“What happens in the North will . . . tell us what kind of a country Canada is; it will tell us what kind of a people we are.”
– THOMAS BERGER,
Northern Frontier—Northern Homeland, 1977
If Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s “Northern Vision” was conceived—and faded—with little political controversy in the North, Pierre Trudeau’s version encountered regional resistance that reflected the changing times. By the early 1970s the Native movement in Canada had mobilized, and Native leaders would no longer tolerate being left out of discussions related to resource development in their homelands.1 The most immediate danger that they faced was not a Soviet nuclear attack or American encroachments on sovereignty. It was posed by southern Canadians. Justice Thomas Berger, hired to look into what the pipeline would mean for the North, entitled his final report “Northern Frontier— Northern Homeland.” It highlighted competing visions of northern history and the future. “We look upon the North as our last frontier,” the report noted. “It is natural for us to think of developing it, of subduing the land and extracting its resources to fuel Canada’s industry and heat our homes. But the native people say the North is their homeland. They have lived there for thousands of years. They claim it is their land, and they believe they have a right to say what its future ought to be.”2 These internal sovereignty claims by Native groups changed the political dialogue, and meant that Canadian decision-makers had to grapple with northern perspectives even when it came to Canadian development projects.
With the issue of the Northwest Passage on the back burner, and Canadian attention directed to internal discussions over aboriginal rights and self-government, Canada and the United States seemed to agree, in the absence of any pressing need to fight for their respective positions, to disagree. As a result, official Canadian sovereignty concerns related to the Arctic waters lessened. This was typical. Canadian governments tended to react to perceived threats, and when immediate fears of losing the North—or, more importantly, of political embarrassment—disappeared from the public radar, so too did political commitments to defend sovereignty.
The Trudeau and Reagan governments had more serious differences of opinion in the early 1980s than the status of Arctic waters, such as the National Energy Program and the renewed Cold War.3 Nevertheless, Canada’s claims seemed stronger by the early 1980s than they had been a decade before. Both Canada and the United States were principal drafters of Article 234 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which dealt with ice-covered areas. “Coastal States have the right to adopt and enforce non-discriminatory laws and regulations for the prevention, reduction and control of marine pollution from vessels in ice-covered areas within the limits of the exclusive economic zone,” it read. Although Canada did not ratify the convention until 2003 (and the U.S. has not yet done so), both countries considered it customary international law on the subject. This vindicated Canada’s Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and gave it “the de facto right to legislate control over the type of commercial vessels that enter the Passage.”4
Within days of taking office in 1984, Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney had promised that “good relations, super relations” with the United States would “be the cornerstone of our foreign policy.” When the United States Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea transited the Northwest Passage in August 1985, however, Arctic sovereignty concerns precipitated another crisis in Canadian-American relations. The reasons for the voyage seem purely practical. The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Northwind, which usually resupplied the American airbase at Thule in Greenland, was immobilized by mechanical problems.5 As a result, the U.S. Coast Guard decided to send the Polar Sea, based in Seattle, to complete the task instead. It used the Panama Canal to get to the Atlantic on the voyage to Thule, but it did not have enough time to take that route and still complete its Alaskan missions. A westward voyage by one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers through the Northwest Passage would save both time and money. “Some Canadians suspected another Machiavellian plot on the part of the Americans,” T.C. Pullen observed. “To others, the transit of the passage appeared to be a sensible operational redeployment by the U.S. Coast Guard. Maybe someone in the U.S. State Department was up to some sharp practice but to the coast guards of both countries, nothing sinister seemed to be afoot.”6
In May 1985, the U.S. Coast Guard discussed its plans with the State Department and the Canadian Coast Guard, explaining that the purpose of the voyage was operational and it was not intended as a sovereignty challenge. Indeed, the Americans recognized that Canadians might be sensitive to the voyage and asked them to participate in the spirit of shared research. The two countries still disagreed over the status of the Northwest Passage, but the U.S. believed that it was “in the mutual interests of Canada and the United States that this unique opportunity for cooperation not be lost because of possible disagreement over the relevant judicial regime.” Both countries should agree to disagree on legal issues and should “concentrate on practical matters” without prejudice to respective legal positions, the Americans suggested. The Canadian government’s initial response was that the Passage was internal waters, but that it would cooperate. The two parties negotiated pollution controls to ensure that the transit would meet AWPPA requirements, and the American government reiterated that “the United States considers that this transit, and the preparations for it, in no way prejudices the juridical position of either side regarding the Northwest Passage, and it understands that the Government of Canada shares that view.” Political scientist Rob Huebert, in his careful analysis of the Polar Sea controversy, concluded that the Americans did not intend the voyage to be an instrument to challenge Canada’s claims. After all, three Canadian observers were accepted on board, and the Canadian Coast Guard ship John A. Macdonald escorted it during the early stages of the voyage. This practical co-operation between officials of both countries, however, was not mirrored on the diplomatic front.7
