Why Canada’s long-term fate could hang on unlocking the Arctic — now – Financial Post

Donald Trump has forced a new urgency on the campaign trail and up and down the country to unleash the North’s potential or risk Arctic sovereignty and a northern treasure trove of resources

Brendan Bell knows what it is like to be ignored. It wasn’t so many months ago that the chief executive of West Kitikmeot Resources Corp., an Inuit-owned company proposing to build a road and deepwater ocean port in the Arctic, was spending a chunk of each day waiting for non-Arctic people to return his phone calls to discuss the project.

Do they ever. Yet that history can be summarized as roads — and major infrastructure projects of all types — may get proposed for the Arctic, but they generally don’t get built. No surprise then that Bell had been contending with an utterly non-urgent vibe from other people in relation to the Grays Bay Road and Port Project. That is until recently, when a lot of those same people started calling him back.