EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, April 23, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Once again, I apologize for the delay in starting, but let's get going.

I'm going to ask our panellists if they'd be good enough to keep their comments to around 10 to 15 minutes at the most. That way we'll have more opportunity for an exchange among us. Perhaps Mr. Fraser will be good enough to start. We'll ask all of you to make your presentations and then we can ask questions.

Thank you very much for coming.

Mr. Whit Fraser (Chair, Canadian Polar Commission): Good morning and thank you, Chairman. I'm pleased to to be here to speak on the subject of a northern foreign policy for Canada, in my capacity as chairman of the Canadian Polar Commission.

This commission was established in 1991 by Parliament in response to concerns over the state of polar research in Canada. The elements of our mandate include monitoring the state of knowledge in Canada and elsewhere in polar research, enhancing Canada's international profile by fostering circumpolar cooperation, and advising the Government of Canada on matters relating to the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Members may wonder what the relationship that mandate could have with the matter of a foreign policy for Canada. But the Canadian Polar Commission has believed that if we do not have a strong science policy and a strong Arctic component to our overall foreign policy, all of our efforts in the Arctic, whether in the area of science and technology, in the matter of social study, social realities, economic development, or the environment, are going to be wanting.

It has been our view that what we need in Canada is an overall Arctic policy of which, of course, there would be a foreign dimension. The commission has also felt for some considerable time that the policies of Canada that were designed to address southern issues have often not worked for northern people. Indeed, there have been many instances over the past 25 to 30 or more years where the policies designed for programs for southern Canada have worked to the detriment of northern people.

We regard the committee's decision to hold hearings on Arctic foreign policy as a potentially important step forward in the country's progression toward meeting the vital needs of Canada's northern peoples.

I want to remind members that about two years ago the Canadian Polar Commission jointly hosted a conference on northern foreign policy for Canada. Mr. Chairman, I will leave you and members with a copy of this. I believe you already have it.

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We touched on a great number of the issues you will now want to consider - a number of the issues in the briefing paper that has been handed out by your researchers. Some of these issues have been addressed in a very important and concrete way.

One of the recommendations from the conference was the establishment of an Arctic ambassador. That has happened.

Another recommendation was that Canada continue to push for an Arctic council. That is happening. The country has made a strong commitment and obligation toward the establishment of an Arctic council. I know that the negotiations are ongoing and occurred as recently as last week. While the council has not yet been established and tough negotiations remain, I believe we are now permitted to feel a degree of optimism that our determination will soon pay off in that regard.

The question, though, is to what end could we have an Arctic council, and to what end to we need to have an Arctic foreign policy for Canada?

The conference I was speaking about heard only from Canadians. That was not to be parochial, but out of a conviction that in shaping a northern foreign policy for Canada the starting point had to be here in Canada with its people, its environment, its national interests and its priorities. Foremost in our concerns were northerners themselves, particularly the aboriginal people.

Leaders from the Inuit, Dene and first nations from the Yukon were all present. Also participating were the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, members of Parliament, senators, members of legislative assemblies from the Northwest Territories and Yukon, federal government officials, and experts in various disciplines in institutions from across Canada.

Our conference affirmed four basic principles that should include and inform Canada's northern foreign policy.

We thought the first and most important one was that relations among the Arctic countries must reflect a basic respect for the interests and aspirations of northern residents, especially the aboriginal peoples.

Second, the policy-making process should involve the direct and active participation of northern Canadians from the beginning.

Third, the economic development of the region must be consistent with the principles of sustainable development.

Finally, peaceful civil relations among the countries of the region are best assured through the sharing of information and the respect of mutual cooperative security.

We looked at a number of specific areas that were essential to a Canadian foreign policy for the circumpolar Arctic and would be also essential for an Arctic policy that had a circumpolar dimension. The first, of course, was economic development and trade.

Members should know that the northern regions of Canada are suffering undoubtedly the highest rates of unemployment, social assistance and social breakdown in the country. In some northern communities the unemployment rate runs to 80% and perhaps higher. Members may have heard of high rates of family breakdown and social destruction, all brought about by the changes people have experienced in northern communities over the past century, half-century, or even 25 years. This is what we need to address in terms of the economic development and sustainable development of the regions.

At the same time, the birth rate in these communities is so high that according to the last figure I saw, 50% of the population is under 25 years old. So you can just imagine from that what's going to happen in another 10 to 20 years.

We are constantly told that the north is extremely rich in natural resources. But so far, development of the natural resources in the northern regions has, by and large, not economically benefited aboriginal peoples at all. In fact, sometimes it has destroyed their environment and left them worse off than in the beginning.

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So what we do in economic development in the north must first address the economic concerns of northern people and ensure that the benefits from this are left back in the communities.

In order to do this, you have to protect the environment. And in northern Canada, environment is either the beginning, the middle or the end of just about everything that comes along. It is essential to the well-being of northern people from a social point of view, an economic point of view and, most importantly, even a cultural point of view.

So we really need to grasp onto this concept of sustainability and sustainable development with the protection of the environment. As I said earlier, science and technology has to be an important part of it and we can't develop our economies and our environments if we don't have a sound domestic and international basis for addressing Arctic science.

Transportation issues should be accorded much importance on our foreign policy agenda. At the conference I spoke about, it was pointed out that over the coming years there is a very real prospect Arctic shipping will expand in connection with northern supply, tourism, resource extraction, exploration and with scientific support. In terms of Arctic transportation, we're going to really get one shot at it. We're going to have to do it right or the environmental consequences will be terrible.

It was also widely held and supported that cultural cooperation must be an element of Canada's northern foreign policy, just as it is a part of Canadian policy towards the Francophonie and the Commonwealth. In their struggle to cope with rapid change affecting their societies and in order to preserve their languages and culture, Canada's Inuit have endeavoured to establish strong traditional ties and cooperation with Inuit living in other Arctic countries.

Similarly, other northern indigenous groups in Canada have worked to cooperate internationally in support of their rights. Canada should encourage this.

Mr. Chairman, what I have presented here is really a summary of the themes and main ideas raised at the conference we convened two years ago. I have not, of course, been able to mention all of the good ideas nor do justice to these ideas. So I would accordingly, as I say, refer you to the proceedings. I will leave these with you and the members.

As I said, many if not all the recommendations have not yet been acted upon. This fact could, I suppose, be taken as a reason for discouragement. But I am not discouraged - not yet anyway. Canada, I believe, has spent the last two years well, preparing the groundwork for an Arctic foreign policy through the Arctic ambassador's appointment and the negotiation of the Arctic council.

I remain hopeful the same kind of energy that has gone into these efforts will now be invested in the development of concrete objectives and practical policy initiatives for the ambassador and the council to undertake.

We have, as I said earlier, a lot of problems in the Arctic, but I would rather focus on the opportunities. There are enormous opportunities and there are enormous and very exciting things happening. We are now talking, of course, about the creation of two new territories in the Arctic, the establishment of Nunavut and the Western Arctic, and land claims negotiations, many of which have recently been concluded, while others are being negotiated or coming to the final elements.

It's a whole new north. It could not be a better time for this committee and for members to begin looking north and looking at how the north is going to fit into our overall national and foreign policy.

As I say, I believe we should look at it in terms of the great opportunities existing there. We must do it for all Canadians but we must also do it within the priorities of the people living there.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Fraser. Since you suggested the environment is the beginning, the middle and the end of most of the concerns in the Arctic, perhaps we should turn next to Dr. Roots from Environment Canada.

If you like, sir, you can be the beginning, the middle, the end, or any part on this continuum.

Dr. E.F. Roots (Science Adviser Emeritus, Department of the Environment): Well, that's a great introduction. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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First I would like to state our pleasure at having a chance to discuss some of these issues, which at least the people at this end of the table have been very close to for a long time. We think, asMr. Fraser has just said, this is a very timely initiative on the part of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

Also, I'd like to express our appreciation to your researcher, James Lee, for putting together a very sensible, brief summary of some of the things that put it into perspective.

My own approach to this has been through many years of working on scientific activities in the north. I became convinced quite a long time ago that Canada's national responsibilities and our international position were lacking in one dimension, that we were a northern country without a conspicuous northern foreign policy. And many times that lack has been evident. So from the times of attempting to draw attention in papers of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs and so on, we've been hammering on the same nail.

I thought it might be most useful at this meeting to indicate what seems to some of us here to be some of the inescapable realities of northern conditions and northern questions. These have to be taken, in our view, clearly and coolly into consideration when looking at the objectives of a foreign policy and the objectives and possibilities of successful trade and economic relationships.

As I've said, there has been a great tendency in this country, going back long before the turn of the century, to govern the north with an absence of mind and then to be either rosy-eyed and optimistic or full of doom and gloom as to what the problems are. Somewhere in between there are some harsh realities. And I think these realities justify specific attention by members of the House to northern questions different from simply an extension of our policies and our concerns in other parts of the country.

I have made a brief note somewhere, and it can be handed out if you like. There are three or four elements to these realities that I think should be important.

One, as Mr. Fraser mentioned, is that environmental realities are behind everything. The climate and geography of the north cause its low biological productivity. And this, of course, causes very limited and, more importantly, very fluctuating living resources from place to place and from time to time. Stability is not a characteristic of low biological productivity, but rather fluctuation is.

This leads, of course, to sparse and scattered human resources, and therefore very little of an economic base. It leads to difficult and costly communication and transport, plus technical difficulty and therefore very high costs for any kind of industrial development. This underlies all of the modern, current ambitions Canada may have for its north.

