INST Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, April 11, 2002

¿

0915

The Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka (St. Catharines, Lib.))

Dr. Peter Johnson (Chair, Canadian Polar Commission)

¿

0920

¿

0925

¿

0930

The Chair

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick (Prince Albert, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

¿

0935

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

The Chair

Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.)

Dr. Peter Johnson

¿

0940

Mr. Larry Bagnell

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères--Les-Patriotes, BQ)

Dr. Peter Johnson

¿

0945

Mr. Steven Bigras (Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission)

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

¿

0950

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Dr. Peter Johnson

The Chair

Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma--Manitoulin, Lib.)

Dr. Peter Johnson

¿

0955

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Dr. Peter Johnson

À

1000

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. St. Denis

The Chair

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP)

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Peter Johnson

À

1005

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Peter Johnson

The Chair

Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.)

Dr. Peter Johnson

Ms. Paddy Torsney

À

1010

Dr. Peter Johnson

Ms. Paddy Torsney

Dr. Peter Johnson

Ms. Paddy Torsney

À

1015

Dr. Peter Johnson

Ms. Paddy Torsney

Dr. Peter Johnson

Ms. Paddy Torsney

The Chair

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

À

1020

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick

Dr. Peter Johnson

The Chair

Mr. Larry Bagnell

Dr. Peter Johnson

À

1025

Mr. Larry Bagnell

Dr. Peter Johnson

À

1030

The Chair

Mr. Bagnell

Dr. Peter Johnson

Mr. Steven Bigras

The Chair

Ms. Paddy Torsney

Mr. Steven Bigras

Ms. Paddy Torsney

The Chair

Mr. Steven Bigras

The Chair

Mr. Steven Bigras

The Chair

À

1035

Dr. Peter Johnson

The Chair

---

CANADA

Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology

---

NUMBER 075

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, April 11, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿  (0915)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka (St. Catharines, Lib.)): The order of the day is, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), study on the three federal granting agencies, peer review funding, and the Canada Research Chairs Program.

    Today we have witnesses from the Canadian Polar Commission: Dr. Peter Johnson, chair, and Steven Bigras, executive director. We'll begin by having you two bring forward your remarks, and then we'll go into questions. We're a nice small group this morning, so we'll be able to spend as much time as possible asking as many questions as possible.

    Thank you very much, and I would ask, who's going to begin? Peter, are you?

    Dr. Peter Johnson (Chair, Canadian Polar Commission): Yes, I am.

    Thank you. I'd like thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee.

    I come to you as chair of the Canadian Polar Commission, vice-chair for the last three years, vice-president of the International Arctic Science Committee, a council member of the University of the Arctic for four years, and a university scientist who has spent over 30 years doing research and teaching in high latitude and high altitude regions, particularly in the part of the world Mr. Bagnell comes from. Obviously, the position I'm going to discuss with you has very much a polar scholarship flavour.

    I do maintain a fairly strong national perspective on the science and technology research as a member of the Council of Science and Technology Advisors, representing the Canadian Polar Commission there, because the Polar Commission is the science advisory board to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. In that capacity on the CSTA I am currently chairing a subcommittee on communication of government science, which makes for quite an interesting discussion.

    I'll just start with a general statement that peer review is essential to excellence in scholarship, peer review in some form, whether it is in universities and colleges, in government, or in the private section. Absence of peer review or even watered-down peer review may result in mediocre science, a waste of resources, and in the long term poor policy decisions. Some of my international colleagues have in fact reflected on this absence of peer review in certain areas of science with the problems it's created.

    From the point of view of the northern focus, northern scholarship poses a number of challenges. I'm going to confine my introductory comments to just five issues that are both directly and indirectly tied tightly to peer review and to the funding of research and scholarship in the north.

    One of the things with peer review is that it requires a strong and extensive community in a given discipline. The concentration of expertise in a few universities and one or two government departments in terms of northern research creates a number of problems. The small and shrinking community of polar scientists in many disciplines results in the fact that we know each other very well. We've usually cooperated on research projects. We've frequently co-authored papers with each other and established partnerships in terms of funding with the granting councils, government agencies, and other people. As a consequence, establishing a peer review panel for major research proposals or even proposals within the current granting council system is really quite difficult. It's only sort of when you get to my stage in life, where you're doing things other than the science, that you actually find you're being called upon to sit on various review committees because you are no longer part of the mainstream young science community.

    So the challenges for peer review for Arctic science are the small community, very much interrelated both in the disciplinary sense and the interdisciplinary sense, and the difficulty of then getting an unbiased review from your community.

    A significant second aspect is that traditional knowledge, which is now a very important element of many northern projects and the subject of a large amount of research in itself, also challenges the peer review process. On the one hand, peer review as conducted in academia and in government has difficulty dealing with input from elders from first nations and from Inuit with respect to intellectual property rights and aspects of this sort, or with cross-cultural concerns. On the other hand, calls are made for greater integration of traditional knowledge into western scholarship.

    Most projects in the north have to be built from earlier stages with the people of the north, both indigenous and non-indigenous. Those people need to be integral to the peer review process, but they don't fit into the standard way in which peer review is conducted in the south.

    The territories have developed their own research agendas. In fact, they're currently in the process of revising research agendas. I believe there was a meeting at the end of last week in Edmonton. The Northwest Territories had come down to the University of Alberta to actually discuss their research agendas with the southern communities. It is rather a nice change, that the northern research agenda was coming south to be explained to the southerners, rather than our going and imposing things in the north.

    There is a challenge in integrating the communities and the colleges into the peer review process. In addition, the research that is done in the north has to be licensed under various territorial provisions. The challenge in terms of funding is that we have to have fairly extensive consultation with northern communities, build them into programs, and also deal with the northern research institutes that are in charge of the licensing process. If you want an example of the challenge to funding, if I go up to Whitehorse to consult with the first nations community at Haynes Junction—to consult with Champagne and Aishikik—it's going to cost me a $1,300 airfare, plus getting up to Haynes Junction. If I have to do that both in terms of developing the research project and reporting on the research project, then there are significant costs involved in the research.

