Environment Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2012

[Adam Bienenstock]

Fishers, hunters, you know.... I was involved in a conversation recently in which they talked about how they didn't like Richard Louv in particular saving our children from nature deficit disorder, because he was supporting hunters. We need a societal shift of mammoth scale, and we're falling way behind. We can have the argument about whether or not you should hunt, or whether or not you should be into photography, or whatever. If you're out there, and you're engaged in nature and learning about it—and hunters are very good conservationists—then we'll have the conversation about how many angels we can fit on the head of a pin in 10 years if we actually succeed, but we don't have a chance any more.

We should absolutely include anglers, hunters, bikers, mountain bikers—all of them.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I like the biker idea. That's just a joke; sorry.

Mr. Butler, in your presentation, you used a lot of words that imply to me “command and control” as the answer to urban conservation. You used the phrase that I find a little bit Orwellian, “urban containment”, whatever that means. I understand where you're coming from, I think, but in that command-and-control philosophy that seems to have come out in your presentation, do you see any role for enhancing individual liberty and freedom in our cities?

[Mark Butler]

What we're seeing in Halifax is that the city has grown in ways that is costing us financially and environmentally, and some of the suburban and rural areas are losing the qualities that they value. You talked about hunting and fishing. A lot of the members of our group are rural folks. There are some hunting and fishing groups, and what they value is protecting the lands around our municipality for enjoying nature, hunting, fishing, and logging.

We think there is some value in containing growth to where you have the services and they're delivered efficiently, and then protecting the green spaces around those areas so people have access to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

Monsieur Pilon is next.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

First of all, congratulations to you all. I found your presentations very interesting.

Let me start with Mr. Bienenstock, going somewhat along the same lines as my friend Mr. Sopuck.

You rightly deplore the fact that most city green spaces and playgrounds have become sterile, paved places over the years. What effect would better conservation of our urban green spaces and playgrounds have on people's health and on Canada's economy in general?

[Adam Bienenstock]

The question of health is important and has been subjected to a lot of research. Playgrounds are important for us. If you leave kids on their own to engage in a natural space with trees and rolling hills and boulders and the things we recall as nature, they'll be there for just over an hour. An hour and four minutes seems to be average. If you send them to a plastic and steel space, one of those post-and-platform things, then they're there for 19 to 22 minutes, so the amount of time that they engage is significantly increased in nature.

ParticipAction is one of our partners, and ParticipAction has now realized that it's not just field sports or organized sport that makes a difference to the health of our kids; it's this unstructured play. These are the spaces we're talking about, because that's where they play.

Active Healthy Kids Canada just last year designated nature as one of the main predicators of the health of our children. It is one of the simpliest, easiest, cheapest ways to make a difference in the health of our children.

If you look at a standard playground or standard green space or even these paved spaces, the children engaging in physical activity are predominantly the A-type kids. About 40% of the kids are getting more than 80% of the physical activity levels. If you make this shift and they spend time in nature, all of a sudden it levels off, so the children you most want to learn about nurturing, those aggressive king-of-the-castle kids, are the ones who actually start to calm down, and the ones on the sidelines who aren't participating normally—the ones with high obesity rates, disabilities, cultural biases, social collaboration problems, phobias—are the ones whose activity levels exponentially increase.

Even though the activities are the same in both, these natural spaces provide us with the opportunity to hit the ones we most want to engage.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

My next question goes to Ms. Gabor.

What is the essential balance we need between urban development and urban conservation, so that an urban conservation plan works for planners and environmentalists alike?

[Andrea Gabor]

My earpiece was not working. Could you repeat the question?

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Clearly cities have to grow, but there has to be some balance between urban development and the environment. What might that balance be, in your view?

[Andrea Gabor]

There must be a balance. I do not have any statistics on that, but I feel that everyone has to be able to have access to green spaces and places to play and enjoy nature. It could be in ravines, beside water or even in parks next to schools. But there has to be a good balance, otherwise children will have no opportunity to play in and enjoy nature.

I do not know if that answers your question.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Yes. Percentages will come. We do not know; I understand that.

My next question is for Mr. Butler.

Nova Scotia is a coastal province. If the government wants an urban conservation plan that is at all respectable, it is critical in the Atlantic provinces for the plan to address the coastal waters as well as the green spaces.

What recommendation would you make to the government about that?

[Jennifer Powley]

Right now the municipality certainly can't do it because of all the federal cuts they've made over....

[Mark Butler]

You're quite right. We are known as Canada's ocean playground and coasts are really important to us, so as part of greenbelting or protecting our green spaces, protecting our coast and making sure that we have enough coastal parks so that people can go to the beach is of central importance. That's where you'll find all Haligonians on a hot summer day in Halifax.

Maintaining coastal access too is something, because often in some of our coastal communities when new people buy property and build right adjacent to the coast, people lose that coastal access. Protecting those areas as part of a planned approach to growth is important. We know we're going to get growth, but we don't want to lose those things that make life worth living, such as being able to go to the beach in the summer with your kids or—somebody mentioned angling—being able to go fishing off a wharf in Bedford Basin or downtown Halifax. Three weeks ago I was fishing for mackerel and squid off a wharf in Bedford Basin. What better experience is there than that?

