Reason to hope

Not since John Diefenbaker has a Canadian prime minister ever promised as much to northern Canadians as Paul Martin promised this week, when he announced that he’ll work with territorial governments and aboriginal people to create an overarching northern strategy.

To say that this is long overdue is an understatement.

Canada has controlled most of the lands that now make up the three territories since 1871 and the Arctic Islands since 1882. But throughout all those years, Canada has never quite figured out how to handle that enormous responsibility.

This week, Paul Martin gave notice to northerners, and to the rest of the country, that now is the time to answer that question. That’s what the “northern strategy” is intended to do: create a plan stating what the federal government should, or should not do for northern Canada.

For starters, that means finishing long overdue agreements giving territorial governments control over public lands and natural resources. We hope it also means an honest acknowledgment of the many areas where the federal government has failed, and realistic, practical commitments to do better. Housing, the justice system, infrastructure, scientific research and the northern fishery are all areas that are crying out for action, not just for better planning.

For decades, the federal government has responded to the peoples of the northern territories in a confused, haphazard manner, marked by the evasion of serious issues until they can be evaded no longer.

Canada negotiated land claim agreements in the North only because it was forced to, and even now, federal officials mostly rely on a narrow, legalistic approach in their implementation of the Nunavut land claim agreement. At other times, the federal government has tended to respond to social crises only when it becomes too embarrassing not to.

At the same time, the long list of federal government departments and agencies responsible for providing various services to Nunavut and the other territories often seem to be working at cross-purposes. One example is how the Coast Guard decided to close its Iqaluit station before the shipping season ended this fall – in a year when the Department of National Defence vowed to make Arctic waters more secure.

Another is the creation of Nunavut itself. Federal government officials still brag about Nunavut when they’re abroad, seemingly oblivious to Nunavut’s worsening housing and infrastructure crises. The dream of Nunavut has soured badly, in part because of bad decisions made by some Nunavut leaders, but mostly because of federal government neglect.

Paul Martin says he wants to change all that, and until he demonstrates otherwise, we should take him at his word. As finance minister, he did what he promised: eliminate the deficit.

And when was the last time you heard a prime minister say something like this? “I don’t know how you can say you are a Canadian, unless you have a deep love and deep commitment to northern Canada.”

One of Martin’s more heartening gestures was in bringing out a large group of cabinet ministers to accompany him while he made his northern strategy announcement. We hope this sends a strong signal to the rest of his cabinet, and to the federal civil service, that Canada can no longer ignore what until now has been its most ignored region.

And if Martin can keep his promises, northern residents have good reason to hope that his government will survive the current minority parliament, and that he will remain prime minister for as long as it takes to finish the job he started this Tuesday.