    One of the offshoots of this, in terms of consultation and peer review and involving northern communities, is that there are very limited human resources in northern communities. The human resources in northern communities are already challenged in terms of the participation expected of them in all sorts of discussions—heritage, legal discussions, land claims, the University of the Arctic: all these sorts of things where we're asking for participation. We're now starting to ask for participation in peer review processes. We have a sort of peer review overload of the people in the communities.

    Looking at the size of some of the first nations in the Yukon, Kluane First Nation at the north end of Kluane Lake at Burwash Landing has a membership of less than 1,000. If you're expecting expertise in these communities, and participation in all of the science activities, then it's a serious demand and a serious strain on their resources.

    The third issue is that polar scholarship in general—and I use the words “polar scholarship” deliberately, because we are concerned about both Antarctic and Arctic science in Canada—is dwarfed by other areas in the granting agencies and in the universities and colleges.

    There are few dedicated national funding programs for polar research, with the exception, I might point out, that—you made reference to the research chairs in your introduction—we have, in fact, just announced six northern research chairs, which specifically came out of From Crisis to Opportunity: Rebuilding Canada's Role in Northern Research, the report that was developed in NSERC and SSHRC. It only involves NSERC at the moment and does not, in fact, involve any input from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They didn't have the funding to put into that program at the present time.

    From the point of view of policy, I find that in government there's no real long-term vision for polar science. We don't have mechanisms for sitting down to talk about what our national priorities are, what our regional priorities are, and what our international priorities are. Now there are discussions that go on just within government. But in fact there's a need to establish ways in which we can get much wider discussion in terms of the formulation of policies.

¿  (0920)  

    In the granting councils from the point of view of the pilot polar scholarship, the polar scholarship competes in disciplinary committees, not in regional committees. So it's very difficult to find a committee in NSERC or SSHRC that has a representative who has a polar focus. In terms of getting a good applicant, a champion, in some of these committees, it really doesn't exist in most of the committees. So if you want to do Arctic biology, you're competing in a committee that is made up essentially of southern-focused biologists in the committee.

    The fact that our community is so small and really quite widespread throughout the universities meant that we received very few of the Canada research chairs. I can think of probably one or two of the research chairs that have been announced, apart from the northern research chair program, that in fact were awarded to polar scientists. This is because a lot of the emphasis in the universities was placed on areas where a university might have a fairly strong focus on high technology, or medicine, or areas of this sort.

    Taking my own university, the University of Ottawa, as an example, we have ten scientists involved in polar research, out of a total number of professors in the order of 600 or 700 professors. It's very hard to get a strong voice in the university when you're so small in the community.

    To go back to the issue of developing a strong national policy in polar science, I've given to your research staff some examples of the approach to setting priorities in polar research or in Arctic research in other countries. Finland, for example, has a well-developed Arctic research strategy. It's an example of a small nation. Large nations, such as the United States, have developed a number of documents looking at what is needed, what are the priorities, and again followed up in terms of funding.

    One of the few areas where we've in fact started to work towards a strategy or a policy is that our small Antarctic research community, working through the Canadian Committee for Antarctic Research of the Canadian Polar Commission, is in the final phases of developing a proposal for a Canadian Antarctic science strategy, and that's in the process of being released in July.

    The final point, which again pertains to funding and peer review, is that scientists who work in the Arctic risk fairly severe impacts on their career because the limited grants that are available have to cover higher and higher logistics costs, which reduces funds available to science. They have to cover the costs of communication and consultation, which are far greater than in other parts of the country.

    On national Arctic logistics organization, the polar continental shelf project is seriously short of funds and supports science in only a limited regional area of the Canadian north. And there in fact you would only get confirmation of the logistic support on a year-to-year basis. So it's very difficult to develop long-term projects where you're going to require field support for five years, say, the length of an NSERC grant.

    There were some examples from last year and the year before where scientists who were in the fourth or fifth year of some of that Arctic research were cut off from logistic support because of the lack of support for the polar continental shelf project.

¿  (0925)  

    As a result of this, it makes it very difficult to recruit graduate students, because you can't really commit to taking a graduate student in the field until you get to April or May of any particular year. We lose many of our most promising graduate students to the United States for their post-graduate careers and also for their first appointments.

    Just as an illustration, I was talking to a colleague of mine in Michigan, where if you are a new appointee as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, you can command $500,000 U.S. as set-up costs from the university to get your research going in that university environment. There is nowhere in Canada where you could come anywhere close to that in terms of set-up costs. That's an enormous advantage for some of the U.S. universities.

    I can also testify that there are greater environmental challenges to doing research in the north, compared with other areas. I think I'll refer to two experiences of my own, one of which involved Steven.

    In two successive seasons in the St. Elias mountains, I had a camp totally destroyed by a bear. I also had a helicopter crash in the middle of camp. The connection with Steven is that Steven was inside the helicopter when it crashed. That, essentially due to the type of environment you're working in, can mean that you will lose a season or so in terms of research effort. That really has an impact in terms of productivity, then indirectly on peer review and on funding.

    I'd like to finish by pointing out that the Canadian Polar Commission is now tracking polar scholarship in Canada through its polar knowledge indicators project. I've left one copy with your research group, but there are copies available for anybody who would like them. We can get them across to the committee

    What this project is doing is trying to look at how we are performing in terms of polar research. Some of the indicators we will be able to hind-cast to see how things have been developing over the last ten years. Others are new indicators. But we're really trying to look at how we are performing as a nation in terms of polar research. We also have a polar information network, which is promoting mechanisms for greater exchange of ideas on polar scholarship issues. So those are some of the areas where the commission is trying to assist in the promotion of polar science.

