Yukon MP Larry Bagnell wants Prime Minister Stephen Harper to listen to northerners during the PM's latest trip to the Canadian hinterland that began in Churchill, Man. this morning and will include stops in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

With Arctic sovereignty a key plank of the federal government's policy, travelling to the country's Far North and Arctic regions has become an annual event for Harper since he and the Conservatives formed a minority government in 2006 – this is Harper's sixth trip in five years.

But this morning, Bagnell criticized the Conservative government for talking more than acting on asserting this sovereignty over the land and waterways of the country's vast Arctic archipelago.

"First it was all military-based, and they couldn't deliver,” Bagnell told the Star of Harper's failure to make good on a raft of initiatives that would bolster Canada's military presence in the region.

"(Harper) personally promised three armed icebreakers ... new planes for Yellowknife, new submarine censors, and they couldn't produce anything, and seeing as they couldn't produce anything, they've come up with a new strategy.”

From Bagnell's perspective, the federal government has shifted from military sovereignty toward a negotiated settlement with competing national interests.

Those include Hans Island (disputed territory with Denmark) and the unsettled offshore boundary dispute in the Beaufort Sea between Canada and the United States.

"But either of those (sovereignty by military presence or negotiation) are not what comes up in (northerners') critical needs,” said Bagnell of the high cost of living, dearth of addiction treatment centres and funding cuts to non-governmental organizations such as those administering the residential schools healing programs.

To date, there are few details of Harper's Yukon visit on Thursday and Friday – particularly whether he will address the public or make himself available to media.

That's in stark contrast, said Bagnell, to federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's visit to the territory last week as part of his cross-country tour to woo Canadian voters.

"(Ignatieff) talked to 20 Yukon organizations, and the night before he took it upon himself to go the entire length of Main Street (in Whitehorse), and he's been totally open to hearing the good and the bad,” said Bagnell.

"And, as you know, with the prime minister's trips to the Yukon, this hasn't been the case.”

This time last year, Harper visited the Yukon to tour the Mayo hydroelectric dam and offer $71 million in federal funds to finance the dam's expansion, but the prime minister made this announcement to a conference room of local Conservative Party supporters and local and national media.

Last week, Harper backed up the release of a 27-page policy document outlining how the country will assert Arctic sovereignty, enhance economic development, including the responsible offshore extraction of oil and gas, while seeking a diplomatic solution to territory and boundary disagreements.

"The number one priority of our northern strategy is the promotion and protection of Canadian sovereignty in the North,” Harper told reporters Friday in Prince Edward Island.

"This is what Canadians want us to do. That is what we will continue to do.”