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Harper rallies troops participating in northern military exercise

By: Stephanie Levitz, The Canadian Press

Posted: 08/25/2010 12:04 PM | Comments: 0 (including replies) | Last Modified: 08/25/2010 9:48 PM

RESOLUTE, Nunavut - For navy diver Leading Seaman Dierdre Doiron, water is water.

It doesn't make much difference to the Prince Edward Island native whether she's going under outside Halifax or in the waters of Allen Bay in Resolute.

But everything else about participating in the military's annual northern exercise is different, and that's why it matters, she said.

"It's just to prove that we can actually work up here," Doiron said, minutes after emerging from a dive under the watch of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Sometimes it is like a forgotten land. We take care of overseas and everything else but you've got to protect your own country as well."

As climate change opens up more space in the North, the troops are moving father up. This year's Operation Nanook is the farthest north they have trained.

About 1,500 personnel, mostly from Canada but also from Denmark and the United States, are engaged in land, sea and air exercises for most of the month of August.

"To operate in the North is tougher than operating in Afghanistan from a logistics standpoint, because you are so far away from all the services," said Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk, who was also on the ground for the prime minister's visit.

While the soldiers from all three countries are working alongside one another, their governments are engaged in a different kind of work around boardroom tables — negotiating who owns what in the increasingly in-demand Arctic waters.

Part of the operation, said Natynczyk, is to show how well Canada has things under control.

"We are demonstrating our capacity to exercise sovereignty of our own nation," he said.

The Harper government has pledged to significantly boost that capacity, adding new patrol boats and an icebreaker to assist northern operations.

"We live in a time of renewed foreign interest in Canada's Arctic," Harper told a few hundred people assembled in an aircraft hangar.

"With foreign aircraft probing the skies, vessels plying northern waters and the eyes of the world gazing our way, we must remain vigilant."

His speech came a day after Russian military aircraft flew within 30 nautical miles of Canada's northern border, a routine occurrence.

On Wednesday, Harper also reaffirmed the government's budget commitment of last March to the next generation of satellites, known as the Radarsat Constellation Mission.

Close to $500 million is being spent on the program, which allows the monitoring of land and navigation routes in the North.

"These satellites are indeed essential tools in affirming Canadian sovereignty in our Arctic," said Harper.

But sovereignty is also more than just flexing military muscle.

The satellites can also help detect events such as oil spills.

Part of Operation Nanook involves mock environmental disaster simulations and Harper observed crews in Allen Bay pretending to clean up a spill.

Nineteen communities across the Arctic have received new marine pollution control equipment.

The prime minister's stop in Nunavut marked day three of his five-day tour of the north.

His trip was grounded for a day in Churchill, Man., because of bad weather, forcing Harper to miss a scheduled stop in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

Later Wednesday he was expected to arrive in the Northwest Territories to attend a reception in Inuvik.

On Thursday Harper will travel to Tuktoyaktuk before moving on to the Yukon and his final stop in Whitehorse.

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