The Canadian air force has cancelled its surveillance flights in the North for the next several months even though Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said protecting Canada's Arctic sovereignty is one of his government's top priorities.

More than half of Canada's fleet of Aurora aircraft, which patrol the country's two coastlines and the Arctic, is in the repair shop, undergoing long-term maintenance, the air force said.

An Aurora patrol aircraft parked at CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia.
(CBC)

Only six of 14 Auroras based at CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia are able to fly, and the air force has decided it will dispatch them to areas off the East Coast and West Coast only.

"Most likely the Arctic patrols will resume sometime in the spring of '08," Col. Derek Joyce told CBC News.

In the past, the Auroras made between 12 and 16 surveillance flights over the Arctic every year. But the closest Aurora crews will get to the Arctic for the next five months is practising Northern flights in a high-tech simulator.

During the federal election campaign, Harper pledged to defend the Arctic, promising to spend billions to buy new underwater sensors, build an army base in Cambridge Bay, construct a deepwater port near Iqaluit and buy three naval ice-breakers, among other things.

Dan Middlemiss, a defence expert and professor at Dalhousie University, speculated that Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan is taking huge amounts of money and squeezing missions at home. 

"The reality of lack of funds for operations strikes home," he said. "We've seen this earlier this year with the navy's reduction in its planned exercises at the end of its fiscal year."

After the navy's financial woes became public last winter, the federal government found the money to restore the cancelled patrol.

The federal government did not respond to calls on Monday about the reduction in surveillance flights.

Earlier this fall, CBC reported the government halted expensive upgrades on the Aurora fleet. At the time, the Department of National Defence said it would decide by Nov. 20 whether to replace the entire fleet or go ahead with the upgrades.