ARCTIC: Canada’s Election Results & more – 6th May 2025

Haluu from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Arctic Update from the 6th of May twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what’s going down North of the Arctic Circle!

Canada, the second biggest Arctic nation, held its federal elections on Monday the 28th of April. In an election dominated by which political party was best placed to handle the threats of Donald Trump, Elections Canada, the national election organizer, confirmed on Tuesday the 29th that Mark Carney, the incumbent, and his Liberal Party clinched victory.

Every Arctic territory, including Carney’s birthplace of the Northwest Territory, voted Liberal — except for Nunavut, where Lori Idlout of the New Democratic Party won.

With the Canadian Arctic firmly in favour of Carney’s government, and his party manifesto promising to back science, research and climate change action, Canada’s north is taking a very different journey to Trump’s Arctic strategy.

The Canadian election may not have represented its northern residents properly, though. On Wednesday the 30th of April, Elections Canada issued an apology to the residents of the Nunavik region, because about 5,000 were left unable to vote due to polling stations either closing early or not opening at all. The Nunavik vote ended in favour of Mandy Gull-Masty of the Liberal Party, who won by a margin of just over 2,000 votes over her rival Sylvie Bérubé, the Bloc Québécois incumbent.

Nunatsiaq News, the Nunavik news agency, published an editorial on Saturday the 3rd of May calling for the result to be set aside and redone, with Canadian Election Laws allowing a vote to be contested if there are irregularities. If a redo is announced, it won’t impact the national results heavily, but Nunavik residents have a chance to be properly represented.

Elsewhere in the Canadian north, there’s good news for a groundbreaking TV show. In a previous show, we covered the release of North of North, the Canadian Inuit comedy that reached Netflix in April, and now, just weeks after launch, Netflix announced they’ve renewed the series for a second season after receiving immense critical praise.

The show is the largest TV production ever in Nunavut, and has given many Indigenous people their first opportunity to work on an internationally broadcast production, so the renewal will come as great news for native communities in Canada’s north.

Over the border in the US, an expected renewal has instead been scrapped. The sixth edition of the National Climate Assessment, which is the most comprehensive report on the impacts of climate change across the US, is in jeopardy, as on Tuesday the 29th of April, public news outlet NPR wrote that the Trump Administration has officially dismissed all of the 400 scientists working on the Assessment.

Dave White, one of the dismissed authors, told NPR that the assessment is a reliable source of public information in most sectors of American life. The Assessment guides schools, city planners, and farmers in preparing for heatwaves, drought, and shifting growing conditions. With Alaska being the US state most heavily impacted by climate change, the removal of this report could have serious impacts on daily life in the state.

To see the previous assessment and why it is so important, take a look at the link in the show notes.

There’s plenty of US government support for building new icebreakers, though. On Monday the 28th of April, Republican lawmakers submitted a funding proposal to boost the Coast Guard’s budget by almost $15 billion US dollars to build almost thirty new vessels, including at least five new polar icebreakers, which require about $10 billion US dollars.

These funds will more than double the Coast Guard’s current twenty twenty-five budget, which stands at under $14 billion dollars. This funding bill will need to be passed through the legal system, but if successful, it would mark a transformation in the US’s Arctic naval capabilities.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian government is in disagreement over its oil and gas drilling prospects. On Friday the 2nd of May, state broadcaster NRK wrote that the Norwegian Parliament will vote next week on expanding oil and gas exploration in Norwegian waters, with most taking place in the north. However, the topic is controversial due to environmental concerns, and the vote is currently tied. The deciding vote is expected to fall to a political party with a single MP, the Pasientfokus party, based in Norway’s northernmost region, Finnmark.

Irene Ojala, the MP, told NRK that she will not support the expansion, citing the damage caused by the industry to northern Norway’s environment. If the vote proceeds as expected, the oil expansion will be blocked until Norway holds its general election in September.

Norway is set to improve its Arctic connectivity by developing the Arctic Way Cable System. On Thursday the 1st of May, Space Norway and data cable builder SubCom announced they have finalized a contract to build the world's northernmost subsea cable, spanning over 2,300 kilometers, about 1,500 miles, entirely within the Arctic Circle. This system will establish reliable and high-speed internet connections in the Arctic city of Bodø, and the remote islands of Jan Mayen and Svalbard.

The existing internet cabling in Arctic Norway is decades old, but with this system expected to be online by late twenty twenty-eight, modern communication is coming.

Greenland is suffering internet problems too. On Monday the 28th of April, Spain and Portugal suffered sudden nationwide power blackouts for at least ten hours, and an unexpected casualty was Greenland.

Tusass, Greenland’s national telecoms agency, reported on Tuesday the 29th that remote communities in the country, which rely on satellite communications, had their connections cut off when its data centers in Gran Canaria were affected by the outage. Tusass confirmed that once Spain’s power was restored on the 29th, its satellite services also resumed.

Speaking of remote northern communities, one in Russia might be closed soon. On Monday the 28th of April, Irina Prosolenko, a member of the regional Murmansk parliament in northern Russia, announced that the local government is considering closing down Ostrovnoy, a small community of about 140 inhabitants on the north coast of Murmansk. Once home to a key submarine base, the town has lost strategic importance, and officials argue it's too costly to maintain. Nearly $4 million US dollars are spent annually on ferry services and upkeep of crumbling infrastructure.

The closure of the town would involve the relocation of all inhabitants and cost over $12 million US dollars, according to Prosolenko, but it might be the most efficient solution in the long term.

In scientific news, on Thursday the 1st of May, The Guardian reported on a forty-year study tracking over 2,000 Arctic plant communities across forty-five sites, from Canada to Scandinavia. The results show dramatic and uneven changes in Arctic vegetation over time.

As the region warms, shrubs like willow are expanding rapidly, overshadowing slower-growing mosses, lichens, and grasses. While this growth increases plant diversity, it risks harming Arctic wildlife like caribou that feed on the disappearing mosses and lichens.

Researchers say this marks a shift in the region’s ecological balance, signalling big changes coming to the Arctic ecosystem.

And to wrap up this edition, let’s head over to the Finnish Lapland, which sees record-breaking tourism numbers. On Tuesday the 30th of April, public broadcaster Yle reported that this past winter season saw the highest ever number of tourists visiting the region. Between November and March, the Lapland capital, Rovaniemi, recorded over 1 million overnight stays, a twenty percent increase from the previous winter, with accommodation revenue reaching almost $150 million US dollars. International tourism was key, with some cities seeing up to a thirty percent increase in foreign guests. As Arctic tourism continues to grow, Finnish Lapland is emerging as a major winter destination.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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