North.

David Alsop of Versatile
Pacific Shipyards tells me cabi-
net is still agonizing over what
kind of supership to build to
meet the challenge of American
and Soviet military build-ups in
the Arctic Basin

Although the issue has hardly
been touched in the Canadian
media, the fact is that the Are-
tic Basin is rapidly becoming a
strategic area of vital impor-
tance to the Soviet Union and
the United States.

Last’ fall, External Affairs
Minister Joe Clark acknowl-
edged that ‘Soviet submarines
are being deployed under the
Arctic ice pack.’’ He added that
the U.S. Navy in turn ‘has
identified a need to vain Arctic
Operational experience to
counter new Soviet deploy-
ments.’”"

This they did with something
of a vengeance in May this year
when three Americ in nuclear
submarines surfaced simulta-
neously at the North Pole.

Caneda may have had an [n-
uit watching with binoculars,
but that's about the limit of our
involvement in ‘tIce Wars.”’

It is ironic that the recent
voyage of the U.S. icebreaker
Polar Sea through the Nor-
thwest Passage caused a flap-
doodle in Ottawa, ye there was
hardly any comment on the fact
that nuclear-powered Trident
ballistic missile submarines were
punching through the ice under

Santa's toy factory.

What is there to say, of
course, about the Americans
doing that when over half the
Soviet submarine fleet is based
in the Arctic?

Against this background,
there is a strong political case to
be made for the building of a
$450-million Polar Class 8
icebreaker to go up and patrol
Canada’s portion of the Arctic
waters. Simply, in) terms of
sovereigniy, i1 comes doven to
lead, follow or get the hell out
of the way.

As recently as the dawn of
this decade, the Arctic region
was still viewed as being ad-
mirahly free of major interna-
tional conflicts and possibly a
site for experiments in coopera-
tion.

No longer.

Today, according to Oran R.
Young of the Center for Nor-
thern Studies, based in Wolcou,
Vermont, “the Arctic is rapidiy
decoming focus for defense and
development issues that touch
on the core interests of each of
the superpowers."°

Worse, it is Gurning into ‘tone
of the world’s most active and
important afeas of military
operations.""

Here en the West Coast we
are quite used to the idea now
of being part of the Pacifie
Rim, but Canada as a whole is
also part of the Arctic Rim. It
shares this frozen frontier with

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BELEAGUERED North Shore shipbuilders are waiting the United States, Russia,
tensely for the federal cabinet to make up its mind about
facing up to the changing military reality of the Far

Iceland and Norway and
Greenland, which is still osten-
sibly under othe control oof
Denmark.

The Arctic has always been
mildly significant from oa
Strategic point of view since the
shortest. distance between the
two superpowers is ucross the
North Pole.

Likewise, NATO) views the
gap through the Denmark Strait
and the Norwegian Sea as the
main break-out point for vessels
of the Soviet Northern Fleet
seeking tne open Atfantic, and
therefore a front Hine.

But technology is changing
ail that. The latest generation of
Soviet Typhoon-class subs as
well as the American Ohio-class
craft are designed specificatly
for Arctic conditions. They can
break through icepacks as much
as 20 feet thick to launch nu-
clear missiles, then retreat
beneath the ice where they can’t
be detected.

Nobody pretends for a mo-
ment that even a Polar Class 8
icebreaker is going to Jast for
two microseconds in a clash
with nuclear subs, but the idea
isn’t to draw a *'Line of Death”
between baffin Island and
Tuktoyaktuk. It is just to say:
“Here be Canucks.’

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