Science and Research Committee on May 21st, 2024

[Richard Boudreault]

Yes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

All right.

I'd like to call on your scientific expertise, Mr. Boudreault.

The Trans Mountain oil project will boost oil production from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day, an increase of nearly 200%. According to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, this will increase greenhouse gas emissions by 21 million to 26 million tonnes per year.

Given all these facts, would you say that increasing oil extraction, production and transportation, and doing so using public funds, is a good, science-based decision on the part of the government?

[Richard Boudreault]

From an environmental standpoint, this is not a good decision.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much.

[Richard Boudreault]

On the other hand, you also have to view things clearly.

Petroleum emits a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. It also emits some after combustion. However, the biggest problem we have right now is the radical increase in methane in the atmosphere. Methane has 86 times the strength of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. So all you need to do is emit one tonne of methane, which can come from anywhere in the oil and natural gas supply chain, to create a situation that is 86 times worse.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I see.

[Richard Boudreault]

So your numbers are good, but since you're not taking methane into account, which is still very unknown, because there's not enough research on it, you're being conservative.

Oh, maybe that wasn't the right term. Ha, ha!

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Ha, ha! Okay. I'm a Bloc Québécois MP, Mr. Boudreault, but I have no problem understanding what you mean about greenhouse gas emission projections increasing global warming, particularly in the north, where it's accelerating.

Mr. Boudreault, let me come back to the essence of our study. Now that we've understood how global warming works, I'd like to hear from you about what the federal government is doing in terms of funding.

Researchers at Université Laval's Centre d'études nordiques, which has nearly 60 years of expertise in northern research, told us that they were seeing a decline in funding, that this would affect their ability to get to the field by air, in particular, and that infrastructure was outdated.

What can you tell us in this regard?

[Richard Boudreault]

It's true. Northern transportation is extremely expensive. Researchers are less able to finance themselves. That's why, in addition to all the extra researchers we need to know what's going on and work in the field, we also need extra money to send these people up north and to partner with scientists from abroad, international partners, to do research with us. We need about $500 million more a year to invest in Arctic research, and at least three or four times as many researchers to reach the average number of our colleagues around the Arctic Circle.

So, we're watching very little of what's going on, and we're going to have some surprises. We already have surprises. People abroad are going to ask us how come we didn't warn them before. It's a big problem.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Yes, Mr. Boudreault. The things you mentioned are very important. You say that other countries interested in the Arctic Circle are investing more.

Do you have any data to that effect, on the fact that Canada underinvests in northern research?

[Richard Boudreault]

Yes, in my notes I included a table I made of the relative density of researchers from different countries in the Arctic. I gave Canada the relative density of 1. The Americans are well below us, at 0.6. Russia is about the same density as us, but has more researchers, because it has a larger territory. On the other hand, Norway has 10 times more researchers than Canada; Sweden has five times more; Finland has six times more; Denmark has 1.8 times more. In proportion to its surface area, Iceland has 13 times more Arctic researchers per square metre than Canada.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

So we're not leaders in northern research. That's my understanding, Mr. Boudreault. Canada is at the back of the pack.

[Richard Boudreault]

That's right.

However, we have an advantage: We have the terrain. Canada has the land. So we can invite people to work with us because we have an expanse of land that's immense and that's going to be able to be used to build relationships with foreign countries.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

This concludes my speaking turn.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's our time. Thank you very much.

We'll turn to MP Cannings for six minutes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for being here today. This is all very interesting. I wish we had more time, as usual.

I'd like to turn to Dr. Derocher.

I'm so glad you brought up the polar continental shelf funding. I was fortunate enough to take advantage of that funding way back in 1983. I spent the summer doing research in Old Crow and Herschel Island using polar shelf funding.

I think it was in 2018 when I heard that this funding had not gone up at all for 20 years. It was similar to the situation we just dealt with regarding graduate student scholarships. I think it was rectified somewhat shortly after that.