Canadian nationalists reacted strongly when the Polar Sea transited the Northwest Passage on a 1985 resupply mission to Thule, Greenland. This prompted the Mulroney government to declare straight baselines to Canada’s Arctic region effective January 1, 1986, enclosing the Northwest Passage as “historic internal waters.” US Pacific Air Forces photo 070105-G-9923N-004
The Canadian government’s position soon began to shift as a result of vocal opposition by what the British call the “chattering classes”: academics, aboriginal spokespeople, national interest groups, politicians in opposition parties, and journalists. One of the earliest indicators of a budding controversy was University of Toronto professor Franklyn Griffiths’s op-ed “Arctic authority at stake,” published in the Globe and Mail on June 13, 1985. Although the article itself was sober and balanced, Griffiths correctly predicted that the Polar Sea voyage seemed “certain to rekindle a heated debate on Canada’s sovereignty over its northern waters.” The way he framed the issue—the Americans failed to ask for permission, thus challenging Canadian sovereignty and control over a region central to Canadian identity—helped to ensure that it did. Government officials took note. Other scholars reinforced the view that, unless the government took action, it was in danger of jeopardizing its claim to the Passage. Aboriginal groups like Inuit Tapirisat urged Ottawa to take a strong stand to protect their livelihood and the Arctic environment. “If the Canadian Government will allow a foreign ship passing through Lancaster Sound without permission, where do the Inuit stand?” Louis Tapadjuk asked. “It’s going to be the start of something that we simply cannot allow to happen.” The Council for Canadians, a left-leaning nationalist organization, chartered a plane and bombed the Polar Sea on August 7 with two canisters: one containing a Canadian flag, the other with the message that the voyage was “insulting and demeaning to our citizens and a threat to our sovereignty. It is not the action of a thoughtful, understanding neighbour.” Liberal leader John Turner called the voyage “an affront to Canada,” and both opposition parties used it as a pretext to castigate the Conservative government for its close relations with the U.S. The media also adopted a strongly nationalistic and highly critical view of the voyage, with editorials in leading Canadian newspapers chastising the government for its unwillingness to take action in the North and defend the country’s sovereignty. This “transformed the voyage into a crisis,” political scientist Rob Huebert observed, and the Canadian government responded not to the voyage itself but “to the actions taken by the various groups and individuals opposed to it.”8
The Mulroney government thus changed its tune. It announced an “intensive review” of Canadian Arctic sovereignty on August 1, 1985, informed its southern neighbours that it considered all of the archipelagic waters to be “historic internal waters,” and demanded that the U.S. seek official permission for the Polar Sea to transit the Passage. The Americans refused to make such a request, recognizing that this would prejudice their legal position. So the Canadian government simply granted the Americans permission as if they had asked for it. The U.S. retorted by denying that it had even given Canada prior notice. Prime Minister Mulroney declared that the American refusal to support Canada’s Arctic claim was an “unfriendly act,” but Canadian officials were just as unbending as their American counterparts. Canada’s assertions went against the U.S.’s established position on the status of the Northwest Passage, which was tied to their strategic mobility around the world. Energy issues and new security concerns related to cruise missiles, the vulnerability of American land-based missile systems, and the ability for Soviet submarines with long-range nuclear missiles to hide in the Arctic ice pack further entrenched U.S. interests.9
In response to the alleged public outcry,10 the Conservative government had to be seen to defend Canadian interests, and thus adopted a strongly nationalistic stance. External Affairs Minister Joe Clark’s statement to the House of Commons on September 10, 1985, encapsulated the government’s response to this latest sovereignty crisis. “Canada is an Arctic nation,” he declared, and its “sovereignty in the Arctic is indivisible”:
It embraces land, sea and ice. It extends without interruption to the seaward-facing coasts of the Arctic islands. Those islands are joined, and not divided by the waters between them. They are bridged for most of the year by ice. From time immemorial Canada’s Inuit people have used and occupied the ice as they have used and occupied the land. The policy of the Government is to maintain the national unity of the Canadian Arctic archipelago and preserve Canada’s sovereignty over land, sea and ice undiminished and undivided. . . . Full sovereignty is vital to Canada’s security. It is vital to the Inuit people. And it is vital to Canada’s national identity.11
While the idea of the Arctic as an indivisible national space was not new, Clark’s words suggested a shift away from Trudeau’s ecological sensibilities and functional jurisdiction to a claim of full sovereignty over the Northwest Passage as “historic internal waters”—a claim based partly upon aboriginal use, rights, and protection. If the Polar Sea transit constituted a “psychological rape,” as Member of Parliament Jim Fulton characterized it in a moment of hysterical hyperbole,12 Canada was no longer going to lie back and accept it.
