Environment Committee on June 4th, 2009

[Ed Wojczynski]

Absolutely.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I think you would be interested to know that Bloc Québécois members on the fisheries committee brought forward a motion and a report outlining the disappearance of eelgrass from the eastern coast of James Bay. They blame, in part, the increasing flows in La Grande Rivière leading to the disappearance of this eelgrass. If I read their report correctly, I infer from the processes that are outlined in the Species at Risk Act that distinct populations of migratory birds and fish have lost habitat, so if somebody from the Chisasibi First Nation wanted to start a process under SARA, that could easily be done.

Do you have any concerns, given the fact that you've already gone through the process, that your compliance with an environmental impact assessment really doesn't have anything to do with any of the implementations of the Species at Risk Act?

[Ed Wojczynski]

I wouldn't want to comment on the Quebec situation, but I can speak generally.

We do have a concern that on a project, no matter where it is or what kind of industry it is, you can go through a very thorough and exhaustive environmental assessment and the studies and the regulatory process can take 10 years. In one of our most recent projects under construction—it's a $1.6 billion project that is halfway through construction—we spent $150 million on environmental studies, in preliminary engineering and aboriginal discussions. You get a recommendation from the environment minister, then you still have to go through a process with DFO getting authorizations for what you want to do. We may have done everything to protect species, but then under SARA we're still exposed if something happens. For example, if lake sturgeon get listed and one lake sturgeon dies in our turbines, theoretically, even though we've done everything possible and gone through all the steps, we would still be not in compliance and could be charged.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to questions of compensation. In the briefs I've received, the CEA does not mention compensation. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association talks about the fact that there is power to compensate but doesn't speak of the merits of it. It doesn't tell us what it means to move to develop appropriate regulations to permit compensation. CAPP is silent on compensation, unless I missed something.

I want to go back to the fact that in the early debate around this act in the late 1990s and 2000 I can recall our government having asked Dr. Peter Pearse at the time, one of B.C.'s leading ecological economists, to try to help craft a way forward on how we would value, how we would move with valuation, if we were seriously willing to compensate landowners, agricultural or otherwise, for doing the right thing. It speaks to our decision as a society as to whether or not we want to put ecosystems, ecological services, and ecosystem management first.

Dr. Pearse at the time was building on the work our government had undertaken— at the time the National Roundtable, which I headed up, was undertaking—to expand the change, the tax treatment for the donations of ecologically sensitive lands in order to encourage landowners who had ecologically sensitive lands to donate them to land trusts and get the appropriate capital gains tax exemptions, the use of a fiscal mechanism to achieve a good environmental outcome. From my understanding, we're just nowhere on this compensation question. We had a debate about it in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and we're nowhere, partly because, I understand, we're deferential to the provinces and territories for the lands that are not under federal jurisdiction. And it's hard to achieve this. I need to get some insight and some help from you.

If we're going to engage Canadians, particularly landowners in rural settings, dealing with the challenges of migratory species or otherwise, what are your insights? What are your thoughts on this compensation issue? How can we move forward to stop the fiction that we can continue managing as cattlemen, as electricity generators, as oil producers to draw down natural capital, compromise ecosystems, and not manage from a holistic point of view, understanding that we're all in this together with these species as well? How do we do this? How do we move this compensation issue forward?

Who wants to go first?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Grant.

[Lynn Grant]

I'll take the risk of going first.

I think society has always had a challenge putting an economic and a monetary value on things that don't have a direct cost. We all do that with our personal lives. How much do you work compared to how much time you spend with your family? What's the economic return of spending time with your family? As a society we have challenges with that.

If we're going to deal with trying to get compensation for the economic and natural resource capital, maybe we have to at least do some trial projects, trying to put an economic value on it. If it's a scarce resource, the more value you put on it, maybe you start generating some revenue from that.

I will comment on donating to a conservation easement or group. Ecosystems are a dynamic, moving thing. They change, and they need to change, especially on a prairie landscape, where I am. Even our boreal forest needs recruitment and renewal. A lodgepole pine forest, like that in the Cypress Hills, needs to be burnt to open the cones so those plants can renew. We have to change the definition of preservation and protection. It needs to become a dynamic thing. If we create a mechanism by which society can pay a producer of the economic capital for producing that, it's a step forward. It will be a learning process, but it has to start somewhere.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I've had that argument, Mr. Grant. I remember having a very public debate with Jack Mintz, who was then the head of the C. D. Howe Institute. He was telling me that I should prove in monetary terms that Canada's 26% of the world's wetlands had an economic worth. I said to him that they were perfect and free air and water filtration systems. He said that I had to monetize it. I said that was dishonest—not you, but Mr. Mintz and his discipline. Economists have failed us.

