Harper to make spending, policy statements in Iqaluit

The HMCS Summerside, foreground, and the HMCS Fredericton sail through the Hudson Strait in August, 2007 during Operation Nanook. This year’s version of the exercise will include submarines, unmanned aerial vehicles, a mock attack on Iqaluit’s fuel supply, and, according to news reports, a visit to Iqaluit by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative cabinet. (FILE PHOTO)

When hundreds of soldiers, Canadian Rangers and government personnel descend on Iqaluit this month for Operation Nanook, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be watching.

Several southern news outlets, citing senior government sources, are reporting that the Conservative cabinet will meet in Iqaluit later this month, in the midst of a five-day northern tour that will take him to all three territories.

The Canadian Press reports the Prime Minister will make a series of spending and policy announcements in Iqaluit. The same story says Harper’s northern junket will run Aug. 17-21, with the Prime Minister landing by helicopter on the Navy frigate HMCS Toronto and conducting a tour of the submarine HMCS Charlottetown. Harper will also visit Pangnirtung.

CP reported Harper will be joined by Walter Natyncyzk, the chief of defence staff.

Brig. Gen. David Millar, commander of Joint Task Force North, confirmed July 31 that one of the Operation Nanook exercises will simulate the destruction of Iqaluit’s tank farm and fuel boom by environmental activists. Military personnel, in addition to federal, territorial and local emergency management staff will be involved in that exercise.

A military spokesman earlier confirmed that exercise will run from Aug. 23-26. An earlier exercise, likely beginning Aug. 17, will involve military personnel only, and simulate the crash of an unmanned aerial vehicle on an island in Frobisher Bay. Navy ships will also conduct submarine hunting exercises.

News that the Prime Minister is heading to the North comes on the heels of the launch of Ottawa’s Northern Strategy and a flurry of diplomatic activity amongst circumpolar countries.

Canadian and American icebreakers were scheduled to rendezvous Aug. 9 in the Beaufort Sea to begin a month-long undersea mapping program of the continental shelf in the western Arctic Ocean. The Canadian coast guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent will collect seismic data, while the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy will collect bathymetric data on the shape of the seabed.

The two nations will share the data, with Canada using the information to help make its claim for undersea territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Its claim is due in 2013.

The United States has yet to sign on to the treaty, but the New York Times reported last week that President Barack Obama and the U.S. State Department are pushing the Senate’s foreign relations committee to hold a vote on the treaty some time this year.

Meanwhile, Russia ruffled Canadian feathers last week when it announced it would send paratroopers to perform a sky dive onto the North Pole next April, the 60th anniversary of the first such jump.

But General Lieutenant Vladimir Shamanov, leader of Russia’s airborne forces, told Russian media the event isn’t intended to show military might.

“We do not intend to engage in rattling, we only intend to make a peaceful visit to the North Pole,” the Barents Observer quoted Shamanov as saying.