Canada: In the Arctic, you can't go back to the future

[Harold Schiffman]

In the Arctic, you can't go back to the future
MARY SIMON

Special to Globe and Mail Update

March 26, 2008 at 8:58 PM EDT

Stephen Harper visited Yellowknife this month for the Arctic Winter
Games, his fifth trip to the North since becoming Prime Minister in
2006. Mr. Harper's interest in the North is no doubt genuine, and he
is to be congratulated on spending time there. Media around the world
are awash in unprecedented coverage about the circumpolar world. News
stories range from the rapid shrinkage of multiyear sea ice to
speculation about new routes from East Asia to Europe, to a just-out
European Union report suggesting global warming in the Arctic may
precipitate security issues for Europe involving energy wars, mass
migration, failed states and political radicalization.

But while the federal government's attentions to the Arctic may be
genuine, there is an eerie throwback quality to its focus. Speeches
and interviews by cabinet ministers have a Diefenbaker-era "roads to
resources" tone to them. There appears to be a central assumption that
a massive expansion in large-scale mineral and oil and gas extraction
projects should drive everything else; that helping make Canada a
mineral and energy "superpower" should be the North's new vocation;
that the state should get out of the way by reducing regulatory
controls; that the trickledown effects of new wealth-creation can be
relied upon to limit the alienation of those who live at the economic
and social margins.

The reality is that the Arctic has the country's worst housing, health
and education indicators. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Notwithstanding last October's Throne Speech promise of "an integrated
northern strategy," a quick review of the recent federal budget shows
where the federal government's priorities rest at the moment: sizable
new funding for mineral development, alongside earlier big-ticket
commitments to military facilities and hardware, with a "hold the
line" approach to endemic social-policy problems.

In this retro-picture, the aboriginal realities of the Arctic — our
demographic majority, our aboriginal and treaty rights, our distinct
languages and cultures — are effectively airbrushed out. Public
pronouncements on northern policy priorities rarely mention Inuit and
other aboriginal peoples and, when they do, the references are
footnotes and afterthoughts. The views and suggestions of
representative aboriginal organizations are sidelined. The
Auditor-General's repeated criticisms that northern land-claims
agreements are not being implemented properly by the Crown are left
unanswered. Former B.C. Supreme Court justice Thomas Berger's
comprehensive 2006 report, titled "The Nunavut Project," is put on a
shelf.

There is a core fallacy that threatens to take hold at the heart of
the federal government's emerging northern and Arctic policies: that
the top third of Canada can be managed and developed as if its
aboriginal history and demography, and its aboriginal values and
character, are peripheral and transitional. Policies built around such
a misleading notion will be unsound in concept and unsustainable in
practice.

The "integrated northern strategy" promised in last year's Throne
Speech is, at least notionally, still under construction. There is now
an opportunity to get things right. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has taken
the initiative in developing a proposal for an Arctic strategy, and
sent it to the Prime Minister two months ago. It is built around a
careful selection of key themes.

Creating economic and environmental win-wins

Treating economic and environmental policy choices as mutually
exclusive is debunked by experience everywhere on the planet. Leaving
large parts of the population mired in intractable social problems is
as poor a long-term economic decision as it is an affront to
collective conscience and citizenship. Further, too much policy-making
regarding the Arctic has been a function of short-term thinking and
strategies that change with the changes in government.

Respecting cultural distinctiveness

The Arctic is at least as distinctive a region as any other part of
Canada. There are no factors that can be recited in support of Quebec
as a nation that cannot be recited for Inuit Nunaat, the four regions
that make up our Inuit homeland. Federal policies should work with
Inuit cultural reality, not deny it. It is not acceptable, for
example, to create and fund school systems that give full respect to
English- and French-language minorities while treating the Inuit
language of the majority as doomed to oblivion.

Relying on the home team on home turf

Federalism belongs to all of us: The front-line role of managing the
Canadian Arctic should be entrusted to the peoples of the Canadian
Arctic.

Arctic foreign and domestic policy

Both foreign and domestic policy apply to the Arctic, which will
always be a high-cost area. Public investments need to be chosen
carefully, so as to enhance the state of civil society in the Arctic,
as well as international objectives in relation to sovereignty and
security. Our starting goal should be the defusing of international
tensions, the creation of institutions and processes that enhance
co-operation on things such as environmental protection and
navigation, and the search for collective wins.

Getting the geography right

Past federal government definitions have been, quite literally, all
over the map. Confusion abounds. We need a clear and complete
geographic definition that unites all the Arctic regions, including
Arctic Quebec, Arctic Labrador and the huge marine areas around the
Arctic Archipelago.

As always, the Inuit of Canada invite the Government of Canada and
fellow Canadians to work with us. In reaching out to Canadians, I have
seen ready support for Inuit priorities in the faces and comments of
the people I have been meeting. It is a positive development that the
Arctic is finally occupying the place it deserves in the attentions
and imaginations of political leaders. The cliché of the "the Great
White North" must give way to an Arctic strategy that builds from the
ground up.

The Inuit and other northern aboriginal peoples will prove willing and
constructive partners in governance of Canada's part of the
circumpolar world. And they will prove equally committed opponents of
anything that falls short of genuine partnership.

Mary Simon is president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080326.wcomment0327/BNStory/Front/home

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