![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom this Monday's The Globe and Mail comes Steven Chase's article "Military showed little enthusiasm in Arctic sovereignty patrol, report says".
Concerns over Canadian sovereignty in Northern Canada, particularly over the famed Northwest Passage, which might become navigable with global warming. The Canadian Encyclopedia provides a reasonably thorough and fair overview of the matter from a Canadian perspective, unlike this 2005 Canadian American Strategic Review paper that goes so far as to build up a Danish order of battle in the case of a Danish claim over, among other potential targets, Ellesmere Island. (Another Cyprus-like affair between Canada and Denmark in the High Arctic might be "interesting" but ... Yeah, right.)
At any rate, Prime Minister Harper had made multiple promises back in 2006 to secure the Arctic for various reasons as described in this 2006 Parliamentary research paper, including national prestige and potentially valuable natural resources. It's perhaps unsprising to see that Canada's own latest willing roi fainéant, content to let the provinces "take as much sovereignty as [they] can swallow", is just as unwilling or unable to do anything positive in the Arctic as in the rest of Canada.
The Canadian Forces have come under fire in an internal report highly critical of military leaders' lack of interest in an Arctic sovereignty protection exercise last August.
Defending Arctic sovereignty is supposed to be a major priority under goals the Harper government set when it took office in February, 2006.
The report on Operation Nanook, obtained by The Globe and Mail under the Access to Information law, was written by a Forces directorate that helped organize the August, 2007, Arctic exercise.
It says Canadian military leaders didn't place a high enough priority on the operation, and it singles out for criticism Canada Command, the military organization given the task of defending this country.
[. . .]
Operation Nanook, which took place between Aug. 7 and 17 last year, is the biggest such annual exercise in the Arctic. Last year's scenarios included intercepting drug smugglers and responding to a ship's oil spill.
The report was critical of the RCMP's V Division in Nunavut for failing to devote sufficient effort to planning and staging the exercise, and blamed the Mounties' "lack of engagement" in part for problems with how things unfolded. Another hindrance was fog.
"Regrettably, V Division of the RCMP, for a number of valid reasons, tends to view ... Nanook as a distraction rather than an opportunity," it said. The report did not explain why the Mounties might lack enthusiasm for Nanook.
An RCMP spokesman blamed lower-than-normal staffing across Nunavut last August. "Human resources levels across the Division were 25 per cent below normal and ongoing operational issues and day-to-day community policing needs took precedence over the exercise," Corporal Greg Cox said.
"Senior RCMP officials were aware of the exercise and co-operated with DND and other exercise officials as much as possible."
Concerns over Canadian sovereignty in Northern Canada, particularly over the famed Northwest Passage, which might become navigable with global warming. The Canadian Encyclopedia provides a reasonably thorough and fair overview of the matter from a Canadian perspective, unlike this 2005 Canadian American Strategic Review paper that goes so far as to build up a Danish order of battle in the case of a Danish claim over, among other potential targets, Ellesmere Island. (Another Cyprus-like affair between Canada and Denmark in the High Arctic might be "interesting" but ... Yeah, right.)
At any rate, Prime Minister Harper had made multiple promises back in 2006 to secure the Arctic for various reasons as described in this 2006 Parliamentary research paper, including national prestige and potentially valuable natural resources. It's perhaps unsprising to see that Canada's own latest willing roi fainéant, content to let the provinces "take as much sovereignty as [they] can swallow", is just as unwilling or unable to do anything positive in the Arctic as in the rest of Canada.
