Environment Committee on May 8th, 2012

[Scott Vaughan]

No. The permafrost melted because of the operations on that site. When they originally decided they were going to store this underground, the plan was that the permafrost would be there. Because of continuous mining operations and underground operations heating the soil underneath and the rock underneath, the permafrost is no longer there. The ground is unstable. The creek is shifting. There are open pits. The open pits are very close to a creek that has spring runoff. The risks in that site are absolutely enormous. The only option that they came up with was to say we have to have this frozen, essentially forever. Forever, for me, is a difficult concept to imagine. Engineers work in timeframes of 100 years. Five hundred years in terms of half-life.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Your time has expired, unfortunately.

Mr. Choquette, you have five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses for joining us.

I have a great deal to say about your report. First, let me thank you for a job well done. Unfortunately, our withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol under Bill C-38 is revolting, and you have put it so well in your report. We invested $9 billion and we don't know what we got out of it. The government said that it wanted to withdraw from Kyoto because it was too costly, but we have no numbers on the actual costs for 2020.

I know that you have read the national inventory. You are being told that the figures in your report are wrong. Does that make you change your mind in terms of your doubting that the 2020 target can be reached? Is there something concrete that is going to make you change your mind?

[Scott Vaughan]

No.

As you know, I am going to leave that with Ms. Leach. We have obviously taken great interest in reading the latest report. The report mentions an increase of two million tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions. The conclusion in our report has not changed at all. We said that we doubted that Canada can reach its 2020 target because, so far, there have not been enough measures or enough time. Time is running out for finalizing the regulations and implementing them.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Vaughan, it is important to understand that the measures in the recent budget are not sufficient. The year 2020 is fast approaching, as you said. We have only two regulations on transportation. There is nothing for electricity, gas or fuel. So there is a sense of urgency. Why is that not included in the current budget? Shouldn't there have been concrete measures in the current budget on reaching the 2020 target?

[Scott Vaughan]

That might be a political decision. What I can say is that, three weeks ago, the government announced a third regulation for transportation, but it is not in place yet. It takes time between announcing and implementing the regulation. Until now, there have been no other regulations for the six other sectors.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

As you well know, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy is unfortunately going to disappear, once again as a result of the budget cuts in the recent budget. This has been the only non-partisan organization bringing the environment and the economy together. The organization's report said that costs for climate change adaptation were even higher than the costs for the immediate fight against climate change.

We are withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol under the pretext that it is going to be too costly. I assume that we are not fulfilling our 2020 commitments under the same pretext. The current changes, including those to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, are clearly in favour of the pipelines and more oil, not the fight against climate change. All those changes are going to cost us more in the long run. Are there no figures because we are trying to pass the debt to future generations, as it was done with the contaminated sites?

[Scott Vaughan]

I noted in the report that we are leaving serious environmental problems on the hands of future generations. Actually, we are going to pass down thousands of contaminated sites across the country along with the impacts of climate change. It has already been two years since we submitted a report to Parliament on the impacts of climate change, and the government said that those changes entailed economic costs.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

You asked for information on costs. Did Environment Canada honour your request?

[Scott Vaughan]

We asked if there was an impact analysis on the Canadian economy, as part of the 2020 plan, but the people from Environment Canada told us that there was no analysis.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

They refused to give you the numbers.

[Scott Vaughan]

No, they did not refuse, but the assessment of all the economic impacts has not been carried out yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired.

Mr. Lunney, you have five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Vaughan and your team, for being with us today.

I wanted to follow up on the discussion about contaminated sites. I think you've acknowledged here in your remarks that we started with about 22,000 contaminated sites, and as I understand it, about 42% of these have already been cleared as of February 2012.

This is a 15-year federal plan to clean up the plants and we're only at the halfway point. That would be my point. We're saying that maybe there are 13,000 sites remaining, and of course, we are concerned about that. But it seems to me that if we've already cleared a substantial number of those, that we are making progress, and therefore, comments about leaving this to future generations fail to recognize the fact that we've already taken measures in the short time that this plan has been under way to clean up a lot of those sites.

Would you not agree with that?

[Scott Vaughan]

I would agree absolutely, sir, that there has been progress. I hope I was very clear. There has been a lot of progress on this file since 2005. A national inventory didn't exist then. The procedures to classify didn't exist. The first steps to actually manage them didn't exist. Those have all been put in place, and 9,000 sites have been closed. Closed doesn't mean cleared, or claimed, or remediated, but they've been assessed and found to pose no immediate risk.

In terms of leaving a legacy, I think the one example from the Giant Mine is something that is going to have to be managed for generations. Faro Mine's the same thing. Port Hope's the same thing. So some of these sites, they weren't generated by the federal government, but because the operators went bankrupt.

This is a legacy that's going to be borne by generations in the future.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Yes, but I think it's helpful to point out that it isn't a legacy of this particular government. It's a legacy of historic activities that went on over.... Do you have any idea when that mine opened in the Northwest Territories?

[Scott Vaughan]

It was in the 1940s. That's an important point. The four big projects date from the 1940s, and the 1950s. Gunnar in Saskatchewan is from the 1950s. Maxwell was in the 1960s. Sydney tar sands was a joint fed-prov from the 1960s as well. These really are legacies before federal regulations were in place, which were intended to stop them.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Yes, so now we're working through a process of looking at new technologies. I think we'd have to agree around this table that technology is actually increasing at a pace unprecedented in human history. Things that were monumental problems are becoming much easier to manage.

A case in point would be many of these...and I raised this in our meeting earlier in camera.

[A voice]

In camera?

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Oh, I didn't mention that, did I?

Let me say that I had this brainwave.

Okay, the question I wanted to raise was simply about new technologies that actually make it possible to clean up sites where there are hydrocarbons. For example, using biotechnology, micro-organisms that consume hydrocarbons, can actually take a site.... Instead of hauling all that soil out of there, and trucking it, and trying to dispose of it some expensive way through incineration or some other problematic way, we actually have new technologies that are making it much more possible to clean these sites up in situ.

Would you agree with that?

[Trevor Shaw]

Yes. We didn't examine those in great detail, but we did pick up information that indicated that there is responsiveness, using new technologies, going forward. You mentioned one there.

I must say, I'm not a scientist or a biological expert. I'm an accountant by training, but when I see these things, it's actually indeed quite encouraging and we do pick up.... Environment Canada is considering these things as they advance the program as well, in fact trying to support the new technologies.

Some of the processes include: ex situ soil washing, removal of uranium and radium-226 from leachate using reverse osmosis, and various forms of bioremediation. Bioremediation is a type of clean-up that uses living organisms such as fungi plants and bacteria. That may take a longer time. They are, in fact, themselves more environmentally friendly, and certainly we would encourage the use and support of those as much as possible.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

We're in the middle of a 15-year plan. We are still working our way through that. We want to use the very best technology and new ideas. We are very open to new ideas. We're putting money into science, technology, and research right now, as you would know.

I just want to pick up another point about the FCSAP, the federal contaminated site assessment plan. At the early stages, we are finding about one in two of these assessments, or 53%, technically resulted in the site being found to be contaminated. More recently, it is only about one in five sites. Is that an indicator that we maybe took on the worst sites first? In fact, is it not as bad in terms of numbers and achievability of this plan as it might indicate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired, so a short answer, please.

[Trevor Shaw]

Generally speaking, yes. But in detail, the Environment Canada or the Treasury Board Secretariat might be able to answer that more specifically. Generally that indicates the number of contaminated sites being identified more recently has diminished, but it's still one in five at the present time. How many more are out there is a question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

You have five minutes, Mr. Pilon.