February 11, 2019 | Local, Aerospace
Bob Weber / The Canadian Press
Recent Russian moves in the Arctic have renewed debate over that country's intentions and Canada's own status at the top of the world.
The newspaper Izvestia reported late last month that Russia's military will resume fighter patrols to the North Pole for the first time in 30 years. The patrols will be in addition to regular bomber flights up to the edge of U.S. and Canadian airspace.
"It's clearly sending strategic messaging," said Whitney Lackenbauer, an Arctic expert and history professor at the University of Waterloo. "This is the next step."
Russia has been beefing up both its civilian and military capabilities in its north for a decade.
Old Cold-War-era air bases have been rejuvenated. Foreign policy observers have counted four new Arctic brigade combat teams, 14 new operational airfields, 16 deepwater ports and 40 icebreakers with an additional 11 in development.
Bomber patrols have been steady. NORAD has reported up to 20 sightings and 19 intercepts a year.
Commercial infrastructure has kept pace as well. A vast new gas field has been opened in the Yamal Peninsula on the central Russian coast. Control and development of the Northern Sea Route — Russia's equivalent of the Northwest Passage — has been given to a central government agency. Russian news sources say cargo volume is expected to grow to 40 million tonnes in 2020 from 7.5 million tonnes in 2016.
Canada has little to compare.
A road has been completed to the Arctic coast at Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories and work for a port at Iqaluit in Nunavut is underway. The first Arctic patrol vessel has been launched, satellite surveillance has been enhanced and a naval refuelling station built on Baffin Island.
But most northern infrastructure desires remain unfilled.
No all-weather roads exist down the Mackenzie Valley or into the mineral-rich central N.W.T. Modern needs such as high-speed internet are still dreams in most of the North. A new icebreaker has been delayed.
Nearing the end of its term, the Liberal government has yet to table an official Arctic policy.
Global Affairs Canada spokesman Richard Walker said in an email that the government is "firmly asserting" its presence in the North to protect Canada's sovereign Arctic territory.
Walker said Canada cooperates with all Arctic Council members, including Russia, to advance shared interests that include sustainable development, the roles of Indigenous peoples, environmental protection and scientific research.
"Given the harsh environment and the high cost of Arctic operations, Canada believes that cooperation amongst Arctic nations is essential," Walker wrote.
"While we perceive no immediate military threat in the Arctic region, we remain vigilant in our surveillance of our Northern approaches."
Canada needs to keep pace if only because it can't count on the current international order to hold, said John Higginbotham of the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo.
"If the globalized system fragments, we're going to get a world of blocs. The blocs will have power to close international shipping channels.
"It's a dreadful strategic mistake for Canada to give up our own sea route."
Arctic dominance would also give Russia a potent card to play, said Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
"It gives you presence," he said. "Whenever there's issues that happen to occur elsewhere, we've already seen the behaviour of the Russians — they start doing overflights of other countries to bring pressure."
Norway, the Baltics and the United Kingdom have all reported increased airspace violations, Huebert said.
Few expect Russian troops to come pouring over the North Pole. The country is sticking with a United Nations process for drawing borders in Arctic waters and is a productive member of the eight-nation Arctic Council.
"There's vigorous debate over whether their posture is offensive-oriented," Lackenbauer said. "The Russians insist this is purely defensive. It also offers possibilities for safe and secure shipping in the Northern Sea Route.
"They're not doing anything wrong."
Canada would be mistaken to ignore the awakening bear, said Ron Wallace of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Calgary.
"It's important for Canadians to be aware of their Arctic and the circumpolar Arctic and what's going on in the North," he said.
Canada is unlikely to take much from Russia's command-and-control style of development, Wallace said, but there are lessons to learn. Combining civilian and military infrastructure is one of them.
"That's the kind of thinking I haven't seen here, but that's the thinking the Russians are using," he said. "They see the northern trade route as an excuse to put up military bases at the same time they're working with the Chinese to open up trade routes for the export of their resources."
That would also help fulfil federal promises to territorial governments, said Wallace.
