Prime Minister Stephen Harper shifted his
political message in the North Thursday after he met Nunavut Premier Eve
Aariak and faced media questions about the immense social challenges
here.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, kneeling, is joined by Natural Resources
Minister Joe Oliver, left, and Harper's wife, Laureen, second from
left, Denis St-Onge of the Geological Survey of Canada, second from
right, and geologist Donna Kirkwood as they examine some of the
geological features of Rankin Inlet.
RANKIN INLET,
NUNAVUT—On a day he intended to highlight more money for mining
development, Prime Minister Stephen Harper shifted his political message
in the North after he met Nunavut Premier Eve Aariak and faced media
questions about the immense social challenges here.
Those had largely gone
unmentioned by the prime minister during his eighth annual Arctic tour.
Instead it has focused on resource development and Arctic sovereignty.
Thursday was also supposed to boost the prime minister’s credentials as a supporter of basic science.
In Rankin Inlet, on
the northwest coast of Hudson’s Bay, Harper, who is frequently
criticized for failing to back scientific research and accused of
muzzling scientists, threw his weight behind a major geological research
project and brought geologists along to tell everyone about it.
The Conservative
government will extend for another seven years a $100-million program
that was begun in 2008 and due to end this year. The same amount of
money will now stretch over the extension.
Its goal is to
complete the geological mapping of Canada’s North by 2020 — a move
Harper promised would boost mineral exploration and development,
bringing jobs to places like Rankin Inlet.
But in a territory where housing needs are overwhelming, family violence clogs courts, and a major study says the
suicide rate has stubbornly remained about 10 times the national average for the past 40 years, the social problems are overwhelming.
Nunavut reporters
asked the prime minister if he’s left social problems up to the
territorial governments, or if he thinks economic development will
naturally bring social development along with it.
Harper said: “I think that is both true and not true.”
Economic development
is “critical to social development” and can help provide flows of
private money “which can be, frankly, much greater than governments can
ever create.”
He said creating jobs
and opportunities for people “are important objectives in their own
right” and added governments will continue to provide a range of social
services, such as health and education. “But I think the most important
thing for economic development is to give people jobs and
opportunities.”
The geo-mapping money was welcomed by Aariak.
The premier told
reporters it was needed, and she appreciated the $100 million in the
last federal budget for 250 housing units, but the needs of Nunavut are
so great, Ottawa must invest more in its basic infrastructure.
A study showed Nunavut
needs 3,000 housing units immediately, and 90 units built each year for
10 years just to keep pace with its population growth. More than half
Nunavut’s population is under age 25.
She linked it directly
to many other social challenges: “Suicide, drop-out rates at the high
school, health issues are all connected to lack of housing, lack of
infrastructure. Everything is connected. If a child is living under a
roof where there is a space to do her studies, and well-rested and
well-fed, just imagine how far that child can go.”
Aariak said the
government of Nunavut cannot do it alone “because the money that we get
from the federal government is enough to run our territory but not
necessarily to develop it.”
Inuit Tapiriit
Kanatami president Terry Audla spoke to reporters, with PMO advisers
listening in, and said Inuit welcome resource development and have long
been concerned about “how can we slow those sad numbers. We’re number
one for all the wrong reasons: highest suicide rates, highest drop out
rates.”
“I’ve heard (the prime
minister) use the phrase a rising tide will raise all boats. I’m
confident that if resource development is done in consultation with
Inuit . . . and Inuit are at the steering wheel, if that happens, in my
opinion the social ills that we face right now hopefully will be
diminished.”
Audla then headed into a meeting of Inuit leaders with Harper.
Cameras recorded the
beginning of the encounter. Billed as merely a photo opportunity, Harper
now had a different goal in mind — to communicate concern for all
people here, not just resource developers.
“We have all shared goals in seeing strong, healthy and prosperous Inuit families and communities,” said Harper.
“We see progress being
made, we also recognize there are also big changes in terms of the
rapidity of historic development, stresses on the environment, social
challenges that we all have, but I think everybody here today is
extremely positive about the potential opportunities for the next
generation of young Inuit people.”
Weather
later prevented Harper from going to nearby Marble Island to look at
the local geology there. On Friday, his last day in the north, he
travels to Raglan Mine, in northern Quebec in the Inuit territory known
as Nunavik.
The government’s geo-mapping initiative identifies what areas to map with an eye on promoting mining development.
Called Geo-Mapping for
Energy and Minerals (GEM), the surveys are conducted in consultation
with provinces, industry, and aboriginal groups.
It is a crucial program, say all sides.
“People are still
using geo-science information that was done at the turn of the last
century — the 1900s,” said Ross Gallinger, head of Prospectors and
Developers Association of Canada, who flew from Toronto to hear Harper’s
remarks.
He said it will drive
some $500 million worth of mining exploration in the coming years. But
he added there are public uses for the information beyond private
interests. “There are all kinds of uses for it, public land use,
aboriginal land claims, environmental assessment and public health and
safety.”
For geologists at Natural Resources Canada’s Geological Survey, it’s a welcome extension.
Dr. Denis St-Onge of
the Geological Survey of Canada said academic researchers at
universities do not have the resources and support necessary to
undertake the kind of detailed probes in remote areas that are required,
and industry itself does not do this kind of work because of its
enormous costs with no guarantee of a mineral strike.
“Google Earth shows
topography and landscape forms. It doesn’t show you the composition of
rocks. You have to be on the ground with a hammer,” he said, with a
grin.
The nitty-gritty hard
work of bringing in geologists by helicopter to remote regions to sample
and analyze the rocks and point the way to potential mineral deposits
worth exploring is done by public servants.
St-Onge said only 40
per cent of Canada is mapped to an “appropriate” level, considered to be
a scale of 1-250:000 — or 1 cm for every 500 metres — with vast swaths
of the country, especially the North, just generally surveyed. He said
seven years won’t complete the mapping of all of Canada, but the North
“is possible.”
Harper said the
program so far has produced more than 700 maps and reports and “as
direct consequence, private investors are now looking for nickel on the
Melville Peninsula, searching for diamonds on Baffin Island, and copper,
silver and gold deposits have been found in Yukon.”
“Some of these maps show where gold, silver, cobalt and diamond may be found, just over an hour north of here, by helicopter.”
Source : TheStar
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