EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 1, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Order.

Today is a continuation of our study on the Arctic.

We're very lucky to have with us today Professor Oran Young from Dartmouth College. He is a prominent author and lecturer. Committee members may recall that as we were travelling through the Arctic we constantly heard Mr. Young's name as the pre-eminent authority. I said to him before the hearing that he was so present all the time that it was sort of like Arctic lichen; he was constantly there. But he said he likes to believe he moves faster than lichen grows. We'll find that out this morning.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron.

Mr. Bergeron (Verchères): Before I begin, I have a brief question concerning the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. The government is scheduled to table a number of amendments in anticipation of the debate at the report stage in the House and we were told that these amendments would be sent to us 24 hours in advance. Do you know when the government is planning to send us these amendments?

The Chairman: I haven't heard anything about this, but I will be tabling the bill myself at 10 a.m. this morning in the House. Therefore, I will try to get this information at that time.

Mr. Bergeron: You're tabling the committee report this morning?

The Chairman: Yes, on the unamended bill.

Mr. Bergeron: And is the debate at the report stage scheduled for tomorrow or for Wednesday? Do you know when it is to take place?

The Chairman: I believe a 48-hour delay is required. Isn't that right?

Mr. Bergeron: Forty-eight hours?

The Chairman: No, 24 hours.

Mr. Bergeron: I see, 24 hours.

The Chairman: It's a problem for the leaders in the House and for the House administration. I myself would like to speak to this subject, but I have yet to be advised of the schedule. I think the debate will probably be on Friday.

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Mr. Bergeron: On Friday? Not before then?

The Chairman: That's what I've been told. I would like to know for certain, but to be honest, these are the mysteries of the House administration.

Mr. Bergeron: In any case, we will check with our leaders.

The Chairman: Understood.

[English]

Without any further interruptions, Professor Young, perhaps you would be good enough to give us an introduction to your report, which you've been good enough to give us. Then I know members will have some questions they would like to be able to ask you.

Welcome to the committee, and thank you for coming.

Dr. Oran Young (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to make a relatively short introductory presentation of 15 or 20 minutes, and then see if we can initiate a conversation around some of these questions.

The theme I will address is really the mandate of the committee regarding these Arctic issues, which, as I understand it, deals with expanding prospects for Arctic and circumpolar cooperation, focusing on the opportunities and challenges this presents for Canadian foreign policy. Because it seems to me a particularly important development in this context, and because it's such a recent development that we're still trying to understand, I'd like to centre my introductory remarks, at least, around the Arctic Council, which has been such a high priority for Canada in particular over these last several years.

What I want to present, in talking initially about the Arctic Council, is a kind of a sober assessment, in some ways a tough-minded but not pessimistic assessment.

Let me just say also, before getting into the substance of my remarks, that I will of course speak in English. I apologize to French-speaking members for speaking only in English, but I'd be delighted to try to field any questions I can in the discussion period.

I've brought a series of overheads to help guide us through this little introductory presentation.

Let me start with the sober assessment regarding the Arctic Council. To be candid, there's a great deal of room for skepticism regarding the Arctic Council and the extent to which it constitutes a really significant departure or development or forward motion with respect to international cooperation in the Arctic. I've listed a few of these reasons for skepticism.

There is a sense in which the Arctic Council is really old wine in new bottles. In many respects it's a relabelling of the Arctic environmental protection strategy. In relation to the Arctic environmental protection strategy, you might think of it as essentially, at this stage, business as usual.

There's a sense also in which the establishment of the Arctic Council constitutes a top-down initiative. The cynics among us have often commented with respect to this initiative that it's really an effort on the part of the foreign ministries of the eight Arctic countries to recapture the action. Back at the time of the initiation of the Arctic environmental protection strategy, in 1991, the foreign ministries were relatively disinterested. This was a fairly low-key, relatively unimportant and not very interesting initiative. But a remarkable amount has happened under the auspices of the Arctic environmental protection strategy, and now the foreign ministries want to get back into the action to recapture what's going on.

The danger that many of us see in this regard is the possibility of a politicization of the programmatic, day-to-day substantive projects that have been carried out under the auspices of the Arctic environmental protection strategy.

As most of you will know, as well, there are no hard or binding commitments under the declaration establishing the Arctic Council. In part, this is a matter of the distinction between soft law and hard law, but I think even more to the point, the declaration contains very few, if any, substantive commitments on the part of the signatories to take concrete action.

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Finally, there's a sense as well in which, with respect to the creation of the Arctic Council, it's hard to see how form follows function. Most of us I think believe with respect to organizations, as well as organisms, that form should follow function.

In a sense, there's not very much clarity in the declaration on function. We have in a sense an organization, an institution, in search of a role.

This is the critical part of my presentation before I get on to the opportunities.

In terms of current international practice - that is to say international cooperation in institution-building in other areas or other parts of the world - the Arctic Council is really a very conservative initiative. It has a rather conventional structure, if you compare the Arctic Council to current European practice, for example, in which organizations are created that can meet at different times and in different places with different configurations of ministers. So you might have a meeting one day of the health ministers, another day of the environment ministers, another day of the transport ministers, and only occasionally of foreign ministry officials. There's a flexibility in some of these European arrangements that has not been explicitly introduced into the Arctic Council context.

If you also look, for example, at the recent initiative like the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, which you might hear more about as you travel, this is an organization with a two-tiered structure. It has the senior structure interstate foreign ministry level, but it also has a lower-level tier that allows representatives of regional governmental entities to meet together, as well as at the senior level.

The Arctic Council also has a rather restrictive decision rule that calls for decisions to be made by consensus. Many people believe that at the international level consensus is the standard decision rule, that almost all international organizations operate by consensus, but this is not true. A fair number of organizations can make decisions by different kinds of majority criteria, including organizations like the International Whaling Commission, for example - a very controversial one, but it doesn't require consensus. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species does the same thing.

The Arctic Council also has no definite funding mechanism. There is not, for example, a trust fund as is set up under other international agreements such as the World Heritage Convention. There's not a fund of money like the Global Environment Facility, the GEF, which provides project support in the areas of climate change and biodiversity and so on.

The Arctic Council also has no permanent secretariat, which makes it a very conservative kind of arrangement in terms of current practice. Other organizations, including the Barents Euro-Arctic region or the North Atlantic Marine Mammals Commission, have permanent secretariats that play rather important roles.

Finally, the Arctic Council, in the declaration that has been signed, includes no explicit implementation review mechanisms. There are procedures that set up a standard process for assessing, monitoring, and evaluating what has been going on within the process initiated by this form of cooperation.

It seems to me as if these are rather serious limitations. They make this limited, conservative initiative which carries us only a small step forward with respect to international cooperation in the Arctic.

Those are the criticisms. That's the sober assessment. Let me turn in the remaining time of this opening presentation to opportunities.

Despite all these criticisms and limitations that I've mentioned, it strikes me that the Arctic Council offers an opportunity to advance the cause of international cooperation in the Arctic that is simply too good to be missed. In other words, we have to take this rather limited, cautious, conservative first step and really do something with it. Here, of course, is where Canada's role is likely to loom very large as the first chair of the council.

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I want to make three sets of points about seizing these opportunities. The first set of points has to do with getting the council's role right: trying to be as clear as possible on what the council can do and can't do, should do or shouldn't do.

