Editor’s Note: This column is a condensed version of Senator Paterson’s speech delivered at the 20th annual Nunavut Mining Symposium in April of this year.

Nunavut occupies 21 per cent of Canada’s total land mass and has 41 per cent of the country’s coastline, along which 25 of Nunavut’s communities are situated. All of our communities are fly-in communities, with no roads linking them, no Internet backbone, no communities connected to an energy grid and all with a fledgling private sector, where the major employer is still government despite our rich natural resources and our growing mining sector. 

Nunavut has the highest unemployment rate out of all three Northern territories at 12.5 per cent, while the national average as of January 2017 is 6.8 per cent. Forty-nine per cent of Nunavut residents receive welfare, 70 per cent of households are considered food insecure and over half the population lives in social housing. 

Eighty-five per cent of Nunavut’s population of 37,000 are Inuit. The population is young and has the highest birthrate in the entire country. Nunavut’s fertility rate of 2.9 per woman is much higher than the national average of 1.6 per woman, and resulted in a 12.7 per cent population increase recorded in both the census of 2011 and of 2016. 

Nunavut’s low population, remote communities and large land mass give it challenges unique to any other province or territory. For example: 

We are 100 per cent reliant on diesel generators for power generation; 

We are 100 per cent reliant on aircraft to deliver perishables to communities;  

We lead the country and sometimes the world in negative social and health indicators.

High on every Nunavut political leader’s priorities is an increase in support for, and the creation of new and improved social and cultural programs. I agree that programs such as language enhancement and preservation, culturally appropriate curriculae, and housing, are important, but I also believe that we need to closely examine what we can do to help pay for these programs. Nunavut’s recent budget totaled almost $2 billion – $1.981B – and 82 per cent comes from federal transfers. We cannot forever continue to rely on southern taxpayers to support our social programs, especially when we have such huge potential in our natural resources. 

The benefits derived from the extractive sector support communities, the territory (almost 17 per cent of Nunavut’s GDP comes from mining), and all of Canada through Inuit Impact Benefit Agreements (IIBA), contributions to infrastructure, event or program sponsorship, training programs and corporate taxes and royalty payments, which eventually in turn pay for the social and cultural programs that are so important to the health and well-being of our people, Inuit and non-Inuit alike. 

That is why I have always advocated for responsible development that balances environmental protection with economic opportunities – and it can be done. In most projects, where there is a will, and an understanding of mutual benefits and respect between proponents and communities, impacts can be addressed and mitigated. 

There are three important processes currently underway that will significantly and directly affect the economic potential of this territory for generations to come: the drafting of the Nunavut-wide land use plan; devolution negotiations; and Canada’s renewed paternalistic and colonial approach to Nunavut that arbitrarily imposes protected areas in our lands and waters, jeopardizes our future economic self-sufficiency and treats Nunavut like a protected areas playground to meet national quotas and international commitments but without consultation with Nunavummiut and with no compensation for the land lost for potential development.

I consider the 2016 Draft Nunavut Land Use Plan manifestly unbalanced, developed largely by excluding genuine community and Northern stakeholder inputs and instead driven by outside forces like the World Wildlife Fund. 

Since the draft land use plan was published on June 23, 2016, the Nunavut Planning Commission (NPC) has received a total of 68 submissions, including expert reports and stakeholder feedback from communities, Hunters and Trappers Organizations, Inuit organizations, the Government of Canada, the Government of Nunavut, the Government of the Northwest Territories, wildlife management boards, various institutions of public government, environmental NGOs, non-Nunavut communities and organizations, and two community members, all suggesting changes to the draft or citing concerns about the process to date. The submissions include a 58-page jointly produced document made by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the three Regional Inuit Associations on February 21, 2017, which is a thorough, factual, and critical analysis of the draft land use plan and the consultation and community engagement processes. 