Then if you look at the social and culture realities, we have to face quite openly that the indigenous cultures adapted to the environment are small-scale. They are responsive to natural changes, but not so responsive to imposed human changes in policies. They're incapable of success if they're expanded in scale. They are distinct from the cultures developed in mid-latitudes and not easily merged with them because of fundamental differences in what is property. What is the bonding to a land? What is the acceptance of jurisdiction? What is the difference between personal aggressiveness for success and cooperation for success, and collective versus individual rights?

Each of these characteristics of a northern society cannot easily be merged with the mainstream of Canadian society. But these cultures are receiving increasingly political and popular recognition in all circumpolar countries. This is happening at different speeds and different rates, but nevertheless, the fact that they've evolved to meet the peculiar environmental questions of the high latitudes means they make sense.

The technical cultures that are immigrant to the north from the lower latitudes tend to be confrontational with nature. They tend to develop technologies or use energy to overcome difficulties. They are therefore dependent on ties with the south. And they almost always are transient in terms of a generation or two at least.

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The economic and political realities we have to face as we look at our foreign and internal policies are that at present, regardless of what you might wish otherwise, the overall economy is increasingly dominated by southern markets in which the Arctic interests have no or little influence.

This means that, 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 high costs.

The indigenous or resident local economy, often politically supported, was originally basically 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 the 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.

There will be spots, of course, of mineral finds and things. Mr. Fraser mentioned that there are resources in the north. In every case we can examine, the subsidy to infrastructure through basic taxation and so on means that we pay for it from the south.

There's another aspect of the north's reality, and that is change. First of all, there is change in the concept of Arctic security from one of a military context to one that is much broader in the security question. I think other members here will talk about that.

Mr. Fraser talked about the change in demographics. In all circumpolar countries, human populations in the Arctic are growing faster than the national average. In many countries, including Canada, that's growing faster than any other part of the country. Based on the number of people in relationship to the resources available to support them, the Arctic regions are the most overpopulated regions in all developed countries.

Another reality of change is that for a number of reasons, partly caused by humans but partly perhaps from natural causes we don't fully understand, the volume and the vigour of living resources in the Arctic, both on land and in the marine areas, is diminishing, and the carrying capacity of both the terrestrial and marine habitats in many, and perhaps all, parts of the Arctic is being degraded.

Another reality is that the introduction and distribution throughout the Arctic of toxic substances of industrial origin that came from non-Arctic regions for the most part is resulting in chemical contamination of Arctic marine and terrestrial food chains.

Ironically - it's just a happenstance of biology - many of the substances of most widespread concern are soluble and animal fats. Arctic ecosystems and Arctic human residents are dependent on a higher proportion of fats for survival and energy than those in lower latitudes, thus they are proportionately more at risk from the same amount of contamination. Also, the low temperatures, prolonged polar darkness, and covers of sea ice and snow prevent the photochemical breakdown of these same substances, which would be of much less long-lasting concern if they happened in the Ottawa Valley.

The evidence of impending significant and rapid change of global temperatures and precipitation patterns, which is likely due in large part to the increased accumulation of human-caused greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere, can be expected on the basis of present scientific knowledge to have its greatest manifestation in regions of the Arctic and sub-Arctic.

Far from this warming of the Arctic being beneficial, it appears that these changes may cause severe hardship and disruption to Arctic terrestrial and marine ecosystems and could increase the costs and difficulties of human activities in the north at least for several decades.

Another element to be borne in mind is the trend for the consolidation of international political arrangements designed to facilitate international economic and trade relations among the dominant economies of southern parts of circumpolar countries, as with, for example, the European Union, the NAFTA agreement and so on. This appears likely to increase the marginalization of the economies of Arctic regions, and to decrease the influence that Arctic regions and Arctic interests can have on the increasingly centralized economic decision-making.

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In Europe, the Lappish and Sami people don't have to go only to Oslo and Stockholm, they have to go through Brussels as well. Here, we're finding our trade arrangements from our northern people can't be handled only through Whitehorse, or even through Ottawa. They instead go through an international, tri-country agreement.

At the same time, the political decision-making with regard to the Arctic is becoming increasingly decentralized in most Arctic countries. So we have a growing dichotomy between the way the economy is working and the way our international relations are working and the way our political arrangements are working. These realities bring us, I think, to a very important question that has to be borne in mind by the kind of study that we are all hoping this committee will do. These realities emphasize a salient fact of Arctic issues that must underlie all but the most trivial policy formation: the multiple nature of issues in the Arctic.

On the one hand, it is increasingly essential to realize and recognize the Arctic regions as distinct regions with different physical and socio-cultural attitudes, different histories, different economies, different values and responses, and above all, different response times from those of lower latitudes. It is increasingly clear that national policies and international arrangements that are designed for the more southern parts of the countries often cannot be applied without change to the Arctic regions, without risk of failure or of being counter-productive.

On the other hand, it is also becoming increasingly apparent that from a policy regulation or investment point of view, the Arctic regions cannot be considered in isolation. The Arctic regions, the economy, the people and the environment are increasingly affected by, and in turn have an effect on, the rest of the world.

One can only think about the far-travelled pollutants from agricultural practices in the subtropics that accumulate in Arctic food chains; or the chlorofluorocarbons that come from industrial urban centres and are destroying the Arctic stratospheric ozone and are affecting the primary productivity of the Arctic Ocean areas. Or consider the effect of the construction of the DEW Line on later generations in Arctic Canada and Alaska, or the current excitement and concerns attendant on development of diamond deposits in the Northwest Territories. The policies and the prospects of Arctic regions today are affected by, vulnerable to, and often dependent on the prospects in lower latitudes, which themselves are not at all concerned about what happens in the Arctic.

From still another dimension, the polar environments - Arctic and Antarctic - are coming to be recognized as having an effect on the rest of the world that is much greater than was previously considered. Small changes in Arctic weather or ice conditions can influence large excursions of mid-latitude weather systems. The breeding success of migratory Arctic birds may have ripple effects on wildlife and insect success and crop damage in agricultural areas. The Arctic Ocean, as you know, is still a major playground for rival nuclear submarines, and security or confidence-building accommodations in the Arctic regions may have major geopolitical consequences for much of the world.

It is because of the inescapable multiplicity of scales and perspective in almost all Arctic issues, from the environment and natural resources to military rivalries, that Arctic policies and international relations are especially complex. They require deliberate planning rather than the extension of existing policies, and have led to a number of distinctive circumpolar international arrangements and institutions.

I hope, Mr. Chairman, that we can talk about some of those as we go along.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Dr. Roots, for that very thoughtful presentation.

I would now like to call upon the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, represented by their executive director, Mr. Terry Fenge, and one of its directors, Mr. Tony Penikett, who in one of his former manifestations was sitting on the other side of tables like this for some period of time as the Premier of the Yukon. Welcome.

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In introducing CARC, perhaps I should say that we're very grateful to you for having inserted in your publication the notice of these hearings, thereby enabling the Canadian public to know what we're trying to do. Hopefully, as a result, you'll enrich the input that we'll get from this. Quite apart from the fact that many of us have been reading your publications for years and have been enriched by what's already in them, this was particularly helpful and I want to thank you very much for it,Mr. Fenge.

Mr. Terry Fenge (Executive Director, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee): Thank you very much for your welcoming comments. We're delighted to be here today to talk to you briefly, in an overview sense, on some of the issues that are of importance in the north.

First of all, let me repeat something that Fred said. I, too, would applaud the background material that has been provided for you by your researchers. I'm aware, of course, that parliamentarians are very busy people. There are tremendous demands upon your time. But I would, if I may, urge you to read the material that has been provided, because it is very useful.

Secondly, I'd like to reiterate some of the comments that Whit made earlier in relation to the foreign policy conference that was held a couple of years ago and brought together a wide variety of interests. In the appendix volume that has been provided to you by your researchers, you'll find printed all the recommendations that came out of that conference. I think that, too, bears a useful examination.

Yesterday, as I was considering what it was that I would say to you, I was thinking that if I were to recommend to you four to six pages of material to read on northern policy, which ones would they be? Interestingly, the conclusion I came to was that it would not be a Canadian document.

In 1994, the U.S. administration adopted an Arctic policy replacing that which had been extant from the early 1980s, the one put in place by Mr. Reagan. The new Arctic policy is only six pages in length, but it's probably the best little policy paper I've read on the north. It builds a variety of policy themes around the central core of sustainability and aboriginal peoples. I believe your research staff has this, and I would recommend that document to you as well.

Rather than set out grand visions, I thought that what I could do was bring to your attention probably four or five issues that you are likely to hear a great deal about in your travels and discussions in the north. I will try to go through these fairly quickly, and I would invite any questions you might have. I think virtually all of these topics are dealt with in some of your background material.

The first one is an old saw in the Canadian north, that being the question of sovereignty. You have a good background paper on this, but I would like to just illustrate briefly for you some rather interesting events that have taken place here in Ottawa in the last year or two on the sovereignty question.

The legal issue at stake has nothing to do with land in the north. It has to do with water. In particular, it has to do with the legal status of the Northwest Passage. The Canadian position, of course, is that these are internal waters, and that Canada has full jurisdiction and sovereignty over this area. This position is not shared by certain other maritime nations, the United States and Great Britain in particular.

About a year and a half ago, CARC published a legal analysis of the current state of play in relation to this issue. This legal analysis, which I have handed out to you, was written by Donald McRae - he's a law professor here in town and I think probably a number of you are aware of him. We did this because we were trying to ascertain from the Department of National Defence whether or not the government of the day had the intention of installing in the Northwest Passage the long-promised Arctic subsurface surveillance system. This was a promise made by the federal government in 1988.

