Environment and Climate Change Canada announced a new consortium on April 9, to be called the Pan-Canadian Expert Collaboration, and to be chaired by Blair Feltmate , Head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo.  The Collaboration brings together fifteen Canadian research institutes, to provide independent, informed advice to policy-makers, mainly on the issues of clean energy, carbon pricing and adaptation.  The researchers were chosen after an extensive competition, begun in October 2018, and the project will be eligible to receive up to $20 million over five years – assuming the Liberal government remains in power in Ottawa after the 2019 election.

The real nitty-gritty about the goals of the initiative are contained in the Discussion Paper  issued to solicit interest in the competition . The briefer government  Backgrounder  on April 9  sets out the goals of the Collaboration, and lists the fifteen research organizations chosen to participate.  The goals: “provide credible and authoritative advice to Canadians and their governments; develop and provide independent and expert-driven analysis to help Canada move toward clean growth in all sectors and regions of the country; develop advice and analysis spanning climate change mitigation, adaptation, and clean growth; set its own agenda and operate independently from government; and fill existing information gaps and help translate research into useful information for policy decision-making.”

The membership:

• Adaptation to Climate Change Team, Simon Fraser University   ;
• Alberta Innovates  ;
• Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission ;
• Canadian Energy Systems Analysis Research, University of Calgary ;
• Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
• Evergreen and Future Cities Canada ;
• Foundation for Environmental Stewardship ;
• lnstitut de l’énergie Trottier, Polytechnique Montréal
• Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation and the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change, University of Waterloo 
• Ivey Foundation (no active website)
• Labrador Institute, Memorial University 
• MaRS Discovery District 
• National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development, University of Victoria
• Ouranos 
• Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, University of Victoria
• Prairie Climate Centre, University of Winnipeg 
• Smart Prosperity Institute 
• Switch (l’Alliance pour une économie verte au Québec)   (English website here )
• Trottier Family Foundation
• World Resources Institute
• Yukon College

So far, the media have taken little notice of the group, despite the fact that it was announced only a week after the release  of the landmark and alarming  government report, Canada’s Changing Climate, which showed that Canada is warming at twice the global rate.  As  of April 10, the only item published comes from The National Observer, “Skeptical of Trudeau’s carbon pricing? There’s an institute for that” (April 9) , which  focuses on the reaction from Ontario’s Ford government – attempting to brand the group as elite academics with no understanding of the costs of climate change policies.