By Tristin Hopper Just as Canada’s need to understand its North reaches new heights – the research dollars are drying up. Why, you say? Sovereignty, security, economy and more.
Two researchers, three grad students, an Inuit guide, a few dogs and a sleigh. Those were the makings of a polar expedition when biologist Louis Fortier caught his first bush plane for the Arctic in the 1970s.
Now, Fortier takes his Arctic trips aboard the CCGS Amundsen, a 100-metre-long research icebreaker packed with lab space, a helipad and bunks for 43 scientists. "Endeavours in the Arctic used to be quite small," says Fortier, the scientific director for ArcticNet, a Quebec-based hub for Arctic researchers. "Now, it's more and more possible to get large multi-disciplinary research going on."
In the last 10 years, an increasingly Arctic-happy Ottawa has poured a whopping $250-million into Arctic research. Northern communities are getting a host of new infrastructure thanks to the $85-million Arctic Research Infrastructure Fund, part of the federal Economic Action Plan. Even when those funds dry up in March, investments will continue to be made in the much-touted High Arctic Research Station, a system of ships, research labs, field camps and branch laboratories (to be based in Cambridge Bay) that is now in the planning stages. It will be "world-class," "cutting edge," and "there to serve the world," according to the 2007 Speech from the Throne.
The reasons behind the recent surge in Arctic funding are clear. Aside from economic stimulus, a sovereignty-obsessed Ottawa likes to see Canadian researchers tramping around the High Arctic. "It's about Canadian scientists having access to the Canadian Arctic and affirming the stewardship of Canada in these regions," says Fortier. "I think that's the main, dominant reason why there's so much interest and funding in Arctic research."
It doesn’t come cheap. Science dollars have a habit of evaporating once you approach the barrenlands. Between charter planes and steep bills for everything from heating to food to telecommunications, a bare-bones arctic expedition can easily morph into a multi-million dollar affair. The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS), built on Nunavut's Devon Island in 2000 by an American non-profit, is a mock Martian base designed to suss out the particulars of interplanetary living. It's little more than a two story, eight-metre-wide circular hut stuffed with plywood bunks, fake airlocks and pretend space suits, but the price tag to build it was $1.3-million.
"It used to be a disadvantage to develop a career in the Arctic," explains Fortier. When funding season rolled around, ministers could either vote to keep the lights on at some primitive Arctic weather station or they could build a new wing at the local university. When push came to shove, Arctic scientists usually got the short end of the stick.
Now, as ice caps melt and Arctic sovereignty moves toward the top of the agenda, Ottawa has shown some willingness to pay the freight. But with little on the horizon, Canada's scientists are starting to wonder if they'll be able to keep eyes on the Arctic.
He was only three months out of port and already Karl Weyprecht was stuck. As captain of the 1872 Austro-Hungarian Polar Expedition, Weyprecht had hoped to map the Northeast Passage and – if there was time – take a jaunt to the North Pole. Instead, the expedition became mired in pack ice just off the north coast of Russia. For almost two years, Weyprecht's ice-imprisoned crew drifted North with the current. Only after an exhausting nine-month journey over the ice was the crew able to flag down a Russian whaler and catch a ride home.
An Arctic hero when he arrived back in Vienna, Weyprecht used his newfound celebrity to preach a valuable lesson: Arctic research was going to take much more than some Austro-Hungarians in a boat – it was going to take global collaboration. Weyprecht died in 1881, but the next year, the world took his advice. A coalition of 12 countries dispatched 700 scientists to a network of Arctic research bases to gather unprecedented levels of Arctic data: The International Polar Year (IPY) was born. When the third IPY was rolled out in 2007, Canada went all-out, pledging a mammoth $158-million to the effort. "In Canada, the amount of hard currency available to polar researchers more than doubled," says Ian Church, the Whitehorse-based chair of the Canadian National IPY Committee. In one initiative, ArcticNet intentionally stranded the CCGS Amundsen in the ice of the Beaufort Sea, giving researchers a 15-month-long research platform.
In dozens of others, Canada's small network of Arctic observatories and field camps saw a flood of ethnographers, health researchers and climate change scientists.
As Canadian researchers put the finishing touches on their IPY research papers, many are wondering about the government's next big plans for Arctic science. “There's light shining on the horizon, but nothing's touched down,” says Church. Funding for infrastructure is plentiful, thanks to the High Arctic Research Station and the Arctic Research Infrastructure Fund, but many scientists still don't know how they'll staff all the new square footage. A common complaint from researchers is that Canada is notoriously bad at laying out long-term funding. The Canadian government usually doles out research funding around March, and Arctic researchers are left scrambling to get their boats in the water before the June 1st start of field season.
