Environment Committee on Oct. 24th, 2012

[Monica Andreeff]

The Canada National Parks Act currently puts ecological integrity as the overriding governing principle for national parks. To be successful in attracting and being relevant to Canadians, national parks need to consider visitor experience and education, on par with ecological integrity. Similar to what somebody said earlier, these things don't need to be considered in isolation of each other. They should be considered in equal balance.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks. You did mention that piece of legislation. I was just wondering if there were other aspects.

I want to get to funding. I will open this up to everyone.

I appreciated, Mr. Rosen, when you talked about a very specific solution in response to Ms. Duncan's question. That's the kind of information I am looking for. I'm looking for specifics, such as at Canada Forest Service you need a position that does x and guidance and advice from the feds. Was it Mr. Manderson who said that piece?

I would love to delve into some of those specifics. Do you have a wish list of specifics? Funding is such a large, grand thing for us to talk about. What are some tangible things we could put our fingers on that would work?

I would love to hear from either Mr. Manderson or Ms. Charlton about the infrastructure granting piece. That's a new concept for me.

[Anne Charlton]

At the municipal level, when we deal with federal funding, it's often a tri-party agreement. The infrastructure Canada program, the national infrastructure program from 15 years ago, was leveraged dollars, which is always of interest to a municipality no matter how big or small it is. Often it dealt with built infrastructure. We have wiggled parks in as green infrastructure.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Good job.

[Anne Charlton]

We have done some very interesting projects, because leveraged money goes a long way. If the federal government believes that urban conservation and green infrastructure truly are essential to a city, then it should expand the definitions. You don't even necessarily have to put as much money against it.

When I debate the cost of a park, and we have built some multi-million dollar parks in Calgary recently, I still talk about them as being a quarter of an intersection and a quarter of an overpass. The value people get from them goes far beyond that. They have that social connectivity. Parks bring people together. Some of the most social people in the world are urban dog walkers.

When you look at the triple bottom line, you can judge the success of urban infrastructure on not only the economics. I think that has been well covered, particularly in the tree discussion. You can evaluate it. It's a social benefit. It's an economic benefit. It will bring kids out of the basement and away from their laptops, back into playing soccer and everything else they should do to combat obesity. Interestingly enough, right now, recreation and health are having very significant discussions at all three levels of government.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Does anyone else want to get in on specific suggestions?

Ms. Dobbie.

[Dorothy Dobbie]

I have one. I'm not sure that it's anything the federal government can do.

Somehow we need to educate developers, engineers, architects, and contractors about how trees grow. They have a vision that the roots go straight down. You will often see trees with these nice little board fences around them. It doesn't do a darn thing for them. Those are some of the trees which cost so much money, and suddenly, after a construction site has been cleared, fall over because a big wind had come along and all of their anchor roots had been cut. When I was chairman of Tree Canada, I wanted to put together a conference where we could bring people with green experience and tree experience together with the people who actually do the built landscapes so that they could have an exchange. I don't think that is done deliberately. Perhaps it's they just don't know any better. I think there is a role for the federal government in that education.

Let me just add that I want to congratulate all of you, because I know that you all voted for National Tree Day. That's going to have a tremendous impact on some of these education pieces. Congratulations to all of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much. Your time has expired, Ms. Megan.

Mr. Lunney, you're next for five minutes.

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

Great. Thank you for that. It's a fascinating discussion, I can't wait to jump in, but before I do, and for Ms. Ambler's benefit, Mr. Cullen, I believe you brought with you some booklets about trees. Unfortunately, they're only in English. I'm wondering, colleagues, could I take a second to ask if there would be agreement to have these distributed? Regrettably, they're only in English but I think there's information in it that would benefit all members of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Very good. I think you have consent.

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

Thank you very much. Perhaps those could be distributed now. That would be helpful.

What a fascinating discussion we're having today. Gardening in order to recover from politics: thank you very much for that, Dorothy Dobbie. Some of us are wondering what step we're at right now. Is this a 12-step program we're talking about?

[Dorothy Dobbie]

It's an easy step, just into the garden.

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

Horticultural therapy, not an escape from reality but into reality. I think some of us appreciate that. I know I'm fortunate enough to live on acreage on Vancouver Island. I have my little trails through the trees behind the house that I maintain with a lawn mower. When I'm contemplating the challenges of the universe, I like to walk those trails. I really miss that time out there if I'm away too much. We appreciate the concepts you're bringing up today.

I want to pick up on one of your comments, Ms. Dobbie, about having a conference with urban developers on how trees grow. I want to tie that in with a question I heard earlier about soil volume. I walk in urban areas. There's concrete everywhere and I see trees that are planted in little holes hardly bigger than the tree trunks. I wonder how those trees could possibly survive. Maybe there is a water supply underneath the trees. Maybe you could comment on that and how big a problem it actually is.

[Michael Rosen]

I want to address that one.

Actually it has to do with a question from Mr. Choquette. He mentioned the same principle because the trend now, of course, is all toward densification. Mr. Choquette was talking about urban areas expanding into rural areas and what we can do. The trend in municipalities is toward densification, to develop more in the cities themselves. That itself, by definition, is going to put pressure on existing trees. We have to learn how trees can live in an area of more hard surface.

