Environment Committee on Nov. 21st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes. You have three minutes left. We have to stop at noon.

Go ahead.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I know, and I appreciate all three of those minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to move to Mr. Petryshen.

Mr. Petryshen, you laid out a long history of water pollution challenges in the Elk Valley. It seems that despite knowing about this problem for decades and decades, there's been very little progress in addressing the root cause of the problem.

In your view, what are some of the key systemic impediments to resolving those water pollution issues?

[Wyatt Petryshen]

The history in Elk Valley is quite complicated, as many of you know, and it's been going on for a very long time, so there are a lot of legacy issues embedded within Elk Valley.

Over the last couple of decades, the issues with the contamination, especially with selenium, have become more and more obvious, and there's been this continued reluctance to take meaningful action. Some of the witnesses have already spoken to this, but there's typically been a reluctance to impose meaningful fines to require companies to come into compliance. This is something that has occurred in the Elk Valley for decades.

The federal government has taken a positive shift, I think, for that $60-million fine that was given a couple of years ago, but if that action had been taken earlier, I think a lot more would have been done to mitigate this issue.

Another issue is the asymmetrical nature in which decisions have been made. Typically, in regard to mitigation and even restoration work, this is done by the company, and it's typically in line with their bottom dollar. A more whole-of-ecosystem approach and an approach that encompasses all different communities, governments and first nations would be a more prudent path forward to make sure that the well-being of that entire ecosystem is maintained in the future and not just in the short term.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Petryshen.

Now, of course, the Elk Valley is only one of the coal-producing regions of Canada. In the area where I live, Bulkley Valley, there's a proposal for an open-pit coal mine near the Telkwa River in the Skeena watershed. This is a watershed that supports a world-renowned steelhead run as well as all five species of wild salmon.

I'm wondering what advice you would have for the residents of Bulkley Valley and the Skeena watershed who are grappling with this proposal, which would result in the mining of 750,000 tonnes to 825,000 tonnes of coal per year over 25 years. Does the Elk Valley provide a cautionary tale? What advice would you give to the people of the Skeena watershed, based on your experience in the Elk Valley?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Answer fairly briefly if you can, please.

[Wyatt Petryshen]

I think it is a cautionary tale. In many respects, I think that a lot of folks didn't know some of the implications of coal mining, and again, it's been going on for over 100 years in the Elk Valley.

In regard to the potential mine in your area, I think it's making sure that people are fully aware of potential consequences from opening one of these mines and how those short-term economic benefits might play out to long-term economic costs. There are many examples of mines in British Columbia that have shut down and whose remediation has fallen to taxpayers, which has cost them millions of dollars.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much. We're going to stop there.

I want to thank all the witnesses. I apologize for some of the interruptions, but it's all fair game in our system.

Before we go to our second panel, we'll suspend to do the sound tests for the panellists who are online.

Mr. Lillo, thank you for appearing in person.

Mr. Zeman, I invite you to send us the brief you were reading. We will have it translated and distribute it to the committee members. It will be useful for the committee's report.

Thank you.

We will suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Colleagues, we're ready for our second panel.

Before we start, the only pressing item of committee business really to do—and I don't think we need to go in camera for this—is to adopt the budget for the water study.

Is everyone is agreement with adopting the budget?

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

In that case, we won't do committee business at 12:50. We won't do any committee business in camera today. We'll do that on Thursday from 1:00 to 1:30. This will allow us to proceed with our witnesses until one o'clock.

Thank you, colleagues. I appreciate the co-operation.

We have with us Mr. Robert Sopuck, former parliamentarian. It's nice to see you today.

We have Andrew Stegemann, from Our Living Waters.

We have, from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Deborah Curran.

Last, we have David O'Connor from the Regional Environmental Council of Estrie.

Mr. Sopuck, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Robert Sopuck, Former Member of Parliament, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope my sound is coming through well.

There are two aspects to fresh water in Canada: water quality and water quantity. Quality relates to the relative purity of water with regard to human use and ecosystem function. Water quantity relates to the amount of water flowing or being used over a period of time. Water can be overabundant due to floods but scarce during droughts, creating significant water allocation conflicts. As Mark Twain once said, “Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting over.”

The most significant water issues are in the settled parts of Canada where most Canadians live and work, sometimes referred to as the southern working landscape. Water in this area is either surface water or groundwater.

There was a 2009 report entitled “The Sustainable Management of Groundwater in Canada”, which noted:

Nearly a third of Canada's population, some 10 million people, depends on groundwater for safe drinking water and more than 80% of Canada's rural population depends on groundwater.... Canada's groundwater, however, is increasingly under threat from factors such as urbanization, climate change, burgeoning energy production, intensification of agriculture and contamination.

