Canada to boost Arctic defenses, says it can no longer rely on others

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled a C$35 billion ($25.7 ‌billion) plan on Thursday to boost Canada's defenses in the giant Arctic region as it tries to decrease its reliance on the United States.

Canada has traditionally relied on US help to monitor the Canadian Arctic, which covers 4.4 million square km (1.7 million square miles) of land and ​sea - larger than India - and is almost completely uninhabited. President Donald Trump's tariffs and musings about annexing Canada ​have put ties under strain.

"We will no longer depend on any one nation, and instead build ⁠a stronger, more independent country. With this new plan, Canada is taking full responsibility for defending our Arctic sovereignty," Carney ​said.

Even before Trump re-entered the White House last year, Canada had long been under pressure from the United States to ​increase defense spending and vowed last June to boost funding for the armed forces. It is promising to hit NATO's 2% military spending target five years earlier than planned.

In January, Carney said the United States and other major nations were eroding the traditional rules-based order that had long ​benefited Canada.

"The assumptions that shaped decades of Canadian defense and security are being upended," he said on Thursday.

"Climate change is ​causing our Arctic region to warm nearly three times faster than the global average, a shift that great powers are actively looking to ‌exploit," Carney ⁠said in a speech in Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories and home to Canada's Arctic military command.

The plan laid out specifics of how previously announced funding for the Arctic would be spent. In 2022, Ottawa announced a C$38.6 billion plan to modernize its defenses and the joint North American Aerospace Defense Command that Canada operates with the United States.

Canada has four ​rudimentary Arctic airfields that can ​accommodate six fighters each, ⁠and around 2,000 soldiers dotted around the region.

Carney's plan calls for investing C$32 billion  to expand the military airfields in the region and to build four operational support hubs.

The plan would ​also upgrade two commercial airports and fast-track two proposed roads from the Arctic to Canada's ​southern regions.