Part of my job is to pull some degree of certainty out of the policy fog, so what we were trying to do was find out whether the government had any intention of fulfilling this promise.

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I've still been unable to achieve the level of certainty I would like, but I would report to you that the Minister of National Defence has made, I think, mistaken comments before committee, and indeed the House, in relation to this Arctic subsurface surveillance system. I have enclosed these comments in here, with some press material.

In essence, it is the position, I believe, of the Minister of National Defence that there is an agreement between Canada and the U.S.A. whereby the U.S.A. informs Canada of transits throughout the northwest passage of nuclear submarines before these transits take place. We do not believe that is the case.

We would recommend very strongly that you perform a public duty by inquiring into this, as the whole question of sovereignty is most directly within your mandate. Thank you.

The second issue, again to pick up on something Whit said usefully earlier, is this key theme of sustainability. I think you will find in your travels that this word will be used again and again. Of course, it has somewhat different meanings depending on who actually uses the term. However, at an international level you will no doubt learn that the Arctic environmental protection strategy and the long-proposed and eagerly awaited Arctic council will deal fundamentally with the principle of sustainability and how to implement that collectively in the Arctic.

We would suggest that you might wish to ask questions of various representatives of the Government of Canada and other organizations about the advisability of Canada adopting a long-term goal to put in place a legally binding framework convention between Arctic states to implement principles of sustainability. Even if Canada committed to such a principle, it would not happen easily and it would not happen quickly. But to our way of thinking, this would be an appropriate long-term goal for Canada to aspire to.

I have two more issues I would like to bring to your attention. The first one is the long-standing bilateral issue between Canada and the United States regarding the future of the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. Once more, you have appropriate briefing material in front of you on this.

The core issue at the moment is whether drilling for oil and gas resources will be allowed on the American side of the border in what is called the 1002 lands, 1002 being the clause number of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. There is an agreement - indeed, we believe a legally binding treaty - between Canada and the U.S.A. to conserve the Porcupine caribou herd and its habitat.

The Canadian government has been very forthright on this issue and I think has done a good job in the last year. So we are not criticizing Canadian policy on this. However, we would suggest a longer-term objective would be to apply an international designation, perhaps under the World Heritage Convention, to this transboundary area to give it another layer of protection and management, and indeed to have this area recognized as the international resource it is. So once more, you might ask some questions on that.

The last point I wish to bring to your attention is very much an issue of the day. Those of you who will travel to Yellowknife, I feel sure, will learn a great deal about this. It's diamonds. I think it's possible, perhaps likely, that within five to ten years the number one export by value from the Northwest Territories will be diamonds.

That's a sobering thought. You might say to me, well, that's very interesting, but why should we as a foreign affairs committee be concerned with this? I would answer that it's because of the potential arrangements to market Canadian diamonds. There are interesting questions that have not been raised by parliamentarians at all yet that relate to the marketing of diamonds.

Those who know even the barest facts about the diamond market know it is controlled by a cartel through DeBeers, which is based in London, England, and Johannesburg, South Africa. There is a very interesting question here. Will Canada, as a nation with free trade credentials, allow its diamonds to be marketed through a cartel based in Europe?

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Certainly the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee is conducting legal and policy research on this question. In particular, we're looking at the advisability or possibility of seeking that the Competition Tribunal would institute some sort of investigation of these arrangements. I would think it would be most useful if you thought about that issue as well.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Mr. Penikett.

Hon. Tony Penikett (Director, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee): Thank you.

As you've indicated, I am here partly as a former government leader in the Yukon, but mainly as a CARC board member and as co-chair of an arctic advisory committee to the Gordon Foundation, a role I share with Dr. Tom Axworthy.

As others here have said, there has been an enormous amount of change in the human community in the Canadian north particularly, but in the circumpolar world generally, in the last generation. A lot of it has been positive. Some of it has been negative. But all of it has had an impact on the policy questions you will be considering here. I wish to supplement what the other speakers here have said by putting some of the change, particularly political change, in the north in historical context, and also suggest to you that there are dimensions to the foreign policy questions here other than the nation-to-nation issues that tend to dominate the news.

As you know, if you look back on some of the major events in the north in the last few decades - including transforming events such as the Berger commission; the Mackenzie Valley pipeline inquiry, chaired by Justice Tom Berger, as he then was; the advent of responsible government in the two northern territories and the maturation of the legislatures there, each in different ways but in ways that are quite remarkable for the amount of change in a short time; the devolution of program responsibilities normally in provincial jurisdiction from the federal government to the territorial governments; and then very profound events in the negotiation and settlement of land claims and the development of self-government agreements there, which are instruments of cooperation between the aboriginal and settler communities the like of which we have not seen elsewhere in Canada yet and which, while they seem to be controversial in some parts of southern Canada, are the basis of long negotiation and long struggle by both elements of the northern community to reach some kind of social contract or some kind of understanding based on mutual respect and mutual recognition - all these things are forces that have tended to have the effect of de-colonizing the Canadian north.

But unfortunately other events have had the effect of re-colonizing it. I would include among those the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, a thoroughly worthy initiative, but one that had the effect, for the first time, of giving a provincial veto over northern constitutional aspirations, something no other jurisdiction in Canada had to suffer. That was further exacerbated by the Meech proposals. As others have said here, economic changes such as globalization and trade agreements have also had the effect of disempowering some northern communities in ways that are problematic.

In the last decade all these events have tended to cause northern communities to develop a new interest in renewing relationships, if you like, with their northern neighbours. In every circumpolar nation the lines of communication and authority tend to flow north-south or south-north. There's been a new interest in east-west relations, and not only with the end of the Cold War, but an extraordinary flowering of initiatives, not just in the institutions referred to by Dr. Roots but in other ways, in the last decade. I'd like to mention just a few.

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Perhaps one of the most profound was was the formation of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which you heard about elsewhere. But there have also been events such as the Circumpolar Agriculture Conference, the first event of which was held in Whitehorse. At the national level there have now been continuing circumpolar health conferences for quite a number of years. In some ways quite exotic instruments occur, such as the circumpolar education ministers, where ministers of education from the Yukon and Northwest Territories, relatively small jurisdictions, sat on bodies with ministers of education from Scandinavian countries, Quebec, and even Russia for a period. As well, there has been the advent of the Northern Forum, a fascinating body that involved regional governments from the old Soviet Far East, Heilongjiang province in northern China, Hokkaido in Japan, and northern jurisdictions in Scandinavian countries as well as Alaska and Canada.

In addition to these institutions that have developed, as long ago as ten years ago both the Yukon and Northwest Territories were doing sustainable development trade missions to Scandinavia. The Northwest Territories and Russia were engaged in various kinds of cooperative economic projects. It's not well known in Ottawa, but for example the Yukon has with its closest neighbour, Alaska, probably more intergovernmental agreements than it has with any other jurisdiction except with Ottawa. It has agreements on wildlife management, transportation, education, rationalization of college systems, joint educational initiatives. These operate like the Porcupine Caribou Management Board, involving aboriginal groups across the border but also the state and the territorial governments.

I would point out that none of these agreements have been sanctioned or blessed by Foreign Affairs. In fact, I suspect most of them are not even known about here. I don't think anybody in Juneau or Whitehorse ever thought to inquire for permission of either Ottawa or Washington.

It's worth noting that when the Northern Forum first met in Anchorage a few years ago, at the organizing meeting, it was fascinating to see Russian representatives of regional governments and aboriginal groups coming to these meetings with an extraordinary appetite for information about what Canadian northerners were doing in fields such as environmental protection, sustainable development, aboriginal claims negotiations, a hunger for information about what we were doing that suggested there was certainly a possibility here for us to export some of these skills or to involve ourselves in a continuing dialogue on this.

For all these reasons I think northerners were very pleased by the recent appointment of Mary Simon as circumpolar ambassador, and by the work the Canadian government has been doing on the Arctic council. But throughout these discussions people in the territories have been very keen, particularly in the territorial government in which I was involved, and I'm sure this is still true, to make sure the first nations - in other words the Dene and the Athapaskans of the Yukon and indeed of the Northwest Territories and Alaska - were involved. Some way was found for them to be involved in the same way as the Inuit and Sami and Russian indigenous peoples will be involved, but also to make sure there is some formal role for the territorial governments.

Certainly when the Northern Forum was being formed - it's a body of regional governments - there was discussion about how these institutions would link to the Arctic council. I know the Northern Forum was enough concerned about it that it went to the trouble of establishing itself as having some formal relationship with the United Nations. I can't remember whether it's a formal NGO status -

Dr. Roots: It's a formal NGO status.

Mr. Penikett: - it's a formal NGO status - to make sure it was linked to what was happening at the national and international level.

For someone who has lived in the north and watched our government over the decades there has been, as Dr. Roots said, a kind of perennial ambivalence by Canadians about the north and northern matters. I would like to illustrate that with one positive example and one not so positive example.

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The Porcupine caribou herd 1002 lands issue that Dr. Fenge referred to is a very good case in point, because the territorial governments first staked out Canada's position in this. Canada only laterally adopted the position the territorial governments took and advanced that position in Washington. The embassy there has continued to play a supportive role with aboriginal groups and government groups that have gone to make representations before various bodies in Washington.

It is interesting how much activity there has been on this issue and how many people, with community leaders from Arctic communities, have been to Washington on this issue, which is very important to them.

