Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

So they're excited about this development as well.

[Anja Jeffrey]

Yes. There is often a schism, though, and it's in the report as well. The aboriginal population of the north, of course, has a certain connection to the land that does not always correspond with the way industry goes in. This is why we have mechanisms in place through which we negotiate impact benefit agreements, do environmental assessments, and all those things.

There is a clash of cultures, of course. It is getting a lot better as industry is moving in, is talking to the communities, and is learning that way.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I was really interested in what Mr. Bevington said, and I agree with him completely. I think ownership is a real key. But when we fabricate homes, they all look the same. That pride of ownership.... Is there a movement to allow for some diversity in housing, maybe some bigger houses and smaller houses? It sounds almost as if we're trying to force our views and our values.... Is that something that is shared there?

[Anja Jeffrey]

The type of housing I'm talking about is public housing. The way public housing in the north is put together, your rent is determined by your income. As soon as people start making money, whether they're employed in the resource industry or somewhere else, the rent goes up because they start making more money.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

But can they own them, as Mr. Bevington said?

[Anja Jeffrey]

They can, but a lot of people are not—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

In a position, maybe?

[Anja Jeffrey]

They might be if they're making good money, but then you run into the boom and bust cycle in many communities, and you never quite know.... Each mine has a life cycle to it. What we find is that in communities that are economically “mono”, in the sense that they are dependent on one major industry and one major employer, there can be a reluctance to enter into ownership, simply because you can sit with a mortgage for the rest of your life and you might be unemployed because of factors outside your control.

The thing about ownership is something that we really look very carefully at in the report, because that's where the care, the TLC, comes in.

The north is different from the south. Made-in-the-south solutions do not work in the north, so we need a completely different mindset in terms of how we work with this. This is why—and I'm not afraid to say this—we had many conversations with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation on this specific report, because they have certain programs and policies. They are very sensitive to the realities of the north, but they also have to work within certain guidelines.

It's very important to understand what makes the north tick. Travelling in the north and speaking to people is the best way of doing it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Jeffrey, thank you very much for coming out today. We really appreciate your testimony.

[Anja Jeffrey]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

With that, I'll suspend the meeting so we can get our new witnesses in, and then we'll get started again momentarily.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We'll get started.

I want to take the opportunity now to welcome our two witnesses from the Canadian Polar Commission: Bernard Funston, who is the chairman, and David Scott, who is executive director.

Gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to be out here today as we look at our study of Canada's Arctic foreign policy. You have an opening statement, so I'll turn it over to you and we can get started. We'll give you 10 minutes, and then we'll move back and forth with the witnesses.

Welcome, gentlemen. I'll turn the floor over to you. We look forward to hearing your opening remarks.

[Bernard Funston, Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm Bernie Funston. I'm the chair of the Canadian Polar Commission. I'm very honoured to be here today with our executive director, David Scott.

I'm going to say a few words to kick it off and then turn it over to David, who will run you through a presentation on the Canadian Polar Commission and what we've been trying to do with it since this new board was appointed in November 2010. We'd be very pleased to entertain questions about the commission and its work, and we'd be pleased to address some of the foreign policy issues that you're interested in.

In that regard, I'll say at the outset that I have a long history with the Arctic Council—from 1995 till December 2010, when I stepped down from my Arctic Council duties to take on the chairmanship of the Polar Commission. I was involved with the creation of the council back in 1995, and I participated in the negotiations. I chaired the committee that wrote the rules of procedure for the council, and I served as the executive secretary for the sustainable development working group from 2002 to 2010. I know you're interested in foreign policy, and I'd be very happy to accept questions from that quarter.

Without further ado, I'll turn it over to David.

[David J. Scott, Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission]

Mr. Chairman, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to provide some background information on the Canadian Polar Commission.

There are just a small number of slides—I believe you all have a paper copy. We'll quickly walk through it, to give you an overview of the purpose of our organization as well as an update on the revitalization process that has been under way for the past couple of years.

The purpose of the Canadian Polar Commission is to be Canada's national institution for furthering polar knowledge and awareness. What we are trying to do is to ensure that Canada can fully embrace its place as a polar nation.

