Canada — Operation Nanook Reaches Successful Conclusion

OTTAWA — Oper­a­tion NANOOK, the cen­tre­piece sov­er­eign­ty oper­a­tion con­duct­ed annu­al­ly by the Cana­di­an Forces (CF) in Canada’s North, came to a suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion yes­ter­day in Res­olute Bay, Nunavut.

“Oper­a­tion NANOOK demon­strat­ed the Gov­ern­ment of Canada’s com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing our North and enhanc­ing the Cana­di­an Forces’ abil­i­ty to oper­ate in this unique envi­ron­ment with our gov­ern­ment part­ners. We have improved our col­lec­tive capac­i­ty to respond, in a time­ly and effec­tive man­ner, to safe­ty and secu­ri­ty threats or emer­gen­cies in the Arc­tic,” said the Hon­ourable Peter MacK­ay, Min­is­ter of Nation­al Defence, who wit­nessed col­lab­o­ra­tion between depart­ments and agen­cies first-hand dur­ing his vis­it to Res­olute Bay and Pond Inlet, Nunavut. 

The oper­a­tion, which began on August 6 in Canada’s east­ern and high Arc­tic, saw the involve­ment of approx­i­mate­ly 1,000 mil­i­tary per­son­nel, along with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of sev­er­al oth­er gov­ern­ment depart­ments and for­eign militaries. 

“I was impressed by the high lev­el of coop­er­a­tion that was evi­dent between the mem­bers of the Cana­di­an Forces, our part­ner agen­cies, and the peo­ple of Nunavut on this oper­a­tion,” said Gen­er­al Walt Natynczyk, Chief of the Defence Staff. “As we enhance our north­ern capa­bil­i­ties, I believe that we will con­tin­ue to build on the pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships that exist between the Cana­di­an Forces and the local com­mu­ni­ties in which we operate.” 

Oper­a­tion NANOOK fea­tured an impres­sive list of “firsts” for north­ern CF achieve­ments: the high­est north­ern deploy­ment of the Arc­tic Response Com­pa­ny Group; the first deploy­ment of the Mar­itime Com­po­nent Com­mand in the Arc­tic; the suc­cess­ful tri­al of a portable cell-phone sys­tem; and the first CC-177 Globe­mas­ter III deploy­ment to Res­olute Bay. All of these achieve­ments demon­strat­ed an increased capac­i­ty to con­duct and sus­tain CF oper­a­tions in Canada’s North, con­sis­tent with the goals set forth in the government’s Cana­da First Defence Strategy. 

Con­duct­ed by Joint Task Force (North) (JTFN), the joint oper­a­tion fea­tured sov­er­eign­ty and pres­ence patrols, Com­pos­ite Dive Team exer­cis­es, Arc­tic sur­vival train­ing, and includ­ed the par­tic­i­pa­tion of ships, air­craft, and per­son­nel from the Cana­di­an Rangers, Army, Navy, Air, and Spe­cial Forces. 

Oper­a­tion NANOOK end­ed with a whole-of-gov­ern­ment spill response train­ing exer­cise that includ­ed the reme­di­a­tion of a sim­u­lat­ed petro­chem­i­cal leak in the Res­olute Bay area of Nunavut. Many par­ties con­tributed to the suc­cess of the exer­cise, includ­ing the Cana­di­an Coast Guard, Envi­ron­ment Cana­da, the Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police, Indi­an and North­ern Affairs Cana­da, Nat­ur­al Resources Cana­da, Pub­lic Safe­ty Cana­da, Parks Cana­da, as well as the Gov­ern­ment of Nunavut and the com­mu­ni­ty of Res­olute Bay. 

Source:
Depart­ment of Nation­al Defence, Canada 

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