Another example that is not so endearing is from my own experience, and you'll forgive me for using a personal example. Some years ago I was in Scandinavia for negotiations with mining and smelter companies. Before I left I called External Affairs to see if it would be possible for me to arrange a courtesy call with an old friend of mine, with whom I'd worked on a committee on behalf of my party and his in Europe for a number of years. This old friend had now become a foreign minister in a Scandinavian country, and I thought I might pay a courtesy call. My staff was told by External Affairs that someone from a territorial government really wasn't important enough to pay a visit to a foreign minister from a real country, so we shouldn't even try.

However, when I got to the capital of this nation I thought, what the hell, I'll make a phone call. I picked up the phone and called and the foreign minister answered. He asked what I was doing there and why I hadn't called. I told him I had tried to call. He told me Parliament was in a crisis and the government might fall that night, but could I come around for breakfast in the morning. I agreed, he gave me a couple of messages to pass on to our Minister of External Affairs about matters that were irritating them, and we had breakfast.

I point that out only to remind members here, as Dr. Roots pointed out, that it is not heavily populated anywhere in the circumpolar north. There is emerging a kind of international northern community, a northern community consciousness. There is a kind of rediscovering process going on in the north.

Peter Høeg, in his novel Smilla's Sense of Snow, points out that at the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the delegates from all of the countries were absolutely fascinated to discover they all had common raven creation myths in their cultures - something they hadn't known. In many ways there is a process of rediscovery going on and a reuniting, if you like, of a northern community.

My pitch today would be only that I think Canada has played a leadership role in this process, and I very much want it to continue to do so. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Penikett, and thanks to each and every one of you for these very interesting introductory remarks. I think it was a great introduction to the types of problems we'll be deeply involved with in the next few months.

I hope with your help we can at least produce some guidelines to help us try to resolve these extraordinarily important environmental and international issues. It is very interesting to see the degree to which everything is interlinked in the north in every way.

We will now move right along into the question period.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien.

Mrs. Debien (Laval East): My question is for Mr. Fraser. In your presentation, you said that Canada should establish some type of circumpolar economic cooperation in the Arctic to stimulate sustainable economic development in the North. You said that was a facet of economic development.

You also told us about the problems facing northern people, namely a very high unemployment rate that has very serious social consequences.

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During the conference that was held here in Ottawa in 1994, a number of potential areas of economic development in the Arctic were discussed. Some of the areas were tourism, again with a view toward sustainable development. Another was the development of natural resources, such as furs, migratory birds, marine mammals and fishing. Basically, anything that can be part of sustainable economic development was discussed.

I was surprised when I heard Mr. Fenge talk about diamond mining, which I think has nothing to do with sustainable development, especially when you think of current mining activities throughout the world, in Canada and in Quebec.

I would like to know what projects could be implemented in the North to ensure a sustainable economy, given the extreme vulnerability of the Arctic environment, and I would like to know what could be done to help the Arctic and aboriginal peoples move from a colonial economy to self-sufficiency.

[English]

Mr. Fraser: What you speak about is really two kinds of development. There's the development of the renewable resources in the Arctic - the fur, fish and wildlife - and the non-renewable resources - the minerals, oil, gas and diamonds, which would come under minerals or precious metals. I believe, and the agency I chair believes, we need a sustainable development policy that covers both.

If you go into an area, whether you're mining for diamonds, gold, or oil and gas and building pipelines, and destroy or harm the local economy - the fur, fish and wildlife - that's not sustainable from the point of view of the northern communities. We believe you should be able to set out a program for developing the non-renewable resources - in this case, the diamonds - in such a way that protects the caribou, fish, moose and all the fur-bearing animals aboriginal people depend upon and, at the same time, allow for the extraction of the resources in an orderly manner over a long period of time in a way that will benefit the northern communities. I'll give you an example of that.

In the south part of the Northwest Territories, very near the Alberta border, are the communities of Pine Point and Fort Resolution. At Pine Point there was a lead-zinc operation. If you fly over it today, you would think you're looking down at the dark side of the moon, or at something that had been through a terrible disaster. The ground is ripped up and there is mile after mile of overturned gravel. There's no more vegetation and huge ponds have been created from the open pits.

Nearby in Fort Resolution - and the community has told us this - in a community that had been sustained since the beginning of the fur era by hunting and trapping, there's little or no fur left because the surrounding area has been devastated. From its point of view, Pine Point could have been a 50-year or 75-year development if the resources had been extracted slowly, and if the land had been repaired and filled in after the holes were dug and re-vegetated. Slow, more progressive development would have provided jobs for the community.

That kind of well-thought-out resource development we are talking about has to happen in the northern communities. We can't continue to rip the resources out of the ground to make the highest profit for southern Canada and international investments and not leave anything behind in the north.

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That's a long way of answering the question, but I hope that it clarifies where we come from.

The Chairman: Mr. Morrison.

Mr. Morrison (Swift Current - Maple Creek - Assiniboia): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to the presenters.

I'd like to talk about economic development in general, and I'd like to direct my first question to Mr. Fraser.

Mr. Fraser, you have pointed out, and I fully agree with you, that there is a problem with selective overpopulation in certain districts in the Arctic, and that the results of resource development have not been well distributed among the population. But I'm wondering what your solution is to that particular problem.

I can tell you that, at least in some instances, regulatory coercion isn't the answer. I can describe specifically to you some events that took place in Keewatin 12 or 14 years ago, where a mining company, as part of its licence to develop, was required to hire a certain number of Inuit people and keep them on the payroll - this was part of the deal. What happened in that particular case was that you had extremely high rates of absenteeism, you had insubordination, you had abuse of equipment, and so on. Those were the direct results.

The indirect results were that it was very bad for the morale of the workforce in general, because there were some people who could be fired and some who couldn't.

Now, what is your solution to that? How do you get around this? How do you get people involved in the development and still not create unnatural and unproductive situations like that?

Mr. Fraser: To begin with, sir, I would say that the first thing we would do in a situation such as you outlined - and I say this with respect - would be to establish some very well-thought-out training programs, and the first people who need to be trained might be the company itself, a company that's going into an area where many of its southern views may not apply.

I can show you other companies that have thought out what they wanted to accomplish in the north, have hired aboriginal people, have trained them properly and have had great success. I've had some experience in this in my own regard in my former work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which has remarkable good luck with hiring northerners.

I think that's part of it. I think companies have a lot to learn when they go north, and they have to realize that they want to make a commitment to the northern economy and to the northern people.

But on the larger question of developing the resources of the north, and in a way that will benefit communities, I think and the commission believes that we need to set out in Canada an overall Canadian Arctic resource research policy. What is our national commitment and obligation? What do we want to do in the north? Nobody has really come to that question yet.

We think we need a policy that is put together with the aboriginal people, with the northern governments, that says, over the next 20, 30, 40 and 50 years, how are we going to develop those resources so that the economic development and the benefits lie in the communities?

We must begin using the enormous amount of effort we are now making and putting into northern research at all levels, especially on the social side and the environmental side. The commission has been saying this, frankly, Mr. Chairman and members, for the last 5 years since we were established, and Dr. Roots said it 10 years before then: we don't have a clear sense of direction and obligation of what we want to do in the Arctic.

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That was one of the reasons the commission was established under recommendations that were made for a previous government by Dr. Roots. We have to start there and set it out. We are spending the money, we are making the effort, but it is done in an uncoordinated way and it is done through a variety of 20 departments, programs and agencies, all working in the north without any sense of coordination, none whatever, and, I'm afraid to say, without any sense or direction as to whether we're getting good value for our money.

Those are the realities. Until we do that, your question is going to go unanswered, really. But I believe the talent is there in the north, it is there within the Government of Canada, if the obligation is there to do it. And it is certainly in the national interest that we finally we do. I just don't think we can afford any longer not to do it.

The Chairman: Mr. Morrison, we're already over the five minutes.

Mr. Fenge, would you make your comment quickly and then I'll move on to to another questioner. We'll be coming back. I'm trying to limit people to the five minutes allotted.

Mr. Fenge: Yes, sure. I'll be very quick.

On the answer we're just giving, if you cast your mind back to a policy document that was released by the Liberal Party of Canada, written by Mr. Axworthy six months before the last election, there was a commitment in that document to draft an Arctic region action plan. This was to encompass both domestic and foreign policy. Indeed, this recommendation has not yet been followed up.

Thank you.

Mr. Morrison: Can I have just one brief question?

The Chairman: If it's really brief.

Mr. Morrison: It's very brief.

Mr. Fraser, I think you underestimate the aboriginal people. You were rather suggesting that they have to be spoon-fed and that these coercive measures are necessary. I've worked with aboriginal people in mineral exploration for half a century. I think I know something about this. Under the voluntary system, where you hire people on merit and they work with you willingly and freely, things always work out extremely well.

What I'm concerned about is the idea of coercion and, if you don't have coercion, how do you get large-scale involvement. That was really my question.

The Chairman: Sorry, Mr. Fraser, I'm really trying to let the thing go round in five-minute intervals, but we'll get back to that issue, believe you me. You'll have an opportunity to address that.

Perhaps, Mr. Flis, you could open up again.

Mr. Flis (Parkdale - High Park): Thank you.

Reference was made to the policy paper when the Liberal Party was in opposition. I was one of the players that helped put that together, so I must take some of the blame, I guess.

The Chairman: Or possibly the credit.

