Far North Fiber— the planned trans-Arctic undersea cable running from Japan to Europe via Alaska, Canada’s Arctic Ocean, the Northwest Passage, and Greenland— would redraw the global topography of data flows. The prize is self-evident; so are the means of putting it at risk. In the seabed era, those risks fall into three overlapping categories: hostile intent by rival states and their proxies; opportunism by criminal actors; and the intractable math of accidents, including anchor drags, fishing gear, and general maritime clutter.
Each of these can be weaponized under the banner of maritime hybrid warfare: low-signature, deniable disruption of maritime infrastructure that never rises to the level of a textbook military response. Recent experience brings the pattern into focus. In the Red Sea, multiple cables were cut amid conflict and heavy traffic, degrading service until re-routes and repairs could catch up. In the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland, oil and telecom lines were struck and dragged; investigations sprawled across jurisdictions, and courts grappled with the limits of coastal-state authority. None of it looked like a clean deterrence story; all of it had the earmarks of maritime hybrid warfare: a sub-kinetic assault that clouded accident and intent and leveraged legal gray areas. That is exactly the kind of attack Canada must be ready to deter or defeat as Far North Fibre—and the follow-on systems it enables—come online.
Against that background, the argument here is for a restraint-based approach to undersea cable security in Canada’s tri-theatre North (the North Pacific, Arctic, and North Atlantic). The military has a defined, credible role—domain awareness, unobtrusive escorts, tailored overwatch, and specific preventive tasks—but does not drive the response. Built on interlocking tasks—prevention, detection, response and repair, and deterrence—the approach is led by civilian authorities with Indigenous co-management, and military leadership playing a supporting role. The aim is deliberately unglamorous: it keeps the network open and secure by making disruption unprofitable, militarization unlikely, and escalation unnecessary.
Any credible strategy starts with architecture. Cable security works when it is treated as a whole-of-cycle system in which prevention, detection and response, and repair are designed, exercised, and measured together. Patchwork fixes are false economies; delay in one stage cascades through the rest. A second anchoring principle is a risk-based, outcome-driven posture that prioritizes continuity of service and time-to-repair over public announcements. The third is genuine public–private–ally co-production: operators, regulators, ports, allies, and insurers hold different pieces of the risk puzzle and must plan, share data, stockpile, and drill together. The fourth is proportionate transparency—routine, standardized advisories that mariners and markets can act on, without divulging details that give adversaries an edge. The fifth is assured, streamlined access: a single permitting window with hard clocks for construction, maintenance, and emergency repair paired with funded spares and guaranteed repair lift, so bureaucracy never becomes a threat vector.
Three Canada-specific principles determine whether those general rules can actually translate north of the tree line. Civilian governance must lead on ordinary days: planning, permits, incident reporting, and market communications should reside with civil authorities, while defence provides cues, presence, and protection as required. Indigenous co-management must be baked in from inception, not layered on later—co-design agreements that lock in benefit-sharing, training pathways, environmental monitoring roles, and shared authority over landings and maintenance plans are the difference between smooth operations and chronic friction. Arctic constraints—ice regimes, long transit times, limited port capacity, and scarce ice-capable lift—must be treated as design inputs, not afterthoughts; they should shape routing, stockpiles, corridors, and exercise design from the start.
The cheapest day to buy down risk is the day you draw the route, not the day you book a repair ship. For Canada, prevention begins with routing and siting standards written for northern realities. Those standards should internalize sea-ice dynamics and multi-year floe tracks; map seabed hazards, fishing effort, anchorage patterns, and shipping lanes; respect ecological constraints and culturally sensitive areas; and anticipate future maintenance access. Redundant branching units should be placed where reroutes are physically viable and geopolitically sensible. Standards are not decorative. They are a blueprint for fewer faults and faster fixes.
Hardening belongs in prevention, too. At sea, that means burial to appropriate depth in high-risk corridors; rock armour or protective mattresses at known abrasion points; intelligent selection of armoring and sheathing based on ice scouring and trawl intensity; and tamper-evident components at landing approaches. Ashore, it means secured, monitored beach manholes; resilient power and backhaul; and landing-station designs that compartmentalize failure. None of this turns a passive cable into a warship; all of it raises the cost and lowers the payoff of hybrid interference and opportunistic crime.
Administrative plumbing has to match that discipline. A single online window with real clocks for construction, maintenance, and emergency repair—staffed by a coordinator empowered to move files across agencies—replaces roulette with predictability. Where geography permits, pre-designated “repair corridors” (routes, anchorages, and harbours of refuge) should be mapped in advance, with terms that permit work inside narrow weather windows without last-minute exemption hunts. “Fast-track” is not a synonym for “shortcut.” It means timed, public, and enforceable.
