Can fresh icebreakers break the ice between the US and Canada?

MILAN — An agreement between Finland, Canada, and the United States to jointly build icebreaker ships may hold the key to deeper cooperation between the Arctic nations, as Washington has set out to boost its fleet against Russian and Chinese efforts to ramp up their own.

The Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, was signed in July 2024 on the occasion of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington. It aims to combine the three nations’ knowledge, resources, and expertise about the Arctic region in general and polar icebreaker construction in particular.

The core ambition of the agreement is to collectively build best-in-class ice boats capable of year-round operations in Arctic waters, plowing pathways for maritime traffic in a region being transformed by climate change. Teaming up in a cluster of countries, the idea goes, will lead to better prices and speedier deliveries for the governments involved.

Officials signed an additional memorandum of understanding last November in Washington to emphasize that the strategic context of polar regions requires deeper economic and security cooperation between the three partners.

The new U.S. president, Donald Trump, who was sworn into office this month, has since made disparaging comments about fellow Arctic players Canada and Greenland, suggesting that both should become part of the United States.

The statement has prompted pushback from leaders in Canada and Denmark, of which Greenland is a district, with neither country prepared to have their territorial integrity challenged by a longstanding ally.

A spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement of Canada, which represents Ottawa’s central purchasing agent in the ICE Pact, said Trump’s combative talk has not affected the spirit of the icebreaker agreement.

“Canada remains steadfast in its commitment to the ICE Pact, our collaboration efforts with the U.S. and Finland continue as planned – there are currently no changes to our agreement or initiatives,” a representative said in a Jan. 22 email to Defense News.

The three nations have each appointed a national coordination team for the ICE Pact, which is working to formulate a plan of action through four working groups, the spokesperson added.

Among the initial priorities outlined by Trump during his first term as president was the need to bolster America’s icebreaker fleet. In 2020, he emphasized that the country needed a “ready, capable, and available fleet of polar security icebreakers that would be operationally tested and fully deployable by fiscal year 2029,” he wrote in a memo.

Washington is far from reaching this goal, then-commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan, noted during the Halifax International Security Forum last November.

“So as a nation, we have one heavy icebreaker … [Russia] has way more than one. It’s close to 40,” she said during a panel discussion, as reported by National Defense Magazine.

It is important to distinguish that even as icebreakers are a highly specific type of ship, countries have different ways of classifying them.

While the U.S. and Canada use a classification system of light, medium and heavy ships for different types of ice cover, Russia’s large fleet is typically split into categories based on their mission type and other technical characteristics.

In 2023, the Canadian shipyard Davie took over Finland’s Helsinki Shipyard, which produced over 50% of the global icebreaker fleet. The acquisition entailed a transfer of Finland’s leading expertise, designs and trained personnel into Canadian hands.

The current demand for such specialized ships is at an all-time high, a statement from Davie said, with over 80 open projects among Western countries as of last July.

Experts have argued that the U.S. defense industrial base is set to greatly benefit from the ICE Pact, as America’s naval shipbuilding industry has been beset by schedule delays and cost overruns.