OTTAWA — As the Trudeau government begins to set its 2017 budget priorities, the country’s 1,000-strong community of Arctic researchers is hoping to secure new funding for a key research network that will otherwise be forced to wind down in 2018.

And, according to documents obtained by the National Post, those researchers have reason to be optimistic.

The research network that could shuttered in 2018 is known as ArcticNet, headquartered at Laval University in Quebec City. ArcticNet and its fate have been subject to several discussions between Science Minister Kirsty Duncan and her officials, according to documents obtained through federal access-to-information legislation.

There are few researchers in Canada or elsewhere doing work about or in the Canadian Arctic that remain untouched by ArcticNet. It supports 1,150 researchers, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and others at 34 Canadian universities and 20 federal and provincial agencies and departments. It is also the key collaborative conduit to 150 international organizations in 12 different countries.

In addition to directing financial support for research, it maintains a database of Arctic data sets known as the Polar Data Catalogue, and it co-ordinates expensive ship-time research on Canada’s only research icebreaker, the CCGS Amundsen.

(ArcticNet) has not only been useful it has been outstanding… It’s really revolutionized how we do collaborative research in the North.

“(ArcticNet) has not only been useful, it has been outstanding,” said David Barber, a professor in the department of environment and geography at the University of Manitoba who holds a Canada Research Chair in Arctic system science. “It’s really revolutionized how we do collaborative research in the North.”

Duncan, reached Monday in Quebec City where she was announcing nearly $330-million in new Canadian Foundation for Innovation grants for research, could not speak specifically to the future of ArcticNet though she acknowledged there have been discussions about the federal government’s long-term role for Arctic research.

“We’re committed to our scientists, our science and delivering real change. I think that’s what we’ve done this past year,” Duncan said. “It’s a government that is committed to research and evidence-based policy-making.”

Barber and other researchers got together about eight months ago in Winnipeg to talk about ArcticNet’s future.

“What do we do? How do we move forward as a community? How do we look to find a replacement for the functionality that is ArcticNet? And we’re struggling with it because there really is no logical avenue for which to move forward,” Barber said in a telephone interview Friday. “There’s no program we can write an application for that will replace it. There needs to be some kind of movement at the federal level.”

The documents obtained by the Post, which were created after that Winnipeg meeting of researchers, suggest there is, indeed, some movement at the federal level though no decisions have been made about any new funding commitments.

For Duncan and federal policy makers, the next key benchmark is a report and recommendations from a panel convened last year by the Trudeau government to review the federal involvement with fundamental science. Duncan said that panel is close to finishing its work.

“We want to make sure our investments are strategic, they’re effective, [and] they’re meeting the needs of our researchers,” Duncan said.

Leah Braithwaite, the executive director of ArcticNet, said Friday she remains optimistic that ArcticNet will live on in some form.

“Canadian Arctic research has never been in such a great place than it is right now,” Braithwaite said.

Canada’s role in leading Arctic science and research would almost certainly have come up at the White House Arctic Science Ministerial summit in September, which Duncan attended.

The documents obtained by the Post also suggest that Duncan and her cabinet colleagues are looking at a broader strategy around the Arctic. A committee of deputy ministers from several departments has been meeting regularly over the past several months to review Arctic issues.

Laval University was among Monday’s Canada Foundation for Innovation grant recipients. It is getting $18-million which it will use to defray the operating and maintenance costs of the Amundsen.

ArcticNet also plays a key role connecting the research community with policy makers. Indeed, that part of its mandate was flagged in a late summer memo written by John Knubley, the deputy minister at the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development which was provided as advice to Duncan.

The documents obtained by the Post make it clear that the government has not yet identified what, if any agency, might replace the core functions of ArcticNet.

ArcticNet will have received $113.2 million between 2003 and 2018 from a federal funding program designed to support what are called Networks of Centres of Excellence. But funding rules under that program mean ArcticNet can no longer get any more cash from that program after 2018.

“It does seem a bit shortsighted after all the investment that has been made and when a research initiative like this is finally starting to pay off, to cut it off at that point,” Braithwaite said. “Is there a way that we can continue an ArcticNet-like initiative? There could be.”

The federal government funds two other projects that focus on Arctic research and, in his memo to Duncan, Knubley seemed to suggest that they were complementary to — but not replacements for — ArcticNet.

Polar Knowledge Canada, known simply as POLAR, is a federal agency created in 2015 by the Harper government to act primarily as the operating organization for the Canadian High Arctic Research Station under construction at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. That station is set to become operational later this year.

The federal government is spending about $17-million this year on POLAR — money administered by the department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada.

The other major federal initiative is known as Sentinel North, which is also headquartered at Laval University. The Harper government allocated $98 million over seven years to that project in 2015. Its focus, however, is mostly on research into complex systems and technology transfer in the Arctic.

The Trudeau government, in the 2016 budget, set aside $19 million over five years to collaborate with Inuit and First Nations researchers in the Arctic.

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