All that valuable and thoughtful input has yet to be taken into account by the Nunavut Planning Commission and has not resulted in any redrafting of the 2016 draft land use plan. The biggest concern, that the plan is manifestly imbalanced, has fallen on the NPC’s apparently deaf ears at the regional consultations. Without any explanation, the 2016 draft plan greatly expands protected areas and dramatically reduces mixed-use areas compared to the 2014 draft land use plan. Further, it fails to acknowledge important current transportation corridors like the proposed Grays Bay Road and Port in the Kitikmeot and the proposed Kivalliq road and hydro corridor. 

We do not need more costly consultations. We need a new and improved draft of the current land use plan, one that takes into account the good input that NPC has already received before there are any more consultations. 

Just as we need to heed the voices of communities and Northern stakeholders on the ground in Nunavut in devising a land use plan, we also need to ensure that when it comes to creating protected areas in Canada, and in Nunavut, the largest region in Canada, these decisions should be made by the elected representatives of the people of Nunavut at the territorial level. 

Nunavut residents, through their locally elected territorial government, should determine the future of Nunavut, not distant officials in Ottawa who don’t even have the respect to consult us before they do something as significant as close off the Nunavut offshore to oil and gas indefinitely or create marine protected areas and parks. Not even the Prime Minister’s office has the right to make these decisions for us. 

I have fought my entire political life to end this kind of patronizing and colonial control by Ottawa over managing our lands and resources in Nunavut. The land claim gave Inuit 18 per cent of the land in Nunavut, a guaranteed role in co-management boards that have a major voice in the regulatory process, a guaranteed share of resource revenues, and a guarantee that developers must negotiate IIBAs before they get final development approval. But the territorial government, which must deliver social programs and deal with many of the impacts of development, is left out, freezing in the cold, when it comes to determining resource development priorities and sharing in resource development revenues. 

This was to end with the longstanding promise of devolution – the transfer of authority to manage lands and resources from the federal government to the Nunavut government. The last two federal governments endorsed devolution for Nunavut, saying it was time all territorial governments managed their public lands and shared in resource revenues. Yukon, many years ago, and the NWT, as of 2015, have been granted devolution for onshore lands. 

In 2008, both the federal and Nunavut governments signed a devolution protocol. It promised to work towards a meaningful role for Nunavut in managing our rich lands and resources and to discuss Nunavut’s role in Canada’s offshore, where Canada claims sovereignty thanks to millennia of occupation by Nunavut’s Inuit ancestors. 

Here is what Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) proudly proclaims about the devolution protocol on its website: 

“The Protocol proposes a phased approach to devolution negotiations. Negotiations would begin with onshore Crown lands and mineral management, with a commitment from all parties to discuss oil and gas resource management at a future phase of negotiations.” 

What oil and gas resources, I ask you? (These resources) … have been indefinitely taken off the negotiating table, without any consultation with anyone – not the territorial governments, nor the Inuit and Aboriginal peoples of the North – by a deal made behind closed doors in Washington, (between) … the lame duck, outgoing President Obama, and in Ottawa, with new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I was luckier than most. I got a phone call two hours before the announcement was made. 

In the NWT, when the transfer of authority for managing lands and resources was completed on April 1, 2015, the commitment to discuss management of the offshore was immediate – within 60 days of the devolution agreement.  These discussions… (never took) place because of federal inaction … The December 2016 announcement … called for a… moratorium on oil and gas development in Arctic waters in both American and Canadian waters. 

Premiers Peter Taptuna of Nunavut and Bob McLeod of the NWT denounced the ban as “…a step backward in devolution progress.” 

The announcement runs completely counter to the commitment, which was also made in Yukon, to discuss a shared management regime for the offshore. It violates the duty and honour of the Crown to consult Aboriginal people when management or policy decisions may potentially affect the future exploitation of a resource to the detriment of Aboriginal claimants. On top of all that high-handed and cavalier action, a signal was suddenly sent out to the investment community that the Arctic in North America is no longer open for business in the offshore. 

