Pan-Canadian Geoscience Strategy
The Pan-Canadian Geoscience Strategy (PGS) represents a renewed commitment to federal, provincial, and territorial collaboration for delivering accessible geoscience data and knowledge for all Canadians.
It responds to:
- Calls from governments and stakeholders to explore options for improving public geoscience coordination and funding
- Federal, provincial, and territorial Minister commitments under agreements such as the 2017 Intergovernmental Geoscience Accord (9 pages, 2 MB), the Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan and the related Action Plan 2020
Members of the National Geological Surveys Committee (NGSC) have agreed to coordinate their efforts on the following priority areas:
- Advancing framework geoscience
- Advancing mineral and energy potential modelling
- Facilitating access to online data
- Supporting the training of next generation geoscientists
- Enhancing public literacy in geoscience
These priority areas were developed and verified in consultation with a cross-section of stakeholders and Indigenous organizations.
Benefits of the Strategy
The PGS supports a long-term vision to provide geoscience information that underpins the responsible development of Canada’s geological resources (geo-resources) and serves the public good. For example, geoscience can help to:
- Inform mineral and energy investment and exploration decisions (benefit: competitive natural resources sector)
- Inform sustainable development and land use decisions (benefit: evidence-based conservation)
- Understand environmental and public safety risks associated with resource development and geological hazards (benefit: safe infrastructure development)
By providing a diverse, extensive, and sound base of evidence, geoscience also enables decision-makers to quickly respond to society’s evolving expectations for responsible land and resource management.
In developing the PGS, the NGSC recognizes that collaboration and coordination can foster greater efficiency and innovation in geoscience. The NGSC also acknowledges that the benefits of geoscience rely on a synergy of robust geoscience and data, skilled workers, and informed end users.
Where we are and where we’re going
The PGS builds on extensive existing geoscience work and collaborations. This work will continue, with enhanced coordination between geological survey organizations, over the coming months and years.
The NGSC is already starting to take new actions on some of the priority areas described in the PGS. For example:
- As a first step to advance framework geoscience, in 2022–23 the NGSC will hold a series of intergovernmental workshops to identify the most pressing knowledge gaps for each major geological region in Canada. The workshops will establish regionally-specific ranked priorities (e.g. high-resolution mapping, collection of geophysical data), which geological survey organizations can use to plan future projects.
- As part of continuing work to facilitate access to online data, the NGSC will begin a pilot project to integrate mineral occurrence data from several provinces and territories into a single user interface. This builds on a data-readiness analysis conducted in 2020–21.
- The NGSC is conducting environmental scans on the following topics to advance the other PGS priority areas:
- Best practices for mineral and energy potential modelling
- Best practices for hiring and training next generation geoscientists, including how to do this in a fair and inclusive way
- Current efforts by Canadian geological survey organizations to enhance public literacy in geoscience
For more information about PGS implementation so far, check out the NGSC Progress Report (22 pages, 4 MB).
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