Franklin expedition search to return to Arctic this summer

Over the course of this most recent seven-year hunt for the two lost ships of the Franklin expedition, there has been no shortage of high-level, high-profile announcements, right up to the prime minister, about the government's plans.

This summer, though, it's been different.

Unlike last year, when Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced the annual search two months in advance, there has been little public or political comment, despite prodding, on what might be in the works — until yesterday when Parks Canada quietly updated its website to indicate exploration of the HMS Erebus wreck and the ongoing search for HMS Terror were resuming in the North.

A tweet also went out, saying "It's official, our [underwater archeology] team is going back to the #Arctic!"

Until then, however, the department had for several weeks only indicated that planning was continuing and would offer no details. And the Department of National Defence said, too, it could not speak publicly about its annual northern training exercise, Operation Nanook.

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Whether there has been a political calculation to minimize public attention right now — in the midst of a federal election campaign — or something else, there's no doubt the quest to find Franklin's lost ships has been riding political waves all along.

Those involved have described it as an important pursuit for everything from protecting Arctic sovereignty to showcasing Canadian scientific and technological achievement.

Still, "there are definitely politics at play," says Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in global politics and international law at the University of British Columbia.

"Obviously there was at least a period of a day or so when the [Erebus] discovery was kept under wraps" so that Prime Minister Stephen Harper could have the spotlight, he says.

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Mind you, he adds, "I think that our other previous prime ministers would have been tempted to do the same thing."

'Big plans'

The fact that there is politics at play on the Franklin file goes way back — even to 1845 when the reinforced wooden warships led by Sir John Franklin were dispatched by the British Admiralty to try to find the Northwest Passage, a political and trade objective in its own right.

Subsequent missions were sent to find the doomed ships, coming back with clues, but no big answers to the Franklin mystery.

"There was political messiness back then, and there is today," former Toronto Star journalist Paul Watson said during a Stratford Festival discussion on the Franklin discovery last month.

(Watson resigned from the paper after saying it refused to publish a story about the Franklin expedition search, an allegation the paper has rejected.)

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But whatever the scope of the northern searching this summer, it will almost certainly take place within the prism of a federal government seeking re-election.

"It appears as though the government has used the Franklin story to its own political advantage by linking the legacy and discovery … with values and themes that reflect and reinforce their own partisan messaging," says Jeff Ruhl, a contract professor in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Ruhl cites the government's The Great Canadian North commercial that was broadcast earlier this summer on TV and appeared in movie theatres, in which last summer's Erebus discovery featured prominently.

In the 60-second ad, an announcer says: "Franklin's legacy is one of perseverance, discovery and innovation that lives on today and has helped to keep our True North strong, proud and free" — words that have contemporary political echoes, Ruhl suggests.

"Such value-laden words as perseverance, discovery, innovation, strength, freedom have all figured in various government messaging and in the prime minister's speeches," says Ruhl.

Lots of promises

Still, as much as Harper has talked about the North over his tenure — and usually undertaken some kind of Northern tour in August, Byers suggests the Conservative leader has backed away from the subject in the past couple of years because the national media has become skeptical of the rhetoric.

"It sees very little progress on the Arctic offshore patrol ships. The construction of the naval port at Nanisivick was stalled for over nine years. The icebreaker, the Diefenbaker, still is not under contract after again eight years of promises, and I could go on."

In the past, federal environment ministers, from John Baird in 2008 to Leona Aglukkaq in 2014, have said the Franklin search would contribute significantly to the government's Northern strategy.

"Information gathered on this expedition will provide benefits to Canadians in the areas of Arctic sovereignty, marine safety, environmental protection, science and technology, history and culture," Aglukkaq said last year.

But while Byers considers the Franklin project a very important archeological exercise, and one he's very glad was carried out, he questions the role it can play in any sovereignty argument.

"I know it's tempting for nationalist Canadians, because I am a nationalist Canadian, to reach for every possible toehold to support our legal position, but as an international law expert I just don't see it here," he says.

Ruhl also sees the Erebus discovery last year as a "huge feather in the cap of the Conservatives' Northern nation-building project."

But he also found it "interesting" that the government felt compelled to announce just days before the Aug. 2 election call, a five-year, $22-million commitment in safety improvements for northern shipping (after an audit last year found inadequacies in sea floor surveys and mapping).

"What this suggests to me is that this government does not want to be called out during the election for neglecting a portfolio it is so visibly touting."