Skip to main content

CHAPTER 6 - SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY FOR ARCTIC COMMUNITIES

Sustainable development will continue to mean different things to different people, but the goal of integrating ecological and economic concerns in decision-making in the Arctic is here to stay, as is the shared objective of living within the region's carrying and assimilative capacities.

Terry Fenge151

Another key challenge facing the Arctic countries is achieving sustainable and equitable economic development. Across the region, levels of unemployment are high, much, much higher than in the South. This has exacerbated the social disaster we periodically read about on teen suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, family violence, that has reached epidemic proportions in northern parts of all Arctic countries. . . . How are people in these communities to live?

Ambassador Mary Simon152

Towards a Framework for Sustainable Economic Development in the Arctic

As we have seen in the previous chapter, the challenges of achieving environmental sustainability in the Arctic are extremely complex. There is still a great deal to be done in terms of entrenching principles of circumpolar environmental cooperation, working towards common standards of environmental protection, and following through on intergovernmental commitments, notably through the AEPS process. If anything, however, the task is even more daunting with respect to meeting the pressing economic needs of the communities of the region, especially those of indigenous peoples, on a basis that respects sustainability principles.

That task is complicated by value-laden controversies over the costs and benefits of current and proposed forms of development and resource utilization, rooted in the often negative experiences of the past. To quote Mary Simon again: "As desperately as northerners want to work, all too often the pattern has been for southern companies to exploit the northern resources using southern labour, removing the north's wealth and leaving little behind them but environmental damage."153 Yet there are also many promising northern-based initiatives, as the Committee heard from territorial and municipal officials, community spokespersons, leaders in aboriginal business and trade development, and firms exporting cold-climate infrastructure technologies, among others. Numerous federal Government programs and activities have been undertaken to support both "northern development" and a range of public-sector services.154 What seems to be lacking, however, is any coherent overall Canadian strategy for advancing sustainable economic development on a circumpolar basis.155 While we welcome Canada's proposal for a conference on this subject sometime this year under the aegis of the Arctic Council, we are therefore concerned with addressing that gap and taking practical steps to move the agenda forward.

The circumpolar area presents some special challenges in achieving economic sustainability. With the exceptions of some parts of the Russian North and perhaps Alaska, populations are tiny and scattered among remote widely separated settlements. Fewer than 10% of Canada's aboriginal citizens live in the "Far North," even if high birth rates contribute to chronic crowded housing and youth unemployment.156 Historically, most of the outside, and especially international, economic interest in the region has not focussed on the needs of its permanent residents. Instead, the Arctic has been treated as a resource-rich hinterland, potentially exploitable but destined to stay on the periphery of the world economy (see Box 10 "The Arctic as an International Economic Region"). In recent decades, while the utilization of renewable resources by the indigenous population continued to be important to northern Canadians, and to attract sporadic external controversies - for example, the disputes with Europe and the United States over harvesting wild fur and marine mammals - strategic attention shifted to large-scale "mega-projects" and non-renewable resources.157 Large corporate and public investments have gone to the mining, oil and gas, and hydroelectric sectors, and the related development of exploration, production and transmission infrastructures (drilling sites, dams, pipelines, shipping lanes, etc.). In turn, concerns have arisen about the resulting impacts on the sensitive ecology of the region and on socio-economic conditions in local communities.

Box 10 - "The Arctic as an International Economic Region"

Perhaps the most important observation that can be made is that, even as the Arctic's resources are increasingly coveted for their economic value, the economies of the Arctic regions are still primarily driven by, and dependent on, their external and separate southern linkages. There is no circumpolar economic region as such within the world economy, although many northerners are working, despite the technical challenges and high costs, to build East-West transpolar commercial ties and to improve transportation routes and communications infrastructures. Given the very small populations in most of the circumpolar North, there will never be an internal market sufficient to sustain such development on an endogenous basis. Northern regions and communities have become much more assertive of their rights to control the pace of economic development, and to regulate the manner in which it takes place, emphasizing environmental effects and local benefits. Nevertheless, under the most optimistic scenario, most of the region's economic inputs will necessarily have to be brought in, often from long distances, and most of the Arctic's commercial output will also be exported to southern consumers. Calls to create a circumpolar trade area do not alter the facts that, with few exceptions among the Arctic states, current national economic approaches and multilateral trade and investment agreements (e.g. the European Community and NAFTA in North America) have yet to give significant attention to the distinctive needs of Arctic regions or the development of a circumpolar basis for economic cooperation.

With respect to the Arctic's immense non-renewable resources (potentially recoverable hydrocarbon reserves alone are estimated at up to 200 billion barrels of oil and 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas), Chaturvedi observes that: "The striking trend towards industrialization of the Arctic during the 1970s and 1980s, focussing primarily on energy resources but extending to other raw materials, may well be seen in retrospect as part of the great `scarcity' debate that raged in the late 1960s and early 1970s."1

While those fears have subsided, there is still major hydrocarbon exploration taking place (especially in Siberia and offshore of the vast Russian Arctic sea coast), and new mineral "rushes" (notably in the Canadian Arctic for diamonds and nickel) are generating headlines in the business pages of southern newspapers. Canada's northernmost "Polaris" lead-zinc mine on Little Cornwallis island will likely be exhausted early in the next century. However, expectations are for multi-billion returns from the exploitation of diamond-bearing deposits in the central Arctic and high-grade nickel deposits in Labrador and northern Quebec. Northern Alaska, which has the largest oil and gas reserves in the United States, is also the site of a mine producing over 60% of that country's zinc (an estimated in-ground value of over US$11 billion). But it is Russia, especially Siberia, that contains the greatest known energy and mineral reserves in the Arctic. Regions such as the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) have worked out promising revenue-sharing arrangements with the Moscow government. Across the Arctic, negotiations are certain to heat up over the distribution of both the costs of, and the economic rents from, major resource development.

The Arctic also has huge renewable natural resource wealth. For example, its waters support some of the most productive fisheries in the world. At the same time, much of this economy is being put at risk from environmental pollution and industrial development approaches. The accumulation of contaminants within Arctic food sources has emerged as an important global problem. Species that play an integral role in the indigenous cultures of the region are threatened. The livelihoods of aboriginal hunters and many small Arctic communities have been devastated by restrictions on trade in fur and seal products. Some hope that responsible tourism can compensate by bringing in badly needed income and employment for local residents. The Yukon hosted over 60,000 wilderness adventure travellers (twice its population) in 1995, and for Canada's territories as a whole, receipts from this growing tourist sector exceeded $55 million in that year. The promotion of such sustainable economic activities can only benefit from a more considered and coherent circumpolar approach to the development of the Arctic as a distinctive region in its own right.

