I thank the standing committee for this invitation to discuss issues associated with Arctic security. These comments are drawn from an understanding of the strategic problems associated with securing the Arctic, alongside the intersecting issues and asymmetric capacities creating challenges for Canada and its partners.

Currently, what we have is a set of partially overlapping institutional arrangements that attempt to manage Arctic challenges concerning great power competition. For example, the Arctic Council's mandates are circumscribed, preventing the securitization of the region by focusing on the environmental and human security aspects. The absence of strong security institutions is shaped by distrust and a lack of confidence when it comes to compliance and monitoring of any sort of security guarantees, ergo the security dilemma.

Of course, we are concerned about Russian reactions. It goes without saying that NATO's enlargement to include Finland and Sweden would enhance multilateral security in the region for Canada and its partners. I'd be happy to speak to that in the question and answer period.

If we're looking at the strategic problems in the Arctic, we can characterize them under the following approaches. The ones we are supporting right now represent a minimal cost to mitigating issues, for example, codifying norms of behaviour in the region with respect to the environment, durable development, and the participation of the communities in the region.

Second, there are ongoing efforts to encourage the positive and discourage the negative externalities of state actions in the region, particularly when it comes to the environment.

Of course, rational institutionalists would say these are the easiest behaviours, but observance and compellence through enforcement are a central concern that we have not addressed strategically or institutionally.

One key aspect of competition in the region is concerns over distribution, which is a central strategic problem we are trying to mitigate through institutions and agreements. This involves the protection of exclusive economic zones and the potential for the degradation of these zones with increasing commercial and military traffic in the area. Increasing militarization of the region due to great power competition significantly raises the risk of accidental crises. Moreover, Russia's demonstrated difficulty in complying with commitments, as we've seen in Ukraine around past security guarantees and humanitarian corridors, does not make it much of a credible partner, even if a bargain could be struck.

Finally, uncertainty about future actor behaviour by both Russia and China creates more problems. For example, China has increasing interest in the region, but it is not integrated into any institutions. It is an observer to the Arctic Council, but has identified the Arctic as an increasingly important strategic region for rivalry and resource extraction. It's set to complete its heavy icebreakers by 2025, creating the potential for a polar silk road, part of its larger belt and road initiative. While some seek to tamper this discourse in China, its actions in the Arctic evidence a state seeking to secure influence and access.

Documents produced recently by the Chinese military offer a more militarized perspective, using terms such as “a game of great powers” and “a struggle over and control of global public spaces”, which is how it views the Arctic.

Engaging a public goods analogy over the space signals to those states currently operating in the region that China has rights to invest in the region and create research stations concerning resource extraction. Of course, this would also enable it to gain important experience operating in the climate.

Its polar silk road offers a competing framework for development, and Chinese firms have increasingly been trying to buy territory in areas that would give them strategic access. However, China’s success thus far in the region appears to be more limited than its ambitions.

There is some ambiguity concerning what China's endgame is in the Arctic. On the other hand, Russia remains quite transparent about seeking and maintaining military capabilities in the region to diversify its capacities, as it sees this region as open for competition and rivalry.

Perhaps the most crucial strategic problem pressing stakeholders is uncertainty about the future state of the world. For the last two decades, there have been claims of a slow decline of the U.S. relative to China, economically and politically. The reality is that the U.S. and many other Arctic states have sufficient capacities to jointly secure the region in a crisis. This would not be without retasking assets from other missions or regions. The current configuration of defence assets in the region offers a level of deterrence from ambition but is not sufficiently strong to deter incursions into the aerial and maritime spaces.