The NWT’s premier says China has approached some northern Canadian communities with offers to help build infrastructure as what he termed “a foot in the door.”
China has invested billions in the infrastructure of other countries, most notably Africa, where it is reportedly involved in projects in at least 35 nations.
For example, the global Belt and Road Initiative, a strategy launched by China a decade ago, invests in other countries’ road, rail and energy corridors. In return, that investment is expected to help Chinese firms access new markets and open up Chinese access to global resources.
Canada, which is trying to develop a critical minerals supply chain to rival that possessed by China, has been wary of Chinese involvement in the North.
Recent Chinese investment in a small-scale rare earths mine near Yellowknife met with fierce political resistance and was ultimately scaled back when the federal government agreed to pay millions of dollars to purchase ore that would otherwise have gone to China. Canada has intervened in other northern mining deals where Chinese firms were poised to benefit, citing national security.
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Speaking on the Wonk public policy podcast, Premier RJ Simpson told host Edward Greenspon the North primarily features “small Indigenous communities who are not connected to the continental power grid, who don’t have year-round road access, who might have no road access any time of year.”
“We’ve heard of the Chinese coming in and approaching those communities,” Simpson said, “the way they might do in places like Africa, where they come in with offers of infrastructure and sort-of get a foot in the door.”
The premier added he didn’t “have a lot of detail” – no communities were mentioned by name, nor any specific projects – and the territory had informed the Canadian government whenever it received such reports.
Giving the example of an isolated community needing to reach a source of gravel for roads, Simpson suggested he understood how circumstances could arise where China might look to step in.
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“You want to build roads in your community, you want to do things. You just need gravel. You need rocks. And without having an access road to a gravel pit, you can’t do that,” he said.
“And so it’s possible for people to come in and make offers that they’re going to assist with just simple things like that.”
Vetting researchers
Simpson has spent time in Ottawa alongside northern Indigenous leaders this month, in part to lobby for the Canadian government itself to make large-scale infrastructure investments. (Past headlines on this topic have included: China Wants to Invest in the Arctic. Why Doesn’t Canada?)
In a wide-ranging half-hour podcast discussion, the premier touched on many policy points that formed the backbone of his Ottawa meetings and with which northerners are familiar: the need for more housing, the transition from diamonds to other mining projects, the impact of climate change on the North.
But when questioned about “domain awareness” – or how the North guards against undue foreign influence – Simpson raised concerns that aren’t as well-publicized as some of those policy areas.
For example, he said the NWT is not well equipped to scrutinize the backgrounds of the various researchers who arrive in the territory each year.
“We have many international researchers who come through and, as a territory, we don’t necessarily have the ability to vet every researcher and look at their background and make sure they are not working for, you know, other agencies or hostile nations,” Simpson said.
“That’s just by virtue of the fact that it’s not something we as a government do, and we don’t have the population and the resources to do things like that. So there’s one little example of how you might see some foreign influence coming into the territory.”
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He also suggested China, with its established critical minerals supply lines, can “turn on and turn off the taps” to try to depress prices and stop development in places like Canada that might threaten its dominance.
He connected that threat to the current low price of lithium, which was recently the subject of an exploration boom east of Yellowknife, and called on the federal government to do more to support the development of mines where “there is going to be a need in the future.”
But Simpson dismissed the suggestion, in the context of Arctic relations with Russia, that the Far North could form a more literal front line.
While acknowledging that Russian missiles might cross the North if they were ever to be fired, Simpson joked: “The North is a rough place, and if Russian troops land on our shores, I think the first thing we’d have to go do is rescue them.”