In the course of the Committee's visits to Arctic communities, we heard a great many of these concerns repeated. At the same time, local people are looking for opportunities to earn income and acquire skills so that they can secure more control over their economic futures. Aboriginal groups want a more equitable stake in developments on their ancestral territories, provided that these developments do not pose any threat to human health or to the physical environment and animal life to which they feel such a powerful connection. Yet several witnesses strongly questioned the wisdom and realism of applying standard industrial development thinking to the North. Gérard Duhaime of Laval University described the "Third World" character of extractive export-oriented resource exploitation that brings little positive benefit to local economies, the extreme dependence on the "industry" of government (and on many imported inputs, including food supplies), and a social health crisis that cannot easily be addressed. Appropriate strategies for intervention require a deep knowledge of the particular circumstances within communities. These trends are apparent throughout the circumpolar North, he argued [47:12ff]. Fred Roots referred to a marginalization of Arctic interests as southern market forces become increasingly dominant.

Contrary to what we might like in terms of a political design, there is an increasingly peripheral or colonial status of the northern economy. The industrial economy, which has attempted to generate wealth, is not adjusted to the local environment. Therefore it leads to escalating costs.
The indigenous or resident local economy, often politically supported, was originally self-sufficient, but now it is increasingly a cultural artifact, despite what we might wish it to be.
The high cost of development and the political desires to keep northern regions intact as functioning parts of each nation has led to a net economic and administrative subsidy to the regions of the Arctic in each circumpolar country, even including Iceland. There is little reasonable expectation, if you look at it coldly, that northern resource development will result in a net long-term addition to the national economic wealth. [10:5]
The implications of this are that no simplistic economic "quick fix" should be expected to cure the dysfunctional aspects of Arctic economies, which, as Chaturvedi observes, are characterized by a mixture of: "(i) old, traditional economies developed from a barter economy based on subsistence practices; (ii) public economies, based on transfers of capital from the metropolises located to the South; (iii) private economies, principally based on large-scale production in the utilization of land resources." If any generalization can be made, it is that "so far economic strategies designed in the industrialized South have brought at best mixed results to the hinterland regions, undermining sustainability in every sense of the term."158

Other studies, such as those done for the Arctic parliamentarians' conferences in Reykjavik and Yellowknife, have pointed to the inherent difficulties and man-made change factors that need to be confronted in conceiving more viable development strategies.159 Among familiar obstacles are: the sheer harshness of climate that creates demanding requirements for suitable technologies; the isolation and vast distances, transportation limitations and costs that inhibit commercial exchanges with and within the North; the high costs of imported capital and other inputs, of developing infrastructure to service small populations, and of doing business generally; the expenses of environmental clean-up necessitated by poorly planned past developments; the complexity of environmental regulatory processes, given the slow self-healing capacity of Arctic ecosystems are especially vulnerable to large-scale economic development; ongoing jurisdictional disputes, especially those involving outstanding native land claims, resource ownership, and revenue sharing; divisions within local communities over the merits and pace of certain kinds of development (e.g. major mining projects). Arctic populations are at the same time coming under increasing stress from externally driven dynamics:

The pace of change is accelerating as the Arctic's oil, gas, minerals, and hydro resources are more fully delineated and developed for the global market and as the region is integrated into the broader world through mass communications technology. The need for sustainability policies is pressing in this vibrant economic and social environment, but the very pace of change poses major challenges in successfully implementing such policies.160
Terry Fenge, who appeared before the Committee as executive director of the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) and has since become director of research for the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), contends that the most promising development approaches are those initiated by northern peoples themselves and which aim at allowing them to take charge of their economic futures. According to this witness: "Sustainability as an approach toward the future resonates among Arctic aboriginal peoples. Passing on unimpaired the natural environment from one generation to the next, adopting cultural health and diversity as unashamed goals of economic development, and integrating these goals with carrying and assimilative capacities all fit well with aboriginal views and advocacy." The recent report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples contains a number of proposals for nurturing northern indigenous economies to sustainable health through community-based diversification and a focus on developing human resources in a context of environmental stewardship. Within such an approach, the report recognizes an important role for non-traditional wage employment and a realistic role for future public-sector support.

The Commission's approach is worth citing at length:

We favour a policy response rooted in sustaining viable communities and promoting a diversified economy that encompasses both wage employment and harvesting renewable resources. Through comprehensive land claims settlements and emerging systems of self-government, Aboriginal peoples in the North have an opportunity to re-establish the traditional-mixed economy in a land where direct use of natural resources is a vital dimension of making a living.
Northerners may well break new ground in coping with common problems of industrialized countries today: increased pressure on public expenditures, global competition creating downward pressures on incomes, and the reduced capacity of states to regulate or borrow to create full employment. . . . Demographic and economic realities highlight the need for concerted efforts to expand the number and kind of opportunities available to Aboriginal young people and adults to earn a living. It is clear that an important tool of northern economic development will continue to be public expenditures, whether through direct employment or promoting the development of other sectors. We believe that the safest and most promising direction for such expenditures, as well as for regulation of land use, is one that strengthens the traditional mixed economy of areas of the North where Aboriginal people predominate. There is scope to support both the older, more traditional sources of cash and employment and new ventures in areas as yet to be fully exploited. In all cases, development must be undertaken in the context of environmental stewardship.161
Internationally, the Inuit were early leaders in setting forth a comprehensive and holistic approach to circumpolar sustainable economic development, asserting their transboundary rights to preserve traditional livelihoods based on the harvesting of renewable resources, to the co-management of those resources, and to determine guidelines for transnational trade and investment in the Arctic.162 ICC President Rosemarie Kuptana highlighted for the Committee as areas for cooperation with the Canadian Government: exploring "new mechanisms for managing whaling in the circumpolar Arctic; removal of trade barriers affecting trade products from the circumpolar region and development of a program to promote trade in marine mammal products; promotion of international wildlife co-management agreements . . . " She added that: "The ICC is also carrying out ground-breaking work in the area of indigenous- to-indigenous trade development through some initial exploratory projects in Central America and the South Pacific. Principles of sustainable development and local capacity building are guiding principles in this work" [Submission of 2 May 1996, p. 5].

The Committee was impressed by the forward-looking internationalist approaches in subsequent presentations by spokespersons for growing aboriginal enterprises from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation in the far west of the Arctic to the Makivik Corporation in the East. We see leaders emerging from within Arctic communities with the skills to develop market opportunities and confront the external forces referred to above. In turn, they want to see Government exercise a Canadian circumpolar economic diplomacy that includes them as active participants and demonstrates that it really understands and supports their goals. A number of witnesses addressed the issues of building effective alliances in that regard, for example to overcome the drastic effects of animal rights groups' anti-harvesting campaigns on incomes in many Arctic communities. We will return to this issue in the section on circumpolar trade.

The Committee also heard from several groups (e.g. the Porcupine Caribou Management Board and Gwich'in Renewable Resource Board) which are wrestling with our American neighbour over serious transboundary disputes stemming from proposals to open part of the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development (see the section of Chapter Nine on Canada-U.S. Arctic cooperation for details). Tellingly, American policies came in for criticisms both for being too pro-development and for being too conservationist. For example, Leif Halonen, President of the Saami Council, told Committee members in Tromsø, Norway, that U.S. proposals to guide sustainable development activities within the Arctic Council were protectionist and contrary to the attitude of indigenous peoples to a wisely managed sustainable utilization of renewable resources.

