Canadian military preps for massive Arctic exercise

Commander hopes for cooperation from Alaskans for Mackenzie event

Associated Press

Canada’s military is planning a massive Arctic exercise to prepare for a possible environmental disaster in the booming energy fields of the Mackenzie Delta.

“We need to go and carry out some exercise on contingencies in that area because it’s going to be a very active area in the next 20 years or so,” said Col. Norman Couturier, commander of the Canadian Forces Northern Area, referring to plans to build a natural gas pipeline from the Mackenzie Delta south and the exploration and development such a pipeline would engender.

“It’s not a question of if there’s going to be a contingency in the North — it’s when,” said the commander, despite the fact there has never been a major environmental disaster in Alaska’s nearby North Slope and Beaufort Sea oil fields, an area that has been producing huge quantities of oil since the late 1970s.

The military must be ready to respond to any industrial or shipping accident, says Couturier, since the territorial government does not have the resources to do so.

Any pipeline, as well as its attendant facilities, might also be a target for attack, he said.

Couturier is conducting a general review of the military’s northern preparedness and is also planning a huge Inuvik-based exercise for 2006 involving the navy, the air force and army.

Civilian agencies such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Coast Guard, which participated in military exercises last summer off Baffin Island, would be involved. Couturier hopes to bring in Parks Canada, Environment Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He also hopes for some cooperation from Alaska-based Americans, which would make it the broadest-based exercise ever staged in the Arctic.

“(I want) everybody involved in this exercise,” Couturier said. “We know there will be some (contingencies), now that we have more activities in the North.”

Those activities include increased tourism. The North’s commodities, from base metals to natural gas to diamonds, are drawing more industry to the tundra.

The exercise will address one of the recommendations in the 2000 Arctic Capability Report, which singled out a lack of contingency planning.

“During the 1970s . . . our winter equipment was virtually guaranteed to work,” it said. “This is not necessarily the case today.”

Couturier, who began his two-year northern posting this past summer, has commissioned a study into how well the report has been implemented and what still needs to be done.

National Defence Minister Bill Graham said in Yellowknife in mid-November that the review of Canada’s national defense policy expected before Christmas will have a northern component. But Couturier said his report won’t wait for Graham’s report to make it through Parliament.