'There are no dots or lines on the lands, waters and ice of the North'

Many federal politicians may still butcher the pronunciation of "ullakut" and "qujanimiik" during their Arctic speeches, but Iqaluit is increasingly learning to speak Ottawa's language when it comes to Arctic sovereignty.

Consider the recent announcement of $100 million for new houses in Nunavut.

Chuck Strahl, the Indian Affairs and Northern Development minister, talked about quality of life and help for those Nunavummiut who live in overcrowded homes.

So too did Leona Aglukkaq, Canada's health minister and Nunavut's member of Parliament, who also added notes about the impact of new housing on health and social development.

That is as it should be. But recognizing the benefits of social spending doesn't always come naturally to a Conservative government, particularly this one.

Until the economic recession forced governments everywhere to consider "stimulus packages" and budget deficits, the natural urge of the Conservatives, to shrink government and control spending, dominated.

What was interesting were the remarks of Eva Aariak, the premier, during that news conference in late February about social housing. She assertively tied such spending to federal concerns about Canadian control over Arctic lands and their marine approaches.

"There are no dots or lines on the lands, waters and ice of the North" as there are on maps, Aariak said.

Instead, she said, Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic is proven by, and relies almost totally on, the continuous presence of Inuit here for centuries.

"It is our residents who embody sovereignty," Aariak said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been much more keenly aware of the Arctic as a place of both potential resource development, and, in a much less likely nightmare scenario, the flashpoint of international conflict over those resources with Canada's Arctic neighbours, specifically the United States, Denmark (via Greenland) and Russia.

Ottawa is also desperately trying to show the international community that it has control over the waters of the Northwest Passage to rebut claims by the United States and others that the passage is an international strait.

Aariak seems keen to be on the same page as the federal government. During the February news conference, she referred to incidents where Nunavummiut helped RCMP arrest foreigners who were travelling in Arctic waters illegally: the 2006 case of a Romanian man who tried to sneak into Grise Fiord from Greenland, and the 2007 case of the self-styled Norwegian "Vikings" who sailed through the Northwest Passage.

In doing so, Aariak is essentially offering Ottawa a deal: spend money on our social development and we'll be your eyes and ears in the North.

Sources close to the premier have said Nunavut's new government was initially reluctant to speak publicly about what it wanted from the federal government, lest the notoriously prickly Prime Minister pull it off the table again.

But now, the Aariak government seems to be shrewdly pitching Nunavut itself as Canada's frontline agent of Arctic sovereignty.

The hundreds of millions of dollars lavished upon Nunavut in the last federal budget, for housing, research, and economic development, seem to stand as evidence that Aariak's strategy appears to be working. Although it is equally true that the Tories were driven to spend money to help rescue Canada from the recession.

Much of the legal responsibility for asserting Canada's interests in the Arctic lies with the federal government: the international treaties governing offshore territorial claims, and the expensive mapping projects Canada is conducting with both Denmark and the U.S. to sort out conflicting ocean boundary claims, for example.

Right now, there's no conflict over the Arctic and its potential riches.

The polar nations, despite the provocative flights by Russian planes close to Canadian airspace during U.S. president Barack Obama's recent visit to Ottawa, generally agree that they'll all follow international laws to work out their differences. Oil drilling in the High Arctic and a parade of shipping traffic through the Northwest Passage are still decades away, and hardly inevitable.

Regardless, the government of Nunavut is not sitting on the sidelines. Late last month, GN and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. representatives took part in an ArcticNet project that means to generate policy recommendations governments can use to help resolve these existing and potential disputes.

That project is led by Michael Byers, a professor of international law at the University of British Columbia. He says it's not too early for lower levels of government, like the GN, to start preparing for the potential resource scramble.

Oil production in the High Arctic, Byers says, and the shipping that comes with it would have to be supported through places like Iqaluit and possibly Nanisivik, where the military is currently building a refuelling station.

But the recession has also forced the price of oil to plummet and that means that expensive oil production in the High Arctic is impossible until prices rise again.

Byers says this lull is the right time for the federal government to negotiate with its Arctic neighbours on boundary disputes and he thinks Nunavut should be at the table, for example, when Ottawa negotiates with Denmark over disputed Hans Island, which lies between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

"Those kinds of agreements… need to involve territorial governments and land claims organizations because you want everyone to be satisfied with the result," he says.

Whether those disputes get settled or not, the Inuit of Nunavut will continue to occupy and use this land. But they will for the time being also suffer from more social ills, poorer health, and lesser education than Southern Canadians.

But for the first time, Iqaluit seems to know how to capitalize on Ottawa's current northward gaze, and use it to win the money that will be needed to solve those problems.