In the wake of the Polar Sea, the Conservative government took various formal measures to confirm and consolidate its legal position over Canada’s Arctic waters.13 First, it announced that Canada would apply “straight baselines” to the Arctic region as of January 1, 1986, effectively enclosing the waters of the Canadian archipelago to reaffirm their status as “historic internal waters.” The Passage had never been part of an international strait, the government argued, and could not be considered high seas. By drawing straight baselines around the outermost islands of the archipelago, Canada would claim complete sovereignty and jurisdiction over everything within the baselines: it officially declared them internal waters. Furthermore, Canada’s territorial sea, pollution zone, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf would extend outward from these new baselines. Letters of protest soon arrived from the United States and European Community, but this did not deter Canada from reiterating its claim.14
This was a significant step. Trudeau had contemplated drawing straight baselines in the 1970s, but did not proceed because legal advisers suggested that international Law of the Sea was not sufficient to support this move. Things had changed, however, and the Mulroney government displayed more confidence. It withdrew Canada’s 1970 reservation, so that the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act could now be challenged through the International Court of Justice. Two main developments in international law justified this action. First, Article 234—the “ice-covered areas article”—in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention suggested that state jurisdiction to prevent, reduce, and control marine pollution in ice-covered areas “far beyond those they could take in other ocean areas off their coasts” had become part of customary law. Second, the Law of the Sea now accepted exclusive economic zones (EEZ), granting states sovereign rights over the sea up to 200 miles (322 kilometres) from the coast in terms of exploring and exploiting marine resources. Both of these legal developments supported the AWPPA and made it less likely that an international court would find against Canada. The government also announced the Canadian Laws Offshore Application Act, which would apply Canadian law to all offshore resource activities within the EEZ and the continental shelf.15
To assert sovereignty, Canada adopted a “proactive and aggressive” plan to “exercise effective control” over its internal waters.16 How could Canada claim sovereignty if it was unable to detect unauthorized, sub-surface transits, never mind respond to them? Ignorance might be bliss, but it is not a credible assertion of sovereignty. If Canada did not know what was happening in waters that it claimed as its own, it could hardly convince the world that it was exercising adequate functions of state in that region. Similarly, if it knew of foreign transits and did nothing about them, it would not be demonstrating credible authority and control. Moreover, if submarines transited the Passage on a frequent basis, this could support the argument that it was “used for international navigation” and thus constituted an international strait.17 What options did Canada have, given that the only open challenger to its sovereignty claims in the preceding two decades had been the United States?
For seventeen years, Canadian governments had asserted the need for a large, all-season icebreaker that could operate in the High Arctic. In his landmark speech on September 10, Joe Clark announced that the government would build a “Polar 8” icebreaker—a vessel capable of maintaining headway at three knots through ice up to 2.4 metres (8 feet) thick. (By contrast, the Louis St. Laurent, Canada’s largest icebreaker, was one-third the size and one-quarter as powerful, and could not break through ice half that thick.) The proposed icebreaker would be the world’s largest and most powerful, and would “provide a year-round platform for hydrographic, oceanographic, and other marine science investigations in previously inaccessible areas,” T.C. Pullen trumpeted. “In some many respects, she will be an ideal research platform, adding immeasurably to our knowledge in the polar environment . . . [and giving] Canada the opportunity to operate at any time of the year in the Northwest Passage and adjacent channels, straits, and sounds.” For the first time, Canada would have the capability to respond to an emergency anywhere in its North. If a foreign submarine ran into problems, for example, Canada would not have to call on American or Soviet icebreakers for help and could thus avoid significant sovereignty questions.18 The price tag would be steep— early estimates of $350 million soon ballooned to more than $500 million—and the project encountered many delays. Nevertheless, commentators tended to stress the symbolic presence and practical purposes it would serve. The Department of National Defence, by contrast, grew worried that the costs would cut into the naval modernization program it was planning without producing a vessel capable of responding to submarine intrusions in the Arctic.19
The boldest initiative, however, was the government’s decision to acquire up to a dozen nuclear-powered attack submarines and lay a fixed sonar-detection system on the sea floor to monitor Arctic waters and identify foreign incursions in support of continental defence. “Our sovereignty in the Arctic,” Minister of National Defence Perrin Beatty explained, “cannot be complete if we remain dependent on allies for knowledge of possible hostile activities in our waters, under our ice and for preventing such activities.”20 Questions, however, began to mount. Would an increased presence in the North not drain resources from Canada’s NATO contribution to Europe at a volatile time? Did it not fly in the face of Canada’s anti-nuclear image? Liberal defence critic Doug Frith complained that a non-nuclear power using nuclear-powered submarines for military purposes “would set a dangerous precedent.” Cabinet ministers complained that the six-to-ten-billion-dollar price tag was too expensive. Pentagon officials were reluctant to transfer essential nuclear technologies that Canada would use to “build vessels that would be used to guard against unauthorized intrusions into Canada’s Arctic waters by United States nuclear submarines.” American defence planners suggested that Canada should leave submarine defences to the U.S. Navy and should focus on conventional forces.21
