Mary Simon's blog

Earlier this week we issued a press release regarding the “Northern Canada Vessel Traffic Services Zone” Arctic shipping regulations that recently came into force.

Under the new regulations ships over 300 tonnes traveling through Arctic waters will have to register their trip. Additional measures are being put into place to prevent pollution of Arctic waters, and response times to potential oil spills have also been strengthened.

Inuit are increasingly concerned with the relationship between shipping and sustainable development. We currently work with multi-national mining companies in the Arctic who are sensitive to the fact that their traffic may interfere with the activities of local hunters. We would hope that all international shipping companies would comply with these new regulations.

The recent Cabinet decision to discontinue the mandatory federal long form census is a disturbing one.

We have been advised by Statistics Canada that data collected on this form will continue to be obtained in the Arctic however in the rest of Canada that is not the case, and this is of concern to Inuit.

The data collected on the long form is an important tool for measuring and analyzing health and well-being indicators, such as life expectancy and social disparities between Inuit and the rest of Canada.

For example, comparable data on life expectancy between Inuit and the average Canadian would not have been possible without the existence of long form census data. For the record, the gap in life expectancy between Inuit and Canadians is 13 years and growing, an unacceptable statistic that could not accurately be tracked without the mandatory long form.