Environment Committee on April 21st, 2009

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

Do you think you will eventually look into this matter?

[Richard Arseneault]

We want to study the issue of water resource management at the federal level in Canada. We'll have to decide exactly what we want to examine. For the moment, I can't tell you what that will be. We could raise that issue.

[Scott Vaughan]

I'd simply like to state that we intend to conduct an audit on the problem of contamination caused by boats and water craft. That's planned for 2010-2011.

What you're suggesting is very useful to us. Obviously, as regards discharges from smaller boats in particular, there are sources of contamination, but the problem is that it's hard to establish a monitoring and inspection system in that case.

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

The fact remains that the problem is being left to the provinces and municipalities and they are being asked to purify their water. It isn't feasible. It's like heavy metals: they are very hard to extract.

Do I have a little time left, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Sorry.

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

Do I have a little time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Just a little time.

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

For a very brief question.

Every citizen, organization or company of a country incurs a real debt to the environment by reason of the fact that they use non-renewable resources.

Do you think that, in a sustainable development management context, that debt incurred by each of us should be taken into consideration by the government? Are you making any recommendations into that effect?

[Scott Vaughan]

You said that all Canadians should have access to high-quality water—

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

Regardless of the resource we are talking about, we are still drawing on the environment.

[Scott Vaughan]

The government is developing sustainable development systems. The purpose of the work underway is to develop a federal strategy for dealing with air and water quality and for integrating the environment system into tax policy, transportation and industry.

In my opinion, this is an opportunity to advance the idea of sustainable development. The idea isn't just to identify problems, but also to establish an overview that will enable the government to move forward in that direction. I think that strategy will be a topic of dialogue for the committee in the coming months.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Calkins.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be asking a few questions, and if I have any time left over, I'll be sharing that time with Mr. Woodworth.

First of all, I'd like to say thank you very much for being here today. One of the questions I have is a follow-up on the lead-off questions Mr. McGuinty posed, to which I heard two conflicting answers. I would like some clarification on this.

Mr. McGuinty asked whether or not progress had been made on the overall water framework. I heard Mr. Arseneault say there was not enough of a program left to audit, and I heard you, Mr. Vaughan, say there was nothing there. Can I get some clarification, please? Is there something there, or is there just not anything there that is worthy of an audit yet? To me, those are two completely different and conflicting answers.

[Scott Vaughan]

I apologize if we gave conflicting answers.

I'll ask Mr. Arseneault to clarify, but my understanding, coming into the office last summer, was that when we looked at the status of the framework, there had been announcements about the framework or a federal strategy related to water, but there was not enough there to be the basis of an audit. There have been commitments from different ministers to move this forward. We would audit programs, and we would audit whether there was evidence of programs and management systems in place. There wasn't enough there for the basis of an audit.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you very much.

Before I came to this place in 2006, it seemed to me there were quite frequent media reports, and we had massive evacuations of first nations reserves. Kashechewan comes to mind. I didn't see anything in your report here that dealt specifically with it. I know you've scoped it out, and you've looked at Parks Canada, and you've looked at the federal penitentiaries, and so on. I'm just wondering if you can elaborate. When do you plan on following up with a report? To my recollection, since 2006 there haven't been any evacuations of any first nations reserves. There is certainly a plan in place to deal with first nations drinking water, which scopes out three different priority levels to deal with or address drinking water quality issues on first nations reserves.

Can you update this committee as to when we might expect a report on the status of that work?

[Scott Vaughan]

Thank you for the question.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we're looking at this right now. I wish I could give you a specific date. The general lead-up time for these audits is between 16 and 17 months, but given the importance of this issue as well as the seriousness of the findings in the 2005 report, with my colleagues in another part of the OAG, I'm looking at something within the next two years. In the course of this audit, we did not look at whether there were any trends we could discern from the 2005 report.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you.

I'd like to share the rest of my time with Mr. Woodworth, please.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

Going back to the air quality index, as I understand it, the problem with the previous situation is that some provinces and some municipalities would have their own indices, and they wouldn't necessarily all be consistent. So do I understand correctly that the project the federal government is now undertaking is to take a leading role to bring some uniformity across the country? Is that correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

That's absolutely correct. The information you would get in Newfoundland and in Saskatchewan and British Columbia would be using the same indices.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And I think that's a very important job for the federal government to be doing.

The second thing I want to understand is with regard to the pilot projects. It indicates there are three completed pilot projects. Are there more pilot projects going on under the air quality index?

[Scott Vaughan]

Thank you.

The pilot project phase of the index has now been completed, and there is now a rollout, which is now covering virtually all provinces. In British Columbia there are now 14 different communities. It's in place now here in Ottawa and in the Outaouais, so there's actually a national rollout.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Excellent. So it's going ahead pretty quickly, then. Is that correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

Yes, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And those pilot projects obviously must have been highly successful. Is that correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

They were highly successful. The pilot project in Nova Scotia was tried in a couple of communities, and the Nova Scotia government came back and said they'd like to apply it across the province.