Evidence of meeting #60 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
It does make it difficult. The other part that's very tough when working with Russians is to know where they stand in terms of their official responsibilities and whether they actually are official spokespersons for a ministry, an agency, or whatever.
It is still a bit of a black hole for us, I think, in our day-to-day work. I do maintain contact with, for example, the indigenous organizations in Russia; I know the leadership of the RAIPON group that was just discontinued. But it is a difficult thing. At the scientific level, I think there is better collaboration, and certainly through IASC, which is one of the bodies we sit on, the Russians are involved at a scientific level.
Conservative
Dave Van Kesteren Conservative Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON
I think one of the challenges, which we haven't spoken about too much at this committee, at least not today, is that as the Arctic starts to free up, there are going to be more fishing vessels. Is there a willingness on the part of the Russians to have some type of agreement, and possibly even to police, so that we don't have a raping of the Arctic, which we experienced on the east coast and in other areas of the world?
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
There already are those kinds of regional fisheries management organizations. There's a very well-known scientific body based in Arctic Russia called PINRO, which does a lot of work with the Norwegians, for example, on Barents Sea fish stocks. That is an area that has been fished for some time.
In terms of high Arctic fisheries, as we learned in our Alaskan meetings recently, we don't know a lot about the productivity of the high Arctic Ocean. Most of the fishing is in coastal areas, which are under state jurisdiction. Where there are straddling stocks, as there are in the Barents Sea between the Norwegians and the Russians, there's actually a very strong management plan already in place.
As to whether people will start fishing in the central Arctic Ocean, we learned that, for example, the Arctic cod, the major keystone species, are tiny little things. They're from one to seven inches long, and we don't know much about their productivity.
So there will be fishing, but primarily it will be state regulated. Then where there are straddling stocks, we would probably work primarily with the Americans, and of course the Danes on the east coast. I don't know that we have any straddling fish stocks of a commercial quality with the Russians at this point, but they are working closely with the Norwegians already and have been for many years.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you. You're already one minute into Ms. Brown's time.
There are four minutes left, Ms. Brown.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
You were here for part of Ms. Jeffrey's presentation to us this morning. I don't know that you caught it all, but she said to the committee that the Conference Board of Canada has put out a document called, “Getting it Right: Assessing and Building Resilience in Canada’s North”.
Have you reviewed this paper, and do you have any comments on it?
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
I haven't reviewed it and I have therefore no comments.
David?
December 6th, 2012 / 10:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission
I haven't reviewed it in sufficient detail. But I would simply add that I think the more we have folks looking at the north, engaging with northerners, and trying to figure out solutions, collaboratively, ideas will emerge and an appropriate path will emerge. But I can't comment on the specifics of that report.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
She said there is another report coming out on Monday on housing strategies for the north, which is going to be available.
Do you get those kinds of papers that are coming out of Canada? Do you have people go through them, and is the board using that as a basis for some of its research?
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
We don't have the staff to allow us to get through the volume of papers that are being generated, and it's huge. Would we like to? Absolutely. At some point it's more important for us to know who's doing what work, as opposed to knowing what's within the walls of their reports.
It does inform the board, but we've tended to bring our ideas together from our various experiences, as opposed to looking at reports and then responding to them. We just don't have the capacity at the moment.
Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission
We do our best to stay on top of new information that is being produced. But as Mr. Funston has noted, it is rather overwhelming, given the relatively small size of our staff. We have essentially two and a half folks working on the full range of things we do.
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
On your website sidebar you have listed resources available and a directory. Who is using that? How do you compile that list? Who do you use as empirical evidence? And would you list the Conference Board of Canada as one of the resources available to the people who are using your information?
Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission
I first must apologize for the current state of the website. I would say it has suffered over the past four or five years and is now nowhere near as up to date as I expect it to be. We're doing our very best to revitalize that.
The Conference Board is one of the players that compiles information and produces analysis, so again, in the spirit of sharing information that's been produced, that's precisely one of the groups that should be referenced as a player in the north that has information and has performed analysis. We're non-judgmental in this case. We will share the work of a full range of government and non-governmental organizations that are weighing in to produce information about the north.
Conservative
Conservative
Lois Brown Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
I would anticipate that there is a lot of university work being done, and, just to Mr. Bevington's comment about universities in the north, the availability of online education opportunities now is one way of getting education into the north. Let's hope that in the future there is an aggregate number of students who would generate the demand for a proper university facility to be built.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you very much.
Mr. Dewar has a question, then I have a question for you, and then we'll wrap up.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
You've touched on it, but the ecosystem management is a massive equation. We're studying the Arctic for reasons that have to do with Canada taking over the chair in May.
Can you give us some ideas—and if you don't have them presently, maybe share them with the committee later—about how that should be contemplated through the Arctic Council? How do you get the ecosystem management right, not just the fisheries but just generally from a policy perspective?
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
I think the real challenge on ecosystem-based management again is to understand what the phrase means. The Norwegians don't even like that phrase. They like the ecosystem approach, because it's not actually management based in the ecosystem. Secondly, it's not managing the ecosystem; it's managing human activity within the ecosystem.
One of the underpinnings of ecosystem-based management is good science. As we know from most of the Arctic Council reports we have read, we don't fully understand the dynamics among the systems that constitute the ecosystems. They've identified 17 large marine ecosystems in the Arctic region. Probably not all of them are right for any kind of human activity in the near future.
But the real challenge here is this whole notion of science that underpins ecosystem-based management and what it means in terms of management, because science is good at developing knowledge and information. It's not particularly good at making choices. It helps make choices, but politicians are the people who make the decisions about competing interests. As I said, I use that analogy of frontier, homeland laboratory, and wilderness. Those are all valid ways of looking at the north. How do you decide whether you're going to drill for oil or allow polar bear hunting? There's a political decision and a choice in that, and sometimes you don't have the information. Sometimes the science doesn't tell you what to do.
So like “sustainable development”, it's a term that will evolve. There's a big report to the Arctic Council on this concept due in May 2013. It has a weakness on the science side, but on the management side it also has a weakness, because in these Arctic states we don't have civil services that are very good at making those kinds of choices on a technical basis. They are quintessentially choices that have to be made at a political level.
Ecosystem-based management sounds like a science-based process, but ultimately it's going to be very politically based, in my view.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Can I just ask you which term you prefer, the Norwegian one or your management—
Chairperson, Canadian Polar Commission
I think I prefer the Norwegian one. The Norwegians are much better, I find, when I work with them on the English language than I am.
I think the ecosystem approach is closer to what we're getting at. We're looking at the ecosystems, but they're not watertight compartments. Of course, what do you do with ecosystem-based management when the actual impacts are from outside: transboundary pollutants and climate change? Those aren't things you manage in the ecosystem. You have to—