THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, November 28, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to study the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation and communications sectors and the consequential impacts on their interdependencies.
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome. I am Leo Housakos, senator from Quebec and chair of this committee. I invite my colleagues to briefly introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Alberta. I come from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Richards: Senator Dave Richards from New Brunswick.
Senator Quinn: Jim Quinn, New Brunswick.
Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo, Ontario.
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne, Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. Today, we continue our study of the impact of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation sector and our study of issues facing Northern Canada.
For our first panel, I am pleased to welcome by videoconference Dr. Steve Kokelj, Senior Permafrost Scientist, Northwest Territories Geological Survey, Department of Tourism, Industry and Investment of the Government of the Northwest Territories, and Dr. Eva Stephani, a Permafrost Research Geographer, Alaska Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey. Dr. Stephani is appearing as an individual, and the views and opinions expressed are solely her own and not those of the U.S. Geological Survey or the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
Welcome. Thank you both for joining us. We will begin with opening remarks, five minutes each, by Dr. Kokelj, followed by Dr. Stephani.
Steve Kokelj, Senior Permafrost Scientist, NWT Geological Survey, Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Government of the Northwest Territories: Thank you very much. I speak to you from Chief Drygeese Territory, the traditional lands of the Yellowknives Dene and home of the North Slave Métis.
In my opening statement, I will briefly paint a picture of what permafrost is, how it varies across Canada’s diverse northern landscape and why this is important to society. I will highlight why permafrost knowledge must be enhanced through the life cycle of an infrastructure project and, finally, touch on a few permafrost challenges and opportunities faced by Canada.
What is permafrost? It is defined as earth materials that remain frozen for at least two years. The shallow surface layer of soils that thaws and refreezes each year is called the active layer. Think of permafrost as the geological product of climate. It is the glue that holds northern landscapes together. It affects about half of Canada’s landmass, influencing how water flows off the land, giving rise to distinct landforms and providing a foundation for our ecosystems and human activities, including traditional land use and infrastructure.
When the climate is stable or in a cooling trend, the term permafrost is most appropriate as it provides a stable, unseen foundation. However, as climate warms and the properties of permafrost conditions change, northern landscapes can become among the most dynamic settings in the world.
Permafrost is characterized in many ways, but only when all elements are considered together are we able to understand the environmental or societal consequences of its thawing, and plan and adapt in an informed manner. Permafrost can be described by the proportion of land it affects, its thickness and its temperature. In Arctic tundra regions, permafrost underlies the entire terrestrial landscape — referred to as continuous permafrost — and it is typically several hundred metres thick underlying the entire landscape. It has an average annual temperature of -6 degrees Celsius or lower. If we imagine moving southward from the Beaufort Sea coast, up the Mackenzie Valley, the permafrost temperatures become warmer, thinner, and eventually it occupies only the portions of the landscape where soil, vegetation and snow conditions favour cold ground conditions.
Differences in soils, moisture and vegetation can produce significant local variation in permafrost conditions. By extension, natural disturbance, such as fire or infrastructure development, which can alter all of these parameters, can play a significant role in affecting its stability.
Permafrost can also host ice that exceeds the volume of pore spaces in the soil. We call this excess ice. If this ice thaws, the ground will subside proportional to the volume of ice that the permafrost hosts. Ground ice can grow when permafrost first forms in a landscape. In addition, cold climate processes can cause the ice content of permafrost to grow significantly over time. Finally, in many northern regions of Canada, large volumes of ice leftovers from glaciation, and these are preserved within permafrost, together making vast landscapes across Northern Canada sensitive to disturbance or climate-driven thaw.
To understand permafrost, we must remember the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, the past matters and, finally, it is what is inside that counts. The climate and geological diversity of the Canadian North give rise to large variations in permafrost conditions, which means that terrain sensitivity and the consequences of thaw can vary greatly across the landscape. This has significant implications for human use because permafrost thaw means very different things for different places. Consequently, detailed knowledge of permafrost conditions is required to plan, design, review and construct major infrastructure projects, to inform community adaptation and to predict the future fate of permafrost.
Infrastructure projects yield an invaluable amount of permafrost data which, in conjunction with that produced by government monitoring, must be curated, managed and made publicly accessible. It is increasingly critical that knowledge on permafrost and infrastructure performance increase through operations and maintenance phase of major projects, along with technical and operational expertise in permafrost because, in a warming north, mitigation, adaptation and innovation are now matters of necessity to ensure resilient northern infrastructure and communities.
Through the challenges of climate change and permafrost thaw, there are significant opportunities for collaboration and co-developing knowledge with northerners at the centre. Infrastructure and community sustainability and monitoring provide focal points for capacity building and generating an applied permafrost knowledge base. Bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise can yield creative solutions, but this requires venues for knowledge sharing among scientists, engineers, practitioners, contractors and traditional knowledge holders from across organizations, institutions and jurisdictions.
Finally, as a northern-based scientist, I feel there’s an important space for programs and venues that foster this type of collaboration and co-development of applied permafrost knowledge and toward ensuring a resilient North. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Kokelj. I turn it over to Dr. Stephani.
Eva Stephani, Permafrost Research Geographer, Alaska Science Center, U.S.Geological Survey, as an individual: Thank you for this invitation to appear before the committee. I understand that the committee’s attention was drawn to our publication on engineering challenges for developing transportation infrastructure in Northern Canada, and it is in this context that I was invited to appear before this committee.
Please let me use this introduction as an opportunity to highlight some of the key messages. Building infrastructure on permafrost is a challenge in itself, and it is further exacerbated by global warming and extreme climatic events which are difficult to predict. Permafrost is sensitive to changes, especially when it is ice rich and warm where an area’s building infrastructure typically changes the local terrain dynamics and affects the ground temperature. As a result, permafrost degradation along infrastructure is widespread throughout the circumpolar regions.
Build-and-maintain has been the main strategy for developing transportation infrastructure in permafrost regions. It involves allowing permafrost degradation and [Technical difficulties] to occur and maintaining serviceability by intensive maintenance to repair damages as they occur. Typically, it involves reduced levels of service, shorter life cycles, reduced comfort and safety and higher travel costs for road users. With climate change, however, we are observing an increase in permafrost degradation, including mass movements, and the traditional build-and-maintain approach is becoming no longer sustainable. Guidance on how to adapt to increased permafrost degradation near infrastructure is limited, including guidance on how to manage infrastructure affected by mass movements and how to effectively control drainage along linear infrastructure, which can be an important contributing factor to rapid permafrost thaw. Throughout circumpolar regions, we are thus observing a critical need to transition from a traditional, reactive, emergency-driven response to a preventive approach that will support the sustainability of our infrastructure system and its surrounding environment.
To develop robust adaptation strategies, however, we need to improve our understanding of permafrost dynamics in varying environments. This involves recognizing permafrost dynamics in the natural environment but also how they are altered proximate to infrastructure due to permafrost infrastructure interaction and feedback. Understanding permafrost dynamics require the collection of field-based data to determine key permafrost characteristics such as its distribution, temperature and ground ice content.
