Evidence of meeting #91 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was north.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you very much to our witnesses on this first panel. We really appreciate your testimony.
If you have anything supplemental that you would like to add, you may submit that to the clerk.
We'll suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave, and then we'll resume with the second panel of witnesses.
Members attending via Zoom, please stay connected to this session.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Welcome back.
I would like to say a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses.
Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking.
For those of you appearing by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.
There is interpretation for those on Zoom. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.
It's now my pleasure to welcome, as an individual, Dr. Nicolas Brunet, associate professor. From Arctic360, we have Dr. Jessica Shadian, president and chief executive officer.
We'll give you up to five minutes for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.
Dr. Brunet, I invite you to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.
Nicolas Brunet Associate Professor, As an Individual
Thank you for this opportunity to speak on this topic.
I'm an associate professor and an accredited professional planner in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph. I'm an interdisciplinary scholar working on the human dimensions of environmental change and research governance. I've been working closely with Inuit and first nations partners in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Canada in various capacities including consultant, student and faculty since 2006.
Much of what I'm going to discuss today relates to work in Nunavut. I'll be focusing on two points, the first of which is whether Arctic and northern populations have the research infrastructure, tools and funds to participate in research.
In my opinion, some research grants are catching up with the need and providing new, more accessible opportunities for northern populations and Inuit specifically, some of which are federal. My experience in getting northern partners to apply for these funds would suggest that some tri-council portals and application requirements are somewhat maladapted to variability in computer literacy and access to reliable Internet in some communities. One has to wonder if those opportunities are reaching everyone equitably. As a result, most opportunities still require some measure of southern-based leadership, although I do see promising signs in the creation of degree-granting colleges and universities in the Arctic, such as Yukon University, for instance, that build tremendous capacity in the north for the north.
This being said, physical community research space is lacking. We often forget that much of research practice has nothing to do with collecting information in the field or on the land. Most is spent in front of a screen, applying for funds, analyzing and interpreting samples and data and writing about the work. An ongoing study co-led with Inuit group Ikaarvik in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, and one of my graduate students, Sarah-Anne Thompson, suggests that community research still occurs in people's homes. This may seem fine from a southern perspective, but it ignores the extent to which Nunavut and other jurisdictions are facing housing crises and a lack of safe, healthy indoor space to live and gather.
The use of research stations for community research is a grey area that I've also been reflecting on for a few years. There are a good number of federal, territorial and university-owned research stations in the Arctic, serving communities in a variety of ways. I've been working closely with Environment and Climate Change Canada in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, and have made use of the research station there for years now. My colleagues at ECCC have been very interested in supporting community science, but there seem to be a number of barriers to allowing local use of these facilities. However, this is beyond the scope of my work for now.
In my view, this is not the solution, though. If Arctic peoples want to participate actively in science undertaken on their traditional territories, they need physical spaces to do so and need to lead in their creation.
My second point is whether Arctic science and research collaboration is meaningfully conducted with local and indigenous people. Inuit knowledge, or Inuit Qauijimajatuqangit, including land-based skills, has been essential to researchers and science in the region for almost 100 years. This relationship has evolved substantially, with various technological and transportation advances, but it remains important.
I'll focus here on the word “meaningful”, which, in my view, warrants much more reflection. The meaningfulness of the collaboration or partnership is directly tied to the level of Inuit community influence and, ultimately, control over the research agenda in their homeland. Communities will probably never be able to lead the vast majority of research that takes place on their territory because research in the Arctic is vast, diverse and requires tremendous resources. Nonetheless, I think self-determination should be central within a negotiated Arctic research policy.
Pulling from recent quantitative systematic reviews of the literature that I led on the evolution, degree and nature of community engagement in Arctic research, here are a few highlights to consider.
Local engagement in Arctic research has only increased slightly since 1965, with a few important nuances that I don't have time to discuss right now.
Arctic author-led studies are negligible, making up less than 1% from 1965 to 2020. We did find that 10% of studies in the last 10 years have had local or community-based authors, which is really promising.
Finally, the focus on climate change and global change could be one of the most important and significant drivers in promoting community engagement in Arctic science presently, which points to a real and genuine interest in engaging in that sort of science.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you very much for that opening statement. I'll ask you to move your boom up a bit higher, just for the interpreters.
We will now turn to Dr. Shadian for her opening statement of five minutes.
Dr. Jessica M. Shadian President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
Thank you, and thank you for this invitation.
