Environment Committee on Dec. 8th, 2010

[Scott Vaughan]

I believe we did discover that, yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And that from 2007 to 2009 you discovered reports of 4,160 pollution incidents reported to the Canadian Coast Guard. Correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

Correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

But it was not really within the purview of your study to determine, nor did you discover or report, any incidents of any inappropriately delayed response in any of those 4,160 pollution incidents. Correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

That's correct.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Again, it was not within the purview of your study, nor do you report, any incidents of any inadequate response to those 4,160 pollution incidents by the coast guard. Is that correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

If I may, on that one, it wasn't a question of inadequacy. The reason we brought to Parliament's attention the issue of documentation was we noted a number of quite serious data errors, number one. Number two, in terms of responses, they were reclassified during the course of the audit from a level 3 back to a level 2. That then raises the question, if it's a level 3, it's a greater extent of intervention--that was what was reported in the field--and then when it came to headquarters it went to level 2. It does raise the question that this information basically records the responses, and that's why we brought it to your attention.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I don't mean in any way to suggest that the proper record-keeping of an agency like the coast guard is not of good significance. I simply want to be absolutely clear of the difference between a complaint regarding inadequate record-keeping and a complaint regarding an actual inadequate response to an oil spill. That's really all I'm drawing attention to. It was not within the purview of your report, nor in fact did you report any indication of an inadequate response. Correct?

[Scott Vaughan]

That's correct, sir.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

And in a similar way, it was not within the purview of your report, nor do you report, any incident of an oil spill or any related matter that wasn't detected by the coast guard.

[Scott Vaughan]

That I would have to ask the coast guard, because we couldn't say with assurance whether the data were reliable or not.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's fine.

I did want to follow up on another item, though. In your report you did mention that there were three surveillance aircraft in the national aerial surveillance program run by Transport Canada. I'm pretty sure I've heard there were four.

Have you had an opportunity to double-check that?

[Scott Vaughan]

Yes, if I may ask my colleague, Mr. McKenzie, to provide some clarification.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Sir, yes, we followed up on that. Transport Canada in fact has owned three surveillance aircraft. One is located in Ottawa and one is located in Moncton. The other is on the west coast. Since 2003 these aircraft have increased their surveillance hours. They've increased their capacity in terms of being able to fly and detect spills in different types of weather. That's partly due to the fact that they've significantly enhanced their surveillance capacity, the onboard equipment. Those aircraft are owned. They are two Dash-8s and a Dash-7. They also will make use of a contract, if necessary, through other government departments, for example, Fisheries and Oceans. If they are doing flights, they'll have them do patrols as well for surveillance.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Perhaps I could just ask Mr. McDonald, so that I'm absolutely sure, whether in fact it isn't a timing issue, because I understand, Commissioner, your report was done in 2007, 2009. I just want to make sure there hasn't been another aircraft acquired since, because I want to track that down.

How many aircraft does the national aerial surveillance program operate? Three or four, Mr. McDonald?

[Gerard McDonald]

Mr. McKenzie answered the question correctly. We own three aircraft that are dedicated to that, but we do contract with PAL airlines in Newfoundland to do some surveillance there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Woodworth. Your time has expired.

Mr. Armstrong, you get the last of the second round.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Mr. Wicklum, you're the director general of water science and technology. I have a couple more questions about the Athabasca. You commented that the Athabasca is heavily monitored by several different agencies and stakeholders: RAMP, the Province of Alberta, the federal government, and others.

Would you say you're satisfied with the amount of supervision that goes on in the Athabasca River as far as water quality is concerned?

[Dan Wicklum]

I'll answer the question this way. We're a science organization. We always think we can do better, and we're always prepared to take advice, such as we get from the commissioner, and use it where applicable and get better.

I would say that the data the commissioner looked at is essentially long-term water quality monitoring from Environment Canada. Even inside the suite of other organizations that collect long-term water quality, it's still actually only a very small part of the data that are collected. We have another whole type of monitoring that we do in Environment Canada, a formula that we call “surveillance monitoring”. It's short-term monitoring. We use it to ask very specific questions quickly and then reallocate our resources onto other, more high-priority areas.

For example, right now we're in the middle of doing surveillance monitoring in groundwater on the Athabasca River on almost 100 sites. This actually is a very large part of the additional work we're doing as a result of oil sands activity. We have quite a scientific challenge in the Athabasca, because you can go into the river and you can find toxic things, naphthenic acids and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, for example, but you can't definitively say whether they're coming from a natural source or from an anthropogenic or man-made source. The reason there's an oil sands mining sector there is because there are oil sands and the Athabasca River cuts through those oil sands directly. You can go there, down onto the banks of that river, and you can actually watch bitumen follow the bank of the river, into the river, and in all of the tributaries as well.

This is a scientific challenge, and when we find things, we have to be able to attribute the source. So we started about 18 months ago what we call a fingerprinting operation, investing significantly. We have an additional $1.6 million that we're investing in this whole program. The goal is to identify unique substances that occur only because of man-made structures or processing of oil sands. This is going to allow us actually to go in and essentially say, yes, this toxic compound at this concentration in the river came from the oil sands operations or mining activity.

We actually do a lot more than that. We have a lot of toxicity testing, so we have a whole suite of organisms that we use to test how toxic tailings ponds effluents are, how toxic the tailings ponds sediments are. Then we actually go into the river and do the same thing. So are there any toxic effects in the river and actually in the water or in the sediments? At this point we just can't find any.

So we actually have quite a broad suite of science activities that we do. We do these in partnership also with other types of multi-stakeholder groups. We talked about RAMP and the long-term water quality monitoring in the river. They actually monitor the water quality in what we call “acid-sensitive lakes”, up to 50 lakes around the area as well.

There's also another multi-stakeholder group called the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, which essentially performs the same function that RAMP does, but for the atmosphere. In a multi-stakeholder setting, it takes a look at air quality and aerial deposition that potentially could happen on the land base. Then we're tracking to see whether or not any of that deposition gets into the river itself through snow melt.

So we actually have what we feel is a very comprehensive science program.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Terrific. And do you feel that the partners you've worked with in this program are all working cooperatively and above board, trying to make sure that things are running the way they should be in the Athabasca River?

[Dan Wicklum]

Again, in terms of the science in our organization, we fundamentally have formally ingrained in ourselves a philosophy of continual improvement. So we think we do well; we think we can get better.

An expression of this is that the past environment minister, Minister Prentice, did name an independent panel of five prominent, leading Canadian scientists to give him an independent assessment of the state of monitoring in the oil sands, and he gave them a 60-day mandate. They are to report on December 16. We welcome that. We actually are quite looking forward to it, because no matter how good we are, we do feel that we can improve, and we are willing to do that.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Keenan, just going to the other coast for a moment, there's been a great deal of work to clean up the Sydney tar ponds. Could you update us on that project?

[Michael Keenan]

There has been a great deal of work to do that. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of knowledge.

I'm going to invite my colleague, Sue Milburn-Hopwood, to answer that.

Is that fair, Sue?

[Sue Milburn-Hopwood, Director General, Environmental Protection Operations, Department of the Environment]

It will be a short answer.

Thank you for the question. I don't have all the details with me today. It actually is a project that's managed by Public Works as well as the Province of Nova Scotia. But I think this is something that we could certainly prepare a response on and get back to your committee.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Could you tell me the when the project, the actual digging, began or was announced?