Evidence of meeting #88 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was management.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Noon
Liberal
Sophie Chatel Liberal Pontiac, QC
This is the aspect that concerns me most because it will come into force on January 1, 2024. I'd like an update from the department.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
So we are adding a request.
Ms. Pauzé, we will now proceed to the vote on your objection.
If you vote in favour of this objection, you agree with Ms. Pauzé that Mrs. Chatel's amendment is out of order.
Noon
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The question is, shall the chair's ruling be sustained?
Noon
Liberal
Noon
NDP
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay, if you vote.... Maybe you could express this better than I can.
Madame Pauzé is challenging the chair. If members vote yes, are they voting for Madame Pauzé's challenge or are they voting to sustain the chair?
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The question is, shall the chair's ruling be sustained? If you vote yes, you're sustaining the chair. If you vote no, you're supporting the challenge.
Just be very clear what the question is. It has nothing to do with Madame Pauzé. It has nothing to do with Madame Chatel. It has to do with you, the chair.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
If you're voting yes, you're voting for the chair. If you're voting no—
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
It's on the decision that this is in order. The whole thing is about—
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
It's about whether it's in order, so if you're voting yes, you're saying that it's in order. If you're voting no, you're saying it's not in order and you're disagreeing with the chair.
Does everyone understand?
If you vote yes, it means you agree with the chair's decision. The amendment is therefore in order. If you vote no, it's the opposite.
(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 6; yeas 5)
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
The amendment is therefore out of order.
We will continue to debate the motion.
Mrs. Chatel, you have proposed an amendment, so we'll have to give the floor to another member of the committee.
Mr. van Koeverden, you have the floor.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
This is Mr. Mazier's motion.
It's on your motion with the friendly amendment that you accepted.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Mr. Leslie, you're next. You can call for the vote if you want.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will be brief. I didn't have a chance.... I haven't read through it in detail. I appreciate your bringing to our attention that there is a document on the website now.
I think there's an important distinction in the motion itself that calls for all the documents and modelling related to this, so while there might be an online version of one set of data, I suspect the environment department has done numerous types of modelling and has probably collected it into this document it put on its website, which states that everything is fine. I think it's worth asking the department to provide all the documentation, as per the motion.
With that, I will call for a vote.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay. Let's vote on Mr. Mazier's motion.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
After all that, we have arrived at a unanimous decision.
It's now time to vote in the House. So I'm going to suspend the meeting. We'll resume the session as soon as we've voted.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I call this meeting back to order. We have permission to continue until 1:30 p.m., so I'd like us to start right away, so that we have a full hour with the second witness panel.
I would like to welcome Professors Beisner and Orihel, who will be testifying as individuals.
We also welcome Ms. Wanda McFadyen, Executive Director of the Assiniboine River Basin Initiative.
Finally, Mr. Marc Hudon, from the Forum for Leadership on Water, also joins us.
Ms. Beisner, you have the floor for five minutes.
12:30 p.m.
Beatrix Beisner Professor and Researcher, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for your invitation.
Today, I'd like to share a few scientific principles on how freshwater ecosystems work and, in particular, why it's important to adopt a watershed-based approach.
Freshwaters are by nature connected ecosystems with directionality in their fluxes and flows. The watershed of a waterbody is more simply defined as the entire land area drained by a body of water, including groundwater aquifers.
All activity within a watershed that can influence the quality of water that flows as precipitation, irrigation or groundwater will influence the associated waterbodies.
While we still have a lot to learn scientifically about all the significant connections, we know with certainty that human activity in watersheds influences their aquatic ecosystems, and that there is directionality of flows through watersheds. Thus, disturbances can influence aquatic ecosystems even if the effects occur far away, although attention is often focused on uses near waterbodies.
Unfortunately, watershed boundaries, defined by the landscape's topography, rarely overlap with political boundaries. Our cities and farming, mining and forestry activities often overlap more than one watershed, or unduly occupy a large proportion of a given watershed.
Recent work we have conducted as part of the NSERC Lake Pulse Network, which sampled over 650 lakes across Canada, has shown that even urbanization levels of less than 5% in a watershed can lead to changes in the organisms present in a lake, potentially influencing ecosystem functioning. Thus, aquatic ecosystem structure and function are partially driven by what happens in the watershed, and not only by internal functioning within the waterbody itself. We call these “allochthonous influences” on a waterbody; these will complement, and in some cases even overwhelm, the internal “autochthonous” interactions within a waterbody.
Given the effects of climate change, such as the forest fires and increasingly intense storm events we witnessed in Canada this past summer, the influence of allochthonous inputs from the terrestrial portions of watersheds will increase, potentially overwhelming the internal functioning of many of our aquatic ecosystems.
The first message to take away is that activity in the terrestrial part of a watershed influences the structure and functioning of its waterbodies. The second message is that political boundaries and watershed boundaries do not necessarily overlap.
I would now like to turn to why it's so important to consider the natural boundaries of watersheds in conservation.
I've mentioned the flows from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems, but there is also the fact that there is a connectivity between the waterbodies that make up watersheds. It is critical to consider connectivity for several reasons.
Firstly, these aquatic connections serve as migratory corridors for many organisms. In addition, with climate change and the warming of Canada's waters, aquatic organisms will need corridors within watersheds to move northward to cooler waters.
