Nunavut stays out of ballistic missile debate

Nunavut is steering away from taking a position on whether Canada should participate in the U.S. plan to build up a ballistic missile defence system.

“We don’t have the jurisdiction of the federal government to decide on matters of national and international security,” Premier Paul Okalik said last week in a speech to a Duke University Law School conference in North Carolina.

The theme of this gathering was “U.S.-Canadian Security Relations: Partnership or Predicament?”

Okalik’s speech says analyzing the “benefits, risks and advisability” of the BMD is “not a question for the Government of Nunavut.”

Participation in the U.S. scheme to protect North America by shooting down enemy missiles over northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland is a national issue and not a territorial or provincial matter. It’s best left to the federal government, Okalik said.

“Our national government and the international community are already staking out national positions,” he said.

Nunavut only wants “a positive role” in any projects such as the BMD that take place in or affect Nunavut – what Okalik called a “true partnership.”

“Inuit have a role to play in northern projects that require an understanding of the Arctic when it comes to such fields as engineering, climatology and environmental assessment,” he said.

For Nunavut, mitigating the BMD’s impact on Nunavummiut and Nunavut is what counts.

“For us, this is the question that defines our partnership and our predicament,” Okalik said.

To illustrate more clearly what he meant, Okalik mentioned the lack of partnership in past defence projects and the negative effects that projects such as the DEW-line had on Inuit, changing “family structures, language and traditional ties to the land.”

Okalik said Nunavut and Inuit land claims now offer some protection to Inuit and Inuit-owned lands.

“The Nunavut land claim agreement and our government are now in place to ensure that future development projects take into consideration the potentially positive and negative impacts on Inuit before projects are launched in our territory,” Okalik said.

However, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents 155,000 Inuit in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia, and particularly ICC’s president for Greenland, Aqqaluk Lynge, have expressed caution over the U.S. move “to upgrade military infrastructure across the Arctic and in our back yard.”

The construction of a BMD site is moreover a huge project — nothing of its size and scope has yet been seen in Nunavut.

In Fort Greely, Alaska, one of several BMD sites planned for the Arctic, there will soon be five missile silos, a revamped radar system, satellite communications and a new command centre. A 500-person construction camp is going up near the base.

The Ford Greely project is expected to cost more than $400 million.

The U.S. military is also upgrading radar facilities at Shemya Island in the Aleutian Islands and a launch interceptor rocket pad in Kodiak, Alaska.

The complete BMD system is also designed to include an upgrade of the Thule Air Base in northern Greenland — or possibly the construction of a similar site in northern Canada if the Thule site falls through for political reasons.