Proceedings of the Special
Senate Committee on the Arctic
Issue No. 8 - Evidence - April 30, 2018
OTTAWA, Monday, April 30, 2018
The Special Senate Committee on the Arctic met this day at 6:29 p.m. to consider the significant and rapid changes to the Arctic, and impacts on original inhabitants; and, in camera, to consider a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Dennis Glen Patterson (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good evening. Welcome to this meeting of the special Senate committee on the Arctic.
My name is Dennis Patterson and I represent Nunavut in the Senate. I am privileged to be Chair of this committee. I welcome everyone with us in the room and viewers across the country who may be watching on television or online. As a reminder to those watching, these committee hearings are open to the public and available online at sencanada.ca
I would now ask senators around the table to introduce themselves beginning with the deputy chair.
Senator Bovey: Pat Bovey, Manitoba.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate, Ontario.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator Galvez: Rosa Galvez from Quebec.
Senator Oh: Victor Oh, Ontario.
The Chair: Tonight we are continuing our briefings on Arctic issues. I am pleased to welcome by video conference Dr. Gary Stern, professor at the University of Manitoba. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Stern. I invite you to proceed with your opening statement.
Gary Stern, Professor, University of Manitoba, as an individual: Good evening and thank you for inviting me to present at your committee.
I am a professor at the University of Manitoba, at the Centre for Earth Observation Science. I know you had a similar meeting with Dr. David Barber, a colleague of mine. We work closely together and have been involved in a number big projects together, including the IPY-CFL Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study and ArcticNet. I will not go through all that. I assume you are all familiar.
I was invited to speak primarily about the Western Arctic. I am coming from a contaminants perspective. I am a contaminants scientist, so I look to see how contaminants such as mercury, hydrocarbons and other contaminants circulate within the Arctic ecosystem, and how they are affected by climate change. As you will see from my presentation slides, a lot of what I will discuss is geared around that, but I would be happy to answer other questions around other issues if I can.
The first slide shows you what the integrated regional impact study is, and I think David Barber mentioned this as well. It is part of the ArcticNet program and is one of their deliverables. There are four different regions, the Western and central Arctic, the eastern Arctic, the Hudson Bay IRIS 3, as well as the eastern sub-Arctic. I lead the Western and central Artic.
The idea behind this is to generate the science and present it in a way that policymakers and committees, such as yourselves, can use as a tool specifically for meetings — like you are having right now. It was written for that purpose in a very plain language.
If you turn to slide 3, you will see that not only was the final report published in December 2016, but we also published highlighted summaries in four different Inuit languages as well as synthesis and recommendations. Rather than having to go through a 300-page document we tried to synthesize the information such that people and committees like yours can easily go through it and pick out the things that are important.
If you go to slide 4, I put this in here because I wanted to show you that this IRIS was not done in isolation. It was not just scientists who were involved, we had a strong Inuit involvement. We have representatives from NTI, IRC, IGC and ITK. It is a strong input from different communities. For example, there are Inuit research advisers who would go back to the communities and discuss with them some of the things we were discussing.
If you go back again to page 5, I want to show you some of the meetings that were involved. It started in 2012. The consultation process was intense. The final document, as I said, was published in December 2016. When we started it, with a big workshop that we had in Inuvik, we invited people from Inuvialuit, Kitikmeot and the Yukon North Slope, as well as different scientists involved in these studies. We got direct input from them as to exactly what their concerns are living in the Arctic. We wanted to make sure the science we were doing was the science they felt needed to be done. It was a long consultation process and it worked wonderfully. They were impressed by the final document and hopefully found it useful for a committee like yours.
The big issue in the Arctic, of course, is warming. We know we have lost significant amounts of sea ice. If you look at slide 6, we can see that since 1978 the amount of ice we have lost is equivalent to about 82,000 square kilometres per year. To put that in perspective, it is about the size of Lake Superior. There has been quite a dramatic decline. The models suggest if this continues unabated, we could have an ice-free Arctic in the summer by approximately 2030.
That is sea ice extent. There are different types of ice — multiyear and first-year ice. The type of ice is important because it affects the climate and the ecosystem. If you go to slide 7, not only is the sea ice extent changing but the type of ice has changed. We have lost dramatic amounts of multiyear ice. That is ice that continues to grow year after year. We are down now to about 15 per cent of what it was back in the early 1990s. It is a significant decline.