When we look at international regimes, international cooperative institutions, we generally tend to think of four main sorts of roles they can play. They can play a regulatory role, by laying down a set of rules of behaviour, or regulations, the members should follow. They can play what we call a ``procedural'' role, in the sense of establishing decision-making processes or procedures to deal with a well-defined class of issues within their competence or jurisdiction. They can play a programmatic role, in the sense of initiating and managing joint or coordinated projects. They can play what we social scientists often call a ``generative'' role, in the sense of developing a common discourse, or articulating a vision and a way of talking about that vision which becomes a common vocabulary, a common way of discussing an issue.

Now, which of these or what combination of these roles can the Arctic Council best play? It's not a regulatory regime. It doesn't lay down a series of rules. It has very limited procedural or decision-making capacity. It is not granted a certain competence or jurisdiction to make specific decisions. It certainly can play a programmatic role, both in the sense of providing oversight for coordinated projects that have already been initiated under the Arctic environmental protection strategy and in initiating new coordinated projects, the so-called ``sustainable development program''.

But very importantly, I believe one of the most fundamental contributions the Arctic Council can make really falls under this generative heading: trying to raise consciousness, to develop a vocabulary, to articulate a vision, so the Arctic becomes a visible, well-defined, well-understood region in the world on a circumpolar basis and we have a sense of participating in a common enterprise, we know what it's about, we know the vocabulary, we understand how to deal with these issues and how to develop an agenda of more concrete Arctic questions. This, I think, is really one of the most significant things the Arctic Council can do and should do.

There is also secondly the question of making progress on sustainable development. I want to make two or three points about sustainable development. The first is that I believe in the discourse of Arctic cooperation sustainable development is really the overarching question. Sustainable development is not simply one of several goals, I believe; it's the basic program. It's the fundamental issue to which everything else should be addressed. So we're not really talking about simply adding a sustainable development program to the existing activities under the Arctic environmental protection strategy. We should be developing a sustainable development architecture, or framework or structure, to which everything else should then be related or connected. So we're not really talking about, as people said at the beginning of this process, the ``twin pillars'', environmental protection and sustainable development; we're talking about sustainable development which must include environmental protection but at the same time must include issues of economic sustainability, of culture, of health, and so on.

In order to pursue this overarching theme of sustainable development, what needs to be done? I think two things need to be done right away. One is to try to articulate a set of sustainable development principles for the Arctic, to articulate what we see as a structure or framework of principles.

Principles in this sense are not really the same as policies of the ordinary sort. Principles are general framework guidelines. Principles are things such as equal opportunity, or no taxation without representation, or polluter pays - general guiding themes people should pay attention to. Some principles that might be interesting in the Arctic context are things such as the principle of subsistence preference: with living resources, when there are not enough stocks to satisfy the demands of commercial, recreational, and subsistent users, subsistence users should get preference.

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Another principle could be the principle of co-management. With respect to decision making regarding living resources, the user groups or communities should have a recognized voice in the decision-making process.

Another principle could be the principle of subsidiarity. That is to say, decisions about Arctic issues should be made at the lowest level at which the competence to make these decisions exists, a principle that many of you will know has been widely developed and articulated in the European Union context.

We could develop a number of other principles. Perhaps in the question and discussion period this is something we can come back to, but I'm suggesting the need for a set, a collection, an integrated set of Arctic sustainable development principles.

I think we also need to begin to initiate concrete projects. We need to do tangible, focused, identifiable, useful things so that the Arctic Council is not just some kind of talk shop, allowing for very broad, general kinds of discussions, but is actually seen to be doing useful things.

Let me just suggest, very quickly, a few examples of concrete sustainable development projects. We might come back to this subject as well in the discussion.

We could consider such things as establishing an Arctic technical assistance program, a program through which engineering and business and other kinds of applied knowledge could be made available to Arctic communities throughout the circumpolar region.

We could initiate an Arctic capacity-building program to upgrade or improve the skills dealing with these kinds of administrative issues of local people, especially indigenous people, in the Arctic.

We could start an Arctic development bank to provide small-scale capital resources to communities that want to initiate community action or community development programs.

We could consider initiating some Arctic adaptations of more general international institutional arrangements or regimes. For example, we could consider whether we should develop the idea of MARPOL, a marine pollution special area, or several such areas, for the Arctic.

We could see whether it would be interesting to follow up on the Law of the Sea Convention, article 234 - a very well-known article in Canadian circles - dealing with ice-covered areas to see whether or not we might want to devise a circumpolar, Arctic set of rules and regulations to deal with navigation in ice-covered areas.

We could identify a number of other examples of these concrete projects, but what I'm suggesting is the need to really initiate some first set, some first collection, of concrete projects as soon as possible to give substance and meaning to this initiative.

Let me also say that with respect to opportunities, I think we need to think carefully about fostering a dialogue between the world of research and the world of policy, the world of science and the world of practice. I think we need to think carefully, within the context of the Arctic Council, about how to make mutually beneficial links and relationships between the scientific or the research community, including those who are concerned with traditional ecological knowledge, and the world of policy. I think there are very interesting opportunities. The time, in many ways, is ripe to do this.

Let me close by bringing this down specifically to the situation of opportunities for Canada. If you follow the argument I've been making in the last four or five minutes about opportunities, what does this suggest for the role Canada might play? I've tried to put up here on this overhead three or four very concrete suggestions that Canada as the first chair of the Arctic Council might consider.

We need to prepare a brief on the council's roles. Coming back to these questions about regulatory and procedural and programmatic and generative roles, we need to think through exactly what role or combination of roles the Arctic Council is best suited to play. We need to be concrete and precise about this. We need to bring this to the practical level of policy-related action.

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It seems to me that as the next step beyond the signing of the declaration, Canada is in a unique position to work out a really well-defined proposal about the roles the council can and should play.

A second suggestion is to develop a set of sustainable development principles for the Arctic. Canada could take the lead in initiating the process that I was suggesting, the process of identifying, thrashing out and negotiating a framework of sustainable development principles for the Arctic with counterparts in other countries.

The third one is to initiate concrete sustainable development projects. Canada could take the initiative in trying to identify one or two or three concrete projects of the sort that I was suggesting and take action. Take these through the senior Arctic affairs officials to counterparts in other countries and propose a program, propose some concrete steps.

The final one is to establish a consultative process involving all Arctic stakeholders. Within the context of the Arctic Council, to avoid the dangers of an exclusively top-down perspective, I believe there's a need for representatives of the council to be in regular contact with other kinds of stakeholders.

I go back in this context to a document that many of you will be familiar with. It was published here in Canada in 1991, and was called To Establish an International Arctic Council: A Framework Report. It seems to me that this document articulated a very humane and, in many ways, satisfying vision of an Arctic Council that would be quite participatory and would allow opportunities for representatives of a variety of stakeholders to have a regular voice. I would like to see that vision returned to.

I've been told that this committee or members of it will be travelling to other parts of the Arctic in the near future, and I think that's a really excellent initiative. I'd like to commend you for thinking in those terms: to go to various parts of the Arctic to meet the stakeholders, to learn something firsthand about their perspectives, their aspirations, their fears and anxieties, and to learn about how the Arctic Council might be developed and articulated with those concerns in mind.

While I've tried to give a sort of sober, tough-minded perspective with an initial set of criticisms to make it clear that the Arctic Council is in many respects a limited and even in some sense flawed initiative, I've also tried to suggest that this is an opportunity that's too good to be missed. And I've tried to suggest some other ways in which we could seize that opportunity and run with it - to move more quickly than lichen grows - and some ways that Canada, as the initial chair and the most important advocate all along of the Arctic Council, could breathe life into this rather simple structure that we see in the declaration signed here last week.