The Flis: Our chairman had sent out a letter to over 100 organizations and individuals, and thanks to the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee an announcement of our hearings has gone out to about 6,000 recipients. In that letter, the chairman says that in developing a northern foreign policy:

The issues that will need to be addressed are multi-dimensional: ...the post-Cold War security agenda; environmental cleanup, sustainable resource management and appropriate economic development; unresolved sovereignty claims; oceans policy and the law of the sea; institutions of intergovernmental, as well as parliamentary, political cooperation, including the inauguration of the proposed Arctic Council...

Our witnesses were very helpful in touching on many of these issues already today. But I always, in terms of developing a foreign policy for northern Canada, take myself back to when John Turner was leader of the Liberal Party. One positive thing he did is that he held one of the caucus meetings in Iqaluit. Many of us were billeted in the homes of the aboriginal people.

My family stayed with an Inuit family with seven children - a very modest home and environment. In that family, the oldest son had committed suicide. The second son does not go to school because the father wants him to learn how to survive in that environment - and Mr. Fraser, you addressed the importance of the environment. The rest of the children were attending school. There was very little communication between the son who was not going to school and the children going to school. There was a whole generation gap within the family.

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My question is how do we develop a northern foreign policy for Canada beginning with that aboriginal family? I think that's what it's all about. If we talk about diamonds, the environment, or whatever, unless we begin developing our foreign policy with that family, we're going to do what these hundred-odd organization individuals have been doing over the last twenty years and we'll end up nowhere.

I'm wondering if the witnesses could help this committee. How do we go about setting priorities to develop our policy, but first and foremost keeping in mind that family? I treasure the experience I had of living with them for at least two days.

Mr. Fraser: I think we all want to jump in on that one.

I would start by saying you do it by going to the north, which you are doing. Finally, the governments of the Northwest Territories are elected by the northern people. They're no longer appointed by Ottawa, which was the case a mere thirty years ago. They're representative of the communities - that's a really good starting point - and in the northern communities themselves.

But northerners have to address those issues. There is so much happening in the territories right now. I believe the creation of Nunavut is one of the most exciting things to have happened in the country in many years, certainly in the north. The Nunavut Implementation Commission is sitting down with eight to ten members - I think all but one are aboriginal people - shaping what their government will look like, what it will do, how it will address all the issues you're talking about. They have a very clear interest in Canada's overall foreign policy.

Indeed, one of the strong speakers at our conference, as I referred to earlier, was the chairman of that group, John Amagoalik, who has a very clear vision off into the future for how that part of the territory, Nunavut, is going to relate not only within the Canadian context and federation but also internationally and in the growing international community Mr. Penikett has talked about.

I'll leave it to the others there. But again, it is by talking to the northern people and the leadership that is there today.

Mr. Penikett: Mr. Flis, if the Arctic council is created and if it is constituted in a way that directly involves representative aboriginal bodies and the territorial governments, for the first time you will have an instrument that can integrate the views of aboriginal peoples, regional governments, and the national governments in not only helping to craft national policy in these areas but also developing, over time, some very important and, I think, very profound international understandings on all the issues you identified at the beginning of your remarks. We haven't had that before.

Even in terms of the culture between INAC and External or Foreign Affairs there has been, one understands, not always perfectly lucid communication. Imagine the problem when you're talking about the distance between Whitehorse and Ottawa, or the even more horrendous problems of dealing with some of those communities out near the Bering Sea in Russia and their national capital.

These are fascinating problems. We potentially have the tools now to be able to work through some of them. But I think any solution, whether or not it's about developing mines, that doesn't respect the rights of people who were there first and that doesn't just see them as subservient but as having a right to a voice and a right to participate in these decisions would be a wrong approach. We're getting past that.

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The Chairman: Do you think in the international context the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and the other institutions that are being developed will enable the members of Mr. Flis's family, maybe not directly but through organizations they are familiar with, to communicate with the other members of the north to enable a coherent government policy of our own? We're sitting here and we've heard you talk about Alaska, so we have to persuade Senator Murkowski as well as ourselves. That's one of our jobs when we go on the trip that some of us in this committee will be taking shortly to meet with the American representatives. If he can't be brought aboard, if we can't do that, presumably people in his own community have to tell him this. Are we creating those intercommunity links?

Mr. Penikett: A whole bunch of fascinating things have been happening in the north and they have been largely ignored in southern Canada. Not only is the legislature in the Northwest Territories constituted on a different model - I mean the consensus model they try to operate on - but you have aboriginal organizations that are trying to rediscover their own tribal and consensual traditions and reforming themselves on the basis of respect for those traditions. In the northern jurisdictions, it's not well known but there are annual legislative exchanges between places such as Yukon and Alaska, with very tight communication. Those people would probably have influence on the Alaskan congressional delegation. I will bet they have not been talked to, though. These are the kinds of people who have involved themselves in the Northern Forum.

There have been fascinating experiences in bottom-up economic planning at the Yukon 2000 exercise, of which I was part. There are a lot of experiments that I think suggest models not to be adopted in Canada but to be taken as evidence of a kind of vitality, a kind of curiosity, and a kind of creativity in the north which should be respected and harnessed for our national purposes on this project.

Mr. Fraser: Mr. Chairman, I could just jump in here and add to Mr. Penikett in his discussion about the Arctic council. As I understand it, an important element of the Arctic council is what are called ``permanent participants''. It allows for the representation of aboriginal people through their international organizations, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Conference or the Sami peoples of the Scandinavian countries, and the Athapaskan people through Yukon and Alaska. So they are part of the negotiations on how they will be involved as permanent participants - not as observers, but one or two levels above that. That's where part of the representation will come from.

The Chairman: Mr. Fenge.

Mr. Fenge: I know this family you're talking about. I worked for Inuit for some years. Indeed, some of the people I worked with and for attempted, and some succeeded, in committing suicide. This is a reality you talk about, an appalling reality.

When I was working for Inuit, I did not understand how this could be so. I just didn't understand it. So one of the things I did was I went into the library and I looked at certain economic statistics. I tried to plot out on a very simple set of graphs the change in prices for fur pelts and for sealskins and the increase in the suicide rate. While I cannot claim to have proven some sort of causal link or causal effect here, it's quite clear these two things are linked in some fashion, because there was a massive decline in the value of this economy in the early to mid-1980s as a result of, I believe, the heartily misplaced lobbying of the animal rights movement. One of the outcomes of that was an increase in all manner of social pathologies in the communities.

The second thing about this is that I would suggest there are limits to public policy here, in what public policy can achieve. That having been said, it might be useful to have a look at some of the rather innovative arrangements that are in place in northern Quebec. As a result of the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, two harvesting income support programs are in place. These programs help to keep aboriginal people on the land. I think if you look at the effect of those programs you will find they have prevented an upsurge in social pathologies. Unfortunately the federal government has not seen fit to include similar programs north of 60 through land claim agreements.

The Chairman: Thank you. We'll come back to that.

Dr. Roots, did you want to add on this particular issue?

Dr. Roots: I have one very brief comment on your comment a moment ago. You asked whether we are setting in place mechanisms that will make progress. I think what you've heard from this end of the table is not that we are setting in place mechanisms; the mechanisms are evolving at the grassroots level, at the lower level. It's a very strong responsibility of those who have, you might say, jurisdictional authority to find ways to use these rather novel and unusual ways of making contacts.

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One quick answer is that I think we've all had personal contacts with families of the type Mr. Flis mentioned. What we have to do quite early in looking at any policy development is, right from the beginning, not have those people at the table but have them initiate what they think is important. If it's the parents of a broken family, plus the children who aren't in school, that must be an important part of what our policies are for. It takes a much longer time for the established mechanism for policy-making to come to some accommodation with the real issues than it does in this system we've developed here for some centuries.

As Mr. Penikett said, it took a long time to get Nunavut going. The people in the south said, what on earth are they arguing about? But if you realize what's happened, it has revolutionized the way of deciding a political jurisdiction. We could not have gotten that if we'd simply had members in power and opposition doing it.

So we're not making the changes. The changes are happening. We have to find some way to use those changes.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

I think all the members of the committee would agree with me that if this committee can make a difference, it will be if we are enabled to tie together what you said about the evolution of these new institutions and relationships to the international framework in which the Arctic operates. That is our job in this committee. If you can help us by showing us that....

I realize that is more complicated than the domestic political one, but it is what we are charged to do in this report. If we can get a good answer to that in a way that will help not only our own government but also other governments of the Arctic to strive to find the answers and solutions, that will be extremely important for us.

I've been going on too long.

[Translation]

Mr. Sauvageau.

Mr. Sauvageau (Terrebonne): I would like to thank our witnesses for their very enlightening presentations.

I would not like to see old problems resurface for this committee. We had once started a study without having all the tools and documents and we realized later that we had a problem.

I read the report that was prepared by our researchers. Could you contact our researchers about the mandate and role of the circumpolar ambassador, the mandate and role of the Canadian commission that was created five years ago, as well as the mandate and the role planned for the Arctic Council.

If the committee is to draft a consistent policy for the North, that information might be useful. The former premier of the Yukon said earlier that a number of agreements had been signed unbeknownst to the federal government and Washington. It would probably be a good idea to have the major agreements on the Canadian North to guide us in our decisions. That is my first request.

In your testimony, you said that 20 departments and programs, as well as commissions and various regional organizations, were active in the North, and that everything was being done in a somewhat haphazard manner. To my mind, that would be the operative word. It may be that millions of dollars are being spent without any real planning on these different activities.

How can the committee stop wasteful program and departmental spending? Is that one of the major problems that must be solved before implementing a consistent policy for the North? Shouldn't we first clean up the mess, and if so, as a second step, what major points should this committee examine to try to find solutions, instead of spreading ourselves thin?

