When it comes to national security, former journalist and Conservative Senator Pamela Wallin does not mince words on protecting Canadian interests at home or abroad.

On Arctic sovereignty, Wallin is firm in her belief that Canada need only assert its northern presence, not scramble to claim what is already ours.

"We don't need to establish our sovereignty in the Arctic, we have sovereignty (there),” Wallin, who chairs the Senate's National Security and Defence Committee, told the Star Wednesday. "I feel it's important to have that public discussion about sovereignty.

"People think somehow that we have to establish this and defend it, but it's not some frontier we're still doing battle over.”

This morning, Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced $35 billion in spending to replace aging Navy destroyers and frigates, as well as patrol ships – pieces Wallin says are necessary to assert that sovereignty – but the senator is not celebrating quite yet.

"This process can take 10 or 15 years ... but it's a frustrating process for many as governments come and go,” Wallin said. "A government signs a contract today with company X, then a new government comes into power and you go through the whole bidding process again, so it can take a very, very long time with huge cost impacts and huge delay impacts.”

Tomorrow evening in Whitehorse, Wallin will share her views on Arctic sovereignty and national security at a Conservative Party fundraiser, and earlier this week took time from her busy schedule to give an interview on two subjects with which she is well acquainted.

On the international front, the senator stands behind the Canadian mission in Afghanistan and decries criticism founded on an incomplete picture of what's happening on the ground in the war-torn country.

As for the less-than adequate portrayal of Canadian soldiers' efforts and what they face battling al-Qaeda remnants and Taliban-led insurgents, Wallin blames the higher-ups and the reportage of some working in her previous vocation.

"The actual cost of doing war coverage, most specifically the cost of ensuring the lives of reporters and cameramen, is very high and for many news organizations it's been prohibitive,” Wallin said. "So what you end up getting is too much reporting from inside the wire.”

Reporters rarely venturing outside the Canadian base in Khandahar has led to week-long coverage of each soldier killed in active duty, Wallin noted, giving an impression that the toll has been significant.

"Each life is a high price to pay, but I think it speaks to competence of our soldiers that after nine years in Afghanistan (146) is the number of soldiers killed,” she added.

Wallin contributed to the 2008 Manley Report based on what she heard sitting on the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan. While she's pleased the government took the panel's advice on getting proper helicopters to "get soldiers off the ground” where they are vulnerable to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Wallin is disappointed the panel's advice that Canada not stipulate an end to the mission – currently 2011 – was ignored.

When conversation turns to the issue of Afghan prisoners captured by Canadian Forces and turned over to local authorities and potential mistreatment by them, Wallin bristles at accusations our men and women in uniform are complicit in torture.

"I for the life of me don't know what would motivate in this country, whether it's a political person or a former diplomat, to engage in this is nothing more than a driveby smear of our military ... it makes me a little angry,” Wallin said.

From the perspective of the senator, appointed Honourary Colonel of the Air Force in August of last year, the politicization of the Afghan war can handicap the efforts of Canada's military asked to fight in a foreign country while being armchair quarterbacked from Ottawa.

"We are there at the behest of the Afghan government and whether we think it's perfect or not, they were duly elected,” Wallin continued. "We can't go in there under the authority of a democratically elected government and say ‘we don't like your government' when we're trying to promote democracy there. We just can't hold each other to the same standards.”

Wallin points to Canada's civilian efforts in Afghanistan, including the work of officials from corrections and the RCMP who are improving prison and policing standards in a region of the world where previous to the 2001 invasion by NATO forces, barbarism ruled supreme.

"If anybody had seen a Taliban prison run by those who would chop people's heads off in the public square, you would've seen hell holes beyond belief,” she said. "And so Canada has brought in people with the expertise who've worked long and hard to clean these places up.”

These civilians, who are also working to open schools and provide clean drinking water in lawless land, must be backed by a military presence, Wallin stressed, and the idea that blue-helmeted "peacekeepers” could provide the same security, or could intervene in other countries' internal crises, is simply wishful thinking.

"Soldiers will be the first ones to tell you about the misconception of peacekeeping. All you have to do is look at cases in which we were forbidden from taking up arms on missions ... such as Rwanda, and the results have been grotesque,” Wallin said. "And right now we're looking at 40 to 50 failed states around the world, some with internal wars ... these are not situations where we're just going to arrive and talk nice at the tea table.”

On Saturday, Wallin gives the keynote address at Yukon College's graduation ceremony.