Permafrost covers extended areas of the Canadian North, and field-based data, especially ground ice and temperature data, are relatively sparse. Collecting field-based data in order to advance our fundamental understanding of permafrost dynamics in the natural and permafrost infrastructure system, as well as creating conceptual frameworks of landscape evolution over the coming decades, is imperative to the effective management of transportation infrastructure in the regions of Canada. This also involves testing mitigation techniques in varying environments, as these methods are not generic and must be adapted to specific environments.
Infrastructure management in permafrost regions is challenging in many other ways. Notably, standards and guidelines for infrastructure design and construction on permafrost are limited. Several documents serve as strong references for design procurement and construction of infrastructure in southern Canada, and although most of them include sections on building in permafrost regions, they rarely provide the level of detail required for adequate thermal and mechanical design for structures on permafrost.
Qualification and training for professionals working in permafrost regions are also a challenge. Most civil engineering programs in Canadian universities do not include specific courses in permafrost engineering, and it is my understanding that there are currently no requirements from licensing agencies for professionals to complete a minimum training that would at least raise the awareness of the need for southern practices to be adapted to sensitive permafrost environments. In comparison, professional engineer licensing in Alaska requires the completion of the course “Arctic Engineering,” which is standardized content given under various formats, such as semester based, intensive, in person and online. The availability of specialized courses in permafrost science and engineering is also limited in Canadian universities. These courses develop based on personal initiative, and are often in specific university departments and not well known beyond them. It is concerning to see that the limited experience of qualified personnel as well as the scarcity of guidelines and standards on permafrost engineering can still lead to poor design and premature failures.
In conclusion, our understanding of permafrost science and engineering has progressed intensely over the last decades, yet several knowledge gaps remain. The past and predicted temperature increases stress the necessity to advance our permafrost knowledge and to further adapt our strategies for developing and maintaining infrastructure in permafrost regions. Advancing our permafrost knowledge and developing new technologies are also essential to evaluate permafrost infrastructure interaction and validate impacts on infrastructure and the surrounding environment. We must improve our capacity to characterize the varying environments systems in Northern Canada and monitor changes over time. The comprehensive systemic approach that integrates interdisciplinary methods will help bridge gaps between disciplines and entities involved in infrastructure development, which is critical for assisting the ability of our infrastructure system.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Stephani.
I have a couple of quick questions before I turn it over to my colleagues. Can we reverse climate change, or do we just need to adapt to the realities as they currently exist? Has the federal government over the last few years done enough of the right things? Have they done the right things in terms of protecting and expanding our infrastructure capacity in the North?
Either of you can start it off.
Ms. Stephani: There is one federal initiative that I think should be mentioned that was very valuable, which is the Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative, or NTAI, led by Transport Canada. I believe it started in 2009 — or something like that — and lasted for a decade or so. It was fostering collaboration between academics, the public sector and industry. It also brought experts together with young students. That was a very valuable initiative that funded some research projects and really helped advance our understanding of permafrost dynamics and interaction with infrastructure in Northern Canada.
Adaptation is obviously needed.
Mr. Kokelj: I would support Ms. Stephani’s comment regarding the value of the NTAI. I wouldn’t say it was a largely funded project, but one of its key elements was that it brought practitioners, engineers and scientists together, often in a northern venue. The opportunity for knowledge exchange among groups that might not always interact was afforded by an initiative like that. Therefore, the value wasn’t just in the research they funded but in the spirit of working together to solve problems.
Regarding your question about whether we can reverse climate change: I’m not a climate modeller. Being a northerner, our primary preoccupation and priority is to have a knowledge base to adapt to the changes that are currently happening. What is imperative right now is building the capacity to adapt to the conditions we can expect in the coming decades. As somebody who is on the ground, that’s a priority.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much to both of our witnesses for being with us. With the understanding that neither of you is a climate modeller, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about what the potential impacts are, if we continue to see this level of permafrost thaw. It is my understanding that scientists estimate there is something close to 1,700 billion metric tonnes of carbon sequestered in permafrost, and that if the Yedoma level loses its carbon, there could be dramatic increases in carbon emissions and presumably climate change impacts arising from that. What are the risks beyond runways and roads crumbling if we start to lose more of the permafrost layer?
Ms. Stephani: There are obviously local feedback impacts from permafrost degradation. But as you mentioned, there is a series of feedback that go beyond the footprints of infrastructure and affects globally our climate and the environment. Yedomas are very organic ice-rich deposits occurring in certain areas of Canada, Alaska and Russia. They are not as prevalent in North America compared to elsewhere, but they can, of course, release important greenhouse gases. So can other permafrost, and it is definitely a concern.
Mr. Kokelj: I would reiterate what Ms. Stephani said regarding some of the climate feedback. There is some nuances between how carbon in different landscapes will transform as permafrost thaws. The story is not as straightforward as what is portrayed. There is a lot of variability across the landscape in a lot of settings. These constituents that thaw become re-sequestered, so there is a need for research in that regard.
With respect to the consequences of thaw, both Ms. Stephani and I alluded to this, permafrost landscapes in some settings will transform. The actual configuration of the landscape will change if permafrost continues to thaw in the coming century, and we have to be able to anticipate those changes in those settings. In other environments, those changes will be more subtle and in some cases they will be non-existent.
The challenge we have in communicating this is that it is a big deal. There is important feedback, but there is a lot of nuance that, when you have to manage these issues on the ground, as Canadians and as northerners, understanding that variability and the responses become really important. I hope that’s helpful.
Senator Simons: We heard witnesses last week, talk about using tubes to the either put ice, super-chilled water or cold air underground to keep the permafrost refrigerated. Can you talk about how those technologies work and whether they are practicable at scale?
Ms. Stephani: There are different types of mitigation techniques that can rely on different physical principles. Some will try to extract heat, some are more passive techniques, but I think the key point is that those methods are not generic. It’s not one method that will work everywhere. That brings back what Mr. Kokelj was saying. There is a lot of variability in the landscape, nuances. We need to understand where those techniques work and in what type of environment. To be able to get there, we need to test more methods, collect data, monitor the changes to be able to come up with good recommendations on which techniques should be applied where. Obviously, there is also a cost related to those techniques which are usually much bigger than the typical build and maintain.
But again, in some circumstances, when climate change or just changes that are occurring with the local permafrost are too big, or if the infrastructure cannot sustain those changes, such as railways, then those mitigation techniques become a necessity.
Mr. Kokelj: That’s a very good answer. I don’t have much to add other than emphasizing that most of these solutions are scale-dependent. They’re likely to solve problems at a local scale. Understanding where they work and where they don’t work is important. The other point that is that with the development and implementation of these kinds of technologies, it becomes imperative that we are also testing their performance.
With a lot of infrastructure development at the operations and maintenance phase, the development is put in place. Sometimes when mitigation is applied, it becomes important to track how that mitigation is performing because these challenges aren’t going away. When the question is asked 10 years from now, we have data and a solid understanding of what worked and what didn’t.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I’d like to hear something a bit more concrete. I follow what you’re saying, but one of the things we’ve heard over and over is that roads, especially the ones built on permafrost, will be among the first casualties.
