Securing the Arctic From the Seabed

A Subsea Sovereignty Cable Network is the fastest way to both secure and connect the Canadian Arctic

Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic is at risk due to underinvestment by successive Canadian governments and the lack of serious attention by the Trudeau government during the last decade of geopolitical transformation. Canada must act swiftly and with significance if we are to adequately address these risks and properly assert our sovereignty at a time when great power rivalry, climate change and the economics of global trade are making our control of the Northwest Passage more and more tenuous.

Few places on the planet demonstrate the shifting geopolitical tensions better than the Arctic. In the last two decades, Russia has shifted from symbolic displays of planting subsea flags at the north pole (in 2007) to hard power investments in the construction of polar icebreakers to assert their interests. Beginning in 2012, Putin invested billions towards the construction of seven nuclear-powered icebreakers to gain dominance in this region, which was undergoing a transition from an ice-filled domain of isolation to an areas of increasing geopolitical competition. With a displacement of 33,327 tonnes and propulsion power of 60 MW, these icebreakers are able to go almost anywhere breaking up ice up to 2.8 metres thick. The first of this class of this new icebreaking colossus was named after the smaller and older icebreaker that helped plant the symbolic seabed flag. The second Arktika went into service in 2020 and was the first of five of the seven icebreakers from this program to enter into service.

In 2018, China released a new Arctic policy declaring itself to be a “near Arctic state”. This was a diplomatic sounding term that they conjured up in order to demonstrate a serious interest in the region. In a similar fashion to Russia, China also began to build a significant capability in icebreaking to back up their symbolic claims to the region. This led to the notion of a ‘Polar’ or ‘Ice Silk Road’ that was an extension of the belt and road global ambitions of a China that was building itself up to rival the United States. These ambitions have quickly become a reality, as Canada and the United States watched as three Chinese icebreakers deployed to the Arctic region this summer at a time that the region was underserviced by North American assets.

Perhaps even more troubling has been the fact that the Arctic has also become an area of geopolitical BRICS alliance collaboration. India and Russia have began to collaborate on shipbuilding for icebreaking capabilities for both nations, and China has been partnering with Russia on the deployment of icebreakers to maximize use of the Russian-controlled Northeast Passage.

While our geopolitical rivals have been deepening collaboration in the Arctic, Canada has watched our closest ally drift away. During the first term of President Trump, our sovereignty over the Northwest Passage took a slight hit when the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Canadian assertion of sovereignty in the Northwest Passage ‘illegitimate’ in 2019. His comments appeared to be an abrogation of the spirit of the 1988 agreement with respect to naval transit of the Northwest Passage signed by Prime Minister Mulroney and President Reagan. This treaty was the natural result of an Arctic defence partnership between the United States and Canada that went back to the creation of the Permanent Joint Board of Defence in 1940. I have written about this history and my family’s involvement in the Canadian defence of Alaska in a previous essay.

As a time that Canada and the United States should have been continuing to operate in close coordination in the north following the Russian build up and the declaration by China that it was a ‘near Arctic state’, the United States decided to step back and weaken us both. The Pompeo announcement was not only a strategically bad call on the part of our closest ally, but it was also the result of Canadian inaction in the Arctic and our overall lack of alignment with the US on policies related to China. We must ensure that we do things differently in the second Trump term.

Cold War and Canadian Arctic Sovereignty

To understand the present state of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic, you need to look to our history. The Canadian military presence in the Arctic and expressions of our sovereign control over the lands and waterways are entirely the result of the Cold War policies and investments made in the 1940s and 1950s. These investments were made by several Canadian governments, and were often jointly funded and built in a direct defense and scientific partnership of the United States. Some of our policies were also terribly harmful for Inuit peoples and we should learn from this in the context of the new cold war we are in.

The strongest projection of Canadian presence in the high north today is the Canadian Rangers. Created in 1947, the Canadian Rangers became the ‘eyes’ on the ground for Canada in a region that represents 40% of our landmass as a country. The Rangers leverage Inuit hunters and other northern residents who hunt and live in the most sparsely populated territory on the North American continent. Today, the Canadian Rangers are a 5,000 strong special component of the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves and they continue to leverage their knowledge of the Arctic to patrol and observe what is happening.

Canadian Forces Station Alert, on the northern part of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, represents the ‘ears’ of Canada in the high Arctic, as it serves as a signals intelligence and weather observation outpost. Established in 1950 as part of a joint Canada-US construction initiative to construct a series of Joint Arctic Weather Stations, Alert is the most northerly, permanently inhabited place on the planet. To show the vastness of our country, Alert is actually closer to Moscow than it is to Ottawa. It remains our most northerly military outpost and a physical manifestation of Canadian dominion in the high Arctic.

