In September 2025, the KAS Canada Whitehorse Arctic Security Conference explored the risks and opportunities for Canada and its allies in the Far North. This article is the author’s review of the conference and builds on his Macdonald-Laurier Institute commentary, “Pole Position: Canada’s slow steps forward in Arctic defence and security,” released in March 2025.
By Alexander Dalziel, October 22, 2025
The United States holds a summit with Russia in Alaska about ending the war in Ukraine. Russian northern ports restart liquified natural gas (LNG) shipments to China. A Chinese firm ships containers to Europe by sea through Russia’s Northern Sea Route; South Korea announces its own Arctic shipping plans for 2026. Chinese scientific expeditions, gathering data of military value, hit a new annual high in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. France issues a new Arctic defence strategy. Denmark summons the United States’ senior diplomat in Copenhagen over alleged political interference in Greenland.
The Arctic is changing rapidly – and the stakes are high. Where does Canada fit in? For Canadian Arctic strategy, the last 18 months have been, relatively speaking, lightning-fast. Commitments are taking shape, but much work remains to turn them into results.
Nation Building, Defence Spending
Expectations for infrastructure and a new era of seriousness in the Canadian North are supercharged.
For the first time in decades, Canada’s military is getting a large cash infusion. Canada’s pledge to its NATO allies to allocate five per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence by 2035 will – if spent wisely, a big if – radically boost Canada’s military capabilities. Spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on armed capability will be some two-and-half times higher than the 2024 level of 1.37 per cent. Moreover, the pledge commits Canada to invest 1.5 per cent of GDP on military-useful infrastructure – a clause tailor-made for Canada, given the infrastructure deficits across the Canadian Arctic.
That intersects with the Canadian government’s “nation-building” projects. Sparked by the turbulence in Canada’s relationship with the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is looking to kick-start grand infrastructure initiatives to tie the country’s internal economy more closely together and facilitate diversified trade beyond the United States. To that end, he created a Major Projects Office based in Calgary. Harnessing Canada’s natural resource potential is at the top of the list. Two signature Arctic elements of the proposed ideas are the “Arctic Economic and Security Corridor” and “Churchill Plus” initiatives that would see enhanced connectivity and port facilities to marine terminals on Canada’s north coast.
Actions do not yet match words. But words matter. After a decade of underselling its potential on the global stage, Canada is starting to think in grand strategic terms.
Domestic Alliances, Stronger Security
What work does Canada have to do? The Whitehorse Arctic Security Conference offered many potential paths forward. Most importantly, it showcased how mission success will depend on strategic co-operation with Indigenous governments and the adaptation and integration of Indigenous knowledge.
A panel of Yukon First Nations leaders emphasized intergovernmental partnership. Treaty-rights holders are part of Canada’s constitutional order, a level of government whose agreement is required to move projects forward on treaty lands. That takes granular understanding and thorough outreach and dialogue to grasp the particulars of different land-claim and self-governance agreements. The goal of these consultations is to secure mutually beneficial investments.
Indigenous knowledge is a security asset. It is a part of a security model that improves the ability to deal with military and national security threats, like sabotage, espionage and political interference. For instance, Yukon Council of First Nations Grand Chief Math’ieya Alatini told conference attendees that traditional knowledge is more than just information transmitted over generations – it is real-time awareness of the natural environment and sets of skills “absolutely essential to survival” in the Arctic. Meanwhile, a CAF representative at the conference noted that the predominantly Indigenous members of the Canadian Rangers have special local knowledge that provides a “substructure” when it comes to maximizing the effect of operations.
These attributes give it direct application in building Arctic Canada’s resilience to “hybrid warfare,” the covert, unofficial campaigns of sabotage and interference against critical infrastructures. Countering hybrid warfare demands superior knowledge of local conditions and vulnerabilities – information that outsiders at higher levels of government are unlikely to hold. As Grand Chief Alatini put it, “mobilizing the expertise that’s on the ground” is crucial to establishing defence and security in the North.
Canada’s challenge is to build Arctic strategy comprehensively, drawing on its collective strengths. In the hard fight for recognition of their treaty rights, Indigenous governments and civil society are on the cutting-edge of how to articulate and defend sovereignty – both over land and in the digital space. Drawing on that knowledge to formulate good grand strategy demands a ground-up approach, of which Indigenous governments are one part. As Grand Chief Alatini said, other levels of government will have to “to let go of power” to fully involve First Nations governments in decision-making. But it is a two-way street. Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation Chief Pauline Frost pointed out that partnership includes finding ways for Indigenous communities to tap the knowledge of all of Canada and its international partners. Another expert, Dr. Rajeev Jaiman of the University of British Columbia, said that knowledge-sharing must be part of Canada’s innovation culture in the Arctic via academic-private-public collaborations.
