Today marked the conclusion of a Summit to discuss issues surrounding the opening Arctic waters. It didn’t end as well as our Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Cannon, would have liked, according to the Montreal Gazette. U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton chastised Mr. Cannon, and by extension, the Canadian government, “for excluding aboriginal leaders and three northern nations — Iceland, Finland and Sweden — from the gathering.”

Mr. Cannon defended his exclusionary tactics by commenting that “Arctic Ocean coastal states have an important stewardship role in the region.” Ah yes, and our Conservative government is doing such a good job with their ocean stewardship – if stewardship means voting against attempts at the recent CITES conference to protect polar bears or rapidly diminishing fish stocks like Salmon and Bluefin Tuna or against banning bottom-trawling fishing vessels, which ravage the ocean’s bottom, not only removing all current life but making regeneration almost impossible.

Yup, Canada is surely a beacon of ocean stewardship, what with Victoria and Halifax still dumping raw sewage into their respective harbours and our careful management of the Atlantic cod fishery. Even our refusal to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples a few years ago shines as an example of stewardship of fragile ecosystems and populations.

We should totally be allowed to take a leadership role on the incredibly fragile Arctic while the EU and aboriginal peoples are excluded from the talks because, well, they actually give a darn about the Arctic as more than another area to exploit as thoroughly as possible, arming it and using it for commercial traffic.

Yup, we are very special indeed.

BTW, here’s a quick link to the GPC policy on the Arctic. Yes, we have one. And while it is called the Green Arctic strategy, we certainly would prefer to avoid that – an outcome the governing parties don’t really seem to mind.