With that, let me end my initial presentation. I'd be more than delighted to engage in a question-and-answer and back-and-forth discussion.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bergeron): Thank you, Mr. Young.

Any questions? Monsieur Paré.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré (Louis-Hébert): Welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Young.

Firstly, I would like to contrast two parts of your presentation. In the first part, you indicated to us that the Council's mandate was rather ambiguous and that there weren't many strict rules. Could it be that the divergent interests of the eight countries involved are the reason why it was not possible to come up with a more substantive arrangement than this?

In the second part of your presentation, you stated that since Canada will be chairing the Council for the next two years, it could play a more active role in establishing this organization's mandate.

However, since there does not appear to much of a consensus at the outset, isn't there a danger of having to start all over again once another country takes over at the helm? Won't this country try to get the Council to follow its own agenda?

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[English]

Dr. Young: Thank you for that very good question, which I think has two parts.

The first part is the question of whether conflicts of interest inhibited the possibility of including more substance in the declaration. I'm not sure that's the case. I think part of our problem with the Arctic is that there has not been a long history of international cooperation, for obvious reasons having to do with the Cold War and so on. So we're rather new. We're still in first grade in terms of learning how to cooperate in the Arctic. I think we're in an exploratory mode rather than having highly articulated interests that are in direct conflict.

I also think that in many of our countries - this is certainly true in my country and I think it's true in Russia as well - in policy terms Arctic issues have had very low priority. They haven't been raised to a high enough level in the policy process to receive focused attention. So I think part of the problem we face with the Arctic Council declaration is a lack of political will at high enough levels in the policy process to be able to make substantive progress.

With respect to the question of whether a successor chair of the council won't simply redirect it to its own particular agenda, I certain agree that this is a very real danger. There's no question that it could occur. I think, however, that the way to minimize the probability of that occurring is to initiate a robust, lively and substantive set of activities or practices that begin to have a life of their own. To some extent this has already been happening in the environmental protection field, under the Arctic environmental protection strategy. Several of the working groups have now developed a sufficient agenda of their own, a life of their own, so that it's increasingly difficult for individual countries as chairs simply to redirect the energy and activity of the council.

I would urge initiating a substantive program as quickly and substantially as possible as a way to minimize the very real danger you identify.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bergeron): Mr. Mills.

Mr. Mills (Red Deer): You spoke about concrete projects and one thing you mentioned was a development bank. Do you think there's any more shortage of development funds, of capital, in the Arctic than in other parts of Canada?

Second, do you think that within the Arctic Council there is the structure, the will, the ability, the resources to take care of some of the serious environmental problems that are part of the whole Arctic area, particularly as it refers to Russia?

Dr. Young: Again, those are two very good questions.

With respect to the availability of capital, my own sense is that throughout much of the Arctic we are faced with communities that have experienced extraordinarily rapid social, economic and political change. For a good period of time, over the last several decades of the post-war period, they have been heavily dependent upon various kinds of transfer payments. They have been no longer able to operate on the purely self-contained subsistence basis that might have been true 50 or 100 years ago, but yet not able to support themselves in some alternative self-sufficient way.

One of our great tasks over the next several decades will be to try to develop more self-sufficient ways of operating for these communities. In that sense I think their circumstances are somewhat unusual compared with, for example, the rest of Canada. Certainly this is the case in Russia today, in an even more dramatic sense. So I think there are reasons to provide some special assistance to these communities.

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I guess your second question had to do with the political will to deal with environmental problems. I would divide that into two sets.

The Arctic, as all of you will know, is impacted on by environmental concerns that originate far outside the Arctic, for example an ozone hole over the Arctic basin or long-range transport of heavy metals and Arctic haze and so on. This is a question of political will in the south, and I'm not at all sure we've reached the point of willingness to do that.

But about many other environmental problems which are more Arctic specific, shall we say, I certainly could not tell you the political will is in place and we're on the right track and it's just a matter of following through at this point, but I do think there are some signs of willingness to deal in a meaningful way with a fair number of environmental problems. I think what you have to do in many respects is to sneak up on these problems; that is, to initiate processes that begin to define the problem more clearly, begin to develop constituencies within countries to take an interest in these problems, begin to develop mechanisms or vehicles through which the further policy steps may go. I'm very interested, for example, in the future prospects of the Arctic monitoring and assessment program in terms of this step-by-step process where we begin to draw countries and policy-making agencies within countries into this sort of process.

Of course it's also true that certain kinds of environmental issues are more politically salient than others. For example, the issue of nuclear contamination in marine areas off the north coast of Russia has a higher profile in North American policy circles than other kinds of issues that in some respects may be equally important but simply don't have that kind of visibility within the process.

I'm not giving you an either/or kind of answer but a modest initiative, which I think does have some potential to move us toward a more substantive response to the questions.

Mr. Mills: I guess the will is one thing, but do we have the resources? You read some things about handling those hundred-plus submarines, rusting and leaking. The resources it would take to handle those are phenomenal. Do we even have that ability?

Dr. Young: We probably would need to pick and choose resources. We all know in our countries today resources are in short supply, as we worry about budget deficits and so on. On the other hand, some things could be done relatively cheaply. With other things we need to identify new and different and more effective ways to deal with them. In terms of resources it's out of the question to initiate in one fell swoop a crash response, saying we're going to deal with all these issues comprehensively. But I do think it's not out of the question to start small, to start with a step-by-step kind of process, and hope to learn our way out of some of the problems and also to build slowly toward more comprehensive responses to the problems that exist.

But you've certainly put your finger on what I think is a major limitation on these Arctic initiatives: how are we going to come up with the resources to fund the kinds of things we identify on paper as good ideas? I quite agree there's no assurance whatsoever that we will be able to deal effectively with the resource question.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bergeron): Mr. Dupuy.

Mr. Dupuy (Laval West): Dr. Young, you gave us a very fascinating description of the direction in which the Arctic Council might evolve. The Arctic Council, as you indicated, is an interstate body, and it will do whatever the member states want it to do. It will evolve according to the policies of the member states. Do you have any insights into the attitude of the leading member states - actually, all member states, if possible - vis-à-vis the evolution you suggest? Which countries would support this evolution and which countries would oppose it? Alternatively, are these countries so lacking in knowledge about the Arctic that they don't know themselves? Some countries, like Canada, would have to take on a leadership role to tell the others where to go.

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Dr. Young: I'm not sure about telling others where to go, but there's a great deal to be said for the last comment you made. Arctic issues in most countries have either not been high enough on the scale of priorities in policy terms for one to be able to say that there are well-defined national policies or national priorities regarding Arctic issues or, alternatively, they've been deal with as purely domestic issues. For example, with respect to the development of non-renewable resources such as oil, gas, nickel and so on in the Russian north, historically this has been a fairly high priority but a purely domestic one. Thinking about the international dimensions has been a relatively recent development.

It's the same in Canada and the United States, where we have thought quite a lot about issues of indigenous peoples, land claims, political claims and so on. Again, we haven't been used to thinking in international terms. I think it's very difficult to answer the first part of your question about which countries would be the leaders and where their visions would drive them, simply because these issues have not been dealt with at a sufficiently high policy level to have a very clear sense of those issues.

Mr. Dupuy: Would you agree then that one of the main contributions the Arctic Council might make in its initial years is to the educational process of governments?

