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Some Arctic security analysts say one thing that’s not talked about enough when it comes to Canada’s sovereignty in the North is intelligence.<\/p>\n
Phil Gurski is a consultant and a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst. He says that improving infrastructure in the North is only part of the picture when it comes to northern sovereignty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there’s a really huge scope for bolstering intelligence on Canadian soil, from Canadian agencies, to help better inform the government,\u201d Gurski told CBC News.<\/p>\n
Gurski said Canada once had a much more robust intelligence presence in the Arctic, during the Cold War. He used the Canadian Forces Supplementary (CFS) Radio System as one example, with stations in places such as Inuvik<\/a>, N.W.T., and Alert<\/a>, Nunavut.<\/p>\n \u201cThese were intelligence stations that gathered raw signals to be able to monitor Soviet activities in their section of the Arctic to determine if there were any indications that the Soviets were planning something,\u201d Gurski said.<\/p>\n While the CFS station in Inuvik closed in the 1980s, CFS Alert “maintains signals intelligence facilities to support Canadian military operations,” with about 55 military and civilian personnel stationed there, according to the federal government<\/a>. <\/p>\n Gurski says intelligence is key to protecting the North\u2019s economy. For example, he pointed to potential foreign interest in mining.<\/p>\n \u201cIf China wants to buy up a mining firm from the Northwest Territories, we want to know who’s buying it [and] what are they going to do with it?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In 2020, Ottawa blocked a $230-million deal<\/a> for a Chinese company to purchase a gold mine project in Nunavut.<\/p>\n Intelligence has been \u2018underappreciated\u2019<\/p>\n Rob Huebert is a political scientist and the director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. He also emphasized the importance intelligence can have in defending the North.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a general under-appreciation of how critical intelligence has to be within the understanding of Arctic security,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Both Huebert and Gurski named China, Russia, and more recently the U.S., as some countries who pose potential threats to Canada’s Arctic sovereignty and to the nation as a whole. <\/p>\n They also pointed to a report last year from Justice Marie-Jos\u00e9e Hogue, commissioner of the public inquiry into foreign interference<\/a>. That report followed a\u00a016-month investigation into how foreign actors have tried to interfere in democratic institutions and the\u00a0electoral process in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.\u00a0 <\/p>\n