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OTTAWA — NATO launched its promised new initiative in the Arctic on Wednesday, and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Canada wants the operation made permanent.
“We’re seeing Operation Arctic Sentry taking shape within the NATO context. We would like to see that initiative be permanent,” Anand told the Arctic360 Conference in Toronto on Wednesday.
Arctic Sentry is NATO’s newest military effort and is aimed at shoring up security in the region. It comes a month after U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his threats to annex Greenland.
At the outset, Arctic Sentry will encompass various military exercises already being fielded by NATO nations, such as Norway’s Cold Response drills and Denmark’s Arctic Endurance exercises.
In January, Trump threatened to tariff countries opposed to the U.S. acquiring Greenland, but walked that idea days later after meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and saying they had developed the framework of a deal for Greenland.
The details of that framework are still unknown.
Trump has eye Greenland for its mineral wealth while claiming that Chinese and Russian vessels are circling the territory, despite experts saying this activity is instead concentrated around Alaska. Anand said Wednesday she is concerned about Russia’s buildup of “dual-use infrastructure” in the Arctic.
Arctic Sentry itself is not a distinct military operation and does not involve the permanent or long-term deployment of troops. NATO press releases do not refer to the initiative as a mission or an operation, but rather as “a multi-domain military activity.”
The alliance says the initiative is “providing NATO planners with full visibility of allies’ national activities across the region, allowing NATO to consolidate these actions into one coherent, overarching operational approach.”
“For the first time now, we will bring everything we do in the Arctic together under one command,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels. He said it would help the alliance to “assess which (security) gaps there are which we have to fill.”
Anand has said she has pushed for years for NATO to pay more attention to Arctic security and has raised the issued with Rutte.
“We’ve exported our defence to Europe. It is the moment in time where NATO … must look north and not only east,” she said Wednesday.
“I am pushing NATO allies and the secretary-general to see this as a collective effort, not only an individual effort.”
But Trump’s push to acquire Greenland from Denmark has ramped up tensions within the alliance. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said a forced American takeover of Greenland would mean the end of NATO.
Canada last week opened a consulate in Greenland’s capital Nuuk. The new consulate was planned before Trump’s return to the White House but has since become a show of solidarity with Denmark.
Anand added that climate change is a security concern across the north and was a prominent part of her discussions in Nuuk.
“The environmental degradation as well as the geopolitical environment are coming to a head in Greenland and certainly in the Arctic at large,” she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 11, 2026.
— With files from Kyle Duggan and The Associated Press.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
