Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Anja Jeffrey. I am the director for the Centre for the North, an initiative within the Conference Board of Canada. I am here today with Heidi Martin, the lead author of a new report that we published in November 2011 called “Building Labour Fo

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. I think your comment is a testament to the fact that even though there is an overarching and very broad political support for Canada's north, when it comes down to the actual implementation of initiatives, there's a lack of knowledge on the ground of what's

Human Resources committee  I have no specific answer to that.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Just a few words about me. My name is Anja Jeffrey. I'm a Danish national, but I live in Canada now. My background is in foreign policy. I was a career diplomat with the Danish foreign service for 17 years. I've had two overseas postings, o

Foreign Affairs committee  May I address the last question first?

Foreign Affairs committee  The Centre for the North was established in 2009. It's a five-year initiative. That's the mandate of the centre. The Conference Board of Canada is a not-for-profit, independent institution. Everything the Conference Board of Canada does needs to be funded. It has no endowments, a

Foreign Affairs committee  All right. The next question is about the governance model of Denmark and Greenland, which is very different from that of Canada, of course. Denmark is effectively the Kingdom of Denmark, so it consists of Denmark, the Faeroe Islands, and Greenland. Greenland has self-government,

Foreign Affairs committee  The report on housing contains four innovative case studies. One of them is in Iqaluit, where they're now building houses above code, and one of them is on reserve, where the Holmes Group has worked very closely with the band and council to build housing that goes above code. A

Foreign Affairs committee  Prior to the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit—that was when Copenhagen hosted the COP/MOP—the then minister of the environment, who's now an EU commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, took a number of delegations from around the world up to Ilulissat, Greenland. Ilulissat is where

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, there are scientific data out there that will show that the glacier moves a lot faster, and that the glacier is melting underneath, so it's pushing it out into the ocean, and that too has an effect on the ocean itself and fish stocks and these sorts of things. That's the wa

Foreign Affairs committee  The window for building anything in the Arctic is short, as we know. One of the case studies we have in the report—and that's the one that pertains to Nunavut—demonstrates that you can actually, in the factories in the south, create the types of panels and other units that you ca

Foreign Affairs committee  In a certain sense, we're working on a project right now on the economic impact of developments in northern marine waters. We're going to do that project a little differently. We're working with an advisory.... We're going to come up with a report. Then we're going to have a hear

Foreign Affairs committee  Within the centre mandate, I'm going to take all of the research that we've done—and we have a lot more in the pipe—and I'm going to write an interim report: What does the research tell us? What are the predominant themes and what are the linkages? What's going on in the north? T

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. I think it really comes down to the people aspect: if we do not invest in the people, then I don't think we have a viable Arctic. Who's going to live in Alert if they're not looked after to a certain extent?

Foreign Affairs committee  I find it really interesting that the federal government is investing in an Arctic research station, which I think is going to be a good thing, but not in a deep sea water port. Right now, the Yukon is looking to Skagway. They're looking to Alaska. Infrastructure gaps are one o