Trudeau defends Arctic ban

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to give ground on his unilateral decision late last year to suspend oil and natural gas development in Arctic waters.

But he assured hundreds of people at a town hall meeting in Yellowknife on Feb. 10 that the freeze will remain open to review every five years.

In the interim, Trudeau said his government will turn its attention to working with territorial governments “to ensure we are opening many more doors of economic opportunity,” without giving any indication what sectors he has in mind.

For now, he has chilled relationships with the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, who are unhappy with the lack of consultation over the drilling ban.

NWT Premier Bob McLeod has insisted Trudeau notified him of the announcement only minutes before it was made.

Trudeau defended the ban by arguing that “quite frankly, it has never been determined that (Arctic drilling) can be done safely.

“We make decisions based on science,” he said. “And that’s why we are working with the North, with communities, with premiers, with scientists, to establish the framework so that we can evaluate every five years ... to make sure that the moratorium is still relevant.

“But what we’ve done now is we’re starting from a place where the ocean and the Arctic ecosystems will be protected by default,” while other potential economic opportunities are explored, Trudeau said.

Rob Huebert, a political science professor at the University of Calgary and an Arctic specialist, wrote in the Globe and Mail in January that regardless of arguments for and against oil and gas development in any part of Canada, the Arctic decision “again illustrates how the people of the North do not have the same political rights as other Canadians to determine their future.”

He said the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 have been used to justify a prohibition on Arctic development in Canada.

“But if we are being honest with ourselves and say that our policies regarding offshore development are predicated on preventing (a disaster on the scale of Deepwater Horizon) why is Trudeau not announcing the closure of oil and gas developments (off Canada’s Atlantic coast)?” Huebert asked.

“The fact that Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are allowed to enjoy the economic benefits of offshore oil and gas development and that Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are not even allowed to discuss it, illustrates that regardless of the much-vaunted devolution of federal power in the North, the most important decisions affecting Northerners are still being made in Ottawa,” he said.

Huebert said that although the environmental movement based in Southern Canada is happy with the Arctic decision “we will not know if Canadian Northerners will be happy, because no one thought to ask them.”

- GARY PARK