    I thank you very much for your time today. We're perfectly willing to answer questions. I'll answer the easy questions and Steve can answer the difficult ones.

¿  (0930)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    You broke up your presentation into two areas--peer review and budget. We'd like to concentrate on the peer review, so I want to make sure that when we're asking the questions we get to understand the difficulties and the pluses and minuses of peer review in your case.

    Who is going to begin here? Mr. Fitzpatrick. By the way, I'd like to welcome Mr. Fitzpatrick to the industry committee. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, as a committee that works very hard to make things happen. Welcome.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick (Prince Albert, Canadian Alliance): A new recruit.

    The Chair: A new recruit. From now on, you have to be six foot two before you can get on the industry committee.

    An hon. member: We're lucky we're in.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson, for your presentation.

    There were a couple of things that I wanted clarified. You mentioned that in order to do research in the north you had to be also licensed under various northern communities. I realize in this country we do have problems moving east and west to do things. It occurred to me that we may have problems doing things north and south too, because of various bureaucracies and so on.

    Can you enlighten me as to why it's necessary to get licensing approval from northern communities? What communities are we talking about? What interest are they pursuing in requiring approval on licensing for polar research?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Perhaps I'll give you a bit of background.

    In the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut—or the combined Northwest Territories originally—the licensing process started as a means of keeping track of what science was going on in the north to try to ensure that results from northern science were in fact fed back into the communities. There had been a history of people going up north, going into communities, collecting data, and leaving with no results or anything of the science ever being communicated.

    That has evolved over time into a process whereby you now have to apply to the licensing clearing houses, essentially. If we use the Northwest Territories as an example, you apply through the Aurora Research Institute, which is part of Aurora College. Your application goes to all the first nations communities, and there are certain requirements for satisfying the research needs some of those communities need to do. There's development of your research project in consultation with the communities.

    Then there are also tied into that some costs in terms of employing local people as part of your research group: sometimes using somebody as a guide, using somebody to keep the polar bears away from you—as I think the member from Churchill might be familiar with—and also paying certain land use fees and so on in the area. It's evolved, really, into a way of making sure that there is communication of research and that there's collaboration in research from the bottom up as to how the research is done.

    The process can be quite lengthy. They ask that you apply three months in advance for a licence. In Nunavut you in fact have the added question of putting your basic research agenda into Inuktitut so it can go into the communities and the communities can agree with what you're proposing to do. It's quite an involved process.

¿  (0935)  

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: One other question I wanted to ask you is more for purposes of clarification too. You mentioned something about positions at the University of Michigan, the resources available, and so on. Would it be fair for me to interpret that statement by saying that a scientist who wanted to pursue a career in polar science and polar research would find a lot better opportunity and a lot better resources in the United States than he would in Canada?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Certainly. In fact, you could do far more research in Canada by going to the United States and getting a position in the United States. You have access to more funding through NSF, and you have much better support in some of the major universities.

    There have been a number of examples over the last few years where Canadian projects funded in terms of thousands of dollars have been competing in the field with projects that have received millions of dollars from American foundations or from the National Science Foundation.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: So it's not only hockey players who are moving to the United States in large numbers; it's the scientific community as well.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Yes. This applies of course to polar research across the board, not just to Arctic research.

    The Chair: Mr. Bagnell.

    Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Thank you.

    As the one who invited you, I'm glad you could make it, and I think you made a lot of really good points. Some of our witnesses have made one point very well, but you covered a lot of points. I'm glad our researchers are here. It would be good to see it in our final report. I can't add to a lot of them because you identified the north, how unique it is, and some of the problems in research.

    My first question concerns peer review and the granting councils. Given that there are no universities north of 60 but that there is the University of the Arctic, a virtual university, has it been or will it under the present system be able to get any money from the granting councils for northern research or a sufficient amount of money for northern research under the present system? I know Bev and I have been allies in fighting for money for research in the north by northern scientists, and I'm just not sure it's there.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: It will take a number of years for the University of the Arctic itself to be accepted as part of the granting programs in the country. It's more likely that researchers in the colleges will gain more access to research dollars in the councils than the University of the Arctic.

    In some ways it's remarkable how fast the University of the Arctic has developed. In other ways we're very frustrated that we can't advance faster.

    I think one of the interesting side things to your question perhaps is that NSERC and SSHRCC are in fact currently looking at the implications of virtual universities for the granting councils and what effect they will have on funding research in virtual distributed learning or virtual research environments, but also what impact they're going to have in terms of funding the professors and the students who are involved in some of these virtual universities. The way in which the virtual universities are developing, with a major international component, means that you have a student in Tromsø being supervised by professors in Toronto, Ohio, and possibly even Australia. This has major implications in terms of how to allocate what funding exists. Also, I think it will have some implications in terms of the peer review process.

    I think we're meeting in April to finalize the report coming out from NSERC and SSHRCC, so it should be out sometime in the summer.

¿  (0940)  

    Mr. Larry Bagnell: I guess the second part of the question is that you refer to the fact that we only have colleges in the north, other than the virtual University of the Arctic. We've already heard from community colleges in general that they don't feel they have sufficient access to funds. Specifically on the colleges in the north, such as the Northern Research Institute at Yukon College or the other ones in the north, do you think they are getting sufficient funds? Do we need to make recommendations so that they can get more funds?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: A number of the colleges are getting research funds. I don't think they're getting sufficient research funds, but they're certainly making very good use of the research funds they are obtaining. Yukon College, as an example, has taken the lead in climate change impacts and habitation in the north. It has the Northern Climate ExChange at the Northern Research Institute, which has some small funds available for research. So there is some access.

    I think the major question is how the northern colleges could get access to some of the larger funding bodies. They do currently have the opportunity of getting funds from CFI, the Canada Foundation for Innovation. I don't think any of the northern colleges have taken advantage of that as yet, but the colleges have had access to CFI for the last two or three years through a special colleges program. I think some quite innovative requests have come in there.

