ADMINISTRATION FOR DEVELOPMENT IN NORTHERN CANADA: THE GROWTH AND EVOLUTION OF GOVERNMENT*

Gordon Robertson

The weary and turbulent world to-day is beset by many problems, worries and dangers: the contest with Communism, nuclear fall-out, racial antagonisms-and a host of lesser ailments. Fears about the danger of “hot” wars have largely changed to a recognition that it is not so much their fury and excitement that will characterize the next few years as the strain and unending crisis of the “cold war. In that “cold” war, on the international scene, much of the contest seems to be working itself out in what was formerly the colonial realm of the once-imperial powers in Asia and Africa.

The main facets of the struggle emerge in three sets of problems: development from colonial status to self-government ( the political trans- formation of the colonial areas); the growth of underdeveloped areas to provide a better livelihood for their peoples (the economic development of these regions); and, finally, the adjustment of primitive populations, or those whose societies and cultures cannot cope with the modern world, to a condition that will enable them to take their place in some- thing like a satisfactory way (the social adjustment of the colonial peoples). We have acquired a familiarity with these problems as we have read about them in the pages of the press. The political difficulties of transformation leap to our eyes in the daily crises of the Congo. Self- government is a very difficult thing-even for those who are used to it. We are long familiar with the need for aid to underdcveloped areas and the critical importance of promoting their economic potential. The problems of adjustment of societies and peoples to new demands and new ways have also become familiar in the problems of Asiatic countries and of Africa. In truth we are getting to know them all-but I suspect that all of us regard them as problems of other places and “less happy breeds.”

We are indeed fortunate in Canada that none of these problems looms too large or menacing close to home. However, the truth is that each one is a domestic Canadian problem and all of them come together in the administration of the Canadian north.

The political problem-the growth from colony to nation-is one we OThis paper was presented to the Twelfth Annual Conference of The Institute of

Public Administration of Canada, at Banff, Alberta, September 14-17, 1960.

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have been tackling for nearly one hundred and fifty years. We have solved the problem on the national scale. We govern ourselves in Canada with no let or hindrance by any other country. However, we are a federal state, and within our own boundaries we have not completed the process. Since 1905 about 60 per cent of our area has been politically mature and self-governing. Forty per cent of Canada still is not. In happier circumstances and more ordered procedures, the two Territories are going through the political evolutioii that is the source of trouble in so many areas: the evolution from dependence and external control to autonomy and self-government.

In the economic field the parallel with the problems of new countries is very close. If any area on the face of the earth qualifies for the descrip- tion “under-developed it is the northern territories of Canada. Nearly a million and a half square miles of land have a population of about 35,000 -less than a really ambitious town can aspire to. There is not a single mile of standard-gauge railway track. The resources are largely undeter- mined-and apart from a few isolated areas, they are entirely undeveloped. Economically the Arabian peninsula or the heart of the Congo are probably much higher in the category of developed areas than is the Canadian north. Economic development there is essentially, and in virtu- ally every respect, the problem of the under-developed country.

What of the social aspect? That third problem of the international scene is equally ours. The Indians and Eskimos of northern Canada had cultures well adapted to cope with the special and limited problems of the nomadic hunting life that was theirs before we came on the scene. They are not at all equipped to cope with the world that has to be lived in to-day. Through no fault of their own, the Indians and Eskimos of the north all-too-generally live in conditions of poverty and squalor that we tend to regard as the pitiful lot of backward peoples of foreign-very foreign-areas. They are not foreign and they are not remote: they are Canadians and they live here. But the problem is the same as that of the African native-the problem of adjustment to a new, a different and in many ways a frightening world.

Essentially the administration of development in the Canadian north is the task of coping with these three basic problems of the world to-day: the political growth to self-government; the economic transformation of an under-developed area; and the social adjustment of people unadapted to our modern life.

We have never thought of ourselves in Canada as being a ‘‘colonial power” with dependent regions to administer and develop. Perhaps it would be better in some ways if we had, for we would have been more aware of the problems with which we have to cope, and we would have seen them more clearly for what they are. In essence our problems in

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the north are precisely the problems that Britain, France and other countries have had to cope with in the lands they administered beyond the seas. It does not make much difference if the areas are not beyond the seas, but are joined right on to the “motherland.” The difficulties are much the same, and so are the obligations and the tasks of solution. We would, perhaps, have done more, sooner and better, if we had seen more clearly the character of the problems of our undeveloped regions and their similarity of those of other areas.

