Alberta’s Minister of Transportation Devin Dreeshen called for Canada’s national leaders to step up and build strategic ports in the Northwest Passage.

Dreeshen made his comments to a room of 1000 businesspeople at the Calgary Stampede on Sunday.

“America benefits from their Alaskan ports, and Russia benefits from their many Arctic ports,” he said. 

“We need to look north and build ports of our own.” 

He added, “If we don’t protect the trade route in the Northwest Passage, we’ll lose it.”

Dreeshen’s comments come amid a vacuum of leadership from Ottawa. Not just provincial leaders like Dreeshen, but federal leaders have also called out the Trudeau Liberals for dragging their feet over Northwest Passage-related jurisdictional disputes.

Ottawa considers the Northwest Passage a waterway under its jurisdiction, but some European countries, as well as the US, consider it an international waterway.

In 2019, Prime Minister Trudeau told former US Vice President Mike Pence that “Canada remains committed to exercising the full extent of its rights and sovereignty over its Arctic waters, including the Northwest Passage.” But Conservative MP Andrew Scheer accused Trudeau of abdicating responsibility and failing to protect Canada’s sovereignty.

Michael Byers, an Arctic sovereignty expert at the University of British Columbia, said in 2019 that the issue is still unresolved. 

“The Americans insist it’s an international strait, open to vessels from any country, like the Strait of Gibraltar, or the English Channel, and Canada says no, these are internal waters, subject to the full force of our jurisdiction and control.”