Jeremy Hall, President, CGC
Gilles Arseneau, Financial Director, CGC
Antoni Lewkowicz, Committees Director, CGC
Peter Bobrowsky, International Director, CGC, and representing CGS
Paul Robinson, Education Director, CGC
Dirk Tempelman-Kluit, Past-President, CGC
Shannon Bott, Secretary, CGC
Scott Swinden, GAC
Dave Sinclair, CIM Geol. Soc.
Iain Wallace, CAG
Murray Duke, GSC (Friday only)
Mary-Claire Ward, PDAC
Jim Franklin, SEG
Richard Grieve, GSC
Jean-Francois Couture, GAC
Brian Fryer, MAC
Don Lawton, CCCESD
Mickie Allan, KEGS
Walter Roest, NRCan ESS
Nat Rutter, CNC IGCP (Friday only)
Christy Vodden, CGEN (Friday only)
Alain Plouffe, CANQUA (Friday only)
Des Collins, CNC IUGS (Friday only)
Denis St. Onge, PAGSE (Friday only)
Matt Salisbury, Canada ODP
Shiri Srivastava, Canada ODP
Sandra O’Connor, NSERC (Friday only)
Teresa Jurewicz, NSERC (Friday only)
Lawrence Davidson, CC IAH (Friday only)
Brian Schreiner, CNC IGCP
Ian Rutherford, CMOS (Saturday only)

Action Items

To the NSERC reallocation steering committees.

Motions

MOTION: moved by S. Swinden THAT CGC should support and endorse IODP.
Seconded: by B. Fryer.
Motion carried by unanimous vote.

Motion – Should CGC be establishing position papers? Put forward by J. Hall. Show of hands – no dissenters – adopted unanimously by the council that CGC should establish position papers.

Motion to endorse the Church Report moved by J. F. Couture, Seconded by P. Bobrowsky. All in favor no dissenters.

The motion THAT member societies to CGC direct the CGC Board to make education and public awareness of Geoscience a priority in the new CGC was moved by J. F. Couture and seconded by P. Bobrowsky. All agreed no dissenters. Motion approved.

Meeting called to order at 4:20 pm by J. Hall

1.0 Welcome and introductions:

J. Hall.

2.0 Agenda review:

J. Hall stated that there would be two additional items on the agenda: (i) comments from NSERC and (ii) a presentation on PAGSE.

3.0 Approval of Minutes of Council meetings June 2, 3 2000 in Calgary:

Motion to approve minutes by B. Fryer, seconded by J.F. Couture.

4.0 Review of action items from June meetings:

Action Items – June 2, 2000

Fryer, Grieve, Couture, Hall to explore workshop on "How to Connect People with the Earth Sciences".
This is done, Hall paper circulated with agendas for later discussion.

Action Items – June 3, 2000

A. Morgan to ask John Cherry to review earlier report on Groundwater Issues in Canada.
This was done by press release; Morgan appeared on ONTV, copy on video to hand.

CANQUA to produce 1 pager on climate change – D. Liverman.
Not yet to hand. To be discussed at tomorrow’s session.

D. Tempelman-Kluit to write a brief to reinforce importance of mapping of Canada to Mines Ministers Meeting.
Not done. Noted that still important to keep pressure on this. CGC should consult with IGWG re agendas for future meetings (next is in Quebec City, Sept. 2001).

A. Lewkowicz to find out status on Northern task force report on Arctic.
Done: will be discussed tomorrow’s meeting.

P. Bobrowsky to report on status of natural hazards.
Deferred as item of agenda for January 2001 meeting of CGC.

A. Morgan to contact G. Skippen to provide remarks on Radioactive Waste.
Done. G. Skippen has committed to write a note on current status of Canadian plans for high-level radioactive waste disposal.

R. McMillan to contact Dr. Tom Pederson re: tailings disposal.
Done. Dr. Pedersen prepared to help with this; will ask him to present at next CGC meeting.

J. Hall to complete draft of Capacity Gaps meeting report.
Done. Paper attached to agenda items, for discussion tomorrow.

J. Hall to email all society presidents and follow up with phone call to encourage better turnout next meeting.
Done.

5.0 Board vacancies:

President-Elect, Issues Director, Administration Director.

J. Hall explained the roles of the positions currently vacant. There is an urgent need to fill the President Elect and Issues Director positions. The Administrative Director position was vacated on the completion of Alan Morgan’s term. Since we now have a management team working for us, it has become unclear how the Administrative Director’s position would knit with the management team. It might well be useful to have someone in Toronto that could liaise easily with Base Management occupy that position. Meantime, CGC retains Alan Morgan’s input and extensive knowledge of CGC history in his role as informal Executive Advisor.