This report provides a useful blueprint for the management of Canada's groundwater resources, and I urge the committee to prioritize groundwater issues.

Regarding surface water quality from a human use perspective, water quality is affected by point-source and non-point-source pollution. Point-source pollution is effluent from a single point, such as industrial and urban facilities. However, non-point-source pollution is diffused and results from land runoff, precipitation, land drainage or hydrological modification. The most prominent result of non-point-source pollution is phosphorus runoff into water bodies, often causing algal bloom, such as in Lake Erie. Such blooms lead to degraded water quality and fish kills and can affect local economies.

Point-source pollution is largely under control or well managed up to a certain point, although I know there are issues still. The 1989 pulp and paper effluent regulations mandated the treatment of toxic effluence from mills, and almost all cities have waste-water treatment plants.

Mitigating non-point-source pollution is difficult and requires landscape-level treatments that are expensive and difficult to implement and may affect local economies.

Regarding water quantity, floods and droughts are the main causes of water quantity issues. Canada's infrastructure needs to be hardened against flooding, as was done by sainted Manitoba premier Duff Roblin when he built the Winnipeg floodway. Built between 1962 and 1968, the floodway cost $63 million and has saved property from damage to the order of $30 billion. That's climate change adaptation at its finest.

The floodway's dikes and dams are examples of hard infrastructure, but natural infrastructure means the creation or the re-creation of lost natural features such as wetlands. This is sometimes referred to as “nature-based solutions”, a concept I strongly support.

A study of the Smith Creek watershed in eastern Saskatchewan estimated that for the 2011 flood, complete restoration of the wetlands to their historic levels decreased the flood peak that year by nearly one-third. Conversely, complete drainage of wetlands increased the 2011 peak by 78%. Constructing small dams has also been shown to protect infrastructure.

Wetlands, whether natural or constructed, also improve water quality and sequester carbon. I recommend that all publicly funded infrastructure programs include the creation of natural infrastructure and support nature-based solutions in addition to the hard engineering.

The best example of drought adaptation is modern agriculture, through which new crop varieties and tillage practices conserve water for crops during droughts. Agriculture is a special case, since farmed land is privately owned, and all of the economic signals incentivize farmers to maximize production.

The miracle of modern agriculture is that people on modest incomes, at least until now, were able to eat well. The current vigorous debates on high food prices are instructive. However, farmers are being asked to conserve public resources on their private lands, such as wetlands, that provide only public benefits and only increase the farmer's costs. Providing incentives to private farmers to deliver non-market public goods will settle this impasse. Public goods include flood control, water quality improvement, biodiversity, conservation, and carbon sequestration. This could be very significant, since much of the southern working landscape is farmed and in private hands.

There are many examples in North America, but one I'm most familiar with is Manitoba's growth program, which provides financial incentives for producers to conserve wetlands. Alberta has developed a similar approach, but these programs need to be scaled up significantly.

Canada has been very late to the game of incentive-based conservation on private lands, and we are behind the U.S. and Europe, where the Farm Bill and the common agricultural policy, respectively, support large-scale private land conservation as a high priority.

I hope the committee will provide strong recommendations to the government to establish private land conservation programs on a scale similar to those in the United States and Europe.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck, for a very interesting and insightful brief.

Thank you for bringing up groundwater, because there is a misconception in Canada that we have a lot of groundwater, but it's under threat, from what I've heard, and you've confirmed that.

We'll go now to Mr. Stegemann for five minutes, please.

[Andrew Stegemann, Former National Director, Our Living Waters, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the members of the committee.

My name is Andrew Stegemann. I am the former national director of Our Living Waters, as well as the former chair of the Canadian Coalition for Healthy Waters.

I am calling from Vancouver, B.C., which is on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh.

When we consider the health of our waters, we often focus on specific problems like managing pollution, but we do so in the absence of a larger consideration of integrated watershed management. If we are to properly manage the pollution in our waters, we have to think like water.

To see the point more clearly, consider a body of water in your riding—a river or a lake or a stream you particularly like. The health of that water is, of course, impacted by what happens on the land surrounding it. If contaminants are spilled on the land, it seeps into the water.

