Heather Exner-Pirot

• PhD Political Science, University of Calgary
• Fellow at Macdonald Laurier Institute

Review first published advance online December 16, 2022Breaking Through: Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic. Edited by Wilfrid Greaves and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. University of Toronto Press, 2021. 224 pp.

As the holder of the some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, along with world class deposits of many critical minerals needed for the energy transition, Canada is well-positioned to meet the energy needs of our allies and partners. Canada must act fast to remove impediments to energy investment, production and export capacity at a time...

This year’s theme, “The Russian Arctic: Economics, Politics & Peoples” was chosen, at the turn of 2021-2022 and prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, due to the high relevance of the Russian Arctic in every aspect of Arctic politics. The region comprises over half of the Arctic’s land surface area, mostly covered by permafrost, and almost half of...

The paper examines how Canadian energy policy in recent years has had an unbalanced focus on reducing carbon emissions and committing to still-evolving renewable energy technologies, while discouraging investment in mineral exploration and the production of conventional energy resources that are necessary for an energy transition.

The theme of 2021, Defining and Mapping the Arctic: Sovereignties, Policies and Perceptions contains relevant topics that are much discussed, examined, reported and speculated in policy circles, academia, and the media. Perhaps because it is distant from major political, business and media centres, the Arctic seems especially prone to external inte...

Arctic foreign policy, in relation to Canadian foreign policy overall, has not been unlike the relationship of the Arctic to Canadians generally: the subject of polite curiosity, but peripheral. Throughout the twentieth century it was viewed mostly as an exposed flank, as a place where the Canadian government’s hold was more tenuous than desired. I...

The authors in this volume of articles, compiled from the Arctic Yearbook, illustrate how China’s approach to the Arctic serves a dual purpose that reflects burgeoning Chinese influence beyond its borders in a global context. As China advances its relationships with Russia and Greenland to ensure Chinese energy security, access to raw materials, an...

It is only in the last 20 years that the Arctic has become a subject, and not merely an object, in international affairs. Prior to the fall of the USSR, the Arctic was, from a global geopolitical perspective, primarily seen as a military theater. Although its strategic location, nuclear deterrence-wise, means this view will continue to be valid, th...

The period of regionalization that the Arctic has enjoyed since Gorbachev’s famous Murmansk Speech in 1987 has brought stability and peace. Ironically, however, it has not led to disarmament, despite the initial premise of developing the Arctic region into a ‘Zone of Peace’, with an Arctic Council focused on demilitarization and arms control issues...

This book assesses the construction of security in the context of climate change, with a focus on the Arctic region. It examines and discusses changes in the security premises of the Arctic states, from traditional security to environmental and human security. In particular, the book explores how environmental degradation and climate change impact,...

This chapter briefly summarizes the objectives of this book, and asks whether a new security paradigm—one that adequately accounts for the threats arising from environmental and climate changes—is on the horizon. We conclude that such a paradigm is not yet available. We remain entrenched in a state-led, international structure that is poorly adapte...

This book assesses the construction of security in the context of climate change, with a focus on the Arctic region. It examines and discusses changes in the security premises of the Arctic states, from traditional security to environmental and human security. In particular, the book explores how climate change impacts security discourses and premi...

Canada chaired the Arctic Council from 2013–15. During its tenure, Canada attempted to rebalance the policy focus of the Arctic Council from environmental protection to sustainable, or as it termed it, responsible development. These efforts were met with resistance from many within the Arctic Council epistemic community. Critics feared that its sup...

The recruitment and retention of health professionals in rural, remote, and northern regions is an ongoing challenge. The Northern Nursing Education Network brought together nursing students working in rural and remote regions of the circumpolar north in Innovative Learning Institute on Circumpolar Health (ILICH) events to create opportunities for...

Canada and Canadians often consider themselves to be a force for good in the world. Does that self-perception hold true with Indigenous issues? This article evaluates Canada’s brand with respect to international Indigenous issues historically, as well as contemporarily under the leadership of the Trudeau government, with a focus on the United Natio...

Canadian universities are developing strategies to address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action. There has been much attention paid to the positivist, individualistic and Eurocentric foundations of nursing and its educational curricula, but limited focus on assessing organizational structures or engaging with stakeholders....

A number of universities have introduced Indigenous student-specific programming to improve recruitment. These programs target the needs of Indigenous students and often impart a sense of comfort or belonging that may be more difficult to obtain in a mainstream program. The University of Saskatchewan, College of Nursing, implemented a Learn Where Y...

This qualitative study examined front-line health care providers’ understandings of the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health’s 2010–2014 HIV strategy, their capacity building needs, and perspectives on how well they were implementing HIV services. Providers’ experiences of engaging people living with HIV, community leaders, and communities affected by t...

Innovation and entrepreneurship are prominent buzzwords in the modern lexicon, reflective of the knowledge economy in which we now dwell. While the possibilities in a world of big data, robotics, and the Internet of everything seem endless, they do indeed have limits. Cities, it has become routine to point out, are the harbingers of innovation and...

Traditional theories of International Relations have thus far failed to explain the unusual degree of cooperation seen in the Arctic between Russia on the one hand, and the seven Western Arctic states led by the United States on the other. Rather than witnessing a devolution into competition and conflict over strategic shipping routes and hydrocarb...

On 15 May 2013, Canada assumed the two-year chairmanship of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum established in 1996 that addresses common issues faced by Arctic states and indigenous peoples in the areas of environmental protection and sustainable development. The Canadian chairmanship disappointed many. By Arctic Council standards, it w...

Book review of: Uttam Kumar Sinha & Jo Inge Bekkevold (eds.), Arctic: Commerce, Governance and Policy (New York: Routledge, 2015)

This article describes a graduate student learning experience as part of an international nursing collaborative working together to develop an academic partnership for global health education in the circumpolar north. The experience provided an opportunity to conduct a pilot project in a rural, remote, northern community using an indigenous, global...

We think we understand environmental damage: Pollution, water scarcity, a warming world. But these problems are just the tip of the iceberg. Food insecurity, financial assets drained of value by environmental damage, and a rapid rise in diseases of animal origin are among the underreported consequences of an unsustainable global system. In State of...

The rapid changes occurring in the Arctic region in the past 10–20 years have become one of the biggest stories in climate change. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising higher than anywhere else on Earth—and more quickly as well. Sea ice has been melting in the summer season at an astonishing rate, and scientists are only beginning to understand th...

This report draws on the expertise of an experienced team of academic researchers, each with extensive knowledge of Northern politics and governance. Its purpose is to provide an overview of the achievements, challenges, and opportunities facing public sectors in the territories and Northern provincial regions. While there are numerous issues to co...

This article examines the Arctic as an international region, outlining the ways in which it is similar to other international regions and ways that it is unique. The article argues that the Arctic, fundamentally, is a regional security complex built around interdependence on environmental and ocean issues, and that this has consequences for the kin...

In May 2011, the members of the Arctic Council, the pre-eminent inter-governmental forum for circumpolar affairs, concluded the first legally binding agreement in its 15-year history. The Agreement on Search and Rescue (SAR) cooperation in the Arctic, while not a particularly influential document in its own right, offers the circumpolar states an e...

In its most recent assessment of global climate change, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded, “A strong body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.” Impacts and rates of change are greatest in the Arc...