Thank you very much.

Thank you, members of the committee, for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here today. You can ask me questions in French, English or Mohawk.

I have been involved in climate change research for 40 years and in the Arctic for at least two to three decades, so my interpretation of all that's going on is based on this foundation.

The Arctic has had spells of temperatures in the thirties in the last two years, which was totally unobserved in the past and is a very big change. The Arctic warms up at about three times the temperature of Canada, and Canada warms up twice as fast, approximately, as the rest of the planet, so we're looking at six times the effect over the warming of the planet. Clearly, if we have a 1.5°C temperature over the 1880s, we are looking at 7°C to 8°C up north, which to a large extent has been demonstrated as well.

There are different tipping points that are owned by Canada or that are in Canadian land or very close to it. These tipping points are called, in French, points de bascule. They're essentially points of no return, where we've changed from one meteorological and environmental climate state to another. Returning may be extremely difficult or impossible.

It is having an impact on quite a few things. Let me state the five tipping points in Canada. There's polar ice melting. There's a stage at which it cannot recover. Greenland is thought to be in a meltdown process that will not be recovered. There's permafrost methane in the Arctic, which is created and put in the atmosphere. Methane has about 86 times the carbon effect of CO2. There are fires in the boreal forest. We have seen that in the last few years, and we've seen again this year that things are reoccurring. There's also the Atlantic circulation stream, the Gulf Stream, which is cooling the eastern part of the country but also managing the temperature of Europe.

All these factors are things that other nations may ask us to report on in the future. These are happening in our territory. We need to understand these effects and report situations that may not be recoverable.

The Northwest Passage is melting and mostly available. The polar vortexes are creating big changes in the temperature in Canada, the U.S. and now Mexico because of the extent of the polar vortex. The ocean temperature is also rising very quickly. Ocean temperature rises mean more environmental issues, such as typhoons and highly damaging tempests.

It's quite interesting that one of the big factors causing the ice to melt in the north is the deposition of soot. This soot is created by operating generators and by burning coal. It tends to accumulate in the north. It deposits on the snow and therefore increases the melting.

One factor that is very important to understand is that the Arctic ice is “the” tipping point. That's where all the effects are cascading over all the other tipping points, including the size of the rainforest and the capacity of the rainforest to be operational as a CO2 capture forest. Soot is very important in driving polar ice melt. We are likely to be held accountable by other countries for what is happening.

If we look at the OECD countries that are involved in the Arctic, we have between four and 15 times fewer scientists than we would need based on the square kilometres of the surface of Canada.