The importance of the Arctic is increasing, both for Canada and for our allies. That means it's critical to better understanding it.

While Canadians sense that the Arctic is part of their identity, few are deeply familiar with the region — its environment, its vastness, its diversity, or its challenges.

In that context, understanding the Russian Arctic — which is very different from the Canadian Arctic — is particularly important, given Russia's role as a destabilizing geopolitical actor and NATO’s principal adversary.

To unpack this, MLI Senior Fellow Alex Dalziel joins Inside Policy Talks. Dalziel is an Arctic expert who spent 20 years working in Canada’s national security, intelligence, and foreign policy communities. Dalziel has recently published two papers with MLI regarding Russia's approach to the Arctic: Polar Power: The Northern Sea Route in Russia’s strategic calculus and Frozen Assets: Russia’s ambitions to exploit the Arctic Ocean seabed. Three more papers in the series will follow later this year.

On the podcast, Dalziel tells Christopher Coates, director of foreign policy, national defence, and national security at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that Russia is trying to set itself up "to be the gateway to the arctic," and that Canada must view Russia as its primary challenge in the region.