Evidence of meeting #20 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chemicals.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
The community pride helps.
Ms. Conant, you talked about some of the largest contributing factors, population growth pressures being one of them. Could you expand on that a little bit? It's something we've been looking at in this committee.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Water Network
Sure. We were parsing it in two ways. You have projected population growth in Canada. Also, my colleagues in the water community are always talking about the fact that even in the global sense, Canada has a lot of water. Most of the population is in the south, concentrated in certain areas. We create scarcity through increasing demand, basically by increasing industry and development, sometimes a bit above the carrying capacity of local water resources.
There are the local pressures that will come with increasing population growth and thus development in any corridor. In the Great Lakes basin, there are many discussions about protecting green space, creating corridors. Those pressures will continue.
The other part that I spoke to is the larger picture; that is, we're part of the interconnectedness of global population increase. There is an expectation there will be nine billion people by 2050. I think by 2030 it's already projected to be eight billion. The expectation is that if we go on as we are doing, we will require 40% more delivered or developed water supplies globally to sustain those populations.
It's not just the population growth itself, but the fact that so many of the world's economies, particularly the BRIC nations, are rising in economic status. When you rise in economic status, that means the diet changes and the expectation of consumer consumption is changed. It's not just that there are more people on the planet, but now they're starting to use water resources as we are in Europe and North America and the developed world.
One thing that is part of the durable competitive advantage in the way we talk about managing our water well so that we're able to deal with those population increases is what I talked about. It's an economic reality that there are products and services needed to serve that emergent world.
I may have the numbers wrong, but I have a report which says, I think, that Canada is one of the top five agricultural exporting countries in the world. What distinguishes us is that a couple of those are right up against the top.... Australia is right up there, but they have basically maximized, with the droughts they have, what they can produce. Canada still has quite a long way to go.
The expectation that literally feeding the world—producing goods and services that other countries have difficulty producing because they don't have the benefit of these water resources—is likely to be the larger pressure and opportunity or benefit for Canada in terms of population increase. We see that it is going to require good stewardship to take advantage of it.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you.
Mr. Storseth, I want to commend you on your generosity. You left Mr. Williams a negative 1.2 minutes.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Well, I notice that he ran when he saw his time was coming up.
April 3rd, 2014 / 4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
I have found over the years in looking at this issue that water is such a diffuse issue—I mean, so many people are working on it in different capacities and at different levels of government and at the grassroots level—that whenever there's a problem such as with water quality in the Great Lakes, which I know is a big problem, there is no lever you can pull on to say, “We'll do this and solve the problem.” The issue seems to be coordination, but there's so much to coordinate that we can't seem to wrap our minds around it.
As I understand the problem in the Great Lakes, it's that there are many components. One is waste water, which contributes to pollution in the Great Lakes.
Last week, I went to see a presentation by one of your colleagues—was it Dr. Blais?—who came to speak to us. She is a biologist at the University of Ottawa. She said that really it's not good that we still have waste water problems, but they seem to pale in comparison, if I understood her correctly, with the problem of phosphorus coming though agricultural runoff.
I was interested, Mr. Florean, to hear what you had to say about how you have improved streams and prevented agricultural runoff.
Earlier in the presentation today, someone mentioned the federal environmental farm program. What is it, and how does it link with efforts such as yours and those of other watershed groups and with provincial regulations regarding agricultural buffer zones and so on?
Can you give me a picture of how all this might work? Is this federal environmental farm program useful, or is the government going to say soon that it's better that the provinces do it?
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Water Network
I have a little familiarity with it. I would turn this over to Theresa, who can tell you more about the details.
I can tell you, from working between the academic and the agricultural community, that in just the kind of circumstance you're describing, people are always asking themselves, “If I can't get my hands around all of it, is there a piece I can do?” This is really the guts of the stewardship movement: people can see the goal and align around the goal.