I said to Mr. Mintz. “You must prove to me that wetlands are worth precisely zero. When you prove to me that wetlands are worth zero, we can talk. Stop putting the reverse onus on me to prove that this has an economic worth.” We know this is crazy. It's a vicious circle. It's the limited social science discipline of economics that has failed us here.

The challenge about which we now need to hear from you is how we do this. Stop the fiction; stop putting the onus on nature to put an economic evaluation on itself. How do we put an evaluation on it that reflects the fact that if we don't have functioning wetlands, for example, we're not going to have air and water filtration systems? How do we do that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'm going to cut Mr. McGuinty off, unfortunately, because we have two more members to engage in questions. We are quickly running out of time here.

But I will ask all witnesses to answer that question in writing and submit the answer through the clerk.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It's your homework.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I love assigning homework.

Mr. Braid, you're up.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here, and to those of you who have travelled to see us as well.

I'll get right to my questions. I'd like to start with the CEA presentation. On page 3, under section (A), you indicate: “As soon as a species is listed, a facility with any [incidental] impact on a listed species must either shut down and disrupt the supply of essential electricity...”. Has this situation ever occurred? Are there situations, examples, cases where...?

[Gary Birch]

One of our colleagues in B.C. went through the CEAA process for a new plant, initiated the new plant and was testing it. During the course of the testing, a sturgeon found its way into the turbine blades and was killed. They were investigated and they immediately shut down all testing. It was for a number of months that they shut it down, until they could come up with a process to exclude sturgeon from the intakes. That's not a prolonged shutdown, but it certainly indicates the kind of thing that we could see.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

What were the consequences of that particular case?

[Gary Birch]

There were both enforcement consequences and better planning consequences. They have a process by which, whenever they shut down the units now, they monitor fish moving into the units. They actually have video cameras and pattern recognition software that's able to designate when a sturgeon goes in. They have to make sure the sturgeon comes out before they'll start the units. They also went before a community justice forum to deal with the consequences of the dead sturgeon.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

What about the business consequences?

[Gary Birch]

I don't know that I should speak to the losses, in terms of power, but they certainly have contracts to supply power, and for the duration of the time that they had to remain shut down, they couldn't meet those provisions.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

On the last page of your written brief, you indicate that harmonization with other federal and provincial legislation is covered in the position paper. I think you indicated in your presentation that you might have examples of this. In my mind, opportunities for harmonization and eliminating or reducing duplication are critical. We need to seize those sorts of opportunities.

Could we get a couple of examples?

[Gary Birch]

I'm sorry to keep returning to the white sturgeon, but we went through a water use planning process with white sturgeon. It's under our Water Act in B.C. New facilities or facilities that meet a certain threshold are to go through a water use plan, which is a sharing of the water; you revisit the balanced use of the water. BC Hydro, being a crown corporation, chose to put all of its plants through water use review when this provision was first added to the Water Act.

We went through that entire process. That finished off in the Columbia in about 2004. About two years in advance of the white sturgeon being listed, we knew it was coming, so we went through a process of including approaches to dealing with the white sturgeon recovery needs in that particular plan, with the hope that the water licence we would receive, the order that went with it, and by extension the fisheries authorizations from DFO that would go in that package would meet our needs under SARA once the listing came forward.

In fact, it has turned out that this is not the case. We still have to get a separate permit or conservation agreement or whatever to deal with sturgeon. We are still in discussions now. Whether our understanding of the $34 million-odd that we committed over 12 years to sturgeon in that agreement and—

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I'm sorry, I have a final question before I run out of time. I apologize for interjecting. This is a final question, for all of you or for those who can latch on to this one.

A common thread through many of the presentations was that there's opportunity to improve and to speed up the recovery process. I'd like to hear from each of you on the one best, most effective way to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Can I ask everyone to do it as briefly as possible?

[Ed Wojczynski]

Put in place a conservation agreement as an authorization for the activities, including research and mitigation measures, and then let them be in place for a significant period of time related to the life of the species and of the project.

[Gary Birch]

I'll add to that by saying that they should be attached to the recovery strategy, not to the action plan, which is the way the act is currently written.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Ms. Paulus.

[Journey Paulus]

I'd say to move towards having consultation early in the process with stakeholders. Engage them in recovery planning right off the bat. The second you list a species, start contacting all the directly affected people you know and get them in the room early.