In the last few years-the last very few-we have begun seriously to cope with the problem of the north. We are not “starting from scratch“ entirely. There has been a background of political and economic activity in the Yukon for over sixty years. For the most of the last fifty it has been more frustration than development in many ways. In the North- west Territories the separation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905 brought on new “dark ages” in which almost nothing happened for about forty years. In the last little while there has been a great quicken- ing. Probably the most significant single factor is that Canadians in general have at last become aware of the north.

The obstacles that nature has provided are great indeed, and for the administrator their inherent complexity is made the greater because, in virtually all cases, the growth of the economy is dependent on factors beyond our control-the state of world markets, the level of world de- mand, and the competitive attractions of other world sources of supply. The known and definite factors are natural problems to be overcome; the rest are unknowns or uncontrollables which make planning difficult and hazardous.

Also in the north, we have a major task in preparing a group of people for whom we are responsible-and especially the children-for the life that will or can be theirs in ten, twenty or thirty years. One solution is to do nothing. No one could then charge sins of commission; no positive mistakes could be pointed to. All that is wrong with that solution is that it means condemning a people-or at least a generation-to a blind alley, to ignorance and to squalor. No Canadian who has any regard for people, and who genuinely believes that he should do to others what he would have done to him can accept such a solution. We have to face the problems, the uncertainties-and the mistakes-that are a part of trying to help the Eskimos and Indians adjust to the world of the future. The difficulties of policy and administration are very great.

It is now my purpose to try to deal with the question of administration more generally, and particularly to take a look at the peculiarities that are created by the evolutionary process in the Territories.

The basic task of general administration in the Territories is to bring the services of government to the area and to the people there and now.

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This covers the full range of federal services, as well as those that are normally provincial or local. They have to be adjusted to the special circumstances of the far north, to the great distances and to the sparse population. That task is sufficiently complicated. However, the provision of present services is by no means the full chore. Administrative methods and organization have to be such that there is also the capacity for growth and change as rapid development occurs. The difference between administration for the Territories and administration for the rest of Canada is perhaps the difference between planning a wardrobe for a growing boy in school and planning a wardrobe for his parent who thinks-or at any rate hopes-that his full dimensions have been achieved. All growth creates problems. But Territorial growth creates more. You usually have some idea how fast a boy will grow and can expect both arms to stay the same length. There is no pattern for a growing Territory.

Finally, it is not sdicient for those responsible for administration simply to devise organizations that are capable of adjustment as changes require them. They must also by their policy and administration help desirable changes to come about-and try to have them occur in as orderly a way as possible. An administration of passive adjustment is not good enough.

In case there should be any disposition to think otherwise, let me say at once that the job of administration for the north is not an easy one. As everyone here knows, there are problems enough in handling com- petently the administration of operations that are of a relatively unified and related character. This is the usual task of a single department of government. It is a good deal more complicated to try to cover what is virtually the whole range of federal, provincial and local services and to do this under circumstances which are as difficult as they could con- ceivably be made. The administrator, in trying to cope with the broad range of government functions in the Territories, has to deal with ser- vices on a scale too small for the degree of specialization that normally can be provided in a province. He must provide services in tiny com- munities where one individual has to be a jack of every trade of govern- ment. He must operate in a vast area where transportation is totally inadequate; where freight arrives once a year just at the time that everything else has to be done in the short summer season. The com- munities in which he must work are usually lacking in available people outside of governemnt service who, in other parts of the country, can be called on for many of the services that we take for granted. Most or all of these are lacking, from the selling of nuts and bolts at the hard- ware store down the street, to the provision of trained assistance at short notice. The local administrator is on his own in the face of the full range

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of human activities and demands; the communications with head offices for direction or advice are totally inadequate.

A wide range of federal services is, of course, provided by the depart- ments that are responsible for them in the rest of Canada. In northern conditions, the Department of Transport, the Department of Public Works, the R.C.M.P., the Department of National Health and Welfare, and the Indian Affairs Branch of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, have especially important functions to discharge. Virtually all of them labour under the special difficulties of operation in the north to which I have referred. Beyond these specialized services of govern- ment, the general responsibility for administration of federal services-as well as for the discharge of what are normally provincial or local functions -falls upon the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources. It is the task of that Department to provide the basic fabric of govern- ment, to try to co-ordinate planning and activity to deal with the requirements of the public generally in the Territories, and to supervise the administrations of the incipient provinces. The Department directly administers the resources and lands of the two Territories, functions that are elsewhere a provincial concern, It builds roads. It has direct and immediate responsibility for the people of Eskimo race. Finally, it provides at the present stage the “civil service” and administrative structure for the Northwest Territories in its territorial aspect-but not for the Yukon.