These migratory pathways also aid exotic species invasions that are challenging many ecosystems across Canada. In managing the effects of these species, we will also need to adopt a watershed-based approach and not focus solely on a single invaded river or lake, for example.
Water contamination by pesticides, other toxins, microplastics and nutrients must also be managed, in a watershed context, because of their connectivity.
Furthermore, damming flowing waters is an obvious barrier to natural connectivity, as are bridge and culvert installations. Such activities are related to human needs, such as transportation, water level management for agriculture and drinking water, and hydroelectricity generation. So, politically speaking, several departments at all levels of government are involved in watershed disturbances, and therefore in their mitigation.
For all these reasons, my third message is that internal flows within watersheds need to be considered when managing contamination, invasive species, migration and climate change mitigation for aquatic life.
Finally, many different types of human activity can influence watershed connectivity and, politically, different agencies need to be involved in their protection and management.
Overall, based on scientific limnological knowledge, the committee is advised to support structuring, collaborative and scientific initiatives at the watershed level for their better protection and conservation.
Thank you for your attention. I'd also like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
12:35 p.m.
Dr. Diane Orihel Associate Professor in Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Queen's University, As an Individual
Good afternoon. Thank you kindly for inviting me back to Ottawa to speak today.
I applaud the members for studying the role of the federal government in protecting and managing Canada's fresh water. As a water-rich nation, Canada has a disproportionately large responsibility on the world stage to be a good steward of water, and the federal government must rightly provide the leadership to do so.
As an aquatic ecotoxicologist, I have devoted the last 25 years to the study of fresh water in Canada, with a focus on understanding aquatic pollutants, including nutrients, mercury, flame retardants, microplastics, oil spills and oil sands contaminants.
Today, I will speak to the issue of fresh water in Canada's oil sands, but before I do, I wish to correct some misconceptions about water I heard in earlier meetings, particularly in reference to the Canada water agency.
First, while it's true that water accumulates in water bodies such as lakes and rivers, in reality water is much more than that. Water is dynamic and exists in many forms and in many places. Water is frozen in glaciers, exists as a gas in the atmosphere, flows underground in spaces between soil particles and exists within our own bodies. Water can be and is contaminated at any and all of these stages. My message here is that if we are to truly protect and manage Canada's water, we must do so throughout its entire hydrologic cycle.
Second, while it's true that water is a resource, again, in reality water is so much more than that. Water is life. Water is a habitat for fish and wildlife. Water, for many indigenous peoples, is a living entity with a spirit—not a resource, but a relative. My message here is to centre reconciliation and indigenous ways of knowing in an effort to redefine our relationship with water.
Now I'll go to the broad policy failure in Canada's oil sands.
This committee has been studying a recent incident of a toxic leak from Imperial Oil's Kearl oil sands mine. Much of the conversation has focused on the communication failures. Certainly, there were grievous errors in communication, but these dwarf the much more profound failure in water management and policy.
Let me elaborate. Currently, 1.4 trillion litres of Canada's water are held by the oil sands industry in tailings ponds. This water has been taken from the Athabasca River and then used numerous times for industrial processes to extract bitumen from oil sands. While reusing water multiple times for bitumen extraction has reduced the volume of water extracted from the river, it has also created a serious problem. It has concentrated salts, metals and naphthenic acids in these waters, making them toxic to fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. I would be happy to submit a brief to that effect.
This highly toxic water is then stored in rudimentary earthen pits that were never constructed to be anything more than temporary settling ponds. As a result, the tailings ponds are a massive liability. I hope the Kearl incident wakes us to this ticking time bomb.
There is a solution. The industry must be required to treat and release its waste water—not at the end of the mine's life and not after the industry goes bankrupt and taxpayers are on the hook, but by the industry, in real time, during mine operation. It's 2023, not 1967. We can do this, and we have done this for other types of waste.
Here are two examples.
Think of domestic waste. In cities, we don't defecate in latrines in our backyards anymore. Sewage is centralized, treated with primary, secondary and even tertiary treatment processes, and then released to the environment. The waste-water systems effluent regulations were developed under the Fisheries Act, and the Government of Canada is responsible for managing the risk posed by substances listed under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Think of the pulp and paper industry. The federal pulp and paper effluent regulations were developed under the Fisheries Act in the 1990s to manage documented threats to fish, fish habitat and human health. When mills implemented treatment processes to remove suspended solids and break down organic matter, the quality of effluent increased dramatically, and downstream ecosystems, including fish habitats, are now better protected.
My message here is that a policy whereby the oil sands industry is required to clean up its industrial waste water in real time as the wastes are produced is the best way forward. I assert emphatically that it's much better to plan for intentional discharges of treated water regulated and monitored by provincial and federal bodies than to have a tailings pond fail and result in an accidental spill of highly toxic waste water to the Athabasca River and the communities living downstream, including indigenous peoples. Such a catastrophe is nothing short of national tragedy and an international shame.
In closing, I recommend that, one, the Government of Canada embrace a holistic and respectful definition of water and re-envision its relationship with water through the lens of reconciliation with indigenous peoples. Two, I emphasize the tremendous need for the federal government to take action and require Canada's oil sands industry to deal—not tomorrow but today—with the enormous dangers of the toxic chemicals in the tailings ponds.
Thank you.