Dr. Young: I would agree very strongly with that. It's part of what I wanted to suggest in terms of this idea of a generative role for the Arctic Council. You could also think of it as a kind of agenda formation role. Sometimes international institutions succeed not just because they've taken specific actions, but because they've helped to put issues or issue areas on the public agenda. This increases the visibility in the policy community of a set of issues that had not been well defined or visible before, and maybe provides a way of talking about these issues - a way of framing not so much the answers to the questions but the way of articulating what some of the principal policy concerns are, could be or should be.

This is in some ways a modest role relative to the great expectations about international organizations. I think it may be, in a sense, the most realistic and in the short run the most useful kind of role we might associate with the Arctic Council to help put these issues somewhat higher on the agenda, and especially to help people in the policy communities to develop a language, a way of talking about these questions. I think there can be issues that are vaguely recognized as policy-important, but if there's no well-understood way of framing those issues or structuring the debate about those issues they tend to disappear. They get lost from sight because they're not tractable or easy to deal with.

I'd be very inclined to suggest this way of thinking about a modest but rather important kind of role that the Arctic Council might play, given the institutional and resource constraints that we know are very real and would limit a more expanded kind of activity.

[Translation]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Bergeron): Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Sauvageau (Terrebonne): I have a simple question for you. I will begin by making an observation and you can tell me if it is accurate. This will determine the direction of my question.

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You stated that the Arctic Council was an institution in search of a role and a mission. The general view is that the Council will have limited financial resources and that it will operate by consensus among the eight member countries. It will meet once every two years. This indicates that as an institution, the Council really doesn't have much clout or power, but nevertheless...

You also said that despite these fairly major shortcomings, we had to define priorities and recommend concrete projects for the Council in such areas as the environment and sustainable development.

Given that all of these noble initiatives were intended for the local population, will it be up to the parliamentary committee to recommend some concrete projects? What kind of involvement will we see at the local level, from the northern indigenous peoples? Since the Council was created first and foremost with them in mind, who will be setting the priorities that we, as a committee, must try to address? That is my first question.

As a previous speaker noted, let's assume that our number one priority as chair of the Council for the first two years is sustainable development, as I hope it is the priority of the local population. What guarantee do we have that in two years' time, the successor chair, for example Finland, will not identity the social right to education as its priority? How can we set priorities and carry out worthwhile concrete projects for a two-year period? Firstly, we don't know who is going to define these priorities and secondly, what assurances do we have that any follow-up action will be taken?

[English]

Dr. Young: Again, I think there are two questions here, both of which are of grave importance. One is the role and opportunity for stakeholders, particularly at the local level, to participate, and the other is this question of council priorities.

As I said in my opening remarks, I think one of the great concerns, or the great dangers, relating to the Arctic Council is its, at this point, top-down characteristic that it seems to be an initiative largely of foreign ministries. Although there is this provision for permanent participants, were I sitting in a small community in the Arctic and looking at this initiative, I'd be quite concerned, frankly, as to whether this initiative was going to be responsive or sensitive to the kinds of concerns uppermost in my mind.

This is a real challenge. This is why I spoke about the report called To Establish an Arctic Council that was published in Canada in 1991: because it had a vision of the Arctic Council that was very responsive to the sorts of concerns of local communities or permanent residents of the Arctic.

I see this at the present time as being a very real danger regarding the Arctic Council. I would attach importance to addressing and reducing the danger posed by this top-down quality without sufficient sensitivity or responsiveness to the local concerns.

On the question of priorities - what happens if Finland becomes the chair and wants to talk about education? - of course, to some degree, the development or evolution or change in priorities over time is quite natural. One doesn't want to freeze in place permanently an initial set of concerns or agenda items. On the other hand, you also want some continuity, some major priorities identified.

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I believe that one way to do this is to proceed, as I suggested in my opening remarks, to treat sustainable development as the overarching concern of the Arctic Council, and then to work hard to articulate a set of sustainable development principles. They would be rather general and not necessarily at the level of specific behaviour, but would nonetheless serve to set the agenda that would identify things like subsistence preference, subsidiarity, cultural integrity, co-management - whatever the principles might be.

I would suggest that if in the first two years, while Canada is chair, progress could be made on trying to define the content of sustainable development and to nail that down through the articulation of a set of principles, this would then serve to provide boundaries. You wouldn't say that five years from now we wouldn't be focusing more on one aspect of this than another, but it would serve to set some real boundaries on the domain across which this initiative will be relevant.

I think this is a danger, particularly because in the case of sustainable development, while it's now a universal expression and is widely adopted in political terms, its content has never been clearly spelled out. We need to focus very hard on spelling out the content of sustainable development in an Arctic context in order to give some sort of permanent direction and clarity to what the principal agenda items and concerns of the council will be.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau: I will take advantage of the change in the chair to extend my speaking time. I have a second question for you. I was saved by the bell. Do I have an additional ten minutes, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: No.

Mr. Sauvageau: Seriously, Dr. Young, you spoke at length about sustainable development and I am concerned somewhat by one thing. I would like you to tell me that I'm wrong.

Along with several other countries, Canada signed the Rio Convention which set clear objectives and a specific timetable for action, Agenda 21, and so forth. The reference was not to the area south of the sixtieth parallel, but to the entire territory of Canada and other countries. What happened happened. These governments were quite serious; they met every day, not every two years, and they had decision-making powers.

Considering the lack of will and accountability demonstrated and the absence of concrete results achieved by duly elected governments, despite the back-patting that occurred when this convention was signed by all countries, how can we hope today that these countries will meet on a consensual basis once every two years in an effort to identify goals and agree on a definition of sustainable development - one which I hope will be the same as the one that came out of the Rio Convention - and then to set concrete objectives with a view to achieving results?

What hope do we have that this group...? I have the impression that we are shirking our responsibilities, and here's where I hope I'm wrong. We are taking our responsibilities and off-loading them onto another group which will have one-tenth of the authority that we have and telling it to deal with the problem. Then, if things don't work out, it won't be our fault, but rather theirs. Am I wrong in thinking this way?

[English]

Dr. Young: I wish I could tell you that you were wrong and mean it, but of course you've put your finger on a fundamental question. It's a question that, as you suggest, is relevant not only to the Arctic but much more universally, growing out of Agenda 21 and so on.

Sometimes people talk about whether the glass is half full or half empty. In this case it's probably more accurately a question of whether the glass is 10% or 20% full or 80% or 90% empty. I want to suggest that in terms of the larger set of problems, the progress that is being made either at the universal level through Agenda 21 or in the Arctic is very modest, very limited. If we judge these initiatives by more comprehensive or demanding standards, there's no question that we would have to say little has been accomplished.

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On the other hand, as we all know in the policy process or in the political world, things don't happen overnight. The issues are with us for long periods of time. If you take what I call a decadal perspective, if you look at ten years or twenty years, things do change.

To come back to what I said before, what is happening here is slowly shifting the agenda, slowly redefining the issues, slowly framing new questions that will become increasingly central to the policy process. This is a very modest achievement. I can't hold up a flag of achievement and say, well, this is what we've done and this is what we've done. On the other hand, I do believe that the kinds of problems, the way we think, the way we define problems, the way we address the agenda, is changing in ways that will play out over the next ten or twenty years. We will look back and say that these were significant times, these were real developments.

For those people who want action now, who are impatient with the slowness of the progress, this is very disappointing. I understand completely why people would be disappointed. However, I try to look at the 10% or 20% of the liquid in the glass and say that something is being achieved.