The main differences between the Territories and the Provinces are seen when one turns from the federal aspects of government to those that are normally provincial or local. Each of the two Territories-the Yukon and the Northwest Territories-has its own government. However, each Territory is far short of the point at which it can cope financially with all the responsibility of a province, and equally short of the point at which it can count on a sufficiently settled and sound economy to support such responsibilities over the years.

In recognition of these facts of life, the Territorial administrations are a part-way house on the road to provincial status. To some degree, their character can be appreciated by considering the system in effect in Canada in, say, 1840-before the achievement of responsible govern- ment. The Canada of that day was administered by a governor who was responsible, not to the local Assembly or Council, but to the government in London. The government of each Territory is handled by a Com- missioner who is responsible, not to the Territorial Council, but to the Minister of Northern Affairs and the Governor in Council at Ottawa. That does not mean, however, that there is not a very important element of local and popular representation and control. In each Territory the people elect a Council that passes legislation for the Territory, approves

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the expenditures to be made, and authorizes the taxes to be raised, in much the same way as the Assembly of the Canadas discharged these functions in the mid-19th century. Each Council also is the voice of the people of the Territory-the forum for airing complaints and bringing new proposals for policy forward. By its legislation it can broaden or narrow the administrative powers of the Commissioner. By its “power of the purse”-which is complete-it has an ultimate control over every aspect of government.

The future political evolution of the Territories seems reasonably clear -except as to the time-table. Before 1905 the Northwest Territories included what are now Alberta and Saskatchewan-and also much of what is now a part of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. The first system of government for the Territories was set up in 1875, and was very similar to what we now have in the two present Territories. By 1888 the territorial Council had acquired the name of Legislative Assembly and there was an Advisory Council on Finance. Just this year, provision was made for the latter development in the Yukon, and the Advisory Council will probably be set up after the next Territorial election.

As the population of the “old Territories” grew, so did the pressure for direct control of the administration. In 1892 an “Executive Com- mittee of the Territories” was established, and in 1897 this hatched into a genuine cabinet-an Executive Council with full powers of government, responsible to the Legislative Assembly. The egg had become a chicken, and in 1905 the fact was recognized when not one but two provinces were formed-Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Across the international boundary line in the north we have seen a similar process of evolution in Alaska. It has just become a state. These examples undoubtedly indicate the course of the future. The Yukon has already, as I have mentioned, gone a long way on the road. However, one finds that the people of the Territories are the first to point out that they are by no means ready to assume the responsibilities of provincial status yet. If we look, for example, at the Yukon Territory, we note a population of 14,000 compared with a population in Alaska of 205,000. The Territorial budget in the Yukon was $4,224,844 for 1958-59 and in Alaska it was $48.5 million. The Yukon is undoubtedly a future province; the present Prime Minister has made that clear. The timing depends on population and economic strength. It has, however, right now the basic administrative fabric for a province. Both policy and administration are directed toward that end.

The Northwest Territories did not have the great stimulus of a Klon- dike Gold Rush, and has not yet gone as far as the Yukon. Moreover, it is not naturally a single entity-as the Yukon is-in terms of geography, communications, transportation or people. It is really two entities: the

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Mackenzie area, tributary to and surrounding the Mackenzie River, and the rest-the more easterly and northerly portions that constitute the true Arctic.

Last July, the Council of the Northwest Territories considered this whole matter and unanimously recommended the establishment-not at once but probably in the near future-of a new Territory of the Mac- kenzie. Administrative arrangements are being devised with that as the objective. By April 1, 1962, we will have a fully decentralized administra- tion for the Mackenzie area established in Fort Smith. It will be possible soon thereafter, if Parliament so decides, to establish a new Territory very much the way the Yukon now is-with its own civil service to manage its own local administration, public health, motor vehicles, liquor, game, welfare-and all the other functions of a province. The Com- missioner and the Council of the Mackenzie will then be the fore-runners of the Lieutenant-Governor, Premier, and Legislative Assembly of a new province.

The remainder of the Northwest Territories-the islands of the High Arctic, the mountains of Baffin Island, and the Precambrian plains of the Keewatin-once the Territory of the Mackenzie has been cut off-will undoubtedly be slower and longer in evolution. However, the winds of change are blowing as surely in Arctic Canada as in equatorial Africa and development will steadily come in these regions as well.