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Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Fraser.

Mr. Fraser: Well, maybe I could start. I will respond from the point of view of the Canadian Polar Commission. Again, our view is that in Canada there needs to be a clear and coherent policy on what our national objectives and our obligations are towards the north. This is related to northern research in particular, but it covers the environment, the economy, the social structure of the north and the culture.

Our commission has made this a recommendation to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and to Parliament. And it is here. And the answer to the question is that I would hope this committee could examine this and perhaps urge its implementation.

I will leave it to my colleagues to talk about other specific things the committee could do in terms of the latter part of the question.

The Chairman: Mr. Penikett.

Mr. Penikett: Mr. Chairman, I guess my short answer to the question about whether we should clean up all the inconsistencies would be no. I think one of the wonderful things about the north in our time is that there is such rich diversity and such a huge range of institutional experimentation going on. This, I think, is good.

Some things will work, some things will not, but that's not so bad. What is important is that for the first time the northerners are leading these experiments. There is some kind of a sense of maître chez nous that did not exist there in my youth. I think we should allow this experimentation, a lot of which is done with respect for certain kinds of cultural history in the region or with a sense of appropriate institutional structures rather than simply borrowing from the south, although there continues to be a lot of that.

I think these things will work out. I think we should respect these experiments and be enriched by them. Where there is evidence things are working, we should try to borrow from them. National policy-makers should borrow from them in terms of doing projects like the one that's facing this committee.

The Chairman: Dr. Roots.

Dr. Roots: Thank you. At the risk of perhaps disagreeing a little bit with the impression my friend Mr. Fraser left, I don't think there is any gross inconsistency in what actions are going on scientifically or from the point of view of collecting information in the north.

What is very true is that there is no connection and coordination in what is happening. There is really very little money being wasted. You couldn't do what work is being done much more effectively than it is being done at present. But what is being done is not fitted into any overall scheme or plan. It's as if a bunch of people, instead of building a house, were putting in doors and windows and floors and wires, but were doing so without a plan for the house.

We badly need some view of what we want in the north. My feeling is that this committee has a very important goal in finding out from people who are affected by what happens in the north what it is they think is most important.

Certainly it won't work if the priorities are designed by a central government or designed at a distance. Even if those people may be representatives, they are put into a mixture and an establishment system whereby it is hard for Mr. Flis' family to feel they are having any influence.

If this committee can take these kinds of questions and present them to the increasingly articulate group of people who are in the north, but who are outside the representation system and find out what's important, it will have taken a step that is very hard for the established agencies, the scientific groups or the governing groups to take.

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The Chairman: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Morrison, then Mr. LeBlanc and Madame Debien.

Mr. Morrison: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, returning to the question of economic development, Dr. Roots identified the problem that as of now there is no net social or economic benefit to our presence in the Arctic. It is a drain on the rest of the economy. It was not ever thus. This is a new development.

What concerns me is that if I didn't misunderstand you, you seem to think we may be facing this in perpetuity. Please correct me if I'm wrong, if that isn't what you meant. But if that is indeed the case, if we cannot look forward to a self-sustaining society in the Arctic through, for example, the development of the diamond mines and so on, then why do we want to be there? Why would we even want to maintain our sovereignty? I hope we're not just on a multi-billion-dollar ego trip.

Dr. Roots: Well, sir, none of us can foresee the future. But I think there is evidence for some of the comments I tried to make. The blunt fact is that the scale of our economy and its expenses is such that it cannot survive. Places where the infrastructure costs are very high cannot survive in competition on a purely economic basis against those where the infrastructure costs are lower.

You are quite right. It was never like this before because we didn't have these enormous infrastructure costs. We have the social welfare question, the intention of having a standard of living and standard of education and so on for all parts of the country. Not all parts of southern Canada are equally productive. We keep them because there is a unity to the nation and it's worth it to the nation as a whole to have them as part of the country.

Undoubtedly the mineral resources in the north will be developed because the world and the economy needs them but not necessarily because they are self-supporting. It's surprising to many people to realize the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska, one of the largest single [Inaudible - Editor] in the United States, does not pay for itself. But the oil keeps the cars running and you pay for it in other ways and so it's worth it. Certainly this has been true with our geopolitical questions in the north.

Certainly the value of a country's hinterland should vary rapidly in today's world and not be judged only in economic terms. The richness Canada has simply because of the presence of an Inuit culture or a Dene culture is something every Canadian values and is going to value more, but not because of its economy. So I think those kinds of issues have to be brought into the equation.

I think the other aspect follows from the question earlier about what is sustainable. Certainly the evidence is that we cannot greatly increase the harvesting of renewable living resources. But they are very valuable. What we have to find is some way in our system to enormously increase the value of every caribou and every silver fox if they come from the Arctic. We haven't done this. We've put them in competition with the beef on the table or the foxes on a fox farm. We have to look at a new dimension if we want to value our country.

So it's a necessary change of value systems away from competitive economics. It is necessary because otherwise it will continue to have to be a subsidy and an administrative cost purely for territorial purposes. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you. We'll go to Mr. Fenge.

Mr. Fenge: On the question of mining and sustainability, quite obviously mining is inherently unsustainable. It's a finite resource. So it's probably more productive to stimulate this debate from the viewpoint of economic rent.

How much economic rent is generated through mining development? Let me come back to diamonds, because this is the issue of today in the north.

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Only a few weeks ago, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development made a presentation to a federal environmental assessment panel. In this presentation the senior civil servants from DIAND suggested that under current royalty and taxation arrangements, about $2.1 billion will be generated in economic rent through the 20-year life of this mine.

Those arrangements are being changed as we speak. Cabinet is considering changes in the royalty arrangements, and the mine is likely to last for many years longer than 20. However, the point I would bring to your attention is that in that presentation DIAND admitted, under questioning, that under the old Dene-Métis formula in the now defunct final agreement, aboriginal people who live in the area would have received about 4.5% to 5% of the economic rent that would have been generated. That would seem to me to be a paltry share.

I would suggest to you that one of the creative things we might consider is how to channel back the economic rent that is generated through mining development, which will indeed happen in the north, to subsidize and support the pre-existing renewable resource economy. If we think creatively and try to do that, it might be a way to have non-renewable resource development sustain aboriginal people and the renewable resource economy upon which they rely.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Leblanc.

Mr. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands - Canso): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to focus on a particular issue that has been raised by our panellists, to attempt to shed some light on the question our chairman was raising earlier, namely the one about international institutional mechanisms or the problem of governance in the north.

The question relates to the problem of the Porcupine caribou in that area between the Yukon and Alaska, and the conflict that seems to be there between the preservation of the calving grounds and the issues of oil and gas development in the Beaufort Sea, as well as issues of sovereignty between Canada and the United States.

I like to use that trade-off between economic development and the preservation of the environment as it applies in that situation. But what is missing in terms of the body of international mechanisms to handle a problem like that, bearing in mind that concern for the environment seems to have to underpin the future of whatever institutions we develop for the north? Do we have the mechanisms in place internationally to deal with issues like that, and if so, what is missing in those mechanisms?

Mr. Penikett: Perhaps I could respond, having dealt with some of these questions in my previous incarnation.

I would say the one thing that has been missing is direct northern involvement. Often these issues have been handled between Ottawa and Washington without much local knowledge. I think that has changed a bit on this issue for the better in the last few years because External Affairs has facilitated heavy involvement by aboriginal and regional politicians in the debate, particularly in the lobby in Washington.

I will use the two examples you talked about. One issue is the disputed area in oil-rich seas offshore between Yukon and Alaska. The dispute arises out of an interpretation of a treaty between Russia and Britain in 1825.

Nearby there's the 1002 lands Porcupine caribou herd issue, and this is a very significant one in the region for the Gwich'in people, who have depended on this herd for sustenance for thousands of years. It was some 180,000 strong the last time I looked. The herd wanders into the Northwest Territories, across the Yukon, and then into the calving grounds in the 1002 lands. On the Canadian side of the border we have a proposed national park. On their side they have this wilderness refuge, which is at risk in the current congress.

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From a northern point of view, I think there has always been some fear that some day the big people in Washington and Ottawa would get together and bundle some of these issues, and there would be trade-offs that would not be done with much sensitivity to northern concerns. Evidence of that might be the case of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, where at the last minute the Yukon River was taken out of the salmon treaty, to the huge disadvantage of the subsistence fishers in that area in the Yukon. Half the salmon in that river are spawned in the Yukon, but the Americans take the vast majority of the catch. It has been an unresolved issue. There has been some progress recently, but it's a very difficult one to resolve.

I think one of the virtues of the Arctic council, to go back to this, might be not that the Arctic council would be resolving these bilateral issues but that the level of knowledge and sensitivity and awareness and understanding of these issues which would develop institutionally in Ottawa by participation in these fora, or this kind of body, would be very helpful in making the diplomats who are dealing with them sensitive to the changes and expectations and aspirations of people in the region. I doubt there's any solution, though, to that particular issue, the caribou herd issue, that would not involve, first, the aboriginal people; second, the regional governments in Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories; and third, the nations.

Dr. Roots: I would add just a footnote to Mr. Penikett's comment. In answer to your basic question about what methods are in place, there are almost no mechanisms that look in any way at a multinational basis for resource conservation or preservation. We've tried a few with whaling commissions and so on. But in the Arctic there is a hope there hasn't very often been anywhere else. This has been the creation by several countries, Finland, Sweden, and now Canada, of circumpolar ambassadors, who can make the first overtures in a systematic way on issues that don't fall within the jurisdiction of a particular department or ministry but that have a northern flavour. We're quite hopeful that, you might say, the growing club of circumpolar ambassadors is another mechanism we have never had before and which is very rare elsewhere in the world where issues of this kind come along.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien.