This illustrates the challenge of accommodating diverse economic interests and groups of stakeholders. Oran Young argued for sustainable economic development principles based on: preference for subsistence users of natural resources; co-management and subsidiarity (i.e. participation in decision-making and political "self-determination"); diversified sources of income; cultural integrity; and protection from external threats. The fundamental aim should be "stable, culturally intact, and prosperous communities rather than assimilation into global systems emphasizing material welfare" [Submission of 1 October, p. 6]. But it is questionable whether the Arctic can prosper by exempting itself from international market trends or whether most of its people - especially the non-aboriginal majorities in some regions - would necessarily want to do so.

Beyond sustaining the indigenous economies, there are also large questions about how to reduce the excessive northern dependence on external government subsidies, in part by stimulating private sector development that emphasizes local benefits. The Committee heard from territorial, municipal, and business leaders in the Canadian Arctic who are pursuing promising commercial opportunities, and indeed have often been de facto "ambassadors" for Canadian interests in building ties with other northern regions. Yet, the fact remains that the Arctic economy, apart from the government-supported sector, rests on a very narrow, resource-dependent base typified by boom and bust cycles (from whales and the Klondike gold rush in the nineteenth century to diamonds and nickel at the close of this century) and vulnerability to external shocks (such as the threatened European fur ban). Because its internal market is so small, the Arctic must expand its potential for export earnings at the very least through fostering circumpolar commerce and must attract significant inflows of investment capital. There will therefore always be a danger that the promotion of Arctic development will be determined more by southern appetites and systems of power than by northern needs decided locally.

Sanjay Chaturvedi has argued that the increased economic pressures on the circumpolar environment and populations, reinforced by a regionalization and globalization of market forces, require movement towards a "legally binding Arctic Treaty on Sustainable Development."163 We think such a regime is a very long way off, if realizable at all, although we did note earlier the comments by the Northern Forum's Stephen Cowper to the effect that using the Arctic Council to encourage adherence to multilateral environmental standards would promote fair business and trade practices among circumpolar regions. Much can also be done to increase the sustainability and retained value of particular economic activities already taking place or projected for the Arctic, and we will shortly turn to this. We believe that Canada can help here by working with other circumpolar countries and their Arctic populations to arrive at a commonly agreed framework for supporting sustainable economic development based on established principles. This should be a primary goal of the sustainable development conference that Canada, as Arctic Council chair, has called for later in 1997.

To that end:

Coping with Large-Scale Capital-Intensive Development

The most controversial issue in sustainable economic development in the Arctic is the role of large-scale development, usually based on non-renewable resource extraction and mainly externally financed. For one thing, such development has not been a stable or reliable source of income for northern communities; even the richest resource discoveries will eventually be depleted. We can add high development costs, increasing resistance to public subsidization, and speculative markets; a downturn in international market factors may cause investors to pull up stakes and move elsewhere. As the former NWT premier and current chair of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, Nellie Cournoyea, told us in Inuvik:

The oil industry, once the backbone of a prosperous economy in the western Arctic is no longer significant. New industries are slow to develop and none have assumed the importance once occupied by oil and gas. Tourism holds promise for the future but there is much work to be done to develop the infrastructure necessary to take full advantage of the opportunities in that industry. The reduced economy of the Western Arctic has heightened the importance of traditional parts of the economy. [Submission of 28 May 1996]
Notwithstanding the decline of exploration activity in the Beaufort Sea area, tremendous interest has been stirred over diamond finds in the central Arctic and massive nickel deposits in northern Quebec and at Voisey's Bay in Labrador. During the first Ottawa panel, Terry Fenge of CARC observed: ``It's possible, perhaps likely that within five to ten years the number one export by value from the Northwest Territories will be diamonds" [10:10]. Returning from Inuvik, Committee members briefly visited the Lac de Gras site 300 kilometres northeast from Yellowknife, where, in preparing the site for a proposed mine a consortium led by a Canadian susbsidiary of the Australian multinational Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd., (BHP) had already invested $170 million. While members were told that the multi-billion dollar project would create over 800 long-term jobs, with a hiring preference for northerners, aboriginals and women, a number of questions raised during extensive local public hearings were brought to the Committee's attention in Yellowknife. In particular, concerns focussed on the adequacy of environmental review procedures, the settlement of outstanding native land claims, and the determination of how royalties from the mine's output would be shared.164 Since similar rich discoveries have been made in Euro-Arctic areas occupied by the Saami and in the Russian Arctic (notably the far east Sakha republic, which has developed close relations with the NWT), there is considerable scope here for learning from sharing circumpolar experiences.165

Among concerned NGOs and aboriginal groups taking part in the public hearings process, spokespersons for CARC were not convinced about the sufficiency of the environmental standards for the BHP project, and suggested creation of a stakeholders' monitoring agency. As well, they argued that if land claims cannot be fully resolved before development proceeds, at a minimum impact/benefits agreements should be signed with the affected aboriginal groups, and the traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous peoples should be taken into greater account when making assessments and designing appropriate arrangements. Low royalty structures should also be revised upwards; perhaps a "heritage fund" could be established from BHP contributions.

The diamond mine received final federal and NWT government approval on 1 November 1996, but stringent conditions were attached. While not fully satisfying the aboriginal organizations and public-interest and environmental NGOs who intervened, the result was better than many expected. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which had filed a legal action in the Federal Court (led by one of its directors, former Prime Minister John Turner) to press for parallel commitments for setting aside a network of protected areas, concluded that enough progress had been made to suspend that action early in 1997.166 Even months earlier, Terry Fenge had told the Committee that CARC did not take the position "that mining development in the North will inevitably create massive environmental destruction. We are of the view that mining development can, and should, go ahead, with appropriate rules and regulations . . . [BHP] is by and large environmentally conscious and environmentally aware, more so than perhaps many of the small to medium-sized Canadian companies" [10:25].

What has understandly provoked so much suspicion is that past major project development has paid scant attention to issues of sustainability, aboriginal and environmental stewardship, and long-term benefits for local communities. We are anxious that past mistakes not be repeated. Jeffrey Simpson wrote in the Globe and Mail of the current byzantine negotiations among governments, investors, and native groups over the fate of the huge Voisey's Bay nickel/cobalt development in Labrador: "Whose land is it anyway, and who should profit from the bounty of the land? These are issues of money, morality and law written across the Canadian landscape in the struggle of native people to lay claim to territories they once used."167 Our meetings in May 1996 with Inuit leaders in Kuujjuaq, the administrative centre for the adjacent region of Nunavik in northern Quebec, revealed other apprehensions over environmental clean-up and health and the balance between human costs and benefits from development. While these leaders still had many problems with the James Bay and Northern Québec Agreement governing resource exploitation in this territory, at least it had provided an established framework for negotiating on behalf of aboriginal beneficiaries. Officials of the Kativik regional government and the Makivik Corporation also referred positively to partnership agreements reached on such matters as Inuit hiring preferences, training, and small business development with the Falconbridge subsidiary that is developing a large nickel mine near Katinniq.

