Zach Zimmerman is somewhat of a rarity in the world of Arctic think tanks. Unlike a lot experts, he’s actually born and raised in the North, growing up in Inuvik and Whitehorse.

He’s a master’s student at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., and a member of the Canadian Institute for Arctic Security. He was also a presenter at the Arctic Summit in Whitehorse this past week.

Zimmerman argues the biggest threats to the Arctic aren’t of the conventional military variety, but rather climate change, disinformation and emergency response. He spoke to Yukon Morning guest host George Maratos.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What did your research tell you about the Canadian Armed Forces’ ability to meet its objectives in the Arctic?

A: If I were to really summarize the findings of my research, I would say Canada’s northern Arctic is really more defended than a lot of narratives and people in Canada think. 

I think if you look at the most realistic and pressing threats facing Canada’s Arctic, we’re not talking about a foreign invasion of our Arctic territories. When we speak about the biggest threats facing our northern Arctic, we’re talking about climate change, we’re talking about search and rescue, we’re talking about hybrid threats, and those sorts of threats do not necessitate having a large and permanent military presence, in Canada’s northern Arctic.

Rather, the Canadian Armed Forces need broad situational awareness. They need to be able to get to a location quickly with appropriate force, and they need to be able to cooperate with allies. So that really means that the Canadian Armed Forces needs to be more flexible and adaptive in Canada’s North, rather than having a large permanent presence.

Do we have the infrastructure to support the Canadian Armed Forces when they are brought in for, say, flood relief support or whatever it might be?

There’s certainly important gaps when it comes to critical infrastructure. You ask anyone living in a remote community in our northern Arctic, and they’ll tell you exactly that. I would say, broadly speaking, Canadian Armed Forces do have decent enough infrastructure in the Arctic, and specifically, that infrastructure is positioned in pretty strategic areas.

If you look at, for example, the biggest airports in the Arctic – those would be Whitehorse, Inuvik, Yellowknife, Iqaluit – those are pretty well positioned to enable the Canadian Armed Forces to reach pretty much anywhere in our northern Arctic quickly.

The U.S. president has often stated his intention to acquire Greenland. How has this newly antagonistic relationship between the Trump administration and its allies changed the way Arctic nations view regional security?

It’s definitely been a bit of a crazy situation, especially in my line of work, and I think it definitely has changed my calculus a bit. I would say that at this point, I view what [Donald] Trump is doing in the Arctic as more of a political problem than a military one.

And in that respect, it requires a political solution, not a military solution. So far, what we’ve seen in Greenland is that they have established a high level working group that are talking as we speak. So hopefully that can reach something fruitful.

And in the case of Canada’s Arctic, I would say we need to be very careful about how we are positioning ourselves, how we are marketing our abilities up in the North, because we don’t want to put any ideas into Trump’s head and potentially end up in a similar situation like we did with Greenland.

You mentioned climate change, but what are some of the other ways Arctic security is threatened right now, maybe ways that aren’t spoken about as much, but still pose a real concern?

I would definitely say climate change is the biggest threat facing our Arctic, but there are definitely some other important threats to look at. One of them is, of course, a lot of domestic issues that we have in the North that really inhibit a lot of progress.

You can look at anything from gaps in critical infrastructure, gaps in health care, gaps in employment, all those sorts of things are going to have very big effects on the well-being of northern citizens. And the well-being of communities in the North is absolutely essential to having a good and strong presence up there. 

Hybrid threats are a big one that I think the Canadian population is not too aware about. Those are threats that combine covert and overt military and non-military means, and they’re typically employed by foreign actors to undermine and cause divisions within society. 

I do think that Canada’s Arctic is especially susceptible to hybrid threats. You could talk about anything like disinformation targeting the Arctic, espionage targeting the Arctic, intrusions of foreign aerial objects.

You could talk about foreign acquisition of our critical mineral resources in the Arctic. These are all sorts of hybrid threats that I think it’s really important that regular citizens in the North and Canada more broadly are aware about and are able to identify and counter them.

Espionage, what does that look like here in the Yukon? Is that a threat here?

It’s hard to say. I think it’s a threat anywhere. Of course, in the Yukon, we have a lot of choke points when it comes to infrastructure. I live in Riverdale [in Whitehorse], so I’m very used to passing through the one bridge that we have connecting us to the rest of the world. 

We also have to be careful about what sort of information is being gathered about our critical infrastructure, whether it’s our hospitals, our bridges, our roads, especially in the very high North where there’s radar stations.

I know there’s been instances of people going up to those radar stations, taking pictures. They’re typically not really protected that well up there. I think it’s definitely something we need to be cognizant about.