Canada's influence over Arctic wanes as global interest grows

Sad but true, our Arctic presence is a joke. On a side note, Coates book, Arctic Front is a great read on the issue.

I went overseas to teach a few years back, and the national rand mncally map of Canada I bought in Halifax to bring with me and teach from didn't extend past the southern half of Greenland... you better believe Russian maps cover all of their territory... what made it worse is the map that didn't go all the way north DID show the States down past D.C. ...

I see that all too often whenever there is a map or a graphic of Canada on TV. For some reason Ellesmere Island doesn't register with the people who make these things.

That's Canada. Don't act until it's too late or at all. "Awww, where's our piece of the pie"???

To be fair there is quite a bit of bullshit in that article but the author is a yukoner so his bias show's through.



Tell that to all the Canadians up there exploring and mining diamonds,gold,uranium,platinum and geo mapping the whole freaking thing.The only military I have ever seen in the arctic has been Canadian.

Hate to break it to the author but we have a presence up there,more then any other country so maybe he should leave his fearmongering at the door and if he's an expert then he would know this.

The other militaries you don't see up there are sitting about 40 feet under water, patrolling under the ice in their nuclear submarines. We can claim the NW passage all we want, but if we can't patrol it for 8 months of the year, that claim is BS. Harper said last year use it or lose it and he's right. That's one of the reason he originally proposed buying three heavy icebreakers, to maintain a 24/7/365 presence in Arctic waterways. Without them (or subs that can patrol under the ice), we can't do anything to show we own it.

The problem is that we have no military presence in the water in the Arctic. Sure we send an occasional patrol plane up there or have a fancy exercise in the summer with a frigate or two, planes and troops, or we send a few brass up there (like this week) to sit in an igloo outside of Iqaluit, but that's about it. The Canadian Rangers are great on the ground and show the flag, but what can they do to stop foreign ships and submarines? The answer...nothing.