GANS AGM

This week (Thursday, May 30), I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Geomatics Association of Nova Scotia at the ESRI Canada office in Bedford.

I received their 2024 Award of Distinction. Their motto is ‘location matters’.

Simeon Roberts invited me to give a ‘dry run’ of my CSRS presentation ‘Fifty years of GIS and RS at COGS’. To be delivered in Halifax in June.

Of particular interest to me was the concern of GANS on education. This has been heightened by the cancellation of GIS programs (among other programs) at SSFC (Sir Sanford Fleming College) in Ontario and at RRU (Royal Roads University) and Vancouver Island University (Masters Program) in British Columbia. Their closure appears to be the result of the federal reduction in funding for foreign students coming to Canada. GANS expressed the concern of the possibility of increased competition, elsewhere in Canada for COGS graduates.

To counteract the shortage of qualified GIS/RS professionals, we must better understand that ‘geography matters’ to address the issues of climate change across the vast, diverse landscape of Canada. We need a better understanding of our geography and access to appropriate training in the related technologies of GIS and RS. This will likely require input from the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), as well as the GIS community at the federal level. We need the equivalent of CACRS (Canada Advisory Committee on Remote Sensing) — a CACGIS ( Canada Advisory Committee on GIS).

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