OTTAWA — Long overlooked by Ottawa, Canada’s remote and resource-rich Arctic is suddenly at the center of a new national project — one whose potential was recognized early on by outside players, including the United States.
“There was a lot of interest from other places,” R.J. Simpson, the premier of Canada’s Northwest Territories, told POLITICO recently. “Even the U.S. Department of Defense has made investments into a couple mining projects in the Northwest Territories, yet we did not. We couldn’t seem to get any interest from Canada to get anything done up north.”
But Simpson says that is finally changing — driven by a mix of economic ambition and military necessity. With Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new nation-building agenda and U.S. pressure to secure North America’s northern frontier, Canada is turning its attention to the Arctic’s critical minerals, infrastructure and defense potential — a shift that could redefine the North’s role in both national sovereignty and continental security.
The premier’s assessment comes as Carney and President Donald Trump continue talks toward a new economic and security agreement that will see Canada leverage the critical mineral wealth of its North and bolster its military footprint in a vast, sparsely populated region increasingly eyed by Russia and China.
New Arctic spending will help Canada achieve its commitment to NATO’s new spending target of 5 percent of GDP by 2035 — including a 1.5 percent component for military-related industrial spending. The move is likely to please the Trump administration, which shares Canada’s concerns about Russian and Chinese incursions into a resource-rich area as melting polar ice opens up new shipping lanes.
Carney’s “nation-building” policy — aimed at building major projects in a bid to make the economy more resilient to Trump’s economic pressure — has an Arctic focus that Simpson thought he’d never see in his territory, a region roughly the size of California and Texas combined, but with only 42,000 inhabitants — about the population of Burlington, Vermont.
Simpson also pointed to ongoing American interest in Canada’s Arctic — and to Carney’s focus on both economic and military investments across the region, which includes Yukon and Nunavut.
‘This is not a no-man’s land’
A joint critical minerals pact between Canada and the former Biden administration helped spark that interest. In 2024, the Pentagon invested C$8.74 million ($6.23 million) in the Northwest Territory’s NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project — part of a broader Pentagon push to secure rare earth minerals needed to power military hardware. Ottawa contributed C$7.5 billion ($5.34 billion) to the project.
Now, Simpson is optimistic Ottawa’s new enthusiasm in the North could translate into ports, highways and military infrastructure that will benefit civilian populations. Those projects could help unlock oil and gas and critical minerals while giving Canada and the U.S. a stronger hand in a global supply chain dominated and manipulated by China.
Simpson recently led a delegation of territorial Indigenous partners for two days of meetings in Ottawa that focused on energy security, Arctic sovereignty, housing and climate resilience.
The visit came after Carney released two lists outlining his government’s “nation-building” priorities. The first identified five fully baked projects his office wants to push over the finish line.
The second list outlines six projects that require “further development” but could be “truly transformative” for the country. Among them is an “Arctic Economic and Security Corridor” — a proposed road and port network designed to link communities, spur economic development and support the Canadian Armed Forces in the North, including critical minerals development.
“By seeing the benefits from military investments in the communities, we’re going to see stronger communities,” Simpson said. “That’s a good expression of sovereignty.”
He added that he wants Canada’s defense department to invest in “hard infrastructure” that will benefit his territory’s civilian population.
“Security is the hard infrastructure — being able to shoot down missiles or whatever they want to do,” he said. “Sovereignty is actually living there and showing that Canada is here, people are here, living. This is not a no man’s land.”
Active talks on a ‘Golden Dome’
During an Oval Office meeting with Carney, Trump said Canada and the U.S. are working “very closely” on his “Golden Dome” missile defense shield.
Canada would play an integral role in the shield, since the U.S. would need access to Canadian airspace and radars to track incoming missiles.
Defense Minister David McGuinty avoided using the term “Golden Dome” at a recent Canada-U.S. summit, but he told a Toronto business audience that he’s in active talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about Canada’s participation in a continentwide shield.
He said Carney turned him loose to have those discussions — nearly two decades after Canada opted out of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program in 2005, which ended bilateral discussion of the subject.
McGuinty said the current conversation includes expanding the role of NORAD, the joint Canada-U.S. aerospace defense command, including Canada’s over-the-horizon radar upgrade to detect missile threats across its airspace.
“The question then becomes, ‘What do you do, if you know something is coming at you?’” McGuinty said. “And that’s why we’re modernizing NORAD. That’s why we are rebooting our entire fighter jet capacity. That’s why we are talking to the United States now about what we call a continental shield — because we’re going to need one.”
McGuinty said he’s working with Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson to develop the Arctic’s critical minerals and oil reserves. The two, he said, are taking a “very integrated approach … under the rubric of not just defense.”
“We’re looking at landing strips and dual use, multi-use … installations. We’re evaluating deep-sea ports. We’re evaluating our forward operating locations under NORAD,” McGuinty said.
Six months ago, Simpson said getting Ottawa’s attention on northern development was like “trying to swim upstream in a dry riverbed.”
Now, he says, “We have defense. That’s next.”