The Chairman: Thank you, Professor.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau: In short, Mr. Chairman, I'm 10% right and 90% wrong. Thank you very much.

[English]

Dr. Young: It's 10% of the way towards the goal and 90% of the course still to run.

The Chairman: Every voyage of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Mr. Flis.

Mr. Flis (Parkdale - High Park): Do I get double time, the same as my colleague?

The Chairman: Absolutely, Mr. Flis.

Mr. Flis: Dr. Young, you gave us a very creative presentation. You asked Canada to bring in its creativity in setting an agenda for the Arctic Council, but I congratulate you on using your creativity in leaving something concrete with this committee as to the role Canada plays.

I have a few questions. We're starting with sustainable development as the overall platform, but to address that we also have to address the security issues. Does the United States continue to oppose discussion of security issues on the Arctic agenda?

Dr. Young: Yes. The United States, at least in its public position, is very explicit in saying that security issues should not be on the Arctic Council agenda. I wouldn't over-interpret that, though. It's not easy to definitively separate issues. As you begin to talk about concrete, substantive issues, the security aspect of these issues often arises. I suspect there may be ways of drawing the United States into some discussions involving security questions without publicly saying that's what is happening.

For example, in the case of the Barents region in northern Europe, the Norwegians said explicitly in 1993, when the Kirkenes Declaration was signed, that marine issues would be off-limits for the Barents Euro-Arctic Council. And what's happened? We're talking about issues of fish and gas development, and guess where those things are taking place?

So at the declaratory level the United States will without question continue to say there will be no discussion of security issues, but it may well be -

Mr. Flis: In the meantime the marine activity continues with U.S. submarines, etc.

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Dr. Young: It may well be that the questions that bear on some of those issues can be introduced in the discussion.

Mr. Flis: We have conventions to protect ships dumping and polluting Arctic waters, but more and more planes are using the Arctic route to travel from Europe to America. Is this an area the Arctic Council should be looking at, maybe seeking a convention on airplane pollution over the Arctic?

Dr. Young: I haven't thought about this much. But the way to begin to think about that would be to ask whether there might be some advantage in trying to develop some Arctic-specific elements of a larger international arrangement. I would think, for example, under the Chicago convention of 1944 or the kinds of rules the International Civil Aeronautics Organization operates under, rules that are meant to be universal, one might ask whether the characteristics of the Arctic as an international region are sufficiently distinct as to warrant a special treatment under the universal umbrella, in the same way as one might ask about marine pollution. Would it be desirable to designate the Arctic as a sort of special area under the MARPOL convention?

So although I myself haven't thought much about this, my first reaction would be to ask the question, could this be a special case, where you need some extra kinds of rules, because of the environmental characteristics of the Arctic, nested within the more universal international agreement dealing with civil air transport.

Mr. Flis: Our two countries have helped former Soviet Union countries through our various technical assistance programs. I like your suggestion here that maybe we should be looking at a technical assistance program for the Arctic. But the concern from the citizens will be, well, here are our two countries giving most of the funding and Russia will be recipient of this. But if we can think creatively again, as you suggest, is there a system of bartering we can use with Russia? Russia doesn't have the financial resources, but I'm sure it has a lot of skills, materials, technology, etc., so they could make their contribution through a barter system and that would create a sort of Arctic fund.

Dr. Young: Yes, that's a very interesting suggestion. In talking about a technical assistance program, I'm thinking of a very low-budget kind of operation; of course not no budget, but as low a budget as possible. I'm thinking really about sharing experience and knowledge on things such as the construction of infrastructure, engineering kinds of initiatives, how you build roads, pipelines, airfields, utilidors, fairly large dwellings, and so on in the Arctic. In a sense it would be swapping, as you suggest, experiences on what works and what doesn't work.

One of the interesting things about Russia, the former Soviet Union, is that although they've made a lot of mistakes in the Arctic, they have had much larger human settlements in the Russian north than anything we know of in Greenland or North America. There is a body of experience with these kinds of applied, practical, infrastructural kinds of developments which has led to some real knowledge and understanding of how these things can and should be done. So while there are many problems and Russia, as you say, has very few resources, it may well have some knowledge and experience that might prove helpful or useful as we engage in various construction projects in North America as well.

I'm thinking of a kind of low-budget pooling of experience. If we want to start some new project in any one country, we could look around the entire Arctic and ask where other things somewhat like this have been done and whether we can call in people who are familiar with those other projects and have them consult, make suggestions and critique the plans, on the basis of the problems they ran into.

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Mr. Flis: Do I have time for one more question?

The Chairman: Yes. I'm just nervous that the professor might have said they might offer to share their nuclear waste or something like that with us. There may be some barter offers we'd be a little reluctant to get involved in.

Dr. Young: Let's not think of the Arctic as a new area for long-term, high-level nuclear waste disposal. Sometimes one worries about the Arctic - in terms of southern metropolitan areas - as being out of sight, out of mind. Therefore people say you can do all kinds of things and it's far enough away from population centres, so who cares? Who cares as long as the pretty pictures of the polar bears and so on keep coming back?

Mr. Flis: Over and over, you stressed your concern about policy development and decisions coming from the top down. In order for the policies, suggestions and creative ideas to come from the stakeholders, I'd turn it around and put the stakeholders and the grass roots at the top and the others down...

But we must provide better education for aboriginals in the whole Arctic region. One way to do this would probably be an Arctic faculty of education where we're training teachers to teach their own people, because even in their educational system, unfortunately, our values are imposed on them. Are any of the other countries doing something that could develop into sort of an Arctic faculty of education?

Dr. Young: First, let me say that I think that this notion of capacity-building - that is, improving the knowledge, skills and familiarity of people resident in the Arctic with the processes involved in operating effectively in policy circles - is a very important issue.

By the way, this is important, as you suggest, first and foremost for the indigenous or aboriginal peoples, but there are, of course, other permanent residents of the Arctic who are also important in these grassroots terms and who need to be heard from. This is particularly true - perhaps even more true - in northern Scandinavia and in Russia, more so than in North America.

With regard to your main question, I don't think there are any complete models that we could simply identify and take over lock, stock and barrel. I think there are experiences that we should identify and draw on. For example, in Alaska, and I suspect in Canada, there's quite a lot of experience in using audio-visual technology for delivery of educational services to distant students. So instead of somehow trying to centralize and to draw people into one of a few communities where the educational facilities are located, we're trying to deliver education on a more decentralized basis, through things like interactive videoconferencing and so on, to people who are located in remote areas.

I think the Arctic is also an area where people will seize - and are already seizing - very quickly upon the capabilities of things like the World Wide Web. These kinds of communication technologies offer a lot of opportunities for people who are small in numbers and widely dispersed over large areas where it's rather expensive to travel. I see a lot of opportunities to use rather sophisticated technologies in the interest of some rather simple capacity-building objectives.

I think a very interesting initiative, in a sense, would be to do an inventory, a survey or an assessment of what is going on with respect to these educational issues around the Arctic to try to identify the most successful initiatives, which could then be used in other settings.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Flis.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien.

Mrs. Debien (Laval-Est): Good morning, Dr. Young.

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I have three questions, the first along the same lines as Mr. Flis' query. You stated that the top-down structure of the Arctic Council was conservative. Personally, I was pleased with the way in which Mr. Flis brought up the issue of education during the discussion. Do you have any suggestions or ideas as to how to modify this top-down structure? Ideally, what kind of structure would you like to see in place?