My comments today come from my own experiences of living and working as an academic and a researcher in the Arctic on Arctic issues for more than two decades. My Ph.D. is in international relations. I lived and worked in Iceland, north Norway, Lapland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S. before living in Canada and becoming the CEO of Arctic360.
Among its activities, Arctic360 focuses on Arctic research to help translate primary research into knowledge for the general public. It's part of two international research projects related to that. For today's discussion, I'll focus on science policy and strategy related to innovation coming out of the Arctic.
Climate change is real. It's impacting the whole of the Arctic region. In Canada, it affects indigenous peoples' and all northerners' security and well-being, and Canada's national security and prosperity.
Canada's climate change research is focused on understanding both climate change and its impacts—not least its impacts on northern communities—and adaptation. However, our approach to adaptation has, in my mind, been limited because, I feel, we undervalue academia's potential and because we lack an Arctic strategy.
I'll explain. Our Arctic neighbours are using the challenges posed by climate change to innovate, prosper, secure and strengthen their own Arctic communities and national security.
Sweden's Arctic strategy, for instance, focuses on the opportunity its Arctic climate creates, enabling innovation to scale for global export. It explains that at Sweden's world-leading Arctic innovation clusters, “Knowledge is transformed into new products and services” through collaboration between business, academia and the public sector, and by small enterprises in subsupplier chains. It goes on to say that “Arctic conditions like a cold climate and sparsely populated areas make it possible to provide test and demonstration environments” for aviation, automotive and space industries.
Norway's own Arctic strategy states, “Further developing North Norway as a strong, dynamic and highly competent region is the best way to safeguard Norwegian interests in the Arctic.” The government will support “innovation, entrepreneurship and start-ups in the north, and specifically northern ocean-based industries, the maritime sector, petroleum, green power-intensive manufacturing, mineral extraction, agriculture, tourism and space infrastructure”. Norway's Arctic cluster team's mission, for instance, is to build expertise, develop innovation and contribute to the commercialization and scaling of solutions for new green value chains, digital transformation and infrastructure for innovative development.
Finland, home to the Arctic VTT Technical Research Centre turned a section of the Norwegian-Finnish E8 interstate Arctic highway into a testing track for EVs precisely because the road is snowy, icy, dark and windy, with extreme weather. The road includes built-in sensors to measure vibration, weight, pressure, acceleration, surface slipperiness, etc.
Longyearbyen, Svalbard, had its own housing pilot project, consisting of three building blocks' worth of new apartments. We can use housing in the north. The project installed sensors into the ground to measure the impacts of steel construction on the changing state of permafrost, and that knowledge will be used to build more climate-resilient infrastructure going forward.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Iqaluit’s 94-room hotel and conference centre, built in 2019, used modular hotel rooms fabricated in and imported from China. The whole of Nunavut does not have its own university.
Initiatives such as the northern transportation adaptation initiative, which was mentioned in previous sessions, are important. This project included co-operation with industry. The focus was on adaptation, but not innovation. For instance, the project employs thermal siphon foundation systems to address permafrost melt. However, the technology itself is patented in and imported from the United States.
This gets to the bigger strategic shortcomings when it comes to Canada's Arctic research. ISED, for example, is missing in the north. Despite there being an office in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan is responsible for the whole of the Northwest Territories, Montreal is responsible for all of Nunavut and B.C. is responsible for the Yukon. Though 75% of Canada's coastline is its Arctic, there's not an Arctic-based—literally based—supercluster project there.
These shortcomings, though, are part of a much bigger conversation about the overall value, potential and role of the north in Canada's consciousness. We often see challenges, crises and impossibility. Our neighbours see opportunity for research and innovation. They know that strong northern regions are the key to being strong Arctic nations, and they make the necessary strategic investments.
When have the many conversations Canada has about R and D, innovation, start-ups, and venture capital and pension fund investments focused on innovating out of the north? This requires a national vision, leadership and strategic thinking, all really realized through an Arctic strategy. It needs to connect the dots between science—including indigenous knowledge—innovation, defence, capital investments, and building northern capacity and infrastructure to address the needs of northerners, build new knowledge and foster an innovation ecosystem in the north that will enable a sustainable, secure and prosperous north and advance Canada's Arctic leadership.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you. That's our time.
We'll start with our first round of questioning.
MP Tochor, you have six minutes.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for their testimony here today.
Dr. Shadian, I very much enjoyed your testimony and your common-sense approach to things.