As I mentioned, I am mostly interested in contaminants. One of the big issues is mercury. I think you also mentioned that during the meeting with Dave Barber. A number of things affect mercury cycling within the Arctic, both its toxicity and bioavailability. It is a complicated process. It comes down to how the ecosystem affects its oxidation states or how it is formed. For example, there is inorganic mercury or there is methylmercury. Methylmercury is a toxin and is the type that is accumulated in marine mammals or in people. We are finding climate change is affecting the levels of mercury we are seeing in the animals, and subsequently in the people consuming their tissues as part of their traditional diets.
If you go to slide 9, I have tried to give you an idea of what the concentrations mercury is in some of the animals, for example seals, polar bears and beluga whales, as well as humans. Again, we are talking about the Western high Arctic. You can see the concentrations in the beluga brain are extremely high. They are beyond the levels where you’re seeing the chemical threshold. This is for the brain, but we are also seeing high levels of concentrations in their proteinaceous tissue, in the muktuk for example, that people are consuming. Their exposure depends on how they cook the tissues. For example, if you dry muscle, the concentrations of mercury will increase because you are losing a lot of the water content. On a concentration basis what they are being exposed to is very high. This is of great concern, especially when we know that since the Minamata Convention on Mercury we are trying to reduce atmospheric emissions, but concentrations still seem to be increasing in the biota, at least to a certain extent. This is because we have a reservoir of mercury in our oceans and lakes right now. It is in a form that is not currently bioavailable. For example, you mentioned the melting of permafrost. Yes, permafrost does melt and releases a lot of mercury, but it is not generally in a form that accumulates. You have this huge reservoir of inorganic mercury. What changes it and what makes bioavailable is the warming climate. The biology going on and the processes converting it from an inorganic form, which is generally non-toxic, to the toxic form which is methylmercury, that is of great concern.
I want to give you an example. I mentioned beluga whales. What the beluga are exposed to is based on a bottom-up and a top-down process. It is basically the food-web dynamics. Mercury increases as you go up the trophic level. You have biomagnification and bioaccumulation. As zoo plankton are eaten by fish and fish are eaten by ring seals, for example, the concentrations increase until you get to the top predators like beluga and you end up with substantially high levels.
It also depends on whether it is a female or a male, its reproductive status and what it is feeding on. It could be feeding in different regions or have longer food webs, so they are exposing themselves to higher levels.
Slide 11 shows you that we have been collecting in the Western Arctic. From Hendrickson Island in particular, we have data from 1981 to 2017, so 23 time points over 36 years. These types of studies are important because the only way we can see if climate change is affecting the levels is to be monitoring it on a long-term basis. This way we can tie any changes to the changes in climate, and mercury levels to the changes in climate we are seeing.
This is a lot of community-based monitoring. All the samples have been collected by the communities. It has been done so since the early 1980s. We would send them up kits, for example. The hunters would go on their traditional hunts and collect samples and put them in properly labelled bags and do the morphometric and biological measurements of the animals and then freeze them and send them back to us.
There was significant input by the communities and the hunters as well as traditional knowledge because they know how many whales there are, or whether there are more males than females, or if they were late this year relative to previous years. There is a lot that we have learned from the traditional knowledge and not just the Western science side of things.
If you go to slide 12, you will see some of the concentrations we are seeing over time in both liver, mercury and muscle mercury. If you look at the concentrations, you can see on the left side, for example, mercury concentrations are up to almost 80 micrograms per gram. That is incredibly high.
The only reason these animals, the beluga in particular, are able to sustain those levels — it would probably kill them if it were all methylmercury — is they have an amazing ability to de-methylate the mercury within their systems and form something called mercury selenide. Their metabolism allows them to detoxify the methylmercury they are consuming as part of their traditional diets.
Again, we are looking at different age classes, 16 to 35, and 36 to 55, just because they eat and behave differently. You can see there is a slight increase over time in the animals that are 16 to 35, whereas in the older animals they peaked around 2002 and then started to drop. There are a number of reasons for that. It gets complicated, but if you wanted to ask questions, I would be happy to explain.
If you look at the muscle, the concentrations are much lower. We are looking at 1 to 2 micrograms per gram. The issue is it is all methylmercury. Concentrations aren’t changing much in the animal size from 380 to 420 centimetres; they are declining from the animals greater than 420 centimetres.
