BOYS WHO CAN’T COMMIT
The omnibus bill crisis has raised a far broader question, one that has dogged Canada for a century and a half.
Our governments will not engage in Aboriginal matters. Not really. Not fully. Not with enthusiasm for the possibility of reconciliation, let alone restitution. In fact, we haven’t ever had a government that has put its mind to trying to understand what the concept of reconciliation means, let alone how to transform the concept into a concrete fact. Paul Martin is a bit of an exception to the rule, but he wasn’t in office long enough to become a functioning prime minister of a real government. He certainly never got to the stage of turning his Kelowna Accord into a mainstream reality that could inhabit the mainstream Canadian imagination.
And so it follows that our governments, one after the other, have not been able to bring themselves to break away from the European urban–rural myth of what constitutes a nation state or a country in order to treat the “commodities belt” – the northern two-thirds of Canada – as a real part of the country. To not treat it as just a source of commodities, colonial territories that will make those of us in the south rich. There has not been a real effort to include those areas as an integral part of Canada, as a place where citizens live. Over the last few years our government has been talking more than ever of northerners becoming rich only if southern miners are allowed to do what they want in the north.
Over the decades our governments have, of course, had moments of enthusiasm for northern projects. Canada was the driving force behind the creation of the Arctic Council. Then we lost interest. The Scandinavians had to take over as the effective leaders. We refused to invest money in its becoming a real force – a body with structures and policies. The chairmanship rotates. When our turn comes, we make it clear that we won’t do anything with this responsibility, except encourage mining.
Canada was also the leading force in the creation of the virtual circumpolar University of the Arctic. But then, early in this century, the circumpolar world came on board and we were faced with the threat of having to take responsibility for our idea. Worse, we might have had to demonstrate our commitment by hosting the university in Canada. My god! Money might have had to be spent on strengthening our northern society. So of course we backed off as fast as we could, and Finland, so much bigger, so much richer than Canada, took over the leadership. The Canadians who had led in putting it all together moved to northern Finland, where people understand what a northern policy looks like.
Worse still, Canada remains the only circumpolar country without an Arctic university. I wrote about this in A Fair Country. And I’ll keep repeating it. Why is there no Arctic university? Apparently we can’t afford one. Greenland can, population 56,840. Iceland can, population 324,000. Norway can, population 5 million. Finland can, population 5.5 million. Sweden can, population 9.5 million. Canada, population 34 million, G7 member, cannot. Besides, we don’t have a large enough northern population to justify a university. Except that our northern population is one of the largest among the circumpolar countries.
The real difference seems to be that the southern-based leadership of the other circumpolar countries actually believes that their north is an integral part of their country. It’s a small detail, but one worth considering.
On the positive side it should be added that an Arctic research station is being installed in the central Arctic at Cambridge Bay. It is projected to open in 2017. This is a big investment in an important building and a good initiative.
However, this plan was preceded in 2012 by the shutting down of the smaller, but well established, Eureka research station in the high Arctic on Ellesmere Island. Why no research station in the Arctic for five years? And Cambridge Bay is thirteen hundred kilometres to the south of Eureka. Why abandon high Arctic research on, for example, climate change? Why couldn’t Eureka have been the northern outpost of the new station in Cambridge Bay? Why was Eureka shut in a rush? The financial savings argument is not convincing. Is it because it was independent-minded and focused on climate change, which the government doesn’t want to deal with? Was it because the government wants to switch from independent research to applied research requested by industry? Designed by industry? Of course applied research is a good thing. But should it replace more fundamental work? Why is it either/or? And should taxpayers be paying for work that could be paid for by corporations? Besides, there are two kinds of applied research. There is the big industrial focus. But more importantly there is the precise applied research needed for our Artic communities. And there we are falling way behind.
There is another, even more important question. Is the Cambridge Bay station to be peopled mainly by scientists who live there full time? Is it to become a hub of northern-centred research and thought? This is what we need. Or is it to be a more sophisticated version of what we have already – a well-equipped place for researchers from southern universities to use as a base for their annual three months up north? These southern scientists now control northern research. Their southern universities get the benefit in reputation and funding from this colonial relationship to the north. And they stand in the way of the development of a northern-based approach and the development of a northern research community, which would include northerners, northern students and northern approaches, including Inuit concepts, known as the principles of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit.