My second question concerns sustainable development. You stated that sustainable development issues should be the focal point of the Arctic Council's concerns. You recommended a number of sustainable development principles. You spoke of equal opportunity, of the polluter pays principle, of the principle of subsistence preference, of species protection and of the principle of subsidiarity. There are several others that I could mention as well.

As far as sustainable development is concerned, I am more interested in the environment. Of course, sustainable development is not limited to environmental issues, but since you appear to look at it from this perspective, I would like you to give us your opinion of the following. Given the extremely fragile nature of the Arctic, environmental issues are extremely important. We know that old contaminated mining sites have polluted part of the Arctic. As we speak, prospecting and mining ventures are underway.

We are told that indigenous people succeeded, for example in the case of Falconbridge Limited, to have a number of environmental measures imposed. However, in the context of government deregulation of environmental matters, I wonder if we should be promoting or allowing mining exploration and development, when we know full well that certain sites in the Arctic are already highly contaminated.

My second question is this: we regularly hear that indigenous peoples must take responsibility for their own economic development and participate in large-scale development projects, whether it be mining or tourism development. There seems to be a contradiction here and I would be interested in getting your opinion.

My third question relates to something you said, namely that the Council's discussions should steer clear of security issues. I trust I understood you correctly. I think that today, security is viewed in a much broader context than mere border or military questions. The environment must be considered within a much broader context of global security. I simply wanted to point this out. I trust that I didn't misunderstand you. That's all the comments and questions I have for the moment.

[English]

Dr. Young: Thank you for those excellent questions. Let me start with the last one, because I can say very quickly what my view is.

Expanding the definition of security through notions of environmental security is probably the way to overcome the resistance of the United States, for example, to allowing security issues to be discussed in the council. If one were trying to raise the question of security in the sense of military aircraft deployed over the Arctic, the United States would be very resistant, but my hope is that by reframing the security agenda and talking, as you suggested, about these larger questions, that may be a way to allow the security questions to be raised in the Arctic Council setting in a manner that isn't rejected or opposed, for example, by the United States.

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To your first question about the ``top down'' or the issue of the grassroots representation, at one level this issue can be handled through rules of procedure relating to the participation of the so-called permanent participants and also to various kinds of observers. But that's a very formalistic answer. I think the rules of procedure are important, but what really matters is the practice.

A question in my mind is whether or not this Arctic Council process will be so dominated by foreign ministries with poor connections or relatively little experience in dealing with the grassroots people that they will end up somewhat disenfranchised. I view that as a very serious concern, which can only be addressed or overcome by building a vibrant sort of lively process with an open door policy to make it clear in the first period of operation to the council that the views, concerns, issues and perspectives of the grassroots people are not only welcomed, but of very high priority.

I'm not predicting that this will necessarily happen. I believe it's a very important issue, which we must work hard to deal with.

Then there's the bigger question you raised about sustainable development. Your comments were extremely interesting in this regard. Let me make a couple of remarks at this point about sustainable development.

At the level of definition, one thing I think we do know is that sustainable development must somehow integrate or link environmental protection with economic, social and cultural progress. Environmental protection is unlikely to succeed in the absence of stable, sustainable, vibrant kinds of human communities. The real objective of sustainable development is to find ways to connect those two agendas.

Having said that, however, my own sense is that we're not likely to make much progress by simply focusing on the issue of definition, meaning trying to come up with the correct definition of sustainable development. I think that the meaning of sustainable development is more likely to emerge as an outgrowth of practice. I think if we were to proceed along the lines I suggested of trying to articulate a set of mutual agreeable principles and then, over a period of time, begin to develop projects to do things that were clearly related to sustainable development, we might find 10 or 20 years down the road that we could now distil from this experience a more explicit idea of what sustainable development means and that through this kind of practice we would learn about the content of the concept.

To go to your particular points about mining and the environmental impacts of various kinds of activities, my own sense is that resource development activities will inevitably occur in various parts of the Arctic. I'm not saying I'm personally necessarily happy about that, but I think it's a fact of life. It's also true that native or aboriginal peoples are in some cases supporters of resource development, including non-renewable resource development. The question in my mind is how is it being done? What are the rules and regulations that apply for these kinds of initiatives? What kind of environmental assessment process do we develop?

For example, there's an effort under way now to see whether we could come up at the Arctic level with some mutually agreeable set of environmental assessment guidelines that would be shared by all the members of the Arctic Council. I think that's an interesting initiative, not only to deal with transboundary and cumulative types of impacts but to share experiences on what kinds of practices in environmental assessment seem to have produced good results in environmental protection in different countries.

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So my sense is that the real question in this area is how we do the development rather than whether we do it or not. I think we need to work hard to come up with procedures that minimize the danger of truly destructive kinds of economic or resource development, of the sort we saw particularly dramatically in the Soviet Union in the last twenty years or so of its existence.

These are just a few thoughts on your very interesting and wide-ranging questions, but I hope they're of some relevance.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Professor. They were.

I wonder if I could follow up on Madam Debien's middle question, because I too was struck by your concept of this being a very top-down, rather rigid and traditional model. We were informed that the participation of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the fact that there would be a formal place for the participation of the aboriginal peoples in the council and the way in which it operated...and in fact this was one of the distinguishing features of this council, as opposed to other international law instruments. You're somewhat skeptical about just how far that goes, are you?

Dr. Young: Let me say to start with that I think the development of the concept of permanent participants and the acceptance initially of these three large organizations as permanent participants are certainly the most innovative feature of this initiative from the point of view of international institution-building. I don't want anything I say to suggest that's a bad idea or not a significant achievement. But these three organizations, which are the initial permanent participants, are themselves top-down organizations. They are high-level organizations that cover huge territories. They are manned, or staffed, by people who are often in the national capitals. It's very unclear to what extent these organizations are able successfully to reflect and represent the concerns of grassroots people.

I don't say this to be critical, but one of the problems that arise in the case of these organizations is that the leaders find themselves flying around the world to hearing rooms and international negotiations with foreign ministry personnel. Pretty soon they have a hard time maintaining contact with, and the confidence of, the people who are in Old Crow or the people who are in Pond Inlet, for example.

This is an even more serious problem in Russia, for example, where the leadership cadre of the Association of Indigenous Minorities of the North, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian federation has virtually no regular process of interaction with its nominal constituents. If you go to the small communities in the far north of Russia, there's very little connection to or trust in or comfort with the idea of a few people in the AIM representing them.

It's also the case - I think this is true throughout the Arctic, but it is especially true in the European and Asian Arctic - that there are permanent residents of the Arctic who are not indigenous or native people. While I'm a very strong supporter of the rights of indigenous peoples, I also think for an Arctic Council to be able to deal effectively with all the stakeholders, with the grass roots, with the people whose livelihoods and lives are tied to this part of the world, there need to be mechanisms to be in touch with, to find ways...

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There needs to be a mechanism - I'm not suggesting a legal mechanism like seats at some table for these organizations - such as a consultative process through which the users, the stakeholders, the identifiable human communities and groups that have long-term interests and stakes feel they have ready access to channels through which their concerns can be transmitted in a way in which they have confidence and trust. Given the structure that has emerged in the declaration, I see that as a very major challenge.

In studying these international agreements, we often say that we're now at the process of moving from paper to practice. We have an agreement on paper and that's a very significant achievement. But how we move from paper to practice is likely to have an enormous effect on the long-term significance, impact, and results of this initiative. This question of the linkage between the national governments and the grass roots is one of the most significant areas in which the movement from paper to practice will determine the significance of this whole initiative.