I'm wondering if you could talk about polar shelf funding, where it stands now and where it should be. As you said, this is the glue that holds research together. It's the logistics support. The main problem for researchers in the Arctic is just getting around.

Could you spend a minute or two talking about the polar shelf, how important it is and where the funding stands at the moment?

[Prof. Andrew Derocher]

The polar shelf is an agency that I've been working with since the mid-1980s. A lot of the logistics support that it provides is almost impossible for your average Canadian researcher to establish on their own. Of course, there are cost efficiencies by bringing in a large agency to set the procedures in place. A lot of my research support is helicopter-based, so what I'm looking for from them is to supply the helicopter and, very often, the fuel to conduct research in various locations.

It hasn't kept pace with the rising costs. It's a very small fraction of my research budget. This past spring, it was in the neighbourhood of about 20%. However, it's the logistics support that puts things in place, which allows me to bring in other funding and be more efficient.

I don't work out of Resolute right now, but in the past—in the 1980s—something I pushed for when I was on the scientific steering committee for the polar continental shelf was that we try to retain the base we had at that time in Tuktoyaktuk. The closing of it was a major blow to research efforts in the western Arctic. It was a hub for much of the research that you were probably involved with in the Herschel Island area at that time.

The problem is that right now, polar shelf is centred out of Resolute, but we don't have the infrastructure to base from many other areas. It's extremely expensive to move across different parts of the Arctic. To speak to the scale of the Canadian Arctic, while CHARS itself is a major step forward, it cannot serve Nunavik and the other northern parts of Nunavut very well. Again, I think we need to see that infrastructure.

If we could do one thing, it would be to increase support going to the shelf and also to NSERC and the northern research supplement. That really doesn't carry the day anymore.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

You have two minutes and 20 seconds.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll continue with Dr. Derocher.

You study polar bears. Polar bears are often considered to be the poster child of climate change around the world. When I was on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, we struggled to assess the polar bear population status and often used your work as the basis for our deliberations.

I'm just wondering if you could let us know what the status of polar bears is these days. How is climate change affecting their environment?

[Prof. Andrew Derocher]

In brief, there are 19 populations across the circumpolar Arctic, of which 13 are wholly or partly in Canada. The status of these populations varies dramatically depending on where you're looking.

The one in the southern Beaufort Sea, north of the Yukon and NWT, has declined by up to 50%. That is the same for western Hudson Bay in Nunavut and Manitoba. The one in southern Hudson Bay has declined as well but to a lesser extent. Other populations are doing quite well. It's really predicated on the trend in sea ice. If the sea ice is changing, the populations are affected.

Ultimately, this is of great concern to northern communities that rely on polar bears for sustenance. Also, culturally, hunting polar bears is very important. This creates a lot of challenges going forward as we have a declining resource but a growing population that would like to hunt polar bears as part of their cultural activities.

In the future, I think polar bears are going to be severely challenged. We will see an increase in conservation concerns going forward. I'll note that federally, the polar bear program of Environment and Climate Change Canada has not been adequately funded nor adequately staffed for many years now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

You have 17 seconds left.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll leave it there and come back to it later. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We'll now turn to Michelle Rempel Garner for five minutes.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

To the witnesses, in reviewing the government's Arctic and northern strategy, adaptation is only mentioned a handful of times, and it's in the preamble. It says that at round tables, “people felt that adaptation activities should take precedence over mitigation actions in the region” because of its “small emissions footprint” and the “magnified impacts”. It also talked about how conservation issues “drew a varied response” from people in the region, and it said that some expressed concerns over the “weight of regulation and its impact on resource development”.

I'm wondering how we square these circles, because we have this strategy that notes these themes came up in round tables, but they didn't make their way into goals. From what I've taken from some of your testimony, they haven't really made it into Canada's research strategies either.

I'll start with this. Would you support a recommendation for the government to place greater emphasis on concrete Arctic adaptation strategies in its official Arctic and northern strategy? That question goes to anyone.