i've studied this at school; i did a research paper on it in 2013. colonization in the south had the initial desired end point of trying to convert the indigenous plains people into farmers that could grow produce to export and tax for the crown. it was at least a coherent project. what actually happened in canada is that the government in ottawa decided that the indians were too savage and uncivilized to be converted to farmers (you can look that up) and moved them to reserves instead. ottawa's plan to develop a farming economy in the plains wanted to replaced the indigenous groups with settlers from the united states, but few came due to the weather, which is extremely cold for half of the year. ottawa had to instead aggressively import farmers for their agricultural plan from eastern and northern europe. for that reason, the canadian plains have a high percentage of scots, irish, swedes, danes, norwegians, finns, poles, balts, ukrainians and russians. my mother is partially descended from finnish settlers to the region, on her mother's side.
they seem to have thought they could do the same thing in the north, and it could only be due to ignorance about how extreme the climate was, and still is.
in recent years, the state has apparently shifted direction and now wants to reverse this process by fostering more self-reliance, after trying to force dependency on them for decades. this was inevitable, and one of the things i pointed out in the research paper. they need to develop their own food economies, they can't indefinitely get hooked on $20 bottles of coke, ultimately paid for by taxes from the south. it's unsustainable, self-defeating and stupid and it's ultimately viciously cruel on top of it.
now, donald trump wants us to buy guns from him and put them in the north, but he seems not to really understand (and i think most canadians don't understand) that we don't really have complete sovereignty over the north, in canada. the north of canada is a semi-autonomous region within canada, and may at some point in the future retain full independence in the global nation-state system. that was the unstated goal of the plan that chretien put into motion in the late 90s; for now, the south is responsible to protect the north, but the north will eventually need to protect itself. this is not going to be ottawa's burden forever.
every time the inuit have been asked, they have told us that they don't want these guns from the south on their land.
if anything good happens from donald trump, if there is any positive outcome from this harmful competition and pointless conflict he is forcing on us, it may be that it acts as a catalyst for northern autonomy in canada. however, they have a long way to go.
step one is to help them relearn how to feed themselves, which we took from them on purpose to make them reliant on us.