The Chairman: Those are helpful comments in some respect and profoundly troubling in others. As members of this parliamentary committee, we are consciously made aware of the problem of a global society that becomes more and more interdependent, requiring more and more international institutions, which therefore get further removed from the constituents they serve.

We travelled as a committee through the Arctic precisely because we wanted to try to make that direct link with the peoples of the Arctic. But we are woefully restricted in terms of the amount of time and energy we can put into this. We hope to go to Europe.

You raised so many issues in what you've said. Are there other models we should be looking at to enable us to do what you suggest? How do we deal with the fact that we have eight partners there? You mentioned Russia and the European model of how the ministers meet in the European Community. If it's an agricultural issue, the agricultural ministers meet rather than the foreign ministers. If it's a social issue, the social ministers meet. That's obviously a very effective way of dealing with this. But how do we draw along our other partners? How do you draw Russia into this type of arrangement if the Russians are not ready for it themselves?

Just to leave you with one other problem I'm coming to grips with, how do we draw our American colleagues, with whom you are more familiar than we are, into this process when we find that we may talk to Washington on issues, but Juneau may have a different approach?

If we talk about the Porcupine herd, for example, which is of great preoccupation to people in our own northern parts, we find that maybe Washington's dialogue is not the same as that of the Alaska government in terms of oil, gas and other forms of exploration. Who has control over these events?

Those are maybe more reflections than questions. I agree with you that this is terribly important. If you could help us with this it would be great.

Dr. Young: You've identified one of the great problems of our time. There is globalization and the need to develop more and more encompassing initiatives to respond to global problems, but then we have a harder and harder time staying in touch with the constituencies. I see that as one of the great issues of our time in all fields.

There are some things in terms of this contact with the stakeholders and this process of being in touch with relevant constituencies that are worth thinking about. In some cases Canada has been a pioneer in introducing some of these kinds of procedures. For example, there is the kind of procedure that Justice Berger developed in the 1970s on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline inquiry, where he went to these communities and listened. He took the time and trouble to hear them out, in a sense. It was a somewhat time-consuming process. On the other hand, in terms of the big picture, the resources were not... It was one person travelling around the countryside and taking testimony. It did not just deal with the specific things that were said, but communicated a concern or genuine interest in what the people at the local level were saying.

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I think one of our observations on the world in general is that it's remarkable what kinds of outcomes people will accept if they feel they've been a part of the process of getting to a conclusion, which they would reject if it's imposed on them. Later on, in the 1980s, I was intrigued that Justice Berger was able to go to Alaska to create something called the Alaska Native Review Commission, even as a Canadian. He used the same process to great effect, and that was an interesting experience.

Also, something that we haven't talked about this morning that is very interesting is this organization called the Northern Forum. Many of you know that it is an international organization of subnational units of government - counties and provinces and territories and states and so on. How does that fit into this picture? It's not grass roots, nor is it at the top level, but it still represents or reflects the voices of Juneau and Hokkaido and various parts of Canada and northern Scandinavia and so on. We also need to think creatively about a process in which that voice is included in the mix.

As you said, this is a big agenda. It's a daunting prospect and it's sort of hard to deal with, but I do think one thing we could do is take a careful look at the experience of the last ten or twenty years, at what people like Justice Berger and others have done, in order to do some sort of assessment or evaluation of the experience we've had with these kinds of organizational arrangements.

I also think we now have enough experience, especially in Canada and the United States - and in northern Europe as well, to some extent - with various types of home-rule governments at the regional level, with land claims settlements, with corporate arrangements that have been created to try to transfer some authority or resources to the grassroots level. It would be extremely interesting, as part of the opening phase of the Arctic Council, to do a kind of a monitoring and assessment not of pollutants, but of institutional design experiences that we've had in the Arctic and various countries. We should take a look at what works and what doesn't work, at why some things... We've now had a fair amount of experience with a significant array of different approaches and different sorts of organizational innovations and initiatives. This might be a very worthwhile thing to do in order to begin to address some of these larger questions of how the various constituencies can be given a meaningful and continuing role to play in this globalizing process.

The Chairman: If I could just take you back to my Porcupine herd example, and also go back to Madame Debien's questions about the environment and sustainable development, do you think the Arctic Council itself can play...? If we move some of these discussions to a level where we have our Russian and Scandinavian partners there, will it advance the ability to find solutions to these bilateral issues, given the complexities of our federal systems? Or do you think that's just a bit of a pipe dream?

Dr. Young: I'm very skeptical about that. When it comes to things that are more substantive projects or are issue-specific like that, I think there is a very real danger that a process of politicization will take place if you move these things into the arena of the Arctic Council, and that is not constructive.

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I think the Arctic Council ought to have an oversight function in the same way that you might have an oversight function with respect to what some government agencies would do. It's therefore on a policy level in that it has something to say, but I'm very concerned about intervening too deeply in the substance and day-to-day administration or development of projects. In doing so in some cases we have not been very successful - and the Porcupine caribou herd, quite frankly, is an example.

If you look at some of the things that are happening in terms of habitat protection or protected natural areas under AEPS auspices, though, some rather constructive, specific things are being done in particular areas. Some of that has to do with the capacity of people with very substantive agendas in line agencies in different countries to get together to work on their common concerns in a problem-solving mode. To intervene at the policy level in those kinds of things on a day-to-day basis would be a bad thing. There ought to be policy oversight from time to time, though, in order to make sure that the general direction in which things are going is appropriate.

The Chairman: Thank you, that's very helpful.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron.

Mr. Sauvageau: I skimmed through your paper, only because I didn't receive it until this morning, not because I wasn't interested in its contents. I note that on page 28, you state...

A member: Is that in the English or French version?

Mr. Sauvageau: I'm referring to page 28 of the English version. One particular passage makes me question something I read on page 8. On page 28, we read the following:

As currently envisioned...

and this is even truer today,

...the Council itself is a somewhat ambiguous arrangement with respect to the distinction between institutions and organizations.

To illustrate just what you mean by this, on page 8 of the English version, you refer to the Northern Forum which was formally established in November 1991:

The Northern Forum is an organization whose membership consists of sub-national units of government - states, provinces, counties, oblasts, autonomous regions, etc and so forth - ...

What comes next is interesting:

...that have common interests, especially as representatives of northern hinterlands seeking to deal with the distant metropoles. The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy is an intergovernmental arrangement created by the eight arctic states in June 1991 to deal with threats to the arctic environment and the impact of pollution on fragile arctic ecosystems.

My question is as follows: will the Arctic Council exert any influence on other organizations and institutions? Must we in our study take into consideration that which exists already and how will the creation of the Arctic Council influence these organizations or institutions?

[English]

Dr. Young: Given that it was on such short notice, let me first thank you for looking at the actual text, and not only for that, but for raising such an interesting question. I think there are two parts to this question, but I'll deal first with the part dealing with the point raised on page 35 on institutions and organizations.

In thinking about international cooperation, we often draw a distinction between an institution - by which we mean a set of rights and rules and social practices - and an organization. An organization is more of a material entity with an office, a staff, a budget, technology and so on. Very often we create organizations to administer institutions. That is, we create an organization whose function or purpose is to manage or apply or administer the rules or the rights or the structure of roles and relationships of the institution.