The strategic outcome we are shooting for is to increase the Canadian polar knowledge available, to be used to inform decisions and generally improve conditions in the north.

We were created as a result of a task force that started in the late 1980s, and that resulted in the legislation that created the commission in 1991. We are active in Canadian polar affairs, and we have been significantly influential in the International Polar Year process that wound down in the spring with a significant international meeting in Montreal. We are now nearing the completion of a two-year revitalization process that began with the appointment of the current board, of whom Mr. Funston is the chair. I joined the commission seven months ago, following a long history of employment with Natural Resources Canada. I am a geologist by training and a professional manager. I have been undertaking a number of strategic initiatives to get the commission’s program on the rails as well as to update its business practices.

As you see on the third slide, we monitor polar knowledge in Canada. We like to keep our fingers on the pulse of what is happening. We work internationally as well as domestically to determine priorities for scientific knowledge creation and to identify who can help create that new knowledge required in the north. We encourage Canadian youth to get involved and interested in the north. We communicate polar research to Canadians and the public abroad, and we are doing our best to improve international cooperation in the advancement of the creation of knowledge.

I will note as well that although today we are focused on the north, our mandate also includes the Antarctic as well. We provide advice to the minister who oversees the commission, Minister Duncan of Aboriginal Affairs.

The revitalization under way now was triggered by the appointment of a new board of directors. We have a three-year strategic plan that is well under way, and on the administrative side, I am nearing the completion of a top-to-bottom review of our operations, regularizing our business practices, and ensuring appropriate oversights so that we can meet Treasury Board and other central agency standards on administrative, financial, and human resources requirements. So we are very much bringing the organization into the realm of the modern public service, as efficient and effective as it can be and fully compliant with all expected reporting requirements.

The fifth slide is a brief overview of our strategic plan. It has three key elements. The first is to aggregate and identify polar knowledge out there, bringing it together so that it can be used. The second is to make sense of that knowledge, to synthesize it, analyze it, identify trends, and provide analysis. And the third is to turn it inside out and communicate that knowledge—the knowledge in the network as well as the analysis of what that knowledge means. We communicate that to the general public, to the international community, and to decision-makers at the federal level as well as in the territorial areas and northern parts of the provinces.

On the sixth slide are many of the key elements we are working on. We have recently opened a new liaison office in the north, located in Yellowknife, in the Greenstone Building. David Miller, a long-time CBC researcher and journalist, is our northern coordinator. He joined us earlier this month. He brings with him a long history of knowledge, investigation, and a very strong network of northern connections to help us retain a good set of eyes and ears in the north that allow us to hear the views of northerners as well as help to communicate polar knowledge back into the north.

We are active in supporting the work of both SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and IASC, the International Arctic Science Committee. These are two international cooperation bodies of whom the CPC is Canada's adhering body. This helps us leverage into leading-edge science knowledge that's being created—natural sciences as well as social sciences globally—to ensure that Canada both contributes to and benefits from international knowledge developments.

On the synthesizing of knowledge front, we recently completed some work in Anchorage, Alaska, at the third biennial Canada-U.S. Northern Oil and Gas Research Forum. We made very strong connections with the Alaska-based players, and we're now undertaking a number of initiatives to coordinate work in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas—studies of the ecosystem, impacts on communities, and various other technical aspects.

Finally, in terms of communicating, we are refreshing our Internet web presence. We are modernizing the publications, which formerly were printed documents mailed around. We are going far more digital. We've stopped printing pieces of paper, and we are very much looking forward to providing a richer Internet experience for interested parties in the public.

Finally, in summary, the CPC is completing a significant two-year revitalization process to become a much more effective organization that is aligned with Canada's northern strategy, delivering for northerners and all Canadians. We are completing a complete business process review to bring the organization administratively and legally up to the expectations of central agencies. And finally, the program is being reviewed and modernized to ensure it is aligned with Government of Canada priorities and is being deployed as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Scott.

