Canada’s Northern premiers are pitching the federal government to dip into its defence budget as a way to bolster Arctic infrastructure and help meet the NATO spending target in the process.
The calls come after Canada released its new Arctic foreign policy earlier this month, which committed to promoting investment in a wide range of sectors — including critical mineral development, transportation and energy — but didn’t specifically make funding commitments in those areas.
The policy, Ottawa says, complements the updated defence policy released last April, which focused heavily on the Arctic, promising $218 million over 20 years to build and operate “support hubs” across the North.
Those hubs will come with infrastructure upgrades for communities that include improved communications, water and power facilities.
While the locations of the hubs have yet to be …