Northern Canada is not nearly as inhospitable as people make it out to be. This is a big myth that needs to be dispelled and I believe the North does need to be developed for us to grow as a nation. For example there are a lot of very good soil for agriculture in Northern Ontario and Manitoba that aren't exploited at all, mostly due to the lack of infrastructure which impedes development. We could easily double our agricultural output if we farmed everywhere we could and I think those are great lands for further development in a post-global warming apocalyptic world.
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal...cs142p2_054011
And those are great soils for farming, you can even farm in crappy weather/conditions; people are farming in the Yukon and NWT for instance.
Here is a land quality map:
You can see huge areas with great agricultural lands near Lake Abitibi, Woodland Caribou provincial park, God's lake, All the land west of Lake Winnipeg, and a lot in Northern BC. The seasons are probably too short there to farm some of the more demanding crops like corn but there are definitely many crops that can be farmed there. The cold climate would also give them a unique, sweater, flavour.