FEATURE | Canada deepens Arctic defense ties with Nordics after Trump comments

In March, Canada and the five Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — agreed to deepen their cooperation in military procurement and ramp up defense production to deal with security threats, including cyberattacks. A plan for how Greenland might adapt the Canadian Rangers is expected by the end of this year, according to government policy documents.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told Reuters she meets regularly with Nordic officials to work on collective defense and Arctic security. Canada’s partnership with the United States through NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, remains critical, she said. But Canada is focused on bolstering new alliances. That includes the opening of a Canadian consulate in Nuuk in February and an invitation to her Nordic counterparts to visit Canada’s Arctic this year.

“We have to build something new, and it has to be a world order that is built on the values that we represent,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Carney during the Nordic-Canadian summit in Oslo in March. In April, Alexander Stubb became the first Finnish president to visit Canada in a dozen years and signed several agreements on Arctic cooperation. Stubb and Carney took to the ice in Ottawa for a hockey practice, and afterward Stubb said he and Carney message each other almost every day.

The two national leaders sometimes chat about hockey or baseball, Stubb told reporters, but, “most of the time it's about NATO or Ukraine or Iran."