Nunavik wants in on Ottawa’s Northern Strategy: Makivik

Makivik Corp. wants Nunavik to be included in the federal government’s 2009 Northern Strategy.

That’s what Makivik lawyer Jean-François Arteau, also an executive assistant to Pita Aatami, Makivik’s president, said earlier this month at a conference of the Northern Research Forum in Iceland, where he asked why Nunavik isn’t included in the Northern Strategy.

The exclusion of Nunavik in the Northern Strategy must be corrected, he said: “this is a serious challenge the government of Canada has to address immediately.”

“From the perspective of Makivik Corporation and the Inuit of Nunavik, it is important to clarify exactly what do we mean when the Government of Canada uses the term ‘Arctic,'” Arteau said, calling that a “serious challenge for the government of Canada” is to look at how its Northern Strategy relates to Nunavik.

The “North of 60” definition of the North on which Ottawa bases its Northern Strategy is confined to Canada’s three territories, Arteau said.

But that doesn’t reflect the reality of the North and of the Arctic, he said, because “Nunavik is an integral part of the Canadian Arctic.”

That strategy focuses on four priority areas:

• Exercising Arctic sovereignty;

• Promoting social and economic development;

• Protecting the North’s environmental heritage; and,

• Improving and devolving northern governance.

Makivik has suggested ways in which Nunavik could be involved in the Northern Strategy, Arteau said.

“But the Government of Canada took another route and turned down the proposal,” he said.

Quebec was also called to task by Arteau in Iceland.

Arteau said Quebec must respect all current treaties and agreements between Quebec and Nunavik Inuit, take into account the long-term impacts of development on harvesting activities, and directly involve Nunavimmiut in the 25-year development scheme.

“If Quebec is to provide benefits of the North to all citizens of the Province of Quebec, it must accept as a fundamental principle of its Plan Nord, before anything else, it has to invest much more to improve the standard of living of the Nunavik Inuit taxpayers inhabiting the territory,” Arteau said.

In his speech to the international group of researchers, Arteau did not mention that in 1912, all the lands north of the Eastmain River were transferred to Quebec.

Until the 1970s, the federal government and Quebec still competed for control of Nunavik, offering duplicate services in policing and education.

But after the 1975 signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement defined Quebec’s greater responsibility in Nunavik, the federal government’s presence diminished.

Quebec’s role has continued to be strengthened through later deals such as the 2001 Sanarrutik agreement on social and economic development in Nunavik and this past May’s Plan Nord, which contains many of the same goals as the Northern Strategy — both of which Makivik signed on to.