Evidence of meeting #25 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parks.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Keenan  Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment
Mike Wong  Executive Director, Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency
Robert McLean  Executive Director, Habitat and Ecosystem Conservation, Department of the Environment

4:25 p.m.

NDP

François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC

Thank you very much.

Since time is flying by, I'll ask one last question.

Fleeting reference was made to Minister Kent's famous round table. Could you provide the objectives of that round table? I gather that no one was invited, that it was people who came forward voluntarily.

Do we have the list of those people and, if so, could we get it?

If you don't have time to answer the question, I would like to ask you to provide us with all the information available, in writing, with the committee's agreement. Otherwise, please explain to us why the information isn't available.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

Thank you.

Unfortunately, the time has expired. But the committee could consider asking for details on that round table: who was invited, the goals, and the outcomes.

Next we have Ms. Ambler.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests today for your thoughtful presentations.

My first question is to Mr. Wong, on engaging young Canadians in conservation at the round table. The opportunity to generate excitement, enthusiasm, and a passion for conservation was discussed. I believe that should start with young people, and it's most easily done.

I'd like to know how we're reaching out to young Canadians, specifically urban young Canadians and new Canadians. You mentioned that in your presentation. You also mentioned using state-of-the art technologies to attract Canadians. We all know that youth use social media more than older folks like me. How are we using these? Are they effective, and are they helping to generate that passion for conservation?

4:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency

Mike Wong

Let's look at youth engagement in some of our workshops on the Rouge Valley National Urban Park. In February, when we had this workshop in collaboration with the University of Toronto at Scarborough, it was a very exciting event. The youth were asked to tell us what they thought should be in a national urban park and how we should go about creating one. This generated a lot of positive input, and we will continue to have engagement with the youth. The Rouge Park is an exciting effort on our part. It's the first time that Canada has created such a model, yet we have the opportunity to engage approximately 20% of Canadians who live around this future national park.

With respect to other initiatives for engagement, we have quite a large number. These include our national parks project, where we partner with musicians who have visited national parks. We use these musicians' videos as a way of engaging youth across the country. On the other side of youth engagement, we have recently launched a project called Operation Unplugged, where we asked selected youth across the country to drop all their smart-phones and electronic devices and travel to national parks and national historic sites and then use social media to tell other youth about their experiences.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON

They have to leave behind their iPhones?

4:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency

Mike Wong

It's called Operation Unplugged.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON

Okay.

4:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency

Mike Wong

This will be a six-episode documentary that will be coming to television. This is done in partnership with GlassBox TV and VIA Rail.

We have activities in the parks and historic sites themselves. I mentioned the GPS guide that's available in some of our parks. We also have activities such as geo-caching. Rather than go on a traditional hike, they're in the national parks looking for treasures and trinkets. These are just a few of the examples we have of youth engagement.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

Thank you; your time has expired.

I needlessly cut short Mr. Choquette's time. He had asked a question regarding the report on the round table in January. He wanted some details on objectives, attendance, and outcomes. Could you comment on that?

4:30 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment

Michael Keenan

I'd be happy to.

The main purpose of the round table was for the Minister of the Environment to begin pulling in ideas, suggestions, inspiration, and direction on how to move forward with a national conservation plan. The minister wanted to develop a broader consultation agenda.

There are about 20 members. We invited people from aboriginal organizations, private sector organizations like the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Forest Products Association, a number of environmental non-governmental organizations like the World Wildlife Federation and Nature Canada, conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited, and academic experts such as Stewart Elgie from the University of Ottawa. It was an opportunity for them to offer their advice on how to move forward in developing this.

There were strong suggestions that we need a national program with a clear national vision. There was advice to go broad, to be innovative, to develop the existing tools and programs, to look at new programs, to think seriously about economic instruments, and to be inclusive when developing the national conservation plan.

I would characterize it as a beginning—the first of many conversations on national engagement in developing a national conservation plan.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

Thank you.

Mr. Choquette, you had 30 seconds; I cut you short. My apologies. I was thinking that we were to be done by five o'clock, so I was backing up the clock, but it's 5:30. That gives us much more time. You have an extra two minutes out of that. Well done.