When you talk about mitigation measures and methods, if the permafrost melts, how will roads be built? Will those roads disappear? If so, how soon?
That can differ from one place to the next in the north, but how long do you think it will take for the permafrost to melt to the point that we can no longer have roads?
[English]
Ms. Stephani: There are several points in your question. First time I qualified to say when permafrost will disappear and when roads will disappear. There is that variability in the landscape and in infrastructure conditions that is really an omnipresent condition. We can have infrastructure built on relatively ice poor permafrost that will last for a long time, whereas some infrastructure is built on ice-rich and warmer permafrost, that is found more in the southern regions of permafrost. Those are more sensitive to changes and climate change, but also the changes that are occurring when we build infrastructure. Once we build infrastructure, we are collecting more snow, the drainage is modified so all those different dynamics are changing and affecting the infrastructure and the permafrost and vice versa.
We need to understand the methods that are used to build and the different types of mitigation techniques that are performing in different types of environments. In some scenarios, they are not needed, such as just mentioned when permafrost is ice-poor or relatively stable and the cost-benefit just doesn’t make sense to implement those costly mitigation techniques.
But in other circumstances, especially when we talk about infrastructure that has limited tolerance to movement such as railways and pipelines, those we will see more often the need to implement those mitigation techniques that someone mentioned, the thermal syphons and so on. There is quite a range of techniques.
We are seeing with climate change mass movements that are occurring more and more.
There’s a case here in Alaska of a landslide on a road that was being maintained. In one section, the landslide was moving very slowly. The road maintenance crews were able to continually repair the damage by filling and refilling, to the extent that it became impossible to do that, and the road just washed out. Now we are requiring a very expensive bridge to go across that landslide.
There is no generic response. It must be adapted to all those different types of conditions. We need to better understand that as well and to monitor how those techniques are working or not, as Mr. Kokelj highlighted.
Mr. Kokelj: That was a great response, Ms. Stephani, thank you.
Maybe I could put this into a tangible context for where I live. I am in Yellowknife. We’re in discontinuous permafrost. It’s warm. Last week, there was a project management conference here. Of course, we had the question, why is the road out of Yellowknife so poor for the first 100 kilometres? Of course, it’s the geology and the permafrost context within which it is built. The next 300 kilometres are still on top of permafrost, but it’s ice-poor and the road performs comparatively well.
In recent times, a new piece of infrastructure was built to one of the communities north of Yellowknife, and there were options. We have learned from the construction of the highway out of Yellowknife that a particular deposit there is very sensitive to thawing. When additional infrastructure was built, there were routing options. Avoidance of that particular sensitive terrain was implemented in the design of the new infrastructure.
This is really to give you a practical example of how we have built historical infrastructure without the same priority or emphasis on thinking about the likely loss of permafrost in many environments. That transition will require consistent mitigation and essentially resources to maintain the infrastructure. By having good geoscience knowledge at the planning phase, we can make better decisions. Sometimes that means a greater cost at the front end — a longer road or routing around sensitive areas — but, in the long run, those will be important decisions and strategies to adapt going forward.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.
For both of you, could you give us an appreciation for what has happened over the last number of years in terms of the area of permafrost that was, how much degradation there has been today, and what the forecast is for further degradation in the coming years? Are we losing 5% a year? Can you give us some kind of quantitative indication of what is happening?
Ms. Stephani: Personally, I am not qualified to give you percentages on what will happen ahead, specifically. Like Mr. Kokelj, I live in the North but not as far north. Anchorage doesn’t have as much permafrost as Mr. Kokelj’s area. We, too, are seeing some changes happening, for sure. They seem to be accelerating, but to be able to quantify what’s ahead, I’m not in a position to respond.
Mr. Kokelj: That is a challenging question. In terms of giving you numbers, again, I can’t do that. I’m just not in a position to give you that type of answer. Perhaps stepping back and thinking about some of the products that we see from the science community can help contextualize this.
The distribution of permafrost is a function of climate. There are a lot of projections that display the distribution of permafrost and what it might look like in, say, 2100. That’s a model; it’s very generalized. It will tell us that the continuous permafrost line may move hundreds of kilometres northward.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind. The climate can change relatively quickly, but the permafrost responds at a much slower rate because ice must be converted to water. That’s a gradual process. The rate of that process will vary across the landscape, even within the area where I live. Permafrost could be in bedrock and in sediments that host a lot of ice. In bedrock, permafrost can disappear very quickly.
Even within a region, that process will be gradual. The critical thing, I believe, at least over decadal time scales, is to understand how these different landscapes will respond through that transition. We can quantify those things by monitoring ground temperatures and also monitoring terrain responses.
The science community is building products to look at hotspots of change. Typically, if that’s also linked with infrastructure performance, we can get a sense of where these hotspots are occurring. How is the infrastructure changing? Where do we need to focus our energy and effort in terms of developing mitigation and adaptation strategies? There is no one answer for the entire region as these changes occur.
Senator Quinn: This is a follow-up question to Dr. Kokelj. Thank you for indicating hotspot changes. You raised commentary, for example, on the road out of Yellowknife where conditions are not great. In these hotspots of change — because we’re looking at critical infrastructure — are you aware of other critical pieces of infrastructure that are being affected by the loss of permafrost today?
Mr. Kokelj: In a general sense, yes. Could you add more? I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking.
Senator Quinn: For example, you have mentioned the highway going out of Yellowknife and people observing the condition of that road. In the area where you live and in the North in general, are there other spots where transportation infrastructure is being affected? Are you aware of other areas where transportation infrastructure is being affected by the loss of permafrost, such that it is having detrimental effects on transportation in the North, which is dependent on the existence of permafrost for roads or landing strips or that type of thing?
Mr. Kokelj: Yes. The short answer is that is occurring in many areas and in many pieces of infrastructure across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, Alaska, where that is occurring.
Highway 3 from Yellowknife has areas that are particularly sensitive. In the Dempster Highway area, which connects southern Canada with the Beaufort Delta Region, particular areas are problematic because of the specific makeup of the permafrost.
The Inuvik Tuktoyaktuk Highway is a new road built over ice-rich permafrost. Again, changing permafrost conditions are affecting that road, but, also, as a new piece of infrastructure, it’s evolving, and the permafrost is adapting to that new piece of infrastructure.
The short answer is yes. That story and what that looks like varies from place to place. Being able to have an understanding of mitigation methods and those costs becomes a really important piece going forward to plan, adapt or inform future design.
Maybe Ms. Stephani can add something regarding experiences in Alaska on that.
Ms. Stephani: Yes. I have the same reaction. There are so many examples where permafrost degradation is affecting the serviceability of infrastructure. We have several of them in Alaska and in Canada.
I have a great example that is worth mentioning. Over 20 years ago, there was an effort that began, led by the Ministry of Transport of Quebec with a leading researcher, Professor Michel Allard, that was studying the impact of permafrost and climate change on infrastructure in northern Quebec and in Nunavut. I believe it is still ongoing. There was a problem with severe permafrost degradation that was ongoing, and the build and maintain approach that was not sustainable.