ACTION: Member societies to provide nominations to Past President (Tempelman Kluit). If don’t get the nominations from members, executive will have to proceed with nominations.

6.0 Review of outcomes from GSC meetings:

If we want help with international funding, we should look elsewhere with the help of the deputy minister. There are two issues however, one is subscriptions and the other is projects. The harder of the two to acquire funding for is subscriptions. There is lots of money out there, it’s a matter of finding it, and with the help of P. Harrison, we should be able to find some.

In June, it was decided by the council, that CGC originally produced discussion papers and that we should move to position papers. In order to gain more recognition, we must move to some high priority issues and then take them to the decision-makers.

A meeting concerning creation of national academies of science in Aylmer with trade unions to PACSC took place in October, and neither the GAC nor CGC was there. There was no one there representing earth sciences. If we want to have the proper representation, then we must get involved in these things. CGC should start navigating as the spokesperson for the earth sciences in this country.

One of the ways of gaining the notoriety as the experts in the country would be for the press to call CGC and ask for someone in a particular field. Or, as soon as something breaks, CGC should to go to the press with five minutes worth of information in that particular area. Either way, we must begin to improve links with the media and those reporting on issues that pertain to CGC. This means, CGC must start contacting and sending information to the appropriate people.

ACTION: CGC should improve contacts with the media on issues of public concern.

7.0 Partnership Group for Science and Engineering:

Denis St. Onge – PAGSE presentation:

PAGSE is not a lobby group; it provides advice and encouragement to government on what it feels important in terms of research and engineering in country. One of the programs implemented is the Breakfast with Eggheads. This event is held on the hill and people look forward to attending. All parties are represented and members of the senate also attend. There is a symposium once a year in the press building across parliament hill. MP’s did the introducing of speakers last year. 15-20 MP’s are usually there. Preston Manning was at the last one.

PAGSE has given a brief to an expert panel on Canada’s role in international science and technology. There is a strong preference that money should go to CFI, and PAGSE thinks more and more that CFI is more than a short-term structure.

PAGSE also meets with heads of research councils once a year to find out what the hot topics are. A brief was prepared for the federal government finance committee addressing the following issues:

Speakers from the oil and gas industry would be great, but it is difficult to get good speakers on this. PAGSE doesn’t allow any lobbying. PAGSE is trying to cover the whole range of science areas and to get MPs excited. Bacon & Eggheads was intended to have sense of humour.

J. Hall congratulated PAGSE on its achievements.

8.0 Reports:

Lawrence Davidson (for CC IAH) was invited to develop a two page report assessing the current relevance of the recommendations and direction of the Cherry report on groundwater issues (CGC, 1993).

ACTION: L. Davidson (for IAH) will develop a two-page report on groundwater issues.

J. Hall discussed CSPG and CGC’s continuing relationship. While on the subject of CSPG, the issue of changing the member fee schedule was raised. Perhaps a new formula might enable CGC to increase its membership, including CSPG. A multi-tier membership with corresponding votes and payment structure was proposed. It would be up to the societies what level they want to come in at. The only potential problem for CGC is if all members come in at the bottom tier. It was agreed that this is unlikely and not something to worry about, for now.

It is believed that if we move toward a multi-level system, we might entice more organizations to join. This way, members would not have to worry overly about costs and we might move more quickly to our target of having members representing all earth scientists in Canada.

ACTION: The board will propose a multi-tiered system of membership to bring forth at the CGC meetings in January.

With regard to CGC taking a stand or forming an opinion about an issue, concern was raised that there may be different opinions among member societies on certain issues, and some organizations may not agree with the majority opinion of CGC. However this is the way most federations work, so while CGC should not take a particular position where there are widely diverging views among members, we should move forward on issues where the degree of consensus is high. What this means exactly will become clearer by practice.

9.0 Report from NSERC:

Sandra O’Connor and Teresa Jurewicz (NSERC)

The last re-allocation of funding to the research grant disciplinary sub-committees was in 1998 and NSERC is working on the 3rd to be finished in 2002 for implementation in 2003. [Each existing committee donates 10% of its current ‘pot’ and this is redistributed among the disciplines according to the status of the discipline as perceived by invited reviewers of disciplinary submissions.] Steering committees for the various disciplines have been chosen to prepare the submissions to NSERC. These submissions include vision statements and specific proposals for use of any funding increases granted: they are due in January 2002.

Previous submissions by the earth sciences had not done well: no adequate long-term vision had been developed. Right now, the community is working on visioning for this next exercise.

A task force report on science research in the North was released by NSERC on September 24th in Whitehorse at the AAAS meeting. Some of the recommendations were that new money should be invested in supplements to postgraduates or doctoral fellowships, and in infrastructure and equipment. If we are looking at partial implementation, 24 million dollars are required. Copies of the report were given out.

