The number one thing, generally, is that there needs to be more funding for northern science. There needs to be more money going out the door and flowing through communities where they can direct it. It doesn't have to come to organizations like ours, but it needs to go to the communities so they can decide what to do with it.
In terms of seals, conduct meaningful stock assessments in the regions, especially in the Arctic, where we don't know what the health of 18 of the 21 species is like. That needs to be done.
The third thing is to take this ecosystems approach. To give you a quick example, science is expensive, but it could be done much more cheaply if you weren't doing it from a huge icebreaker. You could actually access these uncharted nearshore regions where the work really needs to be done and where it has been neglected for decades.
On a single project on our ship, there could be hydrography—mapping for infrastructure and for navigation—while doing a bioacoustic stock assessment and trawling nets to find out about microplastics contamination, which is another serious issue. We could stop to do permafrost core samples and ongoing water nutrient analysis. At the same time, we could be training crew from local communities in Transport Canada certifications to get their bridge watch rating so they can then get good marine jobs. We could also host youth camps to engage youth from the communities in local science.
This is the model we do. This is what we scrape together funding to do. There's no reason the federal government can't do that. It does cross a bunch of programs and a bunch of departments, which is unusual, but that's what needs to happen for science funding in the north.