Mr. Pilon, you have five minutes.

March 8th, 2012 / 4:30 p.m.

NDP

François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC

Thank you.

I would like to ask a few very specific questions in order to understand the ecological gifts program. My questions will be specific because they deal with an issue that affects my riding, namely, Lapierre Island.

Through the ecological gifts program, Lapierre Island is now appraised at $14 million by the government, when it was bought for $400,000 a few years ago. What steps were taken to get to that?

4:30 p.m.

Robert McLean Executive Director, Habitat and Ecosystem Conservation, Department of the Environment

Thank you for your question. Three certifications are required for the ecological gifts program. First is the ecological sensitivity. The second is if the recipient organization is qualified to receive the ecological gift. The third—and an important one—is fair market value.

We have a process, an independent appraisal review panel, that examines all the appraisals that are provided by the donor. We use the Appraisal Institute of Canada guidelines for determining the value. Appraisals are based on the highest and best use of the property. If I recall correctly, the property in question was zoned for two 14-storey buildings. As the appraisers appraise, they don't base their appraisal on what's on the site now, which might be worth $400,000, because there are no structures on that property. Standard appraisal practices for such fair-market evaluation are based on highest and best use.

The highest and best use is based on the potential to put two office towers or condominiums of 14 storeys in height on that property. That's why there's such a large difference in the value of that particular donation.

4:35 p.m.

NDP

François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC

I don't understand how 12 or 14 storey buildings could be built on this island when next to it is the Highway 25 bridge and the government had to wait 40 years before it could build it. There never would have been a bridge next to this island…. But that's another matter.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB

Point of order.

I might ask that my colleagues keep their comments germane to the development of a national conservation plan in the said framework today.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

That is a legitimate point of order, and I encourage Mr. Pilon to make sure that his discussions and questions are germane.

Thank you.

4:35 p.m.

NDP

François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC

Could you please name all the federal programs dedicated to conservation?

4:35 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment

Michael Keenan

Thank you for that question.

I might miss a couple, but I'll be highlighting a few of the key programs, filling in some of these elements of the framework.

We could start with the eco-gifts program, on which you asked a particular question. As my colleague laid out, under certain conditions there is tax assistance for donations of ecologically sensitive land. That has resulted in 400 such donations since 2006, I think. A similar program is the natural areas conservation program, which is a $225-million program in collaboration with conservation organizations, whereby they manage and pull together opportunities to either fully protect ecologically sensitive land or put conservation easements on it to protect habitat and the natural state. There have been 800 transactions. So those two programs have brought in, in the last six or seven years, about 1,200 parcels of ecologically sensitive land from across the country into some state of conservation to protect the local ecosystem.

There are a number of other programs, if you think of that on a conservation stream. If you think of a remediation stream, some significant federal programs have been aimed at remediation. There is about $49 million in the Great Lakes action plan. A lot of that is committed to remediating contaminated sediment in the Great Lakes area as part of our commitments with the U.S. under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

There are a number of those so-called areas of concern where we've been able to bring them, deal with remediation, and essentially take them from being a hot zone back to a more sustainable context. There is a range of additional programs.

I think I might turn it over to you, Bob, to talk about the habitat stewardship program and a couple of others.

4:35 p.m.

Executive Director, Habitat and Ecosystem Conservation, Department of the Environment

Robert McLean

Yes, certainly.

One program I would draw the committee's attention to is a program we share with the United States and Mexico: the North American waterfowl management plan. It started in 1986. To date, in Canada alone, there are nearly 21 million acres of habitat that have been secured and in fact enhanced and improved. There are nearly 108 million acres of habitat that have been influenced. The overall investment, much of which has come from the United States, is just over $1.8 billion since 1986 in this partnership-based program, with $900 million coming from the United States.

It's a partnership-based program, which often is viewed as the way a conservation program should work. It engages not only the conservation community, but also, and in particular, the agricultural sector. The program has expanded into the western boreal as well, so there's an awful lot of partnership-based work happening now with the forest sector.

