Who Owns the Arctic?

Aboriginal consultations delay tender on key Arctic radar chain

 

Map of the North Warning System. Photograph by: Postmedia News, Canadian Military Journal/Department of Defence

BY ANDREW MAYEDA, POSTMEDIA NEWS JANUARY 13, 2011

OTTAWA — The Harper government has put on hold its search for bidders to operate and maintain the chain of early-warning radars that guards against foreign incursions into Canadian and U.S. airspace in the Far North, Postmedia News has learned.

The North Warning System, a chain of 47 unmanned radars that lines the Arctic coast from Alaska to Labrador, is operated and maintained by Nasittuq Corp. under a 10-year, $624-million contract that ends Sept. 30 this year.

Northwest Passage surveillance study halted

CBC News, Friday, July 24, 2009

The federal government has paused a four-year pilot project to test High Arctic surveillance technology at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, CBC News has learned.

As part of the Northern Watch program, scientists from Defence Research and Development Canada began installing underwater listening devices and land-based sensors on Devon Island in the summer of 2008.

If successful, the tested technology would help Canada detect ships and submarines passing through the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage.

Contacted by CBC News, a National Defence spokesperson would only say the Northern Watch program is taking a hiatus this summer as researchers want to evaluate data the devices have collected already.

They will then decide what to do with the program, the spokesperson added.

Audit blasts $583M Arctic cleanup cost, lax controls

Canadian Press, December 22, 2008

OTTAWA — The cost of cleaning up 21 toxic Cold War radar stations across the North has more than doubled to $583 million amid lax controls, says a scathing audit.

Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites that dot 5,000 kilometres of Arctic tundra are being dismantled as part of one of the largest environmental restoration efforts in North America.

Of prime concern are polychlorinated biphenyls - persistent pollutants once widely used in everything from transformers and electrical equipment to paint. PCBs have been effectively banned from commercial use since research in the 1970s suggested links to cancer.