Environment Committee on April 21st, 2009

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I'm thinking of National Defence and the military bases, such as Valcartier and others. Has the environment commissioner prepared reports on water quality at the Valcartier base or other military bases?

[Richard Arseneault]

In 2005, we examined the operation of the procedures system at six departments, including the Department of National Defence, and those of federal agencies. We realized that procedures were not standard from one department to another, that water sampling and testing measures were not consistent. Certain departments had a number of measures and tests, while others did none. For that reason, in 2005, we recommended that Health Canada develop a guide to assist departments in ensuring that the water at federal buildings and sites was potable and that the risk was properly managed.

In our follow-up, we noted that Parks Canada had complied with the Health Canada procedures and guide. In the case of the Correctional Service, we noted deficiencies in procedures that had not yet been updated. The Correctional Service would probably have discovered the lead problem in the water in prisons if it had updated those procedures sooner. It eventually discovered the problem and took measures to correct it.

There are other federal departments. In Ottawa, we know that the water in certain federal buildings is a problem with regard to lead. We discovered that a number of years ago, and we know that measures have been taken.

[Scott Vaughan]

It's a good idea to ask questions on the condition of federal government facilities. You could ask Health Canada or Public Works for the average age of facilities and to what extent drinking water quality is guaranteed there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Ouellet, go ahead.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Vaughan, I would like to talk to you about an area of federal jurisdiction: navigation on waterways containing drinking water. You say the short-term objective is to target cities of 100,000 inhabitants. Certain waterways serve as many as six municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Do you think that all municipalities should be checked in case their populations exceed 100,000 inhabitants, or should we overlook them because they're too small?

[Scott Vaughan]

I'm going to ask Mr. Morse to talk to you about that.

I think your question concerns Environment Canada's air quality health index objective. As you said, the objective is to ensure that that index is available for cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. However, you have to consider whether rural communities will also have access to that index.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

I'm going to come back to that question.

[Paul Morse, Principal, Sustainable Development Strategies, Audits and Studies, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

The question regarding cities with 100,000 inhabitants concerns the air quality health index. In the chapter on water, I don't think we mention cities with 100,000 inhabitants. In that chapter, we follow up on our 2005 recommendations regarding federal commitments. The immediate priority of both departments is to put the air quality health index in place for cities of 100,000 inhabitants by 2011.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

[Scott Vaughan]

You're right that there are deficiencies in the water safety inspection system in airports, and we have noted that in our report.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Ms. Duncan, the floor is yours.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's nice to see you. Thank you for coming to meet with us again. I appreciated the briefing you provided previously. I thought we had a good dialogue then, and some follow-up.

I have a perspective probably slightly at variance from that of my colleague next to me. I think the federal government is failing to assert the jurisdiction it does have. The thing that troubles me is that in the past two excellent audits that your office did, the federal government has come back with increasingly narrow responses. Then what has happened is that the follow-up audits are on those increasingly narrow responses.

In your office's audit of 2005, before you came there, there was a recommendation that the federal government look towards an overall federal water framework. The federal government has a lot more jurisdiction and responsibility over water than is contained in the federal guidelines document. I noticed in your opening comments, Mr. Vaughan, that you specifically say: “The federal government is responsible for the development of the science-based Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality.” In fact, the federal government is responsible for the development of safe drinking water, period—not necessarily by guideline. They have chosen to do it by guideline.

That is an issue on which, in review after review over the last 35 years—and I've participated in many of them—the same recommendation comes down every time, including lately from the Gordon Water Group, saying that it is time to have some federal water standards.

I wonder whether you can comment on that. Your office has done excellent audits on aboriginal safe drinking water. You have done audits a number of times over on different aspects of safe drinking water in Canada. What has fallen between the cracks is the overall coordination and consensus within the federal regime of responsibility for regulating safe drinking water, including at tap and at treatment, and the source water. What I see as falling through the cracks is protection of the source water, which keeps down the costs to municipalities, first nations, or small communities to treat and provide safe drinking water.

