Canada expands its footprint in the Arctic with a new diplomatic mission in Greenland

OTTAWA: Canada will soon open a consulate in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland – the world’s largest island and a self-governing territory dependent on the Kingdom of Denmark that President Donald Trump has talked about being acquired by the United States along with Canada as the 51st state.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand told CBC News that Canada’s new diplomatic presence in Greenland is “unprecedented in terms of expanding our footprint in the Arctic” and that Canada is playing “its role as an important Arctic country at a time when the geopolitical environment is unstable.”

Having hosted a two-day meeting of G7 foreign ministers earlier this week, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Anand was not available for an interview. However, his press secretary, Myah Tomasi, told Fox News Digital that the consulate, whose building will share Canada with Iceland, will focus on Arctic security, which Anand and Rubio have “talked about at length” through the lens of Canada and the United States as “willing partners.”

Anand’s first trip to open the consulate on Thursday was canceled due to bad weather, but she is expected to visit the island soon.

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Traditional Greenlandic housing is seen from the Myggedalen viewpoint on March 28, 2025 in Nuuk, Greenland. (Leon Neal)

En route to the G7 leaders’ summit in Canada in June, French President Emmanuel Macron stopped in Greenland where he said the Arctic island “must not be sold, must not be taken,” and speaking to the Greenlanders, he said that “when a strategic message is sent to you” — without directly mentioning President Donald Trump’s aspirations — “it is literally seen by Europeans as targeting European territory.”

Last December, the Canadian government – ​​under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – unveiled an Arctic foreign policy, which included opening consulates in Nuuk and Anchorage. No date has been set for the Canadian diplomatic mission in Alaska’s largest city.

Alex Dalziel, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank where it focuses, in part, on Arctic security issues, told Fox News Digital that Canada’s decision to open the consulate in Greenland should not be interpreted as “a poke in the eye” from the United States after Trump suspended trade negotiations with Canada last month following an Ontario anti-tariff ad featuring former President Ronald Reagan.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance poses with Second Lady Usha Vance, former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his wife and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright as they visit the U.S. military space base at Pituffik in Greenland on March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via Reuters)

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“Canada is taking the North American Arctic issue more seriously and putting some political and diplomatic elements in place,” Dalziel said.

“Everything Canada does in the Arctic to strengthen its security has the effect of strengthening the security of the United States.”

Last month, Trump announced that four companies – one in the United States, one in Canada and two in Finland – had been selected to design and build six icebreakers in the Arctic.

The United States has had a consulate in Nuuk since 2020, after the first, 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 United States “given the ties between the people of Greenland and Canada,” according to Dalziel.

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The Royal Danish Navy military ship HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen patrols near Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Evgueni Maloletka/AP Photo)

Inuit include most residents of 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 implementing a border agreement between Canada and Denmark regarding the island – and also beginning border negotiations with the United States regarding the Beaufort Sea, which lies north of Alaska and two of Canada’s northern territories.

“There have been overlapping claims between Canada and the United States,” Dalziel said of a decades-long dispute over part of the sea.

“There has been some progress within the Biden administration in moving the discussions forward, but in the current environment, I think it is unlikely that there will be progress,” Dalziel said.

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“Canada and the United States have lived with this, as they have with their disagreement over the status of the Northwest Passage – whether it is an internal historic waterway as Canada claims or an international strait as the United States does.