Northman's Fury

Laying Claim to Canada's Internal Waters

the PM insists more than rhetoric is required to assert Canada's sovereignty, and says he's firmly committed to backing up his political stand with significant financial resources and military might.

"The first priority of national defence is to assert your sovereign presence on your territory, to be prepared to defend Canadians from threats of all kinds, whether they be major threats of invasion, or simply minor threats of unauthorized surveillance or potential unauthorized economic activity," Harper said in an interview with Sun Media. "We believe that this is a first priority. We believe that Canadians are excited about the government asserting Canada's control and sovereignty in the Arctic. We believe that's one of the big reasons why Canadians are excited and support our plan to rebuild the Canadian Forces."

Huge capital costs for specialized equipment means holding our ground won't come cheap, but the PM says even the pricey ongoing military mission in Afghanistan won't deter delivery on his campaign pledge to build a new port, icebreaker capability and enhanced patrol and surveillance in the Arctic. He also intends to bolster the ranks of the reservist Canadian Rangers who carry out sovereignty operations in the most remote regions of the country.

This all sounds quite nice, and as a northern resident, I'm all for keeping the territory firmly under Canadian rule. However, being a northern resident means I probably keep a closer eye on this than most. Harper's campaign promises of the last election haven't translated into much action so far, and while the story line for southern consumption hasn't changed much, the government has already begun to back off on its promises.

The federal Conservative government appears to be backing off on an election promise to build a deepwater port in Nunavut – something that does not please Iqaluit’s mayor, Elisapee Sheutiapik.

”It’s very disappointing news,” Sheutiapik said at a council meeting Tuesday last week, during a member’s statement on the matter.

Sheutiapik referred to a Feb. 3 article published in the Ottawa Citizen that quotes an internal defence department document, the revised Canada First Defence Strategy.

The new strategy appears to scale back the election promise of building an Arctic sea port, along with three armed icebreakers that would patrol Canadian Arctic waters.

Instead, it calls for the construction of a refuelling and berthing site for navy ships in the Arctic, as a “forward operating location,” rather than a multi-use, civilian-military seaport.

The strategy also calls for building six Arctic patrol vessels, but these ships would not be icebreakers, and would be unable to travel through areas with heavy sea ice.

The announcement for where the arctic seaport was going to be built was scheduled for late 2006. They're now saying it will be late this year. Cynic that I am, I figure its to keep the popular idea in the news until after the next election, after which it will become much less of a priority.

One problem with having so few people in the arctic is that there are few people to notice when they fail to follow through on promises.

The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the security certificate system used by the federal government to detain and deport foreign-born terrorist suspects.

It's nice to see that every now and again, we get something right in this country. Personally, I'm not in favour of living in a country where the government can grab people off the street, imprison them for years without charges and/or exile them to countries where torture and the above practice of snatching people off the street and holding them without charges is commonplace.

Of course, if you want to see why democratic countries cam slip into becoming police states, you don't have to look farther than the on-line poll at CNEWS, where currently two-thirds of the respondents think the Supreme Court made the wrong decision in upholding our Constitution.

Update: That was, I believe the shortest on-line poll in Canoe history. It didn't last a day before being taken down. They must not have liked the answer.

The federal government's priority is to help northerners reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than adapt to climate change, Environment Minister John Baird says.

. . .

"Certainly adaptation is a significant challenge," he said. "It's obviously got to be part of any initiative but we can't set our sites away from the need to reduce greenhouse gases, the need to tackle climate change head on, which is obviously the most urgent priority."

Given the great amount of effort they've put into climate change so far, urgency isn't the adjective that comes to mind. Political expediency is closer to the truth.

Although he has "certainly been told about the schools that are beginning to shift because of the permafrost melting and the huge impact on public infrastructure and highways," Baird said these things have to be balanced against the need to slow down climate change.

If all you're going to do is slow down climate change and not try and stop it, then adaptation becomes even more important, not that any of our current leaders are far-sighted enough to realize that. Sound bites for the next election are about as far as they think ahead.

In the meantime, living on permafrost along the coastline, I guess I'll read the fine print on my home insurance to see if, "collapse due to foundation melting" is covered.

Parliament passes a motion to reaffirm Canada's commitment to Kyoto.

Members of Parliament voted Monday in favour of a motion from Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion that reaffirms Canada's support for the Kyoto Protocol.

Members of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government followed party orders and voted unanimously against it, but 161 MPs voted in favour and 115 against the motion.

It is of course a non-binding motion. The major parties talk a good talk, but it still seems they can't quite get around to doing the walk.

On Friday the Conservatives again announced the purchase of four strategic lift aircraft from Boeing for $3.4 billion.

Now, these are good aircraft if you want to send men halfway across the planet for some reason, and by itself this doesn't look like all that bad a purchase, but this "new era" has a troubling side note when put into context. In this case, the fact that the navy is having trouble buying fuel for its ships.

The Canadian navy is pulling three ships out of planned NATO exercises off Nova Scotia next week, citing a lack of funding.

There's no money for the warships to join the U.S. and German ships, navy officials said Friday.

. . .

The decision to tie up the three ships follows a decision two weeks ago to cancel a scheduled sovereignty exercise.

HMCS Halifax was supposed to patrol off Newfoundland, but the navy couldn't afford fuel. Hours after CBC News aired the story, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said $3.5 million would be made available and the ship was ordered to sea.

Now, it seems to me the ability to put ships out to sea guarding our rather large coastline would make better sense from a defense perspective than flying a few troops thousands of miles away. A back of the envelope calculation means that the purchase price of one plane could fuel 200 patrols. It's not really that simple of course, but I wonder when the Conservative government went on it's military spending spree this spring what kinds of missions they had in mind for the "new era", and if guarding our coastlines and borders rated as highly as sending troops into hot spots far from home.