Aug. 6, 2019
For Immediate Release

Waterloo – For nearly 10 years, Wilfrid Laurier University and the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) have been working together on a partnership that has brought new research expertise and training opportunities to the Northwest Territories and deep community connections and research opportunities to Laurier scholars.

Now, that partnership will continue for another 10 years, with a recently signed 2020-2030 partnership agreement.

“The collaboration between Laurier and the Government of the Northwest Territories has resulted in more benefits than any of us envisioned when we began our partnership in 2010,” said Laurier President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy. “Together, we have broken new ground in research important to Canada and the planet, trained many students and research associates and built state-of-the-art infrastructure that will facilitate research for years to come. Continuing our partnership will enable us to deepen our understanding of the challenges facing Canada’s North.”

“The GNWT-Laurier Partnership is a prime example of how researchers and the public service can work together to advance research priorities that respond directly to the needs, concerns and questions of northerners,” said GNWT Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Robert C. McLeod. “By collaborating as learning partners, the GNWT and Laurier have fostered significant advancements in monitoring and research that ensure we are able to make decisions based on the best available scientific, local and traditional knowledge for the people of the Northwest Territories.”

“We expect our second decade of partnership with the Northwest Territories to build on our successes to result in even more profound research, deeper community-level partnerships, and more evidence-based initiatives that make a positive impact on people and ecosystems,” said Laurier’s Executive Director of Cold Regions and Water Initiatives, Professor Kelly Munkittrick.

The first decade of the GNWT-Laurier partnership has seen many milestones, including:

• Opening Laurier’s Yellowknife research office to establish a year-round presence and deepen partnerships in the Northwest Territories.
• Training more than 280 undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to date, some of whom have stayed to work in the Northwest Territories.
• Leading projects in the Northwest Territories involving over 15 different universities across Canada.
• Attracting $33.5 million in external research funding to date.
• Building a network of research facilities and “living laboratories” in the Northwest Territories through the Changing Arctic Network project funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Currently 1.4 million square kilometres of boreal forest and tundra are involved as research areas.
• Providing leadership in cold regions research through the Northern Water Futures project, a Global Water Futures (GWF)-funded, Northwest Territories-focused consortium working to address the impacts of climate change and industrial activity on water resources.
• Leading the Sub-Arctic Metal Mobility Study, a GWF-funded project focusing on how legacy pollutants from mining activity, particularly legacy gold mining operations near Yellowknife, may move through the landscape and affect water and aquatic organisms.
• Starting Global Water Citizenship, a GWF-funded project to help develop community monitoring of freshwater and other citizen-science initiatives, particularly in the Northwest Territories.
• Building the Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science, a state-of-the-art research facility located in Waterloo.
• Establishing the first boreal forest dynamics plot in the NWT as part of the Smithsonian Institute Forest Global Earth Observatories (ForestGEO)
• Bringing Laurier students and northern high school students together through field courses and on-the-land camp experiences.
• Starting Water Knowledge Camps, a project funded by GWF and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council to strengthen community partnerships in the Sahtú region through shared on-the-land experiences.

Learn More

• The Government of Northwest Territories and Wilfrid Laurier University Partnership (Report)