Photo: A CF-18 fighter jet at the 3 Wing forward operating location in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

The “Canadian Arctic” covers 40 per cent of Canada’s territory and is home to more than 200,000 people, more than half of whom are Indigenous. The Arctic Circle, at 66° 33′ latitude, includes the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Canadian fighter jets are based at 3 Wing (Bagotville, Quebec) that includes a forward operating location in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and at 4 Wing (Cold Lake, Alberta) with forward operating locations in Inuvik and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Late last year, Canada’s top military commander, General Wayne Eyre, warned a parliamentary committee that Canada’s hold on the Arctic is “tenuous”.

Eyre commented: “Right now, today, we don’t see a clear and present threat to our sovereignty, not today, not this week, not next week, not next year. However, in the decades to come, that threat, that tenuous hold that we have on our sovereignty, at the extremities of this nation, is going to come under increasing challenge.”

Eyre’s framing of the Arctic obscures “the violent history of expropriation” of Indigenous lands and lacks a decolonial approach to sovereignty. As Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders has bluntly written: “The Far North is, in short, our colony.”

Eyre’s framing could perhaps though be seen to confirm that climate change is a factor in military interest in the Arctic as shipping lanes open and resource extraction is set to intensify there. The Arctic, after all, holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of crude oil as well as rare earth minerals deemed critical by the Canadian government.

Can the F-35 defend Canada’s Arctic region?

CBC reporter Murray Brewster reports: “During his visit to Canada’s Far North last summer, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, remarked that the shortest route for Russia to attack North America is through the Arctic. Canadian officials have stated repeatedly that the planned purchase of F-35 stealth fighters and the introduction of modern over-the-horizon (OTH) radar will go a long way toward easing that fear.”

But is the F-35 the best choice for the defence of the “Canadian Arctic”?

Back in October 2011, the Arctic Institute reported: “Canada’s future multibillion-dollar stealth fighter may be ill-equipped to communicate from the country’s Arctic region. The F-35’s radio and satellite equipment may not be suitable to provide reliable communication uplinks in the northern latitudes of the country.”

In April 2012, the National Post further reported: “Retired colonel Paul Maillet, an aerospace engineer and former CF-18 fleet manager, said the F-35 does not meet the needs of the government’s Canada First Defence Strategy, a key pillar of which is Arctic sovereignty.” Maillet described the F-35 a “serious strategic mismatch” for Canada’s needs.

In One Dead Pilot: Single-Engine F-35 a Bad Choice for Canada’s Arctic (published in June 2014), Michael Byers argues: “The F-35 has only one engine. This fact alone renders it problematic for use in Canada’s Arctic and extensive maritime zones.”

Byers concludes his report by quoting a former CF-18 pilot who said: “A single engine is stupid. There’s no backup. If it fails, you’re dead.”

Then in an article titled The F-35 And The Arctic: Does It Fit The RCAF’s Needs? (NATO Association of Canada, 2014), Christopher Cowan notes: “Its short range (only 2,200km), poor maneuverability, and low payload capacity (i.e., the number of weapons it can hold) would hinder its ability to intercept aircraft in the vast Arctic region.”

And in November 2018, Radio Canada International reported: “Lt.-Col. Stale Nymoen, commander of the 332 Squadron of the Royal Norwegian Air Force and one of the first Norwegian pilots to learn to fly the F-35s [said] operating and flying them in Norway with its harsh North Atlantic and Arctic climate is a whole new experience.”

The F-35 in the Arctic

That said, Air & Space Forces magazine has highlighted Canada’s new fleet of F-35s would join Norway, Finland, Denmark and the United States as “Arctic nations that either operate or have agreed to buy F-35s.”

But experience with F-35s in the Arctic is not deep.

By the spring of 2022, 54 US Air Force F-35s were to be stationed in Alaska. (Defense News has previously reported: “Amid the cold winds and snow, a ghost is haunting F-35 jets in the far north, and it’s causing pilots to divert flights and land immediately.”)

As of January 2022, 24 of Norway’s 52 new F-35 have arrived in Norway. It is expected that by 2025 all the new planes will be in service.

The first of Finland’s F-35s will arrive in 2026 and all 64 will be in operation by 2030.

Denmark will welcome the first F-35A on its soil in 2023.

While this is far from an exhaustive research review, it does suggest that there are reasons to question the choice of the F-35 for the Arctic and that the F-35 does not have a real track record yet of use in Arctic conditions.

In November 2016, the Government of Canada began its announcement that it would be buying new fighter jets with the line: “A modern fighter jet fleet is essential for defending Canada and Canadian sovereignty – especially in our northern skies.”

It appears, however, that beyond the Canadian government’s arguably colonial perspective of Indigenous territory and extractivism, it’s choice of the F-35 “stealth fighter-bomber” to defend “our northern skies” is also questionable.