Meeting adjourned at 6:30pm; continuation on Saturday, commencing at 9:10am.

10.0 Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (ODP):

Matt Salisbury and Shiri Srivastava (Canada ODP Secretariat)

The Ocean Drilling Program has been the most successful long-term international Geoscience research program of the 20th century. Canada has had a strong involvement in it, currently managed by a Secretariat advised by a Council. The current ODP program ends in 2003 and discussions are underway for a new program – to be called the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). This would use new drilling vessels – one with extended capability for drilling in deep water, going beyond the capacity of the current drill ship JOIDES Resolution; a second, being built in Japan would be capable of drilling to 8 km into the seabed in up to 2.5 km of water. So Canada needs to look to the future and determine its involvement with ODP. What role should CGC play with regard to the future program?

The current program is set to end in 2003. ODP is the world Geoscience tool for researching the ocean floors. ODP’s accomplishments include; proof of sea floor spreading, hot spot theory confirmed, K/T boundary, and discovery of deep crustal bacteria, marine calthrate sampling, and oceanic massive sulfide deposits. We can now reconstruct the earth’s history in great detail from the work done by ODP. Despite enormous success, there are limitations such as it can’t drill more than 2 km below sea level, meaning that the oldest, deepest sediments can’t be drilled.

The IODP Science Plan consists of the following themes: deep biosphere & sub-seafloor ocean, environmental change, processes and effects, solid earth cycles and geodynamics. IODP initiatives include wanting to do a systematic survey of where life lives on the sea floor. In Oregon, bacteria are producing methane below the ocean floor, but no one knows why bacteria are there to start with.

The new program will have an advisory structure, which will go through proposals, then pass them for comment to expert panels, where they will be evaluated and ranked by the science committee.

Sources of potential funding for Canadian participation in the new program were discussed.

The CFI was instituted 3 years ago as an 800 million-dollar fund to generate renewed infrastructure to university research centres, later broadened to hospitals etc… Ottawa regards it as a success and they want to expand it further. In the recent mini-budget CFI was asked to be the distributory for large sums ($110M) for Canadian participation in international science. The federal government (which contributes now to the current ODP program) regards Geoscience as not quite core, and Geoscience has lost some of its previous high level of recognition in the world.

When the proposal is up for renewal, one of things that helped ODP get through NSERC, were letters and endorsements from heads of societies, etc. Those pages of endorsements helped and the member societies of CGC should send letters to NSERC.

ACTION: CGC member societies should send endorsements to NSERC about IODP, when asked during the submission of proposals for Canadian participation in IODP.

CGC would like to create a one-page synopsis of ODP/IODP so that CGC could submit this to the NSERC reallocation steering committees in Earth sciences. CGC is committed to continued involvement, and will get behind the proposal when it is going in.

ACTION: Matt Salisbury will write a one-page synopsis of ODP/IODP so CGC can bring it.

To the NSERC reallocation steering committees.

MOTION: moved by S. Swinden THAT CGC should support and endorse IODP.

Seconded: by B. Fryer

Motion carried by unanimous vote.

11.0 Workshop on "connecting people with the Earth Sciences":

Jeremy Hall

During its last couple of meetings, CGC has been challenged to create a strategic plan for earth sciences in Canada. The tabled proposal was developed from an earlier suggestion that Public Awareness of Geoscience should be at the top of any agenda defined by a strategic plan. To follow this up, Couture, Fryer, Grieve and Hall were asked to prepare a proposal for a workshop to connect people with the Earth sciences. The four have varied views on how to move this forward, the tabled paper representing some of the opinions of the group.

Concern was raised over only having a small number of people invited to the proposed workshop. It was suggested that CGC look at a workshop that is larger and has a broader spectrum of people, including the practitioners out in the trenches. If we can gather a good representative group of such people, this may give it some profile and CGC could publicize it. It might be difficult to get individual practitioners to come to a meeting without support of travel – perhaps member societies might put $500 towards the meeting which would provide some advertising and travel support.

An extended discussion ensued on how CGC might best move forward on public awareness.

CGC should focus on three groups: general public via the media; decision makers; and school age children.

For school age children, there are already substantial resources being expended on public awareness of Geoscience, but we need to catalogue these, identify gaps, fill them, and assist practitioners get together to help one another and to focus on recruitment. A workshop for practitioners would be an invaluable step.

ACTION: organize a workshop for practitioners in the next 12 months.

