by Stephen Hazell
The federal government's decision in 1953 to ship Inuit from northern Quebec more than 2000 km north to the High Arctic as part of a human experiment was not only poorly executed. It was wrong. But the government's 1990 decision not to recognize the contribution of Inuit to enhancing Canadian sovereignty in the far North, and to refuse to apologize for the unwarranted suffering endured is worse.
In deciding to ignore the recommendations of a parliamentary committee, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs relied upon a report prepared by Hickling Corporation, an Ottawa consulting firm. As this issue of Northern Perspectives documents, the Hickling report is "grossly inadequate", "suffers significant problems", misrepresents evidence, and supports "conclusions which are grievously inaccurate".
Is the Hickling report a whitewash? CARC has no evidence that the federal government conspired with Hickling Corporation to ensure that it got the report it wanted. Yet the Hickling report suffers such obvious flaws that the government must have been willfully blind to have accepted the report's conclusions on the one hand, while ignoring those of the parliamentary committee on the other.
Even those with a passing knowledge of Canadian history can ascertain that the Hickling report's conclusions on this question of Canada's sovereignty over the High Arctic Islands do not ring true. Hickling concludes that Canada's concerns over its sovereignty had been satisfactorily resolved with the acquisition of the Sverdrup Islands from Norway in the 1930s. Hickling assumes that ownership is the same as sovereignty. Of course it isn't, and both Hickling and the government should-and probably did-know better. Once a state demonstrates narrow legal ownership of lands, it must then demonstrate effective control and occupancy over these lands to maintain its sovereignty claim. Use it or lose it, in other words.
Shelagh Grant shows that in 1953 the Canadian government was worried that U.S. and Greenlander activities in the Canadian Arctic were weakening Canada's sovereignty claims by showing a lack of effective control and occupancy. She points out, for example, that U.S. personnel outnumbered Canadians in the Canadian Arctic in 1943. "Canadianization" of the Arctic-demonstrating effective control and occupancy-was the key concern of top government officials such as Jack Pickersgill, the cabinet secretary. Such concerns dominated meetings of the crucial interdepartmental committee responsible for the resettlement experiment (the so-called Advisory Committee on Northern Development or ACND). Yet Hickling states that a review of the minutes of the ACND meetings and other documents showed no "hard evidence". This is not just bad scholarship; it is misleading because there was hard evidence.
The Inukjuak (then Port Harrison) Inuit were sent to Grise Fiord and Resolute (rather than Iqaluit or Baker Lake) because the government needed Canadians to support the claim of sovereignty. It is difficult to understand how the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs could have accepted the Hickling report's conclusions to the contrary-particularly when previous ministers of the current government had acknowledged the Inuit sovereignty role.
Having dealt with the sovereignty issue ,Grant goes on to show that the resettled Inuit families suffered unwarranted hardship. The government treated the resettlement as a human experiment; it wanted to determine if Inuit from a (comparatively) southern part of the Arctic could survive further north than any existing Inuit community. Provisions and equipment-such as rifles, fishing gear and material to repair tents-were withheld so that the resettled Inuit would not become dependent on government assistance. The Inuit survived the first winter-their first experience with total darkness that lasts several months-in substandard tents.
On the trip north from Inukjuak, lunches for Inuit consisted of four pieces of hardtack and a paper cup of tea (at a cost of 40 cents), while nonnative passengers received a full-course meal in the dining room. The bureaucratic zeal with which this withholding of modern comforts was taken reached its zenith at a Christmas party when Constable Gibson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was reprimanded for having given Inuit gifts bought by Gibson and paid for with his own funds!
The Inuit of Inukjuak suffered a terrible wrong in 1953. The federal government has compounded that wrong by failing to admit its motivations in sending these people to thc High Arctic and by failing to acknowledge the mistakes that were made. It is imperative that the federal government now recognize the contribution of the Inuit volunteers in strengthening Canadian sovereignty in the High Arctic. As recommended by the parliamentary committee, the government should apologize to these Inuit and consider financial compensation to the Inuit and their families. Justice demands nothing less.
If the government fails to act within a reasonable period of time, the parliamentary committee should reopen its hearings on the issue and provide independent experts the opportunity to testify about the High Arctic settlement experiment.
Stephen Hazell is Executive Director of the Canadian Arctic Resourccs Committee.
In June 1990, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, after reviewing the case of Quebec Inuit relocated to the High Arctic, recommended that the Government of Canada:
The response of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to the committee's recommendations came in a communique released 19 November 1990:
The Honourable Tom Siddon, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development tabled in the House of Commons today, a response to a Standing Committee report on the relocation of Inuit families in the l950s.
Mr. Siddon responded to the recommendations saying, "There appear to have been oral promises made when the relocation occurred to return people to Inukjuak if they so wished. The federal government is making good on these promises and backing this commitment financially."
The federal government, to date, has spent $25O,OOO in relocation costs and $70O,OOO to build 10 new homes in Inukjuak to accommodate the Inuit who have already returned. Additional funds amounting to $15O,OOO have been earmarked to offset any further relocation costs and to reimburse any Inuit who left behind possessions when they returned to Inukjuak.
Between 1953 and 1957, the federal government relocated a number of Inuit families from Inukjuak in Arctic Quebec to the Northwest Territories. These relocations were conducted in response to the needs of the Inukjuak Inuit who, at that time, were facing great hardship, particularly scarcity of game. The move was intended to improve the social and economic prospects of the Inuit and in a relatively short period of time, these improvements did occur for those Inuit who had relocated.
Claims that the relocation occurred to protect Canadian Arctic sovereignty have surfaced over the past few years. These claims, as well as the administration of the program were reviewed by an outside consultant chosen by DIAND after consultation with the Makivik Corporation, an organization that represents the interests of Northern Quebec Inuit. This report found no foundation for such claims.
Reviewing the report, Mr. Siddon noted that, "The decisions by the federal government, in the early l950s, appears to have been solely related to improving the harsh social and economic conditions facing the Inuit at Inukjuak at that time."