Arctic security must be a top priority for Canada – not an afterthought

Ranj Pillai is the Premier of Yukon. Ken Coates is the director of Indigenous affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Canada's Arctic policy has long been founded on delayed and partial responses to American challenges. It started with the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897-98, when the arrival of tens of thousands of American stampeders threatened Canada's tenuous hold on the Far Northwest. It hit again in 1942, when the United States launched the construction of the Alaska Highway and other Northwest defence projects in a region almost devoid of effective Canadian governance. The pattern continued after the Second World War, as…