Foreign Affairs committee  I think the real challenge on ecosystem-based management again is to understand what the phrase means. The Norwegians don't even like that phrase. They like the ecosystem approach, because it's not actually management based in the ecosystem. Secondly, it's not managing the ecosystem; it's managing human activity within the ecosystem.

Foreign Affairs committee  I think I prefer the Norwegian one. The Norwegians are much better, I find, when I work with them on the English language than I am. I think the ecosystem approach is closer to what we're getting at. We're looking at the ecosystems, but they're not watertight compartments. Of course, what do you do with ecosystem-based management when the actual impacts are from outside: transboundary pollutants and climate change?

Foreign Affairs committee  They're global.

Foreign Affairs committee  Certainly. It's been a remarkable and quite amazing evolution, in my view. There are a lot of detractors, but the process took time. Sustainable development was not based on any kind of theoretical or definitional approach. The States didn't want to define it at the front end, so it started off as a collection of projects, and the projects were simply approved based on who was interested and who had money to do them.

Foreign Affairs committee  There already are those kinds of regional fisheries management organizations. There's a very well-known scientific body based in Arctic Russia called PINRO, which does a lot of work with the Norwegians, for example, on Barents Sea fish stocks. That is an area that has been fished for some time.

Foreign Affairs committee  I haven't reviewed it and I have therefore no comments. David?

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't have the staff to allow us to get through the volume of papers that are being generated, and it's huge. Would we like to? Absolutely. At some point it's more important for us to know who's doing what work, as opposed to knowing what's within the walls of their reports.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll start and then let Dave finish, because it's a very good question. We're almost an amalgamation of two bodies in the U.S.: the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and the polar board, which does more with the Antarctic side of things for the U.S. Their focus is primarily on research and I think on coordinating departmental and agency thinking on Arctic research in the U.S.

Foreign Affairs committee  The Russians are tough to engage. In our council role, I worked very closely with the Russians for their chairmanship of the Arctic Council from 2006 to 2008. It's a different approach. They're a little less keen on the information sharing side of things. It's not a natural sort of process for them since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Foreign Affairs committee  It does make it difficult. The other part that's very tough when working with Russians is to know where they stand in terms of their official responsibilities and whether they actually are official spokespersons for a ministry, an agency, or whatever. It is still a bit of a black hole for us, I think, in our day-to-day work.

Foreign Affairs committee  It is a very interesting initiative. It's one that actually originated in Canada back around the time of the Iqaluit ministerial meeting in 1998. The people who first came up with the idea sat down at that meeting and put it forward. It's a very worthwhile approach. They're trying to come up with curricula that are relevant to northerners, and to allow people, through Internet capabilities, to actually study in their resident communities without needing to go south if they don't want to.

Foreign Affairs committee  Okay. No, we haven't met with either of the ministers yet on those priorities. We have offered to assist. Our invitation hasn't been taken up as yet; I think there are a lot of things going on. In terms of the priorities, as mentioned, they are set in the Kiruna ministerial meeting in May 2013, and that will be done in collaboration with our Arctic state partners.

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. It's important to learn from one's mistakes. I think we are actually doing it differently—certainly since I began working on these issues more than 30 years ago. The first and biggest step in that “doing it differently” approach was, of course, the settlement of land claim and self-government agreements.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's not just Ottawa. I'm certainly not just blaming Ottawa. That's not the point. It's the whole southern interest recently in the Arctic. In 2005 you might have seen the occasional article on the Arctic. From 2006 on, it's almost every cover of every magazine you could imagine in some form.

Foreign Affairs committee  I spent the first 30 years of my career asking people to pay attention to the Arctic, and I have to say I'm not sure I should have wished for that quite so vehemently.