    So I don't think the northern colleges have sufficient access to research funds, but it's certainly been improving over the last few years.

    Mr. Larry Bagnell: Thank you.

[Translation]

    Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères--Les-Patriotes, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I would like first to thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation and coming here to share their views on peer review.

    Contrary to some of my colleagues here, I do not represent a northern riding, but a so-called southern one, a riding near Montréal, on the south shore of Montréal. Nevertheless, I have had the pleasure to sit on the Committee on External Affairs and International Trade at the time it was doing a study on circumpolar issues, which was followed by the establishment of the Arctic Council.

    The minister for External Affairs at the time, Mr. Lloyd Axworthy, was absolutely convinced of the importance of the North and circumpolar matters for Canada, given that at least half of Canada's territory is in the North and that the major part of Canada's coastline touches the Artic Ocean. We have to regret that the interest the government displayed for that region has somewhat waned since Mr. Axworthy left the government.

    Nevertheless, as you know, a report was published on the crisis in northern research. A task force was set up, in cooperation with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. This report provided for the creation of 24 chairs, 12 senior and 12 junior research chairs, 40 scholarships, 70 strategic projects, etc. Thus far, the government has recently announced, on the 3rd of March, the creation of six research chairs.

    After the work done by this task force, do you believe the government will do more? Can we hope for more research chairs and more scholarships for students who want to specialize in northern studies? What do you see the government doing to implement the task force's report?

[English]

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I think we're on the subject of the granting councils and the northern research chairs and the fact that we've announced six chairs. I think that is an indication on the part of NSERC of their interest in the north. They are committed to trying to find the funds for the fall program. The critical thing with that From Crisis to Opportunity report was that it was a crossed SSHRC and NSERC report. In fact we need to get some funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the creation of social science and humanities chair positions, or even some interdiscipline chair positions.

    We were very fortunate with those six chairs that have just been announced—the ones you referred to—in that NSERC saw the importance of finding the resources from their current funding to put into those chairs and to put a little bit of extra funding into graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. We are still committed to trying to fund the full program. In fact, I would hasten to say we see that recommendation in the Crisis to Opportunity report as the minimum we would like to see in place. We really hope that in fact people don't say, “Well, you've got six chairs; that's it.” We want to make sure we go ahead with this.

    I'll also come back to your comments about Minister Axworthy's interest in the north. Also, I was at half a meeting yesterday in Vancouver at the Liu Centre that Mister Axworthy had convened, which was in fact a follow-up to the “On Thinning Ice” conference we held here two or three weeks ago. So he's still committed to northern issues and certainly very much committed to the Arctic Council.

    Steve could probably say more about the Arctic Council issues you raise, because he sits on or is an observer at Arctic Council on our behalf. There was quite a bit of emphasis yesterday morning in Vancouver on the Arctic Council and the role of the Arctic Council. Do you want to add anything about the Arctic Council?

¿  (0945)  

    Mr. Steven Bigras (Executive Director, Canadian Polar Commission): We were getting a little bit off track. Do we want to stay with the peer review, or do we want to get involved in the Arctic Council's activities? I would just say that they are a very strong supporter of the University of the Arctic as well.

[Translation]

    Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I will come back in a moment to peer review, but about the creation of those six chairs that was announced on March 3rd, to what extent has the Canadian Polar Commission been involved in the definition of the mandate of the first six chairs and in the appointment of the chairholders?

[English]

    Dr. Peter Johnson: The commission did not have a role in the appointment and therefore the choice of what areas those chairs were placed in. That was solely done on a peer review process, the excellence of science of the applicant, but also on the commitment to contribution to the northern communities through the colleges and through the communities themselves. So the commission was not involved in that peer review process of NSERC.

    The commission was involved in the production of the From Crisis to Opportunity report. In fact, we indirectly had two representatives there. We had one of our staff members involved on that task force. And I was also involved on the task force, initially through my role with the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies and then also through the Canadian Polar Commission. We were involved in the report, but then it goes into the peer review process, which is purely a granting council exercise.

[Translation]

    Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: In the document you have given us, you mention the challenges that come from the fact that the northern scientific community is quite small, that the number of students is very limited, as is the number of researchers. You state that it is very difficult to set up a peer review process or to decide to fund projects, students or researchers through a peer review process.

    How do you manage to do it through peer review? And if you don't do it this way, how do you assess projects that must be funded?

¿  (0950)  

[English]

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I think my response to that would probably be that in many of the areas of polar science that Canadians are involved in the peer review process has to be international. I don't know if that really answers your question.

    It is a challenge to put together a panel. Let me use, as an example, glaciology. Canada possesses the biggest non-polar icefield in the world. We have one glaciologist in a Canadian university. We have a small glaciology division at Natural Resources Canada. How you would put together a peer review process for those projects is a real challenge.

    The glaciology community is relatively small throughout the world anyway, so it's probably an international problem. Does that answer the nuance of your question?

[Translation]

    Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Yes and no. That is, I understand that, as far as possible, and please correct me if I am wrong, for polar studies, you try to grant funds through a peer review process, even if you have to go abroad to find enough researchers to make up a review panel, but if you cannot proceed this way, what other way would you use?

[English]

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I think we have to proceed by a peer review process. I don't think there's any other way of evaluating projects, whether they're university or government projects.

    I have no real suggestion as to how we might cope with that problem, because you cannot get into a situation where you're evaluating applications of your co-author or your co-principal investigator in a project. The answer is to build up the communities and have a big enough community so that we have a number of universities or a number of colleges that are in fact involved in these disciplines. That's the long-term answer to the problem.

[Translation]

    Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Then, you still think that a peer review process is the best system for awarding grants.

[English]

    Dr. Peter Johnson: It's still the best system for awarding research grants, yes.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. St. Denis.

    Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma--Manitoulin, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I'd like to thank you all for being here.

