What is the significance of the Canadian Arctic?

The Canadian Arctic spans more than four million square kilometres of land, ice, and water across Canada's northern territories and is home to about 150,000 people, more than half of them Inuit. The Arctic Archipelago contains 36,563 islands including Baffin, Ellesmere, Victoria, Banks, and Devon. Arctic geography is dominated by tundra, permafrost, sea ice, and a marine ecosystem of polar bears, narwhal, beluga, ringed seal, and Arctic char.

The Arctic is the homeland of the Inuit, organised across four regions of Inuit Nunangat: the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik in northern Quebec, and Nunatsiavut in Labrador. Nunavut, created on April 1, 1999 from the eastern Northwest Territories, is the largest land-claim settlement in Canadian history and the only Canadian jurisdiction in which Inuktitut is an official language alongside English and French. Iqaluit is the territorial capital.

Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic is exercised through the Canadian Rangers (a subcomponent of the Canadian Army Reserve drawn largely from Indigenous communities), Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers, RCMP detachments, the Joint Task Force North headquartered in Yellowknife, and the High Arctic research stations at Alert and Eureka on Ellesmere Island. The North Warning System, a chain of radar stations across the Arctic, monitors approach to North American airspace.

Climate change is reshaping the Arctic faster than any other region of Canada. Sea ice extent has declined by about 13 per cent per decade since 1979, opening the Northwest Passage to commercial shipping for parts of the year. The Arctic Council, established in Ottawa in 1996 with eight Arctic states and six Indigenous permanent participants, coordinates international response.