The concentrations are around 1 to 2 micrograms per gram and 100 per cent methylmercury, but there is no consumption guideline, for example, or how much of these tissues in beluga or ring seals, for that matter, that they should be eating. The Canadian consumption guideline for fish is 0.5 micrograms per gram. Whenever they are consuming these tissues, if they are drying the muscle, for example, they are being exposed to high concentrations of methylmercury. It is a concern, especially for women of childbearing years.
There is another example. This is in the Sahtu region in the Northwest Territories. We have been doing analysis or monitoring of burbot on the Mackenzie River near Ramparts rapids. Again, this is community-based monitoring. They would go out every year and collect fish at a particular time because it is an important component of their subsistence diet. They love the liver of the burbot. Every December or January they would go out and collect 20 to 40 different fishes for us and send them back and we would do these analyses. We have been doing that since 1985.
If you look at slide 13, you will see the concentration has increased. If you are looking at the muscle, you can see the concentrations have increased approximately two times over that time period. The levels are higher in the muscle than the liver, but the concentrations in the liver on the right-hand side are also increasing.
Right now the main concentrations are generally less than the 0.5 micrograms per gram that I had mentioned, but if it continues to increase, the data suggests that by 2030 concentrations could be, on average, greater than 0.5 micrograms per gram. That is a big concern.
That is a bit of the story for mercury.
One of the other issues I am involved with is hydrocarbons. We know the issues with pipelines and the potential for resource exploration in the Arctic. Canada, if you look on slide 14, has huge numbers or amounts of undiscovered oil reserves. We know exploration within Canada is in a hiatus right now. If you look at slide 15, you will see a letter from Imperial Oil saying they would not be doing any exploration for at least the next 16 years. That is good. It gives us a bit of breathing room to try to understand and deal with potential spills associated with exploration.
We also know exploration is ongoing in countries like Russia, the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. If you look at slide 16, you see there is exploration going on and around the Yenisei River, going from the coast of Siberia to the Kara Sea. We may not be doing the exploration in Canada, but it is ongoing in Russia. We know, again, from the United States their legalized sale of oil and gas leases in their Alaskan region. We may have isolated ourselves and may not be doing any exploration in Canada, but if there is ever a spill, it will affect Canadian waters.
Aside from the exploration, and I think Dave Barber also talked about this, one of the big issues with the loss of sea ice is it is opening up the northern sea routes to increased ship traffic. I have shown that again on slide No. 18, across the Northwest Passage, across the poles and the Northeast Passage. If you look at point 4, it is anticipated with exploration alone, an increase of 1,000 ships crossing the Arctic per year.
If you go to slide 19, this is basically the Canadian Arctic transportation routes. You can see many of them cross very sensitive ecosystem areas. If there was ever a spill associated with a ship or whether it is exploration or related, it could be extremely tragic.
Another example of the increased ship traffic we are seeing is the Crystal Serenity cruises, which potentially you have heard about. I don’t think they are doing it this summer, but for the past two years they have had these cruise ships moving across the Northwest Passage and they are going with icebreakers. You could imagine if there were ever an accident associated with that.
Another example here is with the Chinese. It is a real boon for them because they can save a lot of money. They can save 17 days of transit time and potentially 500 tonnes of fuel by going through the Northwest Passage. It is very attractive, and because of the loss of the sea ice, ship traffic will definitely increase.
We all know what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I hope that never happens in Canada. There were approximately 4.9 billion barrels of crude oil spilled within that system.
If you go to slide 24, because it was in the southern U.S. and there was close proximity, for example, the countermeasures such as mechanical booms and in situ burning was easily accessible, but if you can imagine, getting skimmers into Arctic regions would be logistically impossible. Things like in situ burning and dispersants are illegal to use in Canada. If there was a spill, whether large or small, we currently have no policy or laws in Canada that dictate what type of dispersants or herding agents we can use and under what situations we can use them. That goes for in situ burning as well.
If you now go to slide 25, it is interesting. Because of the closeness of the spill to the Gulf of Mexico and the ability to do mechanical recovery, on slide 25 you will see that only 4 per cent was actually removed by mechanical recovery and only 6 per cent by in situ burning. It turns out a lot of the oil was degraded biologically by the bacteria present in the Gulf of Mexico. They were able, over time, to degrade a lot of that oil.
The question is: What would happen if that occurs in the Arctic? The waters are much warmer in the Gulf of Mexico than in the Arctic. If the oil spill happened in the colder waters or on ice or under ice or in the ice or on the ice, how would we be able to deal with that?
