Environment Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all of you for coming. We appreciate your time and your testimony.

I'd like to pick up on something Dr. Usher said, which is the need for effective monitoring and follow-up. As you say, this is essentially a science-based program. It must be continuous over time throughout the country. It must meet high standards. This means baseline monitoring and scientific infrastructure.

Who does the monitoring now? What are the rules on monitoring? What is the follow-up? And what would you like to see done?

[Dr. Peter Usher]

Let's start with who does the monitoring now. This is distributed among such science agencies as Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, and Natural Resources Canada. I suppose, if you were looking at socio-economic monitoring, there would be Statistics Canada. There are a number of government agencies. They monitor in the largest sense, and when I say environment I'm talking about socio-economic as well. They monitor a large range of phenomena. Their monitoring programs may or may not be tailored to specific project impacts, but they are more likely to be useful with respect to cumulative impacts.

It's my impression that the monitoring programs are no longer as robust as they used to be. I don't think it's for me to go into why or exactly how; it's probably beyond my competence. I think we need to maintain and refine the monitoring programs we have, and we have to find a way to ensure, particularly through cumulative impacts monitoring, I think, how to tailor the monitoring we do so that it effectively answers the questions we ask.

I mean, I start with “What's the question, and what are we trying to answer here?”, rather than just go out and collect data. That's a basic principle I've applied in my own private practice for many years and the advice I give.

That's what we have to do. Whether the CEAA should be responsible.... I don't think I should speak to who should be responsible in terms of the specific government agencies, but the--

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

But you would like to see cumulative impact assessments and you would like to have the right questions asked.

[Dr. Peter Usher]

Yes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

You mentioned that much of this is at risk, and I would agree. We're currently facing a 43% cut to CEAA, a possible cut of 700-plus scientists at Environment Canada. I'll provide one example. It's the adaptation group at Environment Canada. Many of those scientists shared part of the 2007 Nobel Prize. Eight were fired in June. Twelve of the 17 remaining have received workforce adjustment letters. And I can provide other examples.

In light of what you've said, how are these cuts going to impact environmental assessment?

[Dr. Peter Usher]

I don't think I could answer specifically how they will do that, but I would have to say that as in-house capacity within the federal government declines, it cannot but affect it adversely. You have to have competent scientists, who are capable of understanding what the problem is, asking the right question and designing the right response.

It's really at that basic level that I think I'd have to reserve my comments. I can't get more detailed than that, I don't think.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Usher and Professor Kwasniak, should strategic environmental assessment be legislated?

[Prof. Arlene Kwasniak]

Yes, I believe it should be legislated. I think we should have strategic environmental assessment.

It is already partially legislated, but it's very limited the way it is legislated right now. I think it should certainly be opened up.

There should be more provincial-federal type partnerships, more ability for the federal government to be involved with other entities, such as municipalities and the like, to do strategic environmental assessment. I think in the end that doing good strategic environmental assessment will lead to the need for fewer environmental assessments and may deal with some of the multiple screenings we have.

There are lots of tools in the CEAA already to deal with all the assessments we have. They are just not being used very well--replacement assessments and class screenings--but strategic EA is definitely one of the better ways to go. We've played with it a bit. I think now it's time to get out there and do it.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Professor Kwasniak.

Dr. Usher.

[Dr. Peter Usher]

I'm not sure how to answer the question, because I've heard a lot of different versions about what a strategic EA would be. In the absence of some better definitions, should it be legislated? Well, I guess in order to legislate it, you'd have to define what it is.

I don't know if legislation is the best way to go at that question, because I think that's an evolving situation. I'd be loath to see some sorts of strictures put on it that may or may not be appropriate.

I think it's important that there be a distinction between what project-specific reviews do, even to the extent as they must incorporate cumulative impact assessment to keep them conceptually separate from what I understand a strategic-level review to be.

Let me give you an example. Suppose we had done a strategic review at the outset of what would be involved in developing the oil sands in Alberta--it was never done--and on a project-specific basis you're going at it piecemeal. Can the same kind of panel deal with a project review as can deal with a strategic-level review? I rather doubt it.

