KUGLUKTUK, Nunavut -- Quietly perched on the isolated edge of the continent, this tiny community could be on the brink of having a shipping highway at its front door.
A Northwest Passage route mere miles away, the mouth of the Arctic Ocean is now frozen solid several feet down. Arriving in -58 C weather to follow a military sovereignty operation here, there is definitely no evidence of global warming in sight.
But each year, the local Inuit see more signs of climate change -- some subtle, some dramatic, some deadly. The ice is thinner, the winter shorter and the potential for waterways to open up come much sooner.
Baba Pedersen says the signs are everywhere -- from new breeds of insects and birds appearing in summer to veteran hunters and fishers losing their ability to rely on instincts for survival. This point was driven home last year, when two local men were killed when their snowmobile crashed through weak ice.
"I blame those deaths on global warming, and that is very scary when it causes people to die," Pedersen says. "They were going in an area where they should normally be able to go, and everything they had learned before says it's safe and it looks safe and they go over it and they drown. That's scary. All their knowledge didn't help them."
Also at grave risk is Canada's claim to the surrounding maze of Arctic waterways, eyed by other nations as prime international shipping routes when the passages inevitably thaw and open. Pedersen says asserting Canada's sovereignty is important to prevent a catastrophic oil spill caused by a parade of commercial ships.
"When the bottom line is the dollar and not the environment, that really worries us because they're going to try and take shortcuts," he says. "To us, the environment is always the most important thing because our livelihood is from the land."
To that end, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to put a new focus on the North, and hopes to make it a "major legacy" of his government. With a "use it or lose it" motto, he plans to beef up military presence and make heavy financial investments to protect the livelihoods of native populations in the Arctic.
The Canadian Rangers are now the military's "eyes and ears" in the North, but we can also expect more patrols by regular troops.
But Prof. Alex Wolfe of the University of Alberta says a greater presence, more attention and better education on the Arctic is critical if Canada expects to lay claim to the waters. While we have a strong legal basis to assert sovereignty, he says little has been done to manage and regulate the area.
"The current levels of interest and activity would make such a claim at present laughable to other polar nations," he said. "... Canada has neglected the North, its people and its relevance at large for generations. We are simply paying for it now."
