The North defines Canada?

“I love the North,” Paul Martin declared, not long after his feet hit the tarmac in front of Iqaluit’s airport building this past Tuesday evening. “The North is an important part of what defines us as Canadians…”

The prime minister is not alone in harbouring these sentiments. Most Canadians love to say they love the North.

And most Canadians, especially those who have never been here, love to say it’s what defines us Canadians, especially visiting politicians who think it’s what we want to hear.

But do they really mean it? And do they understand what they’re saying?

The idea of Canada as an essentially “northern” nation is an old construct.

Since the 19th century, Canadians of European descent have never quite figured out the difference between Canadians and the people of the United States, Great Britain and other places. And we’ve never quite figured out what the people of our diverse regions hold in common, other than our undying need to complain about each other. Canada is a country that has never quite managed to make that big leap from adolescence into full adulthood.

So whenever Canadians get into a nationalistic mood, they always invoke the pure, untainted romantic hinterland of their imagination, the “North,” an adventurous place where the struggle against nature makes you strong and pure. Canada’s possession of the North, in some mystical sense that no one has ever been able to explain, is what makes Canada Canadian.

Rubbish. In reality, the North is not what defines Canada. In reality, the North is everything that Canada is not.

Canada is an urban country. An overwhelming majority of Canadians live in crowded cities and suburbs, almost within sight of the U.S. border, enveloped in concrete, smog and unbounded wealth. Most Canadians couldn’t find Nunavut on a map if you paid them.

In contrast, the regions that make up the North — the three territories, Labrador, Nunavik, and the northern regions of Ontario and the western provinces — are rural places. Most northerners live in tiny villages and small towns, connected now to the south by electronic media, but still isolated by our hideously expensive air fares and energy costs.

Canada is also an affluent country with low unemployment, mostly, and in recent years, a rapid rate of wealth creation, low crime rates, and manageable social problems.

But the North, with some exceptions, is a place of poverty, high crime, and unmanageable social problems. Much of the wealth that is created here leaks into the pockets of southerners. There’s nothing pure and untainted about the modern North. It’s a place of struggle, not against nature, but against our all-too-human flaws, and the ignorance of an often well-meaning but blundering government in Ottawa whose agenda is dominated by urban obsessions.

We don’t doubt Paul Martin’s sincerity. As politicians go, the man’s honest.

But if he truly “loves the North” then he’ll make his government pay more attention to what we actually need. If the North “defines us as Canadians,” then Canadians had better pay more attention to us. The people of the North, especially Nunavut, deserve to be properly housed, to be properly cared for when we are sick, and to be given the tools to develop a stronger economy.

We welcome the prime minister to the North, and we thank the three northern MPs for making his tour possible. Most of all, we hope his time here will inspire him to take our issues seriously. JB