Global Courant
OTTAWA –
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on his way to meet with Nordic leaders ahead of an upcoming NATO summit and amid uncertainty over the future of the Arctic.
Trudeau is about to travel to Iceland, where leaders from Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway will be staying for the next two days for an annual meeting of Nordic prime ministers.
Leaders from Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Åland Islands are also present.
Iceland’s government says “societal resilience” will be discussed at the meeting, which is being held on a group of islands known as Vestmannaeyjar and coinciding with the 50th anniversary of a volcanic eruption there.
Trudeau will appear as a guest, and his office says it is an opportunity to advance common interests with the Nordic countries, which range from protecting the environment and developing clean energy to addressing security challenges.
The talks come just over two weeks before the leaders travel to Lithuania to meet with NATO allies and discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
World leaders also kept a close eye on internal strife in Russia this weekend after mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led troops from his private Wagner Group in an armed uprising when he called for the ouster of the country’s defense minister.
The move seemed poised to threaten President Vladimir Putin’s decades-long hold on power, but tensions quickly escalated on Saturday after the Kremlin announced a deal halting Prigozhin’s march to the capital, Moscow. The arrangement will see Putin’s one-time protégé move to Belarus and avoid prosecution for his role in the short-lived uprising, while Wagner group troops will return to Ukraine, where they fought alongside soldiers from the Russian army.
Trudeau said on Saturday that Canada would monitor the situation closely, and G7 foreign ministers called to discuss the situation before announcing the deal.
“There is ongoing collaboration between these countries,” Roland Paris, a former senior adviser to Trudeau and director of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said of the leaders meeting in Iceland. “The Arctic has become a strategically more important part of the world as the ice melts.
“Each of these northern countries has a very clear interest in ensuring the security and sovereignty of their territory.”
Nordic countries, including Canada and the United States, stopped working with Russia through the Arctic Council after the invasion of Ukraine.
That has cast serious doubt on cooperation in the region, Paris said.
Mathieu Landriault, director of the Observatory for Arctic Policy and Security, said the issue remains “fragile”, adding that without cooperation with Russia – which has a huge Arctic coastline – the council has no data on the impact of climate change on a large area. part of the region.
Landriault suggested that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused Canada to “rethink” its position in the Arctic.
NATO is also paying increasing attention to the Arctic in the face of aggression from both Russia and China, Paris added.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned of such threats during a visit to a military base in northern Alberta last summer.
Trudeau, who accompanied Stoltenberg on that visit, praised plans to spend billions on strengthening Canada’s military, including modernizing the aging Canada-US Norad system that controls Arctic space travel.
Paris said he expects Trudeau to draw attention to those same commitments during his visit to Iceland.
“The fact is that we are far behind where we need to be to secure the Arctic in a world where it will increasingly become an area of geopolitical competition.”
Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway have all expressed support for Ukraine since Russia launched its attack.
They all belong to NATO, except Sweden, which is trying to join. Canada was the first country to ratify his request. It also supported Finland’s membership, which was officially recognized in April.
Landriault said the meeting in Iceland is an opportunity for Canada and the Scandinavian countries to show support for Sweden’s entry into NATO, which Turkey and Hungary have not endorsed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to Nordic leaders in May and Trudeau made a surprise visit to Kiev earlier this month.
In addition to a shared interest in security, the Canadian government also has trade interests with the five Nordic countries, with two-way trade totaling about $13 billion last year.
Canada is also home to the largest number of Icelandic immigrants and descendants outside of that country.
The two countries see each other as like-minded and share interests on a range of issues, including the development of carbon capture and storage technology and the protection of the ocean.
Trudeau’s visit follows Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson’s recent visit to Canada, where the pair discussed expanding cooperation in green energy, ocean technology and aquaculture.
That trip, Governor General Mary Simon’s visit to Finland earlier this year, and a 2022 Canada-Denmark agreement to resolve the border dispute over Hans Island, were all signs that Canada wanted to strengthen its diplomatic focus on the Nordic countries. Landriault said.
“It will probably increase,” he said.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on June 25, 2023.
— With files from The Associated Press.
