, diesel fuel (generators for everything, and what if diesel fuel prices skyrocket?), airstrips for sites (if located away from existing communities), and other ancillaries?
7. And, over what timeframe would the 6-billion-dollar price tag apply? And, is this in today’s dollars or in 2032 dollars? Or some other adjustment in-between?
8. And, what happens if the Australian firm (or firms) encounter financial difficulties along the way? Would we get our money back?
9. How dependent would this new system be on Australian specialists for maintenance and repairs? Why was no mention made of Canadian firms simply licensing the technology, if the Australian technology is so superior to our existing technologies?
10. Given that we have no hard information, and given that numerous examples of major engineering projects going way over budget can easily be found with a simple Google Search, how can Dalziel say that this new Australian radar system will be “on time and on budget”?
“It’s frustrating that Canada is promising to invest more in another country’s capabilities rather than its own people’s,” [Lori] said, comparing the $253 million in funding for Nunavut infrastructure Carney announced against the commitment to work with Australia.
This statement alone is evidence enough to show she hasn’t got a clue what her role is or what she’s talking about. She needs to go.
“amid growing threats from Russia and China”
Interesting that didn’t include the United States, which by far presents the clearest immediate threat to Canada.
This picture is hilarious and the MP’s viewpoint is laughably ridiculous.
Relax.
Just send Super Shamou and Qiuq to stand guard. Problem solved.
Along with the “Land Guardians” of Nunavut and the Power Rangers.
Ta-Daah!!!
The Bank of England is a disaster no thanks to Mark Carney. His record is pure globalist and he has the personality of a (fill in the blank).
All I know is I don’t want Canada to be the 51st State of the USA, with the Orange Goblin in power, anything is possible. He could attack Canada and take the arctic easily not to mention China or Russia could as well. Get these stations built asap otherwise were fuc…!
Canada can’t afford to be in lock-step alliance with a country whose manufacturing is in large part, perhaps the largest part dependant on war as is America’s. Death and destruction endless death and distruction is not saving us or anyone else anything. Quit being blinded with the horses!*%.