Science and Research Committee on May 30th, 2024

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

What we particularly pick up at the sites that I work at is an increase in the shrubs that were already in those ecosystems becoming much more dominant. I have a series of photos that I'd be happy to share with the committee afterwards, where you can see the vegetation change; it's dramatic from the 1980s to now at some of the sites where I work. There were hardly any shrubs and now those landscapes are dominated by thigh-high woody shrubs, really changing the habitats for wildlife and the carbon cycling in these systems.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

In this current period of history it's dramatic, but maybe over decades or centuries not as dramatic? Or is this unprecedented right now, do you think?

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

I would say that the rate of change is unprecedented. It's hard to get that picture going really far back, because it becomes more coarse, but the rates of change in the last three decades are much more dramatic than earlier within the last century. Our projections are that this rate of change is going to increase in future for many parameters within the Arctic.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I have a question on coordination. I think with your experience you might have some important comments for the committee on how well research is coordinated right now across the entire Arctic. How you are able to do your research, contribute and coordinate with other areas? How does that work? Does it need improvement? What are your overall thoughts?

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

I have devoted a lot of my career to trying to bring researchers together to do what we would call “synthesis”. We're all working at different sites around the Arctic. We work together to pool our datasets and to ask questions with that full circumarctic dataset. Currently, a lot of that synthesis requires individuals putting in their own energy and their own research funds to making that research come together.

There are programs in other countries that focus on funding synthesis alone, and I have benefited from those programs in Germany and in the U.S. I think it could be really exciting if Canada had that same kind of funding just for the synthesis, for bringing data together, for bringing people together and for bringing researchers together with northern communities to look at these questions. I think that's an area where the Canadian government doesn't currently provide very much funding at all.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I think that's a key point. It sounds like internationally there are a few avenues to coordinate the international efforts, but maybe you're correct in your assessment that there may be more the federal government could do to take perhaps a Canadian coordinated leadership role.

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

We'll now turn to MP Kelloway for five minutes, please.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

It's great to be here in person on this committee. There has been some great testimony.

I have three questions, one for Dr. Anderson, one for Dr. Chen and one for Professor Myers-Smith.

For many years I worked at Cape Breton University and Nova Scotia Community College. While I was at Cape Breton University, I had the privilege of spending some time at Unama'ki College, where the research side was focused on indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and western science.

Dr. Anderson, I'm wondering If you can unpack, just briefly, the importance of indigenous knowledge and observations when it comes to climate change in the Arctic. Do you think the indigenous knowledge side is being adequately represented in current studies of climate change in the Arctic?

[Dr. Kirk Anderson]

I think we're trying. Certainly it's getting a lot of talk and airplay. An example of one of the things we deal with in respect of indigenous knowledge or northern engagement in education, in my view, is that in the discussion on access to the north by shipping, there was no mention of the fact that as shipping advances north, it disrupts indigenous travel routes. The question for me is around how we defend indigenous travel routes, not how we more successfully have ships from the south go north. That's an indigenous perspective. That's a local perspective.

I think we're doing better at it. I would argue, again, that we have villages and hamlets all across the north, and we have people who live there who are quite skilled. We should be leaving something to the benefit of those communities that stays with them when our researchers leave. Now, we're doing better at that, but a more formal arrangement where we're including indigenous peoples and people who are educated will benefit us from the indigenous perspective.

Kudos to Cape Breton University for the great work they're doing, as well.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

Dr. Chen, your testimony and some of your answers to the questions really got me thinking about the contaminants in the north, climate change and the climate crisis. As parliamentary secretary for fisheries, oceans and the Coast Guard, it's of particular interest to me where I live, on the east coast, what's happening with respect to environmental change.

You talked about two issues, contaminants and climate change. Then you talked about prognostication. I wonder if you could take just a little bit of time to unpack some items that may keep you up at night in terms of where we're going. You did highlight it in terms of the impact to the environment. I'm wondering if you could take one specific example, for maybe 50 seconds or so, before I move on to Professor Meyers-Smith.

[Prof. Bing Chen]

Yes. That's a really good question.

One example I can tell you about is the project I did last year. We collected water and soil samples from Yellowknife around Great Slave Lake. It was really community-based. We had community members on the team. We tried to identify the amount of PBDEs. That is a very typical flame retardant, and it's claimed to be an emerging contaminant. It's toxic, carcinogenic and everywhere, from our sheets to our cars to our appliances.

We collected more than 150 samples of soil and water. Surprisingly, there was almost 100% detection of PBDEs. They're not only on the surface; they're also deep, even in the permafrost. Those contaminants are now everywhere. Even microplastics go very deep. We detected microplastics 1.5 metres deep, and you can drill permafrost like concrete.