Prevention also depends on legitimacy that travels with the project. Co-design agreements with Indigenous governments should set benefit-sharing, training pipelines, environmental monitoring roles, and governance seats with real authority over landing sites and maintenance plans. In Arctic logistics, legitimacy is not a press kit. It is why gates open, work windows align with local realities, and crews can move when time is tight. Properly done, co-management reduces friction when the weather finally cooperates—and every hour counts.
The military’s role in prevention should be modest but meaningful. The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) can shape safe-use norms along cable corridors through seasonal presence that is deliberately not theatrical—chart verification runs, buoy and hazard checks near landing approaches, and coordination with the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) on navigational warnings that keep anchors and heavy gear off fragile spans. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) can contribute pre-season route reconnaissance—fixed-wing maritime patrol and rotary-wing sorties that update ice, drift, and surface hazard pictures for civilian authorities and operators. The Canadian Rangers, embedded in northern communities, can support shoreline surveillance of landing approaches and report abnormal activity around coastal infrastructure using simple, standardized protocols. None of this is saber rattling. It is routine seamanship and air-maritime support that hardens targets under the logic of restraint.
Taken together, these measures change the risk profile at the front end. Early, standards-driven routing reduces the likelihood and severity of incidents. Physical hardening raises the technical bar for tampering and lowers accidental damage in crowded or icy waters. Single-window permits and pre-cleared corridors take days off a future repair timeline. Co-management locks legitimacy where it counts—at landing sites and along maintenance routes—lowering the odds of local friction during narrow weather windows. Routine advisories shrink the rumor space in which opportunists thrive, while incentive-aligned compliance makes best practice the cheapest option and raises the floor on operator behavior.
If prevention reduces likelihood, detection reduces the uncertainty that causes delay—and hybrid maritime warfare thrives on uncertainty. That is where defence support comes in: by allowing the civilians who run the system to see anomalies clearly and on time. In the modernization suite, this means sensor investments that translate directly into cues for civil action. Canada’s proposed long-range sensor suite—especially the Arctic over-the-horizon radar now in development—will extend the fringes of early warning deep into the Northern Approaches. Those cues need to flow directly to civil authorities, and should be fused with AIS anomalies, anchor-drag signatures, fishing-effort heat maps, seabed sensor alerts, and, when appropriate, aerial or satellite observations. The aim is not to chase shadows; it is to spot and classify actionable anomalies quickly and to cue appropriate actions early.
A shared operational picture only works if it is paired with shared thresholds. Operators, mariners, provinces and territories, and federal coordinators should work from the same playbook: how normal signatures are interpreted; when a notification becomes a warning; which datasets must accompany each elevation in priority; and who owns the next action at each step. That discipline would collapse the interval between anomaly and mobilization and would compress the rumor window. It would also ensure that civilian voices remain the most authoritative in an incident—a quiet but important way to keep technical data out of partisan weather.
Defence support to detection should be scaled and service oriented. The RCAF’s incoming P-8A fleet should not be tasked to loiter theatrically over branching units but to surge if indicators warrant, verify anomalies, and hand off clear, time-stamped observations to civilian authorities. The RCN’s Arctic and Offshore Patrol Vessels (AOPS) can contribute to the detection picture during their routine patrols by recording seabed disturbance markers along and around critical corridors, then validating reported hazards and feeding those observations through Coast Guard channels mariners trust. Rangers and local units can provide time-sensitive shoreline reporting around landing approaches—suspicious vessel behaviour, unregistered work near beach manholes—without militarizing communities as surveillance outposts. The principle is simple: surveillance as a service, not a spectacle.
Handled this way, the early-warning system becomes more than a dashboard. A shared, fused operational picture lowers false positives and accelerates real ones, turning minutes of confusion into minutes of action. Civilian-led and -driven dissemination keeps technical data out of theatrical politics and in the hands of people who can use it. Clear thresholds, paired with clearly assigned next steps, reduce decision friction on bad days, compress the time from anomaly to mobilization, and shrink the space in which misattribution and speculation can take hold.