Canada’s new Arctic policy was primarily about sovereignty, but it was framed so that it was not simply directed towards the United States. These initiatives coincided with a Soviet buildup in Arctic naval capabilities in the mid-1980s (especially their ballistic missile submarine fleet based at the Kola Peninsula, in the far north of Russia), as well as the Reagan administration’s aggressive arms buildup. Canada did not officially participate in American plans for a “total defence” umbrella to thwart a full-scale Soviet ICBM attack (the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars”)—a stance possible because the American system did not require installations on Canadian territory. It did agree to help respond to the new threat posed by air-launched cruise missile technology through the North American Air Defence Modernization Program which would update the DEW Line.22 This time, Canada contributed 40 percent of the construction and maintenance costs. Like other government initiatives of the era, even this co-operative endeavour was cast in terms that emphasized “the importance of fully exercising sovereignty in our north.” Minister of National Defence Erik Nielsen explained to the House of Commons that “the DEW Line has served Canada well, but Canadians do not control it . . . The North Warning System will be a Canadian-controlled system-operated, maintained and manned by Canadians. Sovereignty in our north will be strengthened and assured for the future.”23
Just as the RCMP had once been the agency of choice to assert Canadian sovereignty in the North, the Canadian Forces continued its role as the modern flag-bearer of choice. Many of the Mulroney government’s supposedly new defence initiatives simply resurrected activities that had been introduced in the 1970s but had been allowed to wane when the earlier American sovereignty threat had diminished. Nevertheless, in the latter half of the 1980s, the army resumed company-level exercises in the Arctic each year, the air force increased its northern patrol flights (NORPATs), and naval deployments designed to show the flag in northern waters (NORPLOY) were revived. Indeed, the Canadian Forces’ role was core to the government’s new northern maritime policy. The 1987 defence policy statement included three polar projection maps and reiterated that the government would allocate substantial resources to address northern security. A fleet of long-range maritime patrol aircraft and a new northern training centre would significantly augment the military’s presence. Furthermore, the policy would upgrade five northern airfields so that these Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) could accommodate CF-18 interceptor aircraft. Critics suggested that even the latter initiative reflected “the now traditional sovereignty-presence concept” more than actual defence needs, but the important symbolism it offered in terms of Canada being able to project its air power over the Arctic was unmistakable.24
In the late 1980s, the Conservative Government promised a range of defence initiatives to defend Canadian sovereignty and security in the north. One of its pledges was to upgrade five northern airfields to accommodate CF-18 interceptor aircraft. DND photo BN2006-0060-14
As much as the Conservative approach to sovereignty assertion was nationalistic, the Mulroney government was the most pro-American in Canadian history. Part of its explicit Arctic strategy was to negotiate with the United States over Arctic waters. The kerfuffle over the Polar Sea highlighted incompatible interests and claims, and past reluctance of either part to concede on any points might have indicated that forward movement would be impossible. President Reagan and Prime Minister Mulroney, however, developed such a positive working relationship that after the two leaders met in April 1987, the president told his negotiators to reach a working compromise with Canada on the Northwest Passage issue.25 In short, good personal relationships can make a difference in policy matters. On January 11, 1988, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark and Secretary of State George Shultz announced an agreement on Arctic co-operation. The United States agreed to seek Canadian consent before its icebreakers navigated in what Canada considered to be its internal waters, based on the principle that these were scientific missions of mutual benefit to both countries. This included, of course, the Northwest Passage. The agreement, however, was carefully framed to avoid prejudicing the legal claims of both sides. “Nothing in this agreement of cooperative endeavour between Arctic neighbours and friends nor any practice thereunder affects the respective positions of the governments of the United States and of Canada on the Law of the Sea in this or other maritime areas,” it noted. The U.S. only agreed to disagree with Canada on the legal status of the Passage, thus ensuring that American national interests in international straits more generally were not jeopardized. “While we and the United States have not changed our legal positions,” Mulroney explained, “we have come to a practical agreement that is fully consistent with the requirements of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.” President Reagan also stressed that the agreement was “a pragmatic solution based on our special bilateral relationship, our common interest in cooperating on Arctic matters, and the nature of the area. It is without prejudice to our respective legal positions and sets no precedents for other areas.”26
Though this agreement related only to icebreakers, and did not solve the core legal disagreement over “internal waters” versus “international strait,” it did allow both sides to satisfy their basic objectives through negotiation. Canada could claim that U.S. icebreakers would not transit the Passage without Canadian consent, and the United States retained access to the Passage while avoiding recognition of it as Canadian. Developments soon confirmed that Canadian-American relations in the Arctic were co-operative and compatible, not competitive. In September 1988, two Canadian icebreakers were stuck in the ice off Point Barrow, and the USCGS Polar Star came to their rescue. When the task was complete, the Polar Star could not cross the Beaufort Sea. With winter fast approaching, the only safe route was back east through the North-w Passage. In accordance with the 1988 agreement, the U.S. State Department sought and within hours received Canadian permission for the icebreaker to transit the Passage and to conduct scientific research along the way—while insisting that this action was not a recognition of Canadian sovereignty. Once again, a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker accompanied the Polar Star and a Canadian officer was on board during its transit of the Passage.27 This time, there was no political or popular backlash. The North American friends could, it seemed, agree to disagree about the legalities and work together.