Grise Fjord, the next most northerly populated community after Alert, tells a very different story of Canadian sovereignty operations in the early years of the Cold War. It also represents another sad chapter in the relationship of Canada with its Indigenous peoples. In 1953, Inuit families were forcibly relocated to Grise Fjord and Resolute Bay (in what is today Nunavut) under the High Arctic Relocation program. These families were transported by the RCMP from their ancestral homes in northern Quebec or on Baffin Island and moved thousands of kilometers away to the high Arctic. There were no settlements, no history of hunting or easy access to food sources and no physical or spiritual connection to the land they were moved to. Hundreds of Inuit people effectively became ‘human flagpoles’ in the drive to demonstrate Canadian sovereignty in the far north.

Successive governments claimed that the relocations were made to offer the families a fresh start from communities that were struggling, but that was never the true reason. Decades after the relocation, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples finally confirmed that the relocation was made to “contribute to the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty”. It took decades to even acknowledge what had happened and it took almost another two decades for the federal government to apologize and attempt to address the harms of the relocation. In his 2010 apology, Aboriginal Affairs Minister (as it was then called) John Duncan noted the “extreme hardship and suffering for Inuit who were relocated” and called it a “dark chapter” in Canadian history.

During the Harper government, of which I was a part, there was more ambition placed on the Arctic than anytime since the government of Prime Minister Diefenbaker. Prime Minister Harper had three major initiatives that underscore the importance and complexity of making investments in the region. Our government invested in the Road to Tuktoyaktuk, the Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) and the naval refueling station at Nanisivik. These investments had different defence, development and scientific objectives, but they had one thing in common. None of them came in on time and on budget. In fact, Nanisivik was announced in 2007, downscaled and later was planned for a 2015 opening. It is still not open today and is slated to open in 2025. This would make it a decade late as a project. The delays these projects experienced underscores the incredible challenge of building infrastructure in the high north. It also shows that Arctic investments must be adequately planned, funded and supported on a bi-partisan basis, as it is likely that several governments will change between the announcement of an Arctic investment and its completion.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

There was really no serious attention paid to the Arctic by the Trudeau government until it was forced to respond after the full invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. I have written previously about the fact that in the weeks following the invasion of Ukraine, Canada moved swiftly on policies they had been dragging their feet on. Within a few weeks an investment in the North Warning System of NORAD and the resolution of the Hans Island dispute with Denmark were announced to show seriousness at a time it was needed. The Prime Minister also finally travelled up to the Arctic for the annual Canadian Armed Forces exercise known as Operation Nanook, and he brought the Secretary General of NATO with him.

One very positive recent advancement in the Arctic has been the announcement of the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact that was spearheaded by Quebec-based shipbuilder Chantier Davie. Davie was once at the centre of a major controversy at the beginning of the Trudeau government in what became known as the Admiral Norman affair, but the shipyard is now helping the government by showing strategic ambition to become a global centre of icebreaking excellence. Davie acquired the Helsinki Shipyards in 2023 and is now leading the Canada-US-Finland ICE Pact for the construction of icebreakers for the three nations to begin to address the Russian tactical advantage in the Arctic. The Trudeau government has rightly supported the Davie initiative and is making some much needed investments to support it.

Earlier this month, the government released its much-anticipated Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy to indicate its strategic plans for the region. I will not comment much on this announcement because there is not very much new or strategic in it. The policy is woefully inadequate as a strategy document given the gravity of the Arctic issues and risks to our sovereignty that Canada presently faces. There is no funding committed in the policy and no serious focus on national defence beyond what had been previously been announced. In fact, the policy document is actually quite short-sighted in two key respects. First, it frames its look across the Arctic as “Russia Since 2022” as the appropriate guidepost of geopolitical change. Any serious observer of the Arctic knows that Russian ambitions in the region began long before the full invasion of Ukraine. Second, the policy document also uses the term ‘North American Arctic’ in many places which, in the absence of anything new or profoundly important in the policy, has led the media to unfairly obsess over this point. Given the language of Secretary Pompeo in 2019, it would be much more strategic for Canada to focus on the ‘Canadian Arctic’ first and reestablish our dominion in our Arctic before talking about how to best return to the collaboration between these Arctic allies.

There was also less detail in Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy than there was in the two major Arctic sovereignty studies conducted over the last two parliaments. In my opinion, these reports serve as better policy guides for what Canada needs to do to get serious in the north. I am biased because I helped lead the 2019 study by the Foreign Affairs Committee entitled Nation-Building at Home, Vigilance Beyond: Preparing for the Coming Decades in the Arctic. In that study we looked at Russian activity going back to disputes over the sea floor and the construction of icebreakers. We also looked at Chinese advancements in icebreaking capability and the opening up of sea lanes in the region.