However, the health of that water is also impacted by what happens upstream. For example, water in the St. Lawrence River flowing past MP Pauzé's riding is impacted upstream by water in the St. Lawrence flowing by Montreal in MP Scarpaleggia's riding, by water in the Ottawa River flowing by MP Chatel's riding, by water flowing in the Rouge River in MP Taylor Roy's riding, by water in Sixteen Mile Creek in MP van Koeverden's riding, by water in the Credit River in MP Ali's riding, and by water flowing in the Grand River watershed in MP Longfield's riding. All of that meets up downstream with water flowing out of the Saint-Charles River through MP Deltell's riding and into the St. Lawrence outside of Quebec City.

In that small example, we've just connected eight out of 12 members of this committee, three political parties, two provinces and countless traditional territories of indigenous peoples, in addition to regional and local governments, not to mention the impact of decisions made by our U.S. neighbours to the south. Those are a lot of interconnections—interconnections that the federal government, with a Canada-wide gaze on these issues, especially needs to consider when thinking about the management of pollution or other water health issues in general.

With this as background, I have five specific recommendations I'd humbly suggest this committee make in its final report. These recommendations mirror the five foundational pillars put forward by the Canadian Coalition for Healthy Waters, which consists of over 65 member organizations right across the country. The coalition is currently co-chaired by the Forum for Leadership on Water and the de Gaspé Beaubien Foundation. They are recommendations that should be applied to every aspect of the government's policy and institutional levers, including legislation, regulations, policies, institutions like the emerging Canada water agency and all government water investments.

First, the Government of Canada should meaningfully advance its commitment to reconciliation with indigenous peoples by developing pathways and providing resources for the co-governance of shared waters with indigenous nations, including recognizing and upholding inherent indigenous water rights and authority, and fulfilling the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Second, the Government of Canada should play a key role in creating and mobilizing the knowledge and tools, both western and indigenous, needed to understand, predict and respond to water challenges and opportunities, particularly against the backdrop of climate change. This includes enhanced funding to amplify existing data collection and dedicated support for community-based water monitoring.

Third, the Government of Canada should take steps to strengthen co-operation across this federation around shared water decision-making and management among different levels of government. This includes respecting the jurisdiction of indigenous nations and peoples, as well as provincial, territorial and municipal governments; and focusing on high-level capacity support while providing leadership and guidance on water management best practices.

Fourth, the Government of Canada should lead through an approach that emphasizes the importance of watershed boundaries in all decision-making. This watershed approach considers interconnected ecological, social, economic and cultural values that must be balanced to ensure the well-being of communities and ecosystems across our interconnected watersheds. This includes supporting watershed-based collaboration across this country and working to ensure adequate environmental flows to provide enough water to make certain that life thrives.

Finally, the Government of Canada should prioritize renewing outdated federal water laws and policies. The immediate focus should be on renewing the over 50-year-old Canada Water Act, in collaboration with provincial, territorial and indigenous governments.

Further, to ensure that the renewed Canada Water Act is consent-based and rooted in nation-to-nation relationships, the act should be co-drafted with indigenous nations.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stegemann.

You used a well-worn political tactic, which is to mention as many people as possible.

We'll go now to Ms. Curran.

[Deborah Curran, Executive Director, Canadian Environmental Law Association]

Thank you.

I'm coming to you here on WSÁNEĆ territory and also that of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples.

I just wanted to clarify that I'm with the Environmental Law Centre, which is a non-profit organization working within the faculty of law at the University of Victoria. We deliver a clinic program through which students and staff provide over 6,000 hours of pro bono legal assistance in Canada each year to indigenous and community organizations. I'm not with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, as was stated.

Over the past decade, clients have engaged with the Environmental Law Centre to work on many different freshwater issues that are within the jurisdiction of the federal government. I rely on that work as the basis for this submission.

To provide some context, you know all about water, so I'm not going to fill you in on anything. I just want to highlight two things that are really driving change in the freshwater sphere and also in relation to laws and policies and their implementation.

The first one is that the way in which we're going to address these interconnected hydrological problems and issues at a watershed scale is through partnerships with indigenous communities. Whether we're seeing unprecedented multi-year droughts or we're seeing the intensification of storm events, it's really in watersheds that integrated collaborative management and governance is going to occur. I can give you some examples of where that's happening in British Columbia.

The second thing is that the actual impacts around water are being seen much more intensely, certainly driven by climate change in the last four or five years. My second point is that the federal government has a lot of tools already. My particular expertise is law. There are a lot of laws and legal tools on the books that are simply not being used to the extent that they could be to address the changing conditions that are going on right now. In particular, I point to the Canada Water Act and a renewal of the Canada Water Act, and also certain provisions of the Fisheries Act.

Those are my contextual statements. I'll just make two points around collaborative governance and then environmental flows as they're related to pollution, because the two go hand in hand.

