NEWS ANALYSIS
Canada’s Arctic sovereignty was just challenged by the United States, and it also received overtures from China, but an expert says that while international attention on the Arctic is not new, it underscores Canada’s lack of success in the region.
Ken Coates, a University of Saskatchewan public policy professor and native of Yukon, says international interest in the Arctic piques from time to time and that’s when Canada reacts. But normally, Canada isn’t sufficiently focused on Arctic issues and isn’t “terribly credible as an Arctic nation on a global scale.”
He also nixes the narrative that there is tremendous interest in the Arctic.
“The symbolic importance of the Arctic is often greater than its practical significance,” said Coates, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s senior fellow in Aboriginal and Northern Canadian issues, in an interview.
One reality is that the development of Inuit lands by Canada remains stuck in low gear while international attention may be becoming increasingly tempting for Indigenous peoples.
Sovereignty claims over the Northwest Passage, potentially a key shipping route, continue to be in dispute, and the Canadian government and the Inuit are not backing down.
An example of the “episodic interest” came with the Arctic Council ministerial meeting in Finland in early May, followed by China’s first hosting of the Arctic Circle forum with 500 participants from 30 nations in Shanghai.
When U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated the Trump administration’s dispute of Canadian claims in his speech to the Arctic Council, he also expressed his wariness of Chinese expansion goals.
