Thanks for the question.
We've struggled, as Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and/or Inuit treaty organizations, to fight for a space for the research priority setting and the research funding, whether it be with the federal government, within academia or within the tri-council. We've made some inroads, but largely not.
The vast amount of funding that is targeted for Arctic science flows through systems that are in the south, and it benefits academic institutions, governments or relationships that are all south to south. People build their careers and live comfortably in the south, while being experts about us and about our environment, or about climate change in Inuit Nunangat. Therefore, priority setting for Inuit and for Inuit communities is a transformative change that we would like to see.
We see the Government of Canada investing in infrastructure, especially in Polar Knowledge Canada in Cambridge Bay. I think that is a very positive development, although the governance of POLAR is still of great concern to Inuit in the way in which the Government of Canada has only used its systems to populate the governance of that institution and the priority setting for it.
We hope that in the future, there will be more partnership-based approaches to Arctic research, but also that Inuit research priorities and Arctic community research priorities will be held in as high esteem as the research priority setting that happens in the south.