OTTAWA: Canada will soon open a consulate in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland – the world’s largest island and an autonomous dependent territory in the Kingdom of Denmark that President Donald Trump has talked about the U.S. acquiring along with Canada as the 51st state.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand told CBC News that Canada’s new diplomatic presence in Greenland is "unprecedented in terms of expanding our Arctic footprint" and that Canada is playing its "part as a significant Arctic country in a time where the geopolitical environment is volatile."
Having hosted a two-day meeting of G-7 foreign ministers earlier this week, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Anand was unavailable for an interview. However, her press secretary, Myah Tomasi, told Fox News Digital that the consulate, the building of which Canada will share with Iceland, will have a major focus on Arctic security, which both Anand and Rubio have "talked extensively" about through the lens of Canada and the U.S. as "willing partners."
Anand's initial trip to open the consulate on Thursday was canceled because of bad weather, but she is expected to visit the island soon.
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On his way to the G-7 leaders’ summit in Canada in June, French President Emmanuel Macron stopped in Greenland where he said that the Arctic island "is not to be sold, not to be taken," and addressing Greenlanders said that "when a strategic message is sent to you" – without directly mentioning President Donald Trump’s aspirations – "it’s literally perceived by the Europeans as targeting a European land."
Last December, the Canadian government – under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau – unveiled an Arctic foreign policy, which included plans to open consulates in both Nuuk and Anchorage. No date has been set for the Canadian diplomatic mission in Alaska’s largest city.
Alex Dalziel, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank where he focuses, in part, on Arctic security issues, told Fox News Digital that Canada’s decision to open the consulate in Greenland should not be construed as "a poke in the eye" of the U.S. after Trump suspended trade talks with Canada last month following an Ontario anti-tariff ad featuring former president Ronald Reagan.
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"This is Canada taking the North American Arctic more seriously and getting some of the political and diplomatic pieces in place," said Dalziel.
"Anything Canada does in the Arctic to strengthen its security has the knock-on effect of strengthening U.S. security."
Last month, Trump announced that four companies – one each in the U.S. and Canada, and two in Finland – were selected to design and build six Arctic icebreakers.
The U.S. has had a consulate in Nuuk since 2020, after the first one, which opened in 1940 following the Nazi occupation of Denmark, closed in 1953.
But in advancing its economic interests in Greenland, Canada will have an advantage over the U.S. "given the connections between the peoples of Greenland and Canada," according to Dalziel.
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The Inuit comprise most residents of both Greenland and Nunavut, Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, which shares a border of less than a mile with Greenland on the uninhabited Hans Island – also known as Tartupaluk in Greenlandic.
Canada’s Arctic foreign policy commits to implement a boundary agreement between Canada and Denmark regarding the island – and to also begin boundary negotiations with the U.S. regarding the Beaufort Sea, which is north of Alaska and two of Canada’s northern territories.
"There have been overlapping claims between Canada and the U.S.," explained Dalziel about a decades-long dispute over a section of the sea.
"There was some progress in the Biden administration to advance discussions, but in the current context I think it’s unlikely to make progress," said Dalziel.
"Canada and the U.S. have lived with this, as they have with their disagreement over the status of the Northwest Passage – whether it’s an internal historic waterway as Canada claims, or an international strait as the U.S. does."
