Northern cable security is becoming a test of Canada’s Arctic readiness |
If a major undersea fibre-optic cable serving Northern Canada were disrupted tomorrow, Ottawa would face a problem it is not fully prepared to handle. The government would need to respond quickly, co-ordinate across multiple jurisdictions and communicate clearly to the public — all before it knew whether it was dealing with an accident, negligence, reckless behaviour or deliberate interference. It would also need to show allies, including NATO, that Canada can contribute credibly to a growing co-operative effort to manage undersea risk in the Arctic.
The hard part is not only protecting cables, but responding when the cause of a failure is unclear. In the Arctic, North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans, a cable outage may look the same no matter what the cause. Governments are faced with the difficult task of deciding what they can lawfully do before officials can say with confidence what has happened.
In that crucial early period, the question would be whether Canada could produce a visible and ordered response while the facts were still being determined. This has become a core requirement of security in the North.
TeleGeography and other industry trackers have long shown that undersea cables carry almost all international data traffic. They underpin financial systems, emergency services, public administration and military communications. They are also difficult to monitor, largely privately owned and vulnerable to tactics that, while disruptive, do not amount to open military aggression. This makes cable security a governance and security problem not only one of infrastructure.
Canada’s preparedness gap
Canada faces a distinct challenge and is not yet prepared. Approaches into its Arctic, North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans are vast. Monitoring is uneven. Infrastructure is sparse and often lacks backup capacity. Repair is slow and depends on a small number of........