Twenty years ago, people were noticing and taking action to try to understand what those changes were and how we can address them. They have been working on different mitigation techniques as well and characterizing and understanding the type of permafrost in that specific environment.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
I’ve been listening to the discussion and issues around permafrost and hearing the anecdotes and stories about roads, rail and all of the difficulties. Since this committee is studying the impact of climate change on transportation, would it be true that there would be less impact when it comes to air transport infrastructure as opposed to rail and roads? Your examples come from those areas. Obviously, roads get wiped out, rail gets wiped out. Is it easier to mitigate the changes in air transport infrastructure, air landing strips and so on?
If that is true, would you think that northerners in the future, given the changes, would have to rely more on air transport in the future than they are now because of this?
Ms. Stephani: In one way, it may be easier to deal with permafrost degradation along airstrips because they are shorter than linear infrastructure such as railways, roads, pipelines and so on. That is the straightforward part.
The airstrips have a much lower tolerance to movement than roads. We will allow cars to go up and down on bumps that are created from sediments, frost and so on, but planes cannot sustain that. The size of the planes is also limited by the size of the airstrip and the impact of permafrost degradation. It is not as simple, I would say, but this is not my expertise.
I would empathize that those efforts that were taken over 20 years ago and are still ongoing in northern Quebec were focused mainly on the airstrips of those different villages. As Mr. Kokelj mentioned earlier, sometimes roads were built in areas that were actually more sensitive. If we had a different location for that road within the general area, it might resist changes better because the permafrost is not ice-rich or warm or whatever condition it is. We realize that some of those airstrips were actually in sensitive permafrost.
Moving infrastructure is not always viable either. That is where we get into the scenario of are we at the point that we need to move infrastructure or do we have mitigation techniques? The airstrips are definitely also affected by permafrost.
Mr. Kokelj: Thank you. Ms. Stephani’s first point is what I was thinking. In terms of the actual length of a runway; it is a lot less than a road and easier to mitigate, but tolerances for movement are fewer. That means that there are innovation and observation that needs to be made. There needs to be a big investment in that.
I do not know that I have much to add. I do not study transportation specifically. The viability of air travel versus road travel is just not something that I can comment on.
Ms. Stephani, on a couple of occasions, brought up the work in Nunavik, and I would like to empathize a point made earlier; a lot of these jurisdictional strategies for adaptation and mitigation and so forth, they become the responsibilities of a regional government. This idea of having a venue and a way to bring practitioners and scientists together from different jurisdictions becomes a valuable thing. There are solutions that different areas come up with where that knowledge transfer becomes important. Airports are one example where there has been really good work done in one region, and being able to ensure that permeates across different jurisdictions is valuable. Other than that, I have nothing else to add.
Senator Dasko: Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you to both of the witnesses. This has been an interesting education in permafrost, something that I did not understand much about.
I have one question in regard to the terms you both used, either the permafrost being ice-poor or ice-rich. Could you explain that more? Isn’t permafrost ice already?
Ms. Stephani: Mr. Kokelj mentioned a little bit about that. We have the porosity of sediment which can be filled with water and then it freezes and there is ice in the porosity. In some widespread scenarios, there is excess ice and that is more ice than the porosity. We can have big ice situations and in some situation more ice than soil in the ground.
The type of ground ice will be very variable within small areas. We can recognize some types of typical ice in typical environments but, again, there is a lot of variability.
One of the big circumpolar challenges that several of us are working on — “us” excludes me — is the difficulty to map permafrost ground ice because we don’t have a tool. There are some geophysical tools which allow us to see some subsurface conditions. We don’t have a tool that will allow us to measure, quantify and recognize the amount of ground ice over extended areas.
Drilling and observing the type of ice — how much ice it is, how spatially distributed it is — is the most reliable technique but it is very time-consuming and expensive. There is definitely a big challenge that we all share across borders to understand where the ice-rich permafrost is because that is where we see some big landscape changes happening.
Senator Cardozo: Permafrost is never just pure ice, pure water ice. It has always got an element of other earth in there, is that right?
Ms. Stephani: It depends. We can have a buried mass of ice, pure ice, remnants from the past glaciation. We can always have what we call ice wedges which is basically an inverted triangle.
If you see how clay will dry and it makes a polygonal shape pattern. In the permafrost area, especially in the northern parts, we can see those polygonal ice wedges, basically massive ice.
The Yedomas, mentioned earlier, are very big ice wedges that can be up to 70 metres tall, although those are not frequent in Canada.
Mr. Kokelj: To add to what Ms. Stephani said, for sure, you have permafrost, if we recall, which is just defined by temperature. It is really just frozen earth or materials that are maintained in a frozen state for multiple years. You can have permafrost in bedrock, technically, and if that permafrost goes above zero, there is virtually no consequence to the terrain or the stability of the terrain. Then the key is to understand the geological deposits that hose these different ice types. Understanding the proportion of ice and the material properties gives you a sense of how that land is going to respond to thawing.
One thing that I would add is, at a broad scale, the neat thing about permafrost and the development of this ice, particularly now that the top or the active layer of permafrost is getting thicker, is that there are landforms that develop that reveal the subsurface intrinsic properties of permafrost. We can use terrain mapping as a first order estimate of what is inside the ground. Throughout COVID we actually developed an online mapping project that involved students and researchers from across the North and Canada to start populating the landscapes and the land forms that characterize the permafrost in the Northwest Territories. That has given us a nice first-order estimate of what type of subsurface conditions we can expect on a very broad scale. We are not just mapping whether there is permafrost, yes or no, it is also what its intrinsic characteristics are.
Senator Cardozo: My sense is that the difference between permafrost and other land mass is that there has to be some level of liquid or water in there. The reason we’re talking about it today is that it changes form over time depending upon temperature and all of that. Is that right?
Mr. Kokelj: Yes and no. You can have permafrost with no water in it. You can have permafrost in bedrock. It is just material that is maintained below zero. The degree of water and the form of the ice that is within the permafrost dictates its response to thawing. Again, as Ms. Stephani was mentioning, a costly but important way of doing that in an engineering context is to obtain bore holes to get the material properties and the ice content of the permafrost. That is used in the design of the infrastructure.
Senator Cardozo: I have one more question on transportation. I get the point that you made to my colleagues in terms of an airport being a rather short land mass compared to roads. The one difference is that you cannot have too many potholes in a runway, whereas we put up with potholes on roads.
I want to know if you have heard or if you know anything about a couple of ideas that have come our way. One is about the use of airships or helicopters, as you would not need a runway and they can land just about anywhere.
Ms. Stephani: That falls outside of my qualifications to answer. Sorry.
Senator Cardozo: Same to you, Mr. Kokelj.
Mr. Kokelj: Yes, it does for me as well. Although I would say that there are folks who like to talk about options like airships. We have a geoscience forum here in Yellowknife each year, and often there is someone presenting on that concept. There are places to look, but unfortunately it is not with me and Ms. Stephani.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
The Chair: We have six minutes left and two senators on second round, so three minutes each.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: My question is for Mr. Kokelj. According to a study published in 2022 in Future Earth’s Anthropocene, for transportation that requires the thickest layer of ice, the number of ice-free days will rise by 90%, 95% or 99% if the climate warms by 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees or 3 degrees, respectively.
