Scientist: cheapskate Canada shuns Arctic research

For many Canadian scientists, International Polar Year was a splendid party while it lasted.

But less than 12 months after the $156-million IPY ended last year, Canada’s polar scientists are awaking to a grey world of federal stinginess and business-as-usual neglect.

“It’s like Cinderella. Your glass slippers have fallen off and your carriage has turned into a pumpkin,” said John England, a distinguished geoscientist who blasted Canada’s lack of coherent Arctic policy in an opinion article published Jan. 13 in the journal Nature.

Nature also criticized Canada in an editorial that accompanies England’s article.

England, who holds the northern research chair at the University of Alberta, says, for example, that the Polar Continental Shelf Program, based in Resolute Bay, still doesn’t get nearly enough money from the federal government to provide polar scientists with the on-the-ground help they need to do their work.

The root cause, England says, is the absence of a coherent, integrated polar policy in Canada.

“Why on earth doesn’t Canada have a whole policy about our whole northern milieu, our whole northern identity? That’s us. That’s who we are,” England said.

England’s work concerns the history and effects of glaciation in the Arctic, knowledge that’s essential to understanding climate change and other issues.

But for the future, he says he and other researchers like him will continue to struggle, while Canada continues to fall behind other Arctic nations, such as the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

“People are openly talking about curtailing their work… We’re really in a fix,” England said.

The continental shelf program, or PCSP, was set up in 1958 to provide researchers with expensive air transportation by Twin Otter or helicopter, as well as satellite telephones, snowmobiles and tents.

Since the average research grant given to Canadian geoscientists amounts is only $36,000, support from the PCSP is essential.

Without it, many scientists, especially those who work inland at remote locations requiring expensive air support, could never afford to do their work.

But the PCSP’s logistics budget stands at only $4 million a year. Though that amount grew during the 2007-09 IPY period, England says that in the future, it’s likely to be divvied up among scientists in ever-shrinking amounts.

“They’ll have no money left over for air fares, or to hire student assistants or wildlife monitors, or pay for air freight, or do the analysis of the samples after they bring them back from the field trip,” he said.

This past summer, the federal government announced it would spend $85 million on badly-needed improvements to 18 research stations across the North.

But England says it’s “pointless” to spend that money if researchers get no logistical support and can’t afford to travel from one place to another.

“Logistics is the circulation system, the heart of the activity that connects these stations and makes operations possible,” England said.

At the same time, young scientists are likely to shun the North and work in areas closer to home rather than risk going into debt with northern projects funded by miniscule budgets.

In turn, many partnerships between scientists and people in northern communities, including young students, will likely wither, England said.

“Your ability to involve students is critically dependent on the polar shelf program’s aircraft support.”

U.S. researchers, on the other hand, get generous government support for northern research projects through agencies like the U.S. National Science Foundation, England said.

“There are individual American applicants who are getting for their annual logistical support as much or more than the entire national budget in Canada for logistics.”

It’s not unusual for some American researchers to get $2 million or more just for logistics, with many others getting $300,000 to $400,000 each.

And because of rising air fares and fuel costs, England’s own work is producing dramatic cost overruns. Last year, he found himself in debt to the tune of $110,000.

England also isn’t impressed by the Conservative government’s much-ballyhooed northern strategy, released this past summer.

Of the four “pillars” described in the strategy, not one is committed to actually do anything or pay for anything, England said.

“The strategy is just a guideline. No one has to comply to it or adhere to it.”

He points out that America’s policy, in an act passed by Congress, declares that the United States is a polar nation that will pursue its interests not only in their own territory but also in the territory of other nations.

“Why are we so completely uninspired? How can it benefit the federal government to be so disorganized?” England said.

To that end, Canada needs to replace the northern strategy with a firm policy passed by Parliament that forces various government agencies to coordinate their work.

Another country that takes its northern identity seriously is Norway, England said, whose Norsk Polar Institute in Tromso employees 250 faculty and staff in a modern building.

And air fares in Norway are so low, it’s possible to fly daily from Oslo to Svalbard Island.

“We have nothing in Canada like that at all,” England said.