Restoration tempo is the centre of gravity in undersea cable security. Hybrid sea denial depends on the asymmetry between a quick cut and a slow fix; the answer is a pre-positioned and mobilized logistics machine that converts detection into a clean splice inside a narrow weather window. Canada should seed an Arctic Cable Resilience Fund with industry and allies to pre-position repeaters, branching units, and spare fibre along critical corridors, and to keep ice-capable repair lift on retainer. These are not accounting entries. They are pallets and contracts that shave days off the only clock that counts. Stockpiles should be paired with modular “repair kits”—connectors, test gear, protective sleeves—that can be moved inside weather windows and staged where the work will actually occur, not where inventory is convenient.
On bad days, paperwork is more likely to fail than ships. Cross-border mobility will need to be cleared before the storm. Repair-safe-passage arrangements with circumpolar partners—covering crews, vessels, components, and specialized tools—should be pre-agreed with customs and immigration fast lanes for personnel and kit moving under an incident designation. A simple, public flowchart should make clear how an alert becomes a mobilization, which authorities green-light which steps, and how each step is documented. It is unglamorous plumbing, but it is the difference between acting within a weather window and watching it close.
Drills turn plumbing into muscle memory. Canada should run civilian-led repair exercises on a predictable cadence that tests notification chains, traffic deconfliction, escort choreography, cold-weather workups, and market-facing advisories. After every drill—as after every real incident—the country should publish the scoreboard: time-to-repair by corridor and season; corridor-compliance rates; safety incidents and corrective actions. Markets will price performance; crews will refine checklists; officials will fix bottlenecks. Rumor will have less oxygen because professionals will have timelines they trust.
Defence support to response must be practical and pre-planned. The RCN’s AOPS can provide low-signature escorts that hold a safe lane around repair vessels, enforce temporary exclusion zones promulgated by the CCG, and deter interference without inviting counter-posturing. The RCAF can extend the safety bubble with targeted overwatch during elevated-risk windows, cueing surface assets and documenting unsafe approaches. The Canadian Army’s logistics units and the Rangers can assist with shore-side handling: moving heavy spares, staging work areas near remote landing sites, and supporting temporary security perimeters under civil authority. None of this turns a repair into a joint operation; it ensures that when civilians move, help is immediate, proportionate, and boring in the best sense of the word.
In aggregate, this pillar pays dividends at once. Stockpiles and assured lift compress the logistics curve. Pre-approved corridors eliminate bureaucratic dead time. Drills lower on-scene error rates and raise confidence. Scaled escorts shrink interference risk without prompting signalling games. The net effect is fewer and shorter outages, calmer markets, and fewer excuses for escalation.
Deterrence closes the loop by collapsing the expected return on disruption. In the seabed era, it is less a parade than a math problem: when restoration is fast and predictable, enthusiasm for cut wires fades. The way to signal that fact is to publish performance (time-to-repair by corridor and season) along with corridor-compliance and safety metrics that show speed is not being bought with sloppiness. When would-be spoilers and opportunists see that a cut buys only a short-lived inconvenience, leverage evaporates and capital prices routes accordingly.
Law buttresses deterrence without theatrics. With Arctic partners, Canada should codify minimum data-sharing for suspected tampering, standardized incident forensics, evidence thresholds for attribution, and fast-track recognition of repair transits even when politics are sour. The point is not to draft a grand charter; it is to close the specific gaps that appear when ice, distance, and international boundaries intersect. Jurisdictional fog corrodes accountability; the antidote is boring law and repeated habit, not louder threats.
A modest but meaningful military backstop completes the design. Domain awareness should cue civilian action; escorts and overwatch should appear only when needed and disappear as soon as the splice holds; and tailored tasking (rather than standing shows of force) should be the norm when indicators spike. On the margins, visible rehearsal matters: periodic, low-key presence with allies during repair drills signals that Canada can protect work windows without turning them into performances. Hybrid sea denial thrives on ambiguity; what withers it is the quiet certainty that repairs happen quickly and safely, under rules everyone understands.
Skeptics will ask whether Canada can execute this calmly ambitious model. The answer is yes, because most of the required plumbing already exists. The Canadian Coast Guard runs practical, plain-language channels—NAVWARN, NOTMAR, and an e-Navigation portal—that can carry cable advisories without fuss. NORAD modernization is adding the sensor reach to cue civil action quietly and early. The fleet mix (AOPS today and P-8A tomorrow) can widen safety bubbles when needed and vanish when not. The Rangers and northern units provide an irreplaceable human mesh where sensors are sparse. The missing elements are mostly administrative: single-window permits with real clocks; repair corridors mapped and recognized across borders; stockpiles and lift on retainer; and drills that turn coordination into muscle memory. Tie those operational steps to a disciplined reporting regime and a handful of crisp legal understandings, and the Northern Approaches become bankably predictable.