In light of that study, does NWT have a plan to deal with that reality in terms of transportation?
[English]
Mr. Kokelj: I think the question is that, with the decreasing viability of ice roads, is there a plan to deal with this in the transport sector of the GNWT?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Of the territory.
Mr. Kokelj: Yes. This is a question for someone from the Department of Infrastructure. I apologize, but I cannot answer that.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Simons: I want to end on the question of mapping. The Northwest Territories is a huge expanse of land. It is not easy to map every inch of it by making bore holes. What needs to be done to get the baseline mapping that you were discussing up to scale? Having students work on it over COVID is different. What would you like to see the federal and Northwest Territories governments do to ensure make sure that we have adequate mapping so that we understand the scale of the problem and so that we have a base measure of where we are now in order to have some sense of what we’re comparing it to, in the future?
Mr. Kokelj: Thank you for the question. I will do my best to answer this concisely so that Ms. Stephani has a chance to contribute.
There is the issue of scale. Canada is big. We need to know a little bit about everything. The example I gave you was to be able to give us better information on permafrost conditions at a very broad scale, but fundamentally, the key areas where we need information is along infrastructure corridors and sensitive environments around our communities. It is there where we need to invest in higher-resolution mapping techniques. We need baseline information, high resolution terrain models, we need good surficial maps and good surficial maps around communities — and this is under the purview of the geological surveys, be they territorial or federal. Those are the baseline data layers that we require to build models that will help us with planning activities.
There is also remote sensing, which allows us to assess and monitor change, which is an innovation component, but that work can’t be done independently of people who are working on the ground. Those initiatives are very important, but it requires a bridge between a technological approach and a boots-on-the ground approach. I think that Ms. Stephani would likely have something to offer on the mapping as well.
Senator Simons: And that is where you would like to see federal investment.
Mr. Kokelj: Yes.
Ms. Stephani: I very much agree with what Mr. Kokelj just said. The key part is where we need to integrate field-based methods and then remote sensing to be able to do our analysis over extended areas. We definitely need to have more detailed field-based data collected. Those are really key to having a good understanding of conceptual models of each type of environment. Then we can recognize those different types of environments elsewhere with surface indicators using remote-sensing methods. Yes, across the border we are dealing with very similar challenges.
Senator Quinn: I have a short question for both witnesses. What are other circumpolar nations doing in this area? Are you aware of those who are more advanced in their approach to permafrost degradation?
Ms. Stephani: I think Russia — which is a sensitive topic, obviously — started way before us and there is a lot of literature, information and different ways of doing things, but it is very difficult to know what they are doing and read that literature since most of it is in Russian. Learning from some individuals who are living there and now working in the U.S., there are definitely things we can learn from there.
Even within Canada and the U.S. — Alaska, mainly — where there is permafrost, there is a lot of variability within our own region. There is a need to talk and to bridge the gap between all those different entities. We do need to talk to other countries, but internally, we already see efforts to foster collaboration and share our learning.
Mr. Kokelj: Ms. Stephani is right regarding places with a lot of experience. I think opportunities to exchange knowledge across jurisdictions become really important. As well, with what’s happening in Russia, there are international components to the community that are looking to do research in Northern Canada. Canada needs to be in a position where we can leverage some of that expertise from groups — let’s say from Norway or Germany — that are coming here and focus their efforts through collaboration to address problems that are important to northerners. I guess that requires policies and guidelines in terms of how research and collaboration are conducted because, obviously, being able to bring more fire power to the table to address the problems that are important to Canadians is key.
The Chair: Dr. Stephani, and Dr. Kokelj, thank you for sharing your views with this committee today. Thank you for being with us this morning.
Honourable senators we are now continuing our study of the impacts of climate change on transportation and infrastructure in Northern Canada. For our second panel this morning, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Jackie Dawson, Canada Research Chair, Tier 1, Human and Policy Dimensions of Climate Change, Full Professor at the University of Ottawa and Scientific Director of the ArcticNet Network of Centres of Excellence of Canada. We also have with us Dr. Alex de Barros, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary, joining us via videoconference.
Welcome and thank you both for joining us. We will begin with opening remarks of five minutes each. Dr. Dawson, you have the floor.
Jackie Dawson, Canada Research Chair in the Human and Policy Dimensions of Climate Change, Full Professor, University of Ottawa, and Scientific Director, ArcticNet, as an individual: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. I am a bit jetlagged. I got in just after midnight from the U.K., so excuse me if I am a little off.
I will open my talk today by talking a little bit about climate change and how it is impacting our world. In brief, we are living in the effects of climate change right now and every day. We are no longer in the business of simply predicting future impacts. Just a few weeks ago, we momentarily surpassed the 2 degrees Celsius warming, a threshold that we all agreed globally was a major tipping point that we should not cross permanently.
We are already seeing heatwaves, ocean heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and tropical storms — et cetera. These events are accelerating and are costing us trillions of dollars in infrastructure damages. The fires that occurred in the Northwest Territories last summer, which caused mass evacuation down a single highway due to the remoteness of the Arctic region and the limited transportation infrastructure in the region, are only going to occur more in the future. That is just one example of what we’re going to face.
Importantly, we need to plan for the effects of slow change and also the abrupt effects of extreme events. Those are two very different things that require two very different approaches.
To prepare for climate change and extreme climate events, we need to focus on climate-resilient infrastructure and also climate-resilient supply chains. These two things are reliant upon each other directly.
When reviewing the extent to which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, addresses climate change infrastructure and supply chains, it is quickly apparent that there is a lack of scientific understanding and a lack of published papers in these areas. A quick search of the word: “Infrastructure” in the most recent IPCC Working Group II report reveals that the word appears just over 2000 times in a document of 750,000 words. When you omit the table of contents and subtitles, et cetera, the word “Infrastructure” appears fewer than 1200 times, and when you link it to Canada, specifically, it appears fewer than 20 times.
What we do know is that direct, indirect and non-market economic damages from extreme events on infrastructure and economic sectors in Canada have increased in recent years. We also know that the number of extreme events with inflation-adjusted damages totalling more than US$1 billion has rapidly increased in the U.S.
Continued investment in economic analysis, including a focus on loss and damage studies related to climate change infrastructure and supply chains, can help us reveal instances where certain investments may be required and where the cost of inaction may be more than the cost of those investments.
Before I conclude, I would like to turn our attention to the Arctic. Canada is an Arctic nation. Just over 40% of our landmass is in the Arctic. We are also, by far, the least developed in terms of Arctic infrastructure. Canada represents less than 5% of the total circumpolar GDP, while Russia represents over 75%. This is in large part due to investments in infrastructure.
At the same time, we are arguably the most advanced in terms of devolution and legislated rights for First Peoples, mainly Inuit, through several settled land claim agreements. This combination of facts, in my mind, puts us in an admirable situation for the future. What I mean by this is that it is not too late. We have the potential. We have a clean slate and the right structures in place to develop the region in innovative, equitable, sustainable and self-determined ways that place climate resilience and indigenous self-determination at the forefront of our minds.