Those things are already there. How do we protect our communities from that when it's in the rivers and the lakes and the food—in the food and water?

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Professor. I have to stop you there. I have a bit less than 30 seconds left.

Professor Meyers-Smith, you talked about the hub-and-spoke example. I'm a big proponent of that. We talked about building capacity in indigenous communities. I'm wondering if there are one or two things you could give us advice on to work on that. Obviously, there's money, but is there something else we need to be doing that we're not doing now?

I'll yield the floor after your answer.

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

A very quick response to this is that people capacity is a limitation as well. We need the money, but we also need the people, and we need people who have the training to bring together academic research, government research and the work that indigenous communities are doing on monitoring ecosystems. We need that to happen in a distributed fashion across the Canadian Arctic covering areas close to communities but also areas further away from communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll continue the discussion by turning to Mr. Bêty.

Can you provide some examples of the Quebec government's contribution to research in the Canadian Arctic?

[Joël Bêty]

I would say that one of the Quebec government's strengths is probably the establishment of strategic interuniversity and multidisciplinary groups, such as the Centre for Northern Studies, Québec‑Océan; the Centre for Biodiversity Science; and the Centre interuniversitaire d'études et de recherches autochtones, or CIERA.

These strategic groups support some or all of the northern research carried out by Quebec researchers. This significantly boosts the ability to share infrastructure data and encourages broader collaboration in Arctic research. Moreover, these groups strongly encourage the recruitment of new university researchers who focus on northern research. This obviously contributes to Canada's research potential in the north.

The Institut nordique du Québec, or INQ, was recently created to bring together researchers from various centres and research groups that work on sustainable and ethical development in northern areas. The INQ is supported by the Quebec research fund; the economy, innovation and energy department; and the Société du Plan Nord. Quebec's Société du Plan Nord also supports projects, mainly in Nunavik, another major part of Canada's Arctic territory. A number of initiatives significantly help to train highly qualified professionals in northern communities and increase our research capacity in the north.

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

Thank you, Mr. Bêty. I'm proud to hear that.

How can we help university researchers and northern communities work together and share knowledge more effectively?

[Joël Bêty]

As I said earlier, I think that we really need help. Communities sometimes need as much help with finding funding and experts as expert researchers need assistance to better support and help communities. This requires highly qualified professional resources that specialize in this type of interaction to optimize collaboration, partnership and co‑construction. I don't think that we have enough of these committed professionals who help both communities and university researchers.

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

Thank you, Mr. Bêty.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I appreciate that.

We now will turn to MP Cannings for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to go back to Dr. Bêty.

You were making some points about long-term datasets earlier, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to expand on that. We've heard from others in this study about the importance of those and how critical it is to keep the funding going on those long-term datasets, because once they're broken, we've lost a priceless set of information.

I'll let you comment on the value of those datasets and that research and how we could be doing a better job of funding and promoting that.

[Joël Bêty]

Thank you again for your question.

As I said, long‑term datasets provide a better understanding of the causes of changes. Obviously, changes can be caused by global warming, but sometimes by other factors too, including factors outside the Arctic. Long‑term datasets make it possible to differentiate between normal and abnormal variations and to identify causes.

The issue is that our funding systems focus much more on short‑term, novelty or species‑specific projects. This is a real issue when it comes to understanding the impact of climate change on Arctic ecosystems.

Also, the different components of ecosystems don't react at the same speed. Some components react quickly, while others react much more slowly. Sometimes, our long‑term time series help us understand the diversity in the reaction of ecosystems. The next Arctic ecosystems will be different. There will be a regeneration and reassembly of ecosystem components that don't react at the same speed. Long‑term datasets help us detect this type of change and better anticipate it.

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

Dr. Myers-Smith, do you want to quickly comment on long-term datasets as well? You deal with them all of the time.

[Prof. Isla Myers-Smith]

I would absolutely echo everything Joël Bêty just said.

I would just like to highlight one thing.

On Qikiqtaruk—Herschel Island we've been collecting various datasets. One was the depth of the active layer. It was something that had been stopped and our research group brought it back as a long-term dataset. Then last summer, suddenly a massive permafrost thaw event happened. If we hadn't been collecting the long-term data, we wouldn't understand right now what was happening and we wouldn't be able to make predictions of what's going happen next summer and into the future.

You can't always anticipate the changes that are coming. You have different rates of change for different parameters of these systems. The impacts are global and also local, and are vitally important. We need the data to understand the change that's going on.