As Ottawa looks to use military spending to build up infrastructure in the Far North, Inuit say they want Canada to take tips from Greenland — where a Nordic social model adapted to local needs has built health, housing and education services deemed superior to anything in Canada’s Arctic.

“There is a lot that we can learn from them,” said Lukasi Whiteley-Tukkiapik, who leads Saqijuq, an Inuit wellness organization in Kujjuaq, Que.

Speaking last week on a charter flight from Montreal to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, where he attended the official opening of Canada’s new consulate, Whiteley-Tukkiapik said services in his community — a hub for northern Quebec — are inferior to those available in Iqaluit.

Nuuk, meanwhile, is “generations ahead of us” in providing Inuit-led social services in well-maintained buildings, he said.

As a self-governing territory of Denmark, Greenland has universal health care and unemployment insurance, free dentistry for children, subsidized daycare and education services generally offered without tuition fees.

Nuuk boasts modern schools and a hospital with four times the capacity of the one in Iqaluit — even though Nuuk’s population is only about 2.5 times the size of Iqaluit’s.

Greenland got 87 per cent of its energy from hydroelectricity in 2022, up from 59 per cent in 2000, according to the British think tank Ember. Nunavut relies almost entirely on fossil fuels like diesel.

The 2021 census found 53.1 per cent of Nunavut’s population lives in overcrowded housing, while a third live in homes in various states of disrepair. Nuuk has brightly coloured houses, cultural centres and libraries — in part because bedrock is easier to build on than the permafrost found in Iqaluit.

The Danish territory still grapples with suicide and tuberculosis — social problems it shares with Inuit communities in Canada — but Whiteley-Tukkiapik said it’s doing more to improve living standards.

“They have the same social issues (but) there’s more of an importance and it’s more on the front burner for them,” he said.

“Their health network, the social programs, the way that they tackle suicide prevention as well — they have a lot of good programs in place and they are working on them.”

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Steven Arnfjord, a University of Greenland professor who leads the Centre for Arctic Welfare, said the best aspects of the territory’s social model stem from Inuit leadership deciding how to use social services funding coming from Copenhagen.

“We educate our own social workers so they understand the culture, the language, everything, when they engage with clients. It’s not a social worker from Toronto or Ottawa or anywhere else that flies up or comes up and has to readjust,” he said.

“This is not a territory. This is a nation.”

Greenlanders get most of their medical services at home, without needing to fly to Denmark, Arnfjord said. When they do need to visit Copenhagen, Greenland Inuit stay in culturally appropriate accommodations run by Inuit organizations, similar to services offered in Ottawa and Winnipeg.

From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s, Denmark made strides on fighting tuberculosis by sending a specialized ship along Greenland’s coastline to offer X-ray screenings. The boat brought sick patients to a specialized facility in Nuuk for treatment before sending them home with a thorough recovery plan.

Arnfjord compared that to the former practice in Canada’s Far North, where people suspected of being infected with tuberculosis were once routinely sent to southern hospitals, sometimes in cramped conditions. Many of those patients never made it home because they died down south or ended up staying there.

Still, Arnfjord said, Greenland’s social system isn’t as responsive as it should be to changes in the population, compared to mainland Denmark or Sweden, where the government is constantly tweaking social welfare systems to address new problems or changing demographics.

He added Greenland’s social services still put too much emphasis on the individual in addressing problems like addiction or homelessness, ignoring the impact of extended Inuit families.

Arnfjord said he attended a parent-teacher conference in Greenland that was framed the way it would have been in Denmark — with the student having primary responsibility for learning. He said that clashes with the Inuit ethic that expects the family to work together to support a child’s education.

“It’s not the group or the collective or the family we’re talking about. The entity becomes the single individual, and that is hurtful for an Indigenous community,” he said. “Because it’s an installed version of welfare, it has this colonial history about it.”

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed represents Inuit from 51 communities across the Canadian Arctic, where cancer care and childbirth almost always require flights to hospitals in the south.

While there is a shortage of comparable data, Obed said Greenland has far more doctors per capita and more medical services than Canada’s Arctic.

“We look to Greenland and see more indicators of equity — especially social equity — and the hallmarks of sustainable communities in a way that we have yet to materialize completely here in Canada,” Obed said.

Andrea Charron, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said Ottawa will need to improve infrastructure in Arctic communities if it wants to expand its military footprint — because military bases and airfields only function well in areas with adequate housing and services.

