Environment Committee on Oct. 24th, 2012

[Monica Andreeff]

I believe that the federal government can help with looking at the mandate of Parks Canada. Ecological integrity needs to be balanced with visitor experience and education. Currently, ecological integrity is the first priority, and that's wonderful. That's wonderful in remote national parks where no one visits. In order to attract Canadians to the national parks, we need opportunities for adventure, activities that appeal to young and urban Canadians, and we need to make all of this accessible to anyone.

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

Do you think this would require additional investment?

[Monica Andreeff]

I understand that Parks Canada has been struggling to maintain the high quality of visitor experiences in light of the recent cutbacks, but I believe there is still reinvestment that can be done in the form of maintaining highways and structures in the parks, making sure the infrastructure gets funding from various federal departments.

They've had cutbacks in wages and salaries, but I believe there's still room for a lot more investment. Upgrading of highways is very important. A crumbling highway between Lake Louise and Jasper, called the Icefields Parkway, needs a great deal of investment, and unfortunately there is not enough money to improve that road.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired.

Mr. Sopuck.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Andreeff, I happen to represent a constituency in west-central Manitoba, and within my constituency is the entirety of Riding Mountain National Park. What you said about national parks really hit home to me.

Given that the private sector is taking more and more of a role in our national parks, where are we with what the private sector has done? What is the potential for more private sector involvement in our parks?

[Monica Andreeff]

The private sector continues to invest in infrastructure in the national parks, maintaining buildings to a higher standard, in some cases, than Parks Canada is able to afford to do.

The private sector can also partner in the delivery of high-quality visitor experiences, something that Parks Canada may not be required to do. I think Parks Canada does a great job of making sure that the mandate of the National Parks Act is met, but sometimes they just have to get out of the way and let private operators deliver the services to visitors and tourists.

There is plenty of potential for more high-quality recreational opportunities. Even though there is sometimes some great direction from Ottawa, we find that at the field unit level the implementation is quite a different story.

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

I couldn't agree with you more. This has been borne out in my discussions with local business people, Riding Mountain National Park, and park staff. Your comments about far-off diktats from Ottawa hit home with me as well.

It seems to me that private sector operators in national parks have a strong incentive to do things right in an environmentally sound way, to present visitors with the most effective experience possible, because their livelihoods depend on it. Could you expand on that?

[Monica Andreeff]

Private sector operators understand they have no interest in killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Many of them, sometimes generations of families, are residents and have been doing business in national parks for decades. They live and breathe the wilderness and the national park values and these things are very close to their heart.

Obviously, we still need to have an economic engine driving the parks so we have sustainable communities where people can afford to live and work. I think that private operators who are operating in national parks are very responsible and work well within the guidelines of the National Parks Act. They're often subject to very stringent environmental assessments that sometimes make it prohibitive for them to move ahead with a new project or a new idea or to replace an aging ski lodge. Sometimes these requirements are very expensive and time-consuming, so in many cases things die on the books because of the cost of pushing a new project or a new activity.

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

I would just comment that I think our changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act will facilitate the kind of redevelopment of our parks that you described.

Ms. Dobbie, I was very intrigued by the phrase you used, “environmental infrastructure”, trees as infrastructure.

Mr. Manderson, you used a phrase that is near and dear to my heart, “ecological goods and services”, which implies the same thing.

Could either of you comment on studies that have quantified what environmental infrastructure does in terms of improving urban living?

[Dorothy Dobbie]

I made some comments about that in my initial remarks, but I think we know both instinctively and empirically that trees make a huge difference to the value of individual properties. It is much more difficult to quanitfy. I've done some research in this area in making presentations to the City of Winnipeg, for example, and there are numbers all over the place. Certainly no Canadian research was useful, but there's lots of research from the U.S.

I can give you a negative when it comes to replacing trees, Moscow planted a million trees at great expense when they came out from behind the Iron Curtain, and 80% of them died. You can see the difficulty if you don't keep up your urban infrastructure.

I don't know if anyone here has been to Truro, but the trees there were subjected to the emerald ash borer back in the early part of the century when the ash borer came to Canada. It took away nearly 100% of the trees. There may be a handful left. If you go to that town, you get a really strong sense of the impact. They stripped the bark off their elm trees, and turned them into icons that celebrate their pioneers and all the good things in their community. That's how much the trees mean to them.

While it is hard to attach dollars and cents to some things because the studies are few—and I think Mark has one that he can point to— certainly you can see all around you the difficulties you have if you don't include the maintenance of trees. Many of them were planted at the beginning of the last century, 80 to 100 years ago. Some of them can live to be 200 or 300 years old. Replacing them would take that much more time and that much more money.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired, sorry.

Mr. Choquette has the floor for five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank all the witnesses here today. This is very fascinating.

Urban conservation is an enormous challenge. It is part of the larger challenge of conservation on a national level. We conducted a study on this and it was published in a report. Of course, we were in disagreement. We mentioned that the committee did not acknowledge significant contributions made by science and scientists, environmental groups, aboriginal groups or communities. Moreover, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy recently tabled its report.

As for urban conservation, there are always problems related to urban development. For example, where I am from, in Drummondville, the city wants to grow. It is natural for a city to want to grow, however it does so at the expense of forests. So we are faced with the difficulty of balancing conservation and housing or industrial developments.

That brings us to the question of climate change. You touched on this when you spoke about the problem of droughts and what not.

How can the federal government provide tools to better reconcile the environment with the economy? What are these tools?

I think that Mr. Manderson and Mr. Cullen have some good ideas on this. Go ahead, gentlemen.

[Chris Manderson]

Within the context of environmental change and dealing with change, this is clearly an issue of the best available science. We need science to understand this and to learn to predict.

