Environment Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2012

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

No matter where you look in the city of Toronto, you see cranes and more cranes, and less and less green space. Has the city adopted anything specific when it comes to land conservation at all, or is it still...?

[Andrea Gabor]

No, but I think that Waterfront Toronto is actually coming to fruition now. Over the last year a number of really fantastic parks have opened. There's Cherry Beach, but the most important, I think, from a sustainability point of view is Sherbourne Common, which is a stormwater management park where the water is treated below grade, and at grade the children in the summer have splash parks and splash ponds and in the winter they can skate. The treatment is done underground, and then it comes up in these—I don't know if you've seen them—really beautiful, art-like towers that spew the clean water out into a canal that takes it back to Lake Ontario.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time's expired. Thank you so much.

Now we'll begin our five-minute rounds of questioning.

Your turn, Ms. Quach.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming before the committee.

I'm going to speak in French too.

My first question goes to Andrea Gabor or David Wise.

You mentioned transit and active transportation. You also mentioned federal infrastructure for LEED houses and sustainability.

I met two researchers from the Institut de recherche et d'informations socioéconomiques in Montreal who told me about a report from the United States describing best practices in efficiency. The report is called Energy Efficiency Job Creation: Real World Experiences. It talks about renovating whole areas of a city in order to make them more energy-efficient. It creates jobs and it uses no oil, either.

At the end of your document, you make four recommendations dealing with best practices, sources of funding and studying federal standards. How do you see the role of the federal government in energy-efficient construction in its various forms? Also, what would be the economic, social and health benefits of such a federal role?

[David Wise]

Thank you very much.

We certainly think that the federal government has a significant role. One of the main things the federal government can do is provide a source of research and innovation through its various agencies.

CMHC is doing marvellous work right now. An example is in Kamloops, British Columbia, where they recently just did the EQuilibrium home, a net-zero energy house done very cost-effectively, very cheaply, in a practice whereby you might actually be able to replicate that in a cross-disciplined fashion.

That's an interesting one because it was done on the Tk’emlúps Indian Band reserve by Sun Rivers Development Corporation. It also involved Thompson Rivers University as well, so a whole variety of different interest groups and whatnot were working their way in getting through there. That's an example of where the federal government can leverage the power of its crown corporations, the power of its crown agencies, and the research and innovation wings at its disposal to drive innovation, to drive pilot projects, and to drive new and creative thinking towards how we're going to handle and deal with some of these challenges.

I think the other question you had was.... Sorry, there was a second part to the question as well, I believe.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Yes. It dealt with the standards that can be applied to construction. I would like to know the advantages of green infrastructure construction for health, for the economy and for job creation.

[David Wise]

That's very interesting as well. Of course, one of the things that has been prevalent across the industry right now is the LEED certification standards, the LEED-certified silver, bronze, gold, and platinum standards. These have had quite a pervasive effect upon the development industry. They've really brought up standards. Ontario now has a much more stringent building code as well, which you could argue has been a response to the idea of being able to provide measurable indicators and to be able to track where we're going.

The importance of being able to quantify and understand the values and to be able to compare them is just unmatched. LEED, although it's not perfect, certainly has provided us with a mechanism to be able to provide those indicators and to do that kind of measurement.

LEED-ND will be the new standard for how we look at neighbourhood development and subdivision plans. That includes all kinds of very interesting indicators that will have profound potential impacts, including access, density, access to park space, overall residential density—all kinds of different indicators. All of these things are good things, again, because although they may not be perfect solutions all by themselves, they allow us to have a measurable base level upon which we can now compare different areas of performance. We can look at a LEED-ND subdivision, for example, and compare it to a traditional subdivision. We can look at those performance indicators and measure and track whether we're actually making progress.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Madam Quach, thank you.

Next is Mr. Lunney.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mark Butler, I want to thank you for that great trip that you hosted. Some of our committee were on the trip to Micou's Island. I also wanted to commend you on that great partnership with the St. Margaret's Bay Stewardship Association and the Department of Natural Resources in the province. Everything's about partnerships today. The trip out to Indian Point and the mussel farm there was instructive. We saw the tunicates, something I think most of us will not forget, and witnessed the challenge posed by an invasive species, or a species moving in where it didn't used to be.

Your salmon enhancement and streamkeepers have improved the creek we were walking along. I know those kinds of projects are very popular in the west and you're engaging a lot of people in them. I wanted to say how much we appreciated the time we spent with you on the bus and seeing all those great spots where your work is being appreciated.

Can you tell us about the engagement of local citizens in the projects you're talking about?

[Mark Butler]

Well, it's a key point. It's about creating opportunities for people to enhance their quality of life by having natural opportunities on their doorstep. You talk about St. Margaret's Bay, a place with a lot of history and beauty, and the efforts of the community and other partners, federal and provincial, to protect that island. This way, as development continues in that area, there's still the island that they can go to where the kids can experience the beach.

We were at the Sackville River, dip-netting gaspereau in that river. They still have salmon. Unfortunately, Atlantic Canada doesn't have the same richness when it comes to salmon, but we do still have some rivers with Atlantic salmon. There you have Atlantic salmon swimming up through Halifax Harbour, through Bedford Basin and right up the Sackville River, an area that is fairly well developed. The key there is to make sure that the water quality isn't affected and that growth is directed to certain areas so that people can still walk along the river and anglers can still fish. It's making sure that places for kids to play remain and are available.