Who should pay for it? If you're doing a strategic-level review, you can't ask individual proponents to pay for that. That's far beyond what they ought to be paying for.

So I think there are very significant problems here that would need to be addressed. I can only suggest what they are rather than provide a solution at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

And time has expired.

There was a previous question regarding observers who may be with one of the groups joining and testifying. If you needed to have another expert come to the table and speak, that would be fine, if that's how the questioner wanted to use their seven minutes, or now five minutes.

We will begin our five-minute round with Ms. Liu.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think we all heard some very interesting ideas come from all of our witnesses today, also, of course, some conflicting points of view. I'd like to start by talking about the ideas that were brought forth around triggers versus a list-based approach.

I think it was Mr. Barnes who talked about the fact that a list-based approach is preferable to a trigger.

Ms. Kwasniak, you talked about how the trigger and the list approach are not reconcilable. Maybe you could respond to what was said.

[Prof. Arlene Kwasniak]

If I'm not mistaken, I think Mr. Barnes did suggest that you would still need something much like a trigger in order to get the federal government involved in a project, unless it's a project that's totally on federal land or is totally under federal jurisdiction. You will need something to trigger it, to trigger federal...even if you did have a list-based approach.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

This is a question for Mr. Wojczynski. You talked about the importance of sustainable development being integrated into our approach towards environmental assessments. From that perspective, do you think environmental assessments should also suggest alternatives to--subject to review? Should that be part of the conclusion of an environmental assessment?

[Ed Wojczynski]

CEAA already, as you know, has that as a discretionary possibility for the minister to include in, let's say, a panel review. Our view on that one would be that we can see the need for that kind of an “alternatives to” analysis, but where that analysis is already happening in provincial jurisdictions, the federal decision-making should take that as the input into that.

I tend to use my own province as an example, because I'm the most familiar with it, although I know it happens elsewhere too. We have had and we're going to have provincial-led panels that do what we call a need for alternatives to assessment that has paid intervenor funding, interrogatories, panels of experts, and that thoroughly addresses the need for an “alternatives to” from that provincial perspective.

If that's the case, then we would suggest that the federal panel, let's say, take that, or the federal decision-making take that, as the input rather than duplicating it by having a very thorough provincial process and then repeating that in the federal process.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you for your answer.

Something that I also found really interesting about your presentation was the fact that you mentioned the need for a social license. This is a recurring idea that we've heard from industry time and time again throughout our study. I'll just cite that part of your presentation, where you say: “We cannot successfully develop and operate our projects without a social license to operate. This needs to be earned and maintained through hard work with First Nations, local communities and a wide range of stakeholders”.

If I can just sum up your ideas on this, basically you're saying that development projects don't just need to respect the law to the letter, but they also have to be socially acceptable to be viable projects.

[Ed Wojczynski]

Yes, absolutely.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

We also know that various levels of consultation are possible. They range from a sort of very shallow public consultation, involving simply information sharing from the top down, to the sorts of more extensive public consultation processes that involve shared decision-making. In order to have a proper social license, what kind of consultation process do you think is necessary?

[Ed Wojczynski]

We think a thorough consultation process that starts long before the federal or provincial processes kick in.... There always will be some potentially affected communities and people and they should be involved right at the front end. In our case in Manitoba, we focus to a great degree on the local aboriginal people, but other developers who have other people who are also going to be affected do the same thing.

In our case, as an example, for the local first nations in the area of our projects we went through six years of consultation. There were joint studies, joint management of the studies, and joint hiring of consultants. We provided funding for them. We had a lot of TK work--traditional knowledge work--where they did their own TK work--

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I'm sorry to interrupt. I'd just like to get a response--

[Ed Wojczynski]

Oh, sorry.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

--from Mr. Atkinson before my time runs out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Unfortunately, your time has expired.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Okay. I'm too late.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Five minutes goes very quickly.

Next we have Mr. Woodworth for five minutes.