Canadian Consortium on Human Security

While all field research involves encounters with the unpredictable and series of obstacles, I likely benefited relative to my HSF counterparts from the fact that my field research took place in Canada, Norway and Finland. As such, logistics involving transportation, lodging, and safety were not concerns. And because my interviews were with government officials and other professionals, I was able to make contact with my interviewees and schedule my interviews beforehand via email or telephone. The only disadvantage associated with doing research in Scandinavia is the cost of living there, particularly in Norway. Because hotels, transportation and food are so expensive, my trip had to be relatively short, and as such my timeframe within which to conduct interviews was limited.

Ottawa Interviews

I encountered a number of dilemmas during the fellowship period. For my interviews in Ottawa, I achieved what I considered to be a pretty good schedule of interviews. However two interviews which I had badly wanted to conduct – with Mary Simon or another representative from the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and with Victor Santos Pedro of Transport Canada, who is the main Canadian expert on the status of, and governmental policy on, Arctic shipping – were not obtained.

Mary Simon was out of town during my planned trip to Ottawa; I emailed other relevant representatives from the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and called the office to try to schedule an interview with any other relevant person who would be available, however it was a busy time of year for the organization and they could not schedule it in. It is my intention to return to Ottawa in the next year and I will try to schedule a meeting with the ICC again. To that end, my former boss at the University of the Arctic, Greg Poelzer, has offered to write an email of introduction on my behalf to Ms. Simon as he has worked with her before and knows her personally.

Similarly, despite emails and phone calls to Mr. Santos Pedros’ office, he was unable to schedule an interview with me. Again, following an email of introduction to Mr Santos Pedro from my thesis supervisor, whom he knows personally, I will try to get an interview with him for a future visit to Ottawa.

Two other interviews which would have been very useful – with Larry Bagnell, the MP from the Yukon, and Adele Dion, the Senior Arctic Official for Canada and Director General of DFAIT’s Human Security and Human Rights Bureau, were cancelled at the last minute. This is likely a common problem for PhD students hoping to get interviews with senior officials; these are very busy people, and an interview with a graduate student is likely a very low priority. Again, I will try to get interviews with the above persons the next time I visit Ottawa.

Scandinavian Interviews

To determine contacts for potential interviews in Scandinavia, I did a number of things. First and foremost, I solicited assistance from my thesis supervisor, as well as my former employers from the University of the Arctic who live in Canada, Norway and Finland as they deal frequently with government officials who work on the North. Second, I asked some of the contacts in DFAIT that I already knew if they could pass on some names of relevant potential interviewees from Norway and Finland. Third, I searched the internet for contact lists from various Arctic conferences, foreign ministry pages and the Arctic Council web site for potential interviewees. All told, I likely contacted twenty-five people for an interview and managed to meet with eleven.

I had great difficulty getting interviews in Oslo. Unbeknownst to me, it was the winter break in Norway, which Norwegians apparently take very seriously, and every person in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry who works on their northern dimension of foreign policy was out of town. As mentioned, I requested interviews with contacts suggested by my former employers at the University of the Arctic, DFAIT and from my interviewees at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. Furthermore, the political consul at the Canadian embassy in Norway is a friend of mine from high school, and he made email and verbal requests on my behalf with his contacts at the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. Unfortunately, all of these contacts were out of town during my time in Norway. This was very frustrating but I am not sure what more could have been done. My trip to Norway needed to take place during a certain time frame and I had booked it before I solicited interviews so that I knew what dates to propose to my interviewees.

A lesson learned from this experience would be to check out holidays in the countries you are going to do field research in before you book your timeframe. I would have been cognizant of major religious holidays or summer holidays, and I checked to make sure there were no major conferences that my contacts would likely be attending before I booked the trip. But I did not guess that winter break would be such a big event in Norway.

All was not lost, however, as I had a very productive and informative interview with the Canadian consul to Norway, who was able to elaborate on Norwegian goals and motivations in terms of their northern foreign policy, their current chairmanship of the Arctic Council, and security in the Arctic in general. I also learned more about Canada’s perspective on circumpolar relations and the Arctic Council.