Photo: Innu land defenders protest at 5 Wing/Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay, Labrador in opposition to NATO simulated bombing runs over Nitassinan.

Photo of RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en territory, November 2021, by Dan Loan.

“Who’s the first to show up when we’re peacefully defending our land rights or water rights? It’s probably going to be the RCMP, and they’re not going to look like the RCMP riding around on their red coats and horses. They’re going to look like the military: heavily armed, armed vehicles, snipers, camouflage, fatigues, you name it. That’s how they relate to Indigenous peoples, even today.” – Mi’kmaw lawyer Pamela Palmater

Toronto Star journalist Allan Woods reports: “Days into 2023 — the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s 150th year — the questions swirling around the force are dark and existential.”

Woods notes various controversies within the RCMP including that David Brown had said the RCMP is “horribly broken” and questioned if “the fabled ‘paramilitary model’ of leadership ingrained in RCMP culture was the best way to run a modern police force that was accountable to the federal government and to the public.”

Brown convened the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP that issued its final report in December 2007.

The current commissioner of the RCMP is Brenda Lucki, who was appointed by the Trudeau government in April 2018.

Woods notes that in January 2022 Lucki was “successfully sued in Federal Court over lengthy delays in responding to the recommendations of a public complaints commission.”

Federal Court Associate Chief Justice Jocelyne Gagne said Lucki had breached her duty under the RCMP Act by not submitting a response to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission’s interim report on the spying allegations “as soon as feasible.”

This relates to the RCMP monitoring Indigneous and settler-ally activists opposed to the Enbridge Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline.

This past summer it was also confirmed that the RCMP has used spyware for years, though Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino has assured the public that it is not the Pegasus spyware (that has been used against PBI accompanied human rights defenders in Mexico).

Woods also comments: “If Commissioner Lucki is fortunate, she will outlast those calling for her head, make it to 2024, and complete the six-year term that seems to be the average for the country’s top Mountie. That would give her time to see through part of a strategic plan that charts the force’s path to the future.”

This refers to Vision 150 and Beyond.

That document notes that one of the RCMP’s “three core responsibilities” includes “advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada”.

(A poll conducted by EKOS Research Associates in April 2022 found that 42 per cent of respondents disagreed with the statement: “The RCMP is advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples of Canada.” Only 33 per cent agreed.)

The Vision also includes an “environmental scan” conducted in 2020 that identified “six mega-trends that will help to frame areas the RCMP must consider when developing its strategies and plans.” The mega-trend on “protecting human rights” notes “Canada’s Indigenous Peoples are experiencing rights issues for land and water”, while the mega-trend of “climate change” says “Indigenous land represents 80% of Earth’s Biodiversity”.

Vision 150 and Beyond also states: “From the creation of the Northwest Mounted Police in 1873, the history of the RCMP and the role it played in colonization has been interwoven with First Nation, Inuit and Métis peoples.”

(Musqueam activist Audrey Siegl says: “Since its inception, we’ve never been safe in ‘Canada.’ The RCMP was created to quash the Indian rebellions. The police were created to protect and serve the colonial state.”)

Vision 150 and Beyond makes no reference to the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) that has been deployed against Indigenous land defence struggles, including the Wet’suwet’en resistance to the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline.

Gidimt’en Checkpoint spokesperson Sleydo’ has stated: “The RCMP are occupying our territory for the sole purpose of protecting industry and ensuring extractive projects proceed unhindered. …We want to live free on our lands, without the constant threat of violence by C-IRG, who are illegally occupying Gidimt’en territory.”

She has also called for the C-IRG and RCMP to be abolished.

Mi’kmaw lawyer Pamela Palmater has also stated: “Canada through the RCMP continues to violently oppress and dispossess Indigenous peoples. Peaceful land defenders, water protectors, and Indigenous rights advocates are vilified, criminalized, surveilled, suppressed, and incarcerated at ever increasing rates. This stands in stark contrast to Indigenous lands defenders’ goals of protecting the lands and waters for our future generations.”

Palmater has argued: “The only way we are ever going to stop RCMP racism and brutality against Indigenous peoples is to declassify, deconstruct and defund the institution itself.”

Both K’asho Got’ine negotiator Daniel T’seleie and Dene Nahjo founding member Dëneze Nakehk’o have also called for defunding the RCMP.

The Act establishing the North West Mounted Police (NWMP), the forerunner of the RCMP, passed in the House of Commons on May 23, 1873, and an Order-in-Council formally and legally brought the NWMP into existence of August 30, 1873.

As the RCMP begins to announce events to celebrate its 150^th anniversary, including Sunset Ceremonies in Ottawa from May 19-23, deep concerns continue to be expressed about the organization along with calls for it to be abolished.