Canadian soldiers with the 5th Canadian Division set up camp during Operation Nanook, the Canadian Armed Forces' annual Arctic training and sovereignty operation, in Inuvik, NWT, March 2.COLE BURSTON/AFP/Getty Images
The Conservative Party, which has already promised a military base in Northern Canada if elected, says they would in fact build three such installations in the region as part of a defence campaign platform that appears exclusively focused on continental security.
Chris Warkentin, the Conservative candidate for Grande Prairie, Alta., said in an announcement Thursday in Yellowknife that leader Pierre Poilievre’s government would also commit to buying a fleet of airborne early warning and control aircraft to increase surveillance and command abilities for the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Arctic.
Mr. Warkentin cited the growing Arctic ambitions of Russia and China to justify these expenditures. China has declared itself a near Arctic state, despite the fact its northernmost tip is still 1,500 kilometres from the region, and it has sent icebreakers there. Beijing is gaining a major foothold in the Arctic as Moscow, facing a severe budget crunch from its military assault on Ukraine, increasingly relies on unprecedented levels of Chinese corporate and state investment to develop the northern region.
“We can no longer be complacent,” Mr. Warkentin said, later adding that “in the face of these rising threats to our sovereignty, from Russia to China, our northern border is now one of our greatest vulnerabilities.”
He said a Conservative government would upgrade the military’s forward operating location in Inuvik to a full base, to be named Canadian Forces Base Inuvik. It would host fighter jets and Airbus CC-330 Husky refuellers to enable quick interceptions of Russian and Chinese military flights over northern regions.
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A Conservative government would also build a naval base in Churchill, Man., on the shore of Hudson Bay to support a fleet of polar icebreakers and secure northern shipping routes through Arctic waters, Mr. Warkentin said.
In addition, it would commit to completing a 600-km, all-season road from Yellowknife to Grays Bay, an ocean port on the Arctic coast that is adjacent to the Northwest Passage. This project is already in development.
A Conservative Party statement said the road would run through mineral-rich regions in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and that their commitment includes developing Port of Grays Bay to allow for large naval vessels to dock and resupply.
Before the election campaign began, Mr. Poilievre pledged that his government would establish a military base in Iqaluit and acquire two additional heavy-duty polar icebreakers.
Ahead of the April 28 vote, the thrust of the Conservative Party’s defence platform as revealed to date is dominated almost entirely by pledges to secure Northern Canada and the Arctic, and doesn’t dwell on overseas NATO commitments.
The definition of what constitutes a base is variable, and the Canadian Armed Forces have a number of stations or installations across the North. David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, a think tank, said Canada’s existing commitments to modernizing NORAD and upgrading northern Canadian capabilities total more than $30-billion.
Mr. Perry said he takes pledges for bases to mean a more permanent presence in the North, which he supports: “It’s one thing to be able to send stuff and deploy people north. It’s another to actually have military capability based there,” he said.
Liberal Leader Mark Carney has pledged buy new submarines, fleets of drones and more heavy-duty icebreakers, while hiking pay for Canadian Armed Forces personnel as part of a commitment to raise defence spending. He has also committed to hiking Canada’s defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP by 2030.
A 2024 defence policy statement by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government pledged to buy early warning aircraft, but this purchase has yet to happen.
As recently as last year, Mr. Poilievre would not commit to raising defence spending to the NATO target of 2 per cent. But the Conservative Party recently responded to a survey from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress lobby group that included a question about its spending target.
The party said it would spend more on defence than current Liberal government projections over the next five years, “with the ultimate goal of national defence spending reaching 2 per cent of Canada’s GDP by 2030.”