Canada may be pulling back from overseas military commitments, but is planning to "flex its muscles" with an exercise on home soil by sending a warship, a squadron of helicopters and 200 troops to the high Arctic this summer.

News of the operation was reported in Saturday's edition of The National Post.

The military says the three-week long exercise has nothing to do with a brewing territorial dispute with Denmark over the ownership of a tiny island between Ellesesmere Island and Greenland.

The operation, code-mamed Narwhal, is the first time the military will have a joint naval, air and land force operating so far north.

Colonel Norris Pettis, commander of the Canadian Forces northern area, told The National Post that the operation is about "sending a message that this land is important to us...that we can put troops, and aircraft and ships, on the ground to respond to whatever we might be called upon to deal with."

Pettis said the "robust" military presence is a sign that Canada is "flexing our muscles" in the Arctic.

The Danish ambassador to Canada, Svend Roed Nielsen, has offered to negotiate with Canadian diplomats about the fate of Hans Island, a three-kilometre-long stretch of rock and ice in the Nares Strait.

Both countries claim ownership of the barren and uninhabited island.

"As far as Canada-Danish relations are concerned we have tried to keep this low-key [but] we have agreed to disagree," Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron told the Post.

A Danish warship sailed past Hans Island in 2002 and a group of soldiers disembarked and reportedly hoisted the Danish flag, an act Canada claimed was a violation of its sovereignty.

Canada has launched a five-year plan to increase its military presence throughout the Arctic, including satellite surveillance and far-reaching patrols of soldiers on snowmobiles.