Nordic ambassadors offer NWT lessons in defence, emergencies

“We call it a total defence approach, making the whole of society – not just government on different levels – prepared for any kind of emergency or crisis.”

That’s how Sweden’s ambassador to Canada, Signe Burgstaller, introduced her country’s view of what it means to be ready to defend your nation, your territory or the Arctic.

She and other Nordic ambassadors gathered in Yellowknife for a half-day conference about northern resiliency on Wednesday, a session planned long ago but given fresh resonance by global events featuring Greenland and the United States.

The conference was an invite-only gathering that featured various municipal, Indigenous and territorial leaders. Burgstaller said the ambassadors also met with NWT Premier RJ Simpson and other ministers, Indigenous governments, the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce and representatives of Joint Task Force North.

At a press conference, the Nordic ambassadors – Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland were also represented – collectively described an approach to defence that Yellowknife’s mayor said his city can use as a basis for future conversations.

“We must look at security broadly,” said Danish ambassador to Canada Nikolaj Harris, in between fending off questions about Donald Trump’s attempts to acquire Greenland.

“Security is not only defence and military capabilities. It’s important – and increasingly important – but it is also economic development, it is resilience, it is education, it is all these things. It’s climate change.”

“It means also private enterprises and civil society” rather than relying on the military alone, Burgstaller added. “And it boils down, actually, to individuals. How can you prepare for any kind of emergency situation?”

While Canada’s military has repeatedly assisted NWT communities struck by disasters like wildfires, Ottawa’s new push to invest in Arctic sovereignty hasn’t necessarily been tied to emergency response. The focus has been first Chinese and Russian Arctic aspirations and, more recently, US aggression.

Harris, though, directly linked “whole-of-society” defence policy with better preparing residents for the likes of wildfires, saying “you need to involve civil society” in all aspects of preparedness, no matter the crisis.

He said Denmark, creating its own emergency preparedness policy, has tried to improve how it communicates with and includes businesses and individuals. In Yellowknife and the NWT, by contrast, the 2023 wildfire season – the territory’s worst on record – generated many complaints from residents that communication had broken down and they felt detached from government action.

“In order to have this whole-of-society approach, you also need the individuals,” said Harris.

“What we see now is that the population in the Kingdom of Denmark are responding quite positively to our advice.”

Situation ‘changed drastically’

Changing the NWT’s approach to defence and emergencies – or even Canada’s approach – would take time.

“We’ve been building this whole-of-society model for, I would say, a century,” said Finnish ambassador to Canada Hanna-Leena Korteniemi.

Even so, Mayor of Yellowknife Ben Hendriksen expressed interest in learning some of those lessons.

“The situation over the last year has changed drastically since I became mayor,” said Hendriksen, who took over in mid-2025 after predecessor Rebecca Alty became the NWT’s MP.

“I think we’re at the infancy stage in terms of what we can learn from the other Nordic countries,” he said.

“The beauty of this event is being able to actually start to have those conversations on a more meaningful basis. Now the ambassadors have been here, what are those connections I can have at the municipal level?”

Yellowknife already has some Nordic connections through a body called the Arctic Mayors’ Forum, which Hendriksen said helped to provide “a network you can lean on.”

As an example, he said he had sent “a nice email earlier last week” to Avaaraq Olsen, the mayor of Nuuk, in Greenland. He did not elaborate on what was said.

Yellowknife and Inuvik are expecting significant federal cash to flow shortly as they are transformed into northern operational support hubs, a type of upgraded military installation.

At this week’s Dene Assembly, in conversations at Tuesday’s IRC chair election and in the territorial legislature, the impact of increased defence spending is being discussed and awaited.

Norway’s representative at Wednesday’s Yellowknife gathering welcomed Canada’s new focus on the North. (Norway and Germany are trying to persuade Canada to pool resources in the production of new submarines.)

“We are happy to see that Canada is building up its presence, exercising sovereignty in its Arctic areas the same way as we are,” said Norwegian deputy head of mission in Canada Jon-Åge Øyslebø.

“There are a lot of projects coming up in terms of military cooperation, cooperation between our two coast guards, and in terms of political dialogue about the security challenges that we see today.”

“I’ve often said we’re carved from the same block of ice,” said Finland’s Korteniemi at Wednesday’s press conference.

“We share the same landscape, we share the same values, we share the harsh conditions … I think there is a lot we can learn from each other.”