Report: Northern people need security too

This doesn’t cut it. According to a new report from the Conference Board of Canada, it’s time to expand the debate about Arctic sovereignty beyond military and diplomatic issues and talk about ways to ensure public safety and community development for people who live in the North. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

A new study suggests Canada must expand its discussion about northern issues beyond concerns about Arctic sovereignty and include the North’s public safety, social and economic needs.

Security in Canada’s North: Looking Beyond Arctic Sovereignty, released Nov. 15 by the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for the North, says the security of northern communities needs more attention from southern academics and media, who mostly focus on international military and political issues in the Arctic.

“Many Canadians have only a limited understanding of the security issues facing Canada’s North,” the report states.

“And what understanding they do have is formed primarily by media reports that tend to focus on a limited number of issues (such as potential military disputes over the Arctic and its resources).”

But the concept of security should go beyond issues of sovereignty and international boundary disputes and include what the study calls northern security and community security.

Northern security goes “beyond issues related to Canada’s sovereignty. It includes the protection of people, infrastructure and the environment against all hazards in Canada’s Greater North,” like crime, pandemics, industrial accidents, drug trafficking and terrorism.

The report says law enforcement will need additional resources to handle the negative side-effects of increased human activity in the North.

More shipping in poorly-mapped areas of the Arctic Ocean will increase the risk of environmental disaster, while the boom in mining and energy “megaprojects” will bring an increase in crime for which northern police aren’t fully prepared.

And the document echoes what many northern political leaders have long called for: increased communication and cooperation between local, territorial and federal agencies.

And it says the highfalutin’ world of international geopolitics and grand theories of international law, diplomacy and military planning ignore local needs like health care, education, job opportunities and search and rescue capacity.

“Traditional interpretations of security promoted by academics and policy-makers have little relevance to the experience of a Northerner,” the report states.

An example is the issue of food security, which rarely figures in global geopolitics unless it creates widespread social unrest.

But the report says the contamination of country foods by industrial pollutants combined with the high cost of imported healthy food is contributing to lower levels of health in northern communities.

The report does deal at length with the question of Canada’s sovereignty over its part of the Arctic, noting the ongoing disagreement with the United States about the status of the Northwest Passage.

The U.S. maintains the passage is an international strait because it connects two parts of the high seas.

If the Northwest Passage is found to be an international strait, it would allow the US and any other country the right to transit the strait, with minimal regulation by Canada.

“[But] most legal experts agree that customary international law would require that the Northwest Passage be used as an international shipping route before it can be deemed an international strait,” the report states.

Meanwhile, the report notes that rising Asian economies like China, Taiwan, South Korea and India would benefit from the right to run ships through an ice-free Northwest Passage.

“Most non-Arctic states share the position that no country or group of countries… should have sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean and that any newly opened routes through the Arctic Ocean should be free for all countries to use.”

The report says Canada can protect its Arctic interests under international law by:

• promoting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as “the definitive mechanism to resolve remaining boundary disputes in the Arctic;”
• seek international support for its Arctic policies through institutions like the Arctic Council;
• pursuing binding international shipping rules;
• working with other Arctic countries to enforce existing shipping and environmental rules; and
• cooperating with Arctic indigenous peoples, both inside and outside of Canada.