I'll pass this to Theresa, but in my experience of dealing with the farm communities and with questions about best management, the environmental farm program was one of the programs they were happiest with and proudest of. In terms of being able to demonstrate that their intent was to be good environmental stewards, it gave them a framework they felt they could use.
Theresa, could you maybe talk to the specifics of the program, through the chair?
4:45 p.m.
Executive Director and Counsel, Canadian Environmental Law Association
It was primarily a federal program, but it was undertaken under federal-provincial arrangements, and then other programs were often leveraged, such as the Canada-Ontario agreement or, in Ontario, source water protection. Over the years, extensive efforts were undertaken that alleviated water pollution into waterways from agricultural and other non-point sources.
I agree with Ms. Conant that it was perceived to be a huge success. My understanding is that it doesn't have the same level of funding, and I would strongly encourage that this model be pursued again. It is a stewardship model, which Mr. Florean has been discussing. I think everyone who was involved would agree it was very successful.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
It was a funding and stewardship program sharing best practices.
In terms of industrial pollutants, the legacy pollutants are down, which is a good thing, but there are new pollutants coming on stream. At one point I remember reading that there were 23,000 chemicals in commerce in Canada and—correct me if I'm wrong—there were only plans, under the chemicals management plan, to manage 10 of these 23,000 chemicals. I remember from when they were doing the CEPA review there were so many chemicals in the system and yet we only have toxic management plans for a limited number, and it takes a long time to evaluate all these chemicals.
Is my understanding correct?
4:45 p.m.
Researcher, Canadian Environmental Law Association
I'll take that question.
You're right, Francis. The categorization process that was required under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act reviewed the 23,000 chemicals that were on the domestic substances list. From that, the seven-year legal obligation was concluded in 2006, and about 4,500 emerged as chemicals that needed additional assessment. The chemicals management plan currently is dealing with what they consider are medium priority chemicals.
4:45 p.m.
Researcher, Canadian Environmental Law Association
In regard to the original 100 or so chemicals that went through the industry challenge, the government is currently looking at them from the perspective of whether they meet the criteria for being toxic under CEPA, and it is now developing a risk management plan to apply to some of those chemicals. For example, the brominated flame retardants came through that process. Some the perfluorinated chemicals have come through the process. In those situations, there have been regulations put in place. But certainly, in the context of the Great Lakes, those assessments that were done under CEPA didn't look specifically at the impacts to the Great Lakes; they looked at them nationwide. There's some value in—
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Is there a lot of work that remains to be done in terms of the chemical management plan to better regulate those chemicals that are impacting the Great Lakes?
4:45 p.m.
Researcher, Canadian Environmental Law Association
Well, that's not the intent of CEPA, but certainly that's what we'd like to see in the context of the Great Lakes, yes.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
We'll move ahead to the next round then, if you're through, Mr. Scarpaleggia.
We'll move to the five-minute rounds, starting with Mr. Bevington.
4:45 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I'm interested in getting into the same topic as Mr. Scarpaleggia did on the contaminants, because we are dealing with water quality here. We've heard a lot about nutrient loading, a lot about the impact of agriculture, and maybe we'll get to that a little bit later.
When it comes to these new chemicals, some of them are bioaccumulators and some are just present in the water course. Is that correct?
4:45 p.m.
Professor, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
The persistent organic pollutants are the ones that are toxic bioaccumulative and persistent. Some substances are not very persistent; they don't stick around for very long. Others are much more persistent and bioaccumulative, so we tend to give them more attention.
4:45 p.m.
Professor, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes. PFOS was the major ingredient in Scotchgard prior to 2001. It was thought to be well contained. It was thought to be not something that would be subject to long-range transport. Then there were studies done that showed very high levels of PFOS in polar bears.
In 2001, 3M took all the Scotchgard off the shelves and reformulated it to remove PFOS. It had all of those criteria. It turned out to be persistent, toxic, bioaccumulative, and subject to long-range transport.