Northern strategy raises big expectations

Be everything to everyone: that’s the tall order facing Canada’s future Northern Strategy.

In last October’s throne speech, Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson said this Northern Strategy would “foster sustainable economic and human development, protect the northern environment and Canada’s sovereignty and security and promote cooperation with the international circumpolar community” – a big promise Prime Minister Paul Martin also repeated when he announced the strategy in Ottawa late last fall.

The two-day roundtable meeting on climate change held last week in Iqaluit was the first major occasion for many in Nunavut to lobby for what they want to see in the Northern Strategy.

Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik spoke to the gathering about devolution and the territory’s need for more control over natural resource development, which he said would give Nunavut the ability to be more resourceful in how it deals with climate change.

And the Northern Strategy shouldn’t be an excuse to stall on implementing land claim agreements or to duplicate what land claim organizations do, Paul Kaludjak, the president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., told the gathering’s 100 participants, who were mainly from the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut governments, various organizations from the three territories, and academic institutions.

“When we see progress in the implementation of our land claim, it will be easier for us to collaborate in the development of an Inuit-friendly strategy,” Kaludjak said.

Jose Kusugak, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president, also called for Inuit input and involvement in the Northern Strategy.

For David Hik, the organizer of Canada’s International Polar Year, the meeting was a way to lobby for IPY’s part of the Northern Strategy – particularly when Ottawa hands out the money.

The 2007 IPY, the first polar year since 1957, is intended to highlight polar research.

But Hik said Canada’s IPY effort needs a commitment of $200 million over three to five years by the end of June to compete with other nations. Even nations far away from the polar regions – Malaysia, Greece and Portugal – have already committed money to their IPY activities.

Hik was looking for an announcement of money for IPY in February’s federal budget – but it wasn’t there, and he says now IPY Canada is running out of time: all eyes will be on Canada to be a leader during the IPY.

“It’s difficult to lead without money,” Hik said. “It’s frustrating.”

Yet Hik believes the Northern Strategy must deal with the North’s pressing needs at the same time.

“How as a government do you put money into science when you haven’t dealt with revenue sharing or education or health care, all those things that are priorities in the North? But you can’t build a pipeline or plan for the future without science.”

In her speech to the meeting, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, said climate change is the issue capable of uniting the parties looking to the Northern Strategy for their needs.

“Figuring how best to respond to climate change unites all of us together,” Watt-Cloutier said.

At the start of the discussions, Bob Corell, who headed the recent Arctic climate impact assessment study on the changing Arctic climate, gave a more sober than usual update on what to expect warming in the circumpolar region.

“It’s going to change how people in the North live,” Corell said.

Corell spoke about the increasing freshening of northern ocean waters, which can disrupt ocean currents and change weather patterns, and about the faster-than-expected melting of Greenland’s ice cap that may raise sea levels by as much as one metre.

Corell included Iqaluit in his hectic schedule of international travel because he wants to see scientific knowledge about climate change turn into action within the Northern Strategy.

Disappointed by his U.S. government’s refusal to act aggressively on climate change, Corell said he’s now putting his personal energy into lobbying smaller groups with political clout, regional lawmakers, industry and developing nations such as India and China to act.

In his opinion, the Northern Strategy isn’t just a strategy for the North, it’s “a strategy for humanity.”