Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Merci, monsieur le président.
I'm here to give a short review of a report from the national round table that came down last November on Arctic infrastructure and climate change adaptation in Canada.
The national round table is a group of Canadians in leadership positions from across the country who are working on environment and sustainable development issues. In terms of putting together this report, we held hearings in the north, and we had a great deal of northern input in connection with it.
This particular report, True North, or Franc Nord, is an effort to look at the very severe infrastructure challenges that Canada will be facing with climate change and the need to adapt to those new conditions. We are seeing in the Canadian Arctic today some of the most rapid climate change of anywhere in the globe, and we will be pioneering the adaptation processes and projects whether we like it or not. This deals with airports, sewage, roads, tailings, pipelines, drilling, mines, and building foundations above all--things that are critical to northerners for their existence.
In terms of our report, there are three particular areas: codes, standards, and related instruments; insurance and liability issues; and emergency measures and disaster management.
Mr. Chairman, in this morning's Wall Street Journal, there is an article on the increase in insurance rates, by 15% to 50%, for all offshore drilling as a result of events in the Gulf of Mexico. In terms of looking at this, the final area will be emergency measures and disaster.
On the physical challenges we face, some have already been mentioned: temperature and active layer expansion in permafrost; the ground ice degradation; the sea level rise and storm surges; and the melting of sea ice and the marine risks that result from it.
We go into some detail on the economic and social side, so I will just touch on it here. Northern people depend on this infrastructure to a very great extent. It's a dispersed population, with great challenges, far greater than those of many southern Canadians. The viability of northern settlement locations, as we're already seeing in some planning in the pan-Arctic area today, is in doubt. Increased economic development brings increased risks in some cases, as we will be seeing. High construction and operating costs in the north are already there.
In terms of actual applications, what are the kinds of issues we're trying to draw out in our report? One is the shorter season for winter ice roads, for instance, as Diavik experienced in 2006, and the increased helicopter costs that are involved as a result. There is enhanced coastal erosion in areas including Tuk, forest fires such as Dawson faced in 2004, and increased drilling in Arctic waters and tanker traffic from Siberia through the Northwest Passage, to say nothing of some of the more mundane things like breaches in sewage or mine tailing ponds.
Codes and standards are a very important part of how we build infrastructure. We have shown in this report the way in which we feel there has been inadequate consideration of northern conditions and circumstances in terms of developing national codes. We show the way in which there are gaps in data for engineers and northern architects and the way in which the real rate of climate change has to be brought down to the settlement level, the local level, in terms of applicability. We welcome the recent responses of the National Energy Board--although we feel it is only the beginning--on pipeline and drilling codes for northern regulatory purposes.
On property and liability insurance, a great deal of this will not be covered by normal private sector insurance coverage. In many cases, government will be the insurer of last resort. It will not cover flooding and settlement relocation issues.
As we are seeing in the Gulf of Mexico, Arctic oil spills will be difficult to curtail. One of the issues, which is of even more concern in the north, is that natural recovery from biological processes will be much slower in the cold water. And for insurance purposes, gradual phenomena like ground subsidence will be harder to document for our purposes.
On disaster and emergency management, I don't need to say very much here. The melting sea ice will lead to weather changes in the circumpolar area. Sea level rise and storm surges will certainly impact soil erosion and settlement locations. Northern emergency measures services are limited and as yet scattered. Northern oil and gas regulation must allow for industry-based emergency measures and response teams, and some of this has international implications because the ocean currents spill from one side of the marine boundaries into the others.
In finishing, Mr. Chairman, I just want to end on barriers to action. We feel there are severe issues in connection with these three areas in terms of federal, territorial, and first nations institutions and governments, to say nothing of the provincial norths, from B.C. to Labrador, which are so important.
Second, we feel that northern input into national standards and codes of practice is essential and needs to be increased.
Third, northern-based research—and I emphasize northern-based here—must include research, assessment, and policies on climate impact and adaptation needs. I strongly support Tim's comment earlier with regard to a northern-based university as part of that.
Last, building community capacity to monitor and address infrastructure needs and climate change is an important part of this overall program.
Once again, many thanks, Mr. Chairman. Merci beaucoup.