A northern exploration fraught with danger

Poverty, dysfunction stand in way of Harper’s bold mining dream

social dysfunction. It is a daunting task, with no assured outcomes. What is clear, now, is that the Conservatives intend to make the attempt.

Thursday morning, the PM appeared before a small crowd of locals to deliver the day’s pre-packaged news — a $100-million investment in geo-mapping, intended to lay bare the underground riches of the North. The goal is to send geologists fanning out across the Arctic Archipelago, first by air and then on the ground, to create a map that will guide mining firms in their own future explorations.

While he spoke, Inuit children played outside on a dirt field, as beat-up pickup trucks and fourwheelers raced along all-gravel roads, among the modular buildings that make up this hamlet of 2,358.

Rankin Inlet, high on the northwest shore of Hudson Bay, is one of three regional centres in Nunavut, alongside Cambridge Bay and the capital of Iqaluit. Though clearly better off than communities farther north, Rankin looks and feels like a Third World town — right down to the choking dust and chaotic traffic. Respiratory ailments, one resident told me, are rife, particularly among the elderly.

The unemployment rate is 13.5 per cent — twice the national average. In some communities it’s as high as 80 per cent. The rate of reported violent crime against family members is 11 times the national average and about 30 per cent higher than in the Northwest Territories, according to the Nuvanut Bureau of Statistics. Between 1999 and 2011, the territorial homicide rate doubled, to more than 12 times the national average. Nearly 40 per cent of Nunavut’s population of 34,000 is receiving social assistance. The suicide rate is 10 times the national average.

Despite this, Inuit and territorial leaders have adopted a cautious line about the prime minister’s visit, welcoming investment while quietly reminding visitors they are grappling with a social crisis right now. Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak told reporters Thursday she welcomed the geo-mapping initiative. She also noted that Nunavut received a $100-million, two-year infusion in the 2013 budget to build 250 new homes. Aariak added, however, that the territory needs 3,000 new homes to redress its housing shortage, and 90 builds a year for a decade just to “close the gap.”

Nunavut’s coastal communities have no adequate small-craft harbour, Aariak said. And though commercial fishing is growing, the catch must be off-loaded in Newfoundland or Greenland due to a lack of facilities here. Moreover, federal-territorial discussions about devolution, which many people here hope will eventually lead to virtual autonomy, are moving at a glacial pace.

Simmering in the middle distance — and at the crux of a meeting Thursday with Harper, senior cabinet ministers and Inuit leaders — is the concept of “Inuit Nunangat,” or “Inuit homeland.” This is a movement to recognize that Canada’s 56,000 Inuit live everywhere above the tree line, including in northern Quebec and Labrador, and not ac- cording to any provincial boundary. It is the beginning of a drive, in other words, for a supra-provincial Inuit polity.

The mining industry has concerns of its own. Should all the projects envisioned for the next decade go ahead, Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada director Ross Gallinger told me, the industry will require 100,000 new workers — many of them skilled — to meet demand. That’s roughly the population of all three territories combined.

The government is, of course, aware of the prize at stake, even beyond the jobs; an estimated 12 billion barrels of oil and 150 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, not to mention untold riches in precious metals, base metals and rare earths. Harper and his ministers speak about this incessantly. Intriguingly, though, when asked to say why all Canadians should care, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver cites Nunavut’s social crisis first. “All Canadians want to see all other Canadians do well,” he told me. “There’s a human element. Doing what’s right is critical.”

It would be easy, given the Conservative government’s mania for economics messaging, to wave that sentiment aside. Here’s what’s intriguing: People here, those who have the most to gain or lose, aren’t doing so — at least, not yet. “I’m very happy the PM is interested in the Arctic,” says ITK’s Terry Audla, who grew up in Resolute Bay. As long as development is responsible and sustainable, and as long as the Inuit can use it to become self-sufficient, he said, they will support it.

Here’s what it boils down to: If all this federal interest generates viable projects that yield measurable job growth and gains in living standards, within a reasonable time frame, then the Tories will have the makings of a major win on their hands. If they fail, or if it shows mixed results, they can still say they tried harder than any previous government has. It is clever. It is, indeed, the right thing to do. And it just may work. For years, observers have speculated about what legacy Harper will seek to leave, when he goes. This looks like it may be it.