corridor. It contains basic recommendations to assist the Government in determining when a pipeline should be built, where it should be built and who should build it.

Volume II of the report is in preparation and will be available this summer. It will contain terms and conditions to be imposed if a pipeline is built.

Volume I includes an opening letter to Mr. Allmand, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, which is a summary of Judge Berger's recommendations.

Key recommendations are as follows:

Judge Berger said: "I recommend that no pipeline be built and no energy corridor be established across the Northern Yukon along either route." This means that the report rejected both the Coastal and Interior Routes proposed by Arctic Gas to bring gas from Alaska to the United States.

Judge Berger said that if the pipeline is built along the Coastal Route and an energy corridor is established, "I foresee that, within our lifetime, the Porcupine caribou herd [one of the last great caribou herds in North America], will be reduced to a remnant." "The preservation of the Porcupine caribou herd is incompatible with the building of a gas pipeline and the establishment of an energy corridor through its calving grounds."

The Arctic Gas pipeline and energy corridor along the Interior Route in the Northern Yukon "would have a devastating impact on the people of Old Crow," Judge Berger said. "All the people in the village told me they are opposed to the pipeline. They fear it will destroy their village, their way of life, and their land."

The report recommended that a National Wilderness Park be established in the Northern Yukon contiguous to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Range "to protect the wilderness, the caribou, birds and other wildlife." "Oil and gas exploration, pipeline construction and industrial activity must be prohibited within the Park and the native people must continue to have the right to hunt, fish and trap." Regarding the alternate proposal to carry Alaskan gas along the Alaska Highway Route across the southern Yukon, Judge Berger said:

Some of the concerns about wildlife, wilderness, and engineer-
ing and construction that led me to reject the corridor across
the Northern Yukon do not appear to apply in the case of the
Alaska Highway Route. It is a route with an established in-
frastructure. In my view, the construction of a pipeline along
this route would not threaten any substantial populations of
any species in the Yukon or in Alaska. But I am in no position
to endorse such a route: an assessment of social and economic
impact must still be made and native claims have not been
settled.

Judge Berger views the Mackenzie Delta-Beaufort Sea area as a "major petroleum province in the making" and regards the pipeline as the trigger for expanded oil and gas exploration and development. He rejected the Arctic Gas proposed route across the Mackenzie Delta in order to protect the Delta's unique ecosystem, the birds and the white whales.

Judge Berger recommended a white whale sanctuary be established in west Mackenzie Bay to protect the calving grounds for the 5,000strong white whale herd. "If the herd is driven from its calving area, it will die out," Judge Berger said. In the sanctuary, "oil and gas exploration and development would be forbidden at any time of the year."

Much of the oil and gas potential of the region is believed to lie offshore beneath the Beaufort Sea. The report recognized that it has been considered to be in the national interest to begin delineating the extent of these reserves but urged restraint in approving future exploration and development. "The greatest concern in the Beaufort Sea is the threat of oil spills." Judge Berger said: "In my opinion, the techniques presently available will not be successful in controlling or cleaning up a major spill in this remote [Arctic] area."

"Therefore, I urge the Government of Canada to ensure that improvements in technology for prevention . . . and clean-up of spills precede further advance of industry in the Beaufort Sea." In addition, Canada is "pioneering on this frontier and establishing the standards that may well guide other circumpolar countries in future Arctic drilling."

Another key recommendation is that "a period of 10 years will be required in the Mackenzie Valley and Western Arctic to settle native claims, and to establish the new institutions and new programs that a settlement will entail. No pipeline should be built until these things have been achieved." But solely from an environmental point of view, Judge Berger said, "I have concluded that it is feasible... to build a pipeline and to establish an energy corridor along the Mackenzie Valley, running south from the Mackenzie Delta to the Alberta border."

"The pipeline companies see the pipeline as an unqualified gain to the North," but "it is an illusion to believe that the pipeline will solve the economic problems of the North," the report said. The Arctic Gas project has been described as one of the greatest construction projects, in terms of capital expenditure, ever contemplated by private enterprise. The Arctic Gas pipeline would require 6.000 construction workers North of 60, a hugh infrastructure of wharves, warehouses and airstrips, and fleets of aircraft, tractors, earth-movers, trucks and trailers. "The pipeline contractors and unions have made it plain that native northerners are not qualified to hold down skilled positions in pipeline construction." Once the pipeline is built there will be about 250 jobs, mostly of a technical nature, that will require qualified personnel from the South.

Judge Berger said:

I am convinced that non-renewable resources need not neces-
sarily be the sole basis of the northern economy in the future.

A strengthening of renewable resource harvesting in the
North-the fortification of the native economy-would en-
able native people to enter the industrial system without
becoming completely dependent on it.

An economy based on modernization of hunting, fishing and trapping, on efficient game and fisheries management. on small-scale enterprise, and on the orderly development of gas and oil resources over a period of years-this is no retreat

into the past; rather, it is a rational program for northern
development based on the ideals and aspirations of northern
native peoples.

The report stated: "The social costs of building a pipeline now will be enormous, and no remedial programs are likely to ameliorate them." The great majority of the 1,000 witnesses that spoke to the Inquiry in the 35 community hearings expressed their fears of what a pipeline would bring: "an influx of construction workers, more alcoholism, tearing of the social fabric, injury to the land, and the loss of their identity as a people." Judge Berger said, "I am persuaded that these fears are well founded."

The report recommended that "the native people must be allowed a choice about their own future. If the pipeline is approved before a settlement of claims takes place, the future of the North-and the place of the native people in the North-will, in effect, have been decided for them." "It would therefore be dishonest to try to impose an immediate settlement that we know now-and that the native people will know before the ink is dry-will not achieve their goals. They will soon realize-just as the native people on the prairies realized a century ago as the settlers poured in-that the actual course of events on the ground will deny the promises that appear on paper." The report pointed out that "the pipeline companies are obviously having trouble in designing their proposal to deal with frost heave" of the buried refrigerated pipeline. Judge Berger expressed his concern about construction scheduling too: "I am not persuaded that Arctic Gas can meet its construction schedule across the Northern Yukon."

Given such uncertainties "it seems to me unreasonable that the Government of Canada should give unqualified approval to a right-of-way or provide financial guarantees to the project without a convincing resolution of these concerns."

The report also recommended that the Government develop an independent body of knowledge on the northern environment, environmental impact, and engineering design and construction under Arctic and permafrost conditions to fill critical gaps in information and to provide government with the knowledge it will need in making an intelligent disposition of northern development proposals.

In the epilogue to the report, Judge Berger referred to the statements made at the Inquiry by native people who said they would be prepared to give up their lives to stop the pipeline if it were to proceed before there had been a settlement of native claims. He said: "I have given the most anxious consideration to whether or not I should make any reference in this report" to the statements made at the Inquiry about possible "violent reaction to the pipeline if it were built without a just settlement of native claims." "I have concluded that they cannot be ignored." "No one who heard them could doubt that they were said in earnest." "I do not want anyone to think I am predicting an insurrection. But I am saying there is the real possibility of civil disobedience and civil disorder that-if they did occur might well render orderly political evolution of the North impossible.

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