Mrs. Debien: My question is for Mr. Fenge.

Given the extreme vulnerability of the Arctic environment, given the fact that any major exploration company gives little thought to the environment, given the fact that barely 4% of revenues of exploration projects were given back to the nordic peoples as royalties, if the residents of the Arctic are to get those revenues, does that mean we will first have to destroy the environment and then improve it?

[English]

Mr. Fenge: First of all, I and CARC are not of the view that mining development in the north will inevitably create massive environmental destruction. We are of the view that mining development can, and indeed should, go ahead, with appropriate rules, regulations, and what have you. It's our view also, based on 25 years of experience, that a variety of attitudes are at play in different mining companies. For example, the proposed diamond mines are being put forward by Broken Hill Proprietary, a subsidiary of a massive Australian-based company. I believe that company is by and large environmentally conscious and environmentally aware, more so than perhaps many of the small to medium-size Canadian companies.

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So I would take some issue with your premise.

Secondly, it's certainly our opinion and our view that there needs to be a more equitable split of revenue generated from non-renewable resource development taking place in the Canadian north. This is why in principle the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee is very much in favour of northern energy and mineral accords between Ottawa, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife. Those would provide a vehicle for this better split of revenues and in the long term we think would assist the northern economies in becoming more self-reliant, if not self-sufficient.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien: Mr. Fenge, the solution you are suggesting is the ideal one. But when I look at what is happening around the globe, I am not very impressed at what we will be leaving to our children. You think that in the space of a few years, we will be able to clean up the environment through regulations, when governments are in the process of loosening their environmental regulations.

You think that by developing non-durable resources in the Far North, we will be able to disregard any current pollution problems and people will immediately comply with any major policy governments might implement. You know as well as I do that companies, especially large ones, can often use their financial clout to circumvent all those laws and regulations.

[English]

Mr. Fenge: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure what the question is.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien: You are suggesting an ideal solution which I would fully support, but when I look around me, I am a little pessimistic.

[English]

Mr. Fenge: Fair enough. I think you raise a very good point here, about the obviously declining capacity of government agencies to undertake regulation in the name of the public good. This is most certainly something that worries us.

In the environmental assessment hearings in which we have just participated in the north it was very clear that the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was suffering through cutbacks and declining budgets at the same time as a very significant increase in mining development is likely to take place in the Slave geological province, north of Yellowknife. So I think you identify a tough issue.

[Translation]

Mrs. Debien: Thank you.

[English]

The Chairman: Before I turn to my next questioner, I wonder if I could ask members if they would have a quick look at this resolution that is being passed out. I have to get this budget approved this week so we can move on. It appears that in the eastern portion, because of the nature of travel there, we will have an expense of $4,000 in addition to what was in the budget for air travel. It's restricted to the eastern portion of the travel, if I understand the clerk.

The other point is that for purposes of House discipline we've broken the two trips into separate weeks. That way we don't have to wrestle quite so much with our whips about the terms of being able to get away.

I'm asking the witnesses to excuse us for a moment while I try to get some House business done, because I'm getting suspicious that as lunch comes along we might lose our quorum.

[Translation]

Mr. Bergeron.

Mr. Bergeron (Verchères): Mr. Chairman, for the benefit of my colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to two errors in the French translation.

On the third line of the French version, it says: "dans la région de l'Arctique de l'Est aura lieu", but it should read "ait lieu".

On the fourth line of the French version, it should say "le budget de déplacements soit augmenté de 4 000 $ pour un total de 135 553 $" and not "par 4 000 $".

The Chairman: Fine. You would use the subjunctive?

Mr. Bergeron: It is not "aura lieu". You cannot move that the meeting "aura lieu"; you can move that the meeting "ait lieu".

The Chairman: Fine. Thank you.

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[English]

Could someone move the motion so we will have it on the table to discuss?

Mr. LeBlanc: I will move the motion.

Mr. Morrison: I think you will find that with the change of dates you might not have to increase the budget, because with the new dates I, for one, probably will not be able to go. I had been looking forward to it, but now I don't think I will go. So maybe it's not necessary to have the extra $4,000 in there. I don't know. I guess you're not required to spend the extra money.

The Chairman: No. Exactly. We could have it as a resource, but we certainly wouldn't spend it if it wasn't necessary.

It might be that we have to charter an aircraft, in which case whether there are six or five won't change the numbers.

I'm sorry about moving the dates. We thought that by moving them we were accommodating members and accommodating the House process, so I'm sorry if this is now going to work to the disadvantage of some members. My understanding -

Mr. Morrison: Some of us make fairly long-term plans.

The Chairman: If I may say so, the clerk has advised me that your office advised us that you would be free that week.

Mr. Morrison: That I would be free that week?

The Chairman: Yes.

Mr. Morrison: How do they know? They don't know what I'm doing that week.

The Chairman: They don't?

Mr. Morrison: No.

The Chairman: My goodness! In my life, my office knows what I'm doing and I don't. In your life, you know what you're doing and your office doesn't. Maybe we should switch -

Mr. Morrison: When you say ``my office'', do you mean my office or the caucus office?

The Chairman: Your office.

Mr. Morrison: I think somebody has pulled the wrong chain here.

The Chairman: I'm sorry. We're doing our best to accommodate all members, and we can discuss that later.

May I get approval of this motion?

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: As pointed out by Mr. Morrison, we certainly don't spend the money if we don't need it.

Thank you very much, I appreciate that. I'm sorry to have interrupted the process with our witnesses.

Maybe I could quickly ask a follow-up question on what we've been hearing from the members. It goes back to what Mr. Penikett, as well as Dr. Roots, had said. Let me frame it by an introductory comment.

In this committee we struggle a great deal in the international environment with what the Europeans call the democratic deficit, the fact that in a globalized society, such as Mr. Roots referred to, decisions now are made at the centre and most of us feel that in today's world we aren't the centre. I come from the city of Toronto, but many times I feel that decisions are being made in Washington or a long way away and that Toronto, which, if we listen to our own rhetoric, is the economic engine of the country, has little or no control over our own destiny.

So it is perhaps understandable that those who fish the Yukon River find that some trade-off is being made that they don't control.

On the other hand, the overall global welfare must prevail. We go back to Mr. LeBlanc's point: what are the institutions that will enable us to make sure of that?

On the caribou herd, my problem is not whether or not local democracy will be heard, because Mr. Murkowski, whom I meet and to whom I've talked about this, assures me that he represents the democratic voice of Alaska and he's in favour of development. So where do we go with that? Unfortunately, it happens that the development is on his side of the line, not on our side.

In this committee we're trying to find out what sorts of institutions we can develop, at least to get those frameworks. I'm advised, for example, that it's probably very unlikely that we will see a larger degree of autonomy being given to the aboriginal peoples of the north of the Soviet Union. But our job in this committee is to find out how we fit Alaska, the Soviet Union, and the others into this, at the same time addressing the overall problem of the democratic deficit.

If we are going to resolve these issues at an international level, then surely the members of this committee and the Canadian public have to realize that by so doing we are removing the issues to a level of international decision-making that necessarily will move them one step farther away from Mr. Flis's family. So to resolve the problem we must go international, but to do so we are creating the problem of removing it farther away from Mr. Flis's family.

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I'm just wondering if the collective wisdom of our people is telling us at this particular level of Arctic international cooperation how they see this evolving. I know this is a huge problem. If you go to Europe, it's the whole problem of the European Union. If you go to the GATT, it's the whole problem of how the GATT develops. So I'm not suggesting you have clear answers, but I hope with this report we can at least get this moving.

Maybe if the report is clear enough and good enough we can persuade our Alaskan colleagues, our Scandinavian colleagues, and our Russian colleagues they should be going in the same direction. That in itself might be one of the most important things we could do in this committee, because if we could produce a framework that would enable the other governments of the region to become interested....

Mr. Fraser: I can't help but think if you as a member of Parliament from Toronto feel you're somewhat removed from the centre of -

The Chairman: I said the centre of decision-making, not the centre of the world. I know that's located in my riding of Rosedale. It's just that the decisions get made somewhere else.

Mr. Fraser: If you feel you're removed from the centre of decision-making, coming from Toronto, imagine how the guy in Tuktoyaktuk feels.

The Chairman: Exactly.

Mr. Fraser: What I've been saying earlier is that most of what we talk about here, some would say, is really not foreign policy issues but domestic policy issues. So I believe what we really need to be talking about is a strong, comprehensive Canadian Arctic policy that has a foreign policy component.

I would also offer that I think internationally and in the circumpolar world our country's doing very well; and it's been doing much better in the last few years, with the establishment of an Arctic environmental protection strategy, an Arctic ambassador, work towards the Arctic council. There's a view to coordinate our efforts internationally in the circumpolar world; but we haven't spent as much time trying to coordinate our national effort in the Arctic. Dr. Roots talked about it. It's not that the things we are doing are not well done, not well thought out, and not addressing real issues, but it's an uncoordinated effort. It has to be connected.

Finally, on the family we keep coming back to, the one Mr. Flis mentions, of course the head of the house, in this case the father, is right in both regards. He's sending one kid out to learn to hunt and trap and he's sending the other kids to school, because economic development is not going to be the be-all and the end-all in survival for the northern communities, and neither can everyone from here on into the future depend on hunting and trapping and a subsistence economy. The two of them must be melded together. That's what that family is doing, and that's what most northern aboriginal families are doing. They see that themselves.

