By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Canada (AA) - NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed Friday that Russian aggression in Ukraine makes Canada and the alliance’s defense of the Arctic a high priority.
Stoltenberg said the key to safeguarding North America and NATO lies in the Arctic.
"The shortest path to North America for Russian missiles and bombers would be over the North Pole," he said at a news conference at Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake, Alberta during a two-day tour of Canada's Far North defenses. "This makes NORAD's (North American Aerospace Defense Command) role vital for North America, and therefore also for NATO."
"As I saw for myself at the North Warning System radar site in Cambridge Bay yesterday. NATO’s new Strategic Concept identifies Russia’s capabilities in the High North as a strategic challenge for the whole Alliance."
Cambridge Bay is home to the Canadian High Arctic Research Station.
Stoltenberg said: "Canadian knowledge of the Arctic is unrivaled, it is unique" which makes it so strategically important to counter Russia's increasing new incursion into the Arctic -- it has reopened hundreds of old military sites there that had been established and then mothballed by the former Soviet Union - as well as China which has termed itself a “near-Arctic" nation.
Trudeau agreed that Russia's war in Ukraine has "changed the way we need to look at the Arctic" and the addition of two more Arctic nations, Sweden and Finland into NATO, now under consideration, will also bolster Western allies' strength to counter Russia.
But Canada spends about 1.4% of its Gross National Product on the military, according to 2021 figures, and has been criticized that it spends less than the 2% of its national economy called for by NATO members. When asked if that will increase, Trudeau ducked the question.
He said investments in NATO and NORAD are going up because "keeping people safe is our top priority."
But he did not specify dollar figures although Trudeau has promised to spend billions to upgrade an Arctic early warning system and CAN$4.9 billion ($3.76 billion) to bolster NORAD, the North American defense system that Canada and the United States share.