Could you briefly comment on this movement away from actually addressing the bigger issue?

I can throw at you one more thing that you might comment on. It's a provision that troubles me that is never acted on. In the Canadian Environmental Protection Act there is a mandatory duty laid upon the federal Minister of Health to take action and to look into any situation upon which information has come to her attention that there may be a connection between a health impact and toxins. That's a mandatory duty. Among all of these statutes there is jurisdictionally quite a big mandate, and yet we don't seem to be moving this forward. I wonder whether you could comment on whether, despite seeing the department reporting on some of the narrow recommendations, we are moving forward or not on the bigger issue of what the federal responsibility and mandate are and, if we're not getting the cooperation of the provinces, on what the federal government can do to move this agenda forward.

I'm sorry, that's a big question.

[Scott Vaughan]

Yes, and thank you very much.

As the previous member pointed out, we note in the report that our understanding.... And you're right, in the context of the programs we looked at, the starting point was that this is a shared responsibility and that the provinces as well as municipalities have an important jurisdictional responsibility, specifically on tap water.

As for general trends, this is something I wouldn't have a perspective on. It may also be touching on policy-related areas.

The report we've just tabled is by definition a narrow report because the terms of follow-up reports are to follow up on what was addressed in the previous report, which would be a full audit. We intentionally try to be as specific as possible, in terms of what the responses were to the recommendations that had been made. Are they satisfactory? Are they unsatisfactory? Are there new problems being addressed?

Finally, in terms of the triggering mechanism, of attention being brought to the Minister of Health, one of the examples we looked at in the bottled water section—these are areas of shared responsibility between Health Canada and CFIA—in the course of this audit was the number of inspections and whether there are triggering mechanisms that go into place, including obviously recalls if there is significant human health risk posed in this.

Given this area's complexity, general trends and responsibility may fall on the policy side, which we generally don't comment on.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I understand that, but if we're looking at federal jurisdiction over water and responsibility, we have different regimes for first nations people and different regimes for setting guidelines for the rest of us, and for first nations. It's done by contribution agreement. So if you don't have a contribution agreement, you have no standards.

I know your office has done excellent reports and recommendations previously and I understand that federal Indian Affairs is now moving forward with some kind of regime, but it would seem to me there's a need for somebody--and probably your office would be one appropriate body to do that--to look across DND lands and facilities, other federal facilities, Indians lands, Indian peoples' water sources, trans-boundary issues, and so on.

We had a brief discussion at the briefing, talking about water from a tap and bottled water, but in between I've discovered in the course of my research that a lot of rural communities are provided water by container and some of those communities are first nation, Métis, and non-first nation, and the regulation is falling through the cracks. So I don't think it's that easy to draw the line in the sand and say, okay, the feds will just do these guidelines and the municipalities will look after everything else, because in northern Canada, the northern prairies, everything is falling through the cracks. In many cases, the provincial officials are trying to fill in the gaps, even though they may not have jurisdiction.

In your previous report, on that paragraph 4.61, there is the recommendation, in collaboration with other federal departments and agencies, to actually work on the federal water framework, as Mr. McGuinty has mentioned. I think given the fact that there are little bits and pieces of improvement but not overall improvement, it's really important to do a thorough audit on that again and maybe ferret out the good stuff that's going on and where there are cracks.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Vaughan.

[Scott Vaughan]

Chair, thank you very much. I have just three quick points.

First , you mentioned the 2005 first nations audit. I just want to say the office took those findings extremely seriously. The findings were unacceptable, given the level of risk of water quality in first nations. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we're planning on doing a follow-up to that as a stand-alone, given the significance.

As for the second one, the framework issue, I want to mention again that it's something we'll be looking at: more general issues of federal management of water, including upstream and the relationship between upstream and downstream in 2010. Then finally, we're also gearing up to look at a related issue, which is climate adaptation, and we know that one of the most important conduits of climate change impacts will be water, either through increased precipitation or increased drought. So that's also planned for 2010.

Thank you for your suggestions on potential follow-up issues related to this.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner, for being here.

