Science and Research Committee on June 4th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Yes, we're waiting for your answer.

Please, go ahead.

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

Thank you.

ICC Canada represents Inuit at the international level. The work we have participated in is very much related to international negotiations, where we bring light to the Inuit situation and warn the world about the changing Arctic over the last several decades.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I just want to clarify. There has been no conveying of meetings about solutions as of yet.

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

Always we meet together in conveying solutions. One of the solutions is that we must acknowledge indigenous knowledge as equal to western science. One of the issues is that when bring our knowledge—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

We have limited time here. I just want to clarify it.

You bring together Inuit knowledge. What is the Inuit knowledge to fix climate change in the north?

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

The observations of Inuit on what is happening with the ice, the reduction of sea ice, is what Inuit have been observing for the last decades and have been warning the world about.

Now, we're not the ones causing climate change; that is also what we're saying. According to our knowledge and our indigenous knowledge-holders, we're not the ones causing climate change. We are asking for climate finance, for direct access to climate funding. As Inuit, we live in a developed country. As Inuit, we are not receiving any direct access to funding provided through the United Nations system, and that's part of the problem. We have limited funds and limited resources to be able to work on climate change.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

The Arctic is primarily in Canada. Which countries are receiving the United Nations funding?

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

It's going to developing countries, the least developing countries, and these are states that are members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I want to switch from the research angle just a little bit. You talked about the cultural importance of Inuit people and the different practices. One of the other witnesses talked about the economic importance of the seal hunt to Inuit people. I just want to get your take on the seal hunt, and if the federal government is doing enough to support the seal hunt for Inuit people.

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

I can't speak for the seal hunters, but I know there have been challenges for Inuit relying on seal hunting for their economy due to the ban on seal products. There is supposed to be a special exemption for seal products. However, the Inuit are impacted by that ban, so they require support from all states that have to do with that ban.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you so much.

To our other witness, I'm limited in time. I have five seconds. Are you aware that the Natural Environment Research Council Arctic Office is working with Russia? Did you receive direction from your government to stop doing research projects with Russia and/or China?

[Henry Burgess]

Thank you for the question.

Yes. At the time of Russia's full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine, there was a government-wide look at ongoing research funding with Russia. All of those areas within the Natural Environment Research Council where there was work with Russia on Arctic science has been either paused or relocated to other countries. Some work that was scheduled to happen in Russia has been moved to Greenland or elsewhere.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

And China?

[Henry Burgess]

No. There is no such injunction with regard to China.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Henry Burgess]

I'm sorry. I didn't catch what you said just now.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Are you currently working with Chinese companies or agents?

[Henry Burgess]

There is no restriction on work with China in that form. There will be a range of researchers across the Natural Environment Research Council and universities in the U.K. who will have connections with China. I don't know the exact details of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We're over time. That can be pursued in another round.

We'll now turn to MP Longfield, who's online.

You have six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for joining us in a different time zone and a different part of the world. It's good to have you both here to talk about research in the Arctic.

I want to start my questions with you, Ms. Koperqualuk, on indigenous involvement. I heard in the testimony from Mr. Burgess that indigenous involvement was separated, rightly so, from Canadian involvement. We've recently done a study in this committee on indigenous traditional knowledge.

Could you speak to how the conversation is changing? Are we getting to the place where we're needing to be in terms of involving Inuit and other indigenous peoples?

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

Thank you for this question. It's a very important one, because we've been advocating for the use of indigenous knowledge for many years and for it to be at equal par with other knowledge, and that it is not western science that validates it.

Now I am hearing of change in the players and the parties in Canada. Perhaps also because of the reconciliation process, there's more openness in working, collaborating and partnering with, on an equal basis, indigenous people in research initiatives. This is really good, because reconciliation cannot be done only by indigenous people.

We have the Qanittaq initiative, for example, between ICC Canada and Memorial University. We have a partnership on a research initiative for bringing more sustainable shipping as well as building capacity in Inuit communities and Inuit knowledge holders with their maritime expertise.

I do hear and understand that there is more openness and better collaboration starting. It's not perfect. We have to push.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

It's a pathway, and we're hopefully on it together.

[Lisa Koperqualuk]

Yes. Thank you.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Burgess, there's very impressive research being done at Cambridge University in the U.K., and also your involvement with CINUK. The question of governance is one we're wrestling with in this study, to know how we can provide the proper collaborations between the parties that can be involved in solution-building in the Arctic.

Could you maybe talk about the challenges of governance, how working groups might interplay, or whether we need some new forms of governance to consider in this study that we're doing?

[Henry Burgess]

Yes. Thank you.

I said in my opening statement that the CINUK programme and the way we had designed it together as partners had challenged us within the U.K. That's certainly the case, because when you combine traditional western forms of knowledge with other Inuit and local and traditional forms of knowledge, those are not systems that we have a huge amount of expertise in yet. We're on a journey here, and we're just at the very start of it, particularly in the U.K.

When you come to design a program that has U.K.-based researchers, Canada-based researchers and Inuit Nunangat-based researchers, you have to find new ways of assessing the quality of the proposals that come forward. Normally within the U.K., you would do that on a peer review excellence-of-science level, and we retained that within the design of the CINUK programme, but we also had local regional committees across Inuit Nunangat looking at it from from their perspective. Did it meet their priorities? Was the partnership open and fair? Was it going to produce meaningful results for them? Was there a legacy that was going to come to their community from that work?

We took those two forms of weighting and brought those together. I think that's the kind of thing that we'll need to do more of in the future if we're going to do more of these international partnerships.