Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Churchill River for introducing the issue of the Arctic into the House. It is a subject which I think has not been prevalent enough in our debates and discussions. He is to be commended for taking this initiative.
He may be aware that our committee, the foreign affairs and international trade committee, a year and a half ago undertook a study, Canada and the Circumpolar World, which was deposited in the House before the last election. The response of the government was subsequently tendered in the House. I will speak to that in a few minutes.
We have to recognize that we share many challenges and opportunities in common with our Arctic neighbours. Canada is seeking solutions to expand a northern co-operation and how our northernness contributes to organizations within the United Nations, Organization of American States and others. The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented process of multilateral co-operation and institution building in the circumpolar north designed to foster circumpolar co-operation in tackling the region's problems and aspirations.
Canada has been an active player in the circumpolar north for many years. It is an area where we have important interests at stake and where we can exercise meaningful influence and leadership. Being clear about our aims will help ensure that we have the greatest possible benefit from our diplomatic, scientific and other international efforts in and concerning the circumpolar region.
From time to time we have pursued specific policies in the region, as with our initiative to establish the Arctic Council to which the member for Churchill River mentioned in his speech.
Vigorous circumpolar institutions and processes are now emerging, and they will play an increasingly important role in facilitating collaboration between governments and the people of the north.
Among the concrete expressions of this emerging circumpolar community is an increase in person-to-person contact. These developments all contribute to a shared vision of responsible action in an increasing number of areas.
That is why this government expressed its intentions in this area in the recent Speech from the Throne:
To advance Canada's leadership in the Arctic region, the Government will outline a foreign policy for the North that enhances co-operation, helps protect the environment, promotes trade and investment, and supports the security of the region's people.
Indeed, many of the complex issues we face as a nation are centred around the direct concerns of northerners. This initiative, therefore, is also in keeping with the prominence the government gives the human security agenda in Canada's foreign policy.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs intends to move forward in this area by examining the possibilities in the trade, investment and transportation sectors by exploring new ways of dealing with the pollutants that threaten the livelihood, lifestyle and often the existence of our northern communities, by seeking new approaches to connect communities and forge partnerships in order to secure a better life for all northerners, and by examining how northern issues, practices and solutions might have an application and expression elsewhere. In other words, he will make the northern agenda a two-way proposition.
With this in mind, the government is working on a comprehensive new document called “The Northern Dimension of Canada's Foreign Policy” which will be ready by the end of this year.
At the beginning of my remarks I made reference to the report that the foreign affairs and international trade committee filed in the House entitled Canada and the Circumpolar World. The Government of Canada's response was filed in the House. In our report we raised many of the issues that the hon. member for Churchill River raised in his speech. It recognizes the nature of the northern community and its specificity, yet also how it links to the south and our neighbours.
In the course of preparing our report, the members of the House had the opportunity to travel to Russia and the northern nations that are our neighbours and of speaking to the people in our circumpolar region. We learned that there is much work to be done there to integrate members of the northern community into what is taking place in the world.
I believe strongly that the formation of the Arctic Council was an extremely important part of that community building. If our northern neighbours in our own country are to affirm their specificity and develop a life for themselves which guarantees the preservation of their lifestyle, surely the member for Churchill River will agree with me that one of the best ways to ensure this is to ensure they have strong collaborative links with people of similar aspirations and backgrounds who are their real neighbours in the north. I am speaking of people in northern Russia, northern Finland, northern Norway, northern Sweden and Greenland. These are people who share similar aspirations and cultures, people with whom our citizens in Canada, in northern Quebec, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, can be in daily contact with through the Internet. They have regular communications.
They also have something else and totally new in the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is an unusual international organization. It brings the members of the Arctic nations together, not only the countries I have already spoken about but also the United States of America. Through Alaska, the United States is an arctic nation.
In the Arctic Council there is a relationship that has been developed that is very unusual in international law; that is, the role of the aboriginal peoples of the north to actually have the right to participate in the deliberations and actively be involved in the Arctic Council. That is an extremely important innovation in an international institution and an innovation that we can learn from in other international institutions where, as members of the House know, there is considerable concern today that individuals do not have relationships with huge international organizations like the WTO or even the United Nations.
What is happening in the Arctic through the Arctic Council is that the aboriginal peoples who live there are having an input into an important part of what is not only Canadian foreign policy, but the development of their lifestyles in that area.
We all know that northern issues are complex, ranging from the questions of sovereignty and defence to issues of industrial and commercial development, new trading relationships and transportation routes, environmental protection, research and education, health and social development, and the promotion of cultural diversity.
The circumpolar community embraces some of Canada's most important foreign policy partners, as I believe I have demonstrated, from the Nordics and the EU to the U.S.A. and Russia. Only by working together and building on the broad community of regional organizations from the Arctic to the Barents Council and promoting co-operation, coherence, and synergies between and among them, is Canada better able to move forward on these many issues that tend to be transboundary concerns.
The end of the cold war has opened new possibilities for co-operation with Russia and the Baltic states. There are also exciting new possibilities for partnership with other countries of the north, particularly Russia, the Baltic states and with various communities within the north, particularly the indigenous peoples operating through the Arctic Council and other institutions that we can build in the future.
We know of the Nordic Council, the Council of Baltic Sea States, the Barents Council and the Arctic Council. They are four important institutions that have been developed in the north to enable an international dimension to be brought to the existence and preservation of indigenous people.
I conclude by saying to the member that perhaps in my remarks I have not addressed his specific concern about the 55th parallel, but I did want to bring to the debate a dimension which I thought was important. I remind the House that the Arctic is a region of Canada that is part of a circumpolar region. Its development, the development of its people, their survival, their way of life and their existence in the global community will only be preserved if we bear in mind their relationship to their Arctic neighbours and our relationship to our Arctic neighbours and the way in which we work together in these important international institutions.
I urge the hon. member opposite who has brought this matter before the House not only to bear in mind the issues which he raised in his speech, which I think were very appropriate, but also those other issues of foreign policy which I think we have to focus on if we are going to guarantee that the indigenous peoples of the north will preserve their way of life.
I believe that the government through the activities of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is doing exactly that. The government is focusing on not only the domestic dimension of this issue but the international one.