Going back into some of your past work, in your 2018 brief to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, you argued that the surest way to protect Canadian sovereignty is to fix the infrastructure gap in the north. It is now six years since that statement. Have we fixed the infrastructure gap in the north?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
No. Possibly it's become much worse.
This comes back to the piece on Arctic science and innovation. The fact that we have such an infrastructure gap is a huge opportunity if we look at it that way, because we could be world leaders in trying to determine infrastructure for the second half of the 21st century that can survive and thrive in the north, in the Arctic, in cold and extreme weathers, and with permafrost melt. These technologies and innovations can then scale, and they can scale not just beyond Canada and throughout the Arctic but also throughout other parts of the world.
I will say that, and I'll leave it there.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
On that, how can we ensure that there is more investment in the north, then, and not just public government dollars?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
Well, that's where I've taken a lot of insight from some of our Nordic neighbours. They seem to have a nice.... They're strategic, but they have pretty strong partnerships that involve academia and also private companies that then also attract that type of start-up venture capital, intertwined with policies.
You have academia. You have new innovations coming out of that through start-ups, and then you have private capital. You also have public funding, because I think public funding is absolutely essential and is the nucleus around which all of this needs to happen.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Speaking on some of the solutions from research that is being conducted in the north, earlier today we heard about requiring some of the research to include measurable outcomes and, hopefully, solutions. We keep studying the same problem over and over again, but we are not coming up, in my mind, with actual solutions. Mitigation is important, and adaptation is crucial, in my view, in the north.
What would your comments be on that?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
This is where I think that new knowledge, primary knowledge and applied science intersect. If we think about things that we need to still continue to do, we are missing a lot of baseline studies. We need to do much better monitoring, but this also can be connected to.... We need to have more sophisticated technologies. We should be able to utilize sensors to be able to help collect real-time data at the same time.
Again, this goes back to having a better strategy. What do we want to do? What do we, as an Arctic nation, want our north and our Arctic to look like? What does it mean in terms of everything from economic development to defence? I'm thinking about the DIANA program through NATO. As NATO now is increasingly focused on the Arctic, obviously some of these innovation pieces are going to be focusing on cold-weather technologies, so is there a space there?
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I have limited time. Thank you so much.
I'm just going to switch gears a little bit and go to energy security in the north. I think it's horrendous how much diesel we ship up there and burn for electrical needs. There has been some work that you, the Arctic360 group, have done on SMRs.
What could it mean for a northern community if there was an SMR or a microreactor located there?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
I think it's community-dependent. This goes back to some of the earlier discussion that we had in the past session. We need to be doing more economic assessments, financial assessments, energy economic assessments in the north, but we also need to be thinking strategically.
I think SMRs hopefully are going to be something that we can utilize in various communities, but it also needs to be attached to something that's much bigger. What is the energy plan for the north? What is going to be the sustainable energy infrastructure that we're using? What do we do in the interim? How are we connecting this? How are we making things multi-purpose, multi-user?
We need energy not just for heating. We need it if we're going to have more Internet. We need more Internet. We need energy systems for a whole host of things, for defence. How do we think more strategically?
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I always thought that if a community was welcoming toward nuclear, to have a military base of some sort in the north, close to a natural resource project, would help the community if they're welcoming of technology such as SMRs or microreactors.
How would that work its way through the community?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic360
I would say that communities in the north, while there are a lot of differences, in many ways are like communities in other parts of Canada. They are filled with all types of people and personalities who have different ideas about what they would like to see for their own future and their own communities. It's not like everyone thinks the same across the board.
I'd also say that from all of my experiences with everybody I know in the north, people want solutions. They want things to be better. As I always hear and as it's always said, they don't want to just survive; they want to thrive. It's that mentality. The status quo is not okay, and they're looking for ways to work with others moving forward.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you so much. That's our time.
We'll now turn to MP Longfield for six minutes.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses who are calling in from various places, including closets. Places that we work from sometimes aren't ideal, but thank you for taking the time.
Welcome home to Dr. Brunet. I'm also calling in from Guelph, and it is muggy here.
Could you tell us a little bit about the conference that you just returned from? Is there an output that could be used in the study that we're doing?
Associate Professor, As an Individual
Are we talking about the Arctic Congress right now?
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
If not, that's okay. I'll rephrase it.
We're doing a study on Arctic science, and if there's anything from that conference, which obviously is going to be very current, that could help us with our study, maybe you could send it to our clerk.