This was particularly surprising coming from a new federal government that has made reconciliation and the building of new relationships with Aboriginal peoples a signature theme of its priorities. Duane Smith, President of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, decried “unilateral decision making” and complained that the decision would “…limit the future prospect of retaining economic and other benefits from these resources within our region.” 

For INAC, this is just a continuation of its historic paternalistic and anachronistic approach, which endures despite changes of governments, and continues to guide its approach to Arctic policy development. 

Officials suggested that this ban could have minimal economic impacts due to a lack of interest in Northern drilling. They told me that they have since engaged with proponents after the fact, and feel even more confident now that there was no future for Arctic oil and gas. Yet, at the Arctic Oil and Gas Symposium in mid-March (2017), I learned that there has been no recent activity in the North because INAC has not issued a call for nominations in some years. This arbitrary decision was taken by INAC under the previous Conservative government and was reinforced by the Trudeau-Obama declaration. 

Canada seems to take its advice from the Toronto-based president of the World Wildlife Fund, who, on the day of the announcement, confidently asserted: “It is quite clear from our work at WWF that risk to nature of drilling is far too great to be worth taking.” 

Yet the facts are that 500 wells have been drilled in the Arctic without any mishaps since the National Energy Program was implemented by Trudeau senior, whose government provided Petroleum Incentive Program grants to encourage companies like Petro Canada and Dome Petroleum to explore and discover our oil and gas potential in the Arctic. And they discovered and capped significant oil and gas resources in the Arctic … The National Energy Board estimates that the Arctic offshore in the NWT holds 7 billion barrels of oil in the Beaufort Sea. The Eastern Arctic is estimated to have as much oil as Saudi Arabia in our Arctic waters. 

The federal government ignored or seemed otherwise unaware of Canada’s stellar Arctic offshore exploration record. It also ignored, and indeed, seemed unaware that the National Energy Board conducted an extensive, thorough and public review of Arctic drilling in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Arctic communities from the Beaufort Sea to Baffin Island were carefully consulted for their views. What emerged from that study was … the NEB’s Emergency Management Program, which sets the bar higher than ever before and allows the board to evaluate, audit, and verify emergency response procedures when considering any application for drilling in Arctic waters. 

All this was ignored or unknown when President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau were impelled by environmentalists – who I call “green colonialists” – to declare North America’s Arctic offshore off limits to investors, who will be driven away from North America and make their investments instead in Nordic countries or the Russian offshore… 

Ottawa has also further undermined its devolution talks with Nunavut by committing to an ambitious goal of protecting at least 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water in Canada, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. This is the so-called 2020 Biodiversity Goals and Targets for Canada. 

According to the Canadian Parks Council, 10.6 per cent, or 1.05 million sq. km of Canada’s terrestrial area, was recognized as protected by the end of 2015. Where will Canada identify the next 6.4 per cent or more of protected lands, or 639,000 sq. km – a bit smaller than Saskatchewan at 651,036 sq. km – to meet its 17 per cent goal?

Stand guard, citizens of Nunavut and the Government of Nunavut. The feds will go where they can play – on Crown lands they still control in Nunavut, which total about 1.7 million sq. km – and the only region in Canada where they can do so without bothering to consult the territorial government, should they so choose. They just did that with the offshore, seemingly without a trace of regret. 

Please, Canada, don’t create any more parks in Nunavut or for that matter in the North. I say we have already done more than our share to contribute to the total amount of protected terrestrial areas in Canada. Of the 20 “mega-parks and protected areas” (those areas exceeding 1 million hectares) in Canada, 14 are in the territories, and 8 of those 14 are wholly or in part in Nunavut. These parks make up 30 per cent of all the parks in Canada. 

Last year, 17 visitors went to Quttinirpaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island. The numbers will swell dramatically if a cruise ship sends a zodiac ashore. How many jobs did those visits create in Resolute Bay or Grise Fiord, the nearest communities, and only a $10,000 charter away. 

