As of 2017, the nearest permanently inhabited place of land closest to the North Pole belongs to what nation?

Located in a shifting sea of ice, the North Pole sits at the center of the Arctic Ocean, the literal top of the world. The shifting of the ice makes it impossible to establish a permanent base at the pole, though drifting stations have been created through the decades that are manned for several weeks at a time. But situated only 817 km (508 miles) from the North Pole, a military installation named Alert, located at the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada is the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world!

The total current population of Nunavut (as of 2011) is estimated to be around 33,330 people, the vast majority (84%) of whom are Inuit (a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples). Of the approximately 28,000 Inuit living in Nunavut, more than half of them reside in the eastern Qikiqtaaluk region of the territory and, remarkably, they are mostly young people.