You bet, and thanks for the opportunity to present.
There are three parts to the presentation that I want to provide today. One is just putting some context around the north and Canada's northern or Arctic foreign policy. Second, I want to identify two particular areas that I think would be worthwhile for the Canadian government to focus on. The last part is to look at a couple of challenges I think Canada confronts around building knowledge and support around Canada's Arctic foreign policy.
First, and I'm stealing a bit from the title of a book that I thought was a very thoughtful one by Laurence C. Smith, The World in 2050, and looking at northern futures in a circumpolar context, of course Canada is one of the major players, the second largest after Russia. There are four areas that are going to frame and shape the future of the north, particularly international relations in the north.
One, of course, is globalization and the increased interaction globally and interest in the north, but also among the Arctic partners themselves. Really over the last 25 years it has accelerated in the circumpolar north.
The second, of course, is natural resources and the demand for natural resources, which are abundant in the circumpolar region. It's no secret to anyone here that this demand is only going to increase, driven by a third factor, which of course is demographic changes. The demographic change in areas such as India, China, and Brazil, and so on, in those humming economies, is going to put further pressure on resource demand, not only as their economies grow but actually as their populations grow as well.
Climate change is also a very important factor, and everyone knows potentially for transportation, shipping...though less likely a factor for Canada, but destination shipping certainly will be.
The last, the fifth, would be in the area of governance, particularly around devolution, the increasing illegal regime in the north, and around aboriginal rights and the empowerment of aboriginal peoples, not only in Canada but in other circumpolar countries.
Those factors are going to play a significant role in the nature and context of circumpolar relations and how we should look at Canadian Arctic foreign policy and northern policy. I'm sure the committee has heard many things in repeating patterns on what Canada ought to do, but I want to bring in two in particular that may have less attention than what conventionally gets brought forward. One is the need to bring in the provincial north, and the second is to establish greater leadership and capacity building.
On the first one, the provincial north, one of the challenges that comes up in Arctic Council, comes up in other circumpolar Arctic foreign policy discussions, is that the provincial north is almost always excluded or not included in considerations of Canada's northern or Arctic policy, and really I think that's to the detriment of Canada. It's certainly detrimental to northerners. If you look at the provincial north, we're looking at about 1.5 million people, whether they are in northern British Columbia, northern Ontario, northern Quebec, Labrador. That region contains most of Canada's natural resource wealth. Linking that with the territorial north, I think, is critically important as we move forward in the 21st century in defining Canada's northern foreign policy.
There is a natural community of interest between residents of the provincial and territorial north, everything from the climate to the bio-environment, the economies, and demographics. Just to point out one example, northern Saskatchewan, the northern administrative district, which is roughly half the territory of the province of Saskatchewan, has a higher aboriginal population as a percentage than does the territory of Nunavut.
The second area is in terms of leadership and capacity building.
It is probably well known to members of the committee that Canada is the only country of the Arctic eight that doesn't have a university in its Arctic region, so that focus on education is important. There's been a greater focus on research, but I think it's important to bring in the circumpolar and, as a dimension of our foreign policy, build those education and research linkages.
But I wouldn't stop there in terms of establishing leadership and capacity building. It's more than training and research or education and research. It also means we are building stronger businesses, business linkages, economic linkages, and government linkages, particularly municipal, first nations, Métis, and Inuit organizations and governments, and obviously territorial and provincial north government organizations.
Where there's been success, especially in the Barents region, in terms of building economic and governance capacity, there's been considerable effort placed by those governments, as part of their foreign policies, on business-government linkages and building capacity in the north.
One other area that's worthy of consideration is military investment and greater military investment in our Canadian north. If you look in comparison to other regions, such as Alaska, northern Norway, northern Sweden, the investments in military facilities, for instance, have had very important civilian spinoffs, in everything from telecommunications to research capacity and so forth. The University of Alaska Fairbanks would not be the world-class research institution in geophysics, environmental research, and so on were it not for the investments around the U.S. military. I think that's really important to state.
In northern Norway, for example, not only is there northern air command, but the national air command is based in Bodø, Norway. Again, that creates a hub of activity and resources that help northern regions in terms of economic opportunities, capacity building, communications and so forth.
A final dimension that I want to bring to the presentation is about the challenges for building Canadian support around our northern policy and interest in engagement. The reality is that Canada, for the most part, is a southern country in terms of its population, though certainly not in terms of its geographic land mass. Most of the population, as is well known, lives within a couple hundred kilometres of the United States border.
There are two other demographic changes that I think present a challenge for Canada. Number one is the number of intergenerational urban Canadians. If we look at 30 years ago, most Canadians either came from a rural area or had relatives living in a rural area. The natural connection to northern, rural, and aboriginal issues was certainly much stronger then. What we've had over the last 30 years is a shift. You have intergenerational urban Canadians, and there aren't the natural linkages to the rural areas, or to the north or aboriginal issues. I think that plays heavily, to our detriment, in terms of the connection to the importance of Canada's northern foreign policy.
The second demographic change is new Canadians. New Canadians are critically important to the past, present, and future of Canada. Culturally, economically, and so forth, new Canadians bring a vitality to the country. Most new Canadians settle in urban areas. Half of those people in Canada's largest city were not born in Canada. Just as with intergenerational urban Canadians, there isn't a natural connection to rural Canada, northern Canada, or aboriginal Canada.
In terms of garnering greater support and interest—because it's in Canada's interest to be engaged in our northern foreign policy—I think those two demographics need to be addressed in a systematic way. If we add that to the emphasis on leadership and capacity building in the fullest dimension, as well as a very concerted and explicit effort to include the provincial north in Canada's foreign policy, I think those would be worthwhile considerations as Canada moves forward.
Thank you.