She cautioned that Inuit communities are accustomed to empty promises from the federal government. She said a military buildup will only benefit locals if it respects Inuit sovereignty and offers dedicated funding over years.

Ottawa, Charron said, tends to get enthusiastic about the North every few years before getting sidetracked.

“We need sustained attention and funding to this infrastructure, because what we tend to have is what I call Arctic distraction disorder,” she said.

“You have to be very clear about what the money can and cannot provide.”

Charron said better infrastructure also would shore up Canada’s security in the North against the risk of territorial or political incursions from foreign powers.

“Growing, healthy communities are a bulwark against foreign interference,” she said. “If you are lacking access to healthy food and you don’t have internet and you don’t have clean drinking water, then it’s much easier for nefarious actors to say, ‘Well, we’ll provide this for you.’ But it often comes with strings attached.”

Arnfjord added that Greenlanders have taken on a new appreciation for their social safety net in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for ownership of the territory and Washington’s talk of paying residents thousands of dollars.

“The level of trust and investment in a good welfare system, the benefits from that sort of thing — that’s something that you can’t supplement with a lump sum of money,” he said.

He recalled seeing dire treatment of Indigenous people and widespread homelessness while visiting Alaska in 2022.

“That’s not something that will be tolerated in Greenland.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Friday that Berlin had begun talks with France about a European nuclear deterrent, while President Emmanuel Macron said Europe had to become a geopolitical power given the Russian threat would not disappear.

Merz, who said the region had to become stronger in order to reset its relationship with the United States, called in a speech to open the Munich Security Conference, on Washington to “repair and revive trust” in a dangerous new era of great power politics, warning the U.S. could not go it alone as the old global order crumbles.

He was later followed by Macron, who pushed back on criticism of the continent, but said it was time that Europe was more assertive and prepared itself with a stronger security architecture.

The speeches underscored how European leaders are increasingly looking to carve an independent path after a year of unprecedented upheaval in transatlantic ties, while also striving to maintain their alliance with Washington.

Europe faces myriad threats from Russia’s war in Ukraine to massive ruptures in global trade.

“I have begun confidential talks with the French President on European nuclear deterrence,” Merz said. “We Germans are adhering to our legal obligations. We see this as strictly embedded within our nuclear sharing in NATO. And we will not allow zones of differing security to emerge in Europe.”

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Macron is due to make a speech on the nuclear deterrent later this month.

He said the consultations with Germany and other leaders were part of a broader discussion that included conventional deep strikes capabilities, which Europe does not possess unlike Russia, and the role of France’s nuclear deterrent.

“This is the right time for audacity. This is the right time for a strong Europe,” Macron said. “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power. It was not part of our DNA.”

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“We have to reshuffle and reorganise our architecture of security in Europe. Because the past architecture of security was totally designed and framed during Cold War times. So it’s no longer adapted,” he said.

European nations have long relied heavily on the United States, including its large nuclear arsenal, for their defence but have been increasing military spending, partly in response to sharp criticism from the Trump administration.

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Russia’s Medvedev says expiry of New START nuclear missile treaty should ‘alarm everyone’

While Germany is currently banned from developing a nuclear weapon under international agreements, France is the European Union’s only nuclear power following Britain’s departure from the bloc and has the world’s fourth-largest stockpile.

Taking his cue from those warning that the international rules-based order was about to be destroyed, Merz said: “I fear we must put it even more bluntly: This order, however imperfect it was even at its best, no longer exists in that form.”

Switching to English at the end, Merz said: “In the era of great power rivalry, even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone. Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It is also the United States’ competitive advantage.”

“So let’s repair and revive transatlantic trust together,” he added.

Defence Minister David McGuinty told a panel on defence industrial cooperation at the conference that Canada was strengthening its ties with Europe on defence procurement and security. He did not mention the U.S. but affirmed Canada was stepping up its defence spending and capabilities with help from diverse partners.

U.S. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a top Democrat on multiple foreign relations and defence committees, told the same panel that America needs to adopt the same approach of cooperation in order to counter China and Russia.

When asked if he believes the Trump administration is following that advice, however, Coons acknowledged he did not.

“That is a core concern,” he said, citing the recent push to acquire Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark.

“Our core attitude must be, we only get through this with our allies.”

