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
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November 30, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
Murray Brewster · CBC News The last couple of weeks may go down in the Trudeau government's public record as the point when the desires of deliverology met the drawbacks of defence procurement. Remember 'deliverology'? That lofty concept — measuring a government's progress in delivering on its promises — was the vogue in policy circles at the beginning of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's administration. While it's sometimes derided as an empty concept, deliverology must have seemed tailor-made for a new government inheriting a troubled defence procurement system. The Canadian International Trade Tribunal's decision Tuesday to step into the brawl over which multinational consortium will design and support the construction of the navy's new frigates is another lesson in how (apologies to Robert Burns) the best laid plans of mice and men go awry. The tribunal's decision to order Ottawa to put the frigate project on hold pending the completion of their probe into a complaint by a failed bidder comes at a politically awkward time for the Liberals. One week ago, Auditor General Michael Ferguson delivered an ugly report on the Liberals' handling of fighter jet procurement — specifically, the plan to buy interim warplanes to cover the gap until the current CF-18 fleet can be replaced with new aircraft. Self-inflicted wounds A cynic's reflex (given the checkered history of defence purchasing over the last decade) might be to consider these two events as just another day at the office for the troubled government procurement system. That might not be entirely fair. Still, experts were saying Wednesday that the government is suffering from numerous self-inflicted political and administrative wounds on this file. With a federal election on the horizon, and in a climate of growing geopolitical instability, the question of what the government has actually managed to deliver on military procurement is an important one to ask, said Rob Huebert, an analyst in strategic studies at the University of Calgary. While the system, as the Trudeau Liberals and previous governments have constructed it, seems to be the perfect model of the "evidence based" policy making promised by the champions of deliverology, it's also not built for speed. Some would suggest the deliverology model was followed to the letter in the design competition now tied up before the trade tribunal and in Federal Court. What seemed like endless consultations with the bidders took two years. The government made up to 88 amendments to the tender. And in the end, the preferred bid was challenged by a competitor that claims not all of the navy's criteria were met. Alion Science and Technology Corp. and its subsidiary, Alion Canada, argue the warship Lockheed Martin Canada and BAE System Inc. want to sell to Ottawa cannot meet the speed requirements set by the tender without a substantial overhaul. It does not, the company claims, meet the government's demand for a proven, largely off-the-shelf design. Michael Armstrong, who teaches at Brock University and holds a doctorate in management science, said the government could have avoided the challenges and accompanying slowdowns had it been more precise in its language. "They could have been more clear and firm when they use the words 'proven design'," he said. "Did they literally mean we won't buy ships unless they're floating in the water? Or did they mean that British one that doesn't quite exist yet is close enough? "If they would have been more firm and said, 'We want a ship that actually exists,' that might have simplified things at this stage." Huebert described the auditor general's report on the purchase of interim fighters as an all-out assault on evidence-based policy making. "It is just so damning," he said. A break with reality The Conservatives have accused the Liberals of avoiding the purchase of the F-35 stealth jet through manufacturing a crisis by claiming the air force doesn't have enough fighters to meet its international commitments. The auditor found that the military could not meet the government's new policy commitment and even ignored advice that one of its proposed solutions — buying brand-new Super Hornets to fill the capability gap —would actually make their problems worse, not better. That statement, said Huebert, suggested a jaw-dropping break with reality on the government's part. "They [the Liberals] were just making things up," he said. It might have been too optimistic to expect the Liberals to fix the system, said Armstrong, given the short four years between elections. But Huebert said Ottawa can't carry on with business as usual — that the government now must deliver on procurement, instead of doubling down on rhetoric. The problem, he said, is that governments haven't really paid a price in the past for botched military procurement projects. There was "no political pain for the agony of the Sea King replacement, as an example," he said, referring to the two-decade long process to retire the air force's maritime helicopters. "The thing that makes me so concerned, even outraged, is that we are heading into a so much more dangerous international environment," said Huebert, citing last weekend's clash between Russia and Ukraine over the Kerch Strait and ongoing tension with Beijing in the South China Sea. "When things get nasty, we have to be ready." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/why-can-t-ottawa-get-military-procurement-right-1.4924800