Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, bonjour. Thank you very much for the opportunity to give evidence to your inquiry today. It's a great pleasure to share this opportunity with the chair of ICC Canada, Lisa Koperqualuk.

My name is Henry Burgess, and I am the head of the Natural Environment Research Council Arctic Office, which is hosted by the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge in the United Kingdom. I've been in this role since 2016, and prior to that I was the deputy head of the Polar Regions Department in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. For the period 2022-26, I'm also the president of the International Arctic Science Committee, an independent, non-governmental organization that has existed since 1990 with 24 member states, the role of which is to encourage and facilitate international co-operation across all forms of Arctic science.

Our role in the U.K.'s Arctic Office is to support Arctic researchers based in the United Kingdom, to provide advice to policy-makers and decision-makers, to represent the U.K. in a range of international science discussions and fora, to support the delivery of the U.K.'s physical presence in the Arctic through our research station in Svalbard, Norway, and to create new international research programs.

Canada has been a major focus of our approach over the last six years. We have made a significant commitment and investment in developing a new international program and implementing Canadian, U.K. and Inuit priorities. The Canada-Inuit Nunangat-United Kingdom Arctic Research Program 2021-25, known as CINUK, is an $18 million-plus program to address key themes connected to climate-driven changes to terrestrial, coastal and near-shore marine environments across Inuit Nunangat as well as the impacts on Inuit community health and well-being. Full details of the program are available at the website, cinuk.org.

The CINUK programme represents the United Kingdom Research and Innovation's largest current single strategic investment in Arctic research. It is delivered and funded in partnership with Polar Knowledge Canada, the National Research Council, Fonds de recherche du Québec, Parks Canada and in fully equitable partnership with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. The program is delivering 13 projects involving more than 150 program participants and over 60 research, community and other organizations.

Themes include human health, animal health and country food, beaver range expansion, food security, glaciers and ecosystem health, shipping trends and risks, plastics and health, search and rescue, coastal erosion, integrated renewable energy, safe sea ice travel and much more. Combining environmental themes with social, economic and technological themes is central to the program.

Equitable and empowering partnerships between Inuit researchers and community members and those in Canada and the United Kingdom in governance, core design and assessment, project delivery, publication and data ownership are central to this program. Every step of the development of the program has been done in partnership with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and with the aim of meeting the expectations of the national Inuit strategy on research. Every project has had Inuit involvement in the planning and delivery from the very start.

The development of the program, which included the signing of a groundbreaking memorandum of understanding between all the partners in 2021, has involved a major commitment by U.K. Research and Innovation. It has stretched, in many good ways, our existing ways of working. I'm extremely grateful to all our Canadian and Inuit partners for their patience, support and partnership in taking forward this new way of working.

Whilst the CINUK programme represents only part of the U.K.'s Arctic science and research connection with Canada, the innovative and stretching nature of the program represents an important development, with implications for wider international partnerships. As we think about the next phases of research connection with Canada and other international partnerships and about the international polar year coming up in 2032-33 as a whole, we are committed to ensuring that we spread the learning from this approach.

I look forward to assisting the committee in any way I can.

Thank you.