‘We are all butter, no guns’: Experts look back at Canada’s difficult Arctic defence history

Arctic security and sovereignty are shaping up to be key issues for the April 28 federal election. This article is part of a series examining northern security, and the plans that Canada’s main political parties are promising.

For decades, Inuit have played a primary role in asserting Canadian Arctic sovereignty.

“I’m one of the proudest Canadian flagpoles that we can be,” said David Akeeagok, Nunavut’s economic development and transportation minister, in a Feb. 17 speech during the Aqsarniit Trade Show and Conference in Ottawa.

Akeeagok is an Inuk from Grise Fiord.

His family was relocated to Grise Fiord, Canada’s northernmost community, through a government-sponsored program in the 1950s with the goal of “demonstrating Canadian sovereignty,” as described in the Qikiqtani Truth Commission report.

However, with all three federal party leaders recently coming to Iqaluit, pledging to change Canada’s approach to Arctic security, some military experts say that even if the political leaders follow through with their campaign promises, those would merely plant more maple leaf “flagpoles” in the region.

Butter versus guns

Retired Col. Pierre Leblanc was a commander of the Canadian Forces Northern Area from 1995 to 2000.

At that time, he knew that if a foreign nation were to illegally enter Arctic waters, there was little he could do.

In fact, there was little chance he would actually know about the invasion.

“Would we know that there was a North Korean vessel with missile components for Iran transiting the Northwest Passage? The answer to that question was no,” he said.

“And do we have anything to stop it from doing it? No, we don’t have anything.”

And the situation has changed little since then, Leblanc said.

By 1987, Brian Mulroney’s Conservative government had identified the need for submarines equipped to patrol the Arctic, and was set to acquire 10 to 12 nuclear-powered subs for $8 billion.

“It didn’t make it to the next budget,” Leblanc said.

Three decades later, the discussion was revived.

The Liberal government unveiled its plan to acquire 12 non-nuclear submarines as part of its $81.1-billion defence policy introduced in April 2024.

The first submarine is set to be delivered “no later than” 2035.

But Leblanc says he learned to be skeptical of government defence pledges.

“We are all butter, no guns,” he said referring to an old metaphor for governments’ attempts to balance social program spending (butter) and military spending (guns).

The federal leaders prefer “butter” as it includes better “vote-buying initiatives,” he said.

‘There is enormous merit in showing the flag’

Canada’s major federal party leaders have announced various defence plans for the Arctic as the April 28 federal election approaches.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promises a military base for Iqaluit, a plan NDP Jagmeet Singh showed support for during a recent visit to the North. Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Iqaluit in March to announce an over-the-horizon radar detection system.

“Canadians want to know the North is defended, even if it’s not,” said Ken Coates, a senior policy fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a policy think tank based in Ottawa.

With growing threats from Russia and China, along with U.S. President Donald Trump “rattling his sabres,” Arctic defence policies are an “exercise in bribery,” that will do little except for planting more flags, he said.

“Don’t get me wrong there is enormous merit in showing the flag,” he said, but adding he finds it hard to get excited about the parties’ pre-election platforms.

“It’s hard to say, ‘Boy, that’s really dynamic, aren’t we proud that we’re finally doing something.'”

And it’s likely that these infrastructure projects will be delayed or abandoned as soon as the feeling of emergency is gone, Leblanc added.

“That’s what happened to Nanisivik,” he said.

The Nanisivik refuelling station near Arctic Bay was announced in 2007 by then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the rest of the world.

The project has been delayed several times in the past decades and its opening date is still in limbo.

‘Five-dollar safety belt’: Where does Canada’s defence stand now?

The last base built in Canada that is still operational is in Suffield, Alta., and dates back to 1972, according to the Department of National Defence.

Canadian Armed Forces currently have 20 bases and two stations including CFS Alert, the most northerly inhabited location in the world.

Bases have significantly larger permanent personnel than stations, with CFS Alert having only 55 permanent residents.

The Department of National Defence doesn’t publish the number of personnel on all of its bases. But of those published, the base in Halifax has the largest staff with 7,500 military and 2,300 civilian personnel.

And the base in Shilo, Man., is the smallest with roughly 1,700 both military and civilian residents.

If the Iqaluit base is built it will likely have 250 people attached to it at the very most, Coates estimated.

In the past decades, roughly a dozen Canadian Armed Forces bases were shut down across the country, at the same time as Canada has been under pressure to meet its commitment to spend two per cent of its GDP towards defence as a NATO member.

“Nobody buys safety belts that are only good for a five-kilometre impact speed,” Leblanc said.

“But I’m not sure that we even have a safety belt now, from a defence point of view, even if we do it’s certainly the five-dollar one.”

The Canadian Armed Forces currently have 20 operational bases ranging in size and the number of personnel attached. If you want to learn more about each base follow the link to view an interactive map of all the bases. (Created by Arty Sarkisian)