The midnight sun shines on the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent near Resolute Bay, Nunavut, last year. Canada is meeting with other Arctic countries to discuss the region. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Canada will take a leadership role in the Arctic region but work closely with other coastal nations and not act unilaterally, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Monday.

Cannon was speaking after meeting in Chelsea, Que., north of Gatineau, with diplomats from the U.S., Russia, Denmark and Norway — the five nations with Arctic coastlines. He reiterated the Harper government's oft-stated stance that Canada takes its Arctic presence very seriously.

"Our leadership is based on a principle of openness," he said. "But our citizens and northern inhabitants expect us to show leadership in this, and that is what we are doing."

The one-day meeting was controversial from the start, with aboriginal groups protesting their exclusion from the talks. Other northern countries such as Sweden, Finland and Iceland — which are part of a larger international body known as the Arctic Council — are also not happy about being excluded.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Canada Monday for not inviting all those with legitimate interests in the Arctic.

In her prepared remarks to open the meeting, Clinton said she had been contacted by representatives of indigenous groups, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, who all had similar concerns about not being invited.

"Significant international discussions on Arctic issues should include those who have legitimate interests in the region, and I hope the Arctic will always showcase our ability to work together, not create new divisions," Clinton said.

But Cannon brushed off suggestions that the exclusion of those countries and groups was a snub against other stakeholders or a sign that those who were invited to the meeting intended to act unilaterally.

"All the participants in this meeting made a clear distinction between the role of the Arctic Council and the role of coastal states," Cannon said. "This was not to replace or undermine the Arctic Council."

No foreign representatives appeared alongside Cannon at the press conference to close the meeting.

As climate change opens up the region to more sea traffic, Cannon said, other nations are going to have a presence in the area.

"But all Arctic coastal states have responsibilities to their own citizens on things like public safety," he said.

He said it's up to the coastal nations to deal with any potential nautical disasters that might occur in the area, including those involving vessels from other parts of the world.

"If there is a disaster in the area, they will look to us to bring aid, and the coast guard to provide search and rescue," Cannon said. "Those are things that fundamentally fall on the Arctic coastal states"

Norway urges cooler heads

Earlier, Norway's foreign minister urged all polar allies to keep a cool head and work together to solve disputes in the Arctic.

"We sometimes analyze Russia with old mental maps, with the mental maps of the Cold War, where we have instinctive reactions to what we see and hear," Jonas Gahr Store said.

"One should not put all mental maps to the shredder. But I think updating mental maps … analyzing it coolly is the responsibility of modern government."

Store didn't refer to Canada directly, but the Harper government has criticized Moscow in recent years over what it views as provocative conduct in the Far North. A Russian submarine planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole and Moscow has sent bombers close — but never into — Canadian Arctic airspace.

"Not everything Russia does in the Arctic, not every flag they plant, which is a symbolic gesture, has legal meaning," Store said. "And the more you react to that … you give it meaning."

Valuable natural resources

As much as one-fifth of Earth's undiscovered oil and gas is believed to be in the Arctic and climate change is causing the rapid melting of Arctic ice, opening resource-exploration potential.

Store said Russia has legitimate interests in the Arctic and much of the resource wealth is in its sovereign territory, which should minimize future disputes.

However, maintaining relations with Moscow is complicated because Russia is not quite a "normal" state, he added.

"Russia is in transition, and as some of their able analysts are saying, they are lost in transition.… It is not certain in what state they will be when that transition ends.

"We are all served by seeing that transition landing softly into something where Russia can still be called a democracy with rule of law, civil society, freedom of press and freedom of expression."