The 2023 report from the Standing Committee on National Defence is an even more timely roadmap for the rapid action we must take in the Arctic. A Secure and Sovereign Arctic recommends many investments and policy changes that need to be made to ensure that Canada can adequately assert our control over the Northwest passage and have the ability to project our interests in the region.

Investment in Subsea Cable Infrastructure

Therefore, on the eve of the second Trump administration and with the ambitions of geopolitical rivals like Russia and China better understood by the Trudeau government, Canada should quickly follow the advice of the National Defence Committee and embark on our most ambitious period of Arctic infrastructure investment since the end of the Second World War.

One investment that can help assert our sovereignty and reconcile some of the failures of the past is the installation of subsea cables in our Northwest passage and across Arctic communities. Recommendation 17 of A Secure and Sovereign Arctic called for Canada to prioritize the installation of subsea fibre optic cables in the Arctic for both the security of the country and the critical connectivity needed by northern communities. This recommendation was connected closely with recommendations 1 and 13. Recommendation 1 pushed for Canada to “immediately begin the process to procure undersea surveillance capabilities for Canadian Arctic waters in order to detect and monitor the presence of foreign threats to our national security”. Recommendation 13 states that military infrastructure investments in the Arctic should have “dual-use benefits to close the infrastructure deficit in Arctic communities”. Combining these three recommendations into a national plan for Arctic subsea connectivity would be the most meaningful investment possible to quickly assert our sovereignty in the Arctic.

Subsea cables globally, found at www.submarinecablemap.com

Today, in the midst of a new Cold War, we have the opportunity to learn the lessons from our past and assert our sovereignty in partnership with Inuit businesses and communities. This form of economic reconciliation was also part of the intention behind Recommendation 17. Grise Fjord and other high Arctic communities remain some of the most isolated places on the planet and they are once again at the crossroads of geopolitics. With a plan to build out a network of subsea cables, we can connect these remote communities and build a backbone of communications infrastructure to monitor and safeguard our Arctic. These communities face great challenges and are the most extreme example of the digital divide in Canada. The 2023 Auditor General report on rural and remote connectivity confirmed that less than half of Inuit households are connected to the internet

A national investment in fibre optic infrastructure in the Arctic will empower remote communities to engage fully in the digital economy that the majority of Canadians now take for granted. It will also allow Arctic communities to access vital government services related to education or health that have been lacking or lagging in the north for generations. Subsea cables have an inherent dual-use capability because they can connect both military outposts and civilian communities to the internet and both secure and connect the north. When cables are laid in highly strategic waterways like the Northwest Passage, they can also be installed with monitoring equipment that would allow the Canadian government to monitor everything from the impact of climate change to the presence of submarine and maritime traffic.

Current telecommunications in these areas of the high north rely on satellite or microwave transmission, which is costly, prone to environmental and electromagnetic disruptions, and can be geopolitically precarious. Subsea fibre, by contrast, provides a reliable, high-performing, and multi-purpose solution that can connect communities while also securely connecting our military and observational facilities. Recent controversy around the control of commercial satellite options like Starlink and the potential vulnerability that an overreliance on just one form of technology shows the need for a sovereign capability in the Canadian Arctic. I believe there needs to be both terrestrial and space-based defence and telecommunications systems serving the Arctic, but subsea cables allow for more dual-use sovereignty application and meaningful Indigenous-led business partnerships.

If we Don’t Build it, Someone Else Will

Taken from: www.farnorthfiber.com

The Americans have been laying thousands of kilometres of subsea cable in their high Alaskan Arctic over the last five years. Canada has installed zero kilometres. This must change or the ‘North American Arctic’ could just become the American Arctic.

There is presently a proposal to lay fibre through the Northwest passage, but it comes from a private company and not from the Canadian government or a Canadian consortium with Indigenous development corporation involvement. Far North Fiber is a Finnish-American consortium. It is not clear whether they recognize that the Northwest passage is an internal Canadian waterway. They are already raising funds and planning their route, while Canada does nothing.

If we do not get serious in the Canadian Arctic, we will lose it. We are already seeing our allies and even private sector actors appear to just ignore Canadian sovereignty because of our lack of ambition and our inability to assert our dominion over our Arctic waterways, coastline and lands. Building a Canadian Sovereignty Subsea Cable Network will be one way we can reverse this trend. It represents the most tangible and quick to deploy infrastructure investment than can link our Arctic communities in a way that will be as transformational for the high North as the railway was for Western Canada over a century ago. This investment will secure the Canadian north, contribute to our NATO 2% defence spending pledge and have a dual-use connectivity benefit that will allow the government to finally make good on its apologies and desire to redress the failures from our past.

Connecting our Arctic will demonstrate our commitment to sovereignty, reconciliation, and will show the world that we mean business in the Canadian Arctic. It is time to move.

Post Script: A shorter version of this essay first appeared in The Hill Times on October 30, 2024.