Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans

Daniel McCarthy
Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:26:28 -0800
Opinion

Donald Trump's Arctic strategy has been 500 years in the making.

When Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic in 1492, he intended to find a direct path from Europe to Asia.

He didn't, of course — but the first transatlantic explorer to sail under an English flag, John Cabot, tried again a few years later and became the first modern explorer to reach what is now Canada.
Updated: Mon Jan 26, 2026

Donald Trump's Arctic strategy has been 500 years in the making.

When Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic in 1492, he intended to find a direct path from Europe to Asia.

He didn't, of course — but the first transatlantic explorer to sail under an English flag, John Cabot, tried again a few years later and became the first modern explorer to reach what is now Canada.

The commercial potential of the Northwest Passage was obvious from the start, but even once explorers at last figured out how to thread their way through the Arctic's ice and islands, there was no possibility of developing the route: the sea ice was just too dense.

Until now, that is: warmer temperatures and 21st-century technology put a trade route the world has sought for centuries within reach — but whose?

Canada claims the passage as its own territorial waters.

America, like most of the world, has never accepted that assertion.

The future of what one day may be the planet's most important shipping lane is being decided today.

China is already literally testing the waters. In 2017, the Chinese used a research vessel to confirm that cargo ships can now make it through the passage.

Talk of a "Polar Silk Road" has been rife since the Xue Long made its trek.

"It opened up a new sea lane for China," the state news agency Xinhua boasted. "From Shanghai to New York, the traditional route that passes through the Panama Canal is 10,500 nautical miles, while the route that passes through the Northwest Passage is 8,600 nautical miles, which saves 7 days of time."

Canada granted the ship permission to make the crossing but didn't know its "research" had a commercial angle until China announced its triumph.

Since then, Beijing has focused most of its Arctic attention on its relationship with Russia, whose northeastern sea routes are already well developed — the Arctic's overall economic activity is still small, but Moscow is the dominant player.

Yet there's no doubt about China's long-range intentions.

One former Canadian security official, professor Stephanie Carvin, told the Canadian Broadcasting Company last September that China "has an ambitious plan to basically control a lot of the rare-earth elements and mining and wants to invest in the Canadian Arctic."

President Trump recognizes the dangers here.

Canada is heavily reliant on America's intelligence capabilities and military strength, but Canadian security also depends on Canadian politics, and that's the weak link — for us as well as them.

Successive governments in Ottawa have failed to meet Canada's NATO commitments to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense.

They've also been complacent about Chinese and Russian activities in the waters Canada claims as its own.

Prime Minister Mark Carney's courtship of Chinese trade in recent weeks highlights how economically vulnerable America's northern neighbor is.

Carney quickly backed off after Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs if Canada sought a major trade deal with Beijing. Carney now says he's never intended to strike a free-trade bargain with China, despite recent bilateral agreements.

The Northwest Passage and the Arctic's mineral resources are vital to the economic security and military defense of America, Europe and Canada alike.

Yet national pride — the claim of exclusive dominion over the Northwest Passage — will lead to national disaster, and a global crisis, if Ottawa doesn't get serious soon.

Trump's hardball diplomacy with Ottawa, his tariffs, and his jokes about Canada becoming America's 51st state put a strain on America-Canada relations, but they also force Canadian leaders to think about the country's ultimate choices:

Can Canada develop and defend the Arctic without America?

If Trump seems like a bully, what can Ottawa expect from China and Russia as the Northwest Passage's potential is realized in the decades to come?

Americans, too, have to face reality: we can't afford to be complacent about how this neighbor and ally governs the waters it claims but can't secure.

Canada should take a lesson from Greenland's experience: Trump seemed to demand nothing less than Denmark's surrender of the territory to America, but once he'd succeeded in shocking everyone into thinking about the most basic questions of sovereignty and security, he used the opportunity to strengthen America's commitments to Greenland's defense.

His approach to Canada is similar — Trump is not trying to repeat James Madison's folly in the War of 1812, when America actually tried to annex Canada.

Instead, he's asking Canada's leaders to acknowledge they can't take our trade and defense assistance for granted while resenting our interests in the Northwest Passage and the region as a whole.

Today the Arctic is the free world's frontier, and Canada can keep it safe only by treating America as a partner, not a piggy bank.