OTTAWA: Canada is preparing to establish a consulate in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. Greenland, known as the world’s largest island, is an autonomous region within the Kingdom of Denmark. Previously, there has been discussion about the U.S., alongside Canada, acquiring Greenland as a potential 51st state.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand shared with CBC News that this new diplomatic mission in Greenland marks a significant step in Canada’s Arctic strategy. Anand emphasized Canada’s role as a key Arctic nation amid an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical landscape.

After hosting a G7 foreign ministers’ summit in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Anand was unavailable for further comment. However, her press secretary, Myah Tomasi, informed Fox News Digital that the shared consulate with Iceland will primarily address Arctic security, a topic extensively discussed by both Anand and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, highlighting the cooperative stance of Canada and the U.S.

Anand’s scheduled visit to inaugurate the consulate was postponed due to inclement weather, but she plans to make the trip soon.

A view of traditional Greenlandic housing from the Myggedalen viewpoint in Nuuk, Greenland, captured on March 28, 2025. (Leon Neal)

On his way to the G7 leaders’ summit in Canada in June, French President Emmanuel Macron stopped in Greenland, where he said that the Arctic island “is not to be sold, not to be taken,” and while addressing Greenlanders said that “when a strategic message is sent to you” – without directly mentioning President Donald Trump’s aspirations – “it’s literally perceived by the Europeans as targeting a European land.”

Last December, the Canadian government – under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – unveiled an Arctic foreign policy, which included plans to open consulates in both Nuuk and Anchorage. No date has been set for the Canadian diplomatic mission in Alaska’s largest city.

Alex Dalziel, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank where he focuses, in part, on Arctic security issues, told Fox News Digital that Canada’s decision to open the consulate in Greenland should not be construed as “a poke in the eye” of the U.S. after Trump suspended trade talks with Canada last month following an Ontario anti-tariff ad featuring former President Ronald Reagan.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance poses with second lady Usha Vance, former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his wife and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright as they tour the U.S. military’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via Reuters)

“This is Canada taking the North American Arctic more seriously and getting some of the political and diplomatic pieces in place,” said Dalziel.

“Anything Canada does in the Arctic to strengthen its security has the knock-on effect of strengthening U.S. security.”

Last month, Trump announced that four companies – one each in the U.S. and Canada, and two in Finland – were selected to design and build six Arctic icebreakers.

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney on the sidelines of the G7 Summit, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Kananaskis, Canada. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The U.S. has had a consulate in Nuuk since 2020, after the first one, which opened in 1940 following the Nazi occupation of Denmark, closed in 1953.

But in advancing its economic interests in Greenland, Canada will have an advantage over the U.S. “given the connections between the peoples of Greenland and Canada,” according to Dalziel.

Military vessel HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen of the Royal Danish Navy patrols near Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo)

The Inuit comprise most residents of both Greenland and Nunavut, Canada’s largest and northernmost territory, which shares a border of less than a mile with Greenland on the uninhabited Hans Island – also known as Tartupaluk in Greenlandic.

Canada’s Arctic foreign policy commits to implement a boundary agreement between Canada and Denmark regarding the island – and to also begin boundary negotiations with the U.S. regarding the Beaufort Sea, which is north of Alaska and two of Canada’s northern territories.

“There have been overlapping claims between Canada and the U.S.,” explained Dalziel about a decades-long dispute over a section of the sea.

“There was some progress in the Biden administration to advance discussions, but in the current context I think it’s unlikely to make progress,” said Dalziel.

“Canada and the U.S. have lived with this, as they have with their disagreement over the status of the Northwest Passage – whether it’s an internal historic waterway as Canada claims, or an international strait as the U.S. does.”