Well, I think a really important point to start out with is that the polar continental shelf funding does support research within and across the Canadian Arctic. I'm working in the far west of the Canadian Arctic, right along the Alaska border, and that program does support my research.
However, the hub for the polar continental shelf is based in the eastern Arctic, so I'm very far from the logistics people. They're still helping me out with the funding even though I'm thousands of kilometres away in the west with my research team.
Just to put some numbers on it, to get to my research site, Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island, you need to get to Inuvik first. Then you take a one-hour charter airplane flight from Inuvik. A few years ago it cost $7,000 one way, then $8,000 one way. This summer it will be $9,000 to $10,000 one way, for one trip for a few members of my research team. We have to take multiple of trips per summer, and the costs are accelerating at an enormous pace, because of the cost of fuel and other logistical constraints. The polar continental shelf program comes in and supports those costs to allow us to use our research funds for the actual research. Without that logistical support, we could not go to these sites, and these sites are where climate change impacts are playing out. We need to be there on the ground.