Despite continuing, stated commitment by both the Government of Nunavut and NTI to a balanced approach to development, well-funded environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society actively lobbied in Yellowknife and Ottawa against changes to the Nahanni Park boundaries in the NWT to accommodate potential mineral developments. The Pew Foundation’s Oceans North continues to push for an increase in conservation areas, parks and marine conservation areas in Canada’s Arctic waters. 

Of the close to 2.1 million sq. km that make up the total area of Nunavut, 211,996 sq. km, or 10.1 per cent, is designated as protected land, according to Environment Canada. That’s the highest percentage of total protected areas in all of Canada. 

Our challenge now is to stop the federal government from acting unilaterally, as they did with the Arctic oil and gas moratorium, and also to stop taking advantage of Nunavut – the last federal playground – to freeze development potential on more of our onshore land to meet the ambitious national quotas. This is something they would never dare do in provinces, where locally elected provincial governments own the land and resources, and where there is an incentive to find responsible ways to develop resources to pay for social and health programs. 

We must stop the federal government from undermining the spirit of devolution negotiations by foreclosing development options even as negotiations are underway within a framework protocol that calls for territorial involvement in designing the onshore and offshore management regimes. 

And we must work within our own territory to stop the Nunavut Planning Commission from also protecting vast swatches of potential transportation and energy corridors and lands with mineral potential through their grossly imbalanced land use planning process. 

I’ve heard idealistic youth talk of decolonizing our education and social programs in Nunavut. But they don’t complain about the federal government acting like a distant colonial power in declaring large tracts of our lands and waters off limits to development, using federal constitutional powers without consultation with the people of the North. Inuit are at least entitled to negotiate IIBAs for Parks and Marine Conservation areas. The duly elected public government of the Nunavut territory is promised nothing and gets no compensation for what Premier Taptuna has described as  “…a decision which could cripple Nunavut’s future financial independence.” The GN will have to carry on providing health and justice services as well as pay for policing and infrastructure. How can it do that if the opportunities for economic opportunity have been frozen before negotiations even begin? 

In Nunavut, we are facing development prohibitions on Inuit lands, depriving Inuit of business and employment opportunities, and forcing our rapidly growing population to depend on the public sector or income support for sustenance. This is not what Inuit envisioned in their land claim and not what they want for their children today, I can confidently say. I was involved in those negotiations.

Mervin Gruben, former Mayor of Tuktoyaktuk and President of E. Gruben’s Transport said, “We’re trying to be self-reliant and get off social assistance. You get all these environmentalists, and Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund are doing all this stuff and shutting this down, and then they take off. They’re not going to feed us.” 

The federal government is acting in bad faith and prejudicing the economic future of Nunavut. It is disrespecting good faith devolution agreements and is ignoring the letter and spirit of comprehensive land claims agreements. I fear the federal government will continue to treat Nunavut like a last colonial playground where it can seize lands and waters for protected areas to meet arbitrary international standards or campaign pledges set out to woo city dwellers who care about expanding green spaces, even if it will have the effect of forcing large segments of the proud original inhabitants of those lands to live on welfare…

I dream of the day when Nunavut will be self-sustaining and will be a net contributor to the well-being of Canada through the orderly development of its rich natural resource potential – on our own terms and for our own benefit; where our children will see hope and opportunity in employment and business opportunities not just in government and the service sector, but in a diversified mixed economy; where natural resource revenues support vibrant social and cultural programs. 

This is our potential looking forward. Three operating mines in Nunavut are beacons of hope, showing the way forward. And we need not fear devolution. These mines were permitted and operate under rigorous conditions set by our made-in-Nunavut co-management boards. But we are going to have to fight to have Canada honour its commitments to negotiate devolution in good faith. And we are going to have to fight to protect huge tracts of our amazing natural resource potential, onshore and offshore, from being taken away from us by outside forces, including by our own national government.