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Executive Summary

The Arctic is opening up at a rate that continues to astonish. Climate change, the prospect of easier access and transit, and the expectation of long term growth in global demand for oil and gas have evoked unprecedented interest from the world at large and first of all from the eight nations of the region: the Eight are Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States. But while the strategic significance of the Arctic is increasing rapidly, Canada has no strategy for the region in its entirety. This paper aims to start us on the way to one.

Given an extensive frontage on the Arctic Ocean and, after Russia, the largest land holdings in this part of the world, Canada has a great deal at stake in the evolution of the Arctic as an international political region, specifically in the changing proportion of cooperation and conflict among the ice states and in their dealings with non-Arctic states who may want in. Should change favour conflict, not only Canada but the region as a whole will suffer the costs and risks of strategic rivalry and all manner of collaboration foregone. Vigorous cooperation is surely Canada’s preference.

A Canadian strategy will strive to channel the unfolding story of the region in a direction that mutes conflict and enables all to exercise due care in the exploitation and enjoyment of a shared natural environment. Its twin watchwords will be stewardship and sovereignty. Stewardship is defined here as locally informed governance that not only polices but also shows respect and care for the natural environment and living things in it. Stewardship enhances national sovereignty in the conditions of natural and human interdependence that prevail in the Arctic. No way stinting on the need to ensure sovereign possession, a Canadian Arctic strategy will strive for cooperative stewardship throughout the region.

Closely examined for purposes of international cooperation, the Arctic proves to be at most a region of sub-regions. The prerequisites for region-wide cooperation are in short supply. Accordingly, a Canadian strategy will not aim directly at outcomes on specific issues such as adaptation to climate change, management of commercial shipping, or joint emergency preparedness. Instead, it will foster the very capacity for pan-Arctic collaboration. Governed by three interrelated objectives, it will give rise to new initiatives in our bilateral as well as multilateral relations with interested states.

The objectives of the strategy that is envisaged here are:

(1) elevation of Arctic international relations from the official to the highest political level;
(2) engagement first of the United States and, thereby, of the Russian Federation on behalf of cooperative stewardship and
(3) invigoration of regional governance, which is to say the Arctic Council.

Overall, this strategy should see Canada lead the way in making Arctic international relations at once less dependent upon the domestic northern agendas and self-regard of the Eight regional countries, and more responsive to the global priorities and shared interests of non-Arctic states as well as the Eight themselves.

It should see Canada encourage others not so much to commit to the Arctic region as to act on the view that their global interests can be served effectively by new Arctic engagements.

Initiatives to be taken under the strategy are principally:

• Elicit US interest in an Agreement on Basic Principles of Arctic International Relations, patterned on the 1972 BPA on American-Soviet Relations and intended both to encourage Russian stewardship cooperation in exchange for security reassurance and to provide the United States with an opportunity for a new departure in relations with the Russian Federation;
• Lead the Eight to an enlargement of the Arctic Council in which interested and capable non-Arctic states participate freely as consultative parties, making contributions to a new Arctic Fund that are matched by the ice states who continue to hold the consensus of an energized forum that coordinates and supports stewardship cooperation undertaken by varying combinations of Arctic and non Arctic states;
• Stabilize and deepen Arctic relations with the United States by surrounding the Canada-US agreement to disagree on the Northwest Passage with a thickening bodyguard of bilateral cooperation, developing a unified North American approach to the evolution of the Arctic as a region, building stronger ties with Greenland as a North American partner, actively supporting US global arms control and disarmament positions that make for reduced conflict in the Arctic, seeking US agreement to lead jointly in a search and rescue exercise at the North Pole with icebreakers from Arctic and interested non-Arctic states and so on;
• With Germany, discuss access to Canadian high Arctic natural gas reserves, Arctic Council enlargement and Arctic stewardship potential of the Russian proposal for a renewed Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe;
• With China, and also Norway if thought appropriate, discuss potential for joint action to expand pan-Arctic and also transpolar intercontinental trade, together with Arctic Council enlargement and Canadian Arctic gas in conversation with China alone and
• Give priority to Arctic Fund allocations to capacity-building for permanent participants in the Council, and for Russian stewardship.

Of these initiatives in building preconditions for greater cooperative stewardship, engagement of the United States and Arctic Council enlargement are most critical.

Finally, there are preconditions to be met in Canada if we are to lead effectively. The challenge here is one of leadership in a country that, not unlike others of the Eight, is preoccupied with Arctic possessions and unaccustomed to a pan-Arctic view of the region and opportunities to shape the conditions in which sovereignty is exercised. The challenge, as elsewhere, is also one of raising Arctic issues from the bureaucratic to the highest political level. The two dozen recommendations that conclude this paper begin therefore with a proposal that the Prime Minister take personal responsibility for Canada’s future as an Arctic nation and for the creation and execution of an Arctic strategy.