From the late 1960s until quite recently, Canada’s bark was much worse than its bite. Its northern foreign policy, if it had a coherent one, was to extend Canadian law and thus bolster the Canadian claim to waters seldom transited by anyone. As political scientist Rob Huebert observed, Canada’s typical, ad hoc, reactive approach to sovereignty revealed that, despite tremendous political bluster, successive governments’ actual activities in the North had been superficial through the last three decades of the Cold War.28
While Canada had come to view the North “as a place that, however remote and unknown, is still an inherent part of the nation,” Ken Eyre concluded, the United States saw the North “as a direction of strategic approach.”29 In commercial terms, the Northwest Passage was something to pass through in the name of freedom of commerce. In military terms, it represented an international strait that, if designated any other way, could set a dangerous precedent for “innocent passage” through strategically important waterways around the globe.
“We cannot accept the assertion of a Canadian claim that the Arctic waters are internal waters of Canada nor can we accept their other proposals,” Theodore L. Eliot Jr., executive secretary of the U.S. State Department, explained to President Nixon in March 1970. “Such acceptance would jeopardize the freedom of navigation essential for United States naval activities worldwide, and would be contrary to our fundamental position that the regime of the high seas can be altered only by multilateral agreement. Furthermore, our efforts to limit extensions of coastal state sovereignty over the high seas worldwide will be damaged when other nations see that a country—physically, politically and economically—as close to the United States as Canada, feels it can undertake such action in the face of United States opposition.”30 While Canadians are ultrasensitive about perceived U.S. incursions on sovereignty, or at least frustrated by American unwillingness to concede to Canadian national claims, they sometimes forget that we are not the centre of the U.S.’s strategic universe—one upon which we also base our security. Furthermore, as Joseph Jockel, director of the Canadian Studies Program at St. Lawrence University, remarked, “the Canadian emphasis on sovereignty protection places a premium on the presence of Canadians, rather than on the fulfilment of a defence mission.” Indeed, Canada could devote resources to a presence precisely because it knew that, in the end, the U.S. could be relied upon to offer it security.31
Canada’s 1987 White Paper on Defence was a classic Cold War document. The policy it espoused, and the assumptions upon which it was based, were rendered largely moot by the events of the next half-decade. On October 1, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev called for “the North of the globe, the Arctic, [to] become a zone of peace.” Western leaders were understandably skeptical, but did demonstrate room for circumpolar cooperation.32 The 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dissolution of the Eastern Bloc prompted western governments to re-evaluate their security assumptions. The Russian bear, although still untamed and potentially unruly, could no longer focus its primary energies on matters outside of its increasingly tenuous borders. Voices within the United States, bolstered by the confidence of “winning” the Cold War, began to preach about an expected “peace dividend” in a new era of liberal peace. The Mulroney government responded to the new realities by announcing, on April 27, 1989, that it would not proceed with plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. One by one, its other planned military acquisitions to serve the cause of Arctic sovereignty were cut. Only the DEW Line modernization program and the expansion of the Canadian Rangers avoided the government’s knife. More pressing national priorities—particularly a growing national debt—seemed to trump Arctic issues. Correspondingly, military activities in the North underwent a now-typical period of decline in the 1990s. The sovereignty crisis had passed, and so too had the imperative to deliver on Arctic promises. After all, what good could come out of allocating precious military resources to defend against the almost unthinkable possibility of American encroachments on Canadian sovereignty?
“Sovereignty is not a magic word which automatically requires or justifies a certain military set-piece. It is rather the political and territorial framework within which a state exists and functions. It is not made up of, or protected by symbols, tokens or gestures.” So noted the Legal Division at External Affairs in August 1970.33 Yet it seems that symbols, tokens, and gestures were indeed the main elements of Canada’s reactionary approach to sovereignty until the 1980s. As historian Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel observed, “Canada has rarely allocated or committed funds, personnel, or equipment to monitor, defend, or protect the Passage.”34 When its conflicting maritime claims with the United States surfaced, the federal government seemed unwavering in its commitment to uphold Canada’s interests. Of course, when both sides were unwilling to set aside their legal claims, there was no room for bilateral compromise. Captain Thomas Pullen, the retired RCN officer who had sailed on the Manhattan, published a sober reflection on the situation in September 1987:
If push comes to shove, which is more important—Canadian Arctic sovereignty or U.S. security? When one shares a continent with a superpower, these are the facts of life; the issues of sovereignty and security are inseparable. To be squeezed between two superpowers is a costly and frustrating business. Canada should negotiate with its southern neighbour to find a mutually palatable solution to the issues of Arctic sovereignty and North American security. Surely it should be possible for the United States and Canada—friends, neighbors, and allies— to come to some agreement.35
In 1988, a non-prejudicial, practical arrangement—necessary to overcome a longstanding legal impasse—proved that diplomacy could trump the politics of embarrassment so often played out in the press.36 “The 1988 agreement represents a pause rather than an end to the Northwest Passage dispute as military, economic, and environmental pressures increase in the entire region,” Philip Briggs, an American political scientist, concluded in a sober study of the Polar Sea affair. “Continued creative diplomacy and joint efforts will be necessary to avoid future problems . . . , however, diplomacy based upon mutual respect for each state’s national interests and the growing interdependence between the two countries may yet yield a more complete solution to the Northwest Passage dispute.”37
The time seemed right for a more co-operative approach. The West won the Cold War, or so it thought in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. As a result, radar defence systems, military outposts, and major security operations became obsolete. Preparing Canadian troops for sudden deployment in the Far North seemed much less important than training them for interventions in Africa and Asia. Canadians and their government lost interest in strategic questions—but soon found the national agenda once again crowded with northern concerns. The new issues—aboriginal land claims, northern self-government, and environmental concerns— were each stimulated in part by the dramatic impact of military and strategic measures over the previous fifty years. The greatest complication, and opportunity, rested with the fact that Canadian Arctic issues now played out on a circumpolar stage. The empowerment of aboriginal and other northern peoples, and growing connections between the Arctic regions, gave Canadian questions international meaning and Arctic residents powerful political platforms.