    We can probably all agree that for the future of the north, when you consider it strictly just from an energy point of view, the potential is incredible. From the environmental point of view, the delicate nature of the northern environment requires special attention, not to mention the preservation of cultures and languages.

    I just wonder if you could--you'd mentioned the words “science community”--in the context of peer review talk about the polar science community and not just northern Canada. I'm assuming that you have quite a network when it comes to all the polar areas, be it Alaska, Russia, Greenland, etc., and I'm assuming that the peer review process includes an international community of people. I wonder if you'd talk a bit about that and possibly tell us how that community--and I hope or assume it does--works together to engage the south, not only in your funding but in your issues.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: There are certainly very strong international networks, and not just in the individual disciplines. One of the interesting things about the circumpolar world and the circumarctic world is that there is a much stronger truly interdisciplinary approach to a lot of the research that's being done. A lot of the international community is in fact engaged in networks and also in the peer review process.

    Essentially, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council both make use of those networks of international scientists in the review process.

¿  (0955)  

    Mr. Brent St. Denis: Are the other players, other countries, involved in the circumpolar region? How do we each contribute? Is everybody pulling their weight, including Canada, in relative terms when it comes to research and cooperation?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: In terms of the research there is a rather wide range of commitment in terms of pulling one's weight in Arctic research and in Antarctic research. At the moment, when we talk to our international colleagues, we get placed just above Russia in terms of the resources we're putting into polar science. If you take into account Antarctica, the Russians are making a much bigger contribution, obviously, in the Antarctic then we are making down there. We're pointed out as an example, the only country that makes money out of Antarctic research, but we don't do very much Antarctic research ourselves, which is an interesting contradiction.

    Mr. Brent St. Denis: I wonder if you could list off the countries that are included in the Arctic region, just for the record.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: The eight circumarctic nations are the United States, Canada, Greenland—that is, Denmark—Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia.

    Mr. Brent St. Denis: I'll conclude with a final question, Mr. Chair, if that's okay.

    With the increasing profile of climate change and hopefully further increasing... I noticed some articles recently about the prospects in the worst case of permanently open waters in the Arctic region. Are you finding that because of that...? Maybe in a parallel way the emergence of vast stores of energy, I think methyl hydrate... Do you have some of that in your area, Larry? I commend my colleague Larry Bagnell for his efforts in helping get you gentlemen here.

    I'm just wondering, because of the immediate interest in those, do you see that as encouraging the scientific community to bring good projects forward? Is it helping in your public relations efforts? Because you're always competing for dollars, you're always competing for the attention of the best new scientists, I guess. You want to attract new graduates into the field.

    I'm just wondering if this media...some of it may be bringing some bad news, but in real terms is it having a positive impact on your ability to sell the issues that are important to the Arctic region?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: It's certainly bringing forward a lot more proposals in terms of Arctic research, and particularly things that are directed towards those two areas are really critical. The funding has not yet caught up with it. In fact, I was talking this morning at the partnership group breakfast, before your committee hearing, with Gordon McBean, who is the head of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. They have just gone through a review of proposals for Arctic science, and also the Climate Change Action Fund has gone through a review of proposals for Arctic science. There are far more proposals than can be funded. So there's a lot of interest. The potential economy is driving a lot of this interest in the science. I don't think we're keeping pace with the pace at which development is going ahead. I think those two issues you just mentioned are going to be very, very important in the next few decades.

    In fact, just on your mention of the gas hydrates, of which we have enormous reserves off the Mackenzie Delta, in the Beaufort and along the north slope of the Yukon there is potentially an enormous amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can result from those gas hydrates. In fact, methane is going to be more critical than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming. It's already picking up in terms of its importance, and I think that within the next ten or twenty years you'll see that people are talking much more about methane than carbon dioxide.

À  (1000)  

    Mr. Brent St. Denis: Because of the natural release of these gases, as the climate.... It's sort of a vicious cycle, with the natural release of these gases from the frozen state with the warming of the atmosphere.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: With the warming of the atmosphere, yes.

    In fact, some of the predictions, from an energy point of view, are that there are more reserves in gas hydrates for energy than there are in all other types of fossil fuel on the earth today. It's a very major concern, I think, for the future.

    Mr. Brent St. Denis: Thank you very much.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Ms. Desjarlais.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Yes.

    Gentlemen, thank you for coming and for sticking around for our rather slow start this morning.

    I have a couple of quick questions. With respect to the appointment of the research chairs and the Polar Commission's not being involved in a consulting way about where research chairs were assigned, do you feel the commission should have had some say in the matter?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: No, I don't think so. Although I'm an academic myself, we are not an academic body. Once we had these chairs set up in NSERC, it was very much of an academic decision that was made on the chairs, with some participation from the northern colleges and the communities.

    I don't know if you looked at the definition of the chairs, but there was a very strong element that requires the holders of the chairs to in fact be present in northern colleges, teaching in northern colleges. So, no, it isn't our role to do academic, peer review types of processes.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. You indicated earlier that because of not having northern representation, for whatever reason, within NSERC—if I got this right—sometimes projects for the north don't get the same consideration for dollars. I think that was the crux of what you were saying.

    How is it possible to expect the consideration would have been given properly, for chairs first of all, but also has there been specific research that you think has not proceeded because there hasn't been that representation within NSERC?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I couldn't really comment on specific research that hasn't proceeded. It's difficult to say what effect not having northern champions on committees has had.

    We have, I think, over the last two years since we've had this Crisis to Opportunity report, managed to raise the consciousness of committees about northern research and the special challenges of northern research. To actually get champions on each committee I think is probably unreasonable. But it was nice to get the chairs program, which was focused on the north and separate from the Canada chair program. Those were specifically northern and were in fact reviewed by people involved in northern science and by northerners. But I certainly wouldn't like to comment on specific proposals that have not been funded.