There is a deeper logic here that suits our political culture. The history of cable disruptions suggests deterrence by visible presence is a poor fit for a domain where accidents, anchor drags, and opportunistic vandalism dominate the noise and where malign acts can hide in commercial clutter. Deterrence by resilience, on the other hand, makes sense to allies, markets, and northern communities. It is humble, measurable, restrained, and compatible with the rhythm of Arctic life.
It keeps civilian governance at the centre of the story, which is how legitimacy is preserved when maintenance windows are narrow and tempers can run hot. And it gives the military a role that is both real and restrained—support that matters in practice without inviting escalation in theory.
Securing Far North Fiber, and the northern systems that may follow, does not require Canada to reinvent itself. It requires the country to act like what it is at its best: a North Pacific, Arctic, and North Atlantic power that keeps the commons open with rules, competence, and quiet confidence. The framework is straightforward: prevent, detect, respond and repair, and deter.
The Canadian accent is what makes it credible: civil leadership on ordinary days, Indigenous co-management baked in at inception, Arctic constraints treated as design inputs, and a military backstop present enough to matter and quiet enough not to provoke. Build that system and publish the scoreboard (time-to-repair, corridor-compliance, safety performance), and investors will notice, allies will notice, and northern communities will notice most of all. The trans-Arctic build-out will not decide the global balance of power. It will decide whether essential systems can be kept out of the escalation trap. Design for calm and measure what matters, and the Northern Approaches will stay what they should be: boring, reliable, and profitable. The strength that matters up here is not the noise you make, but the stability you build.
Author
The Western powers have failed to effectively manage the increasing threat of proliferation in the Middle East. While the international community is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia has moved forward with developing its own nuclear program, and independent studies show that Israel has longed possessed dozens of nuclear warheads. The former is a member of the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while the latter has refused to sign the international agreement.
On Middle East policy, the Biden campaign had staunchly criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal and it has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier since assuming office in January 2021. However, serious obstacles remain for responsible actors in expanding non-proliferation efforts toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
This panel will discuss how Western powers and multilateral institutions, such as the IAEA, can play a more effective role in managing non-proliferation efforts in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Peggy Mason: Canada’s former Ambassador to the UN for Disarmament
– Mark Fitzpatrick: Associate Fellow & Former Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
– Ali Vaez: Iran Project Director, International Crisis Group
– Negar Mortazavi: Journalist and Political Analyst, Host of Iran Podcast
– David Albright: Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security
Closing (5:45 PM – 6:00 PM ET)
What is the current economic landscape in the Middle East? While global foreign direct investment is expected to fall drastically in the post-COVID era, the World Bank reported a 5% contraction in the economic output of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in 2020 due to the pandemic. While oil prices are expected to rebound with normalization in demand, political instability, regional and geopolitical tensions, domestic corruption, and a volatile regulatory and legal environment all threaten economic recovery in the Middle East. What is the prospect for economic growth and development in the region post-pandemic, and how could MENA nations promote sustainable growth and regional trade moving forward?
At the same time, Middle Eastern diaspora communities have become financially successful and can help promote trade between North America and the region. In this respect, the diaspora can become vital intermediaries for advancing U.S. and Canada’s business interests abroad. Promoting business diplomacy can both benefit the MENA region and be an effective and positive way to advance engagement and achieve foreign policy goals of the North Atlantic.
This panel will investigate the trade and investment opportunities in the Middle East, discuss how facilitating economic engagement with the region can benefit Canadian and American national interests, and explore relevant policy prescriptions.
Panelists:
– Hon. Sergio Marchi: Canada’s Former Minister of International Trade
– Scott Jolliffe: Chairperson, Canada Arab Business Council
– Esfandyar Batmanghelidj: Founder and Publisher of Bourse & Bazaar
– Nizar Ghanem: Director of Research and Co-founder at Triangle
– Nicki Siamaki: Researcher at Control Risks
The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Fueled by government incompetence and foreign interventions, terrorist insurgencies have imposed severe humanitarian and economic costs on the region. Meanwhile, regional actors have engaged in an unprecedented pursuit of arms accumulation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have imported billions of both Western and Russian-made weapons and funded militant groups across the region, intending to contain their regional adversaries, particularly Iran. Tehran has also provided sophisticated weaponry to various militia groups across the region to strengthen its geopolitical position against Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel.
