Scientists urge Harper to develop a polar policy

Scientists say they’re worried concern that recently announced budget cuts and layoffs at Environment Canada could affect the Canadian Ice Service. (FILE PHOTO)

MIKE DE SOUZA
Postmedia News

OTTAWA — On the eve of what has become an annual end-of-summer trek up north for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, senior Canadian scientists are urging him to balance his strategy for the region.

While many believe Harper’s government is doing some of the right things to support development in the North, rapidly undergoing a transformation because of global warming, they say a lot of it is for the wrong reasons.

“It’s a matter of leadership,” said Louis Fortier, the scientific director of ArcticNet, an academic network hosted at Université Laval in Quebec City.

“I think I would tell this government that the scientific community in general is there to support Canada’s northern strategy, but we have to act faster to take leadership, to take action, not to always wait for the others to make the first move, but to go ahead and do it.”

Fortier and other top Canadian scientists contacted by Postmedia News praised the federal government for paying attention to the Arctic for the first time since the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s when John Diefenbaker was prime minister. But Fortier noted some recent examples indicate it must do more, such as criticism from France’s ambassador for the polar regions, Michel Rocard, who suggested Canada was not keeping up with Russia in terms of Arctic shipping capacity.

In another recent case, Fortier said that Canada only followed up on imposing a fishing moratorium in the western Arctic after the United States implemented one of its own.

Cities and communities also have warned that their ice roads are disappearing and shorelines eroding as the ground beneath homes and public buildings melts away with rising temperatures that are increasing much faster than other regions on the planet.

Last year, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimated that its northern communities needed at least $230 million to protect vulnerable buildings from the impacts of climate change. The estimate is equivalent to about $5,000 for every resident in the region.

Meanwhile, most scientists expressed concern that recently announced budget cuts and layoffs at Environment Canada could affect divisions, such as the Canadian Ice Service, which are essential for northern research.

“Even if you don’t care about the ecology of the North, if you don’t care about polar bears, or if you don’t care about sea ice and things, we do have a huge unfunded liability there in terms of infrastructure in communities,” said Duane Froese, an associate professor and Canada research chair in northern environmental change at the University of Alberta. “So there are big gaps right now that we’re not tackling in any serious way as far as I can see.”

Environment Canada declined to identify which divisions it will be cutting, “for privacy purposes, in consideration of Environment Canada employees.” But in a regional breakdown, the department has indicated that 110 out of 776 positions being affected, are in the Prairie, Northern, Pacific and Yukon regions.

Fortier said the government sees and understands that climate change is the major driver of the transformation of the Arctic, but is downplaying this aspect of its northern strategy.

Fortier also said that the government has recently invested about $85 million over the past two years on research infrastructure in the North, and he is hoping Harper will make a stop in Resolute Bay to announce some additional funding that was expected during a recent visit up North by senior federal cabinet ministers with France’s Rocard, on board the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen.

“The government at this time is the government of the Arctic, like the Diefenbaker government before,” Fortier said. “And I think, we have to give back to Caesar, what belongs to Caesar. That is [to say], maybe not for the right reasons, they are certainly looking after the Arctic after generations of [neglect].”

Wayne Pollard, an associate professor and the director of McGill University’s Centre for Climate and Global Change Research described some of the federal research investments as “smoke and mirrors” since he believes a disproportionate amount is being allocated to research from an icebreaker.

“There’s a lot of science done in remote camps and done under some pretty difficult physical conditions, and ironically, I think some of the best science is done under those very stressful conditions,” said Pollard. “Doing science from an ice breaker is ridiculously comfortable in comparison to a tent camp on the northern tip of Axel Heiberg Island in temperatures that never get above zero and you’re in slush every day.”

The latest trip would mark the first visit to the North for Harper since winning a majority government in the May 2 federal election, indicating he has a serious interest in the region, according to one expert on international affairs.

“The fact that he’s going North with no election on the horizon shows that his interest is real,” said Michael Byers, Canadian research chair in international law and politics at the University of British Columbia.

John England, the northern research chair for NSERC, an arm’s-length federal agency that offers research grants, urged the government to go one step further, to develop a binding policy with teeth to guide its plan.

“If we’re not going to do it, someone else will do it for us — the international community will do it for us,” said England, who also leads scientific research teams in the Arctic. “Let’s have a Canadian polar policy and let’s use it as our podium to tell the world how we value the North and how we plan to really establish a working vision of where we intend to go in fulfilling all of our responsibilities and opportunities there.”