Arctic Front by Ken Coates

Author:Ken Coates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CUR009000, book
ISBN: 9780887626197
Publisher: Thomas Allen Publishers
Published: 2010-10-09T04:00:00+00:00

By the late 1990s, the Canadian Rangers’ red ball caps and sweatshirts had become the most recognizable symbol of Canada’s military presence in the far north, embodying a spirit of cooperation between northern communities and the Canadian Forces. DND photo IS2004-2134

The focus on diplomacy and cooperation meant that traditional preoccupations with “defending” sovereignty slipped to the back burner. The Somalia affair of the mid-1990s and other scandals made the Liberal government wary of the Canadian Forces. Most military programs seemed to clash with agendas articulated by northerners. As a result, military activities in the North slowed. No sovereignty operations were conducted in 1999–2000. Aurora maritime patrol aircraft were scheduled to conduct only four sovereignty patrols in 2000, down from twenty in the mid-nineties. By the end of the decade, CF assets in the North were sparse indeed. The headquarters in Yellowknife, with seventy-seven personnel, lacked “the staff resources or situational awareness to coordinate more than a nominal level of activity.” Although the four Twin Otter transport aircraft represented a CF presence in the North, they were small and slow, forcing the military to rely on commercial airlines. The Forward Operating Locations were seldom used for fighter-aircraft operations. The largely unmanned NWS radar sites, maintained by civilian contractors, and the skeleton staff at Canadian Forces Station Alert/Eureka on Ellesmere Island continued their quiet vigil. The Canadian Rangers, part-time volunteers in fifty-eight patrols across the territorial North, provided the most extensive and visible military presence in the North, as well as a constructive and intimate connection with northern communities. They did not, however, have the capacity to operate outside of their local areas nor the authorization to do more than report problems.59

By 2000, the Canadian Forces’ “Arctic Capabilities Study” acknowledged that the nature of security issues had evolved to include environmental, social, and economic aspects, particularly in the North. Rather than diminishing the military’s role, the commander of Canadian Forces Northern Area argued, the coming decades would make the North even more vulnerable to “asymmetric” security and sovereignty threats. “There is presently no immediate direct military threat to Canada,” the study conceded, but “there remain many significant security/sovereignty challenges of a different nature emerging in the North” which could, over the long term, erode Canadian sovereignty. The Canadian Forces had to be prepared to respond to challenges related to environmental protection, increased shipping as Arctic sea lanes opened due to climate change, heightened commercial-airline activity, and “trans-national criminal activity” that would accompany resource development such as diamond mining. To meet its obligations in the North, Canadian Forces Northern Area argued, improved capabilities to monitor and respond to emergencies were needed.60 The Department of National Defence decided, given its limited budget, that the equipment and programs proposed to address more than surveillance issues would be extremely expensive. Scarce military resources would, instead, go to more pressing priorities.61

If the North had been an “exposed front” during the Cold War, with perceived sovereignty threats prompting reactions at various junctures, nothing at the end of the

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