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

Mr. Bienenstock, thank you for your remarks earlier. That was a new comment about the average roam time or roam rate being 150 yards. That's a new concept for us.

I grew up in Manitoba, near the Red River. We crossed the river in the winter on snowshoes and went up and down the banks, playing on the hills in what we called the sticks, the bush. That was the way we grew up.

You mentioned that when you have a conversion from plastic and steel to a renatured park, the playtime expands from an average of 20 or 22 minutes—I didn't catch the figure. What do you end up with on that?

[Adam Bienenstock]

It's times three.

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

Three times is the expansion.

[Adam Bienenstock]

Yes, if they're left to their own devices, it expands by a factor of three, and there's a shift from 40% of the kids getting 90% of the physical activity to an even spread throughout. All of the kids engage. The 60% that you're missing is now what you engage.

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

You were talking about the connection with nature and how that has so many positive benefits. Where I come from, our first nations community have a word they like to use. Hishuk ish tsawalk in the Nuu-chah-nulth language means “everything is one”. It means we're part of nature, and nature's part of us. It's pretty hard to get away from that, and when we do get away from it, we have pretty nasty social effects.

You mentioned levers the government can pull to help make a difference. I didn't get them all down, but I wanted to pick up on your third and fourth points. You mentioned “no child left inside”. I liked that. You mentioned tax credits for increasing biodiversity. What was your third point? Could you go over your third and fourth points?

[Adam Bienenstock]

The last one is funding—taxes and legislation about what you fund. There are schools out there that are fantastic examples of engaging people in participatory education in the outdoors. North Vancouver Outdoor School is one. Another is the Palisades. Schools like this need to be helped. They are falling away and they are not being funded. If we don't institute a pedagogical approach to education in nature in these cities, it's soon going to be virtually impossible.

The last thing is that there need to be more urban park rangers, stewardship programs, and collaborations with people who are doing it already.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you. Unfortunately, time has expired.

Mr. Choquette, you have five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

My question is for Mr. Butler and Ms. Powley.

Of course, we have urban conservation now. It is also becoming part of the national conservation plan that we have recently studied. We are just going deeper into it. We have to see urban conservation as a whole. You said so and other witnesses have said so as well. We have to be looking out for human health, both physical and psychological. Nor must we forget the war on climate change. In that respect, research has recently been done on what are called climate change jobs, the jobs that allow the war against climate change to be fought. We talked about science and so on.

You also mentioned that we must make sure that we are close to nature and we do not have to sit in a car for an hour or two in order to get to it.

What interests me is the role of the government in all this. A lot of levels of government are involved in these areas, it must be said. The municipal and provincial levels are there, but what can the federal government do?

You suggested creating a department for this. What exactly is your idea behind that? Are there other things that the government could be doing, such as establishing stricter environmental rules and providing a place for research, for science and for innovation?

[Mark Butler]

Thank you for the question.

We're just going to confer for a second.

That's a big question. There is a reduced role, in some ways, for the federal government in urban planning. A lot of the important decisions about how and where our cities grow have to be made by the municipality. How your city grows and develops is the most important thing that affects one's quality of life—how you travel and whether you're stuck in traffic and all these things.

Where the federal government can come in—and this is perhaps a big statement—is to see and recognize how important protecting the environment is for our national identity and our children's future, and how nature is such a good teacher.

I have a son, and as Mr. Bienenstock has mentioned, when you put him on a beach, that is the best playground ever. Off they go, and they don't come back until it's suppertime.

We need to protect these places, and we need the legislation, be it fisheries or otherwise, to protect our nature. It's really important for our psychological health and the well-being of Canada as a nation.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much.

I understand that we have to have very strong legislation. You gave the greenbelts, the Rouge Park and the Evergreen Brick Works Park as examples. Should there be examples like that all over our municipalities?

I am thinking of the municipality of Drummondville in my constituency. It is a medium-sized city with more and more urban sprawl. Earlier, you said that downtown cores were becoming less and less vibrant. They are losing the vibrancy to the areas of urban sprawl. There is a lot of deforestation in Drummondville, though we still have a lot of trees. Our environment is also becoming very fragmented.

How can we address this problem? Should the government have a strategy? You talked about city planning. Should the government become more involved, in cooperation with the provinces or the municipalities?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Please give a very short answer. We have about 20 seconds left.

[Mark Butler]

The answer is yes. Using mechanisms, as the previous speaker mentioned, such as tax credits, is attractive and encourages activity. Tax credits now exist for physical activity, but expanding those tax credits would be good.

The Rouge Park is an exciting initiative, and it perhaps changes our way of thinking about parks. They're not some place far away; they're closer. Certainly having parks that are near and accessible is a great move, so more urban parks like that would be wonderful. I believe the Rouge Park in Toronto is part of their greenbelt.

Let's all work together—provincial, federal, regional—to create a network of green areas so these are accessible, and also accessible to all—

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Mr. Butler, unfortunately time has expired. Thank you.

Mr. Woodworth, you have five minutes.