Canada’s opposition chief says he will slash foreign aid to build Arctic military base

Pierre Poilievre, noting Pentagon had warned of potential Russian action in Arctic, also said he would double number of rangers to 4,000

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Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative party. Photo: Reuters

Published: 1:48am, 11 Feb 2025

The head of Canada’s official opposition party, on track to win an election in the coming months, said on Monday he would slash foreign aid to help build a base in the Arctic and boost regional security.

US President Donald Trump, who is threatening to impose tariffs on Canada, often complains Ottawa does not spend enough on defence. Canada only has a handful of military bases and 2,000 local Inuit rangers to watch over a vast deserted frozen landscape that covers more than 4.4 million square km (2.73 million square miles).

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, noting the Pentagon had warned of potential Russian action in the Arctic, said he would build at least one new military base, double the number of rangers to 4,000 and buy two more polar icebreakers.

“All of these improvements will be funded by dramatically cutting foreign aid, a lot of which goes to dictators, terrorists and global bureaucracies,” he told reporters in Iqaluit, capital of the Nunavut Arctic territory.

“I will be bringing our money home with massive cuts to these wasteful and corrupt foreign aid grants,” he added, but did not give details.

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), shutting down life-saving programmes across the globe. In the 2023 financial year, the United States disbursed, partly via USAID, US$72 billion of aid.