Canada

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More than 3,000 kilometres north of the nation's capital, soldiers, ships and aircraft of Canada's Armed Forces gathered this week in one of the most remote areas of the country to answer one question: How would they board a foreign vessel that neither wanted to be seen, nor stopped.

What if the crew of that ship was near sensitive military sites in the North?

It may seem far-fetched. But vessels run routinely through the north with their transponders switched off — largely invisible to other ships, and not necessarily seen by Canada's satellite and surveillance systems.

The annual exercise is known as Operation Nanook, and took on particular significance this year with a collision of geopolitical changes: China's growing ambition in the Arctic, Prime Minister Mark Carney's plans to substantially increase the capabilities of the military and the newly recognized value of minerals in the North.

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Canada's traditional adversaries have shown growing interest in the North's rich deposits of critical minerals. Not to mention the opening of new, shorter shipping routes between Asia, North America and Europe through the Northwest Passage as climate change makes for an increasing number of ice-free days.

"That would be Russia and, increasingly, China," said Stephanie Carvin, a former national security official and now an academic with Carleton University in Ottawa.

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