In short, the economic potential of major resource discoveries cannot be ignored, but nor can the large capital expenditures required to upgrade transportation and communications infrastructures across the North. The revenues, income and employment from private-sector investment are indeed needed, as was noted by the position of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Its November 1996 Final Report discusses efforts to address the fact that, although mining is "the single largest private sector, goods-producing, export dollar activity in the North . . . [it has not been] a major source of employment for northern Aboriginal people." It draws the conclusion: "There are a number of ways Aboriginal people could benefit from mining developments, provided appropriate arrangements are made and environmental protection standards are maintained. In no situation has mining been a panacea, but it may be that enough has been learned so that regulated mineral development can be undertaken in a manner that does not damage and perhaps even enhances the traditional mixed economy."168

The Committee would like to share that optimism. We do so, however, with the strong proviso that the international sustainable development principles we have recommended must be fully respected, the knowledge and concerns of indigenous Arctic communities heard, and the learning referred to above increasingly shared and promoted on a circumpolar basis.

Accordingly:

Investing in Community-Based Development

A number of witnesses before the Committee argued that the most desirable, if not the most lucrative, forms of Arctic development are small-scale and directly focussed on nurturing an economic base to build sustainable communities, rather than being driven by external economic factors and having to mitigate the community impacts afterwards. The objectives of community-based economic development in the Arctic have been described as (i) to operate within the limits of the biosphere and local ecosytems; (ii) to address basic local needs, strengthen shared commitments to the common well-being and encourage local initiative and self-reliance; (iii) to benefit indigenous and other northern peoples and improve their quality of life consistent with obligations to future generations; and (iv) to encourage use of local technologies and indigenous knowledge for promoting culturally appropriate development.169

In regard to technological applications generally, DIAND Deputy Minister Jack Stagg, testifying before the Committee, observed that most past investments, public and private, have "not been oriented towards adapting southern technologies for northern use, or establishing the infrastructure required to support economic diversification."170 Clearly these should be areas of priority. Innovative firms that are investing in technological development that serves northern community needs - e.g. Ferguson, Simek, Clark in Yellowknife in cold-climate housing construction, and NorthwestTel in Iqaluit in telecommunications facilities linking distant high Arctic communities in Nunavut - told us that there are also potential export spinoffs from the transfer of such Canadian technologies to other circumpolar communities. As well, new information technologies could be utilized to promote indigenous knowledge networks and cultural exchanges. In Iqaluit, the Committee learned about the first Inuktitut Internet site at the Nunavut Arctic College and Research Institute, and about the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation's capabilities in producing native-language programming with an international audience.

With respect to maintaining the viability of indigenous communities as development proceeds, a recent Canadian study suggests that the following northern-based policy principles could be applied on a circumpolar basis: (1) culturally sustainable planning development; (2) support of subsistence economies; (3) recognition and use of traditional ecological knowledge; (4) co-management of land and resources; (5) building and strengthening of indigenous social institutions; (6) recognition of communal property rights of indigenous groups; (7) assessment of the cumulative impact of development projects.171

Work being undertaken by the Social and Economic Development Division of Cambridge University's prestigious Scott Polar Research Institute builds on practical experience from Alaska applied to achieving sustainable economic recovery for remote regions of Russia's North and East. This provides a very promising concrete illustration of how sustainable development approaches can be successfully adapted for productive use in even some of the most economically troubled areas of the circumpolar world. We will refer to specific project examples in Chapter Nine, on cooperation with Russia. At this stage, what is notable, according to documentation provided by Piers Vitebsky, head of Social Sciences and Russian Studies at the Institute172 is how the application of such approaches includes

supporting the traditional activities of local populations engaged in pastoral or subsistence activity, through the clarification of land rights, resource management regimes and economic methods such as the creation of local corporations.
Targeted support of the "traditional" sectors provides an avenue to avoid the destruction of traditional cultural activities and helps to revive them. We find that the traditional sectors usually need only a small amount of redirected resources to allow the economy's "disconnected" pieces to create vital sustainable linkages.
Morever, the Cambridge Institute continues to elaborate a sophisticated methodology for assessing and encouraging sustainability that "links the traditional economic sector with regional primary non-renewable resource development and economic recovery in a complementary, rather than confrontational, manner. Furthermore, information about the traditional sector becomes "useful" to industry and economically minded funding agencies, while the economic rents from primary (mineral) development are utilized efficiently and effectively for local needs."

We believe that a variety of viable economic activities can be encouraged within a community-based sustainable development approach. Some of these activities, however, such as the traditional harvesting of species like whales and seals, and transboundary exchanges of traditional products among indigenous peoples, require specific foreign policy attention; this was underlined to the Committee by Nellie Cournoyea and other aboriginal witnesses in Canada and the Nordic countries. She argued that U.S. protectionist legislation in particular (notably the Marine Mammal Protection Act, to which Canada was unable to obtain an aboriginal exemption under the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement) places undue legal restrictions on indigenous peoples' rights to practise sustainable resource use and cultural development. This is an area where Canada could work through international forums to achieve more acceptable circumpolar agreements.

Possibilities could also be explored for safeguarding indigenous "country-food" sources and developing small agri-food and marine-product industries (e.g. the shrimp fishery in eastern Arctic waters) which have international potential. While Gérard Duhaime of Laval University cautioned against the marketing of wild game [47:14-15], Makivik representatives in Kuujjuaq, where Committee members visited its research facility, saw export potential in the regions's abundant caribou resource.173 That interest was combined, however, with strong concerns about the growing problem of contaminants in country foods (relating back to the critical international issue of longe-range transboundary pollutants that we addressed in the previous chapter). Hence the prior need to address food safety and health issues in the context of developing external markets for northern food products.174 Here again is an obvious area for circumpolar policy research and coordination.

