{"id":13329,"date":"2026-02-14T23:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/13329\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T23:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T23:05:08","slug":"inuit-look-to-greenlands-social-model-as-canada-pursues-military-buildup-in-arctic-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/13329\/","title":{"rendered":"Inuit look to Greenland\u2019s social model as Canada pursues military buildup in Arctic – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Ottawa looks to use military spending to build up infrastructure in the Far North, Inuit say they want Canada to take tips from Greenland<\/a> \u2014 where a Nordic social model adapted to local needs has built health, housing and education services deemed superior to anything in Canada\u2019s Arctic.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere is a lot that we can learn from them,\u201d said Lukasi Whiteley-Tukkiapik, who leads Saqijuq, an Inuit wellness organization in Kujjuaq, Que.<\/p>\n

Speaking last week on a charter flight from\u00a0Montreal\u00a0to Greenland\u2019s capital Nuuk, where he attended the official opening of Canada\u2019s new consulate, Whiteley-Tukkiapik said services in his community \u2014 a hub for northern Quebec \u2014 are inferior to those available in Iqaluit.<\/p>\n

Nuuk, meanwhile, is \u201cgenerations ahead of us\u201d in providing Inuit-led social services in well-maintained buildings, he said.<\/p>\n

As a self-governing territory of Denmark, Greenland has universal health care and unemployment insurance, free dentistry for children, subsidized daycare and education services generally offered without tuition fees.<\/p>\n

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Nuuk boasts modern schools and a hospital with four times the capacity of the one in Iqaluit \u2014 even though Nuuk\u2019s population is only about 2.5 times the size of Iqaluit\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Greenland got 87 per cent of its energy from hydroelectricity in 2022, up from 59 per cent in 2000, according to the British think tank Ember. Nunavut relies almost entirely on fossil fuels like diesel.<\/p>\n

The 2021 census found 53.1 per cent of Nunavut\u2019s population lives in overcrowded housing, while a third live in homes in various states of disrepair. Nuuk has brightly coloured houses, cultural centres and libraries \u2014 in part because bedrock is easier to build on than the permafrost found in Iqaluit.<\/p>\n

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The Danish territory still grapples with suicide and tuberculosis \u2014 social problems it shares with Inuit communities in Canada \u2014 but Whiteley-Tukkiapik said it\u2019s doing more to improve living standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have the same social issues (but) there\u2019s more of an importance and it\u2019s more on the front burner for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir health network, the social programs, the way that they tackle suicide prevention as well \u2014 they have a lot of good programs in place and they are working on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Steven Arnfjord, a University of Greenland professor who leads the Centre for Arctic Welfare, said the best aspects of the territory\u2019s social model stem from Inuit leadership deciding how to use social services funding coming from Copenhagen.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe educate our own social workers so they understand the culture, the language, everything, when they engage with clients. It\u2019s not a social worker from Toronto or Ottawa or anywhere else that flies up or comes up and has to readjust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a territory. This is a nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenlanders get most of their medical services at home, without needing to fly to Denmark, Arnfjord said. When they do need to visit Copenhagen, Greenland Inuit stay in culturally appropriate accommodations run by Inuit organizations, similar to services offered in Ottawa and Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s, Denmark made strides on fighting tuberculosis by sending a specialized ship along Greenland\u2019s coastline to offer X-ray screenings. The boat brought sick patients to a specialized facility in Nuuk for treatment before sending them home with a thorough recovery plan.<\/p>\n

Arnfjord compared that to the former practice in Canada\u2019s Far North, where people suspected of being infected with tuberculosis were once routinely sent to southern hospitals, sometimes in cramped conditions. Many of those patients never made it home because they died down south or ended up staying there.<\/p>\n

Still, Arnfjord said, Greenland\u2019s social system isn\u2019t as responsive as it should be to changes in the population, compared to mainland Denmark or Sweden, where the government is constantly tweaking social welfare systems to address new problems or changing demographics.<\/p>\n

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He added Greenland\u2019s social services still put too much emphasis on the individual in addressing problems like addiction or homelessness, ignoring the impact of extended Inuit families.<\/p>\n

Arnfjord said he attended a parent-teacher conference in Greenland that was framed the way it would have been in Denmark \u2014 with the student having primary responsibility for learning. He said that clashes with the Inuit ethic that expects the family to work together to support a child\u2019s education.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not the group or the collective or the family we\u2019re talking about. The entity becomes the single individual, and that is hurtful for an Indigenous community,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause it\u2019s an installed version of welfare, it has this colonial history about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed represents Inuit from 51 communities across the Canadian Arctic, where cancer care and childbirth almost always require flights to hospitals in the south.<\/p>\n

While there is a shortage of comparable data, Obed said Greenland has far more doctors per capita and more medical services than Canada\u2019s Arctic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look to Greenland and see more indicators of equity \u2014 especially social equity \u2014 and the hallmarks of sustainable communities in a way that we have yet to materialize completely here in Canada,\u201d Obed said.<\/p>\n

Andrea Charron, director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said Ottawa will need to improve infrastructure in Arctic communities if it wants to expand its military footprint \u2014 because military bases and airfields only function well in areas with adequate housing and services.<\/p>\n

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She cautioned that Inuit communities are accustomed to empty promises from the federal government. She said a military buildup will only benefit locals if it respects Inuit sovereignty and offers dedicated funding over years.<\/p>\n

Ottawa, Charron said, tends to get enthusiastic about the North every few years before getting sidetracked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need sustained attention and funding to this infrastructure, because what we tend to have is what I call Arctic distraction disorder,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be very clear about what the money can and cannot provide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charron said better infrastructure also would shore up Canada\u2019s security in the North against the risk of territorial or political incursions from foreign powers.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing, healthy communities are a bulwark against foreign interference,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you are lacking access to healthy food and you don\u2019t have internet and you don\u2019t have clean drinking water, then it\u2019s much easier for nefarious actors to say, \u2018Well, we\u2019ll provide this for you.\u2019 But it often comes with strings attached.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arnfjord added that Greenlanders have taken on a new appreciation for their social safety net in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s demands for ownership of the territory and Washington\u2019s talk of paying residents thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe level of trust and investment in a good welfare system, the benefits from that sort of thing \u2014 that\u2019s something that you can\u2019t supplement with a lump sum of money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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He recalled seeing dire treatment of Indigenous people and widespread homelessness while visiting Alaska in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not something that will be tolerated in Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Ottawa looks to use military spending to build up infrastructure in the Far North, Inuit say they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[227,57,1592,2834,1827],"class_list":["post-13329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-greenland","tag-canada","tag-greenland","tag-inuit","tag-u-s","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}