I have a big project called GENICE. GENICE is a $10.5 million project funded to me and Casey Hubert from the University of Calgary. It is a Genome Canada project that allows us to look at the potential for natural bioremediation within the Arctic itself. Do the Arctic waters and the Arctic Sea ice have bacteria present that could naturally degrade the oil should a spill occur, and also generate the tools we would need, for example, with the Coast Guard, whose mandate is to respond to these incidents?
We had a meeting with them and they said, “We need the tools. We need to know how to address these issues.” We want to provide them with the understanding and knowledge to say that yes, the Arctic waters have bacteria present that could potentially be augmented with nutrients, for example, but if there is a spill there is the potential for the bacteria to degrade the oil.
The last two slides are an overview. In the end, with that project, we are trying to provide end users — that is, communities, different industries and all different levels of government such as Senate committees like this — with the tools and understanding that are needed to deal with potential oil spills in the Arctic.
I will stop there.
The Chair: Thank you for a fascinating presentation, Dr. Stern. You managed to put it in pretty understandable language. I, for one, want to thank you for that.
We will now turn to questions from senators.
Senator Bovey: Thank you, Dr. Stern. I find the work you are doing with your colleagues absolutely fascinating and, in many ways, quite frightening.
I have two questions, if I may. One is more general. On the basis of your research and your years of working in the Arctic, and given the way we’re having to look at the changing Arctic and the intersection of issues this committee is trying to get handle on, what is your greatest concern? What would you think is your most important recommendation to us as we move forward to try to ensure the protection of the Arctic and its people, its wildlife and its sustainability?
Mr. Stern: First, a lot of contaminant issues are driven by climate change. The first thing we have to do is get a handle on our greenhouse gas emissions. I mentioned before that mercury has accumulated to a great extent in the Arctic Ocean and in the lakes, but in a form that is it not currently bioavailable. However, as the climate warms it will change the systems in such a way that they become more bioavailable.
The first thing we need to get a handle on is to — as the Government of Canada is trying to do — reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. I am worried a lot about the communities in the Arctic. They are dealing with so many different issues. It is not just contaminants but it’s coastal erosion, the changing sea ice and them not being able to get on to and do their traditional harvest since it’s no longer safe because the ice isn’t there in the way their traditional knowledge told them it should be. I believe they are getting away from eating and hunting for their country foods and they’re moving toward a poor diet, for example, processed foods. Their livelihoods and lives as they know it are changing dramatically. As we know, the climate is warming in the Arctic faster than any other place in the world.
What we want to do is try to adapt. First of all, we would like to mitigate but the mitigation we’re doing are our best but a lot of what we will be doing is adapting. They have a lot on their plates. It’s changing so fast and the adaptation they have to do is so fast. It’s scary to me.
Senator Bovey: Thank you for that. That is a good segue into my next concern. It is tremendous you are including Inuit peoples in your research and in gathering the tissues and working with you and including Inuit knowledge in your work.
That leads me to that wonderful word “education” and access to education. Can you talk about the kind of training the people you are working with need? Are they getting it? Do you feel there is appropriate access to education to be able to sustain their lives and the work they’re doing?
Mr. Stern: I think the key is young people. As you say, I think the key is education. We want young people, the Inuit and northerners to be the ones in the future doing the research so they can tie the Inuit knowledge they have with the Western science knowledge. We need to get more young people into science-type positions, whether it’s through getting master’s degrees or undergraduate degrees at different universities, or different training, for example, at the Yukon College, where they can be out on the land. We have a lot of training, for example, when we do a lot of our ship work off the CCGS Amundsen, for example, we have community people and students involved so they can see what is being done.
Getting young people educated and in the system and leading the science and tying the traditional knowledge to the Western sciences is absolutely key.
Senator Bovey: Are those students getting access to the programs like those in which you teach?
Mr. Stern: Yes, they absolutely do. We bring them into our labs. We spend sometimes weeks training them in different scenarios. We take them through everything from working up the sample all the way through to looking through data, at least from my side of things. We are exposing them quite a lot. We can’t do that with everyone, of course, but if we train those people, then they go back to their communities and they can transfer some of the knowledge they have gained to others.
Senator Galvez: Thank you very much, Professor Stern. Your work is fascinating. I have so many questions to ask but will try to put them all together.
You talked about mercury. I wish I could know whether it is from anthropogenic or minerals coming from the soil. You also talked about hydrocarbons. We know that risk accumulates in Indigenous people who consume food and breathe air that is contaminated.
