A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals an unsettling truth about the  new Ukraine “peace proposal.” This isn’t a good-faith strategy to end a war. It’s a thinly veiled mechanism to reopen Russian Arctic gas and mineral projects to Western investors. The language of “peace” is being weaponized as a political shield for a resource grab in one of the world’s most fragile and strategically contested regions.

For Canada, this isn't a distant geopolitical abstraction—it's an immediate challenge to our national interests and principles. As an architect of the Arctic Council and a long-standing defender of rules-based stewardship, Canada has worked for decades to protect the High North from great-power exploitation. Granting American corporate access to Russian Arctic resources would shatter the very principles we helped enshrine: environmental protection, Indigenous rights, and circumpolar cooperation grounded in science, not brute-force politics.

The danger lies in the clever framing. By packaging access to Arctic gas and critical minerals inside a “peace initiative,” private actors make it easy for governments to posture as peacemakers. In reality, they are normalizing something far more corrosive: the idea that business negotiators and energy investors—not accountable public institutions—can redraw the strategic map of the Arctic. Indigenous communities, northern residents, and democratic allies are relegated to spectators while commercial interests reshape the future of the region.

The consequences will not be contained. If this becomes the model, it will set a precedent that influences everything from shipping routes and seabed mining to the justification of dual-use military-civilian infrastructure. Once “peace” becomes a gateway for privileged corporate access, the Arctic Council’s foundational commitments risk being erased by back-channel dealmaking.

NATO, where seven of the eight Arctic states are members, has a direct stake in this outcome. The Alliance cannot claim to take Arctic security seriously while a parallel process of private diplomacy aims to turn the region into a commercial playground for great-power advantage. The WSJ report reveals the basic truth: this is not diplomacy; it is extraction disguised as peacemaking.

This highlights a larger, more troubling pattern. When political negotiations are outsourced to corporate operators, the public interest is the first casualty. Environmental safeguards weaken, accountability vanishes, and decisions with generational strategic implications are made behind closed doors. Allowing corporate actors to shape the terms of peace sets a dangerous precedent that will be difficult to reverse.

Canada has an unique responsibility and the standing to lead. Our credibility as a northern nation, our role in building the Arctic Council, and our long record of mediating between security and stewardship give us a voice no other ally possesses.

Ottawa must use that voice now to mobilize NATO partners and draw a clear line: no Ukraine settlement that trades “peace” for Western access to Russian Arctic resources is compatible with our collective security, our climate commitments, or the rights of Indigenous peoples.

If Canada does not take the initiative, others will define the Arctic’s future. The High North will be reshaped not by accountable governments or cooperative institutions, but by private dealmakers pursuing narrow commercial gains. That is the real risk exposed by the Wall Street Journal: the Arctic—piece by piece—being sold off under the false banner of peace.