Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both of our witnesses today. This has been a most interesting project for us at the foreign affairs committee, so thank you for your involvement.
Mr. Poelzer, I'm really pleased to hear you talk about those two areas. You said that we need to bring in the provincial north and we need to strengthen capacity building. I'm sure you're aware that both of those are under our northern strategy. We heard earlier today from Danielle Labonté, who is the director general for northern policy and science integration, and she talked about that—I'm reading from her script—“...the Government of Canada is committed to providing northerners with more control over their economic and political future”. So we know that there is a great need to give them more autonomy, as it were.
We also heard from Mitch Bloom, who told us that there is a great initiative there in starting to do skills development with the colleges. Yes, we know there isn't a university there yet, but the critical piece is to get so many of these young people to finish high school, which is an important part of the steps that we need to go forward.
I think, Mr. Green, you were talking about having the long-term view as well, and saying that we have to get the first steps right.
I'm very interested in pursuing this piece on education that you're talking about. As a teenager my parents offered each of their eight children the opportunity for a trip somewhere in the world for our 16th birthday present. I went with an organization called Ship's School Association, which provided us with learning opportunities as well as site visits. I chose the Orient. Two of my sisters chose Europe. One of my brothers chose South America. So we all went to different places but had the same kind of experience, where the education component firmly embedded in us the understanding of culture and industry and environment.
So I'd like you to talk a little bit more about what this polar school looks like. Are you seeing this as a Canadian institution? Or is there room for international involvement and it just happens to be housed in Canada? What's your view on that?
My daughter is a grade 3-4 teacher and she has just finished teaching a whole section on Arctic studies because of our taking the Arctic Council, and you're right, there's no curriculum. Is there room as well for your students who have gone on these expeditions to start creating curriculum that can be used in our public school system? Those are a lot of questions, I'm sorry.