Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our guests for their presentations.
I want to start with the whole issue of the Arctic, around what models would work. When you consider all the views and the blown-up rhetoric that we've seen in the last while, with the talk about the Russian bear as opposed to protecting the polar bears' habitat, we can see that we need to have some clear direction as to where we should go.
I say this as someone who sees that some of the strategy of the government is to create this kind of phony war, in my opinion, be it with the Russians or with the Americans. In fact, when you see the joint work that's going on between scientists, what we need to do is get behind what they're doing.
Where would you see the role of scientists in joint management? Would you see them as being on the board? Would you see them feeding into the data and the joint projects? I'm sensing that there's a lot more cooperation going on between Canada and the U.S. than we are actually aware of. On the models you talked about, where would you put scientists and researchers?