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Arctic Yearbook 2013
Nicol
During Harper‘s recent northern sojourn, Canadians were again inundated with media
images of the Prime Minister taking target practice and making announcements of federal
initiatives focusing on economic development as a key means of ensuring his continued
commitment to the Arctic. But all that attention leaves me wondering why Harper
continues to act as if the Arctic remains at the top of his defence-policy priority list. He
has been making promises for years to bolster a Canadian presence in the Arctic -
especially in the form of the Canadian Forces – but to date, there has been no significant
progress in delivering on his commitments (Murray, 2013).
Still, this perspective is not monolithic. Others were relieved to think that rather than focus on
defence, the Canadian Government was now more interested in securing northern economic
development for its citizens. Indeed, much like the dichotomy between the environment and
resource development in the 1970s, the concept of economic development for northerners, versus
securitization (or more aptly securitization rhetoric) for southerners became a contrasting series of
tropes in the popular press. Parodying the Conservative political vision of the North and its role as
capstone to a ‗unified‘ Canadian state, for example, Hunter (1980) wrote a rather satirical article for
the Globe and Mail in August 2013, following Prime Minster Harper‘s most recent trip to Nunavut
and Operation Nanook:
Back in 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went north of 60 in a fighting mood, with
clenched fists. Surrounded by soldiers in desert camouflage, he talked of defending
Canada's North against all comers, especially harpoon-wielding Vladimir Putin, the
Russian president. Back in 2007, Harper had promised six Polar Class vessels to patrol the
Arctic shoreline, a deep-water station at Nanisivik on Baffin Island near the eastern
entrance to the Northwest Passage, a military training centre at Resolute Bay.
He promised, again, to re-arm and re-equip the Canadian Rangers, the band of happy
warriors who stand on chilly guard for the rest of us. As he said in 2007 of the true North,
strong and free: ―We use it, or lose it.‖
His view of our Arctic has seemed to be the old Cold War version; the North has value
only as a zone of defence for Canada‘s South...It‘s apparent that, despite Putin‘s
pugnaciousness, there are more pressing threats to our northern frontier – things like
pollution from shipping, illegal migration, and trafficking in drugs, weapons and human
beings. So this time on his northern adventure, Harper kept his clenched fists in his parka
pockets. He‘s singing from the songbook prepared for Canada‘s assuming the
chairmanship of the Arctic Council last May – a chair it will fill until 2015.
The new themes are ―development for people of the North‖, ―responsible resource
development‖, ―safe Arctic shipping‖ and ―sustainable circumpolar communities‖
(Hunter, 2013).
By the end of the summer of 2013, at the time of writing, there are other signs that the ‗economic‘
North has begun to resurface as the most important way of situating this region in the news. Not
just a sub-text of the climate change and sovereignty discourse, it has gained traction of its own. As
Table 1 shows, of all the articles published in the major dailies to September 1 of this year (2013), 12
per cent of stories focused upon economic stories, compared to 14 per cent which positioned the
Arctic as an environmental issue. Fewer stories focused upon defence and sovereignty in the North
– only about 9 per cent positioned the North as a vulnerable sovereignty space, or spoke to the