Administrative growth is also important at the local level. In the Yukon Territory there are at present two municipalities and no school districts whatever. These basic units of popular self-government have not developed as far as could be wished. In the Northwest Territories there are also two municipalities-but two school districts as well, one public and one separate. As a nursing stage toward municipal maturity a device has been set up in the Northwest Territories called “Local Improvement Districts.” In such areas advisory councils consider certain categories of local expenditure, limited local taxes are raised, and the roots for local government can be put down.

To generalize, it could be said that, at present, the conditions of the two Territories require many functions of administration to be discharged “one stage up.” What are properly local functions are frequently handled by the Territorial administration because municipalities and school dis- tricts are lacking. What are properly provincial functions are in some cases handled by federal agencies until full territorial maturity can be achieved. Obviously there is nothing final about such arrangements. They are parts of a process of evolution and change. Like everything that is incomplete and unfinished, the arrangements of government leave much to be desired. However, they are adjusted to the circumstances of the moment and they are devised with change and growth in mind.

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I have mentioned that it is not enough for the administration to provide the necessary services and to adjust its administration to permit change. It must also foster growth and bring it about.

Sometimes the argument is made that Canada should not be in a hurry to exploit the natural resources of her northland-that they will be called into production by the natural processes of market demand in due course and that will be time enough. This philosophy has the virtue of post- poning investment, both governmental and private. However, there is a good deal of danger in this attitude for two reasons. In the first place it counsels stagnation. The businessman who retreats from the com- petitive battles soon finds himself out of business. The nation that has no work going on in the fields of science, engineering or industry can lost her zest for progress and even the know-how for ordinary things.

In Canada’s northland, the activities that have gone on during the past five years have created a core of specialists in many fields who know how to work in northern conditions. Five years ago the first tender call for the new town of Inuvik was for a $5 million construction job. A firm price was asked for, probably the first firm price on a job of such magni- tude in the Arctic. Though invitations to bid were broadcast from coast to coast, only one construction firm offered to do the job and the price they named was double the expected cost. The government negotiated an arrangement whereby the risk was removed from the contractor, an incentive plan to promote economy was inserted, and the job was com- pleted at a very satisfactory figure well below the expected cost. Three years later tenders were invited for a job in the same place of similar magnitude. This time bids were made by seven contractors and the lowest was a full million dollars under the expected price. The lesson I wish to point out is that in the interval between these two tender calls the heavy construction industry of Canada had acquired confidence in its ability to work in the Canadian Arctic. I suggest that there is no other way to acquire the ability to live and work in the Arctic except by doing it.

The second reason there is danger in a passive attitude toward the development of the resources of the northland is that the speed of tech- nological developments today makes it impossible to rely on world demand of some remote future date ever calling into the market the raw materials Canada may have. There is today no shortage of base metals in the world, nor of oil and gas. If Canada has these commodities, she will do well to search them out and market them if she can. If she sits on them she may still be sitting fifty years hence while countries which have greater dynamic find other ways to supply their needs. Techno- logical obsolescence can overtake almost any commodity.

The present interest in the north suggests that Canada is developing

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characteristics that derive from the geographical fact of being a northern country. The difficulties are great, costs are high and rewards to industry are cut into by these high costs. But Canadians are learning rapidly to cope with northern conditions.

In saying why work is going on in the northland, in some ways it is almost enough to say simply that these great lands of boreal forest and Arctic tundra are ours. We own the north. Its problems are ours, its difficulties, its sorrows and its wealth. It belongs to us. Canadians for this reason must look at the north to see what it is good for, to see how to use it. The task of surveying these million and a half square miles by aerial photography has only been done in the past few years. We are now commencing hydrographic surveys and a project in oceanography of northern waters such as has never been seen in this hemisphere before. Electromagnetic surveys for the geological characteristics and the mineral potential are just beginning. The continental shelf facing the Arctic ocean is now being studied. The submerged lands around all the coasts of Canada are now recognized as part of the nation’s property, and their nature and their values must be ascertained.

I said in introducing today’s discussion that the problems of adminis- tration in the Canadian north are basically the problems of the colonial power in bringing subject peoples and subject lands to a state of maturity, prosperity, and political equality. The pages of today’s press testify to the difficulty of the process. Some colonial powers-notably the United Kingdom-have succeeded brilliantly. Others have failed dismally, We, in Canada, are belatedly aware of the importance of the same task that we still have to do at home. We have a great many advantages, but there are still many difficult hurdles to leap. The greatest single guarantee of the success of our efforts is the very fact of the present awareness of the people of Canada of the job there is to be done to complete the fabric of democracy and government in this country.