Less controversially, perhaps, we see opportunities to expand alternative employment and income sources through developing cottage-based industries - notably in the arts and cultural products sector, which has earned an international reputation and important market niche thanks to the pioneering efforts of Canadians such as James Houston. Toronto will host a Northern Encounter Festival in June 1997 featuring cultural activity from the eight circumpolar countries, with substantial financial support from the four Nordic states. Connections with Arctic-based initiatives such as the Great Northern Arts Festival, from which the Committee heard in Inuvik, should be encouraged. Committee members who visited the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative in Cape Dorset were also impressed by the need to encourage infrastructure and diversified development to support this sector. The mayor of Cape Dorset referred to the lack of action in the construction of a combined community centre and cultural complex for displaying showcase arts activities and attracting tourism. She also saw potential for exporting superior traditional clothing made by Cape Dorset women and thereby encouraging local skills and marketing to other circumpolar countries. While a recent discovery of a large alabaster deposit in the Canadian Arctic is being celebrated as a boon to Inuit carvers, the cultural products sector can be precarious and still deserves close attention and support from governments to ensure its long-term sustainability.175

One of the most promising areas at which Arctic communities are looking is the expansion of sustainable or ecotourism; which is increasingly combining wilderness travel with an appreciation of local indigenous cultures.176 It can be argued that Canada holds a great, if underdeveloped, comparative advantage in this area as the holder of approximately one-fifth of the globe's remaining wilderness, most of which is in the North. Ecotourism, especially when it involves participation by aboriginal enterprises (the Committee notes, for example, the Makivik Corporation's strong interest), could offer a long-term source of income for many remote communities and, operated with strict controls, could also act as a powerful incentive to protect native cultures, species and ecosytems. Groups such as the World Wildlife Fund have already been active in developing guidelines for sustainable Arctic tourism,177 but circumpolar governments too need to take a lead.

Several witnesses argued that Canada is in danger of falling behind by not taking the same advantage of tourism potential as the Scandinavian countries, especially northern Norway. Professor Branko Ladanyi argued that Svalbard is not so different from Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec; yet, while little is being done in Kuujjuaq to attract tourists, the Svalbard region is succeeding in drawing them from a wide range of countries. He asked: "Why not provide the necessary services, access and infrastructure to develop the tourism industry?" [47:11]. Kevin Knight, of Unaaq International, an Inuit company operating in Nunavik and the Baffin region, described another problem which seems all too typical of an uncoordinated Canadian approach: "at Industry Canada we have a Canadian tourism strategy aimed at attracting ecotourism to Canada and to the North. The strategy was developed without the full involvement of northerners who have succeeded in this business of ecotourism and therefore without adequate attention to northern realities or to the need, perhaps, to attend to niche markets-not mass markets-for the North" [20:10].

More generally, in terms of community and small-enterprise development in the Arctic, coordinated policies and programs are required that address the practical needs of local people for acquiring employment and business skills, and accessing sources of investment capital, as well as professional and managerial expertise. Branko Ladanyi made the point that: "if Aboriginals are to become self-sufficient, they need tradespeople . . . they need specialists of every kind. So I am wondering who is supporting the training of Aboriginals in this area, who is teaching them these trades. You cannot have a northern community without people who know how to repair snowmobiles, houses, heating systems, etc." [47:10]. The Committee heard about some vocational education activities through the staff of colleges with whom we met in the Arctic, but obviously this area calls for more attention.178 As well, Oran Young described concrete sustainable development projects related to these needs, which in his view would require quite modest financial resources, and put them on his priority list for early action on the circumpolar cooperation agenda of the Arctic Council countries:

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. . . .

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 . . . 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. [40:5-8]

In light of the above:

Promoting Circumpolar Trade and Facilitating Commercial Linkages among Circumpolar Economies

In an era where trade liberalization and systems of transport and communications are increasingly global, it is important that the circumpolar region not be left out or left behind. A remaining problem is the historical pattern of predominant North-South economic flows - between dependent peripheries of nation-states and their southern metropoles - and barriers limiting development of East-West, North-North exchanges. In Canada, we now commonly think of ourselves as integral players within North America, trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific economic areas. There has been, in contrast, hardly any strategic consciousness of an emerging circumpolar area in trade and economic development terms. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, of course, has separate trade development activities in all of the Arctic Council countries, but there is no circumpolar-region orientation or focus.

Indeed, circumpolar trade issues have received only occasional attention. The Canadian Polar Commission in its early years sponsored a conference on the subject which recommended developing "in cooperation with northerners . . . an urgently needed circumpolar trade policy for Canada" and identified a number of problem areas, including: a "fragmented" knowledge base; a "lack of international codes and standards for cold-climate technologies"; weak Canadian investment in exploiting competitive advantages from these technologies; an undeveloped local business environment and northern enterprises that were not yet "export-ready"; barriers to international trade in renewable resource sectors; and lack of marketing associations to strengthen export activity in these sectors. Conference participants recommended establishing a "Canadian Polar information System [incorporating] a trade services and opportunities database that lists companies and services"; a national research and development program for cold-climate technologies; and joint federal, provincial, and territorial action to harmonize regulations, coordinate programs, and generally collaborate more effectively to address deficiencies in trade development. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade was requested to "devise a strategy and cooperative marketing plan that involves representatives of all northern stakeholder groups that are proposing global trading initiatives."179

A few steps have been taken since then. The Canadian International Business Strategy for 1997-98 will, for the second year, have a chapter on "aboriginal products, services and technologies," and within that context a "North of 60" team is being contemplated that would address trade development for Inuit arts, indigenous food products and fisheries and promote technology transfer within circumpolar regions for the communications, transport and mining, and resource industries. In regard to aboriginal-initiated developments Don Axford of the Canadian Inuit Business Development Council, told the Committee how "the Inuit are clearly reaching out to the circumpolar world and beyond. They are setting up businesses at a remarkable rate. The CIBDC does provide one way for the Inuit in a pan-Arctic way to gain an understanding of where businesses are being set up and what services or products are being provided in the North. It's also for these businesses to reach out to see where the barriers might be to trade and development" [20:14]. Yet, as Kevin Knight, of Unaaq International, underscored in the same panel, there is no overall Canadian policy that works through the implications of global and regional trade regimes (GATT/WTO, NAFTA, EU) for Arctic development and the sustainability of northern-specific approaches:

For sustainable development to occur in the North and be supported in the South there needs to be a fuller understanding of the nature of economic development and the areas in which it can be supported rather than just the simple application of approaches specific to the south. . . .

Without understanding in the North, without having an appreciation for which businesses are ready for which kind of trade activity, and without knowing more about the match between size and scope of products and relevant markets, some of the trade activities are doubted and then fast drive away interests in the North in outward trade linkages and development. Support then must be provided for northern businesses in understanding and readying themselves for trade beyond the northern Canadian level. [20:10-11]

On the same point, Gerald Lock reiterated to the Committee some of the themes he had emphasized as chair of the economic development and trade workshop at the 1994 northern foreign policy conference. He had observed then that maximizing benefits to Canada from cold-region technologies, many of which could also be environmentally protective, would require substantial investments, accompanied by "aggressive" trade policies marking a new forward-looking mindset:

Our attitude towards circumpolar trade still lives in the nineteenth century . . . [yet] within a few years we will have the technology of the twenty-first century. Telecommunications now permits us to do the ``paperwork'' of circumpolar business in a much reduced time period; and transportation technology offers us efficient air routes together with the promise of new sea routes in the foreseeable future. Arctic transportation of goods, and in support of tourism, should thus become a key element in a Canadian circumpolar trade policy.180

In Gerald Lock's view, Canada should be establishing such a comprehensive policy on the cornerstones of: "capitalizing on our record in international diplomacy and commitment to environmental protection; promoting our natural comparative advantages in renewable resources, non-renewable resources, telecommunications and transportation; developing new and current markets for Canadian products and services; mitigating the effects of adverse foreign measures such as boycotts and trade barriers."181 Moreover, the advent of the Arctic Council should be seen, not only as a useful forum for general discussion of trade issues, but in terms of exploring the Arctic implications of international trade agreements and rules, looking towards circumpolar arrangements and perhaps, as he suggested to the Committee, an "Arctic free-trade agreement" [20:5].