The end of the Cold War also meant that military considerations took a back seat to other concerns, particularly those relating to aboriginal peoples. Indigenous leaders objected to military manoeuvres on their lands, like those at Goose Bay, Labrador,38 and the general presence in the North in general. Inuit and Dene leaders complained that military activities had harmed their communities. Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), tried to redirect the sovereignty question, noting that “Arctic security includes environmental, economic and cultural, as well as defence, aspects.”39 “Inuit,” she said, “have a legitimate, extensive and varied role to fulfill in international matters. In light of the increasing impact of the actions of the international community on Inuit rights, our culture and northern homeland, we have a compelling responsibility to become increasingly involved.”40
The Inuit were the first of the international indigenous groups to bring effective pressure to bear on the government of Canada. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, founded in 1977, promoted circumpolar co-operation, developed a pan-Arctic environmental strategy, advocated demilitarization, and pushed for northern autonomy.41 Indigenous organizations like the ICC changed the debate from matters of national prestige and security to those of cultural survival, sustainable development, and political mobilization.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, as Rob Huebert has observed, shifted attention from traditional to new security concerns, particularly the protection of the Arctic environment. Canadian scientists, for example, uncovered extensive evidence of transboundary pollutants, such as fertilizers and insecticides, deposited in the Arctic region. Equally disconcerting, evidence mounted that the Soviet Union had done little to protect its Arctic regions from pollution and radioactive wastes.42 An observer at the 1992 ICC meeting issued a sombre but realistic assessment: “Many Inuit have serious concerns about the long-term health of the Arctic environment and the course that future industrial development in the region, fuelled by Western investors, is likely to take. The Arctic environment, often mistakenly seen as pristine, is already polluted with rising levels of heavy metals, radioactive isotopes and industrial and agricultural chemicals.”43
The Arctic political mobilization launched by the ICC soon spun off in several directions. In 1991, eight Arctic countries signed the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy (AEPS), originally a Finnish initiative but largely drafted by Canadian officials, creating a forum to work on Arctic-wide environmental regulation and management.44 Mary Simon, then president of the ICC, welcomed the step with cautious praise: “That has to come now. We can’t keep signing these international agreements and have no action. The important part becomes the implementation and interpretation of the agreement and the work plan that has to follow.”45
Canada, fittingly, played a significant role in pushing the international community towards a broader and more influential Arctic Council.46 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally proposed the idea of a regional form for Arctic co-operation with Russian authorities in 1989. The idea picked up on a series of earlier initiatives, ranging from measures to protect polar bears, a Canada–USA co-operative agreement and the Canadian deal signed with the Soviet Union in 1989. The philanthropic Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation pushed the idea of an Arctic Council, with an early panel calling for an organization with substantial aboriginal representation and a mandate “to make the circumpolar region into a domain of enhanced civility—an area in which aboriginal peoples enjoy their full rights, and where national governments that speak for southern majorities accord progressively greater respect to the natural environment, to one another, and, in particular, to aboriginal peoples.”47
The concept of an Arctic council was more revolutionary than it seemed. National governments hesitated to elevate the role, stature, and decision-making power of aboriginal groups, particularly at the international level.48 Although few people in southern centres paid much attention to the proposal, northern leaders saw in the Arctic Council the shape of a new North, working across national boundaries to solve problems of critical regional importance.
