How secure is Canada’s Arctic?

In today’s The Big Story podcast, recently the Department of National Defence announced a plan to pour billions of dollars into Northern security. And there’s no doubt that in a changing world the Arctic region has become more important, for Canada and our allies, as well as for our adversaries.

Andrea Charron is a professor and the director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba. “More and more you’re seeing talk about coordinating NORAD efforts and NATO efforts, because we have so many NATO allies that are also Arctic states,” says Charron.

So what does ‘security’ or sovereignty even mean when we’re discussing a huge swath of land that’s sparsely populated and lacking the infrastructure to change that? What does the National Defence plan to use that money for, exactly? And how will it work with northern Indigenous communities?

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