There are also a number of more immediate ways, however, in which Canada could move to realize the unfulfilled potential of stronger circumpolar trading relationships with other Arctic Council members and interested countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom and France. A compelling statement to that effect was made by Professor Robert Williamson, chair of the University of Saskatchewan's International Committee and a former Inuktitut-speaking member of the NWT legislature during the 1994 foreign policy review public hearings.

We have shared interests and trade interests in the circumpolar context. We also, as a country, have very extensive expertise, much valued by other circumpolar nations . . . we are in competition with very sophisticated economies. For example, we have an enormous seaboard requiring ice navigation technology, but Finland and Sweden, and even Denmark, are competing in building icebreakers and doing at least as well, if not better than us.

We have internationally-recognized expertise in northern environmental mining, in hydro-carbon product exploration and production, pipeline building, and permafrost environment construction . . . in northern aviation and northern road and railroad operations, northern building construction, and hinterland communications . . . we have expertise that could be exported more effectively. We already are active in Siberia, but nowhere near to the extent of the U.S.A. or Germany or the Japanese initiatives in Siberia since the end of the U.S.S.R.

Siberia . . . has enormous forest resources. Again we're in competition with the Swedes and the Finns in the development of well-conserved forest reduction technology in marginal settings. . . . in western Canada we have developed a great deal of trade potential in agricultural science knowledge and technology, very applicable to the tremendous needs of the huge agricultural tracts of Siberia and northern Russia where we can be profitably involved to a greater extent than we already are.182

Professor Williamson also pointed to the success of Canada's northern indigenous peoples in creating cooperative and regional development enterprises which are examples of "successful corporate models that could be made available in terms of Canadian expertise elsewhere in the circumpolar world." Overall, as a nation we are "capable of exerting a great deal more influence on the Arctic environment for the sake of the health and thus the trade effectiveness of the whole of Canada and the circumpolar world."183

This potential was brought home to Committee members in meetings with aboriginal business leaders in the Arctic. For example, in Kuujjuaq, Makivik Corporation Treasurer Peter Adams outlined its ambitious expansion plans and international ventures, from Greenland to Russia and beyond the circumpolar area, including the plans of its First Air subsidiary, of which he is president. In Iqaluit, members were impressed by the vision in which municipal and Nunavut spokespersons are working with the local private sector to make this Baffin community and future territorial capital, into a hub for circumpolar commercial activity. In Inuvik, Nellie Cournoyea, chairperson of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, submitted that: "We in the North are excited about the opportunities which world trade can bring. As Inuvialuit we have a special interest of kinship in promoting international relations with countries in the circumpolar region. As Canadians we wish to see the export of our products grow and our participation in international trade expand." At the same time, she cautioned that Government action must "be cognizant of the interests, traditions and way of life of northern peoples" [Submission of 28 May 1996]. We would add that this includes adhering fully to the overarching principles of sustainable development recommended earlier.

During the 1994 foreign policy review, Ms. Cournoyea, then NWT Government Leader, testified about numerous initiatives that could be undertaken to exercise circumpolar trade options and contribute to Canadian trade diversification. Nicholas Poushinsky had also called for "more northern focussed trade missions . . . [and] more balanced northern representation on trade missions."184 The Committee heard from several other witnesses, including officials responsible for territorial and municipal economic development in Yellowknife and Whitehorse, who expanded on their testimony from 1994. Stephen Simek of Ferguson, Simek, Clark Consulting Engineers, a leader among a number of Yellowknife-based firms involved in construction and management projects in the Russian Federation's Sakha republic, elaborated on the range of elements (e.g. consular services, export financing and insurance instruments, and improved transportation links) that require attention if Canada is to take advantage of areas of real comparative advantage and potential niche markets. He suggested that a "Team-Canada" trade mission might help to boost trade momentum, which has sometimes flagged in recent years. Witnesses have argued that the federal Government could be helpful in other ways, such as through establishing an industry clearing-house for information and product data on cold-climate technologies and by expanding diplomatic and trade representation in the circumpolar area, especially the vast Russian north and far east. Although in Chapter Nine we will look in more detail at promoting circumpolar economic ties through Canada's relations with other Arctic countries, we want to underline this theme which emerged in our Ottawa panels and our visits to the Canadian Arctic and overseas.

Before turning to more future-oriented trade and transport connections, we must mention an outstanding area of traditional exports - namely, wild fur and fur products - that has been crucial to the indigenous economy of many small Canadian Arctic communities, and that was described repeatedly during our study as requiring continued vigilant action by the Canadian Government.185 The wild fur trade represents appropriate sustainable utilization of renewable resources, but the controversy over alleged "inhumane" trapping methods, fuelled by animal rights groups and supporters in the European Parliament, led the European Union to adopt an import embargo in 1991; this measure was strongly challenged by Canada and other principal fur exporters, the U.S. and Russia, under international trade rules. The ban has yet to take effect as the EU's Commission has postponed implementation several times during lengthy multilateral negotiations to try to come up with an internationally satisfactory trapping standard. Canada and Russia reached a tentative draft agreement with the European Commission late in 1996; however, it has not yet achieved enough acceptance among European governments and ministers, so the overhanging threat remains.186

The Committee believes this is an important area of unfinished business in which Canada needs to craft an effective circumpolar foreign policy strategy. Witnesses in the Canadian Arctic argued for stronger direct involvement by aboriginal peoples in devising overseas trade strategies and for utilizing Arctic Council channels. In his submission, Gary Bohnet of the Metis Nation declared that:

The evolution of circumpolar relations and international cooperation requires that Aboriginal trappers and commercial wildlife harvesters have free markets to support their traditional livelihoods, and by that, maintain Aboriginal cultural survival and obtain economic independence. The Arctic Council can promote the environmental importance of trapping as well as free international trade with other circumpolar countries. [Submission of 30 May 1996, p. 7]
However, the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec was notably critical of the Government's approach to date. Advisor Brian Craik contended that "Canada has involved native people only in the publicity aspect, not in working out the trap standards process. . . . The concrete thing Canada should do now is to work with aboriginal peoples to set up programs in Canada for trapper training, for trap replacement and for the development of new forms of traps. That should be done with aboriginal peoples" [41:18-19].