We have done some work in the Calgary region, for example. We know that we're going to be losing the primary source of water, the Bow River, which is fed by the Bow glacier. That's going to disappear certainly within my lifetime.

The patterns of precipitation are changing in southern Alberta. We're going to expect somewhat wetter, more unpredictable weather. We have to think about that in terms of how we supply drinking water to several million people, which is going to be a big change for us.

We need guidance. We need science. We need advice, I would say, at the federal and international levels, that's going to help municipalities deal with that.

With respect to the Convention on Biological Diversity, an interesting report just came out which talks about cities and the biodiversity outlook, and that the brunt of climate change is going to be borne by cities.

It spoke, for example, of coastal cities and the rise of the oceans as being one issue. Drought is going to be another. It's not just going to be an issue that can be solved locally. It needs to be solved nationally and internationally. Mitigating the effect of that is certainly an important element of that, but the mitigation is going to take some comprehensive planning.

[Mark Cullen]

LEAF is an organization that has spent a lot of time planting trees on private property. That is its mandate. It has determined that one tree equals $161,000 in environmental benefits. It has measured that. I'd be happy to provide the background information on that to anyone on the committee who would like to see it.

Let me make sure that I understand the question. I think you were pitting development against green infrastructure and the concept of developing green infrastructure in our urban space. Is that the nature of the question?

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

In fact, I was not referring to green infrastructure, but rather to housing and industrial and commercial developments.

[Mark Cullen]

Right. I just wanted to make sure I understood the question before I attempted to answer it.

I think it's a mistake to pit development against either the preservation or the development of green infrastructure. I believe that we can do both, especially where the intensification of residential development is concerned. We know that the intensification of residential development is a huge issue in our five or six largest urban centres. Elsewhere I'm not so sure. Maybe we're still dealing with sprawl, but less so in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, etc.

I won't go on any longer except to suggest there are answers to that question. We need to talk about how we can do both, rather than have one or the other. I think when we start talking about doing both, we can really advance the discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

Mr. Toet, you have five minutes.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our panellists today. It's been very informative.

I just wanted to go back to a couple of points on the scope of the study: point two, what could be the goals of connecting urban Canadians with conservation; and point five, what are the economic, health, biodiversity and social benefits associated with urban conservation.

The reason I go back to those two points is I know Mr. Cullen and Ms. Dobbie are avid gardeners and big promoters of gardening. Ms. Dobbie, I often enjoy your program on Sunday mornings while I have my morning cup of coffee. It has helped me with great insight into some of the gardening challenges that I face on an ongoing basis. I do appreciate it.

I wouldn't necessarily call myself an avid gardener, but I love getting out in my yard as much as I possibly can. I enjoy gardening, landscaping, the whole aspect of working out there and getting my hands in the soil and getting my fingers really dirty. I know some of the benefits that I feel personally about getting involved in that.

I wonder if either or both of you could speak to some of the psychological benefits of gardening and getting involved in the landscape, kind of becoming one with it.

[Dorothy Dobbie]

I always say that gardening is what made me recover from politics. It really does have a huge psychological benefit. When you go outside and you're in your garden, you're in that green space and you lose all sense of time, whether you're gardening, just cutting the grass, or whatever it might be. It takes you into another place and it's a happier place. I can't quantify what the health benefits are, but I'm sure they are great.

You cannot live in a city that doesn't have green spaces. All parts of those green spaces are important. We are talking about trees here, but grass is important. It helps to cool the atmosphere and makes it possible for trees to grow. The things people grow in their backyard gardens, the tomatoes they grow, it isn't so much about the food they eat, it's the joy they get out of growing it that makes the difference.

You mentioned my radio show. I know that many of my listeners don't garden. We get 50% of the Sunday morning listeners in that time slot of all the radio stations in Winnipeg. The people who listen are listening because it takes them away from strife and war, from stress, and it makes them feel good. How do you quantify that?

[Mark Cullen]

That's one of my favourite questions. Thanks for asking it.

I think all of the evidence needed to answer this question exists in a whole new industry that has developed over the last 25 years called horticultural therapy. You can now be certified as a horticultural therapist, a qualified therapist who helps people with any number of maladies, whether it's cancer, Alzheimer's, or any kind of cognitive disability. It can slow the progression of that malady or illness and sometimes reverse it.

If you look into horticultural therapy—google it and explore that a little bit—you'll get answers to your question. I think you'll be impressed by what the association has to offer as evidence of horticultural therapy. Not only does a beautiful garden provide benefits of its own, but there is the experience which Dorothy was talking about, of being in a garden and the benefits that gardening also provides.

Finally, going out into the garden is not an escape from reality; it's an escape into reality. By that I mean the garden links us to Mother Nature. It links us to our parks and to the real world around us, and it gets us out of the four square walls that we surround ourselves with.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

That goes a long way to explaining why I fight with my kids about cutting the grass, not because I want them to cut it, but because I want to cut it. It's my time.

Mr. Manderson, I have a question for you. Wetlands are something of a real interest to me. It's obvious from some of the research you've done that it is of great interest to you. You may be looking from a slightly different aspect. I come from Winnipeg, where we have real issues with water management, as almost everybody across Canada is aware of.

I would like you to talk about the benefits that wetlands would have, specifically for cities, but also in the role for Manitoba. I look at it from a flood mitigation aspect. Can you give us some enlightenment on that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Unfortunately, you're time has expired and you'll have to get the answer to that maybe through another question.

Ms. Leslie, you have five minutes.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks very much for your testimony. It has been very interesting.

Ms. Andreeff, you started off by talking about funding. Everybody talked about funding, but you mentioned funding and legislation, I think.

[Monica Andreeff]

Yes, that is correct.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Could you expand on what you mean by legislation? I am trying to figure out where federal jurisdiction would lie around legislation.