Ernie Regehr debunks the claim that fighter aircraft such as the F-35 have any significant contribution to make to Canadian security and sovereignty in the North.
Fighters and Arctic sovereignty

Ernie Regehr debunks the claim that fighter aircraft such as the F-35 have any significant contribution to make to Canadian security and sovereignty in the North.
The Harper government’s dire warnings of a Russian threat in the Arctic — at one time a regular feature of its campaign to sell Canadians on the “need” to buy the F-35 — do not reflect its own behind-closed-doors assessment of the situation.
Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables show that Prime Minister Harper’s frequent scare talk in support of a greater Canadian military presence in the Arctic is just for public consumption and does not reflect what he says in private (Campbell Clark, “Harper’s tough talk on the Arctic less stern in private,” Globe and Mail, 12 May 2011): […]
Yukon Member of Parliament Larry Bagnell has proposed a private member’s bill to make the Canadian Arctic a nuclear-weapon-free zone. Bill C-629, introduced on February 15th, would would make it a criminal offense to “possess, manufacture, test, store, transport or deploy a nuclear weapon in the Canadian Arctic.” The prohibition would not apply, however, to […]
In an effort to bolster its claims that Canada needs the F-35 to defend Canadian sovereignty in the North, the Conservative Party is pointing to the recent intercept of two Russian Bear aircraft “over the Arctic” by Canadian CF-18s as evidence of the need for new fighters, claiming that the intercept puts Liberal leader Michael […]