We've seen some interesting court decisions recently. Here in British Columbia, courts now recognize that treaty and aboriginal rights are limiting the way in which state governments make decisions about natural resource development across the landscape. I'm referring to the Yahey decision from 2021 in British Columbia, which found that the cumulative impacts of primarily oil and gas development in northeast B.C. was a treaty infringement of those nations.

We're also seeing, at the same time, consent-based processes for new mines, water quality and broader conservation, such as for protected areas. With the federal funding for meeting the biodiversity targets of “30 by 30”, there is a lot of funding available to improve on conservation areas.

In terms of collaborative governance, we're seeing that in many cases it is indigenous communities that are leading the way, in partnership with the province and sometimes with federal funding. I can point you to, for example, the Gitanyow Aks Ayookxw water policy that they have just launched, which is based on both western science and their legal order. It is a process that anyone using water in their territory needs to abide by.

I also point you to—you might have already spoken about this with federal staff—the decades-long monitoring of water quality and quantity by the first nations in the Peace-Athabasca delta and the federal government's commitment to further work in that area.

My final points relate to both flow and pollution.

The way in which we do environmental regulation related to water in Canada is still very much along the principle of dilution being the solution to pollution. As flows change—I'm particularly pointing to low flows—pollution concentrates. There has never been a meaningful conversation with indigenous people about, for example, what that means for the Fraser River and the fish coming up the Fraser River. That is now occurring quite extensively with the nations in the Peace-Athabasca delta in relation to Wood Buffalo National Park as a result of a lot of pressure from UNESCO and various other fora.

I would echo the comments of the panel before us around the international impacts of the pollution from Elk Valley and the need for the federal government to more fully use its existing legal tools to take an interest in freshwater issues that are of national concern. They're of national scope and concern, not just interjurisdictionally but within federal lands, as they are affecting fisheries. The federal government does have a lot of room to act.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

You mentioned that not all provisions of the Fisheries Act are being used to their fullest, or are being used at all. Would you mind sending us some examples that we could distribute to committee members and that the analysts could incorporate in the draft report?

I will go now to Mr. O'Connor.

[David O'Connor, Project Manager, Invasive Species, Regional Environmental Council of Estrie]

Hello, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for inviting me today.

I was born in Ottawa, and it was also here, at Carleton University, that I discovered my passion for ecology.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is translation not working?

Everything seems to be working now.

You may continue, Mr. O'Connor.

[David O'Connor]

Right.

My name is David O'Connor and I am the project manager at the Regional Environmental Council of Estrie. Before going any further, I want to clarify that I am here in my personal capacity, and not as a representative of the Regional Environmental Council of Estrie or of the Regroupement national des conseils régionaux de l'environnement du Québec.

If you are wondering why I have come to talk to you about invasive aquatic species in the context of pollution, it is because no other pollutant containing so few contaminants can have as much impact as biological pollutants. Less than a millilitre of water contaminated by a species such as the zebra mussel, the quagga mussel or the spiny water flea can have major repercussions for our indigenous species, destroy the recreation and tourism economy, and create major costs for our municipalities for modifying and managing their water facilities.

Take the example of Lake Mégantic. When the disaster happened ten years ago, hundreds or even thousands of litres of petroleum products were spilled into the lake. Today, the lake is recovering. Compare that with Lake Temiskaming, where the spiny water flea has been introduced. A significant decline in the populations of perch and other recreational fishing species has been observed.

The federal government already plays an important role, and it is really important that it take the lead in the areas where it needs to act. A number of federal agencies have a role to play, including the Canadian Transportation Agency, which manages pleasure craft licences and pleasure craft operator cards. Outside the Great Lakes and watercourses where commercial vessels navigate, pleasure craft are the main source of contamination by invasive aquatic species.

In my work, I am developing a regional strategy to combat invasive aquatic species. This is a project funded by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That is another role played by the federal government. In the course of this work, I have studied what happens elsewhere extensively.

I believe we are ten to 15 years behind the Western Aquatic Invasive Species Resource Center, an organization that brings together the states and provinces in western North America. At the border, in several states, the organization operates a boat inspection and decontamination station that is open 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It is illegal to pass one of these stations with a boat without stopping, regardless of whether it is a kayak or a water sports craft. These activities are funded by renewals of boat registrations and licences. A portion of the money collected is therefore used to support this effort.

In addition, I believe we are five to ten years behind New York state, which spends over $9 million per year just on a program that makes it possible to have individuals responsible for meeting people at boat launches and for inspecting and decontaminating boats.

