“The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold.”
- Robert Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, 1907

The same year Robert Service published his famous poem about the mystery and grandeur of the Far North, Canadian Senator Pascal Poirier was busy staking his country’s Arctic claim in Parliament to a world that largely didn’t care. One hundred years later, a Russian icebreaker led two research vessels to the North Pole to plant a symbolic Russian flag 13,200 feet below the surface, encased in titanium. This time everyone noticed.

It was territorial brinksmanship at its finest: a shot across Canada’s Arctic bow. Past efforts to define the country’s northern frontier have been largely reactive and rarely successful, but this time the Russians are playing for keeps. If Canada doesn’t respond with strength and resolve, there will be more to lose than a few Arctic trails in the land of the midnight sun.

At stake are a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves, as well as countless mineral deposits and precious metals, locked deep beneath the thawing Arctic mantle. More cherished still is the prospect of finally navigating the fabled Northwest Passage — a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific running through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago which chops 7,000 kilometres and two weeks off a typical one-way freight run from Europe to Asia (currently by way of Panama).

So why all the excitement? Scientists recently announced that nearly 2,000,000 square kilometres of sea ice have disappeared in Canada’s Arctic over the past three decades, and on August 21, 2007 the Passage became fully navigable by normal marine vessels for the first time since observations began in the early 1970s.

For some, Russia’s geopolitical motives are clear: less Arctic ice means more Arctic profit. For others, the cause lies in Canada’s historic inability to defend its sovereignty, encouraging other Arctic powers to push for a greater role in one of the world’s final untapped frontiers.

Despite the occasional chest-thumping from Washington and Brussels, international law hasn’t ruled conclusively on anyone’s behalf. But without extending Canadian authority over its arctic waters soon, there’s an even greater risk that the country’s claim will be lost for good. If Russia wants to start pressing the issue, it’s time Canada started pressing back.

As a rising middle power, Canada is now leveraged to capitalize on the G8’s only fiscal surplus and a considerable resource bounty to rally in defense of its claim. Harper’s recent moves to revitalize the country’s northern defenses will undoubtedly help, but a handful of icebreakers, a deep water port, and 1200 Inuit rangers aren’t likely to frighten the Kremlin away.

“This isn’t the 15th century.â€? insists Peter MacKay, minister of defense. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘we are claiming this territory’.” Canadians haven’t seen this type of bravado in their foreign policy for quite some time. But rhetoric is cheap in this new “Ice Cold Warâ€?. With oil pushing US$90 a barrel and gold at $750 an ounce, Russia’s timing is opportunistic if not belligerent, and warrants a greater response from a country with the most to lose from a changing of the northern guard.

What Canada needs now is a concerted effort to codify its claim on land inhabited by its northernmost citizens for millennia. It’s time for “Canada’s New Government� to lift the country into the limelight of 21st century geopolitics where it belongs, and finally claim what many consider to be one of its most precious national treasures before someone else does.

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Posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 12:30 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.