It will be me, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. It is a pleasure for me to be here with you.
I would like to introduce to you Ginny Flood, National Director, Environmental assessments and major projects.
I'll go through the presentation. I'll be following it loosely probably, because what I'm really interested in doing is explaining what the law says and how it applies to the types of projects that we see in the oil sands. I'll be covering as well some of the jurisdictional issues that we have with the province as to how we work together with the province and with other stakeholders.
We'll look at slide three. The Fisheries Act has two main provisions for regulating fish habitat. One says that you're not allowed to kill fish by means other than fishing unless you have the authorization of the minister. The other says that you're not allowed to harm, alter, disrupt or destroy fish habitat unless you have the authorization of the minister. That's important to understand, because if you do require an authorization, then there's a trigger in the Environmental Assessment Act that says you do require an environmental assessment. So if you're going to either kill fish or destroy or alter habitat, you'll need an authorization and you'll also trigger an environmental assessment.
Of course this is all done on a project-by-project basis, so if the proponent has a development that it wants to undertake, we review that development as a stand-alone project and the authorization is issued with respect to a particular project.
The Environmental Assessment Act, however, does require us to consider cumulative environmental effects, and that's a concept that's important to bear in mind as well. I'll talk about that later when I get into the water management framework.
I would like to make note of the last point on this page. It relates to the cumulative effects. Looking at a project in isolation is useful, but because water is connected, projects do have a cumulative effect. When we think there will be a significant environmental impact, in some cases due to the cumulative effect of multiple projects, then we'll recommend or suggest that the minister recommend to the Minister of the Environment that a panel environmental assessment be held. In the last four developments, that's been our recommendation.
Slide four talks a little bit about Fisheries Act authorizations. An important concept to understand is that our preference would be that people not kill fish and that they not destroy or alter habitat. So the process we go through when working with proponents is actually to help them look for ways to avoid doing that damage. We're proposing, on the basis of science, different ways that they can mitigate the effects of their development. But in some cases it can't be avoided, and then we get into the discussion of authorization. To be able to authorize destruction, we'll seek some sort of compensation.
Typically oil sands projects, as you're aware, have two effects on the water system: one, they'll either divert streams or tributaries, because there's a big open pit and there may be streams running through the area. Compensation in those cases is typically a diversion of the stream around the area so that water can still flow, or in some cases creating a new water body to replace one that would be eliminated.
The second impact that these types of projects have is that they draw water from the watershed. That's something we need to be aware of as well, because the fish need that water to live in. So we'll evaluate the amount of water that's required for the fish to actually survive.
Slide five, to pick up on my last point, talks about how this is an area of shared jurisdiction, because the province regulates the volume of water that's being used by proponents and we're interested in the amount of water that's needed for the fish and their habitat to be viable.
We have to work quite closely together, and we've found a way to combine these two interests by developing a water management framework. This has been a product of discussions that began in a multi-stakeholder organization called the Cumulative Effects Management Association. The two key decision-makers in that organization are the province and the federal government.
I'll move on to slide six and talk about the framework in a bit more detail.
The water management framework is the tool we've developed to address the cumulative effects of all these projects in the watershed. The easiest way to explain this is to think about the watershed as being a series of tributary streams flowing into the lower Athabasca River. Every time you eliminate a stream or divert it, you're going to be affecting the flow of the water, not only in terms of the volume but in terms of the rate the water flows through the water system. Both those factors are important to us from a fish and fish habitat perspective. Fish need a certain amount of water to live in, but the rate and flow of the water is also important.
We know over the course of a year that the rate of flow varies naturally. The framework uses a scientific model to say what an acceptable variation in water flow is over the course of a year. It actually sets a range. If the water flow is above this level, usually a unit of volume of water per second in a unit of time, then we're okay, but if we go a little below that we're starting to get into a cautionary zone. There's also a red zone. We're of the view that if you get into that low level of water flow you're actually going to cause destruction to fish habitat.
This is a useful framework for industry to know how we will be evaluating their project. They can use it as a planning tool. And as a decision-maker, we can ask proponents what the rate of water withdrawal will be from the watershed and predict what effect that might have on fish habitat. Again, the goal is to avoid harm or destruction to fish habitat. We prefer that proponents find ways to avoid getting into that yellow or red zone.
It's the province that actually sets the conditions on how much water can be withdrawn. It's their legislative power that sets the conditions on water removal. We're interested, because if a proponent were to exceed that or put in a plan where there would be a risk of water actually being withdrawn at a rate that reduces the flow in the streams to a low level, that would cause the trigger for our authorization.
Right now, with oil sands being in the very early stage of development, there are not so many projects that in-stream flow requirements are a problem. But we can foresee that if there's further development we'll have to use this tool much more carefully. It will become much more important to the decision-makers, to guide our decision-making with respect to how much development we allow in the area.
It's quite a useful tool. It does allow people to monitor. It's the province that monitors the amount of water that's being used, and it can be used in real time to say what is happening today. The information can be shared with the proponents and decisions can be made to actively manage this process.
The final slide is just to say we're obviously not working alone. We're a full participant working closely with the Province of Alberta. We're consulting actively with all the stakeholders, including first nations, and in our decision-making process, although the legislation is primarily focused on environmental needs, there are mechanisms--and if you want, we can talk about these--that allow us to balance the socio-economic needs as well.