Canada's Northern Strategies: from Trudeau To
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Lackenbauer Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security No. 17 Canada’s Northern Strategies: From Trudeau to Trudeay, 1970-2020 1970-2020 to Trudeay, Northern Strategies: From Trudeau Canada’s Canada’s Northern Strategies From Trudeau to Trudeau, 1970-2020 Compiled and introduced by P. Whitney Lackenbauer DCASS 17 Canada’s Northern Strategies From Trudeau to Trudeau, 1970-2020 Compiled and introduced by P. Whitney Lackenbauer, Ph.D. Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security (DCASS) ISSN 2368-4569 Series Editors: P. Whitney Lackenbauer Adam Lajeunesse Managing Editor: Ryan Dean Canada’s Northern Strategies: From Trudeau to Trudeau, 1970-2020 P. Whitney Lackenbauer DCASS Number 17, 2020 Front Cover: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada’s North 1970-1980. Back Cover: Prime Minister’s Office; Library and Archives Canada; Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Canada’s North 1970-1980. Centre for Military, Security and School for the Study of Canada Strategic Studies Trent University University of Calgary 1600 West Bank Dr. 2500 University Dr. N.W. Peterborough, ON K9L 0G2 Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Tel: 705.748.1011 x7390 Tel: 403.220.4030 www.trentu.ca www.cmss.ucalgary.ca Arctic Institute of North America University of Calgary 2500 University Drive NW, ES-1040 Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Tel: 403-220-7515 http://arctic.ucalgary.ca/ Copyright © the authors/editors, 2020 Permission policies are outlined on our website http://cmss.ucalgary.ca/research/arctic-document-series Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. ii Canada’s Northern Strategies, 1970-2020: An Introduction .................................... iii Background .....................................................................................................iii The 1970s and 1980s ....................................................................................... v The End of the Cold War and a New Circumpolar Focus.............................. xiii Stephen Harper and the Conservatives: A New Northern Agenda? ................ xix Towards “A Shared Vision of the Future” Under Justin Trudeau’s Liberals? Consultation, Reconciliation, and the 2019 Arctic and Northern Policy Framework ......................................................................................... xxxii 1. “Northern Canada in the 70’s” (1970) ................................................................. 1 2. “Policy on Canadian Sovereignty,” September 1985. .......................................... 14 3. Looking North: Canada’s Arctic Commitment (1989) ........................................... 19 4. The Northern Dimension of Canada’s Foreign Policy (2000) ................................. 70 5. Developing Your Northern Strategy (2005) ........................................................... 87 6. Speech from the Throne, 16 October 2007, and Prime Minister Harper’s Reply, 17 October 2007 ........................................................................................... 92 7. Canada’s Northern Strategy: Our North, Our Heritage, Our Future, July 2009 ..... 97 8. Statement on Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy: Exercising Sovereignty and Promoting Canada’s Northern Strategy Abroad, 20 August 2010 .................................... 111 9. Canada’s Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, September 2019 .................. 129 10. Arctic and Northern Policy Framework International chapter, September 2019 .................................................................................................................... 177 11. Arctic and Northern Policy Framework: Safety, Security, and Defence chapter, September 2019 .......................................................................................... 193 Further Reading ................................................................................................... 207 About the Editor .................................................................................................. 