When the research program was finally announced in August 2014, it was focused on technology. As for the investment in actual research, it came down to a miserable $2 million a year. The whole program is based on the hope of investment by industry, for industry. This suggests that the research station is more of a rental opportunity for southerners and corporations than the beginning of a northern-based research community.
The government’s four research priorities are resource development, transportation (relating to resource development and defence), marine safety (again relating to resource development and defence) and finally community infrastructure. There probably won’t be much private money for this fourth priority, almost as if it were an afterthought.
It is a question of policy. And, as with all indigenous policies, it is a matter of mindset. Of narrative. This could of course be altered.
Central to a healthy change in narrative would be the context created by an Arctic university. Why is such a large investment being made in a research centre – a good idea and the proof that the money exists for intellectual development in the Arctic – without any move toward a university?
Is the answer that this is what the southern universities want? What corporations want? Is there no commitment in Ottawa to the development of a northern-based community of learning and thinking?
If these are fair questions, then they take us back to the central issue of our unfulfilled engagement in the north: Why do we lose interest so easily? Because the old colonial dreams – so much part of our provincial and federal structures – reassert themselves. In the colonial mind, the north is a place from which wealth is to be extracted, including the wealth of knowledge. Corporations and universities based in the south continually remind us of this, and they lobby the government hard to ensure that Ottawa doesn’t go all soft and romantic and start treating the northern two-thirds of Canada as anything other than outlying territories where the commodities are. Only four or five years ago there was great enthusiasm in Ottawa for social and basic state investment and development in the Arctic. Lots of specifics were announced. Slowly they evaporated until now little is left except mining projects and this research centre. Even the military dreams are largely gone. The first elements to evaporate had to do with strengthening the reality of northern peoples as citizens of Canada. Why would they want to be treated as citizens when they can be given a job in a mine?
Is this fair? Am I suggesting something romantic or nationalistic that doesn’t include jobs? Don’t I believe that northerners have the right to mines and the jobs they offer and the training that will produce the jobs? The sensible answer is always the same: the choice should not be between being ignored and accepting jobs on someone else’s conditions. There is a bigger picture filled with social conditions, rights, a broader sense of the economy that includes people and the environment. And, of course, there is that central question of high-quality education, properly funded. If you build a strategy that includes these elements, to say nothing of working closely with northern citizens, the way to shape economic development will emerge.
Let me take this argument down to the most basic level. We southerners tell ourselves that we want to travel east, west, south. Not north. We want to go to Paris, London, the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii, Bali. Fine. But at one level, these are the dreams of the insecure. Not fair, you say. Of course there is nothing wrong with visiting cathedrals and palaces. And why not lie on a beach in the sun? Fine. But that is not the point. Ask most Canadians: Have you been to the Arctic? A look of panic. It’s so difficult to get there! Actually, just go online and buy a ticket on First Air. It’s so expensive! Actually, no more expensive than Europe. My god, where would I stay? In a Co-op hotel, motel, B&B. Summer or winter, the Arctic is one of the most exciting places in the world, one of the most surprising, one of the most beautiful. Inuit are among the most welcoming.
What then underpins these myths that drive most Canadians away from the Aboriginal reality? I believe it is the incredibly powerful reality of a colonial mindset. That sounds a bit facile. Is it unnecessarily insulting?
Not really. Think about our references when we talk about ourselves. We don’t seem to be able to get ourselves beyond the European model – that model in which there is no Aboriginal component. And where there is no vast northern element in which nature dominates. We don’t seem to be able to think of ourselves and Canada outside of the European model in which the urban is superior and the countryside feeds the urban. Of course we know that there is some rough nature lying somewhere out there, but it exists only for one-way exploitation or for the pleasurable distraction of the urbanite. And so we cannot bring ourselves to make the effort to make the northern two-thirds of our country strong. We do not make the long-term strategic and real investments in community in the north. This is the single most depressing thing about Canada because it is – I repeat – a constant reminder of a colonial state of mind.