The proposal for an Arctic Council limped along, a high-profile commitment of the Mulroney government lacking the American support needed to proceed. Many observers, Franklyn Griffiths foremost among them, believed that the council had the potential to pull Russia into the circumpolar sphere and to help ease western worries about post-Soviet aspirations for the Far North. “It would be no small accomplishment for Canada to bring Russia onto the world stage in its first multilateral negotiation since the formation of the Soviet Union,” he argued. “All the better if the purpose of the negotiation is to create a new instrument for civility and indeed civilized behavior in relations between Arctic states, between these states and their aboriginal peoples, and in the way southern majorities treat their vulnerable northern environment.”49 Tom Axworthy, principal secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau, agreed: “As Arctic neighbours and as the biggest members of the circumpolar North, Canada and Russia share many common interests and problems. We must do what we can to encourage Russian democracy and oppose the resurgence of ultra-nationalist and autocratic forces there. The creation of an Arctic Council will be a modest but real recognition that Russia has joined the democratic community of nations.”50 The Chrétien Liberal government, in office as of 1993, pushed the idea further, noting, “We have to stop defending what our countries are doing and start telling the truth even if it hurts.”51
The Arctic Council came into being in 1996, with the United States reluctantly agreeing to join. Aboriginal people were assured substantial and separate membership. The new Arctic Council had an impressive—even daunting—set of marching orders. Russia, for example, needed help to eliminate radioactive waste in the Arctic, country foods had to be assessed for toxins to determine their suitability for human consumption, and climate change research encouraged. The council focused on sustainable human development in northern communities, and the need to balance resource development and environmental protection. In the international sphere, co-operation, trade, and cultural support were the orders of the day.52 At the Americans’ insistence, the council did not discuss military matters.53
Arctic collaboration quickly expanded in science and education, including the creation of the Circumpolar Universities Association and the University of the Arctic. The latter, a collaboration between 110 higher-education institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), was officially launched in 2001 to deliver university courses to students across the circumpolar North. Scientific co-operation was spurred by the establishment of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA). In less than two decades, the strategic isolation of the Cold War era gave way to impressive collaborative enterprises in governance, learning, and research.
Canada declared itself pleased with these developments, and with the continued downgrading of military concerns. “Nothing illustrates more dramatically the link between domestic and foreign factors than the state of the Arctic environment,” House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade chairman Bill Graham reported in April 1997. “That environment, so special and so fragile, is particularly sensitive to foreign influences.” The report accepted that the concept of security had broadened from military issues to encompass an array of social and environmental issues. “This new agenda for security cooperation is inextricably linked to the aims of environmentally sustainable human development,” the report noted. “Meeting these challenges is essential to the long-term foundation for assuring circumpolar security, with priority being given to the well-being of Arctic peoples and to safeguarding northern habitants from intrusions which have impinged aggressively on them.”54
The most appropriate solution, the all-party committee recommended, was for Canada to push to make the Arctic a nuclear-free zone, and even to demilitarize the region. The environmental legacies of the Cold War also had to be addressed: abandoned military sites in the Canadian North required cleaning up and restoration, and the report recommended that Canada assist Russia with the dangers associated with its decaying northern fleet, such as radioactive contamination from illegal dumping of nuclear wastes and abandoned Russian nuclear-powered submarines rotting in the Arctic Ocean.55
This federal focus on international co-operation fit with the government’s announcement of an “Aboriginal Action Plan” to foster healthier communities and partnership at home, even if they did not support demilitarization. The military played an important role in the region, particularly in communication, navigation, and transportation systems in the region. Furthermore, the Canadian Forces conducted essential operations, such as humanitarian assistance and search and rescue, which would be “difficult, and perhaps even impossible,” for any other organization to provide. “Additionally, the cultural inter-play of service people serving in our North has an intangible benefit in promoting a sense of national awareness among the military and those northern residents who come in contact with the military,” the response noted. “A military presence in the North also provides Canada’s Aboriginal peoples with an opportunity to serve their country and community through participation in the Canadian Rangers.” In short, Canada’s existing activities to assert sovereignty (maritime surveillance overflights, Coast Guard icebreaker patrols, and the Canadian Rangers) were compatible with a constructive Arctic strategy. There was, however, no security crisis that warranted an increased military presence beyond a modest expansion in the number of northerners serving with the Canadian Rangers.56
The debates of the 1990s had convinced the government of Canada to reconfigure its approach to Arctic sovereignty. In 2000, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade issued “The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy.” Its opening paragraphs showed how much the Liberal government’s view of the Arctic changed from that of its predecessors:
Both the tradition of transnational co-operation and the new emphasis on human security are particularly applicable to the shaping of the Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy. The circumpolar world that includes the northern territories and peoples of Canada, Russia, the United States, the Nordic countries plus the vast (and mostly ice-covered) waters in between was long a front line in the Cold War. Now it has become a front line in a different way—facing the challenges and opportunities brought on by new trends and developments. The challenges mostly take the shape of transboundary environmental threats—persistent organic pollutants, climate change, nuclear waste—that are having dangerously increasing impacts on the health and vitality of human beings, northern lands, waters and animal life. The opportunities are driven by increasingly confident northern societies who, drawing on their traditional values, stand poised to take up the challenges presented by globalization. Whereas the politics of the Cold War dictated that the Arctic region be treated as part of a broader strategy of exclusion and confrontation, now the politics of globalization and power diffusion highlight the importance of the circumpolar world as an area for inclusion and co-operation.
