Canada’s slow freeze-out from Arctic research
We’re lagging many nations in spending on North
The Liberal government made much of the decision this month to renew funding for the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory at Eureka, Nunavut, just 1,100 kilometres from the North Pole.
The government announced $1.6 million in what amounts to emergency funding, to keep the lights on at PEARL and allow the High Arctic lab to continue its research into the ozone layer and climate change.
Scientists were seeking $1.5 million annually and a commitment for longer term support — the latest tranche of cash is really bridge funding, and no one has any idea what it’s bridging to.
But the Band-Aid fix allows the government to boast of its commitment to support science and evidence-based decision-making in the North.
The problem is, the statistics don’t support that claim.
Canada ranks well down the list of countries investing in the North, even though we have more Arctic territory than any country except Russia.
It adds to the feeling that the Arctic region is being ignored under the Liberals — despite being elected on a call for a bold, internationalist policy.
A new Arctic strategy is expected to be delivered in January but the signs for increased investment in research in the region are not good.
Louis Fortier is a professor at Université Laval and the scientific director of ArcticNet, Canada’s network of centres of excellence for academia-led Arctic research.
He said Canada is the Arctic country par excellence but that we are losing ground as far as research is concerned.
“Other countries are investing more — Norway, France, Germany, the U.K., even China is building new research icebreakers,” he said.
ArcticNet researchers have use of the Canadian Coast-Guard icebreaker, Amundsen, which was decommissioned and converted to an Arctic research vessel. But Fortier said it is old and was only at sea for 130 days last year, around half of the time researchers wanted.
He said Norway — a country of five million people — is building a research icebreaker and its $125 million Nansen Legacy project dwarfs Canada’s investment.
Fortier’s concern is that this country is spending less in relative terms at a time when change in the Arctic is at its most pronounced when it comes to climate, shipping and navigation, trade, resource exploration, territorial claims, eco-systems and melting permafrost.
ArcticNet’s team of researchers from 32 Canadian universities keeps an eye on what that means for the local Inuit population and the rest of Canada.
“We monitor the marine and continental environment and predict what’s going to happen. There’s a lot of work being done to find a way to get sustainable development in the North and it is a bellwether … a climate warning for further south,” he said.
But even the current level of research is in jeopardy because ArcticNet’s funding is set to expire next March. It is eligible to compete for funding worth $9 million a year under the Network of Centres of Excellence funding envelope — less than the $10 million required to maintain current capacity.
But that funding is not available until April 2019 and there will be other networks in other scientific fields competing for the $9 million.
“We are in danger of going back to the dark ages of the 1970s and ‘80s, when countries like the U.S. and Sweden charted icebreakers to conduct their own research in the Canadian North, with hardly any Canadian participation,” said Fortier.
He said research is the best way Canada can assert its sovereignty in the Far North. “Other countries see we are active and trying to develop the Arctic in a sustainable way,” he said. “It’s an incredible opportunity to show the world how it could be done correctly.”
Kirsty Duncan, the science minister, takes issue with the idea that Canada is a laggard on Arctic research.
“Our government understands that the Arctic matters now more than ever because of climate change. That is why we have and continue to put significant funds towards Arctic research,” she said.
She pointed to the PEARL funding, $98 million in the Sentinel North program at the Université de Laval and $18 million to upgrade the Amundsen ice breaker earlier this year. A further $46 million is being spent on the soon-to-open Polar Knowledge Canada High Artic research station, she said
Fortier acknowledges the uptick in spending in recent years compared to the 1980s and ’90s.
“But we are sitting on our laurels as other Arctic and non-Arctic countries are investing massively in Arctic research. They are doing so for good reasons, as the changing Arctic is transforming our civilization climatically, economically, environmentally, geo-politically and socially. While they invest, Canada is losing ground,” he said.
The Sentinel North Strategy was hailed as a major advance in northern research when it was awarded to Université Laval in 2015. The trans-disciplinary effort has brought together physicists, biologists, chemists, medical doctors and engineers, to study the role of microbiomes present in the atmosphere and hydrosphere in northern ecosystems.
But Fortier said Sentinel North was a one-time investment, and that believes there is a lack of predictable funding for the broad range of research that ArcticNet has been providing for the past 14 years. “Losing that will set us back significantly,” he said.
The Liberal government launched a review of scientific research in 2016, and a Chief Science Advisor, Dr. Mona Nemer, was appointed to provide advice on the creation on a new federal scientific infrastructure. The spring federal budget included new investments in stem cell research, space exploration and quantum technology.
But it made no mention of Arctic research and the fear is that the Liberal government’s strategic priorities lie elsewhere, with attention diverted toward a more modish sector like Artificial Intelligence, and away from Canada’s rapidly changing North.
EVEN CHINA IS BUILDING NEW RESEARCH ICEBREAKERS.