Meanwhile, some of Canada's existing Arctic researchers are being forced to board up the windows. On a rocky Ellesmere Island outcrop stands the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), a red sheet-metal building housing Canada's only High Arctic atmospheric station. Thousands of kilometres from any highways or smokestacks, PEARL's extreme isolation makes it perfect for picking up slight changes in Earth’s atmosphere. And, since the station is subject to an ample variety of blizzards and polar storms, it is well placed to keep an eye on changing weather systems. “We have our foot on the accelerator when it comes to understanding what’s happening with climate change,” says director James Drummond.
Studying climate change was PEARL's fatal mistake. While the feds enjoy cutting cheques for the North, they've put the brakes on anything to do with climate change. PEARL received much of their funding from the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences, a federal agency founded in 2000. When the agency's $100-million treasury began to run dry near the end of the decade, the Conservative government indicated they had no plans to revive it. Drummond says he is searching around for alternative sources of funding, but his board of directors is already preparing for the possibility of closure. Only two years ago PEARL received a $1.8-million chunk of funding to spruce up their telecommunications system. Since the money came from an infrastructure funding coffer, the station maddeningly couldn’t use it to pay their operational bills.
Drummond wonders what the closure will mean for Canada's international standing. “If we don't measure the climate over Canada, who is going to do it?” he says. “Will we have to go to other countries and say, ‘Please, can you give us the data over Canada?’”
With climate funding slashed and the High Arctic Research Station still a decade away, many of Canada's Arctic scientists are starting to skip the country, says Ian Church. During IPY, more than 1,000 Canadian graduate students made their academic bones on the tundra. Now, they’re turning their attentions to well-funded research programs in Australia and the European Union. According to Church, “we're losing a lot of our best and brightest.”
Only a handful of icebergs bounced off the bow of the M/V Xue Long as it cruised into the outskirts of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1999. Years before, those waters had been choked with pack ice, but by then, the Shanghai-based research vessel had to travel higher than ever to find enough melting ice to study.
The Xue Long (Snow Dragon) was originally meant to haul freight to Baltic sea ports. But months after it got out of dry dock China bought the ship as a research vessel for its newly-minted Polar Research Institute. At 167 meters long, the Xue Long remains the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker. When Chinese shipyards roll out a $300-million sister ship in 2013, Canada's icebreaker fleet will be outclassed by a country without a polar port.
China may not have a single narwhal to its name, but it is serious about establishing a scientific presence in the Arctic. Russian researchers, too, have gone into overdrive mapping out their continental shelf and keeping tabs on local ecology. Norway is pouring unprecedented amounts into polar research. And just last August, a German-backed satellite station was opened on the outskirts of Inuvik.
“The underlying reason for all this is to establish a presence so they can have some say over what happens in the Arctic resource base,” says Chad Gubala, a Whitehorse tech consultant and director of the Yukon Cold Climate Innovation Centre. As the fate of Arctic resources and shipping lanes are hashed out, it doesn't hurt to show up to the bargaining table with some knowledge of the terrain.
If Canada can't keep pace with the flood of international research, scientists warn, we could get gamed at the bargaining table. “When we enter international negotiations, our position depends partly on having a made-in-Canada science base as well as an international science base,” says climatologist Gordon McBean. If Canada shows up without the right Arctic know-how, we could easily fall behind the curve in negotiating royalties, environmental regulations and the preservation of cultural values.
For decades, Canadian academics have sailed and dog-sledded their way through the Arctic with the simple goal of unlocking the secrets of one of the world's last frontiers. Now, they've found themselves part of a much larger political game. “When I write proposals to secure funding for big projects, I always highlight the fact that Canada has no choice: The international community expects Canada to take up its role as Arctic country,” says Fortier. “We would have egg on our face if we didn't do it.”
Animal populations are shifting, weather is changing and foreign freighters are waiting at our borders. By the time the High Arctic Research Station is online, summertime ice in the Northwest Passage will be nothing but a memory. In the interim, all Canada's scientists are hoping is that they'll be able to keep their seat in the front row.
It takes data points to command the North, and in the game of Arctic politics, whoever has the thickest ring binder wins.