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I do not have a lot of time left. You can all answer in turn, but very quickly.

What is the most pressing urban conservation issue at the moment?

Anyone can answer. Go ahead, Mr. Bienenstock.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired, so just give a short answer.

[Adam Bienenstock]

The most pressing one is this: who are the next generation of urban conservationists? Where is their sense of ownership with the natural world? Where is their sense of Canadian identity going to come from?

We have a tradition in Canada of being tied to the land, and we are losing that. An entire generation is losing it. We're not coming up on the cliff, we're on the edge of the cliff and about to fall off; we have to learn that we're either going to fly or we're going to fall, and what we do right now matters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

Time has expired.

I'm going to ask Ms. Ambler to ask questions. You have seven minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. Your presentations have been absolutely fascinating, and I thank you for them.

Mr. Bienenstock, in particular, I was saddened.... You are completely 100% correct about the roam range. I've never heard it put that way before, but it's so true. As the mother of a 13-year-old—and we live in the suburbs—I wasn't sure if I just worried more than my mother ever did, but times have changed. I do let my son walk around the neighbourhood and walk down to the park, which is close by, and there's a little man-made pond and some swings and things like that, but I do not let him go alone, and he's 13 years old. It's a different life from the one that we led, I think.

I wanted to know more about what you do. You talked about ripping up asphalt, so I want to know exactly how that works. How do you decide where to rip up the asphalt, and then what do you do? Can you give us an example of the type of work you do, the natural playgrounds that you build?

[Adam Bienenstock]

It's my pleasure.

There are a lot of different places. Basically, anywhere you'd see one of those plastic and steel things, you would find us working there. I'll give you some different examples.

A private school might call us and say they have this plastic and steel thing. Bishop Strachan School did this in downtown Toronto. They had it for a year and a half. They spent $95,000 on it and they broke three kids' arms in a row. It was the standard break, the radial arm break that snaps right here. That's the standard break off a slide and a swing. They had one too many, and they decided this was crazy. They said, “We have a Reggio Emilia curriculum for experiential education, and we have a flat space with rubber and plastic and steel. Can you come and help us?”

So we go in, we make the change, we dig all of that up, we put in hills, slides on the sides of the hills. Our play structure is a tree that lies sideways in the space. There's a boulder to climb on. There are forts. We're not focused on gross motor activity in our spaces. We're focused on all aspects of child development.

We watched the statistics for bullying rates drop by 90%. We watched the statistics for vandalism in the school drop by 70%. We watched the injury rates drop. They haven't had a major injury yet.

We do city parks. We do consultations with the city and we rip out what was there and put this stuff in, but we do that through a consultative process with them, so they decide what they want and we put that in with them.

We do a community-building process as part of every one of these, because you only get a certain number of points for renaturing these spaces. The rest of the points come from how you animate the space, how you consult with them so they know it is theirs, how they make their decisions, and then how they program the space afterwards. This is why we work with the Canadian Wildlife Federation, ParticipAction, Parks Canada, Right to Play, and Scouts Canada. It's because they all provide programming. We need to animate these spaces once we're done. It's not enough just to build it, so we get involved with how we animate the space afterwards.

Another quick example of the work would be a place like Moss Park in downtown Toronto, which would have traditionally had some really bad statistics. We went in with a sponsor to pay for it, and on a community-build day there we worked with the community to renature their space. We did it as a reflection of Georgian Bay Islands National Park. Parks Canada came and started to deliver a program there, and they were taking youth from there back up to Georgian Bay Islands National Park, and now those youth are actually scouts. As well, they started a Scouts group there that wasn't successful.

Each one of these groups on their own could not be successful in that space, but if all of us collaborate and layer it properly, we can create a complete social change there. That's what happened with their statistics of engagement and the amount of crime. It used to be a place to buy crack, and that has disappeared recently as a result of all of this change. That's consistently what happens if you do this work.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's incredible, and those are incredible statistics. I'm surprised to be talking about bullying in the environment committee, but I thank you. I like the term “renature” .

For the record, you talked about P3s. I laughed when you said government doesn't have the money anymore, so I want to know more about P3s and how you think they might work. Have you worked within this framework at all in your natural playgrounds?

[Adam Bienenstock]

Yes. The last project I described was a perfect example of that.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

You said you had a sponsor.

[Adam Bienenstock]

We brought in a sponsor to pay for this to happen. They brought $150,000 to the table. We brought in a national charity, ParticipAction, which was involved from how we engaged with the community to some of the programming that goes on afterwards.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Therefore there's a federal funding opportunity there, possibly.

[Adam Bienenstock]

Yes, absolutely.

The one thing that has been disappointing up until now is that the amount of money committed by all of our federal partners doesn't even amount to the tax we've paid to do the work that we've done, so you're quickly losing your right to be involved, and if it weren't for the fact that I really believe in my heart that we need to get more people back into our national parks, we probably wouldn't be able to justify affording it.

We need to find a federal partner willing to invest in some of these partnerships as well in order to make it work a bit better.