Canada’s new leader announces $4.2 billion Australian radar purchase on visit to Arctic Circle

Canada Premier Mark Carney (right) meets with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok in Iqaluit

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday announced a radar purchase from Australia and an expansion of military operations in the Arctic while visiting Canada’s far north in an effort to assert sovereignty over the increasingly contested region.

The prime minister’s office said the Canadian $6 billion ($4.2 billion) Over-the-Horizon Radar system will provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-United States border into the Arctic.

Carney announced the purchase at a military base in the capital of the Inuit-governed territory of Nunavut on his last stop after visiting Paris and London for meetings with leaders there.

“Arctic sovereignty is a strategic priority of our government,” Carney said. “”Canada is, and forever will be, an Arctic nation.”

The Australian radar system will consist of a series of pillars almost a mile in length. Officials said that the system would have a smaller footprint than what the similar American system would take up.

“This will be a significant export if this deal is finalized,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Albanese had a phone call with Carney the prior night.

“Obviously, there are issues taking place, particularly between Canada and the United States, I wouldn’t have expected to have been happening in my lifetime,” Albanese said.

Senior Canadian government officials, who briefed reporters on Carney’s plane before the announcement, said the purchase has been well received by top military officials in the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the joint U.S.-Canadian military command that overseas threats over the two countries.

But the officials said they couldn’t say how the Australian purchase would be received politically by Washington. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Carney also announced the government will spend Canadian $420 million ($294 million) to expand Canada’s Arctic operations and training exercises and deploy more personnel. He said Canada will have a “greater sustained year-round presence.”

The prime minister’s flight path took him over Greenland. U.S. President Donald Trump’s interest in Greenland, northeast of Nunavut, comes as part of an aggressively “America First” foreign policy platform that has included threats to take control of the Panama Canal and suggestions that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

“The United States priorities, once closely aligned with our own, are beginning to shift,” Carney said.

Trump has threatened economic coercion to make Canada the 51st state. His constant talk of annexation has infuriated Canadians and turned around the political fortunes of the governing Liberal party, which was headed for a historic defeat but now has a chance of winning a fourth term. Carney is expected to call a general election by the end of the week.

The president is threatening sweeping tariffs on all Canadian products and has already placed them on steel and aluminum.

Carney and Trump have not spoken since Carney was elected as the new Liberal party leader and prime minister more than a week ago. Carney said at the “appropriate time” he will have a discussion with the U.S. president, as “two sovereign nations, that is comprehensive and not targeted at one issue.”

But Trump keeps disrespecting Canada, saying twice on Fox News on Tuesday night that that “Canada was meant to be the 51st state.”

He said that’s why he’s he’s tougher on his neighbor than America’s biggest adversaries.

Trump also repeated several times that he didn’t care that the Liberals might win the Canadian election now.

“The Conservative that’s running is stupidly no friend of mine. I don’t know, but he said negative things,” Trump said. “So, when he says negative things, I couldn’t care less. I think it’s easier to deal actually with a Liberal. And maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me at all.”

Carney visited Iqaluit, which is by far the largest municipality in Nunavut, a vast territory straddling the Arctic Circle. Nunavut is roughly the size of the U.S. states of Alaska and California combined, with a mostly Inuit population of about 40,000.

For much of the year, the weather in Iqaluit can be severe. In February 2010, Iqaluit hosted a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of Seven nations. Several of the dignitaries, including Carney when he was head of Canada’s central bank, went dogsledding in subfreezing temperatures.

It is a distinctive destination — home to about 7,500 people but not a single traffic light — with no road or rail links to the outside world.

Increasing international tensions, global warming and the changing world economy have put the Arctic at the heart of the debate over global trade and security.  ROB GILLIES, IQALUIT, MDT/AP