It is vital that we begin to discuss what climate-resilient Arctic infrastructure development looks like. Our typical per capita model for funding infrastructure will just not work in the Arctic, where the population base is incredibly low but where the potential for geopolitical tensions and economic opportunity are so incredibly high. We need an innovative approach in this regard.
The Canadian Arctic is dominated by the Arctic Ocean, and maritime transportation infrastructure is well known to be the most vulnerable to climate change impacts compared to other forms of transport infrastructure. This is significant, considering that shipping is fundamental for community resupply across the region, and also because almost 90% of all goods globally are moved by ship at some point. Importantly in the Canadian Arctic, this is even more so the case. The shipping industry is a very important and effective part of supply chain management.
Related to this, reductions in sea ice across the Arctic region has led to a 75% increase in shipping activity in recent years and an over 200% increase in kilometres travelled by those ships. Climate change may finally make John Franklin’s dream of accessible global trade through the Arctic a reality.
We do expect increases in Arctic shipping to occur, but it may not be accessible for global trade until the medium-term future and certainly not before Russia’s Northeast Passage becomes increasingly accessible. The potential delay in accessibility is due to the import of thick, multi-year ice that breaks up due to climate change in the Arctic Ocean and flows down into the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Because of these well-known sea ice dynamics, some experts purport that the Northwest Passage will never be attractive for global maritime trade.
However, I disagree with this assessment and believe that while sea ice will continue to be a risk for maritime trade through the Northwest Passage, other external factors will play intervening roles, such as global economic trends, geopolitical tensions, innovations in ship design for ice breaking and propulsion and just overall political will.
Furthermore, the ongoing climate impacts in the South will drive maritime traffic to the North, including, for example, severe droughts that are happening right now around the Panama Canal, where they have experienced a 41% reduction in rainfall in October, leading to reduced water levels and a reduction in canal transits from 37 to 25 per day.
Indeed, science can be an important tool for diplomacy and investment in science. Multi-purpose infrastructure for science, economics and local well-being are welcome and very much needed in the Canadian Arctic, especially considering the fact that even like-minded countries, including some of our G7 allies, continue to deny Canadian sovereignty over our Northwest Passage.
I will end my remarks here. Thank you very much for your attention to this very important issue.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Dawson. Dr. de Barros, given the fact the chair is benevolent, I will give you seven minutes for opening statements as well, so feel free.
Alex de Barros, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Calgary, as an individual: Thank you very much. I don’t think I’ll need seven minutes, but I appreciate the gift.
Good morning, senators and panellists. I would like to thank the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications for this opportunity to discuss my research on this very critical issue for our society.
The research we are discussing today, the one that I have been working on, has been commissioned and funded by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy as part of a larger series on the Canadian northern corridor, a concept that would connect the nation’s southern infrastructure to a new series of corridors across middle and Northern Canada. Its main goal was to assess the existing airport infrastructure, and air services to remote communities located in the notional corridors area of influence. A total of 146 remote communities were identified and assessed for ease of access to an airport, overall conditions of the airport infrastructure and availability of commercial air services.
In addition to the airport infrastructure assessment, we conducted weather analysis for a subset of those airports. Twenty-one airports uniformly distributed over the study area. The study covered a period between 2005 and 2022 and used hourly reports on cloud ceiling. Typically, visual operations at airports are restricted if the cloud ceiling is below 800 feet. Our study revealed no change in trends in the total number of hours during which airport operations are restricted due to the low cloud ceiling. This is a very important finding. Although air operations may be affected by several other weather factors, cloud ceiling is not only one of the most important of these factors, but it is also correlated to them.
This concludes my opening remarks. I look forward to answering any questions you may have about this study. Thank you.
Senator Simons: I want to thank both of our witnesses, Dr. de Barros for getting up early and Dr. Dawson for staying awake. You have certainly kept me wide wake.
Dr. Dawson, we have heard from previous witnesses on the issue of supply chain resiliency in the North that last summer was particularly bad for the Western Arctic because of the fires, which meant the CN line that usually ends at Hay River is burnt out and couldn’t get to Hay River and that the Mackenzie River water levels were so low, they couldn’t use the barges they would usually move up from Hay River. Instead the answer had been to bring in things that were desperately needed, like fuel oil, via ocean routes from the North. So what you said resonated with me in the wake of that testimony.
What kind of investment would we need to make sure that the harbours and the ports that are now going to see perhaps volumes of travel they have never seen before, what can we do to make sure that maritime communities in the High North, whether they’re in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories, are able to use that method of getting supplies in?
Ms. Dawson: Yes. I think this is one of the most important areas of focus. Also, shipping is one of the greenest forms of transport, so it aligns with our net-zero goals.
A lot, I would say. Our infrastructure is very limited. We have one deepwater port in the Arctic, although we have now invested in the Iqaluit port. Churchill is a problem simply because the rail line is constantly at issue because of the permafrost thaw.
We don’t even have a small engine repair business in the Arctic, so if your resupply vessel breaks down, you have to rely on twinning or large industry.
There is a lot of investment that is needed. But like the previous speaker mentioned earlier, we can’t just invest in the whole thing. It’s too big. We have to be very strategic. We have to look at historic data. We know where the ships are going. We know where the typical routes are. A lot of the work we have done is involved with Inuit communities to identify where the culturally significant marine areas are. It is really important.
We often think about the belugas, whales and the biology, and we should, but we also need to think, ask and speak with Inuit who know the region and the ice.
We need fairly significant investments in infrastructure if we want to be taking advantage of economic opportunities to reduce food prices. Climate change will allow us to bring in more ships, but we’re not ready.
Senator Simons: What do we need to do to get ready?
Ms. Dawson: Your study is a good first step. People know where we need infrastructure. It’s just so much money. Private-public partnerships are really important. I don’t know why, but we seem to shy away from those. I’ve known many private sector companies that have bent my ear about how the federal government often doesn’t match that, be it communications infrastructure or actual physical infrastructure and science infrastructure.
There is a lot of talk. As the previous speaker said, there are other countries that are throwing their ideas and money at us because they want to work in Canada because people no longer want to work in Russia currently. The opportunities are right now. We need to get ourselves organized and focusing on the North. We’re an Arctic country, the Arctic is our front yard yet most of us have never been there. We forget about it.
Senator Simons: I’m from Edmonton and I flew to Ottawa yesterday. The gentleman beside me came from Tuktoyaktuk. I asked him how he got to Edmonton where he watched the Oilers wipe out another team. He was very happy. He described how, at one point, there were many more direct flights from Inuvik, even direct to Edmonton. It really made me think.
Part of the problem is infrastructure, part of the problem is changing weather conditions. But to what extent is it also airlines that have the capacity to fly, have cut their flights in the wake of COVID? I don’t know if you can answer this question. Are there things that the government needs to be doing to subsidize or incentivize carriers to be active in the North?
Mr. de Barros: I believe you have answered your own question. Airlines are businesses looking for profitable routes. If a route is profitable for them and will add value to their business network, they will definitely have that route operating.
If not, the only reason why they would do that is if they do get a financial or an economic incentive. Unfortunately, when we reviewed the existing policies for air transportation for remote communities in the North, we didn’t really find any significant policies regarding those routes.