We note as well that the Speaker of the Finnish Parliament told the Committee that the wild fur issue was not very significant for the Saami population of that country, and that Finland would tend to abide by the EU consensus [Meeting No. 48, 29 October 1996]. Denmark, although a more established EU member, offers more potential for strategic collaboration with Canada because this issue is important to Greenland. This was confirmed to Committee members by Finn Linge, Greenland's representative in Brussels and a noted expert on the subject,187 during meetings at the Indigenous Peoples Secretariat in Copenhagen. Nonetheless, Canada must show creativity and energy in evolving circumpolar trade strategies that support sustainable resource utilization principles of special importance to aboriginal peoples. In that regard, Milton Freeman of Edmonton's Circumpolar Institute urged that more be done generally to advance Canadian objectives through joint circumpolar action against various international arrangements that may be injurious to sustainable circumpolar trade development:

Development of the northern resource economy requires working to overcome artificial barriers to international trade such as, e.g. the MMPA and EU directives banning trade in sealskins and wild furs, actions of the IWC opposing the commercial utilization of non-endangered whales, and unjustified CITES' sanctions against trade of various abundant, non-endangered species. Canada, Greenland, Norway and Iceland should work closely and resolutely together on overcoming these negative impacts; these countries are all non-EU nations, and all are adversely affected by EU and U.S. actions. [Submission of 3 June 1996, p. 6]
Moving beyond the traditional export sector, new technologies are opening up promising possibilities in circumpolar commerce, transport and communications, and creating concomitant requirements for Arctic standards and environmental safeguards. As the evidence of Gerald Lock and others indicates, there is a lot still to be done in all of these areas. Confirming the testimony of Professor Robert Williamson on icebreaker technology, former Canadian Coast Guard captain Patrick Toomey told the Committee: ``The combined Swedish and Finnish Baltic Sea icebreaker fleet, which has nothing to do with Arctic ice, is better equipped and more powerful than ours. We should not miss the opportunity to take control of the situation. If Canada is going to opt out of ice-breaking, I'm sure the Russians, the Scandinavians, and even commercial interests might be interested in building ships capable of looking after Arctic Ocean navigation'' [20:2].

However, as Patrick Toomey hastened to add: "Polar navigation left purely to commercial interests to exploit, without government supervision and regulation, to my mind is a recipe for ecological disaster, and human disaster too" [20:3]. Oran Young suggested to the Committee that a circumpolar institution like the Arctic Council could be used to initiate "some Arctic adaptations of more general institutional arrangements or regimes. For example, we could consider whether we should develop the idea of MARPOL, a marine pollution special area, [i.e. designating a special zone for anti-pollution measures]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-know 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" [40:6].

On the subject of future Canadian interests in circumpolar shipping, applied technologies and commercial spinoffs, the Committee benefited greatly from the testimony of Martin Luce, President of Canarctic Shipping, a company created as a joint venture by the federal Government and private industry. Using its expertise developed in the Canadian Arctic, Canarctic has created a technical services subsidiary Enfotec, which is currently engaged in a major project with Russian partners - the Integrated Arctic Resources Information System ("Intaris") - designed to support resource development in Russian Arctic offshore areas. Intaris has the potential to create a marketable system of circumpolar applications for project planning, environmental monitoring, and ice forecasting. Members were able to appreciate those merits in meetings with both the Canadian and Russian associates at the Arctic and Antarctic Institute in St. Petersburg; and we will have considerably more to say about the technical cooperation side of this activity in Chapter Nine.

In an earlier Ottawa panel, Mr. Luce had emphasized commercial opportunities and technological innovations (e.g. Canarctic has pioneered the use of remote sensing, satellite communications and electronic on-board systems for ice navigation), and also awareness of advancing leading-edge technologies in a context of environmental stewardship. As he put it:

Canarctic has closely monitored the environmental impact of its operation on northern residents and their traditional lifestyle. The company works in cooperation with local groups to document and minimize the effects of vessel operations on the physical Arctic environment. We, in our way, have made a small contribution to Canada's very significant expertise in environmental impact assessment, which is one area in which Canada can certainly take the lead in circumpolar cooperation. [20:8]
This brings us back appropriately to the essential underlying theme of practising sustainability in circumpolar economic initiatives in order to preserve the regions's ecosystems and benefit its human communities. Despite the optimism reflected in much of the foregoing in regard to trade, technological and transportation developments, there are still many gaps and concerns to be attended to. As an example, a major project such as the "Northern Sea Route," which was discussed during our meetings in Europe, could open up Euro-Arctic and Russian waters to greatly increased year-round polar commercial transit, and thereby raise serious reservations about the adequacy of circumpolar arrangements for ensuring that sustainable development principles are respected.188

For Canada, therefore, the challenge is to improve our international policy instruments so as to be able to act vigorously on a circumpolar basis to realize economic gains through liberalizing exchanges and development of profitable linkages; within a multilateral framework of sound sustainable development principles. The overarching aim of Canadian policy should be to enhance the security and build the economic capacity of the regions's indigenous communities, which all too often in the past, have borne the brunt of powerful forces outside their control. The next chapter accordingly elaborates further on the need for indigenous rights and democratic accountability to be part of a circumpolar sustainable development policy framework.

Concluding our survey of economic development priorities within such a framework:

151
Terry Fenge, "Toward Sustainable Development in the Circumpolar North," Theme Paper prepared for the Second Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, Yellowknife, NWT, March 1996, p. 9.

152
Mary Simon, "Building Partnerships'' (1996), p. 4.

153
Ibid., p. 6.

154
While federal spending has been declining since the early 1990s, total public expenditure north of 605, excluding the provincial norths, was still over $2.5 billion in 1994-95 by 27 federal organizations and the two territorial governments. Federal transfers account for almost 90% of territorial government's budgets. Interestingly, the Department of National Defence is listed as the federal agency that spends the most, followed by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (DIAND); together they account for over 50% of direct federal spending. Foreign Affairs and International Trade is not even listed. (Cf. DIAND, Annual Northern Expenditure Plan 1994-1995, Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa, published 1996, especially Table 2, p. 12.)

155
This point was made to the Committee, in particular by Kevin Knight of Unaaq Inc., an enterprise owned by northern Quebec and Baffin region Inuit, and Don Axford of the Canadian Inuit Business Development Council (see Issue No. 20). Witnesses generally criticized a lack of coordination at the federal level, although Tony Penikett, a former government leader of the Yukon, put a positive accent instead on the growing diversity of initiatives being generated by northerners themselves, without waiting for federal direction or support (see Issue No. 10).

156
For an extremely useful and detailed socio-economic profile, see the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), Vol. 4 "Perspectives and Realities," Chapter 6 "The North," p. 387-517.

157
For example, W. Harriet Critchley, "L'importance internationale du développement économique des régions arctiques," Revue études internationales, March 1989.

158
Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), Chapter 9 "Sustainable Development in the Arctic: Options and Obstacles," p. 236.

159
Cf. Alf Håkon Hoel, Geir Runar Karlsen and Andreas Breivik, "Resources, Development and Environment in the Arctic," in Arctic Challenges, Reykjavik Conference 1993, and Terry Fenge, "Achieving Sustainable Development in the Arctic Region," paper for the Yellowknife Conference, 1996.

