Unit 9: The Future of the North: More of the Same or on the Road to Sustainability?

Question 1

What are the challenges and opportunities in providing greater resource economy employment for northerners?

Answer 1

Challenge: training and incorporation into the workforce.

Opportunity: Aboriginal corporations, partnership agreements that stimulate workforce.

Question 2

Define globalization. How does it affect the North?

Answer 2

Globalization is the increased interdependence of societies around the world due to the multiplicity of linkages and interconnections among states and communities around the globe.

Not a new process for the north - implicated populations for centuries in global economic and cultural processes since the fur trade. But, many believe its scope and intensity have increased recently.

Best exemplified by oil and minerals that stream from the North across to destinations internationally.

Question 3

What are three developments over the past 30 years that have helped reduce the environmental damage caused by megaprojects?

Answer 3

1. Recognition of Aboriginal title
2. Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999.
3. International environmentalism (e.g. Stockholm Convention).

Question 4

Even with stricter environmental regulations, what is one circumstance that cannot be taken fully into account to ensure that companies clean up any environmental degradation they may have caused?

Answer 4

In short, bad actor turning a blind eye for money. You can have all the regulations you like, but if they aren’t fully committed to and enforced, they lose their force. See this with tar sands and poor monitoring systems (that are run by the provincial government). Without effective monitoring, we fail the environment.

Question 5

Explain the term “air commuting” and critically discuss this as an option for addressing un- and under-employment in Aboriginal communities.

Answer 5

Air commuting is the practice of flying-in skilled southern workers to work on development projects. This is done because of a lack of skilled workers at the work site (e.g. lack of skills training for locals). Addressing this problem can be done through improving training for locals.
But, air commuting could go the other way. If there is a lack of jobs in communities, why not fly them south? But problems with this: -dislocation from homeland and supports -money and wages don’t necessarily make it back -it doesn’t really solve the root causes of under and unemployment.

Question 6

Discuss the concept of a hunting subsidy and what role you think it could potentially play in northern communities.

Answer 6

By provide these income securities, Aboriginal peoples could continue to maintain their traditional ways of life while being an option that is cheaper and more beneficial than simply relocating people to different communities.

Likewise, the cost of the program would be offset by reduced need for welfare and lower social costs as many settlements suffer a host of social ills.

Question 7

What are the potential advances of harnessing wind energy as a northern energy source?

Answer 7

1. Renewable resource
2. Training local workers for maintenance work = increased local jobs
3. Could be basis of new scientific industry in Canada –wind turbine technology centre to study and design them for remote or isolated sites, offer training and operation and maintenance, sell this to other circumpolar.
4. Swapping fossil for wind helps reduce emissions.
5. Joint project that could serve as model for others to search for breakthrough solutions to northern challenges