From the remarks of the First Nations panel at the conference experts, part of the equation will be shifting the perspective of policymakers from “dual-use” to “multi-use” infrastructure. Dual-use divides an infrastructure into its potential military and civilian applications – think seaports, airports or fibre-optic digital telecommunications cables. But many have multiple distinct civilian uses – for instance, undersea fibre optic cables can be set up to collect scientific data. In many cases, the civilian side need not have military application at all. “Multi-use infrastructure” thus captures a wider range of opportunities for different sectors of society – and achieves better dollar-for-dollar return on the (relatively higher) costs of infrastructure investments in the North. Chief Frost pointed to the ongoing importance of caribou and salmon to Gwich’in communities’ food supply. Thinking about infrastructure as multi-use offers more flexibility when developing policy that different communities consider to be “critical.”
International Partnership and Arctic Primacy
The globe’s most serious security threats involve the Arctic. The University of Calgary’s Dr. Rob Huebert pointed out that the advancing nuclear arsenals of the United States, Russia and China are an existential threat that would use the Great Circle Routes through the Arctic to reach their targets. Panellists debated the threat of China: Arctic expert Dr. Andrew Chater contended that US President Donald Trump’s talk of annexing Greenland is disrupting Arctic governance more than anything China is doing, while international security expert Vina Nadjibulla noted that China’s goals in the Arctic go beyond science, citing its growing co-operation with Russia in the region and its inconsistency on respecting the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as essential to understanding the threat it presents to Canada in the long-term.
While questions pervade the future Canada-US relationship, close Arctic operational co-operation continues. The United States is still Canada’s premier military partner, the CAF panelist stated. Operation Latitude in 2025 is one example, where the Canadian Navy and Air Force patrolled with US counterparts in the North Pacific-Arctic Ocean region – a growing area of bilateral co-operation. In addition, the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) has monitored the movements of Arctic-bound Chinese research vessels (that are, at a minimum, collecting data that has military navigational value) – likely to become a more regular function, with the CCG’s move to the Department of National Defence in September 2025. As US Consul General (Vancouver) Shawn Crowley told the audience, the US sees “extensive co-operation” with Canada and the “vital role” of Indigenous institutions creating “unprecedented opportunities” on a range of issues like NORAD modernization, commercial shipping, research co-operation and “sensible” economic development.
Nonetheless, the economic damage that US tariffs are doing to the Canadian economy, in particular the automotive, forestry, steel, and aluminum sectors is altering the discussion about security among Canadians. As Huebert put it, Canada and the US were no longer in “lockstep,” citing Trump’s repeated rhetoric about making Canada a “51st state.” He noted that the heightened potential for a US freedom of navigation operation in Canada’s Northwest Passage was a real concern, a contingency that, if it came to pass, would injure bilateral relations.
Against that backdrop, the conference discussed new international partnerships. That hinges on how Canada develops its revised vision of “Arctic primacy,” a concept that asserts that the Arctic countries and peoples have the decisive say in the region’s future. In the Canadian case, this long-held view held that the defence of the North American Arctic was a matter for the North American countries alone, mostly under the mantle of the binational North American Aerospace Defence (NORAD) command.
Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy (CAFP) and the Our North defence strategy, both published in 2024, expanded Canada’s concept of Arctic primacy. The US remained at the core of Canada’s strategy, but Canada was now also part of NATO’s “northern flank,” and Canada’s role in securing the Arctic no longer focussed on NORAD. The government would pursue new partnerships with European Arctic countries and allies and close partners from outside the region could take a larger role.
Because this new foreign policy is less cut and dried about who Canada will co-operate with in the Arctic than its predecessor, executing it requires careful identification of partners. The Whitehorse conference gave an opportunity to think about who they might be.
There has been a flurry of progress in northern Europe, within revitalized EU co-operation, reflecting rich opportunities for alliance strengthening, energy security and trade diversification, including with Baltic partners Germany, Poland and Latvia. In the European Arctic, new strategic partnerships with Finland and Sweden are the most visible, and Canada also welcomed Denmark to its co-operation with Germany and Norway on maritime security. Invigorated industrial co-operation is also visible: the construction of a new Canadian polar icebreakers commenced in Finland in August, and Sweden’s and German submarines are among the weapons systems the government is looking at for the CAF, headline items among a broad array of defence-industrial opportunities. Huebert spotted one “missed opportunity”: co-operation between NORDEFCO, the Nordic Defence Co-operation, and NORAD, to improve air defences across the northern flank.
