VANCOUVER—The vast gap between Ottawa’s Arctic ambitions and reality moves to the international stage this week as Canada takes the helm at a top regional forum.

Canada becomes chair of the eight-nation Arctic Council on Wednesday, beginning a two-year term when rapid warming is exposing the Far North to increasing threats, including more shipping, oil drilling and other hazards.

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Inuit and southern experts hope the spotlight will move Prime Minister Stephen Harper to match talk of responsible development and stricter security with more leadership in Canada’s Arctic.

Experts at Toronto’s Munk-Gordon Arctic Security Program are pressing Ottawa to significantly improve Canada’s Arctic marine and aviation infrastructure, which is dismal compared with its neighbours’.

Canada last chaired the council at its inaugural meeting in 1998, when the forum promised to promote co-operation, especially on sustainable development and environmental protection. Growing world interest in the Arctic gives Canada a good opportunity to lead, said Sara French, director of programs at the Munk-Gordon Arctic initiative.

Two years ago, council members signed an agreement to work more closely together on Arctic air and sea search and rescue.

“And one of the ways it can show its leadership is to implement this agreement,” she added. “It’s important to know that only 10 per cent of Canadian Arctic waters are mapped to modern standards.”

Ottawa has listed economic development, including what it calls “responsible Arctic resource development,” and safe shipping among its top priorities as Arctic Council chair.

Leona Aglukkaq, Harper’s minister in charge of northern economic development, did not respond to an interview request. But she told The Canadian Press that Ottawa’s focus on development — including the creation of an arctic business forum — won’t distract from other priorities.

“What I’m proposing is a trade show forum, a business forum of Arctic to Arctic, an opportunity for private industry to exchange information on best practices on permafrost, on shipping, all of that,” she told The Canadian Press.

“We can do science and research but if we’re going to make fully informed decisions we have to ask industry, how are we doing? I feel we have to close that gap.”

The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on earth. Melting ice is opening treacherous waters to more commercial and tourist ships.

Commentators writing from Europe last week “were worried that Canada was not going to fulfil its obligations under the search and rescue agreement,” said University of Toronto professor John English, an expert on the council’s history.

As Opposition leader, Harper promised in 2005 that his government would buy three new heavy icebreakers and build a new combined military-civilian deep-water port in a $5.3 billion effort to strengthen Arctic sovereignty.

After he became prime minister, Harper instead announced in 2007 a plan to build six to eight patrol ships that could navigate major rivers, coastal waters and open seas in Canada’s Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic waters.

In a detailed analysis of the plan last month, Canadian Arctic experts criticized Harper “for choosing to build compromise vessels that are suitable neither for an Arctic role nor as offshore patrol vessels.”

“At stake is not just the $7.4 billion (or more) that will be spent, but also Canada’s ability to operate effectively on all three of its coasts,” added the report, published jointly by the Rideau Institute and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“An urgent change of course is required, one that would see the Royal Canadian Navy provided with purpose-built offshore patrol ships based on proven and therefore less expensive designs.”

Canada’s 162,000-kilometre Arctic coastline is the world’s longest in the Far North. But RCAF air rescue flights take six to eight hours to reach the eastern Arctic from their Trenton bases, French said.

“You can imagine the results when the temperatures are plummeting down to -50 degrees (Celsius),” she added.

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The increasing perils of Arctic warming demand that Canada be better prepared for emergencies, said Cathy Towtongie, president of Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., set up to ensure promises under the 1993 Nunavut Land Claims Agreement are kept.

“Hunters are increasingly coming across thin ice so we need a strategy in place for transportation,” she said from Iqaluit.

“We don’t have the infrastructure with the large influx of tourists,” Towtongie added. Passengers and crew from a stranded cruise ship “were just fortunate that the closest community put them up in the gymnasium.”

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