    I would point out, however, that there are examples where NSCERC has funded northern programs that have then had to struggle to get the logistics to actually go ahead to do the program. We have one case in point at the moment where there's been major funding obtained for a Canadian program--the Canadian Arctic shelf exchange study, which is led by Professor Louis Fortier out of the University of Laval, a very excellent program. One of the major question marks all along has been a scientific icebreaker to actually conduct the research. Hopefully, sometime in the next few days, there should be an announcement that we're going to refurbish the Franklin, which is currently tied up in Newfoundland, specifically as a scientific icebreaker and dedicate that project for next year. I think they're scrambling for an icebreaker for this year for the start of the project.

À  (1005)  

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Respecting the licensing you would have to receive to go into some areas, is there a cost involved other than the travel going to and from those kinds of things? Is there a cost involved for the licence itself?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I don't think any of them have a specific cost for the licence, but there are costs inherent in some of the licences. For example, if you're working in the Mackenzie Delta under the Northwest Territories licensing, if you're working both in the Inuvialuit settlement region and G'wichin settlement region, you're liable for about $2,000 extra cost for various fees for camping and establishing a research camp. In other areas there are no costs. In the Yukon, for example, there are a whole series of licences and permits you might have to get, but there's no cost associated with any of them.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Just out of curiosity, is part of the reason why they have certain requirements put in place that in the past there's been some tendency—you mentioned the research—for the information just not getting back afterwards? Was there research in some cases that resulted in certain things being removed from the territories that people didn't realize until after the fact?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: In the past that was certainly the case. And remember, it's not just the physical objects, but intellectual property. There had been cases in the 1950s and 1960s, back in that period, when in fact people came in who were talking to the communities about traditional knowledge and things of that sort and then just disappeared and published under their own names down in southern universities. That led to a number of problems. So yes, there have been specific instances of both physical and intellectual property disappearing.

    Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Okay. I think that's it.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Ms. Torsney.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.): Thank you. I apologize for having had to step out.

    I'm very pleased you're here. A couple of summers ago a group of members of Parliament went up to Resolute and Grise Fiord and Iqaluit and met with a number of scientists who were doing research in the north. It opened our eyes to how important the area is and how difficult it is to do science in the north, how expensive it is to get there.

    I think that's probably your biggest challenge: it's really far. You need to have more people who are educated about the potential and the beauty and the need to continue to do the research there, and given the distance, it's really a bit of a challenge to get people to focus on it.

    So I wonder, as there are more travel opportunities in the north and more cruise ships entering into our north, if there is a concerted effort to try to tie in some of that awareness-building; if you're capitalizing on those people who have at least had the good fortune to go north.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Education is certainly one of our concerns. Educating Canadian people is one of our mandates at the Polar Commission—education with respect to polar scholarship, polar issues. I concluded a few years ago that in fact it was a much more difficult task than I had envisaged, because it was much easier to talk about the Amazon rain forest, at that stage anyway, than it was about the north.

    Northern communities have managed to make sure they're much more prominent in national and international discussions. But I still think—and I use this analogy probably too many times—that to people in Toronto, north is Muskoka. People in Manitoba have a much better appreciation, because people in Manitoba think Churchill. They know about Churchill and are very well aware of it. But I don't think as a nation we really have a northern perspective.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Well, the 175 people who live in Grise Fiord have a bit of a challenge to explain it to the rest of us.

    But you have this captive audience. Anyone who goes there is an advocate for ensuring you do have the research dollars. I'm wondering if there isn't an opportunity to at least connect with some of the people who are already there, even for a brief period. For instance, the Students on Ice program, which two constituents of mine participated in... Those kids are just charged and ready to go and able to talk about things most 17-year-olds can't even fathom. To capitalize on those kinds of education opportunities and to encourage those people... I was north in 1998. There was a real problem with northern research at that point—it was before this task force—and there was a great concern about the fact that there wasn't even an emerging group of scientists who wanted to go into this field, because there were no research dollars. I hope you will capitalize on those other things that are going on and encourage, because it is a sovereignty issue for us, and I think there is great potential once people have a little more knowledge about it.

À  (1010)  

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I take a group of between ten and twenty students to the Yukon every summer. I'm taking ten of them into the middle of the St. Elias icefield this summer. But what seems to be the case is they need an opportunity like the Students on Ice program, or an organized thing, to get them into the north. They seem to think it's such a challenge to get to the north; it's much easier to go to Europe.

    There's a strange attitude among parents. Parents seem to think it's much safer for their kids to go off to Europe and backpack around the major cities of Europe than it is to go to the Yukon and wander around in Kluane National Park. Well, all you have in Kluane National Park that's of any real danger to you are bears. In Europe, I can think of--

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Let's not itemize them, or kids won't be going anywhere.

    To be fair, there are a lot more organized tours to Europe, and packages and everything else, than there are to Kluane or anywhere else. Again, those of us who have been north are huge advocates. I tell all my constituents, at the Rotary Clubs and everything else, to go north. Don't go to Florida; don't go to the Amazon. Go north and you'll be quite impressed with how wonderful it is—even going to Dawson City, which isn't that far north. To know that a third of our country's revenues at one point came from Dawson City is mind-expanding. I think there needs to be a concerted effort. And as I say, you've got a captive group of members of Parliament who've had the good fortune to be up there.

    In the area of traditional knowledge, when we were working on the Environmental Protection Act and a number of other bills, where, as you say, we're building in this demand for people to have scientific, traditional knowledge enter into the decision-making process—both in peer reviews, perhaps, and in terms of implementing legislation—one of the challenges we heard is that there just aren't enough people with the capability to feed into those scientific processes, and there needs to be a concerted effort to train up and build the capacity of a lot of people to be there. Are there specific programs you're undertaking, or where you're matching scientists to get the skills transfer and make sure we're building the capacity of people to feed into this process? We're creating a huge demand through legislation.

