Canada’s Arctic defence conversation routinely elevates sensors, bandwidth, and posture. The OPSA analysis reported by Eye on the Arctic pulls the frame down to the ground: in Inuit Nunangat, the binding constraint on response capacity is still the runway.
OPSA’s figures are not a rhetorical flourish. The analysis flags that only 13% of airstrips across Inuit Nunangat can accommodate a C-17 Globemaster and 48% can handle Hercules aircraft. It also warns those percentages could shrink as thaw destabilizes runway surfaces. Put plainly: if the strip can’t carry the aircraft, northern response becomes an aspiration rather than a capability.
This matters because it turns a broad readiness debate into a decision surface Ottawa can actually manage. The question is no longer “Are we investing in the North?” It becomes “What runway performance is required for the response scenarios we claim we can meet—and are we getting it?”
Why airstrips are the readiness gate
In Inuit Nunangat, airports do not sit beside the transportation system. They are the transportation system. They move food and freight, enable medevacs, and connect communities when other routes are seasonal, weather-dependent, or absent. That dual role is exactly why OPSA’s runway emphasis is operationally credible: what keeps people supplied and safe is also what makes deployments feasible.
Climate pressure collapses the distinction between “infrastructure” and “readiness.” A runway can look fine on a map and still fail in the seasons that matter most—when shoulder-season conditions are least forgiving, when surface stability is uncertain, and when maintenance access is slow. Readiness is not just about having an airfield; it is about having an airfield that stays usable, predictably, under stress.
The real tension here is heavy-lift access versus reliable service for smaller community airstrips.
Ottawa’s opening: a dual-use fund with the right logic
Ottawa has already created a policy channel that can carry a runway-first approach without forcing an unhelpful civil-versus-defence argument. The $1 billion Arctic Infrastructure Fund (over four years) is explicitly designed to support dual-use transportation projects, including airports, tying community access to defence readiness. That is the right logic: in the Arctic, the same physical nodes enable human security and operational mobility.
But a fund is not a strategy. A dual-use program can still become a list of worthy projects if Ottawa does not define what capacity looks like and how it will be measured. In the North, that is how money turns into construction activity without turning into deployable readiness.
What Ottawa should stop pretending
First, aircraft-access standards are not a detail to be addressed later. OPSA’s numbers show that heavy-lift access is not a default attribute of the operating environment. If Ottawa believes certain scenarios require C-17 or Hercules-class access, it must state where that requirement applies and invest accordingly.
Second, not every airstrip needs to be a heavy-lift hub—and pretending otherwise is how you create the very inequity critics fear. The North needs two outcomes at the same time: declared heavy-lift nodes where Ottawa says they are essential, and widespread reliability improvements for smaller strips that keep communities connected and responders mobile.
Third, a runway that reopens quickly after damage may matter more than one that merely meets a higher spec on paper. Time-to-recovery is part of readiness. In a region where spares, contractors, and weather windows are all constraints, recovery performance is a capability, not a maintenance footnote.
The counterargument Ottawa will face
The most credible critique of a runway-first posture is hub bias: that focusing on large-aircraft access will concentrate investment in a small number of airports, leaving smaller communities with limited near-term benefit. That risk is real, and it can quietly undermine legitimacy—especially when airports are essential community infrastructure.
The response is not to avoid prioritization. It is to make prioritization transparent, and to measure improvements in both tracks. Dual-use must be demonstrated as dual benefit, not dual branding.
The decision lever: a Northern Runway Availability Index
Ottawa should publish a Northern Runway Availability Index and tie Arctic Infrastructure Fund airport support to measurable improvement. The index should be simple enough to be audited and understood, and specific enough to prevent “readiness” from becoming a label applied after the fact.
A decision-useful index can focus on three measurable elements:
— Aircraft-access readiness: the share of designated priority airstrips meeting declared standards for the aircraft Ottawa says it needs in-region (Hercules-class where that is the requirement; C-17 access only where Ottawa explicitly says it is essential).
— Seasonal operability: availability by season, including shoulder seasons, against a defined threshold.
— Time-to-recovery: the time required to restore service after common failure modes (settlement, flooding, surface damage), measured and reported.
Then Ottawa should set a target: by FY 2028, improve measured availability for the runways that anchor northern response—and report progress consistently. If a project does not move the index, it should not be presented as readiness.
Just as importantly, the index can be structured to reduce hub bias. Ottawa can report outcomes in two categories—heavy-lift nodes and community-reliability strips—so it is visible whether dual-use spending is improving surge capacity and everyday access at the same time.
What to watch
- Selection criteria: Whether the Arctic Infrastructure Fund publishes airport criteria tied to runway performance (availability, seasonality, recovery) rather than generic eligibility.
- Declared standards: Whether Ottawa states where C-17 access is required, where Hercules-class access is sufficient, and where reliability for smaller aircraft is the operational objective.
- Sustainment realism: Whether funded runway projects include recovery targets and maintainability planning, not just construction scope.
- Distribution of gains: Whether reported improvements show benefits for smaller community airstrips alongside any heavy-lift upgrades.
OPSA’s point is not that Canada can rebuild everything at once. It is that northern response capacity is being gated by physical infrastructure that climate stress will continue to test. Ottawa now has a dual-use funding vehicle that aligns community access with defence readiness. The missing ingredient is accountability: a metric that forces tradeoffs into the open and rewards measurable reliability.
The single most important lever is the Northern Runway Availability Index tied to FY 2028 targets. If Ottawa does not pull it, Canada risks spending into Arctic defence ambition while the practical ability to land, supply, and sustain operations in Inuit Nunangat quietly erodes.