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There is an ambiguity here with respect to the Arctic Council. Is the Arctic Council conceived of as something that will grow into an organization in this more material sense? Will it inhabit a tangible material place, with offices and personnel and so on? I'm not sure that's what will happen. It's hard to judge that. But if it does, what would be the agreed-upon set of rules or codes of conduct or rights that will be designated for it to administer or to manage? That's the ambiguity. In reading the declaration and knowing the negotiations that took place during the lead-up to it, at this point it's hard to foresee exactly where this organization, this new construct, this new body, will go. I think that's one of the major questions that needs to be worked out over the next two to four years.

With respect to your last point about these other initiatives that are already in place and where the Arctic Council fits into them, my sense is that the Arctic Council will go nowhere if it tries to set itself up as something that's completely separate and unrelated to these other initiatives. The only way we will have any hope of success is if we can somehow find a way to integrate these various initiatives into a coherent whole, perhaps with the Arctic Council as the sort of overarching framework, as a body that gives coherence to or helps with the integration of all of these other initiatives. But if it tries to set itself up in competition with or as an alternative to these other bodies in some new initiative, my sense is that it will go nowhere.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau: Therefore, in order to do a relevant study of the role and objectives of the Arctic Council, the committee will have to examine the role as well as the ins and outs of other northern institutions or agencies in order to create a whole, not simply another arrangement. Is that what you are saying?

[English]

Dr. Young: Absolutely. What is required here is some kind of a division of labour, such that the parts of this larger whole each have a relatively well-defined role to play in the overall structure of international cooperation. I think that's the only hope for the future. Therefore your comment is exactly right: as a committee, you would need to look at these other activities or other organizations or other initiatives in order to get some sense of how they could be fit together into a single coherent package.

[Translation]

The Chairman: The researchers advise me that some things are coming, Mr. Sauvageau. I'm reining in your curiosity somewhat because we are already considerably behind schedule.

Mr. Sauvageau: Yes, but we do have to do our work effectively.

The Chairman: Absolutely.

Mr. Sauvageau: Perhaps it is a little too early to form an opinion of the situation, but if the committee were to realize by examining the Arctic Council in relation to other existing institutions and agencies that co-operation is not possible and that the chemistry really isn't there, would you nevertheless recommend that this structure be maintained?

[English]

Dr. Young: We concluded that this chemistry wouldn't work, so my sense is that if that were to happen the Arctic Council would probably simply become more or less a dead letter under those conditions. It would probably continue to exist on paper, but it would be increasingly ignored and would simply not become an important part of the Arctic policy game - and this does happen from time to time.

It's not at all uncommon for initiatives to be taken and not work out. They very often hang on. They're on the organization chart. Maybe there's someone somewhere who's delegated to keep track of the paper that's produced, but in reality events have passed them by and they don't have any lasting importance. That could certainly happen in the case of the Arctic Council. At this moment, there's no guarantee at all that this will not be the outcome.

The Chairman: Thank you. That's a sober warning.

Monsieur Dupuy.

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Mr. Dupuy: Getting back to your comment about raising the priority of Arctic matters in the global agenda and also your comment on representation of Arctic people, what role do you see for parliamentarians? I know there is an association of Arctic parliamentarians, and of course we here are investing a great deal of time in looking into circumpolar affairs. We've acquired and we are still acquiring a lot of knowledge about it, but eventually we will produce a report and move on to something else, and eventually there will be general elections and some of us may no longer be able to contribute to this great stock of knowledge.

How do you see parliamentarians contributing to the enhancement of the priorities and the representation of the Arctic people? Do you have an evaluation of the association of Arctic parliamentarians?

Dr. Young: As you may know, I participated in the Arctic parliamentarians' meeting that was held earlier this year in Yellowknife. I found that very interesting as an opportunity to think about exactly the questions you're raising.

My sense is that the parliamentarians are a very important piece of the puzzle in this regard, and I don't say this simply to be flattering in this room. I think there are certain initiatives that government agencies, foreign ministries or other departments, can take, but I think there's a severe limit to how far those initiatives can go. I don't know whether they can really acquire substance, either in policy terms or in more material resource terms, without the elected representatives of the people being parties to the development of the programmatic activities and the policy directions that these take.

As I said before, these initiatives or international agreements, which are signed by foreign ministers or whoever signs them, are likely to remain paper operations or dead letters unless some real foundation of public or popular support is injected into them through the electoral process.

When we come to this question of making sure the stakeholders or various constituencies are heard in the process, I also think the parliamentary channel is one that can be important in making sure that certain voices that are often not heard very clearly in the more administrative hierarchy are heard. This varies to some extent from one country to another, but it is the case in many countries.

I came away from that meeting thinking that it was a very good idea to recognize the Arctic parliamentarians as a player, as a constituency in the Arctic Council process. I was very pleased that, although the language in the declaration is general, there is a recognition of the importance of the Arctic parliamentarians. I think that's a very good addition to the earlier text that had been circulated.

The Chairman: I don't see any other questions, so on behalf of everybody I'd like to thank Professor Young for having come. Normally we have a panel of witnesses, but we feel that this morning we've had a panel with you. It was great to have an opportunity to enrich our experience by having a direct dialogue, and we're certainly aware of your great experience in this area. We appreciate your coming from Dartmouth to be with us today. Thank you very much, sir.

Dr. Young: Thank you very much for having me. As I'm sure you're aware, I have a long-term interest in these issues and would be more than happy to respond in future to any questions you have that I might have some answer to.

The Chairman: Well, there was Mr. Dupuy's question about what happens after the next election. We might all be down there looking for a job in Dartmouth, so give us lunch or something, will you?

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chairman: Mr. Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron: I have a question regarding the upcoming meeting on Thursday October 3 scheduled from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. According to the committee calendar, it seems that the meeting on Iraq will last only one-half hour, that is from 11:30 a.m. to 12 noon.

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The Chairman: One hour, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Mr. Bergeron: Would it be possible for us to get an earlier start in the morning in order to have a little more time with the officials?

The Chairman: The problem is that we have a meeting with the Cree first. If we want to have more time to discuss Iraq...

Mr. Bergeron: Can we meet with the Cree earlier in the morning?

The Chairman: We'll see. If we move up the meeting by one-half hour, we will have 90 minutes to devote to Iraq. Would that be amenable to you? Good.

Mr. Bergeron: Mr. Chairman, I have another question regarding the future business of the committee. I would like to discuss the calendar of committee and sub-committee meetings.

I have a question concerning the scheduled meeting with Laval University officials. Will we be hearing only from Laval University witnesses at that time or will there be others testifying as well?

Mr. Gerald Schmitz (Committee research officer): I think we could add a few more witnesses to the list, if that's what the committee wants.

The Chairman: Would you prefer that we add several witnesses?

Mr. Bergeron: I would prefer if we hear only from Laval University officials.

The Chairman: Then we'll stick with that for the time being. Agreed?

Mr. Bergeron: Fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chairman: Are there any other observations or questions about the calendar?

We'll shortly try to nail down our budget. The clerk has been working on that, but I am anxious to get it working through the process of the House, so we'll have a look at it as soon as we possibly can. We've been able to reduce it substantially, by about $60,000, so I think we're getting to a position where it's much more acceptable. I would like to get it approved by the whole committee as quickly as possible so that I can then present it to the liaison subcommittee.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron: I trust we will be able to discuss it officially before then, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Yes.

[English]

We're adjourned until 9:30 a.m. Thursday. Your offices will be advised if it's to be then rather than at 10 a.m. Thank you very much.

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