Have you done any risk analysis to evaluate the dangers Indigenous people may be exposed to?
I was just talking to somebody who works in the North who said they have found pesticides in the Arctic. You have pesticides, hydrocarbons, mercury, all of them accumulated in the liver, in the flesh, and Indigenous people are eating these foods. What is the danger?
Mr. Stern: I’m not a toxicologist. I’m more involved in looking at processes, how it’s accumulating, why it is accumulating. But we work very closely, for example, with Health Canada and with the NWT Health and Social Services and the same for Nunavut. We’re providing them with information we’ve generated on a regular basis so they can update any type of advisories with respect to the consumption of these different foods.
Yes, mercury concentrations are increasing in fish, for example. The larger fish will tend to have higher concentrations because they live longer and accumulate it longer. We try to provide them with the information and suggest they eat smaller fish, for example, because smaller, younger fish don’t have as high mercury levels as larger fish. I can’t speak to the toxicology side of it, but I know they’re on top of it and that we work quite closely with them to provide the information they need to make decisions.
Senator Galvez: We received notes from the territories, and they had some critiques about the scientists and the work they do in the North. They mentioned scientists are present during the summertime but are not there all year round. They were afraid the type of results that scientists provide are only seasonal but not necessarily year-round.
Could you comment on that, please?
Mr. Stern: We’re trying to get around that, and I’ll just bring up a couple of different studies. One is called CASES. It’s a big program funded by NSERC in the early 1990s. There is also the big IPY Circumpolar Flaw Lead System study. Both of them involve the CCGS Amundsen. For that purpose specifically, the ships were out in the Beaufort Sea, in both cases, for the entire year. The idea was to not only get summer data but to get and collect all of the associated seasonal data. If you’re talking about going out to individual communities and doing work in those regions, we do some of that. I know, in the Belcher Islands, for example, some of my colleagues are out there collecting samples off the ice. It’s hard to be out there all of the time. Some of my Masters students, for example, one of them who was more involved in the communications side of things, actually spent four months in Sachs Harbour, over a period of the year, trying to build the rapport and the communications with the community so they understood the issues associated with the work we were doing. I think it is very important. We need to understand the seasonal variability. This year, the Amundsen is going into Hudson Bay in early June. In 2005 and 2010, they were in the summer, but we really need to be in there earlier to look at, for example, the primary seasonal blooms in the spring. We need to be out there all year round, as much as we can, to try to understand the seasonal variation.
Senator Galvez: Thank you.
Senator Oh: Thank you, Dr. Stern. I’m interested in the Northwest Passage, that you have a saving of 17 days and 500 tonnes of fuel for the cargo ships or whatever goes through there.
How heavy is the traffic there today? Do we have any idea? How many months a year is the traffic allowed to pass using the passage?
Mr. Stern: Well, I can’t give you specific numbers on that, but I know, as the ice is receding, the traffic is definitely increasing over time and not just cargo ships. For example, as I mentioned, there is also the Crystal Serenity, associated with the tourism industry. I’m sorry; I don’t have these numbers at hand. I can say they have been and will continue to increase significantly.
Senator Oh: Do we have other navigation systems set up to guide all of these cargo ships, cruise ships, through the channels?
Mr. Stern: Well, no. One of the issues that I think Canada really needs to deal with is the lack of icebreakers. No cargo ships are really going to be moving through the Arctic in the winter time, but you can’t even be moving through in summer, where, depending on the winds, for example, you still can get a lot of the passages blocked by ice. In many cases, you may need a Coast Guard ship or an icebreaker to escort through or, at least, respond to an incident, if one happens. Canada, right now, has, I think, five icebreakers that were all built in the early 1970s. On the CCGS Amundsen, $40 million was spent on that ship to upgrade it. They are old. There has been talk about the Diefenbaker, which is a polar class icebreaker that Canada is supposed to be building. I know that is still a ways away but I think this is something Canada really needs to do.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much, Professor Stern. That was a sobering yet very important presentation and complementary to what we’ve been hearing for sure. You’re not contradicting, in any way, what we’ve heard.
I have a couple of questions. They are actually not related to each other. I’m not sure, given your statement that you’re not a toxicologist — You did make the statement that there’s a big concern, particularly for women of child-bearing years, with the methylmercury accumulation. I understand there may also be issues with breast milk. Is there anything you could tell us particularly about the threat for women of childbearing years? Could you go a little further on that, if you have any information on breast milk, and what’s being done?