There are techniques, and they're not those what we call tree coffins, those little cement boxes that you described. That's a technology from the 1960s and 1970s. There's new technology available. One of them is called Silva Cells. It's a living system underneath sidewalks. They are cells that can support sidewalks and infrastructure but allow for soil so that tree roots can exist in the soil beneath the sidewalks. They're one of the best examples, and they're being used all across the major cities. If you're ever at Yonge and Bloor in Toronto—some of you may be there one day—take a look at the trees planted along there. This is a multi-million dollar project. They ripped apart the entire sidewalk system simply to incorporate these cells to allow the trees that they've planted to grow to maturity and maintain a very large size.

It is possible, but not under the technology that you described. In the technology you described, according to a study that I saw, the trees live an average of seven years. It's more like a replacement program, a job creation program, where the trees are literally replaced every seven years. The long-term solution is to invest big money and unfortunately--here's the plug again—that money is borne by the municipal tax base. It's a tax levy on the municipalities. They have to bear the brunt of trying to support a tree in a hard surface area.

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

Thanks for that.

Ms. Charlton, I think it was you who mentioned soil volumes, the beginning of life and end of life. Would you expand on that for us?

[Anne Charlton]

Yes, and actually Michael's very right. In downtown situations we, too, are experimenting with Silva Cells, but as he mentioned they are a very expensive technology and are only appropriate in the places where you have that kind of money.

What we've been doing is under the residential street policy for Calgary, we've been in negotiations with developers, our engineers, and internally as a municipality, for probably a couple of years, and we have become a little more creative. We have looked at the width of the streets, the width of the sidewalks. We are creating additional space and additional soil volumes, as well as trying to style the size of the tree with the amount of dirt attached.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

The time has expired. Thank you.

Mr. Trottier, you have five minutes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a real delight to be here.

Mr. Rosen, I appreciate your comments about Toronto. It's my city. We've lived through all of the digging and re-digging of Bloor Street, and it looks to be a success.

Another project that's been happening in the city of Toronto is one around the waterfront. You're probably aware of it.

I've spent some time with them. They've talked about some of the best practices they're putting in place for all the park space they're developing down there, but also for the tree planting. They mentioned that the vision is to have not seven-year trees down at the waterfront, but 50-year trees. It sounds as though they've been incorporating the Silva Cells, I guess. Is that the technology they're using?

[A voice]

Yes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Is that an example of best practices?

I should mention, by the way, that's it's not all municipal money that's going into the Toronto waterfront. It's actually mostly federal money.

Is that an example of the best practices being used in the country, or are there better examples of best practices when it comes to urban planting?

[Michael Rosen]

When it comes to best practices that you could have in a municipality, I'm not going to name the municipalities. I don't want to get into that.

You have to think of the bigger picture. Some municipalities actually have an urban forest strategy. In my mind, every city should have one. I don't know if we want to legislate this, but we should be actively encouraging it.

A municipal urban forest strategy tells the municipality that we have to do an inventory. You have to ask yourself: why do we have the problem with emerald ash borer? Why is it that the City of Ottawa has one-third of their trees in one species? How did that happen?

A lot of it happened because there was not a lot of planning. Actually, there was no strategy in Ottawa in the 1970s and 1980s—after Dutch elm disease, ironically—no strategy to say that the strategy should be to have a diverse urban forest, no strategy to say that you should want to create diversity in the forest.

I think the short answer is that the best management practices always start with a good, comprehensive plan, including: what kinds of trees we have growing now; what kinds we would like in the future; when the trees have to be replaced; what size of tree we have to replace them with; and whether we're redeveloping the downtown. Also, we should be using Silva Cells. All of that stuff has to be spelled out in a comprehensive plan.

Yes, the waterfront is a good example, and so is the area around Yonge and Bloor. Unfortunately, though, there's the rest of urban Canada, with the guy maintaining the hockey rink taking care of the trees, who's not privy to the technology, the training, or the funding to do that kind of innovative stuff. But yes, the waterfront is a great example.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Good. Thanks.

I hate to be too Toronto-centric on everybody, but I'd like to talk a little about Rouge Park. It's our first urban national park. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on some of the uses for Rouge Park. It's great to have trees and a wild space in the City of Toronto, but at the same time, this is an opportunity for young Torontonians, a lot of whom are also new Canadians, to experience the forest.

Maybe, Mr. Cullen, you could comment on that too. I know that you've spent a lot of time in Toronto.

In thinking about those people and how to get them to experience nature in a different way, some uses that are being proposed are things like canopy walks, zip lines, and things like that, which get the kids into the forest itself. Are those kinds of things appropriate, or do they degrade the quality of the forest?

[Mark Cullen]

I think you need to look at the activity, whether it's a zip line or mountain biking—probably not a good idea—or whether it involves something motorized, and you need to ask yourself whether that is good for the trees. If it's not good for the trees, I don't think it's a good idea.

On the other hand, we want to engage as many Canadians as we possibly can in Canada's first federal urban park, right? I live in Markham, which envelops the northern part of the park, so I am very familiar with it. As a kid, I rode my bike through it.

The question is maybe best answered with a question: What would engage people to the maximum and draw them to the park without damaging the trees? That would be my response. Is that reasonable?

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Yes, and maybe as what I'll call an armchair designer at this point, what kinds of suggestions do you have? I know that we're still in the early stages of designing the park; I don't think the planning is too far advanced.

What kinds of suggestions would you have? What could we do to make Rouge Park a fantastic park, and a destination not just for Torontonians, but for people from across the country and around the world?

[Mark Cullen]

Right. With your permission, I'd like to think about that. It's a good question and I'd like to give you a more thoughtful response than I can give you at this moment. Could I do that?