If you really need and want to provide commercial service to this community, I believe it is important that a government subsidize these routes. That will require further studies to determine what kind and level of subsidy you will provide.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question to follow up on Senator Simons’s question: Is it realistic to think we are going to build new ports up there in the Arctic? I know you’re a researcher, but considering the level of mitigation we have to do on roads, on everything — at the moment I understand barges go to the big boats and permit the merchandise to go on the land.
But really, are we discussing building new ports?
Ms. Dawson: We will never see something like Vancouver. There is a difference between that and small port infrastructure, small craft harbour infrastructure. Right now, a lot of the ships will anchor offshore and then bring material and even fuel in and then they reel out hoses. The vast majority of fuel spills we see are from those hoses.
It’s a little bit of investment. I wouldn’t advocate for the building of a whole bunch of ports. It is not feasible or necessary. We have a lot of injuries too for how we do resupply. I don’t think it’s feasible. We already invested in the Iqaluit Port, which I think is great. Tuktoyaktuk isn’t a great place for a port. It is too shallow, so small infrastructure is what is necessary.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: In an article in the High North News that you co-authored, you reported on the implementation of low-impact shipping corridors in the north, low-impact marine transportation corridors that encourage marine vessels to use identified routes that pose less risk and minimize impact, especially in terms of climate change.
Do such corridors exist already? If so, are there financial implications or route changes? Obviously it won’t help unloading, but what can you tell us about these corridors?
[English]
Ms. Dawson: Low-impact shipping corridors are a very good idea. In fact, other countries are following our lead on them. We have loosely established them based on scientific information.
To my understanding, we haven’t used them to any great extent. Hopefully, they will be used for decision making, as you suggested. Where should we be investing in infrastructure based on these established corridors? That’s exactly what we need to use to make these decisions.
The corridors don’t imply any formal regulations. It is all informal, which is appreciated by the shipping industry because they need to make decisions based on safety, cost and these corridors. If you speak to them, they will avoid hunting haul-out areas or biologically rich areas if they safely can.
The issue is communicating these corridors. They exist on maps, papers and briefings but they have no teeth and I don’t think that they’re very well shared.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: What should be done? Regulations? Is it important enough to have regulation to make them mandatory or not?
Ms. Dawson: I wouldn’t make them mandatory. I don’t think that’s in our best interest. It’s a communications challenge. If I will be frank, in my mind there has been a lack of clarity around who leads them. Is it Canadian Hydrographic Service, Transport Canada, Canadian Coast Guard, who is leading? What are we doing with them?
We are scared to release them publicly because my understanding is if we make them formal, then we have a legal obligation to invest in infrastructure to support them. The idea is they stay informal to help guide decision making, but they won’t be formalized, for example as in the Great Lakes. That is why they are called corridors and not shipping routes.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Investing in infrastructure on corridors, what are we talking about?
Ms. Dawson: For example, along those corridors you may want to have areas of refuge, or you might warrant to have oil spill response equipment. I’m talking small investments not major infrastructure investments or even science investments, understanding we need more monitoring and we need to be monitoring where we are using those areas.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
Professor Dawson, I want to follow up on some of your comments. I see that you are the Canada Research Chair in the Human and Policy Dimensions of Climate Change. I want to follow up on your comments about Russia. I think you said — correct me if I am wrong — in terms of the percentage, you were talking about the total GDP in the North, and you said that Canada is responsible for 5% of that and Russia for 70%.
I have always thought — I might have heard this but I want to ask you — is that partly because of forced labour in Russia? People are forced to live there, right? Can you expand on that, to any extent, please.
Ms. Dawson: To some extent. I am not an expert in this exact area.
I don’t disagree. These numbers also fluctuate year to year depending on what is going on. Obviously, our countries operate in very different ways. To some degree, there are influencing factors. They are mining resources in ways that we are not. They charge for the use of the Northeast Passage; we do not. Yes, I would say that there is some lack of comparability in those numbers.
If you were just looking at the straight numbers in the circumpolar Arctic, by far, Russia is the biggest economic player according to these traditional numbers. I’m not saying that it is the best route, and I’m certainly not saying that we would follow it.
Senator Dasko: Yes. I am suggesting or saying that they have a larger population in their north, and that is where that starts; it begins with a much larger population.
Ms. Dawson: Absolutely, yes.
Senator Dasko: I am just suggesting that I have read that a significant portion of the population is actually, what I would call “forced labour,” but maybe that is too strong.
Ms. Dawson: I am unsure. I would not doubt it. But I cannot comment. I am not an expert on Russian —
Senator Dasko: Yes. I have another question, and I would like your thoughts on this. I’m on the Standing Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs, and we travelled north last year to Iqaluit, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and other spots, and I wondered about your thoughts on the sovereignty and security issues raised by the opening of the waterways and how we might deal with that.
Ms. Dawson: That is a huge one. You could do a whole study on that.
Senator Dasko: Yes.
Ms. Dawson: It is important and has been tempered in previous years because we have not been going full forward looking for resources, but the United States has clearly said that they see the Northwest Passage as inland waters. I was speaking with the ambassador from Germany the other day, and they also take that position. It is a known position. My colleagues in the world of military science have suggested that it is not going to turn into anything significant, but there are unexpected things that happen.
I do see it as a challenge, mostly for people who live in the region, because it is harder to regulate vessels in an area that is considered international waters than it is in an area that is inland seas. Now, my understanding is that most of these vessels are following the regulations that Canada puts forward so that they are applying for permits even though they openly say, “We don’t agree.” They are still following all of the regulations and requests that we have. So far, so good.
I do not see it as a good thing. We are going to see more and more ship traffic. There is no doubt in my mind.
Senator Dasko: Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: Dr. Dawson, I understand that you have thoughts on airships, and I wonder if you would share them with us in terms of their viability, as you understand it.
Ms. Dawson: Yes. They are thoughts. I’m sure that you have heard of Barry Prentice, the big name behind this idea for 20 or 30 years. This idea has been floating around for a very long time. Yes, exactly. I sat down with someone from the private sector. They are telling me that these ships are more viable now than they have ever been before. My questions were all about, “Well, we need a huge payload to make this useful because the carbon cost of these airships is significant compared to shipping.” My personal perspective is that we’re not there yet and that shipping is probably the better option at the moment.
I don’t see them as viable options. There certainly are people who are arguing that they are.
Senator Cardozo: And they would be good for carrying people or goods?
Ms. Dawson: My understanding of the idea is that it would be good for carrying goods. We have seen the history of airships.
Senator Cardozo: Yes.
Ms. Dawson: It is mostly to try to solve some of the food insecurity issues in the North. We all know that the cost of food is enormous. But we are talking about major investments in airships at a time when the sea ice is melting, and we can actually already get more ships in more frequently. We need subsidies to ensure that the cost of food goes down, but we need to make sure that those get passed on to the communities and do not just stay with the ship or airship operators. I feel that it is trading one issue for another. I’m not a huge proponent of airships but many people are.
Senator Cardozo: Can you talk more about the low-impact corridors and what they are? Does that include being able to move ships that are not as deep as others or more barge-like things?