With respect to the habitat stewardship program Mr. Keenan just alluded to, it has been in existence since 2000. To date, we have over 2,000 projects that have been implemented, with legally binding habitat conservation of about 160,000 hectares. With respect to habitat improvement and one of the restoration questions, on average over the life of the program, about 30,000 hectares of habitat have been improved, and about 725 kilometres of stream-ways have been improved each year since the start of that program.

So those two programs are very significant with respect to the national conservation plan.

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

Thank you.

Mr. Toet, you're next.

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Thank you.

I have a very short time, so I'm going to get straight to a couple of questions. For the first question, I'd appreciate a fairly short response.

There have been some questions about the stakeholders who are at the table, at the initial round table. I'd like to expand on that a bit. Maybe you can even respond to that with some kind of other submission. It's not so much about who was there, which is also important, but I'm sure that there were also many names, organizations, or groups that came up, through that round table, that maybe should be included.

I'd love to have some feedback from you on that. It would help us to also expand on the people we should be hearing from as we go through this process.

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment

Michael Keenan

Sure, we'd be very happy to do that. Maybe I could just rattle off what we think of as some key groups or categories—I think that was an earlier question that came up—and then we'd be happy to dig up a list of people we've come across in them.

One is obviously the large conservation organizations, the national ones. Also, because of the shared ecosystem in North America, to some extent some of the American ones have partnerships in Canada, and they also have interesting practices.

As well, I would say, there are the national wildlife organizations, the anglers and the hunting organizations, the Trout Unlimited types of organizations, because they have a very keen interest in preserving the natural ecosystem.

Industry groups are engaged in this increasingly, we find. I mentioned a couple earlier, but there's a fairly wide range of industry groups that are organizing themselves and are doing some interesting practices on the land.

There are the local conservation organizations that are doing some highly innovative things, whether it's the Beaver Hills tradeable conservation credits out east of Edmonton, or the tradeable water quality in the South Nation watershed just east of here. Bringing these local organizations into the mix would be very helpful.

Of course, there are the aboriginal organizations. There's a range of aboriginal organizations that need to be part of this. They have a particularly important perspective and some interesting ideas.

The other category is what I would call academics and specialists. These are people who have studied innovative mechanisms and innovative arrangements. There are people who have looked at what has been happening in other countries and at some experiments on the ground and getting that in.

Very quickly, I would say that these would be the categories to think of. We'd be pleased to dig up some of the contacts we have and share them with the committee.

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Thank you.

I also wanted to talk about the innovative ways of doing this so that we also have a positive economic outcome on things. We can also use rehabilitation of conservation areas and biodiversity in the ecosystems to deal with local and ongoing issues. One of the things that comes to mind—I'm from the wonderful province of Manitoba, so I know all about flooding—is whether there has been any talk of that initially around the table, of how we can use some of these ideas to bring forward solutions to these issues that will also have great conservation opportunities at the same time.

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment

Michael Keenan

I'd say in general, absolutely. Flood control is a great one. Think of the Canadian boreal forest agreement, in terms of changing the rules of engagement on 76 million hectares across the country. I think they took about 29 million out of production, and the rest they're producing differently. As you manage that differently you have a big impact on flood control in the country, right? In the Manitoba context, that may or may not be that relevant, but in general across the country it is.

In the riparian zones, bringing back some of the narrow strips of conservation around the riparian zones, in terms of the grasslands and the trees, can have a significant effect on water and flood control.

It's interesting. If you look at the broad boreal, I was reading a study recently where they calculated that it produces—in terms of the forest products we all know so well—a tremendous amount of economic value for Canada. It's something in the $50-billion-a-year range, I think. But in terms of estimating the benefits of flood control, the pest control by habitat for birds, the tourism, they worked it out to something like $90 billion a year in terms of economic benefits, in terms of avoided floods, avoided damage, etc. So finding those in a local context where it's particularly important, such as in Manitoba, and finding ways to advance those objectives through conservation is definitely a win-win.

4:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa

Time has expired.

Ms. Leslie.