What's happening in the north isn't different from what happened in the Maritimes or in western Canada, and what is still happening. I'm from Nova Scotia. When I was going to school, I and half my classmates knew the day we finished school we had to get out of town, because there were simply not enough jobs there for us. That was the reality of living in Nova Scotia through the 1950s, and it's still the reality in those communities. It's the reality in many small communities across the country. In the north we're going to be seeing the same thing: northern kids are going to have to be educated and find their places somewhere else in the country, and others are going to have to stay at home and stay in the local economy in the communities.

I'll leave if there, but just to recap it, from our point of view it's a national Arctic policy with a strong foreign component that addresses those concerns.

Mr. Penikett: Mr. Chair, there are many aspects to this problem of the democratic deficit you've talked about, and there are many ways of addressing it. There are certainly people in Gwich'in communities in the Alaskan Arctic who will suggest Frank Murkowski doesn't represent their views on this question.

The Chairman: I know a few people in Rosedale riding who feel the same thing about me. It's the nature of democracy.

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Mr. Penikett: I find that astonishing, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Come on down, you won't be astonished.

Mr. Penikett: Whenever there were any northern delegations going to Washington to speak to this question, for the most part they were very careful to say that we did not want to intrude on the right of Americans to make their own energy policy decisions, even if, as Dr. Roots suggests, they are uneconomic.

We had already an agreement that committed both nations to protecting the Porcupine caribou herd, and it was in protecting that agreement - one of the instruments you're talking about developing - that we were addressing ourselves to American policy-makers, American decision-makers. That sense of shared responsibility is absolutely essential to any view of sustainable development in the north. It is the idea that we can't make decisions in one jurisdiction that affect others without involving them, any more than we can affect future generations with...decisions.

Again, I go back to the point that some of these new institutions, such as the Arctic council, are going to be absolutely invaluable. I have had the rare pleasure of having debates with Senator Stevens, Frank Murkowski's colleague on matters of this issue, during which I could assert some of the assertions about Canada that Senator Stevens made were fact free.

The Chairman: Intuition is an important part of politics.

Mr. Penikett: The point is that even though we are beginning to open up these east/west links in the north, we still have a lot to learn about each other, a lot to learn about dealing with other, and a lot to learn about how we can actually address issues like this. I think there has been, notwithstanding your conversations with Senator Murkowski, probably a lot of lobbying on this issue, but not much real dialogue yet. That day may come.

This is not the only such issue; there will be many more. And I think we do need an institutional structure. We do need ways of facilitating this dialogue.

The Chairman: Yes, I agree. Thanks very much, sir.

Dr. Roots.

Dr. Roots: I like your comment, sir, about Toronto being the centre. In 1967, the first time I went to the North Pole, we got off and stood on the ice of the North Pole and said, now we're at the middle of the earth. Actually, there is some truth in that, because had the weather conditions deteriorated back in northern Canada, at Alert where we took off from, our nearest place to get to with our aircraft tanks would have been Dikson in northern Siberia, so that was a point.

I strongly believe that the kinds of issues you're facing cannot be divided into domestic versus international issues. They have an integration and a connection that can't be escaped. If Canada wants to have a coherent northern goal, if not a policy, and see where this policy is to work towards, I think there is a great deal to be learned from the experiences of our other circumpolar nations, because they have very similar conditions, even though the way they deal with them politically may be quite different. Conditions are similar in terms of multicultural questions as well as economic and environmental protection questions, and in questions of having made mistakes and sometimes learning from them, sometimes making the mistakes worse.

I might suggest to your researchers that the book Tony has here would be a very useful one for researchers. It's one produced just a few months ago by the Tampere Peace Research Institute - I think you may know it, Jim - which looks at the effect on the northern rim of Europe of the growing integration, of the growing economic union and economic community, and compares that to what effect NAFTA is having on the northern parts of Canada.

Also, while we're pedalling international questions, there is a very recent small little brochure by the Nordic Council of Ministers on the program of cooperation in the Arctic region, adopted by the ministers in February of this year, prior to their minister taking part in the Arctic council talks.

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To know how the senior levels of government, as shown by the Nordic ministers, are approaching these questions is useful. It's also very useful to know how it's happening at lower levels.

Mr. Penikett mentioned the Northern Forum. It has almost been forced to take on a new view of how business, education and citizen group concern about the environment fit into regional, state and oblast policies. I think that's very much a part of what this group should be looking at in all levels of government.

It should also look at whether it is necessary for an international agreement to recognize the fact of the growing exchange of Inuit people between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. This happens whenever the ice is good, not whenever diplomacy says so. You find funny kinds of equipment and even trade goods and groceries in stores on Ellesmere Island. Nobody is going to tell you how they got there.

Is this good or bad? I think we should look at the fact that senior governments don't need to put their fingers into all of this if it's going to work properly.

If your committee can see the multiple levels at which exchanges are taking place and recognize that in the northern parts of the world east-west exchanges are often easier - even though they may be more expensive and fewer in volume - than north-south exchanges when there are policy questions, I think you will have done a good service.

The Chairman: Thank you. I trust, Dr. Roots, you're not suggesting that parts of this evidence should not be sent to the Minister of Revenue. We will take all evidence into account when we do our hearings. Thank you very much.

Mr. Fenge, sir.

Mr. Fenge: It is clear that in recent years there has been a significant and important rebalancing of south-north relations. This is a fundamental reality and is being brought about by constitutional discussions, devolution, land claims, treaty entitlement negotiations, negotiations to implement the inherent right of self-government, etc.

While we discuss the fact that decision-making seems to be ever more distant, I think we should bear in mind that a significant amount of authority has, of recent years, been transferred to the north. I think that's all to the good.

Second, I would report to you real interest in the rebalancing that has been taking place in Canada on the part of aboriginal people in northern Scandinavia and that small part of northern Russia I have visited. I hope very much that you will have an opportunity, as a committee, to go to northern Russia and actually speak to some of these aboriginal people.

For example, I spent a week to ten days a year and a half ago with the Sami in the Kola Peninsula, which is the most heavily militarized area in northern Russia. People there had a vague appreciation for what was happening in Canada, but they wanted to know a great deal more about it.

This might be the sort of thing we could consider exporting in terms of the cooperative management arrangements and rebalancing arrangements we are putting in place in Canada.

I suspect a number of people around the table have read The Globe and Mail in the last few days and the statements attributed to the Prime Minister when he was at the G-7 meeting in Russia about Alexander Nikitin, the environmentalist who is currently incarcerated. In essence, my understanding is that this individual is a whistle-blower.

I would invite the committee to consider discussing this issue and potentially passing a resolution in support of this gentleman. Perhaps it could reiterate some of the words of the Prime Minister that Canada welcomes him to take up residence here in Canada. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. On your last point, we are obviously thinking alike. I thought of exactly the same thing and was going to raise that with the members of the committee. It does look as if some of the comments he made during his immigration interview somehow found their way into the police files, which enabled them to incarcerate him. This is really totally crazy if it is true. I think this committee might actually do something useful there, and we will raise that issue. That's a very good suggestion. Thank you for bringing it to us.

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Let me wrap up this session by saying a couple of things. I really want to thank all the members for their very stimulating contributions to our thinking on this subject.

I think this report could be one of the most important reports this committee could do. It's extraordinarily important for us. There's so much to be learned, not only about the north of our own country, as you say. I think we must travel to the other Arctic countries, and we intend to do that. We intend to learn from both.

Then probably what we'll try to find are solutions that are, in a way, universal. In many ways these solutions will transcend the problems of the north. If we can get at the problems of the north, at least in this relationship between domestic and international policy, it will help us better understand how we do that in other areas.

From an international management point of view, the problem of trying to deal with pollution in the Great Lakes - which I live closer to than the Arctic - is not substantially different from the management of the problem in the north. The problems are different, but ultimately the human institutional frameworks we have to find the answer to tend to be the same. Yet we must at the same time respect the diversity of different areas when we are trying to deal with this.

Thank you very much, all of you, for a very stimulating introduction to our study. We are grateful to you, and perhaps we'll have an opportunity to get back to you in the course of it.

Now, before we adjourn, I just want to draw the attention of the committee members to a couple of points.

On Thursday, April 25 - this Thursday - we will be seeing a group of church leaders from Nigeria. This will be arising out of our questions of Shell and Nigeria and our recommendation to the minister about the Commonwealth conference. So we will split this into the A and B teams and we'll give you advice or notice about it.

Secondly, on Monday, April 29, an important Chinese dissident who started the democracy movement in China and who has been jailed for the last 14 years will be in Ottawa. She is being sponsored on a Canada-U.S. tour by the Federation for a Democratic China. Given the interest in China, I will again set up a meeting for members of the committee to meet with Wei Jinjshang, who has been released.

Thirdly, on Thursday, May 9, between 11 a.m. and noon, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who is the secretary of state for Northern Ireland and who is obviously directly involved in the negotiations for Northern Ireland, will be able to meet with the committee. We will set this up.

Finally, there is a delegation of human rights advocates for an international NGO forum on Indonesia who will be here May 28. We'll set that up.

As usual, we have a fairly charged agenda. But we'll try to accommodate members by breaking things between the committees so we don't have to have everybody here.

Thank you very much for your attendance. And again, on behalf of the committee, thanks very much to the witnesses for their very helpful comments.

We are adjourned until tomorrow at 3:30 p.m.

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