Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 04/02) - The Senate's fisheries committee wants the federal government to invest more research dollars in the North.

"The funding for the North is way too low," said the chair of the committee, Senator Gerald Comeau. "Some would suggest that it's even a crisis."

Comeau said too much attention has been paid to the state of Canada's East and West Coast fisheries, and not enough on the North.

In a series of 12 recommendations delivered to the Senate on Feb. 19, the committee calls for expanded Northern research by the Freshwater Institute, greater use of traditional knowledge in fisheries decision-making.

It also suggested increased funding for multi-year, fish stock and marine mammal assessments, among others.

"If they don't attach the importance of arctic char and the beluga on Northern diet, they are missing the point," said Comeau.

Industry growth in Nunavut and along the Mackenzie Valley make increased research dollars all the more crucial, Comeau added.

Although no dollar amounts were attached to the recommendations, Comeau said it is important to recognize that 60 per cent of Canada's freshwater flows towards the Arctic.

The Senate committee began conducting its research during the summer of 2000. The senators, including Nunavut's Willie Adams, visited several locations across Nunavut and the NWT, including the Wool Bay fish plant outside of Yellowknife.

Much of their work, said Comeau, was prompted by a joint task force made up of members of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which found that the state of scientific research in the North was "in crisis."

The task force's report, From Crisis to Opportunity: Rebuilding Canada's Rural and Northern Research, was released in September 2000.

Director of policy for the SSHRC, France Landriault, said she is pleased with the committees' recommendations.

But she also warned that not enough focus was paid to building relationships between communities and the researchers.

"The issues are very complex," said Landriault. "The human counterparts are very important to coming up with solutions."