Mr. Stern: First of all, mercury would be transferred more via cord blood. It’s more of a proteinaceous type of contaminant. When you’re talking about breast milk, you’re talking about what we call more lipophilic contaminants, like PCBs, Chlordanes or some of these new brominated flame retardants we’re hearing about. These compounds, because they are lipophilic, accumulate very much in the fat of the animals. When the community is eating beluga blubber, for example, which is a major staple or part of their community diets, they could potentially be exposing themselves to higher levels of these contaminants. Many of these legacy type contaminants, like PCBs, have definitely gone down over time.
We’re a little bit concerned about the potential for climate warming to remobilize, some of which is already there, but there are all sorts of new contaminants coming online that we’re trying to keep a handle on. Some of them, for example, are these fluorinated compounds and the brominated flame retardants. They need to be restricted. Some are presently being restricted, but, unfortunately, these animals have accumulated them over their lifetimes. The only way, other than trying to mitigate by making them illegal to use or reducing their emissions, is for a woman of child-bearing years not to eat beluga blubber, for example, from a certain stage in their life.
Again, I’m not a toxicologist. I don’t want to speak for them, but it is an issue.
Senator Coyle: Could you tell us more about the source of these newer toxins?
Mr. Stern: Well, the brominated flame retardants were, as the name suggests, used in everything from sofas to computer boards to prevent combustion. The market for them has changed over time. They’ve tried to change from the ones that tend to, when you incinerate, go up into the atmosphere and are transported North. They tried to reduce the types of compounds that persist and don’t degrade over time and are more readily transported.
These brominated flame retardants are no longer just a Southern issue; they are being used in Northern communities as well, such as when they’re burning their waste.
These are contaminant issues of concern. We are trying to reduce their emissions, but it needs to be looked at carefully.
Senator Coyle: The combination of them travelling North from the South, but also now dealing with garbage burning and other collectables — those are also factors in the Arctic.
Mr. Stern: Absolutely.
Senator Coyle: I have another question, which is unrelated, as I said.
When you were speaking about oil spills and oil spills in the North, did you say that there was no regulation in Canada regarding in situ burning and the application of dispersants?
Mr. Stern: There are no policies. It is currently illegal to use dispersants. This is one of the things we’ve been working on. Right now, having discussed this with Coast Guard, Transport Canada, and Environment and Climate Change Canada, if there’s a spill, there is no policy they can go to say, “You used this type of dispersant or this type of herding agent, so this needs to be dealt with.”
We also don’t know, for example, how these different dispersants would work in Arctic waters. They used Corexit as a dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico, but would it work the same way in the much colder Arctic waters? This research really needs to be done, and done quickly. This is where the GENICE project I mentioned, which involves natural remediation — what is the potential for existing bacteria to degrade the oil should a spill occur?
Senator Coyle: Thank you for that clarification.
The Chair: In that connection, Professor Stern, I would like to ask whether you’re aware of any measures in the recently announced Ocean Protections Plan of Canada. It’s a $1.5-billion project. Are you aware of any impacts that new funding will have on the Arctic Ocean?
Mr. Stern: Actually, I’m involved in one of the studies. It is by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Ken Lee, who is a scientist and is leading that file. Ken has been in contact with us. We’re currently writing proposals with very specific issues dealing with oil spills in Arctic waters as well as on all three coasts.
So yes, I am. There will be significant monies in the near future that will be available for us to conduct the research that needs to be done.
The Chair: Okay, thank you.
Senator Pate: Welcome, and thank you very much for your presentation. It’s very disconcerting, to say the least.
Mary Simon has talked about the new shared Arctic leadership model and emphasized the need to look at the theme of healthy communities, in particular in the most recent research plan developed by Polar Knowledge Canada. I’m curious whether you have recommendations in terms of practices you think have worked well in terms of linking new investments and research to improving community wellness, as well as how you’ve combined elders and traditional knowledge in those areas in the way Mary Simon has suggested.
Mr. Stern: We do try very much to include traditional knowledge in all the research we’re doing. The main thing is empowerment. They need to have the education, Western sciences in combination with their traditional knowledges, to deal not just with the climate change issues but also with all the industrialization going on up there. They need to have the skills to be able to deal with all that potential. I think that is the direction in which things need to be developed.
Senator Pate: Do you have any practices you can point to that have been successful, or that you think should be encouraged by this committee — whether ones you have been involved with or ones you have heard of?
