Thank you.
Last September we launched the most ambitious initiative in the Conference Board's history--we've been in existence since 1954--the Centre for the North. It's a five-year project. It's only about eight months old, and we started back in September. At the moment, 38 organizations are involved as part of our leaders round table. They've met twice, once in Yellowknife last September and just three weeks ago in Whitehorse.
The purpose of this centre is to help stakeholders achieve a sharp vision of sustainable prosperity for the north and prescribe actions to realize it. Our goal is that within five years we will have engaged those stakeholders, with a view of developing the policies, strategies, and actions that will be required to realize that vision.
I don't have much about the actions required in terms of recommendations today, because we are just eight months into this process, but I want to talk to you about what we're doing and bring you up to date on some of the activities.
First of all, this centre is guided by seven principles, one of which is a holistic approach.
We must adopt a holistic approach, since the interdependence between factors is so great that, if we were to study only one dimension, we would miss the boat.
The second principle is engagement and the co-operation between Aboriginal groups. These groups are an important part of the North. The engagement is not necessarily about supporting the Aboriginal issues themselves, but it is about incorporating the Aboriginal situation in the overall context of northern development and prosperity.
We also have a short-term and long-term perspective. We can take actions starting now, like actions that address structural problems. For example, climate change issues are rather long-term and we would need more time to address them appropriately.
Another principle is the northern perspective. The northern development ministers' council borrowed our perspective. Canada's north takes up more than 80% of our territory. That corresponds not only to three territories, but also to the northern regions of seven of our ten provinces.
In order to come up with our program, we created a diagram.
It's called a research framework that we presented last fall that really resonated with the stakeholders. It has three foundation themes. One deals with thriving communities, another with economic development, and a third with security and sovereignty. Within that there are five cross-cutting themes, which represent the challenges we're facing. Mr. Martell talked about some of those, such as transportation and other infrastructure; the whole challenge of human capital, not only in terms of education, but in terms of training and development; and the attraction and retention of highly skilled people.
There are other challenges that tend to be more sensitive. For example, there's the whole issue of governance and policy-making, and the stakeholders who have the responsibility to make those policy decisions having the capacity to make the right types of policies.
A fourth challenge has to do with healthy populations. Mr. Martell mentioned the challenge of health care. I think we also have to look at the broader determinants of health, which include housing, education, income support, and other social factors.
Finally, environmental sustainability is going to be key.
In terms of our work, at the moment we're working on the three foundational themes and laying the groundwork of what we're talking about. As part of the thriving communities, we're finding there are about 1,700 northern communities, each with their own characteristics and challenges. The challenge we're currently facing is how to define a thriving community within a northern context. We have been approaching northerners to get some input into that. People have different ideas on what that means, but some common elements are coming forward. As part of it, though, we're noticing major information gaps. We're trying to get hold of the economic, social, and environmental landscape of each of those communities.
Unfortunately, that data does not exist. It exists for some components, but not for all. It's going to be a challenge for those who want to do some in-depth work in terms of that and make any headway. We're looking at how to address it through various means. Economic development and thriving communities go hand in hand, so it's a question of how we link those two, moving forward.
When we were looking at economic development, we were examining the economic potential of the north. At the moment, the north is dependent on natural resources and on public services. Those are the two main sectors that exist in the north, and they will continue to play a major part in the north. In terms of public services, it's only government departments, and it also includes education, health care, and social services.
There are also some emerging opportunities. Though they're very small at this time, they could grow in terms of potential. That includes areas such as tourism, fisheries, agriculture, and environmental services.
As part of this, we started looking at mapping this economic potential. Very major differences exist among the territories and the northern regions of the provinces. The richest at the moment tend to be the Northwest Territories and northern Alberta. One of the poorest tends to be Nunavut. So some challenges and opportunities exist in each of these regions, but there are different stages.
The Northwest Territories are doing so well because of diamond mining. Look at that territory pre-diamond mining activity and post-diamond mining activity, and there's a stark difference between what happened before and after.
In northern Alberta we know it's because of the energy development that is taking place in its oil sands.
Nunavut and other regions have great potential in terms of that, but they haven't tapped into it so far because of the challenges they're facing.
The other aspect we're dealing with is the issue of security and sovereignty. I know this group is not necessarily focusing on Arctic sovereignty, though it is a major issue. But northern security is very critical, and community security is very critical to economic development and to thriving communities.
What we're finding at this time is that even the experts in the field don't have a comprehensive view of what are the threats and vulnerabilities facing Canada's north. That is something we will need to address moving forward. It can be part of the plans.
So that's basically some of the work we are doing.
We are also extending our outreach efforts with a program called Northwords, where we are using a hub and spoke approach with key representatives of the seven provinces in terms of the northern presence, and each of the three territories. We are seeing how we can do that outreach and seeking the information required for the work we're going to be doing and feeding back to them the information and implications of that research.
Another thing that we're going to be doing is launching a portal, so that everyone, including you, can access it. It will have an interactive map and information from the research we're going to be doing.
One of the things we are developing is the “Here, the North” series, mapping through a series of socio-economic indicators the differences among the northern regions and the differences between the south and the north. As we're looking at these various indicators, we're finding that the line that has been drawn by the ministers of northern development is actually a real line and could actually be the most significant line in Canada. It is one that really brings to bear some of the realities, whether we're dealing with differences in educational attainment, in income per capita, or in terms of housing, and especially the issue of crowded housing. What we're going to be doing through this is sensitizing Canadians about the Canadian northern reality and moving forward with respect to that.
So in a nutshell, those are the main comments I want to make in my opening remarks. We have very little to say so far about our research findings, because we're just in the process of doing it, but I'm willing to answer any questions you may have.