"Somewhere in the middle there is a better policy for northern Canada."
— Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960
November 10, 2022 | Local, Naval
Sans en dévoiler la date exacte, le ministre fédéral de la Santé et responsable de la région de Québec, Jean-Yves Duclos, a annoncé mercredi que Chantier Davie Canada sera le troisième partenaire de la Stratégie nationale de construction navale (SNCN) «d’ici Noël».
January 8, 2021 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
Lee Berthiaume The Canadian Press OTTAWA -- An internal Defence Department report has warned that Canadian Armed Forces operations and security may be at risk due to major problems with how the military's computer networks are built and supported. The report follows a review of the Defence Department's information management and technology systems, which are described as "critical" to the success of Canadian military operations and training. That review uncovered a patchwork of IT systems across the Defence Department and Armed Forces that was not only inefficient and expensive to maintain, but also often out-of-date and poorly supported. The brunt of the report's criticism is directed at the technical support provided to the military by another federal entity, Shared Services Canada, the agency that took over management of most federal networks in August 2011. Nearly all defence and military officials who participated in the review were upset by the amount of time it took Shared Services to respond to requests for help, according to the report. In some instances, those delays harmed operations. The report cited one instance in which an email server that went down during an unspecified domestic mission couldn't be fixed right away because it was a weekend and Shared Services did not have staff on call. The reviewers also found that a quarter of requests for assistance made to Shared Services remained unresolved after six months, and the agency did not have anybody in Europe to help the hundreds of Canadian troops posted there. While the problems were partly attributed to a lack of appropriate IT resources and staff, the report also flagged the lack of an agreement between the Defence Department and Shared Services establishing clear expectations for network support. Without such an agreement, the report, defence and military officials believed Shared Services not only didn't understand their needs but also wasn't required to respond quickly, "which led to putting clients at great risk on a number of fronts, including security." Delays in tech support weren't the only point of contention between the Defence Department and Shared Services, with the latter upsetting the navy by requiring the removal of equipment that had increased bandwidth on warships. Shared Services also stopped supporting some older intelligence systems while they were still being used by the air force, army and navy, according to the report recently published on the Defence Department website. Defence Department spokesman Daniel Le Bouthillier on Monday described the review as a "valuable tool" for improving IT support even as he defended the department's relationship with Shared Services Canada. "We have a good working relationship with Shared Services Canada and the two departments continue to work collaboratively to ensure the appropriate and timely delivery of IT services to DND/CAF," he said. "We are also reviewing our relationship with Shared Services Canada with a focus on improving the service delivery model to help better support the department and the Canadian Armed Forces." The internal report also took aim at the military's troubled procurement system, which was found to deliver IT equipment with inadequate or out-of-date technology. Poor planning was partly to blame but the report also blamed onerous levels of oversight. While that oversight was described as the result of cost overruns and delays on past IT projects, the report said that it nonetheless created new problems in delivering modern equipment. "The complex processes associated with the capital projects and procurement are very slow and cumbersome," according to the report. "The process cannot keep up with the rate of change of technology." Those delays -- and their potential impact on operations -- were also cited as a major reason for why a patchwork of IT systems and programs now cover different parts of the Defence Department and military. While that patchwork might serve the day-to-day needs of the military, it was also found to be inefficient and expensive. To that end, the reviewers could not pinpoint exactly how much was being spent by the Defence Department and military on IT services and support every year, but estimated it at more than $700 million. In response to the report, senior officials told reviewers that they were looking at ways to better calculate annual spending on IT and address the problems that have contributed to the creation of so many systems in the first place. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 4, 2021. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/poor-it-support-hurting-canadian-military-operations-internal-review-finds-1.5253148
May 23, 2023 | Local, Naval
La nostalgie de Marine Industrie remonte à la surface à Sorel-Tracy lorsqu’on évoque le chantier maritime Davie. Dans cette ville de la Montérégie, la construction de brise-glaces en territoire québécois représente l’occasion de renouer avec ce qui était jadis son épine dorsale économique : la construction navale.