It is essential that the federal government play a role to help municipalities, regions and provinces better manage invasive aquatic species. In Estrie alone, we have one of the most contaminated watercourses apart from the Great Lakes: Lake Champlain, which empties into Missisquoi Bay and feeds into the Richelieu River. The region also has several lakes that cross the international border. We therefore need to take action beyond the merely regional level.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That is really fascinating. Thank you, Mr. O'Connor.

We will now proceed to the question round, where the time allotted will be six minutes. However, I will allow myself a little more flexibility, given that if each person were allotted seven minutes, we could conclude right on time, at 1:00 p.m.

Mr. Leslie, you have the floor.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start with Mr. Sopuck, given that B.C. Wildlife was here but had some technical difficulties.

I know you're an avid hunter and angler. I wonder if you can speak to the role that community plays in managing our freshwater resources and how we can go about better recognizing that reality.

[Robert Sopuck]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Leslie.

What's different about the hunting and angling community in Canada, versus everybody else who talks about environmental conservation, is that these people actually get their hands dirty and are out there in the field cleaning up rivers, improving fish habitat and creating wildlife habitat. They number about five million people. They are always forgotten in these kinds of fora.

For example, the Smithsonian Institute in the United States did a major study on bird abundance, and they found that the only bird species that are doing well are waterfowl. They attribute it directly to the work and positive actions taken by hunters and anglers, who collectively prioritized preserving these species. There was a group of people who actually went on the ground and got their hands dirty.

I noticed in the testimony from the B.C. Wildlife Federation.... Unfortunately, his talk was truncated, but he talked about on-the-ground work that's done.

When we were in government, we instituted something called the recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program. Over the three years that the program ran, there were literally hundreds of freshwater projects conducted by Canada's angling groups with regard to fish habitat and fish population enhancement. It was a remarkable story of community partnerships with government.

Unfortunately—and it's a fact, not my opinion—when the new government came in, they cancelled that program.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

You mentioned your time in the Harper government. Back in 2012, a former government amended the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Act. This government, when it came in, made some significant changes to reverse that.

Could you explain why those changes were made back in 2005, and your thoughts on the abandoning of those changes that were originally made by the Harper government?

[Robert Sopuck]

Sure. I did a paper on the Fisheries Act for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy way back in 2002. The Fisheries Act defined habitat extremely broadly, so basically any puddle or any little drainage ditch were all considered fish habitat. Second, it talked about the factors that not only affected fish but had the potential to affect fish. What that did was make basically every single water body a fish habitat.

When the fisheries officers descended upon rural communities—and, of course, always carrying side arms, which we found very strange in a farmers' meeting—they were very much meddling in the private activities of private landowners and their farming activities.

I recall a study that we did at the fisheries committee—I was also on the fisheries committee for nine years—and we were in opposition at the time. We had a look at the changes we made to the Fisheries Act. One of the witnesses was a Mr. Ron Bonnett. Mr. Mazier knows him. At that time, Mr. Bonnett was president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. He was scathing in his critique of DFO's having descended on farms. He said that the enforcement was inconsistent, that it didn't work, and that it actually inhibited him from doing fish habitat programs.

The other reason we changed the Fisheries Act is that we actually wanted to focus on fish. Fish habitat is supposed to produce fish, so we focused on fish production.

Regarding the Navigable Waters Protection Act, it was a similar kind of thing to the Fisheries Act. Every little water body that could float a canoe was considered navigable. The act was promulgated in the 1800s when water navigation was prominent and important in Canada. It has become much less so because of railroads and trucking. At the time, we created the Navigation Protection Act, with the point being to protect navigation on those waters that are actually being used for commercial navigation.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

I'm switching gears again a bit, and I'll ask you to answer in about a minute, if you can.

You mentioned the work that Duff Roblin did in Manitoba. You seemed to indicate you favour that adaption and mitigation approach to tackling climate change and the impacts of it, rather than implementing taxes to try resolve the problem. Could you expand on why you take that approach?

[Robert Sopuck]

I have yet to have anybody explain to me how a carbon tax in Canada will affect anything that happens in Canada in terms of droughts, floods and all those kinds of things. Again, we're all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. The fact that Canada emits 1.5% of global CO2 means that not much we do in Canada will have any effect either on the global climate or on Canada's, in general.

Where we can make a significant impact is through adaptation and mitigation. Protecting our natural heritage, our great forests and grasslands as carbon sinks, is critically important. That's why I talked about natural infrastructure.

In terms of hard infrastructure, what Duff Roblin did.... We didn't call it climate change back then, but the miracle of the Winnipeg floodway and the associated flood control works have saved Winnipeg many times over.

One last point I want to make about the federal government is we're trying to build a lake—