Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee. Thank you for this invitation and the opportunity to appear before you.

My name is Warwick Vincent. Throughout my career, I have conducted research on environmental change in the polar regions.

I have recently retired from Université Laval in Quebec, where I held a senior Canada research chair and was a full professor in the department of biology. I continue my work as an emeritus professor and researcher at Université Laval and the Centre for Northern Studies—Centre d'études nordiques, which is the inter-university research centre in support of sustainable development in the north. I was scientific director of the Centre d'études nordiques for eight years and I am a founding member of ArcticNet, the Canadian network for northern research and for knowledge co-production with Inuit and first nations.

Over the course of my career, I have witnessed first hand the enormous impacts of climate change in the Canadian north. In consultation and partnership with federal agencies and Inuit communities, we established a small research station on Ward Hunt Island, on the northernmost coast of Canada in a region now referred to as the “last ice area”. This Canadian station is the furthest north in the world. It is 4,000 kilometres due north of us here in Ottawa and it is logistically supported each year by the vitally important federal agency, the polar continental shelf program.

During these recent decades, we have seen and reported on massive changes in this far northern region of the Canadian Arctic. These are driven by recent warming and are without precedent for thousands of years. For example, the ancient ice shelves—thick permanent ice that fringed the northern coast of Nunavut until very recently—have largely melted and collapsed into the Arctic Ocean. We now observe that many of our northern glaciers are also shrinking at accelerating rates, resulting in the further extinction of unique habitats and biodiversity.

At the same time, I have had the great honour and privilege of working with indigenous elders, communities and young people in the north and to witness their resilience to change. I have been humbled by their depth of indigenous connection to northern lands and seas, and by their deep knowledge and sense of connectedness of people, the natural world and the environment.

Other testimonies to this committee have drawn attention to how the lack of a Canadian strategy for Arctic science is holding us all back, whether that research be southern-led, indigenous-led or co-produced knowledge. I would like to add my voice to this concern.

In my professional activities over the decades, I've had the opportunity to sit on many research advisory and funding panels in Canada and abroad, including, at present, on the scientific advisory board for the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Germany, which is the largest research institute in the world conducting Arctic climate research.

These experiences have always been very informative and enlightening. Unfortunately, they have also been reminders of how far behind we are in Canada compared with other nations that are continuing to advance their Arctic science strategies and activities. This includes countries such as China, which is newly branding itself as a near-Arctic nation, and India, which is an emerging leader in space technology and whose stated objective in India's Arctic policy is to expand satellite remote sensing of the Arctic.

Canada has a pressing need to develop a Canadian strategy for Arctic science that indicates our ambition towards international leadership in both applied and basic fundamental Arctic research and that draws upon and is strengthened by the indigenous sense and knowledge of connectivity and resilience. Such a strategy would be uniquely Canadian, identifying science objectives relevant to indigenous and other national, as well as international, priorities. It would connect our many sources of expertise, resources and infrastructure for efficient Canadian research and knowledge exchange within the broader context of circumpolar and global science.

A Canadian strategy for Arctic science would send a clear message to the rest of the world that Canada is very serious about the Arctic and it would be an inspiring message to all of us in Canada that science and research in Canada's Arctic is to the great benefit of all Canadians.

Thank you very much.