The Carney government’s first budget promises $81.8 billion in new defence funding over the next five years, with much of it earmarked for Canada’s Arctic. This will be one of the most consequential defence efforts from the Canadian government in decades, and the timing couldn’t be more urgent. A new geopolitical reality is emerging. Canada faces threats from Russia and China, who are armed with new weapons that challenge the ability of the West to defend itself. Making matters worse, we can no longer rely on the U.S. to protect us. But Carney’s spending boost might be too little, too late.

For decades, the federal government assured Canadians that our Arctic sovereignty was protected and the region was at peace. This dates back to the end of the Cold War, when the world declared a new beginning for Arctic co-operation, and the West and Russia created new multinational bodies devoted to protecting Arctic waters. This was an era of Arctic exceptionalism, when the North was governed by general frameworks of peace rather than specific geopolitical tensions. During that era, Russia worked closely with all seven states that border the region, Canada, the United States, Denmark (with Greenland), Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden. But, when Vladimir Putin was elected in March of 2000, the Russian military began a difficult but determined process to modernize its key weapon-delivery systems, breaking with decades of Arctic accord and fighting for Russian dominance in the area.

In the early 2000s, Russia began to develop hypersonic missiles—specifically nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missiles and long range nuclear-powered Poseidon torpedoes. These systems were designed to speedily and stealthily overcome the American defensive systems, like the Patriot anti-missile that proved so efficient in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the late-2000s, the Russians also resumed long-range Arctic bomber patrols,........

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