Predicting the North: sovereignty and the Canadian brand in the Arctic

ABSTRACT

Uncertainty sums up the Arctic of today, with significant implications for sovereignty and branding Canada. Climate change produces a level of interest in the North from a widening range of actors and confronts Canada with new challenges. The present study uses an expected utility forecasting model to assess the likely outcomes, under current conditions, across a range of substantively important issues in the Arctic. After an overview of the Arctic as an essential aspect of the Canadian brand, the work unfolds in four further stages. First, a forecasting model is introduced and linked to the present context. The second stage presents the expert-generated data used to forecast the future. Third, forecasts are produced and assessed in terms of implications for existing policy in areas ranging from search and rescue to transit of the Northwest Passage (NWP). The fourth and final stage offers conclusions about the Canadian brand in relation to the Arctic and suggests directions for future research.

RÉSUMÉ

L’incertitude résume bien la situation de l’Arctique d’aujourd’hui, avec des implications significatives pour la souveraineté et l’image du Canada. Le changement climatique suscite un niveau d’intérêt dans le Nord, parmi un nombre croissant d’acteurs, et met le Canada face à de nouveaux défis. Cette étude utilise un modèle de prévision d’utilité espérée pour évaluer les conséquences potentielles, dans les circonstances actuelles, de toute une série de problèmes sensiblement importants dans l’Arctique. Après une vue d’ensemble de l’Arctique en tant que trait essentiel de l’image du Canada, l’étude est présentée en quatre volets. D’abord, un modèle de prévision est présenté et mis en rapport avec le contexte actuel. Le deuxième volet introduit les données générées par des experts et servant à prévoir l’avenir. Le troisième expose des prévisions produites et évaluées, relativement aux implications pour les domaines politiques existants, allant des opérations de recherche et de sauvetage au transit dans le passage du Nord-Ouest (PNO). Le quatrième et dernier volet présente des conclusions sur l’image du Canada, relativement à l’Arctique, et propose des orientations pour les futures recherches.

KEYWORDS:

• Arctic
• Canada
• foreign policy
• forecasting
• sovereignty

Acknowledgements

This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Herzliya, Israel, July 2013, and the Biennial Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, Tampa, Florida, November 2013. We are grateful to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita for use of his software in implementing our models, and to Michael D. Cohen, Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel Rob Huebert, Carolyn C. James, Tom Jamieson, Jonathan Markowitz and Simon Radford for helpful commentaries. We appreciate the help of Marc André Bodet and Melanee Thomas in identifying the main issues in Canadian foreign policy. Jinny Choi provided excellent research assistance and we thank her very much as well.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Mark Paradis holds a doctorate in political science and international relations from USC.

Richard Parker is the former president of the Southern Association for Canadian Studies and a graduate of McGill University.

Patrick James is Dornsife Dean’s Professor of International Relations at USC.

Notes

1 Francis (1997, p. 157) cites the discovery of gold in the Klondike of 1998 as a reason behind the high level of interest. The gold rush lasted briefly, but “many writers and, later, filmmakers were attracted to the story” (Francis 1997, p. 157).

2 Recent general works on Canadian foreign policy include Hale (2012), James (2012) and Nord and Smith (2013); for comprehensive histories of Arctic diplomacy and sovereignty, see Elliot-Meisel (1998), Smith (2014) and Lajeunesse (2016).

3 The literature on national branding is multifaceted; for examples, see Nimijean (2008) on Canadian studies in relation to cultural diplomacy and Rankin (2012) regarding gender and the Canadian national brand.

4 A summary of the new geopolitics of the region for all of the Arctic states appears in Huebert (2011a, pp. 205–216).

5 Byers (2009, pp. 131–141) reports on a scenario worked out with students that conveys a sense of urgency about possible loss of sovereignty regarding the NWP. This scenario, however, is unique and does not constitute reproducible evidence. Instead, scenario-based thinking focuses on potential adjustment of existing strategies and tactics in light of results from a forecasting model that is based on expert-generated data about actors, capabilities and preferences as they exist now.

6 James and Jones (2018) provide an exhaustive set of references and many illustrations regarding the highly successful expected utility model. It is beyond the scope of the present study to present the model in detail, but a user-friendly version also appears in James and Jones (2018).

7 Our first and second experts, respectively, are Carolyn C. James (Pepperdine University) and Elizabeth Elliot-Meisel (Creighton University).

8 While some readers may question consultation with just one expert to generate most of our data, evidence suggests that accuracy is not generally improved by using more than one coder (James and Lusztig, 2000; Bueno de Mesquita, 1994). Moreover, as described below, we use robustness checks to verify the stability of our results to variations in the data.

9 While actors may misrepresent their bargaining position, the expert coder infers sincere positions for participants on the basis of all available knowledge.

10 Constabulary powers are a largely uncontested area, with the possible exception of the NWP. However, even the United States, which is generally the main opponent to Canada's claim, would likely support Canadian constabulary efforts. Indigenous rights are an internal, “nation-to-nation” issue (Trudeau 2015).

11 Some controversy might ensue about granting this status to the Arctic Council because, to be exact, the treaty flowing from it requests better coordination involving national assets and policies.

12 It is understood that the ICJ is not formally part of the UN.

13 The output files are provided in Appendix 2.

14 The fishing and seabed resources models had a 30 per cent probability of a shock of a magnitude of 30 per cent. We used higher probabilities and magnitudes here due to the greater uncertainty over the inputs.

15 The graphs show the round-by-round smoothed mean for rounds that meet and do not meet the end rule along with the quartiles for smoothed means from the 20 additional simulations. We use quartiles instead of standard deviations because the clustering of the smoothed means from the shocked rounds is rarely normally distributed.

16 The need for posturing to please audiences at home, however, could stand in the way of cooperation with the United States (Bergh, 2012). Hale (2012) draws attention to the tendency in Canada to underestimate the importance of American domestic coalitions in constraining government action.