We're now going to start with Mr. Dewar, for seven minutes, please.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm going to start and then share with Mr. Bevington.

Thank you for being here today. I should note there was a time when there was a problem in terms of capacity for you. I remember asking questions in the House back in 2008: where was the board? It took the government two years to actually get you up and going. I'm glad to see you here and functioning. It should be noted, though, that it was an institute without a board for two years, from 2008 to 2010. But t's good to see you here.

I'm curious about how you work with other partners in other countries. As you will know, the whole Arctic Council idea was to web circumpolar countries together to make decisions to advocate for the north. How do you do that as an institute, in other words, in working with what other countries? And how does that fit into your present day-to-day operations of sharing information and who you work with?

[Bernard Funston]

I'll kick off on the general side, and then David can wade in here.

We do work with a number of international organizations. We'll start with the one David indirectly mentioned with our recent trip to Alaska. We work closely with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. We had joint meetings in April of last year. We're due to meet with them next week in Vancouver, actually. We look at a range of issues that are of common interest and we try to find ways to work together.

Some of those are generally informational. I should say, to characterize the Polar Commission, we're an information shop primarily. We're not a policy shop and we're not a research shop, really. We don't direct research money or priorities, but we have a large network, and we certainly keep track of who's doing what, where, and when.

We have two very formal connections to international organizations, to the International Arctic Science Committee, as David said, and to SCAR, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Those are national representatives that we participate with in those organizations. One looks at the Antarctic side, and the other, of course, looks at the Arctic side of the agenda.

Most of our work is not joint project work. We don't have a budget that can allow us to jump into joint research projects, for example. They're informal connections, primarily moving information and making people aware of what's going on, giving them linkages, if you will, into our domestic Arctic activities.

Dave, do you want to say something?

[David J. Scott]

Yes. In a little bit more detail, much of what we do is attempt to coordinate and encourage new partnerships to emerge. We work with federal agencies domestically to try to ensure that what Natural Resources is doing is perhaps more closely partnered with what Environment Canada does. We try to stretch that out internationally as well to work with the best and the brightest who are out there, who may be interested in a particular thematic area of investigation, if we can bring their expertise and finances to Canada.

Canada, in many cases, can be the natural laboratory where new knowledge can be created. We bring in the best and the brightest. This also allows Canadian scientists, whether they are based in universities or in government departments, to be connected internationally.

Again, the scientific community is really recognizing that it's an integrated global system. It's not just work in the north or the south; it's how the two come together.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'll pass it over to Mr. Bevington.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have about three and a half minutes, sir.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you.

I'm very pleased to have you here. Mr. Funston, you come from my hometown, and, along with Mark Carney, you are one of the more famous people from my hometown.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I want to ask you a question that I asked at the natural resources committee. That is, what is Canada's Arctic research agenda? Is that available? I asked the deputy minister that and he promised me a copy of it, but he hasn't delivered it to the committee, so I'm asking you: have you seen the Arctic research agenda?

[David J. Scott]

I think an expression of that is the current science blueprint of the Canadian High Arctic Research Station. It's in its nascent phase, as I'm sure you're aware. There is a feasibility study that broadly outlines the thematic areas of research the government will pursue through the research station at Cambridge Bay, as well as the science program that will function, essentially, coast to coast to coast—everywhere except Cambridge Bay—in the north. The areas in question are things aligned with the northern strategy, such as environmental stewardship, social and economic development, governance, and sovereignty and security issues. Those are fairly clearly laid out in the blueprint that is available on the web, at science.gc.ca/CHARS. That document is available.

The details of the scientific plan, as to how that will be accomplished over the first five-year increment, are still under development. A first draft of that has now been produced for consultation. The department rolled it out earlier this week, and consultations, especially with northerners, will be ongoing in the coming weeks and months. All of this is led by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

[Bernard Funston]

One additional note on that—Dennis would be shocked if I didn't mention it. Of course, the three territorial governments have their own science agendas as well. The Yukon is developing one. The Northwest Territories already has one. When you said Canada, I assumed you meant the Government of Canada, but it's more generic than that.