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Munich Security Conference opens without Carney after B.C. school shooting

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had also said transatlantic ties faced a “defining moment” in a rapidly changing world but struck a more conciliatory tone that contrasted with remarks by Vice President JD Vance in 2025.

At the same gathering of top security officials last year, Vance had attacked European allies in a speech that marked the start of a series of confrontations.

“I think it’s at a defining moment … the world is changing very fast right in front of us,” Rubio said before departing for Munich.

“(The U.S. is) deeply tied to Europe, and our futures have always been linked and will continue to be,” said Rubio, who is a potential rival to Vance for the 2028 U.S. presidential race. “So we’ve just got to talk about what that future looks like.”

Transatlantic ties have long been central to the Munich Security Conference, which began as a Cold War forum for Western defence debate. But the unquestioned assumption of cooperation that underpinned it has been upended.

Underscoring the damage, a YouGov poll on Friday of the six largest European countries showed favourability towards the U.S. in Europe hitting its lowest since tracking began in 2016.

The latest figures are broadly comparable to – and in some cases higher than – the perceived threat from China, Iran or North Korea, although behind Russia, YouGov said.

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UK, allies pledge billions in further military aid to Ukraine as fight against Russia continues

U.S. President Donald Trump has toppled Venezuela’s leader, threatened other Latin American countries with similar military action, imposed tariffs on friends and foes alike and talked openly about annexing Greenland – a move that could effectively end the NATO alliance.

Last year’s speech by Vance accused European leaders of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration, which Merz explicitly rejected.

“A rift has opened up between Europe and the United States. Vice President JD Vance said this very openly here in Munich a year ago,” Merz said.

“He was right. The culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours. Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech goes against human dignity and the constitution. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade,” he said, drawing applause.

—With additional files from Global News

The fallout after the release of millions of documents in late January — related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — continues as job departures, firings and resignations among high-powered business executives, politicians, lawyers, prolific academics and public figures ramp up.

As the files are dissected and studied, high-profile people across Europe, North America and the Middle East have seen consequences for their various relationships with the late financier Epstein.

Find below some of the people who’ve lost their roles or jobs.

High-ranking lawyer to leave Goldman Sachs

A top lawyer at global banking firm Goldman Sachs has announced she will leave her role after appearing in the Epstein files.

Kathy Ruemmler confirmed Thursday that she will exit Goldman Sachs in June after email correspondence revealed a relationship between her and Epstein.

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Gates expresses regret for involvement with Epstein, but denies allegations amid file dump

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Speaking to the Financial Times on Thursday, Ruemmler said, “I made the determination that the media attention on me, relating to my prior work as a defence attorney, was becoming a distraction.”

She initially said she would not resign from the role she has held since 2020, and a Goldman Sachs spokesperson previously stressed that Ruemmler “regrets ever knowing him,” The Guardian reported.

Reummler, who worked as White House counsel under former president Barack Obama, had extensive communications with Epstein between 2014 and 2019 after he was convicted of child sex trafficking offences, the documents show.

Communications include advising Epstein on how to respond to a media request to comment on the alleged special legal treatment he received due to his status and connections.

It also shows she received gifts from Epstein, whom she frequently called “Uncle Jeffrey.”

Waterloo professor ‘pauses’ work over Epstein ties

People in Canada have also been impacted by past connections to Epstein.

Lee Smolin, a revered theoretical physicist and founding member of the University of Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, a world-renowned independent research centre known for its work in quantum theory, has “agreed to pause his working relationship” with the university, the institute confirmed to Global News in a statement.

His name appears 182 times in the latest tranche of Epstein documents.

While being mentioned in the files does not indicate any criminal wrongdoing, the documents reveal a relationship between Smolin and Epstein, which continued after the former financier’s 2008 sex-trafficking conviction.

The files show correspondence between the two in which they discuss the 2008 economic crisis, and several messages addressed to Epstein remind him to “call Lee Smolin.”

Smolin previously told The Verge that he had not been in contact with Epstein since 2008 and had last seen him at a conference in 2007.

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Email correspondence appears to contradict Smolin’s timeline.

In one email dated Nov. 2, 2010, with the subject line “Hi from Toronto,” Smolin appeared to send a message that simply reads “Dear Jeffrey.” Epstein, in the same chain, replied, “You’re always welcome in ny.”