Mr. Stern: I can speak for myself personally. It’s actually getting up there and spending time in the communities. As I mentioned, several of my graduate students and I have spent much time up there in Inuvialuit, for example, up in Tuktoyaktuk, or Aklavik. The focus is forming and generating relationships and trust, bringing them in and making sure they know they have input into these types of programs — for example, the IRIS’s being developed, any new and ongoing research programs, and making sure they’re at the table when the science is being discussed. I can speak to that more from a research perspective.
Senator Pate: Thank you. Professor Stern, you mentioned the IRIS studies in the Arctic regions, under the auspices of ArcticNet, I believe. What’s the future of that work?
Mr. Stern: ArcticNet just finished its 14-year period; March 31 was the end of that program. I know they are up for renewal. They’ve changed the rules for the networks of centres of excellence, NCEs. It used to be that NCEs funded previously were not allowed to resubmit, but I think they’ve realized — and it’s not just ArcticNet; there are many NCEs out there, ranging from medical-oriented NCEs that are very important. I think they have come to the decision that you shouldn’t end a program just because you’re at the end of 14 years. There has been so much accumulated knowledge and momentum that has built up. It is a shame to just stop it.
We have submitted a letter of intent, and it has been accepted. Currently, we are writing a proposal for the next call for the NCEs. Hopefully, we will be successful, and that means ArcticNet will continue for the next five years.
The Chair: Thank you. The genome project that you referred to — the potential for bioremediation — could you outline how that was funded?
Mr. Stern: It was funded by Genome Canada. This project is led by me here at the University of Manitoba and Casey Hubert from the University of Calgary. There was a call for proposals from Genome Canada for which we submitted. It’s not just supported by genome Canada; it’s also supported by the Provinces of Manitoba and Alberta. Genome Canada contributed $3 million in cash to the project. The provincial government of Manitoba contributed $1 million, the Province of Alberta contributed $1 million and I think there was also $500,000 from the Province of Quebec.
The Chair: Thank you. We’re going to second round, and we have roughly 10 minutes left.
Senator Galvez: Thank you very much for all that very useful information.
I know in the North, solid waste is a very heavy problem, because there is not much elimination in the traditional way of landfilling or recycling, so there’s a lot of waste dumps all over. With climate change — warming up — because you work on contaminants, do you see these dump sites as new sources for contaminants? Degradation will take place or perhaps people will start burning more. What do you think?
Mr. Stern: That’s a difficult one.
We could say that because waters are warming, we could get potentially more bacterial or bioremediation of waste making its way into the ocean. Ultimately what it comes down to is it should be properly reclamated. There are a lot of nutrients, for example. Even if we get away from the toxicants, when you’re dumping nutrients into a lake, or even into the ocean, for that matter, if you are doing enough of it, it changes the lake. It increases primary productivity within the lake and it changes the entire system within itself. We see that a lot in Lake Winnipeg now, for example, where there are a lot of nutrients from farming going into the lake. It’s causing significant algae blooms. This could be a problem.
Senator Galvez: Do you have an idea of the magnitude of the problem or how fast it could become a real issue?
Mr. Stern: That’s a tough one, because all the different communities are dealing with their waste in different ways. Ultimately, the best way to deal with it is to reclamate it before it goes into the water.
Senator Bovey: Picking up on the question that Senator Patterson asked about the ocean areas: The Senate received late last week — and we’ll start discussing it this week, I think — Bill C-55, for the ocean marine protected areas and Canada’s goal of having 10 per cent of our oceans in marine protected areas by 2020. I think we’re at 7.7 per cent.
Have you been part of any of the discussions in helping to define the criteria or define these suggested future marine protected areas?
Mr. Stern: I haven’t recently. However, I used to work with DFO before I came to the university, and I was very much involved in the Western Arctic side of things. I think they’re very difficult to find. What I was generally looking at were beluga whales, for example, because beluga don’t just stay in around the Mackenzie Delta. They migrate up east, and then north and up through the Bering Strait. My issue with marine protected areas — it’s great. You can restrict hunting and industry, for example. How do you know they are actually being protected? Along with marine protected areas, you have to do continuous monitoring to see whether that protection has actually led to or decreased any changes that are going on.
Senator Bovey: One quick question: I had occasion the other day to go into the labs and storage areas of the Museum of Nature and was taking a look at their Arctic collections. I found it fascinating, looking at a lot of the specimens they have from the pre-ice age from the Eastern and Western Arctic. I know their scientists go up North regularly and they’re planning for their summer trip.
