Historian Ken Coates on how Trudeau is leaving at 'most troubled time you could imagine' for Arctic security

Historian Ken Coates pulls no punches when talking about Justin Trudeau's announcement this week that he would step down as Liberal leader and prime minister.

"This is not a way to run a country. And I think it's almost like Prime Minister Trudeau decided he'd do one last insult to the country for rejecting him," said Coates, who chairs the Yukon Arctic Security Advisory Council.

"It's kind of unprecedented that a prime minister would leave the country foundering, as he's done."

Coates is particularly interested in the Arctic region, where he says Canada has largely failed to effectively assert its sovereignty in recent decades — even amid growing global threats and a shifting political environment.

Coates spoke to Radio-Canada's Sarah Xenos about Trudeau's departure and what it might mean for security in Canada's North.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What impact will Trudeau's resignation, and the prorogation of Parliament, have on Arctic security?

We are in the most troubled time you could imagine, in terms of our security. And we have a new American president coming in who is quite assertive, quite demanding, and very angry with Canada for its under-performance on defence spending. We have a still-intense international environment, Russian aggressiveness, Chinese interest, uncertainty in a whole bunch of different areas.

And we have a situation where we're basically leaderless in the House of Commons and the Canadian Parliament. I know that the prime minister will still be officially the prime minister, but he has very little credibility, does not have the backing of the House, that's quite clear, does not have the backing of his own party, that's quite clear. And we're sending him off to negotiate in the worst possible circumstances you could imagine.

What kind of message does it send to the world, and what kind of impact does that have, in terms of making sure we have our place at the table?

So, recognize that the world is in considerable stress right now, and it isn't just the United States. We've got real problems in Germany, serious problems in France, obviously you have the Ukrainian situation and the European Union, and on and on. So the world is in a very, very tense time. And it's a time for statespeople to step up, people of real stature, real presence or real prominence, to sort of guide the world through these troubled times. We don't have very many, and we don't have one in Canada. 

Unfortunately, our prime minister's standing internationally has eroded dramatically over the last five years. The first couple of years when he was in office, he had a lot of credibility and charisma and attraction, and that has largely disappeared. 

We used to also be a country that was a really honest broker. Canada wasn't a superpower, we didn't have a big military, we weren't spending huge amounts on development assistance, but we cared a lot, and we were known to be sort of nonpartisan, and fair and just. We haven't lost that, people don't think badly of Canada — quite frankly, they don't think very much about Canada at all. 

And you know, we don't have a friend in India right now. We've got real serious problems, obviously, with Russia. We have problems now with the United States, that will be 95 per cent of our preoccupation for the next two months. So it's all we can focus on, is the United States. And those situations create vacuums, where other countries sort of move in and try to do things.

And I think what's happening is we've kind of lost control of our prominence on the Arctic Council. Norway is far more prominent in the Arctic Council than Canada is now. And so it's really uncertain as to what role Canada would be playing in sort of shaping the Arctic policy in the years to come. 

And the major issue, really, is the question of defence spending. Incoming president Trump has done an incredible job of focusing the world's attention on the NATO budget, and are we paying our fair share? Other countries are doing better than Canada, some countries are doing worse.

But Canada is responsible for well over a third of the Arctic. And we have a very minimal military presence in the Arctic. It's tiny. And so America looks at us and says, 'you're not doing very much.' The United States is going to spend a huge amount of money on our continental defence system, our radar system - we're paying some as well, but America sees us as freeloaders. 

So trying to establish yourself as a permanent and substantial presence in the Arctic has become increasingly difficult when we're not all that credible. 

What if Trump were to remove the United States from NATO? 

The idea that Donald Trump will do something as dramatic as drop out of NATO is even a bit of a surprise in his own world — but he surprises us all the time.

And you have to remember that what he does when he talks about Canada as the 51st state, you know, that's an opening gambit in a long sort of negotiation. He pushes and prods and we've overreacted to that — we should have just ignored it. We're not going to become the 51st state. But we've reacted to it. So he's teasing us, over and over and over again, and we play along. 

The thing to keep in mind is that the United States needs to protect northern Canada to protect itself. And that's been the case ever since the Second World War when they built the Alaska Highway through the Yukon to Alaska, and all the early alert systems, they have to be in Canada in order to protect the United States. So the United States is not going to walk away from the continental defence of Canada. 

Mr. Trump will continue to push us, and we'll probably make bad decisions as a result. Rather than the ones that serve the interests of the North, we'll do the ones that serve the interests of the United States.

We should be looking instead at saying, 'what do we need in the North for our security and our defence?' Let's focus on that. Let's do that first. And then maybe Trump will look at that and say, 'OK, you've done your share.' But we don't have the credibility as a northern defence system to actually sort of stand up and say we've done our bit.

Just to remind people, that as late as the mid-1960s, we had more than 1,000 to 1,500 employees of the Department of National Defence in the Yukon. We had this before, and then we let it all go away. And now we're sort of trying to get it back. And that's a hard thing to do because you're trying to please too many different audiences.