Canada’s Arctic is emerging as a potential flash point between the country and the U.S. Residents in the North say that the superpower is now their highest concern, according to recent polling, and Prime Minister Mark Carney's newly released fall budget has earmarked millions to address security in Canada's North.

The government has committed $81.8 billion over five years on the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), with a focus on protecting Canada’s sovereignty. The funding will be used to rebuild, rearm and reinvest in the CAF, with $76 million planned specifically for the Northern territories.

“Through these investments, we are giving our Canadian Armed Forces the tools they need to defend every square foot of our sovereign territory, from the seafloor to the Arctic to cities to cyberspace, and to protect Canadians from present and emerging threats,” the budget states.

Earlier this year, the Observatoire de la politique et de la sécurité de l'Arctique (OPSA) polled 608 residents living in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, asking them what they perceive the greatest threat to be to Canada’s North. Thirty-seven per cent said the United States, followed by Russia at 35 per cent, then China at 17 per cent. Eighty-five per cent said Canada must use its Arctic sovereignty or it will lose the territory, 62 per cent said Canada “should pursue a firm line in defending its sections of the Arctic,” while 26 per cent preferred a diplomatic approach to border or resource disputes.

The findings come as University of Toronto political professor Franklyn Griffiths wrote in The Globe and Mail that U.S. President Donald Trump could use the Arctic as an opening move to annex Canada by sending warships through the region without Canada’s permission.

The U.S. must first get consent from Canada before travelling through the Northwest Passage as agreed upon in 1988 after the U.S. sent a ship through the waterway in 1985 without permission, causing a flare-up. The U.S. has already made clear that it wants the passage to be international waters and not require Canada’s permission to travel in it in 2019 when then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Canada’s claim to the route “illegitimate.”

University of Calgary political science professor and arctic expert Rob Huebert told Yahoo Canada that if the U.S. did not ask permission to go through the passageway, it would be a “very real sovereignty threat to Canada.” He said that Griffiths is right to be worried about such a possibility, but disagrees that the U.S. would send a warship as a show of strength, as it is very vulnerable to damage from Arctic ice. Instead, Huebert thinks it may be one of their two icebreakers.

“They would have to do a lot of planning (if they send a ship),” he said, noting that the icebreakers are in high demand. “It would have to be very much a political decision at the highest level because the American Coast Guard has better things to do with its time, quite frankly.”

Expert says move from U.S. would be 'totally irrational'

Huebert said, though, that the U.S. sending a ship through Canada’s Arctic would be “totally irrational” because it would open the door for Russia and China to use the passage as well if it were declared international waters.

Pierre Leblanc, the principal of Arctic Security Consultants and former commander of a joint task force in the North, told Yahoo Canada that right of passage through the Northwest Passage would allow not just ships to use it but submarines and aircraft, as well.

“Soviet bombers could actually transit the northern part of Canada by flying over the Northwest Passage,” he said. “One of the issues would naturally be bombers firing hypersonic cruise missiles from a position on the Northwest Passage, with the flying time to the [U.S.] being now much shorter than if they were fired from well above the northern part of Canada.”

Even though the U.S. travelling through the passage without consent doesn’t make sense for the country strategically, Leblanc notes that the country so far in Trump’s second presidential term has demonstrated behaviour akin to a bully that doesn’t follow the rules. That behaviour could make a show of force in the Arctic that contravenes the current agreement more plausible than under a previous U.S. administration.

Trump has already detained suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant through ICE forces, has fired on suspected narcotics smugglers off of Venezuela without due process, and has threatened to take Greenland because "we need it. We have to have it."

Leblanc said the same disregard for norms could apply to Canada’s Arctic, which has great strategic importance to the region as a hegemony against Russia and China, and contains valuable natural resources.

Jessica Shadian, the president and CEO of the think tank Arctic360, told Yahoo Canada that it is critical minerals in the North that present opportunities for Canada to be undermined. She referenced the U.S.’s deal with Ukraine to further provide military support to the country in exchange for preferential access to its critical minerals as a sign of how the U.S. now likes to act when it comes to other countries it sees an opportunity to take advantage of.

“We should always be concerned when a country is taking and owning other countries’ critical resources,” she said. “There are many ways that Canada can be cut off by its kneecaps.”