Canada wants to build up its long-neglected Arctic. The hard question is how

The Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk highway in the Northwest Territories, Canada, on 2 March. Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images Ottawa wants to modernize a region in the north that’s about six times the size of Texas, ‘just like in the 1800s’ By Selena Ross in Ottawa Picture an Arctic territory, marginalized by its own country, almost entirely lacking roads, ports and power sources, but rich in mining potential and suddenly feeling vulnerable to outside threats. It’s not Greenland ; it’s the Canadian Arctic. After decades of underinvestment, Ottawa is now turning its attention to the country’s north amid an outbreak of nationalism and new spending, in reaction to provocations by the Trump administration. In June, the government of newly elected prime minister, Mark Carney, passed a “nation-building” bill meant to cushion the effects of Donald Trump’s tariffs by drumming up jobs and investment with fast-tracked construction projects. “We can give ourselves far more than any foreign government can take away,” he said. The plan includes the most literal kind of nation-building: roads, rails and other transport corridors. “The hope is that [the Arctic territories] will be brought into Canada … just like in the 1800s, when the federal government decided to build a railway from eastern Canada all the way to British Columbia that opened up trade and commerce,” said Natan Obed, who speaks on behalf of Canadian Inuit as head of the organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. As always in the Canadian Arctic, however, the hard part is knowing how to build strategically. The region is about six times the size of Texas , yet is home to only about 150,000 people. The trick is to pick projects that serve many purposes at once, though northern leaders are often skeptical that southerners will plan properly around their needs. On Thursday, the government revealed that it was pushing ahead with two road projects. One is the Grays Bay route – also called the Arctic economic and security corrido...