Honourable colleagues, I hope you all had a good summer.

I have the honour of being a member of the Senate Special Committee on the Arctic, providing input on Canada’s new Arctic Policy Framework.

Senator Patterson, our chair and Arctic legend, and our deputy chair, Senator Bovey, recently led our group, including Senators Eaton, Pate, Oh and Day, all the way from Kuujjuaq, home of our former colleague Charlie Watt, across Canada’s Arctic region to Iqaluit, Baker Lake — near the geographic centre of Canada — an overnight in Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank gold mine to the newly minted Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, westward to Yellowknife, Inuvik, located on the Mackenzie Delta, the second-largest delta in North America after the Mississippi, and finally to the Yukon Territory, where the premier, Sandy Silver, comes from my home town of Antigonish.

Across this vast territory, the Inuit, First Nations and Metis communities are the original peoples. The Inuit lands of Nunatsiavut, Nunavik, Nunavut and of the Inuvialuit comprise 40 per cent of Canada’s vast land mass, not to mention their seas and ice.

So what did we hear from the people we met? I quote these people:

“It is important to see the Arctic framework in a nation-building context.”

“Canada needs to be a full player in the North.”

“Climate change is huge, blow your mind huge.”

“My grandmother was on the land; my parents went to residential school — this has caused a rapid loss and shift in identity.”

“Our biggest asset is our youth.”

“There are lots of lost kids in this small community — kids need to be able to see their possibilities.”

“We don’t want to lose our young people.

“Education is critical. We need to bring up the academic standard while restoring pride and knowledge of Inuit identity, thought, culture and language.”

“We need to find creative ways to make education accessible.”

“Our strength is our Inuit culture. Our people have a legacy of resilience in this harsh environment. We need to reinforce that.”

“Language is the carrier of our culture.”

“We have minerals in the North which are critical for the green tech future.”

“Employed people in charge of their own destiny are healthy people.”

“We’re worried about the growing inequality between the have and have-nots in our territory.”

“Housing is one of the main reasons people leave and don’t return.”

“I want you to understand how important a home is.”

“We need infrastructure with redundancy built in. We need housing, ports, roads, energy, the Internet, airports.”

“We are concerned for food insecurity and for energy insecurity.”

“Innovation is needed in every sector.”

“Self-determination and community-based decision-making is key.”

“Reconciliation needs to be a prominent and central goal of the Arctic and northern policy framework. We need to hold the pen and co-write it with Canada.”

And finally, I end with the mantra we heard repeatedly: “In the North, for the North, by the North.”

Thank you.