Last week, the Trudeau government announced a sum of 4.9 billion dollars over six years to modernize the fifty or so radars covering the northern border of the country, which are now unable to detect the new generations of missiles. In total, $40 billion over 20 years will have been promised to defend the sovereignty of the Canadian Arctic. Wouldn’t it have been more profitable to allocate these sums to the development of the region?
Investing such amounts to monitor a territory populated mainly by polar bears and islands of populations each separated by thousands of kilometers of icy steppe may seem absurd, but it would be to forget that the Arctic is an integral part of Canadian identity. , a feature that very few countries possess — Russia and a few Scandinavian countries share this trait with us. (It’s less clear for the United States, where California, Texas, or New York City have shaped American identity far more than Alaska.)
However, even though the Arctic accounts for 40% of Canada’s territory, only 0.5% of the country’s population lives there. There is a way to do better. We must invest in the Arctic, but above all we must build bridges, roads, ports and other civil infrastructures there, long before a series of radars scattered across the tundra.
Spending such a sum on a few technological gems nestled in the far north when a report from the Climate Institute of Canada released this month sounds the alarm about the state of our “dilapidated northern infrastructure” is paradoxical.
At a time when this immense territory, once impenetrable, is gradually opening up to us at the rate of global warming already well under way in the region, it is becoming surprisingly less accessible due to the dilapidated state of the infrastructure in place, which does not were ever designed to withstand melting permafrost.
Many will say that maybe it’s better this way, that it’s better to keep these vast areas in a wild state, but we see that the Arctic is already changing, with or without direct intervention. It would be a pity to deprive oneself of the possibilities it dangles when Canada is probably one of the rare “lucky ones” in the climate lottery… On the condition of giving itself the means for its ambitions.
The Russians, on the other hand, began their rush north some time ago and now own several cities beyond the Arctic Circle. The best known, Murmansk, is inhabited by nearly 300,000 people, more than the population of the three Canadian territories combined.
In addition to cities, this country also has military bases, a network of northern infrastructure both land and sea. It has even developed small floating nuclear power plants to power its most isolated projects.
Although Canadian ambitions are undoubtedly more modest, we would be wrong not to develop this territory, as the economic prospects in certain sectors of activity are so promising. For example, 30% of gas reserves and 13% of oil reserves would be in the Arctic.
On the social level, a network of civil infrastructures would allow a permanent occupation of the territory in addition to contributing to the defense objectives of Ottawa. A structuring project could guarantee Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic in addition to contributing to our prosperity.