National and Regional Interests in the North

Nora T. Corley is a librarian in Ottawa.

The Third National Workshop on People, Resources, and the Environment North of 60° held in Yellowknife in 1983 was the first to be held in the North. Sponsored by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC), the workshop laid the foundation of CARC’s policy research for the following five years, as indeed had the two previous workshops. The goal of this workshop was “to explore policy alternatives for resource management that accommodate the growing demands of northerners in a way that respects the interests of all Canadians in the development of these resources” (p.xiv). Some 300 people attended to discuss eight topics currently considered important in the North: 1) natural resource jurisdiction and political development, 2) regional planning and land use planning, 3) conservation of environmentally significant areas, 4) mineral development, 5) renewable resources management, 6) inland water resources, 7) ocean management, and 8) development in the Beaufort Sea region. Each of these themes was further divided into four questions to be addressed by each working group: 1) what are the national and regional interests in the policy or management topic addressed by the working group? 2) what are the conflicts and compatibilities between these interests? 3) which of the conflicts can be resolved through research and discussion and which are more difficult to reconcile? 4) what research is needed now and what policy and institutional initiatives will help to reconcile conflicts and improve the management of northern resources? This report of the third Workshop includes the verbatim reporting of the opening plenary session, the land claim plenary session, the working groups, and the concluding plenary session. The section on the working groups contains the commissioned background papers, opinion papers submitted by participants, and the final report of each group. References where needed are found at the end of the sections. This book is full of useful, interesting, and important information. Its readers would have been better served if it had been indexed.