Framed by principles of Canadian leadership, partnership, and ongoing dialogue with northerners, this rare foreign policy statement on the region was rooted in four overarching objectives. The first priority involved enhancing “the security and prosperity of Canadians, especially northerners and Aboriginal peoples.” After all, the birth of the new territory of Nunavut in 1999 signalled that the North was changing in fundamental ways. Self-government and devolution, rooted in partnership with aboriginal peoples, required new economic opportunities that promoted northern interests.57 While the government committed itself “to assert and ensure the preservation of Canada’s sovereignty in the North,” such efforts would take a new form, marked by the absence of traditional security and sovereignty threats. Canadian officials clearly believed that constructive engagement, not confrontation, would mark the twenty-first century.58
By the late 1990s, the Canadian Rangers’ red ball caps and sweatshirts had become the most recognizable symbol of Canada’s military presence in the far north, embodying a spirit of cooperation between northern communities and the Canadian Forces. DND photo IS2004-2134
The focus on diplomacy and cooperation meant that traditional preoccupations with “defending” sovereignty slipped to the back burner. The Somalia affair of the mid-1990s and other scandals made the Liberal government wary of the Canadian Forces. Most military programs seemed to clash with agendas articulated by northerners. As a result, military activities in the North slowed. No sovereignty operations were conducted in 1999–2000. Aurora maritime patrol aircraft were scheduled to conduct only four sovereignty patrols in 2000, down from twenty in the mid-nineties. By the end of the decade, CF assets in the North were sparse indeed. The headquarters in Yellowknife, with seventy-seven personnel, lacked “the staff resources or situational awareness to coordinate more than a nominal level of activity.” Although the four Twin Otter transport aircraft represented a CF presence in the North, they were small and slow, forcing the military to rely on commercial airlines. The Forward Operating Locations were seldom used for fighter-aircraft operations. The largely unmanned NWS radar sites, maintained by civilian contractors, and the skeleton staff at Canadian Forces Station Alert/Eureka on Ellesmere Island continued their quiet vigil. The Canadian Rangers, part-time volunteers in fifty-eight patrols across the territorial North, provided the most extensive and visible military presence in the North, as well as a constructive and intimate connection with northern communities. They did not, however, have the capacity to operate outside of their local areas nor the authorization to do more than report problems.59
By 2000, the Canadian Forces’ “Arctic Capabilities Study” acknowledged that the nature of security issues had evolved to include environmental, social, and economic aspects, particularly in the North. Rather than diminishing the military’s role, the commander of Canadian Forces Northern Area argued, the coming decades would make the North even more vulnerable to “asymmetric” security and sovereignty threats. “There is presently no immediate direct military threat to Canada,” the study conceded, but “there remain many significant security/sovereignty challenges of a different nature emerging in the North” which could, over the long term, erode Canadian sovereignty. The Canadian Forces had to be prepared to respond to challenges related to environmental protection, increased shipping as Arctic sea lanes opened due to climate change, heightened commercial-airline activity, and “trans-national criminal activity” that would accompany resource development such as diamond mining. To meet its obligations in the North, Canadian Forces Northern Area argued, improved capabilities to monitor and respond to emergencies were needed.60 The Department of National Defence decided, given its limited budget, that the equipment and programs proposed to address more than surveillance issues would be extremely expensive. Scarce military resources would, instead, go to more pressing priorities.61
If the North had been an “exposed front” during the Cold War, with perceived sovereignty threats prompting reactions at various junctures, nothing at the end of the twentieth century indicated a strong need for government action in the sovereignty or military-security realm. The government had to act in the North, Mary Simon explained in 1996, but the needs were social and environmental. “There is an image of this barren land that is very pristine and hardly anybody lives there, but in many ways it is not that,” she explained. “You are talking about a much more severe climate, but it does not stop people from being concerned about the environment, about their livelihoods . . . their cultural identity, their language.” Human and environmental security, sustainable development, and capacity-building were the new catchphrases of northern foreign policy. The direction of the twenty-first century, it seemed, would be broader and more progressive than the post–Second World War era.
As Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, said at the inaugural meeting of the Arctic Council in Iqaluit in September 1998, “A true partnership has emerged where Arctic states and Indigenous peoples have, together, developed a vision for the Arctic where national agendas can be harmonized and cultural diversity encouraged. This has allowed us to work effectively on the substantive challenge of achieving equitable development in the Arctic while protecting and promoting its environmental integrity.”62 Promoters of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, the Arctic Council, and the University of the Arctic had stitched together a political and administrative trans-border network that, by the late 1990s, promised to make the Far North a place of co-operation rather than a resource and strategic battleground. The lack of southern interest, ironically, had created openings that northern and indigenous politicians had exploited with creativity and success. The result was that despite the huge stakes in the Arctic, the potential for actual conflict between states seems unlikely—something that stands in contrast to many regions of the world.
With each passing year, Canada’s assurance about the Arctic seemed to build. Canadian legal experts expressed confidence that Canada’s sovereignty claim to the waters of the archipelago was grounded in international law. Unique geography justified straight baselines to enclose the waters. The small number of ships that crossed the Passage hardly supported the contention that it was an “international strait” in legal terms, even if did connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But there was no justification for apathy. “Sovereignty can be lost; it can be abandoned,” law professor Donald McRae warned. “And it can be abandoned by dereliction. Failure by Canada to exercise its sovereign authority over the waters will diminish the credibility of its claim of sovereignty.” If foreign vessels continued to transit the Passage, it might become a strait “used for international navigation” and thus undermine Canada’s claim to internal waters.63 It would take a new threat—that created by a remarkable transformation of the Arctic environment—to make this possibility a likelihood and to once again transform the sovereignty and security concerns of the Far North.