Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is William Quinton. I'm a professor of cold regions hydrology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. I've worked in Canada's Arctic and subarctic regions since 1987.

The overall goal of my research is to improve the understanding of how climate warming is affecting Canada's northern water resources. The justification or rationale for this type of work is that it provides the mechanistic understanding needed to develop better predictive tools, forecasting models and so on so that we are in a better position to forecast what lies ahead of us as climate change continues. That, in turn, makes us better managers of climate warming and water resources in Canada's north.

Living in southern Canada but working in the north has given me a unique perspective on the stark contrast between north and south in terms of the rates, patterns and impacts of climate warming, all of which are much more obvious in the north, even to the casual observer. Since 1999, I've worked in what you can think of as the southern fringe of permafrost. It's the southern margin of permafrost that extends across our country from east to west, with my work being mostly focused in the Northwest Territories.

In this region, Canadians live at the front lines of climate change impacts. They're dealing with many abrupt changes over recent years or the last couple of decades, including warmer winters; shorter winters; changes in precipitation regimes, which drive changes in river and stream-flow regimes; changes in the frequency and occurrence of extreme events, including droughts, floods and wildfires; and other changes as well.

To put a human face on this, I think of a colleague and friend of ours who is also a former grand chief of the Dehcho First Nations in the Northwest Territories. In 2021, she and all of her community of Jean Marie River, on the banks of the Mackenzie River, lost their homes to the flooding of that year, as did many other communities nearby. She and many of her community members had to build their new homes elsewhere, and she did, in the community of Enterprise, not too far away. Two years later, that community burned to the ground. Ninety per cent of it burned, including her house. She lost two homes to extreme events within two years. I just don't see its equivalent in southern Canada, and she's by no means the only person with these types of experiences in the north.

As to the southern fringe zone, you can think of it as the front lines of permafrost thaw. It's where permafrost is sufficiently thin, at five to 10 metres. It's relatively warm—it's pretty much at the melting point temperature—and it's discontinuous. Those three characteristics make it highly susceptible to rapid thaw. In fact, in this region, permafrost isn't just thawing rapidly. It's disappearing, and it's doing so at an increasing rate. As permafrost disappears, it has profound impacts on water resources, on ecology and ecosystems, on infrastructure and, of course, ultimately on communities.

I think I'll leave it there as a high-level overview. I'm happy to answer questions.