160
Terry Fenge, "Towards Sustainable Development in the Circumpolar North," p. 4. See also his testimony before the Committee, Meeting No. 10, 23 April 1996.

161
Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996), Vol. 4, Chapter 6 "The North," p. 471 and 487-88, emphasis added.

162
A landmark statement was the ICC's Principles and Elements for a Comprehensive Arctic Policy, Centre for Northern Studies and Research, McGill University, Montreal, 1992, especially Part VI "Economic Issues." The development and publication of this document was supported by the Gordon Foundation and also assisted by the Quebec government's Ministry of International Affairs. See also the subsequent manifesto published by the ICC itself, Agenda 21 from an Inuit Perspective, Ottawa 1996, and its 1994 publication Circumpolar Sustainable Development.

163
Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), p. 232 and 264ff.

164
For critical reviews of the issues at stake in Arctic mining mega-projects and the BHP proposal specifically, see "Mining in Aboriginal Homelands," Northern Perspectives, Vol. 23, Nos. 3-4, Fall/Winter 1995-96, and Kevin O'Reilly, "Diamond Mining and the Demise of Environmental Assessment in the North," Northern Perspectives, Vol. 24, Nos. 1-4, Fall/Winter 1996.

165
On the problems common to resource rushes (such as over diamonds in other parts of the Arctic), see Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), p. 239ff. See also Chapter Nine for the relevance to issues of bilateral Arctic cooperation with Canada. As for international market implications, a recent article contends that: "The Canadian mine will add to the uncertainty in the diamond world" (The Economist, 25 January 1997, p. 60).

166
"Update: Central Arctic Diamond Mine," WWF Working for Wildlife Quarterly Action Report, Winter 1996/97, p. 3; "Environmental Group Drops Court Action," The Ottawa Citizen, 14 January 1997.

167
Jeffrey Simpson, "The Inuit and Innu Should Benefit from the Mine at Voisey's Bay," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 31 January 1997.

168
Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Affairs (1996), p. 482-85. Another, more sceptical analysis, which argues that better and stronger environmental assessment than the present must be done first, poses the central issue more broadly: "Can mining activity make a contribution to the longer-term health and sustainability of communities? This is a question for all Canadians, not just the northern aboriginal peoples who see themselves as stewards of their traditional territories. Aboriginal or not, all Canadians want to live their lives in healthy, sustainable communities. Common sense says that, anywhere in Canada, economic activities should be constructed in ways that move communities toward, rather than away from, health and sustainability. (Susan Wismer, "The Nasty Game": How Environmental Assessment Is Failing Aboriginal Communities in Canada's North," Alternatives Journal, 22:4, October/November 1996, p. 16.)

169
Sanjay Chaturvedi, The Polar Regions (1996), p. 233.

170
Cited in ibid., p. 235.

171
Fikret Berkes and Helen Fast, "Aboriginal Peoples: The Basis for Policy-Making toward Sustainable Development," in Ann Dale and John B. Robinson, eds., Achieving Sustainable Development, Sustainable Development Research Institute and UBC Press, Vancouver, 1996, p. 254-55.

172
Meeting with Committee research director Gerald Schmitz at Cambridge University, 15 February 1997.

173
The Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) notes that: "The Inuit of Labrador operate a commercial caribou hunt using a modern packing plant in Nain. They marketed meat in Europe when the reindeer herds were affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Inuvialuit in the western Arctic operate a commercial muskox harvest in the winter months and sell their products in Japanese markets" (Vol. 4, p. 486).

174
As Canadian Polar Commission Chairman, Whit Fraser testified to the Committee on 18 February 1997: ``Food products from Canada's Arctic have slowly been gaining entry into specialty markets the world over and it would appear that there may be some tremendous prospects for the future. That this has been accomplished is due in no small measure to images of pure, healthy products derived from natural unspoiled wilderness. Now, I'm afraid that the contaminants issue represents a threat to the full development of that market potential'' [66:5].

175
On the mixed prospects for the development of these Arctic cultural industries see, for example, "A Motherlode for Inuit Carvers" and "Decline of Printmaking Worries Artistic Community," The Ottawa Citizen, 5 and 6 January 1997.

176
See, for example, Peter Jacobs, "The True North Strong and Free," Ecodecision, Spring 1996, p. 70-72. According to another survey, the mainly foreign visitors "are bringing money and jobs to a region that desperately needs more of both... tourism promoters believe that they have only begun to exploit the fascination with the Canadian North that exists in many parts of the world. One emerging market is Japan. From a handful of visitors less than a decade ago, about 1,700 Japanese travelled to the Northwest Territories in the past year" (Brian Bergman, "Arctic Thrills," Maclean's, 17 June 1996, p. 44-5).

177
See "Guidelines for Arctic Tourism on the Way," WWF Arctic Bulletin, No. 1.96, p. 12-13, which reports on a January 1996 workshop held in Svalbard and hosted by the WWF Arctic Programme and the Norwegian Polar Institute, which some Committee members visited in Tromsø in November 1996.

178
Chapter Eight will address a broader range of issues related to circumpolar cooperation in education.

179
Circumpolar Trade: The Canadian Agenda, Report of a Conference held in Edmonton, 5-6 March 1993, Canadian Polar Commission, Polaris Papers, Vol. 1, No. 3, March 1994. A CPC program that aimed to develop a Canadian Polar Information System (CPIS) was subsequently abandoned when it lost federal funding. For more on that issue see Chapter Eight.

180
G.S.H. Lock, "Towards a Canadian Circumpolar Trade Policy," in Lamb ed., A Northern Foreign Policy for Canada (1994), p. 83-84.

181
Ibid., p. 84-85.

182
Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, Issue No. 13, 30 May 1994, p. 55. Dr. Williamson explained that he had been associate director of the University's Institute for Northern Studies and head of the Arctic Research and Training Centre "before they lost their funding," indicating that the circumpolar inspiration of individual Canadians may not be backed up and sustained institutionally.

183
Ibid., p. 55-56.

184
Special Joint Committee, Proceedings, Issue No. 20, 1 June 1994, p. 125.

185
For over 40,000 aboriginal Canadians, trapping provides income and an opportunity to pass on traditional values and skills. About 40% of Canada's wild fur exports go to European consumers; interruption of this trade would cost Canada over $25 million annually.

186
"European Officials at Odds over Fur Ban," The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 18 December 1996. EU environment ministers will not be easily persuaded to go along with a deal during the current Dutch presidency through June 1997. As diplomatic and internal EU manoeuvres continue (EU foreign ministers meeting on 24 February 1997 also called for improvements to be renegotiated in the December agreement), that is when the next decision deadline looms, according to the latest information available as of February 1997.

187
Cf. Finn Linge, Arctic Wars, Animal Rights, Endangered Peoples, University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1992.

188
See, for example, Sanjay Chaturvedi, "Development and Management of Circumpolar Transportation/Communications Networks," The Polar Regions (1996), p. 253-57.

;