Environment Committee on Nov. 26th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

The clock is our enemy, is it not? Thank you so much.

Ms. Ambler, you are going to close out our last five minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask both of you how important it is to incorporate the history of a place into a plan. If that was done here, why is it important, and how did you do it?

[Jim Tovey]

I'll try to be brief. We all know that if you don't know where you came from, you don't know where you're going, so that's really clear.

I had the number one ward for graffiti. Everybody wanted to tag the waterfront. Kids were running rampant doing graffiti. That was prior to my being elected. We've now done a total of 14 different anti-graffiti projects with three different high schools. I also have a background in commercial art, so I go with the kids and I paint. We do garbage cans and park benches. We do murals. Everything we do has a heritage component to it.

We also had one of the largest munitions factories during the Second World War. It was 255,000 square feet, and 16,000 Canadian women worked there. I know 10 of those women, and they're great. We introduced them to the kids. Now my ward is no longer the number one graffiti ward in the city.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

It was also voted the greenest ward in the city.

[Jim Tovey]

Yes, we just got the greenest ward award.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Congratulations on that.

Tell me about the plan, about the economic case for the plan, how it creates jobs. Will it create jobs?

[Jim Tovey]

Are you talking about the legacy project? Absolutely, it'll create jobs.

When we started doing the modelling in 2006, we did 15,000 residential units at $200 per square foot. Of course, nobody can build in the GTA for $200. It was over $2 billion, so there are all those construction jobs. We already have partnerships that we've developed since 2006, with the University of Toronto at Mississauga, the University of Toronto downtown, Sheridan College, and Seneca College. Seneca College has the first degree program for brownfield remediation. As citizens we couldn't afford to hire professionals, so we got master's students to do all the studies for us, and we in effect became the client.

Now that we have those partnerships with the Small Arms building, which is the only building left from the munitions factory, the TRCA, and the Credit Valley Conservation Authority, and some of these students are going to be working on projects. That's going to be the beginning of a centre for environmental excellence. It's all about building slowly, and that means more jobs.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

It sounds as if you're using your imagination.

Mr. Dion, you talked about an innovative funding approach. Aside from the partners Councillor Tovey is talking about, what were you talking about? What is this innovative approach for funding? Does it include the private sector?

[Ken Dion]

The innovative funding approach that we're talking about is....The Region of Peel currently has a pocket of cash budgeted to deal simply with the long distance disposal of materials that are generated as part of their capital works. It's increasing. The price of gas goes up. Distances are getting longer and longer. As time goes on, these costs are getting to be close to 25% to 50% of capital projects.

The idea is if there are ways that you can incorporate the material that's generated locally and use it as a resource so that you don't have those long distance and disposal fees, the difference in cost between the original estimated amount of the budget that contributed to the disposal, and the new cost for the local reuse of it, becomes your operating budget to deal with planning, land acquisition, actual construction of wetlands, actual planting plans, and development of trails. It can even go toward operating budgets, potentially, if they're sufficient.

It's using the same money in a constructive way that brings in benefits to the local community and improves the environmental conditions in the area as well.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Fantastic.

[Jim Tovey]

We'll be using about two million cubic metres of fill and by doing that we'll be taking 200,000 diesel trucks off the road.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

I really do appreciate the witnesses being with us today. It was very interesting.

Mr. Cotler, you have some guests with you. Would you like to introduce them?

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I would like to say that sitting among us is a group of grade 8 students from Hawthorne Public School here in Ottawa, accompanied by their teacher, Karen Kelland. It's great to have them with us on this occasion. It reminds us that we, in effect, are the trustees of the environment that they will inherit.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

That's so true. Thank you so much.

Monsieur Garand, do you have a guest you wanted to introduce, too?

[Guy Garand]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I have one last point.

Everyone here is looking for Canadian solutions. The Conseil régional de l'environnement de Laval does not have a charitable organization number. We did manage to buy land in an urban area in Laval. We bought 7 million square feet, without a tax receipt. The asking prices ranged from 9¢ and 11¢ to 17¢, if not 40¢ a square foot. I bought over 7 million square feet, so more than 70 hectares.

If you had a program to put in place on a pan-Canadian level, it should perhaps focus on funding these non-profit environmental organizations to help them buy natural environments to protect them in perpetuity.

That is what we did in Laval. We encumbered them with notarial deeds.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you for that commercial message.

With that, we will accept a motion to adjourn.

[An hon. member]

I so move.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

The meeting is adjourned.