On the other hand, with international terrorist networks and intense regional rivalry in the Middle East, it is impractical to discuss peace and security without addressing terrorism and the arms race in the region. This panel will primarily discuss the implications of the ongoing arms race in the region and the role of Western powers and multilateral organizations in facilitating trust-building security arrangements among regional stakeholders to limit the proliferation of arms across the Middle East.
Panelists:
Luciano Zaccara: Assistant Professor, Qatar University
Dania Thafer: Executive Director, Gulf International Forum
Kayhan Barzegar: Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of Azad University
Barbara Slavin: Director of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council
Sanam Shantyaei: Senior Journalist at France24 & host of Middle East Matters
The emerging regional order in West Asia will have wide-ranging implications for global security. The Biden administration has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier, an initiative staunchly opposed by Israel, while also taking a harder line on Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Meanwhile, key regional actors, including Qatar, Iraq, and Oman, have engaged in backchannel efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table. From a broader geopolitical perspective, with the need to secure its energy imports, China is also expected to increase its footprint in the region and influence the mentioned challenges.
In this evolving landscape, Western powers will be compelled to redefine their strategic priorities and adjust their policies with the new realities in the region. In this panel, we will discuss how the West, including the United States and its allies, can utilize multilateral diplomacy with its adversaries to prevent military escalation in the region. Most importantly, the panel will discuss if a multilateral security dialogue in the Persian Gulf region, proposed by some regional actors, can help reduce tensions among regional foes and produce sustainable peace and development for the region.
Panelists:
– Abdullah Baabood: Academic Researcher and Former Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies, Qatar University
– Trita Parsi: Executive Vice-President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
– Ebtesam Al-Ketbi: President, Emirates Policy Centre
– Jon Allen: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Israel
– Elizabeth Hagedorn: Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor
Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.
While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy. and more specifically, how Canada can utilize its policy instruments to more effectively deal with the increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East.
Panelists:
Erica Di Ruggiero: Director of Centre for Global Health, University of Toronto
Reyhana Patel: Head of Communications & Government Relations, Islamic Relief Canada
Amir Barmaki: Former Head of UN OCHA in Iran
Catherine Gribbin: Senior Legal Advisor for International and Humanitarian Law, Canadian Red Cross
In 2016, Canada launched an ambitious five-year “Middle East Engagement Strategy” (2016-2021), committing to investing CA$3.5 billion over five years to help establish the necessary conditions for security and stability, alleviate human suffering and enable stabilization programs in the region. In the latest development, during the meeting of the Global Coalition against ISIS, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau announced more than $43.6 million in Peace and Stabilization Operations Program funding for 11 projects in Syria and Iraq.
With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years. More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Ferry de Kerckhove: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Egypt
– Dennis Horak: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
– Chris Kilford: Former Canadian Defence Attaché in Turkey, member of the national board of the Canadian International Council (CIC)
– David Dewitt: University Professor Emeritus, York University
While the United States continues to pull back from certain regional conflicts, reflected by the Biden administration’s decision to halt American backing for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen and the expected withdrawal from Afghanistan, US troops continue to be stationed across the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China have significantly maintained and even expanded their regional activities. On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran.
As the global power structure continues to shift, it is essential to analyze the future of the US regional presence under the Biden administration, explore the emerging global rivalry with Russia and China, and at last, investigate the implications of such competition for peace and security in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Dmitri Trenin: Director of Carnegie Moscow Center
– Joost R. Hiltermann: Director of MENA Programme, International Crisis Group
– Roxane Farmanfarmaian: Affiliated Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa, University of Cambridge
– Andrew A. Michta: Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at Marshall Center
– Kelley Vlahos: Senior Advisor, Quincy Institute
The security architecture of the Middle East has undergone rapid transformations in an exceptionally short period. Notable developments include the United States gradual withdrawal from the region, rapprochement between Israel and some GCC states through the Abraham Accords and the rise of Chinese and Russian regional engagement.
With these new trends in the Middle East, it is timely to investigate the security implications of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In this respect, we will discuss the Biden team’s new approach vis-à-vis Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The panel will also discuss the role of other major powers, including China and Russia in shaping this new security environment in the region, and how the Biden administration will respond to these powers’ increasing regional presence.
Panelists:
– Sanam Vakil: Deputy Director of MENA Programme at Chatham House
– Denise Natali: Acting Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies & Director of the Center for Strategic Research, National Defense University
– Hassan Ahmadian: Professor of the Middle East and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran
– Abdulaziz Sagar: Chairman, Gulf Research Center
– Andrew Parasiliti: President, Al-Monitor
