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Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Far North has been emphatically demonstrated by the planting of a Russian tricolor on the seabed at the North Pole, the construction of a network of new and refurbished military bases across Siberia, the forward basing of an army division in eastern Siberia by 2018 and the deployment of a new fleet of nuclear-powered ice breakers and quieter submarines in the Arctic.

The Trudeau government’s “rational” approach to the Top of the World is to initiate talks with the Russians next month about areas of mutual interest such as global warming and search and rescue.

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At the Brisbane G20 summit two years ago, then prime minister Stephen Harper received kudos from Canada’s allies when he famously told Putin, “I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.”

Canada now favours a much less confrontational approach, according to a speech given recently in Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion’s name by his parliamentary secretary, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones.