With US President expressing his firm intention of taking control of Greenland to markedly improve the national security tied to the important Arctic region, it’s remarkable that the leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative party has chosen to address this important issue for the western hemisphere.
Pierre Poilievre, who is on track to win an election in the coming months – if Canada does not turn into the US’ 51st state – declared on Monday that he is prepared to slash foreign aid in order to help build a base in the Arctic and boost regional security.
Reuters reported:
“U.S. President Donald Trump, who is threatening to impose tariffs on Canada, often complains Ottawa does not spend enough on defense. Canada only has a handful of military bases and 2,000 local Inuit rangers to watch over a vast deserted frozen landscape that covers more than 4.4 million square km.”
Poilievre noted the Pentagon warning of Russian action in the Arctic region, saying he would build ‘at least one new military base’, as well as double the number of rangers to 4,000 and buy two more polar icebreaker ships.
“’All of these improvements will be funded by dramatically cutting foreign aid, a lot of which goes to dictators, terrorists and global bureaucracies’, he told reporters in Iqaluit, capital of the Nunavut Arctic territory.
‘I will be bringing our money home with massive cuts to these wasteful and corrupt foreign aid grants,” he added, but did not give details’.”
As Trump is dismantling the USAID, saving hundreds of billions each year, Poilievre seems to have liked the idea.
“In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the most recent period for which complete official data are available, Canada spent a total of […] $11.2 billion on foreign aid. The money funded almost 3,000 projects in more than 100 countries.”
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