For decision-makers, CGC needs to develop two capabilities – proactive (raising issues), and reactive (responding quickly when issues arise). On the proactive capability, CGC must determine which standing committees of the next government to contact, and integrate CGC issues into meetings with ministers (especially those annual meetings of provincial and federal ministers of appropriate departments. This must extend beyond Mines and Energy with whom we have some contact now). On reactive capability, CGC should prepare position papers in readiness for issues that may arise, i.e., anticipate some of the issues and have 1-page briefs ready for immediate circulation. CGC should also develop an express means of obtaining members input into issues that arise without any prior preparation, so that a timely response is given to topical issues.

For the general public via the media, CGC should have parallel proactive and reactive capabilities, but create versions of media releases constructed appropriately for the particular market.

It was recommended that CGC organize a workshop that would bring together a range of Geoscientist to look beyond the more restricted aspect of public awareness among school age children.

In general, CGC needs to take on more of a communication role. We should begin with ODP – promoting it actively, and thus start to build a new reputation for CGC.

Geoscience success stories are good place to start to build some recognition. We could do this rapidly, and it would give examples of how Geoscience provides a practical way of doing things. They would be a concise one-page document. Christy Vodden does precisely this.

ACTION: Geoscience success stories should be collected to insert on website, newsletters etc....

Motion – Should CGC be establishing position papers? Put forward by J. Hall. Show of hands – no dissenters – adopted unanimously by the council that CGC should establish position papers.

12.0 Position Papers:

There was a review of the status of position papers, as determined from action items from the last meeting in June. It was appreciated that some of the papers were perhaps better defined as background papers, in which the state of a situation would be described, in contrast to position papers, which express a CGC view of what actions should be taken.

ACTION: M. C. Ward will write one-page document on continuing need for geological mapping of Canada.

13.0 Progress towards endorsement of specific position papers:

13.1 Church Report:

Michael Church had written a paper for CGC on the relationship between university curricula and the requirements of professional registration, in order to generate better understanding for an empathic relationship between the two.

Motion to endorse the Church Report moved by J. F. Couture, Seconded by P. Bobrowsky. All in favour, no dissenters.

13.2 Capacity gaps:

J. Hall tabled a paper summarizing the CGC workshop, held in January 2000. Four recommendations were made:

Capacity gaps supply and demand studies are needed. HRDC wants to fund this kind of study. CGC Executive to follow up on finding out how to fund through HRDC.

ACTION: Executive should follow up on finding out how capacity gaps studies in Geoscience might be funded by HRDC.

13.3 Climate change:

The identification of human influence is still a major area of research and part of the international effort. It is dangerous to take a position on matters that are not really clear. CMOS decided to issue a paper that endorses international mechanism to make recommendation on the science. Models predict that there should be an effect but we need a cautious approach so that we can discuss this matter at a later date.

There are technical aspects of some of the issues connected with mitigation of climate change that require extensive Geoscience R&D for which CGC should press. An example is sequestration of carbon dioxide.

D. Lawton agreed to write a one or two page document on carbon dioxide sequestration.

ACTION: D. Lawton has agreed to write one or two pages on carbon dioxide sequestration.

14.0 Other Business:

14.1 Northern science:

CGC may want to endorse the recently published report from NSERC. At the same time, we should develop a fact sheet or backgrounder on how important Geoscience is to the north.

J. Hall invited members to consider the two reports.

"Northern Science and Technology in Canada – Federal Framework and Research Plan" April 1 2000 – March 31, 2002 and "From Crisis to Opportunity: Rebuilding Canada’s Role in Northern Research". Final Report to NSERC and SSHRC from the Task Force on Northern Research published September 2000. {summary available at www.nserc.gc.ca/news/2000/p000921.htm }

ACTION: Members should consider the two reports on Northern Science for discussion in January.

14.2 Education and Public Awareness of Geoscience:

At the 103rd Council Meeting on Saturday, June 3rd at the University of Calgary, D. Liverman moved and J. F. Couture seconded a motion "THAT member societies to CGC direct the CGC Board to make education and public awareness of Geoscience a priority in the new CGC". The motion was tabled and agreed that it would be voted on at the 104th Council Meeting in Ottawa on October 28th.

The motion THAT member societies to CGC direct the CGC Board to make education and public awareness of Geoscience a priority in the new CGC was moved by J. F. Couture and seconded by P. Bobrowsky. All agreed no dissenters. Motion approved.

15.0 Next Meetings:

The next meeting will take place after the Cordilleran Round up the week of January 21st – January 26th 2001. On Thursday January 25th, the board will have its meetings in the evening. Full Council will meet Friday January 26th and Saturday January 27th.

In May, the meetings in St. John’s, NF will be following the GAC/MAC annual meeting. The board will meet on the evening of the 31st of May and the Full Council will meet Friday June 1st and Saturday, June 2nd.

J. Hall assured that agendas would be circulated for timely comment and input.

Meeting adjourned 5:06 by Jeremy.