Inuit group wants in on five-nation Arctic meeting

Representatives of five Arctic states, as well as Hans Enoksen, then the premier of Greenland, pose for a picture during the Greenland meeting in May of 2008 that produced the Ilulissat Declaration. Canada was represented by Gary Lunn, who then served as natural resources minister. Next month, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon will host a similar meeting in Chelsea, Que., a small town near Ottawa located in Cannon’s federal riding, Pontiac. (FILE PHOTO)

Updated 4:10 p.m., Feb. 15

The chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, Jimmy Stotts, said last week he wants Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to invite Inuit representatives to a meeting of five Arctic coastal states next month in Chelsea, Que., a small town just outside Ottawa.

“I expect Inuit will be given an invitation to be active participants in the upcoming sovereignty summit,” Stotts said last week in a letter to Cannon.

Foreign affairs ministers from Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the U.S., the five Arctic states who signed the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration in Greenland, will attend the one-day gathering, set for March 29.

“Because Inuit are a coastal people, because this summit is about the Arctic Ocean coast, and because Mr. Cannon underlined the importance of our involvement in multi-lateral meetings outside the Arctic Council, I expect we will be given an invitation to play a meaningful role at this important summit,” Duane Smith, the president of ICC Canada, said Feb. 12 in a news release.

Another aboriginal group, the Arctic Athabaskan Council, which represents First Nations and Métis living in Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, also demands an invitation to the March 29 five-nation gathering.

“It makes no sense for us to be included in the Arctic Council but excluded in meetings of the five Arctic Ocean states,” Billy Erasmus, the chair of the council, said last week.

Cannon said earlier this month that the objective of the meeting is to “encourage new thinking” on economic development and environmental issues in the Arctic.

In an interview Monday, a spokesperson for Cannon said next month’s meeting is for the five Arctic coastal states only.

But she said Cannon would convene a meeting of Canada’s Arctic Council advisory committee, which includes the ICC, before March 29.

In their Ilulissat Declaration, the five nations agreed to the peaceful and co-operative resolution of boundary and other disputes, through legal rules set out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

They also declared that despite the effects of climate change and the prospect of more resource development and shipping, the Arctic does not require a new international legal regime for its protection.

“This [Ilulissat] is not what’s going to be discussed on the 29th,” Cannon’s spokesperson said.

“What’s going to be discussed on the 29th is issues unfolding in the future… the melting of the ice, the access, and also the resources of the Arctic.”

The five nations meeting next month are all members of the eight-nation Arctic Council.

But their five-member club does not include Finland, Sweden and Iceland, the three Arctic Council nations whose coastlines do not border the Arctic Ocean.

This has led some observers to suggest the activities of the five-nation group could eventually weaken the Arctic Council.

But the foreign affairs spokesperson said the March 29 meeting isn’t meant to undercut the Arctic Council, which wasn’t scheduled to meet in 2010 anyway.

In an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen, Michael Byers, an arctic sovereignty expert at the University of British Columbia, urged Cannon to include Arctic issues during a meeting of the G8 foreign ministers, which include Canada, the U.S. and Russia, plus the four largest members of the European Union.

Byers wrote that indigenous peoples, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden should be invited to observe as guests.

“The G8 foreign ministers could start by discussing Arctic search-and-rescue,” Byers wrote. “With hundreds of cruise ships and thousands of commercial airliners traversing the region each year, a major accident is inevitable — involving the citizens of many different states.”

“A multilateral treaty is needed so that information and assets can be deployed without regard for international boundaries or national pride.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Larry Bagnell, the MP for Yukon, who chaired a Liberal Party caucus meeting on Arctic issues in Ottawa last week.

Bagnell noted that the Ilulissat Declaration contained an agreement on search-and-rescue cooperation, yet Canada still has to sends planes stationed in the South up to search for lost northerners.

“We can’t even do search and rescue for our own country,” Bagnell said. “We don’t have any search and rescue fixed-wing fleet… north of 60.”

With files from Jim Bell and Chris Windeyer