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I don't think there's sufficient emphasis on it. I think we need to develop the ability to use traditional knowledge from the ground up in projects. Too often we bring it in as something from the side, which is totally useless. But we need to train people to use traditional knowledge in all aspects of science, scholarship, governance, or whatever it might be, and it really has to come from within. You can't have a university course in how to use traditional knowledge, because the actual practitioners themselves need to develop that expertise, in order to apply the traditional knowledge.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Yes, but with respect, it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation here.You have only a few people who are overrun with the demand, and you haven't identified for younger people that this is a career path for them and established that there's at least a program to apply to. If information isn't out there that there will be a matching of skills, so there's a need to be filled, you're never going to get the people there and create the demand internally.

À  (1015)  

    Dr. Peter Johnson: There's certainly a career path, and most people in the communities are aware there's a career path in various aspects of traditional knowledge, in conjunction with western science, legal aspects, and so on. The colleges are now starting to address that. The size of the programs and budget restrictions of the colleges are quite severe. You're putting in very small programs all the time in the colleges.

    It's not a traditional knowledge example, but a few years ago Yukon College put into operation a welding program, which was extremely successful. However, within about three or four years you had enough welders trained in the Yukon to last the Yukon for... So these programs are very small and you have to sustain them, even though from the economic sense we might look at a Canadian southern university, or something... There's only a small number of people in the north, after all, so you're never going to have a large number of people in these programs.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Are there any immediate needs you have, specific emergencies, beyond the icebreaker? Are there any specific actionable items within the next two or three months, for instance?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I'm not sure. A large amount of work needs to be started on the impacts and adaptations aspects of climate change, as they pertain to the energy issues, and particularly as they're starting to apply to shipping. The northern route around Russia has been studied quite extensively now for about ten years. We've done very little on that. There's an enormous amount of science work involved, and an enormous amount of work on the economic aspects is required.

    As I mentioned earlier, the applications for climate change work to the Climate Change Action Fund and the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences far exceeded the money available by a factor of not quite a hundred to one, but it was certainly greater than ten times the amount that was available.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Hopefully this committee will make some strong recommendations about funding research in the north and building in specific programs for supplements, just based on travel and costs. Even once you're there, the costs are a lot greater. I'd be happy if we could support something like that, Mr. Chair.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    I would like to focus you on the topic we are here for, and that's peer review. I want to make sure all the questions on peer review are asked, because that will be the context of the report. I just want to remind a few people of that.

    Mr. Fitzpatrick, on the second round I want to make sure we concentrate and don't miss any questions on peer review in the north and how we go forward. Mr. Fitzpatrick.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: I think this question will be on point.

    In terms of peer review, can you give me a concrete example of how traditional knowledge up north is necessary or relevant to that process?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: A specific example of the importance of traditional knowledge in science scholarship would probably be the study of beluga in the western Arctic: the environmental, ecological importance of the beluga, but also its importance as a traditional food source, and the fact that traditional western science for years had given estimates of the number of beluga and where they lived that didn't fit with what the local harvesters were telling us, both in terms of numbers and how far they ranged.

    It wasn't until the two got together and started to look at what the traditional knowledge had to offer and the opportunities from western science that they actually managed to start to get a good handle on beluga populations and beluga ecology and sustainable harvesting levels, and therefore impact on the local economy.

    Is that a good enough example?

À  (1020)  

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: It helps. I'm just curious about the number of whales. Was it more or less than the scientific community thought?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: It was far more than the scientific community were saying, and the range was far greater.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: So the traditional knowledge people were a lot closer to the real facts than the scientific community was in this particular case.

    Here's another question on that. I'm not sure whether it's really on point, but hopefully it will be. How linked is this country with the polar research being done in other countries, and how good are we at making use of it? Or is it collecting dust, for Canadian purposes?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: No, we're very well linked to the research that's going on in other countries. In fact we have excellent scientists who are participating in programs funded by other countries. We also have some external funding supporting research in the Canadian Arctic.

    The current project taking an ice core out of the top of Mount Logan is, to many people, a very esoteric type of scientific research, but it's funded heavily by the United States and Japan, as well as having some input from Canada.

    So yes, the science communities are well connected. The knowledge connection is very good. But there is one sore point, in some aspects, in Canadian availability of scientific information involving meteorological data and things of this sort. We have to pay for it. It's very often much easier, in fact, to get the same data via a route through the United States at no cost than it is to go to Meteorological Services Canada and pay for the data. A lot of international comment is fed to us about the costs of Canadian data.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: Maybe I'll ask just one last question in this area. If I understood you correctly, sir, in terms of peer review for polar research, it was your view, was it, we have to think in terms of some international component to make this sort of determination?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: We already do.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: Pardon?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: We already have to. We go outside the country quite extensively for peer review for polar research.

    Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: That's happening already?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Yes. Steven was just pointing out that in fact we get asked to review other international projects. We get asked to review projects from the United States, and from Finland, and so on. It does work both ways; we're not shut out in that respect.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. Bagnell.

    Mr. Larry Bagnell: I just want to support, for our researchers, the point Paddy made and you made, that when we're doing peer review involving northern costs, the peer reviewers should have as a guideline when they're allocating projects the fact that it's a lot more costly.

    Do you have an example the granting councils have used, when they're using peer review, where they've actually incorporated traditional knowledge into the peer review?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: The chairs are probably the best in terms of approach to the communities. I don't know if there were any first nations or Inuit people actually on the committees that sat here in Ottawa, but certainly in terms of the reviewing of the applications there were reviews done by first nations communities. Chris Burn, who is a professor at Carleton, certainly got full support in the review of his application from Mayo, Inuvik, and other communities.

    There's much more consideration of traditional knowledge in the review process in SSHRC specifically because of one program there that has been extremely successful. It's an excellent model for this sort of partnership-type research. That's the Community-University Research Alliance program, the CURA program, which has in fact been very effective at developing university and first nations or indigenous people partnerships with review really based on both systems integrated into the project. I can think specifically of one joint project that's going on between the Cree in Quebec, some professors at Laval, and a few other people involved in the program. Yes, there are some good examples, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, of that integration.