Ms. Dawson: Yes. There are primary shipping corridors and then there are secondary and tertiary ones.
They are basically voluntary. They are lines on a map that have identified safe routes for vessels based on historic routes, ecological and cultural sensitivity. They are guidelines only, showing where ships should and could go. I do not think they are not all mapped to modern-day standards.
It is also a way of prioritizing our Canadian Hydrographic Service, or CHS, resources to get those digital maps in those particular areas. There will be resupply routes. But one thing that concerns me is the tourism vessels: They purposely go off those routes because they want to avoid other ships and go to areas where there is sea ice and animals. Those are the vessels that concern me the most.
Senator Cardozo: Why do they concern you?
Ms. Dawson: Because they are avoiding known safe areas to go to other areas. Pleasure crafts or yachts is the fastest growing maritime sector in the Arctic. They do not need a lot of infrastructure. They can go where they want. They are the ones who are going to be most in need of search-and-rescue infrastructure and resources.
Senator Cardozo: Do you have any concern about their impact on the environment?
Ms. Dawson: To some degree, yes. But they are small vessels, so less so there. I’m more concerned about the cultural impact.
Senator Cardozo: Alex de Barros, I wonder if you have any comments on those issues that I just discussed with Dr. Dawson.
Mr. de Barros: I do not have a lot of expertise on airships either. I understand that there may be a market for them. I do not think that they will be replacing air transportation. For example, they will not be replacing aircraft for transportation of passengers just because of their speed, mainly, and also because of the safety issues, as Ms. Dawson just raised.
There may be a market for transportation of goods to remote places with difficult access not only to air transportation but also to shipping infrastructure. There is definitely a market.
Again, I am not an expert on that issue. I do believe that if there are remote communities where you don’t have an airport infrastructure, and it would be very difficult and expensive to build one, airships would definitely be an option for transportation of goods but not people.
Senator Cardozo: Any thoughts on low-impact corridors if you have anything to add?
Mr. de Barros: I am really not an expert on that.
Senator Cardozo: Okay. Thank you very much.
Senator Richards: Thank you to our witnesses for being here. Senator Dasko asked my question, but I will ask it in a slightly different way. I do not expect a different answer, but would like to just ask the question.
Maybe we are too late with our structure because we have not insisted on our sovereignty. We have Russia right up to our back door — or front door, as you said — and we have China, who is mapping the corridor. We have the United States who simply negates our idea of sovereignty, and other northern nations as well. Maybe the infrastructure should have come before now. We cannot even fuel our planes. We get people from Alaska to do that for us.
With the idea of new shipping lanes and the need for new structure, shouldn’t we have declared our sovereignty and insisted upon it 20 years ago?
Ms. Dawson: Yes, I think so. I would have. I think that I argued it 20 years ago. Since we’re not there, I try to spin it positively in the sense that we’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years. We know how to invest in more sustainable, climate-resilient infrastructure now, and so in some ways we have a blank canvas. Also we have settled land claims, which many other Arctic nations do not have. I think that is a strength. In some ways, we can go forward in a more resilient way than we could have 20 years ago, but I am looking for silver linings.
Senator Richards: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: I have a question for each of you. For Dr. Dawson, I want to talk about the dangers of spills. You mentioned the dangers of little refuelling spills, but if we are going to be moving large amounts of fuel through that corridor, we do not have the marine response to clean up spills. We talked about the need to build port and harbour infrastructure, but what else do we need to make sure that we’re protecting something that is important and one of the last remaining pristine environments. “Pristine” is not the right word, but you know what I mean.
Ms. Dawson: I know what you mean. This is the million-dollar question. It is very hard to clean up fuel and spills in ice. It is very difficult. Right now we are not shipping large amounts of crude oil or anything through the Northwest Passage, and I would argue we probably shouldn’t, but we certainly will be shipping different elements through there and we need infrastructure for that. Obviously, we can put in regulations in our own country about whether or not we engage in deep-sea mining or other things, but the reality is that if other countries do not do that, the way that the ice and ocean dynamics are, those things will flow into the Canadian Arctic regardless. American policies matter. That means we have to invest in local strength in that area. Most ships are equipped with booms and other cleanup materials, but if we have a major spill, yes, it is a big problem.
We do have oil spill response equipment in different Inuit communities as well, but whenever I go up there, most people do not know how to use it or we do not have the key to the sea can, where the equipment is. Those are concerns. We need to get the communities off diesel. Again, it is this blank canvas for investing in a remote green energy infrastructure. We have to do that. We could be world-leading. If we had done it 20 years ago, we would be world-leading. Diesel is not a sustainable answer or for well-being. People are getting lung disease from the fumes.
We have to move our carbon equipment. We track black carbon from ships. We cannot do it from communities because there’s so much contamination in the air that we can’t capture it appropriately. We have to put our machines way offshore to capture that.
Senator Simons: Wow.
For Dr. de Barros on the question of air transport, we heard last week from Aaron Speer, the Vice President, Flight Operations for Canadian North, who said that they were facing 175 weather cancellations a month for their planes. You mentioned that is not in your analysis because of cloud levels. What should we make of the fact that they are having 175 weather cancellations a month? Do you foresee that those problems will increase as the climate becomes more volatile?
Mr. de Barros: Thank you for the question. Yes. There are two caveats to our conclusions here. First, we are not saying that there isn’t climate change. That is not what our conclusion was. We just looked at the impact of climate change on a specific aspect of air operations, and we did not find evidence of impact.
Climate change can affect air operations in many other ways. There are many other weather factors that we need to look into when it comes to air operations. We need to look at runway visual range; surface conditions on the runways, especially including ice in the winter; precipitation, being snow and rain; visibility, which was already mentioned; and crosswinds are a very big issue for air operations. In our study, we did not actually look into any of that because of the limited resources that we had.
We did look at the cloud ceiling because it is probably the most important one when it comes to deciding whether an aircraft will be able to land or take off at an airport. From a cloud ceiling perspective, we did not find any impact in terms of the number of hours that an airport is open during the year.
Of course, that could also change. Climate and the weather conditions can change from one year to the next. We looked at a time period over 17 years starting in 2005. That is from when we had the data. Over these 17 years, considering all of the ups and downs of these weather conditions, we didn’t find a pattern. We didn’t find that it is getting worse on average, or that it is getting better.
Again, that does not mean the weather patterns are not changing. If you look at the past few years, there might have been a bigger impact than over those 17 years. If that is true — and this needs to be investigated — then what is going to be the impact of this weather as the climate changes over the next few years? It could be potentially very large. We need a deeper investigation into this.
We hoped that when we picked cloud ceiling as the parameter that we were going to study, we were actually thinking that we would see an impact and it would encourage and incentivize us to do a deeper study. I was intrigued when we didn’t see that impact, especially because we know that weather effects tend to be related. Cloud ceiling tends to be lower when there is precipitation, when there is low visibility, and when the runway surface will be covered in water during the summer or ice during the winter. It is a significant finding, but it does invite us to actually do a deeper investigation.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues, if there are no further questions then I would like to thank Dr. Dawson and Dr. de Barros for being with us this morning.
(The committee adjourned.)