Canada is spending billions to reinforce its Arctic presence, but the national Inuit organization says Ottawa still doesn’t have enough diplomats on the ground to make that strategy work in the region it claims to be defending.
Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said the Arctic has become “a geopolitical hot spot” while the federal government “does not have huge bench strength when it comes to Arctic diplomacy,” according to a Canadian Press report published Sept. 27. His comments came the same day Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told CTV’s The West Block that threats to the Canadian Arctic have “shifted significantly” because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising strategic competition in the North.
The two statements, one warning about a staffing gap and one about a changing threat picture, point to the same underlying problem. Canada is trying to project Arctic power abroad faster than it is building the people and relationships to back it up at home.
The numbers show the gap. Canada shut its Canadian International Arctic Centre in Oslo in 2023 to save $550,000 a year, a move an internal Global Affairs audit from May 2025 found had cost the department “key contacts in the Arctic” and reduced opportunities for Indigenous speakers at international forums. When Canada opened its first Arctic consulate in decades in Nuuk, Greenland, in February, it budgeted $8.76 million over five years for three full-time staff. It currently runs on one.
Artur Wilczynski, a former Canadian ambassador to Norway, said building Arctic expertise takes years of sustained presence in the region, not remote work. “You do not get that from a Zoom call,” he said. Global Affairs Canada defended its hybrid approach, saying it has “demonstrated the department’s ability to engage worldwide through technology.”
Ottawa has, at the same time, moved aggressively on the military and infrastructure side. Anand cited a contract with Germany’s TKMS for up to 12 new submarines, a still-unfinalized fighter jet purchase, and plans for a second Arctic consulate in Anchorage, Alaska. She also pointed to a meeting of Arctic nations convened by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, where she said allies “had a frank discussion about the collective need to work together.”
Public opinion in the North complicates the picture Ottawa is presenting. A September poll cited alongside Anand’s comments found 48 per cent of northern Canadians see the United States, not Russia, as the greatest threat to the Arctic, versus 30 per cent for Russia and 12 per cent for China. That is a notably different threat assessment than the one driving federal spending decisions in Ottawa.
For Inuit communities, the stakes go beyond geopolitics. Obed’s critique echoes a long-standing demand in Arctic governance, summed up in the phrase northern leaders have used for years, nothing about us without us. Marc Lanteigne, a political scientist at the Arctic University of Norway, argued that “para-diplomacy” carried out through Indigenous communities and northern researchers may do more for Canada’s Arctic credibility than traditional embassy staffing, since it puts the people who actually live in the region at the centre of the relationships Canada is trying to build.
Canada restored its ambassador for Arctic affairs post only recently, three decades after the role was created under Jean Chretien and two decades after it was eliminated under Stephen Harper. Whether that renewed commitment survives the next budget cycle, or the next change in government priorities, is the question Arctic watchers say will determine whether Canada’s sovereignty claims are backed by substance or just ships.
Via The Canadian Press (CP24/CTV News) and Yahoo News Canada. Read the original reporting: CP24 and Yahoo News Canada.