À  (1025)  

    Mr. Larry Bagnell: My other question is related to the comment you made about no long-term vision of polar science or, I guess, a locus for such a vision. Now, if the granting councils and those providing the funds through peer review had such a locus, such an impetus, or such a place, would it give them more ability to provide more northern projects? Should this vision centre be in the granting council itself, in the government, or in the Polar Commission? How would this work to increase the projects that through peer review we could allocate to the north--that is, if there were more attention paid to an actual polar vision, a science vision?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I don't think it should really be located in any one place. What we need is some mechanism to bring together people from all these communities. It shouldn't be government-led because there are always suspicions about something government-led, and it shouldn't be NSERC-led because then there's always the sort of academic perception. It should be some way—we've talked about it in the commission—of brokering a group of people who will come together to just talk about national priorities, not just government priorities but national priorities, in the academic sense, in the governance sense, and so on.

    I had an interesting opportunity a few weeks ago to participate in an exercise of this sort in the United States. I was invited to go to what was called the All Hands meeting for the Arctic System Science Program. It was held in Seattle. They had 350 scientists, including 50 or 60 students, scientists from government, policy-makers, people from NSF—the National Science Foundation—and others like that. The idea was not to discuss the science but to discuss the importance of the science and the priorities within the science among all these communities, a very interesting exercise. It was a bit unwieldy with 350 people, though.

    If we could bring together a group of all of the—I have to use a word I hate—stakeholders in this process and just sit down and talk about... We have limited resources. Obviously we're not going to be able to fund everything everybody would like to do. What are we going to put our resources into? Where are our national priorities? Then we can support them and support them so we can do a good job in those areas.

À  (1030)  

    The Chair: This is your last question.

    Mr. Larry Bagnell: Okay, this is my last question.

    In what's now Nunavut in the NWT there used to be three research centres that were more permanent research centres. They were more active--some of them, at least--than they are today. Were they funded through peer review projects through the granting councils, or did they have core funding from another source?

    Dr. Peter Johnson: Are you thinking of the Aurora Research Institute and the Nunavut Research Institute? They were originally the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories, SINT, and they were funded through the territorial government. Then they got moved to being part of the colleges, so they are funded through the college process. Some of them have some activity in terms of research, but most of them are not doing much research themselves. The best example of a group that's doing research out of one of the colleges is the Northern Climate ExChange, which has its base in Yukon College.

    Mr. Steven Bigras: If I may, before the territories assumed responsibility it was the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development that used to run the research centres in Inuvik and Igloolik through core funding. They were mostly part of an infrastructure that scientists could use to launch the research into that area. They had many projects that they supported for many scientists, but they weren't project-oriented types of organizations.

    The Chair: Is there anybody else?

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: Am I allowed to ask what the budget was for those science places, the research institutes?

    Mr. Steven Bigras: Offhand, I wouldn't have that information. I'd have to look for it. That was many years ago. They probably went through devolution about twenty years ago.

    Ms. Paddy Torsney: We could probably have a peer review of that if you were able to bring that forward to us.

    The Chair: I'd like to ask a few questions.

    I was involved in Brock University with Pond Inlet research and I have been involved with the natural resources research just outside of Iqaluit on the finding of marble under the tundra. If people haven't heard about it, there is beautiful orange marble. The question now is how to remove it properly. I had a piece about the size of a coaster that I took to a few companies that are in the marble business, and they're just dying to get their hands on it.

    You mentioned a long national plan. Does the Polar Commission have a strategy for the north, and how is that strategy publicized?

    Mr. Steven Bigras: The commission has been trying to develop a national research strategy for the last five years, and—using the word that Peter hates—we want to do that in concert with the stakeholders. It's not something for the commission to decide for everyone and put forward. It's something we all want to work together on to provide that focus.

    The way it works now is that the commission has a board that decides the priorities. As we've talked today, we've noticed there are very large areas of research that have to be addressed, there is a lot of work to be done, and you can't address them all, so you have to prioritize. The commission has developed a three-year vision of what it's going to do, how it will disseminate its information, how it will do its outreach programs with respect to the universities, and some of the projects that we are going to be involved in over that period. That's how we set it up.

    How we publicize it is through our annual report. We have to report to Parliament through the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development every year, so we indicate which direction we're going in there. We have our Internet site, which we've put the vision on and where we put various reports and our newsletters. We publish newsletters three or four times a year. Any special reports we also put on our Internet site. That's how we communicate the information we have. It's the same with our indicators report, where we gauge how polar knowledge is advancing. We send that out to the public, to universities, and to parliamentarians so that we can get the word out that way.

    The Chair: Do you have a target date for the strategy to be released?

    Mr. Steven Bigras: For the national polar research strategy we don't have a target date. There have been a number of different committees that have been getting together to work on that. Part of the task force was just a portion of that. It's really to try to pull that all together. That's something we'll be discussing at our next board meeting, actually, whether they want to take that initiative on in the next three years to try to put something together.

    The Chair: I will go back to some of the comments that were made on publicizing. It starts with having a strategy for your own area, and some of us have been arm-twisted to make sure we visit Mr. Bagnell's area this summer. I hope to do that.

    I agree with Ms. Torsney when she said that you really have to go see it. I've had the opportunity to travel every place except Mr. Bagnell's area. I appreciate very much the work of the north and the research going on in the north. More people need to hear about it, and have a “touchy-feely” of it. The example is what other things can we find in the north that will help the north prosper?

    Is that okay? Are there any parting remarks before I close the meeting?

À  (1035)  

    Dr. Peter Johnson: I would just like to thank you very much indeed for permitting us to digress so much from the peer review theme. This is something that is very dear to our hearts, as you might have gathered, and we've been working in various capacities to promote it. So I thank you for giving us that time. It's very much appreciated. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    I will call this meeting adjourned.