Defence announcements come with big numbers. When the prime minister unveiled $35 billion in Arctic spending in March, Yukon Premier Currie Dixon did the math: triple the combined GDP of all three territories, in a single press release.
This issue is about what happens after the press release. Nearly every story in it arrives, by a different route, at the same conclusion. Buying capability is the easy part, and sustaining it is where Canada has historically stumbled.
Our cover story puts the same questions to the three northern premiers, and their answers diverge sharply. Northwest Territories Premier R.J. Simpson describes federal coordination so close he calls it “almost strange,” while Dixon says no federal minister has called to ask his view. Nunavut Premier John Main worries about aging power generation in Resolute and paycheques flying south. On one point, though, all three agree.
Each defines sovereignty through the people who live in the North, not the hardware stationed there.
“The people of the territory are the ones asserting Arctic sovereignty every single day, on the ground,” Simpson told us.
I put that idea to BGen J.N.M. Parent, who took command of Joint Task Force North in May. He didn’t push back, calling thriving northern communities “among the strongest expressions of Canadian sovereignty.”
Asked to name the gap the press releases miss, he answered in one word: sustainment.
“Reaching the North is not the challenge; sustaining operations once there is,” he said.
Jayson Myers, CEO of NGen, makes a parallel argument about industry. Canada excels at inventing technology, he writes, and struggles to produce it at scale on Canadian soil. “Production capacity is not a footnote to defence strategy. It is the strategy.”
Wuxly founder James Yurichuk brings the point down to the individual soldier. He points to the more than 30 Canadian Armed Forces members hospitalized with frostbite during a cold-weather exercise in Alaska in February.
“We’re not building rocket ships,” he said. “We can definitely make clothing.”
None of this makes for a ribbon cutting. Maintenance plans, supplier networks, training pipelines and repairs to the Dempster Highway rarely get a photo op. They are also what separates a deterrent from a prototype, and a base from a building.
Canada now has the money and, by most accounts, the political will. The test over the next decade is whether it builds the systems that keep capability working once the cameras leave.
You can read the full issue here. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.
Steve Ladurantaye,
Editor-in-chief
[email protected]
