Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable committee members. Hello from the Arctic.

First, I want to express my huge gratitude to all of you for taking on this very important subject. I also want to apologize for not being there in person due to my travel to Bodø, Norway. Here, I'm attending the congress of the University of the Arctic, given my duties as an academic advisory board member and as a UArctic research chair.

My name is Bing Chen. I'm a professor, UArctic chair and associate dean of the faculty of engineering and applied science at Memorial University. I also served as a founding director of the northern region persistent organic pollution control laboratory, NRPOP. It's the first of its kind in the country. It's dedicated to oil spills and environmental pollution in cold regions and oceans.

I'm also the founding director of the PEOPLE network, which is a pan-Canadian and global network on persistent emerging and organic pollution in environments. As a world-leading consortium, we have over 300 professional members, including more than 200 researchers from over 40 research institutions and 50 partners from government, industry and communities, including indigenous groups in Canada and worldwide.

I'm an elected fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the incoming president of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.

My research targets two major environmental challenges, and they are intertwined.

The first is persistent and emerging contaminants—such as petroleum hydrocarbons, flame retardants, microplastics, and pharmaceutical and personal care products—that are toxic, carcinogenic, bioaccumulative and persistent in the environment, especially in cold regions like the Arctic. Importantly, most of them are not regulated.

The other major challenge is climate change, which it seems everyone knows. However, what most people don't know is that climate change makes pollution problems much more challenging. In the Canadian Arctic, we are facing increasing risks of oil spills and emerging pollution due to shrinking ice coverage and growing human activities under climate change. They are threatening our Arctic environments and their residents, especially including indigenous communities.

There are pressing needs for better knowledge, technology and policy to support sustainable development. Frankly, we are walking on thin ice. This is why I thank you very much for looking into this subject.

Thank you, Madam Chair.