 

I was also able to get an interview with Neil Hamilton, the director of the WWF Arctic Programme, which is an observer in the Arctic Council, an active participant in circumpolar affairs, and an expert on environmental security in the Arctic. Unrestricted by the need for diplomacy and government hierarchies and bureaucracies, Mr. Hamilton provided a very blunt assessment of the work of the Arctic Council, concrete goals for the future of the Council, perspectives on the politics involved between cultural and environmental security issues in the Arctic, and most importantly a general feeling for the role of NGOs in Arctic Council.

When I first contacted Mr. Hamilton he said he was unable to have an interview during my visit but would be pleased to have a phone conversation at a later date. As the WWF was very close to my hotel, I stopped in hoping to gather some literature and maybe talk with someone at the office. As Mr. Hamilton was there at the time, I managed to get my interview with him. A lesson learned in that situation would be that sometimes, persistence pays off, and while you don’t want to inconvenience anybody, it’s much harder to turn someone away in person than via email.

My interviews in Helsinki were with the best possible contacts and all went very well and yielded a lot of good information. I was able to meet with Jyrki Kallio, Finland’s Senior Arctic Official and representative from the Finnish Foreign Ministry, who provided Finland’s goals and motivations for their northern foreign policy and elaborated on the differences between Scandinavian and North American perspectives on human security: because of the relatively small percentage of the population that the northern indigenous group the Sami make up, and their significant integration into Scandinavian society, Arctic human security is not a domestic issue as it is in Canada, but an international issue, and one primarily concerned with the sustainable development and security of the Kola Peninsula and the Barents and Baltic Seas in particular and Russia in general.

I also met with Guy Lindstrom and Lassi Heinenen. Guy Lindstrom is a Finnish Member of Parliament who has been involved in the development of Finland’s and the EU’s northern policy dimensions and Arctic Council and offered an excellent history of circumpolar relations. Lassi Heinenen is probably the pre-eminent expert on human security in the Arctic and participates in the Arctic Council’s Sustainable Development Working Group, the Northern Forum and University of the Arctic.

Other Dilemmas

On a more personal note, I am still nursing my now 9 month old daughter and so had to bring her along with me to Winnipeg, Ottawa, Oslo and Helsinki. Bringing the baby along certainly made the trips (and entire fellowship period) more exhausting, expensive, and required more planning. To help me out, my father came with me to Winnipeg, my husband to Ottawa and my sister to Scandinavia. While this allowed me to do the research, I had to organize my travel to a certain extent around the dates which they could get off work and an extended stay in either Ottawa or Scandinavia, both for time and cost issues, was not possible. I also had to schedule my interviews in a way that allowed me to return periodically to my daughter to feed her.

On a positive note, it turns out the baby is a very good flyer, and having family around made each of the trips more rewarding. I have many lessons learned from this aspect of my field research, but most importantly, that with help from family it is possible to balance motherhood and scholarship, and opportunities for field research such as that afforded by the HSF need not be postponed or forsaken.

Conclusion

For my Master’s thesis, I conducted an extensive field research trip in Southern Chile studying the level of political participation of rural and indigenous women. I can say that without doubt, this research trip was easier, more straightforward and more efficient, and I was mostly successful in obtaining the information I had originally sought. Of course, different research objectives determine the nature of the field research and something is lost when the researcher is not able to get a feel for the way of life, daily social events and obstacles faced a particular group. Because my research questions focus on government policies and state motivations and goals, it was the right decision to restrict my field research to the capital cities of Canada, Norway and Finland. However, with unlimited time and money, it would have been worthwhile to travel to some of the communities around the circumpolar world for whom Arctic human security is not a theoretical discussion but a matter of cultural survival.

Lessons Learned:

 

When interviewing participants who have sensitive files and as such are unlikely to divulge any extra information, be sure to develop a list of specific questions rather than rely on open-format questions. Be sure to check for any major holidays, religious festivals, etcetera before scheduling your research trip.Sometimes persistence pays off: when emailing fails to obtain an interview, call; when calling fails, visit the office in person if possible.