217 i Acknowledgements Thanks to Ryan Dean and Peter Kikkert for their consent to draw upon co-authored materials for parts of the introduction, and to research assistant Harrison Lackenbauer for assistance with scanning several key documents. Research was conducted pursuant to my Canada Research Chair in the Study of the Canadian North at Trent University, the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN), and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant on “The Manhattan Voyage and the Creation of the Modern Canadian North” (primary investigator: Adam Lajeunesse). Special thanks also to Jennifer Arthur-Lackenbauer for designing the covers and to Corah Hodgson for final proofreading, both of whom bring polish to the Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security series. The word clouds were generated at https://www.wordclouds.com/. ii Canada’s Northern Strategies, 1970-2020: An Introduction P. Whitney Lackenbauer This volume is intended to serve as a general reference document to compare and contrast the development of Canadian federal Arctic policy frameworks over the last fifty years. It is telling that Canadian governments have not issued many Northern and Arctic strategy documents, and that the four pillars introduced in 1970 – people, the economy, the environment, and sovereignty – have proven remarkably resilient. By reproducing several key Arctic and Northern strategy documents and statements, and encouraging that they be read together, this collection encourages deeper consideration of continuities in how federal political leaders have framed Northern policy issues, strategic agendas, and priorities. These documents also reveal evolving relationships with Northern Canadians, particularly Indigenous peoples, as well as desired futures for the region – and for Canada more generally. Like previous DCASS volumes, this collection promotes a more comprehensive awareness of strategic thinking that has guided Arctic and Northern policy formulation, encouraging future policy discussion and more robust scholarly assessment of Canada’s Arctic record.1 Background The Second World War introduced the new idea that the Canadian North also represented a military frontier, which resurrected fears about the United States’ encroachment on Canadian sovereignty in this sparsely-populated realm. 2 The Americans withdrew at the end of the war and confirmed Canadian ownership over northwestern Canada and the infrastructure built therein, but visions of a looming 1 See, for example, Ryan Dean, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, and Adam Lajeunesse, Canadian Arctic Defence and Security Policy: An Overview of Key Documents, 1970-2012, Documents on Canadian Arctic Sovereignty and Security (DCASS) No. 1 (Calgary and Waterloo: Centre for Military and Strategic Studies/Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism, 2014); and P. Whitney Lackenbauer and Ryan Dean, eds., Canada’s Northern Strategy under the Harper Conservatives: Key Speeches and Documents on Sovereignty, Security, and Governance, 2006-15, DCASS No. 6 (Calgary and Waterloo: Centre for Military, Strategic and Security Studies/Centre on Foreign Policy and Federalism/Arctic Institute of North America, 2016), https://cmss.ucalgary.ca/sites/cmss.ucalgary.ca/files/dcass6.pdf. 2 See Ken Coates and William Morrison, The Alaska Highway in World War II: The US Army of Occupation in Canada’s Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992) and Shelagh Grant, Sovereignty or Security? Government Policy in the Canadian North, 1936-1950 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1988). iii Cold War provided a primary impetus for another round of military-inspired development beginning in the late 1940s. In the end, the North American neighbours found solutions that affirmed Canada’s terrestrial sovereignty.3 On the other hand, the American behemoth largely dictated the pace of military modernization in Canada’s North throughout the 1950s and the major socio- economic, cultural, and environmental impacts that flowed from it.4 In the postwar period, Canadian officials began to awaken to the federal government’s obligations to Northern residents. The introduction of the Canadian social welfare system meant that Indigenous Canadians now had access to a wide array of programs, from family allowances to old-age pensions, and then housing, schooling, health care, and economic development grants. Aware of the changing nature of the North, Ottawa scrambled to address the problems of insufficient game resources, a health crisis that saw a large portion of the Inuit population in Southern sanatoria, and a failing traditional economy. 5 Most of the academic literature is highly critical of the federal government, seeking to expose its “totalizing” agenda, chastising its colonial and “high modernist” mentalities (in such fields as education, fledgling training and employment programs, the delivery of health services, and development of settlements), or accusing it of outright duplicity (often in terms of the High Arctic relocations and other coercive settlement efforts). By contrast, the government officials who served at this time paint a more benevolent portrait of a government seeking to anticipate and address a range of emerging security, economic, 3 See, for example, P. Whitney Lackenbauer, “Right and Honourable: Mackenzie King, Canadian-American Bilateral Relations, and Canadian Sovereignty in the Northwest, 1943-1948” in Mackenzie King: Citizenship and Community eds. John English, Kenneth McLaughlin,