The conference also looked westwards. It is where US, Russian and Chinese activities intersect. Nadjibulla described the North Pacific as a gateway to the Arctic. Operationally, Canada has stepped up but grand strategy has yet to catch up – for example, South Korea and Japan are eager for partnerships. South Korean Consul General (Vancouver) Jongho Kyun shared his country’s ambitious plans to launch a trans-Arctic shipping route and construct five new icebreakers in the next five years to support it; moreover, a South Korean vessel is a finalist for Canada’s next submarine fleet. Canada should forge meaningful Arctic cooperation with both.
A CAF representative spoke to how the Canadian military is adjusting to new realities, striving to deepen its understanding of the Arctic “battle space” to better protect security and sovereignty amid a low-trust international setting. No longer “immune” to attack, the Arctic was the CAF’s “centre of gravity,” which it was prioritizing with “urgency.” The top priority is to improve “domain awareness” – basically, the sensors and surveillance and data integration capabilities needed to monitor, act, and react. Other priorities include improving mobility and agility. The Arctic is an “austere” environment, where the “fragility” of technical systems and the limits of supply chains for conducting operations is apparent. Canadian operations need to avoid overwhelming local communities’ resources and supplies, the CAF representative noted.
Similarly, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is re-engaging in Canada’s Arctic. CSIS’s key goal in the North is opening channels for information sharing and threat detection. A CSIS representative at the conference spoke of the amendments to the CSIS Act expanding its remit to include providing intelligence to partners outside of the federal government, on issues such as economic and research security and countering foreign interference. That better positions CSIS to advise Indigenous governments on threats of foreign interference and espionage to areas under those governments’ jurisdiction, such as intellectual property, natural resource supply chains and critical infrastructure. CSIS is the only security service in the world that has co-developed UNDRIP – the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – commitments with Indigenous partners to help advance and protect self-determination.
Next steps for Canadian Leaders
Change is afoot. The Whitehorse Arctic Security Conference provided a tremendous opportunity to reflect on Canada’s Arctic. Based solely on the author’s observations, here are three proposals that would turn some of what it discussed into action.
First, put the Arctic at the centre of Canada’s geostrategy. As geopolitical expert Aaron Burnett argued at the conference, the Arctic (and natural resources) should define Canada’s upcoming national security strategy. This should entail concentrating a whole-of-society effort on allocating resources and ingenuity to the Arctic and where it interfaces with the North Atlantic and North Pacific. That will make Canadian strategy more coherent, and that coherence will strengthen impact, defining what Canada can offer its allies. And it will help frame what countries are most important to Canada’s security, among them being the Nordic countries, NATO members, the EU, and Greenland in the North Atlantic; Japan and South Korea in the North Pacific; and the United States across these regions.
Second, mould the national security strategy around self-determination. Indigenous governments and treaty-rights holders can contribute to a unique Canadian security model in the Arctic. Mobilize that security model through dedicated engagement with all levels of government on defence and national security, to develop a whole-of-society approach.
Third, to truly nation-build, parcel out major projects in small, interconnected chunks. For instance, make improving airports across Canada’s North a priority. Investing in improved runways, terminals, hangars and maintenance facilities would have geostrategic, economic, and social impact, helping northern communities and, where relevant, the Canadian Armed Forces, Canadian Coast Guard, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other federal departments. The challenge is to wed community and defence needs. That can only happen through investments built around on-the-ground partnerships
Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Canada Office Director Dr. Bernd Althusmann opened the conference by stating it is essential to “heed the voices of the North.” Outgoing Yukon Premier Raj Pillai defined the current moment as a “unique opportunity for the North.” Canada’s allies and regional leaders get it: the North is Canada’s comparative advantage. It is up to Canadians to tap the knowledge and resources needed to lead in the Arctic.
Alexander Dalziel is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. An Arctic expert who has spent more than two decades working in Canada’s national security, intelligence, and foreign policy communities, Dalziel’s most recent MLI papers include Exposure risks: Greenland, China, and economic security in the North American Arctic, and Distorted reality: Putin’s media on the North American Arctic.
