Invest in North ‘before we all have to speak Russian’ – Inuvik mayor

Inuvik’s mayor has joined the Northwest Territories’ premier in calling on Canada to invest more in the Arctic to reach its Nato spending target.

The federal government has been criticized by partners in Nato, the 32-nation North Atlantic military alliance, for failing to meet the alliance’s collective goal of spending two percent of GDP on defence.

Last week, Premier RJ Simpson said major infrastructure projects like the Mackenzie Valley Highway, which would build a permanent road through the Sahtu region, should qualify as defence spending.

“Those are nation-building projects that also add to Arctic security and national security,” he told Cabin Radio following a conference of Canadian premiers in Halifax.

Inuvik is the largest NWT community inside the Arctic Circle.

In a letter circulated this week, the town’s mayor – Clarence Wood – said Canada’s defence spending was “an embarrassment” compared to that of Nato allies.

Wood said the result was a limited military presence, the likelihood of disputed territorial claims and an inability to address Arctic environmental concerns.

Inadequate infrastructure is also a concern, he wrote, as is vulnerability to “external influence or encroachment by other Arctic nations.” (He listed both Russia and the US in that category.)

“It’s time the Canadian government got off its behind and gets serious about defence spending before we all have to learn Russian,” Wood concluded.

Wood is among a group of NWT community leaders hoping to attract Canadian military investment through what Ottawa has called a network of new “northern support hubs.”

Defence minister Bill Blair told Cabin Radio in April that five such hubs are being contemplated, with their host communities yet to be decided.

Each hub will require upgrades that can drive construction jobs, Blair said at the time, and hubs can then share the resulting infrastructure with locals.

Elaborating at a mid-April parliamentary committee hearing, Blair set out his vision for the issues those hubs can address.

“One thing that I think many people in southern Canada sometimes think, when they think about protecting northern sovereignty, is that we occasionally have a plane fly over, or perhaps when the ice is out a boat goes by,” Blair told MPs.

“When we’ve gone to northern communities and listened to them, they’ve said, no, it’s about infrastructure. It’s about airports. It’s about highways. It’s about fibre-optic communications. It’s about water treatment plants and power plants. It’s about medical facilities.

“We know that we have to build five different northern support hubs so that we can fly our new fighter jets, multi-mission aircraft, search and rescue aircraft and helicopters into that region. We know that we’ll have to persistently deploy members of the Canadian Armed Forces and we’ll have to train in the North. There’s a real opportunity in the infrastructure that this will require for it to be multi-use.”

Blair said northern premiers and leaders of “Inuit and Indigenous communities” would be “very much involved” in the construction and subsequent use of new infrastructure.

“If a runway can be used to land a fighter jet or transport plane, it can also be used for medical evacuation and search and rescue aircraft,” he said as an example.

Simpson said he will press Blair and Ottawa to keep their word regarding collaborative construction.

“When they talk about multi-use infrastructure that’s going to benefit communities, we need to have a say,” the premier said last week, articulating how the GNWT sees its role in holding the federal government accountable for defence commitments it makes.

“They need to engage not only with the territorial government,” Simpson said, “but with the Indigenous governments, whose land they’re planning these projects on.”

A timeline for decisions regarding the location of northern support hubs has yet to be announced.