Am I correct in assuming that your work intersects with them? And have you done some joint projects with the Museum of Nature?
Mr. Stern: Absolutely. One of the nice things about big programs like ArcticNet or ships like the Amundsen, or the Circumpolar Flaw Lead Study and other studies is that they’re very multidisciplinary. At any one time, you have 40 scientists on a ship and you’re always interacting with one another.
It’s impossible to understand an ecosystem in isolation. You can’t just go out and study benthic invertebrates or beluga whales or sediment accumulation without understanding the atmospheric forcings or the oceanography, water chemistry or the biology. These ecosystems are complicated and very multidisciplinary. We have been, and will continue to work and interact. I think it’s wonderful, because 16 years ago I probably wouldn’t have said the same thing. We have moved to this multidisciplinary type of research. So yes, I have.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much again, Professor Stern. My question is building on some of my colleagues’ questions regarding bringing more Indigenous people into the scientific research cycle that you and many others are involved in. Canada is making very large investments in Northern research, and those investments are well warranted.
I am curious. I know everyone is very well-intentioned and there is some progress being made. The will is there. My question is: What kinds of barriers are you seeing to this taking off in a significant way, where a significant number of young people are emerging into the workforce in these Northern communities and who could become real partners in this research and actually build careers in this area?
Mr. Stern: I see a lot of great potential. I work with a lot of intelligent, knowledgeable students. As part of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead Study, I don’t know if you have heard of a program called Schools on Board. We had an international program where we brought students on board from around the world, as well as nationally.
We also had an Inuit Schools on Board where we brought Inuit students from different regions of the Arctic on board the ship for 12 or 14 days. It was absolutely fascinating to see them get involved with the research. Again, I don’t know if you know the program, but it very much involves working directly with the scientists, and being trained on or showing some of the research, for example, how you collect box cores or sediments from the bottom of the ocean, how we do some of these analyses. I think a lot of those kids were really inspired; and we need to get them inspired so that, when they go back home, they will look at taking, for example, a post-secondary type of education.
This is a personal thing that I’ve always noted. Sometimes I find it’s difficult for Northern students to be away from their families for long periods of time. They have close-knit bonds with their families. In some cases I found it was difficult for them to adapt to living away for longer periods. If we can somehow address that issue, I think it would be really important.
The Chair: Just quickly wrapping up, Professor Stern, I’d like to get back to the policy vacuum in Canada for dealing with spills in Arctic waters. You’re doing the GENICE program, and you said DFO is working on a project to deal with oil spills in Arctic waters. Will these initiatives fill that policy gap?
I’d also like to ask your opinion in that connection: Do you think we should be looking at burning oil or dispersing oil like most other countries do?
Mr. Stern: To answer your first question, GENICE was pretty much developed based on an end-user pull system. Right from the onset, we were working closely with our end users, our partners, to develop and do the science they need to develop the policies that can be used in the case of a spill. To do this, we’ve had many meetings. For example, we had a meeting last April with members of the Canadian Coast Guard where they presented their issues and we presented our science. We spent the whole day coming up with ideas and ways we can do the science that can answer the questions they need to have answered. They can provide needed ships and tools to communities to deal with those spills.
We’ve dealt with Environment Canada and Climate Change, and we’ve dealt with the legal and economics side of things. We have a meeting coming up soon that involves looking at people involved in the shipping industry. We will be discussing with them what they need.
It’s a very end-user pull system. It is geared specifically to answer those questions. If we don’t answer the questions, as far as I’m concerned, a project like GENICE will be a failure. But this won’t happen.
The Chair: What about dispersants and burning? Do you have any opinions on that?
Mr. Stern: The best way to do that is if the Arctic has a potential to microbially and naturally remediate it. In some cases, using dispersants is a good idea because it does what it says. It disperses the hydrocarbons so they sink and are more easily degraded by the present bacteria. There is always the question of whether the dispersant you are using is also toxic.
There is also with in situ burning, when you are burning large amounts of oil, where do the emissions go? They go up into the atmosphere. Will that affect nearby communities, for example? We just need to do the studies. I don’t know if you have a spill in the middle of the Arctic Ocean how relevant even adding dispersants would be. There are so many different questions that need to be answered.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Stern. It has been helpful to all of us. I thank you very much for being with us here tonight.
We will now proceed in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)