In a 2009 email to Epstein, who had just been released from jail at the time, Smolin wrote to him saying, “I hear that you are out and living there at home. Hope all is well, would love to see you and catch up at some point.”

Epstein wrote back, offering to fly Smolin and his family to Florida.

“That’s a very nice invitation. Thank you. Let me speak with [his wife’s name] about when would be possible,” he responded.

Their final exchange appears to have been in 2013, according to the files released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Dubai Sultan, port CEO, replaced

Dubai Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the head of DP World — one of the world’s largest port operators — was replaced on Friday after documents revealed some lewd exchanges between him and Epstein.

Without mentioning bin Sulayem by name, the Government of Dubai Media Office announced the appointment of Abdulla bin Damithan to the position of Chairman of the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation in his place.

A prominent Emirati businessman, bin Sulayem regularly appears with Dubai’s ruler and has been photographed with President Donald Trump.

Bin Sulayem’s name appears 344 times in the Department of Justice’s Epstein library, mostly in email exchanges between him and Epstein.

“The hands do look like mine,” Epstein wrote back.

The emails also include the men discussing dinner and travel plans, as well as invitations from bin Sulayem to Epstein to various high-profile events.

Former Norwegian Prime Minister charged, others under investigation

Former Norwegian prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with “gross corruption” over his ties to Epstein, police confirmed.

On Wednesday, police searched the home of  Jagland, who has also served as foreign minister, leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and head of the Council of Europe, the continent’s highest human rights watchdog.

He was questioned this week, police said, on suspicion of aggravated corruption. Jagland has said he was looking forward to helping to clarify the situation.

Police also this week questioned Mona Juul, a diplomat who played a role in setting up the back channel between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization that led to the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, about her own links with Epstein.

Juul, who is under suspicion of aggravated corruption, has said she did not commit any crime.

The World Economic Forum has also started an independent investigation of its Norwegian CEO, Børge Brende, to clarify his relationship with the convicted sex offender.

In addition, Crown Princess Mette-Marit has apologized for her friendship with Epstein.

Peter Mandelson fired, resigns from the House of Lords, U.K. Labour Party

U.K. Labour peer Peter Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party and the House of Lords earlier this month over his association with Epstein.

U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer also fired him from his role as British ambassador to the U.S. last year after communications between Mandelson and Epstein were made public in a previous release of Epstein files.

Mandelson said in an interview with British journalist Harry Cole last year that he “deeply” regretted his friendship with Epstein, after a note he wrote to the convicted sex offender was released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee in a “birthday book” gifted to the former New York City businessman on his 50th birthday.

In the note, Mandelson called Epstein his “best pal.”

Starmer initially showed support for Mandelson after the release of the note, stating that his government still had complete confidence in Mandelson and that it was “focused obviously on our relationship with the US, with President Trump coming for an unprecedented second state visit next week.”

Mandelson told Cole that he “accepted assurances that he [Epstein] had given me about his indictment, his original criminal case in Florida. Like very many people, I took that at face value,” a decision he said he wished he had never made.

Starmer’s chief of staff also resigned this month over the furor surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the U.K. ambassador to the U.S. despite his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Morgan McSweeney said he took responsibility for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson, 72, to Britain’s most important diplomatic post in 2024.

The list keeps growing

Other well-known figures facing growing furor over their ties to Epstein include Brad Karp, who announced he had stepped down as chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday amid allegations of ties to Epstein, and Toronto-born CBS News contributor and chief science officer of the protein brand David Protein, Dr. Peter Attia, who was shown to have kept close relations with Epstein in the 2010s according to newly released documents.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is also facing calls to resign after emails showing he planned a visit to Epstein’s island with his family in 2012 surfaced.

Steve Tisch, the owner of the New York Giants, was found to have exchanged emails with Epstein in 2013 that included discussions about “working girl” status, prompting a review by the National Football League, ESPN reported.

Last week, pop star Chappell Roan announced she was severing ties with her talent agency, Wasserman, after emails revealed exchanges between its CEO, Casey Wasserman, Epstein and Maxwell. Several Los Angeles officials have also called for Wasserman to step down as chair of the LA28 Olympics committee, The Guardian reported.

Late last year, a number of charities cut ties with Sarah Ferguson, the ex-wife of the former Prince Andrew, after British newspapers published an email that she reportedly wrote to the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, describing him as a “supreme friend.’’

—

— With files from Reuters and the Associated Press