Canada will open consulates in Alaska and Greenland, appoint an Arctic ambassador and continue its boundary negotiations with the United States over the Beaufort Sea.

Those promises and more are laid out in a new federal document released Friday morning about Canada’s Arctic foreign policy.

The federal government, along with northern premiers and Indigenous organizations, announced the policy in Ottawa.

    • cygnus@lemmy.ca
      2·
      20 days ago

      It’s just frustrating because nuclear subs are such a natural niche for Canada and the idea keeps coming up every decade but gets shelved. They are perfect for patrolling the Arctic, able to stay under the ice for extended periods of time. Freaking Australia will be getting SSNs as part of the AUKUS deal. Canada should have been part of that. Then again, Canada should also not have pulled out of the F-35 deal…

        • cygnus@lemmy.ca
          1·
          19 days ago

          Yes but Canada signed on as a partner at the development stage and then (very expensively) pulled out only to come crawling back years later to buy back in at a far higher price. Absolutely idiotic, but I’d expect no less.

          • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
            0·
            19 days ago

            Most of that was due to Harper and his group of thieving syncophants.

            (In 2006-2009) Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the next phase of JSF development under a Conservative government, expected to cost US$551 million through 2051. Canada emphasized that the commitment does not mean Canada would purchase the plane.

            (In early 2010) Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the Commons that Canada would buy the F-35. Ninety minutes later, he said he misspoke and announced there will be an open competition with all aircraft considered. Six weeks later, ignoring what he previously said, MacKay announced that Canada will purchase 65 F-35s. The cost was estimated by the government as $9 billion. Deliveries were to begin in 2016.

            In April 2012, with the release of a highly critical Auditor General of Canada report on the failures of the government’s F-35 program, the procurement was labelled a national “scandal” and “fiasco” by the media.

            The F-35 did not feature in the Harper government’s federal budget tabled in March 2012 and was not mentioned in the Conservative Party 2015 election platform.

            In a December 2014 analysis of the procurement Ottawa Citizen writer Michael Den Tandt cited the Harper government’s “ineptitude, piled upon ineptitude, and bureaucracy, and inertia, driving a lack of progress”.

            Source

            • cygnus@lemmy.ca
              1·
              19 days ago

              That doesn’t contradict what I said, but thanks for the extra background.