I want to first respond to some questioning from Mr. McGuinty. When we took over as government in 2006, we found we had inherited an environmental mess. Yes, Walkerton did happen under the previous government's watch. We inherited federal infrastructure neglect, over a decade of neglect, and Mr. Arseneault is quite right that we have to be focused, and our focus was on site decontamination. I had the honour of announcing the funding for the cleanup of the Sydney tar ponds and flew back.

In the last three years I believe we have accomplished a lot. Your report focused on water and air. I was quite happy that you started off by saying that environmental issues are fundamental to life, and you're absolutely right. The David Suzuki Foundation did a report a couple of years ago that elaborated on the importance of a clean environment that is sustainable. Environmental pollution in our water, in our land, in our air, is a direct causal factor in about one in twelve deaths, prematurely ending our lives and costing our health system billions of dollars every year. There's an importance to making sure we have a cleaner environment, and our government has been committed to that since becoming government three years ago.

Your report says you found satisfactory progress. In your last report regarding the recommendations of 2005, you reported that Health Canada was slow to develop and review the guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality. At the time there was a backlog of about 50 guidelines, potentially in need of updating to reflect current science. You've reported that we have made satisfactory progress in both the environmental issues, water and air.

I want to focus on the consultation process. You've elaborated a little bit on that for both water and air, and you said the consultation that was done was a model of how future progress could be made. Could you elaborate on the consultation, who we consulted, and why it would be a model? Also, could you elaborate on the costs incurred by the departments to successfully move forward in addressing these challenges? So consultation and cost.

[Scott Vaughan]

Great. Thank you very much.

Let me go first to the consultations. You're absolutely right, we've said in the development of the air quality health index that this was an example of looking at the expertise of non-governmental organizations across Canada, as well as consultations with the provinces and consultations with urban areas. There were, I believe, 30 independent non-governmental organizations consulted. I think it just underscores that among the best recipients or guardians of environmental information are grassroots organizations. These are people who get up every day and work hard on this. I think we went out of our way to note this because this was an example of actually moving towards a better outcome.

In terms of the different groups, I'll ask Mr. Morse, but there were both national as well as local NGOs. We can provide you that list.

As for the second one, in terms of the cost incurred in the consultative process, I don't have that information here. I'm not sure whether the audit team asked the department in the process of that, but we can send that information to you in a follow-up letter, Mr. Chair.

Paul.

[Paul Morse]

Thank you.

In our report, we don't name all the groups. I guess I'd have to get a list. There were some municipalities and obviously the nine provinces and the territories. Originally Alberta was part of it but dropped out. So it was originally ten and then nine provinces, and as Mr. Vaughan said, a number of groups were consulted.

Also, one of the things we mention here is that some of the criteria we used were the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada guidelines for effective regulatory consultations. We looked at those guidelines and the way it was done in this case. We found that what was done matched those guidelines very well. So those guidelines are already there, not necessarily for...because this is not a regulatory exercise. Nevertheless, they applied pretty well, and they were followed. With the exception of Alberta, which had some reservations about it, all concerned seemed quite satisfied with it and felt it was very worthwhile.

When it comes to the cost, I don't think anyone actually costed that exercise, what it would have cost. We certainly don't have any figures on that.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

So consultation with water was largely focused on the provincial and territorial consultation. Is that correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

Exactly. With the water consultation, say on the development of the guidelines, this would involve, as I mentioned.... I mean, there's a very, very strong federal-provincial committee in place on ensuring that the guidelines are up to date, so the consultations are with all the provinces. In addition, Health Canada draws on input from, for example, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There are other groups involved as well, including municipalities, in ensuring that the guidelines are up to date.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

The consultation process took place from when to when?

[Scott Vaughan]

On the guidelines, the consultation is ongoing. As I mentioned in the opening statement, there are 120 different contaminants, but that is not a fixed list. If a there's a new risk or new information on toxicity data or other data that comes in, the list either would increase or some things would be dropped if there's a problem that's addressed. This is an ongoing exercise that happens virtually every week somewhere in the country.