Environment Committee on Nov. 26th, 2012

[Marguerite Ceschi-Smith]

If I may throw one thing in, my staff has just said that the green municipal fund, to date, has saved 1.1 billion kilowatt hours for 460 communities in 900 projects. It's been a good investment.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

There are energy savings, and therefore, I suppose, they are indirectly reducing carbon emissions. Is that correct?

[Marguerite Ceschi-Smith]

Absolutely. It is also saving water and doing a whole series of things.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Is there a website that would inform everyone about this good news?

[Marguerite Ceschi-Smith]

There is. If you go to fcm.ca, that will get you to it. Have a look at the sustainable communities projects. They'll blow you away.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I appreciate it. I know that some of the skeptics often refuse to acknowledge the good things the government has done, so I'm glad that we got that out, and I appreciate that. Thank you.

Ms. Bellemare, I read with interest your 2012 study entitled “Report on the Status of Laval's Wetlands”.

It was distributed to us. I noticed that it paints a rather grim picture of wetlands that have been lost in the non-agricultural area of Laval. I think some 50 hectares were lost in eight years and another 74 hectares were disturbed in that time.

You are familiar with this report, because you wrote it, didn't you?

[Marie-Christine Bellemare]

Yes, I wrote it.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good. Am I correctly reporting that eight-year loss and disturbance?

[Marie-Christine Bellemare]

Yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good. I also noticed that at another point in the report, there was a reference to nature sometimes playing tricks. This was in relation to what seemed to be new wet areas developing. Is it possible that some of the wetlands that have been lost are due to natural causes, or is all of this loss and disturbance due to man-made causes?

[Marie-Christine Bellemare]

I will continue in French, if I may.

If I've understood correctly, your question has to do with new wetlands. They are sometimes created naturally and often allow for water to be absorbed naturally. These areas are like sponges. But when we fill in a wetland—

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

May I stop you for a moment just to make sure the question is correct. Of the lost and disturbed wetlands, is that loss and disturbance due entirely to man-made causes or might it also be the result of natural changes?

[Marie-Christine Bellemare]

No, it is only caused by urban sprawl.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good.

I understand from your report that Quebec's Environment Quality Act would require applications for certificates of authorization to permit partial or total filling in of wetlands. Am I right about that?

[Marie-Christine Bellemare]

Yes, absolutely. For every wetland that needs to be filled in, authorization must be obtained from the Quebec Ministry of the Environment. Currently, the majority of the authorization requests are approved. So there might be a problem with this legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Your time has expired. Thank you.

Mr. Cotler, you have seven minutes.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I thought you framed some of the questions we might be dealing with very well in your opening remarks.

Let me turn to the panel. Welcome.

Last week I met with three councillors from the FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to discuss some of these issues. Very briefly, they shared with me infrastructure concerns, the concerns of the absence of a national transit strategy—I think we're the only OECD country that does not have a national transit strategy--with the environmental fallout that this obtains. There were water treatment concerns and less so urban conservation concerns.

Maybe I would put my question to you, Marguerite, because you are the vice-chair of the FCM.

How does the federal government prioritize among these concerns? To go back to the chairman's question, what is the role of federal leadership here? Let me make it more specific to assist the reply. You chaired the FCM's brownfields committee. You also served on the brownfields task force of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which developed a national brownfield strategy in 2003. Regrettably the national round table, formerly chaired by our Governor General, has been terminated, as has the invasive alien species partnership program, to which you referred.

Do we have alternative or replacement instruments or frameworks in place for these two instruments or initiatives that I found were fairly important in this regard? Reference has been made to the green municipal fund. That has played a very important role.

How do we secure funding for the urban conservation strategy? What kind of policies should there be? For example, should there be a doubling of the gas transfer tax for that purpose?

Those are just some of the issues I thought you might address. If any other members of the panel wish to answer, that's fine.

[Marguerite Ceschi-Smith]

I didn't write down all the comments that you made, so you'll have to help me a little bit.

I'll start with the long-term infrastructure plan. That has been the latest piece. This last week, as you indicated, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities had its board meeting here in Ottawa and that's when we speak to members of Parliament about our various issues.

The gas tax was one of the big things we had spoken about long and hard in the last federal budget, because the build Canada plan and a couple of other programs are ending very shortly, and the gas tax, of course. With that, the federal government had promised there would be discussion with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities when the federal budget came through, particularly in relation to the long-term infrastructure plan. I'm sure you are all aware that our bridges are falling down and the roads aren't all being done and the green infrastructure comes into play there as well, many of the things that we deal with as municipal governments.

Those are issues that we certainly have been working on. We have been working with the federal government. We have been trying to work together. The federal government said that it would work with us. Again, we all know that infrastructure is the wealth of this country and it is getting old and it isn't being kept up enough. We simply don't have the resources as municipal governments to do it all ourselves. We really don't. We need partnerships. We need partnerships with provincial governments, the federal government, and municipal governments in everything we do.

For the infrastructure, as you said, we're looking to have the gas tax indexed. That's one thing. There's the building Canada fund. We want to work with you so that we can work collaboratively for the entire country, with the municipal governments, the federal government, and provincial governments as well. It's very important that all three orders of government work together on all the things that are done on the infrastructure. We need to keep our country going and to create the wealth that we have. We simply can't do it ourselves. The federal government needs the other orders of government as well, so we all need to work together.

I don't know if that answers your question.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Do we have, and if we do not, do we need a kind of comprehensive strategy? There are infrastructure concerns, transit strategy concerns, water treatment concerns, urban conservation concerns. Should there be some overall umbrella generic strategy that deals with it on a tripartite level with the federal, provincial, and municipal governments?

Do we have something resembling that? Is this something we need? As the chairman put it, what is the role of federal leadership in this regard?

[Marguerite Ceschi-Smith]

I think federal leadership is huge in this regard. We can't do it all alone. We all need to work together. The federal government needs to listen to the municipal government and the provincial government. All of us need to work together in those orders, because we're all in this together.

We all have different roles. I think the role that is important to remember with municipal government is we're the order of government that is closest to the people. We're the ones that take care of the water and the garbage and all of those things. If we're not able to support all of that, including urban forests, which is what we're talking about here, if we can't work on all of this together.... We simply don't have the money at the municipal end. We get, as you've heard, 8¢ on the dollar, which is what we use to operate what we have.

If we can work on all of this together, we can deal with all the environmental and the green issues in every area. As you said, it's water, air and again, the urban forest. It's everything we need as people to exist and to create jobs and to create the wealth of this entire country. We really do need to work together. It's vitally important. Cities and municipalities are the wealth of this country. That's where things happen. We are all in this together. You can't forget about us.

I think we need to find a way whereby we can work together on all of this. That's where the budgets are. If we're all in there and you're listening to what our needs are, they're your needs as well.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Tovey, I noticed you were just....

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired, so could we have a very quick answer, please.

[Jim Tovey]

I'll give a quick answer.

I agree with you. I think all three levels do need to work together.

I spent 30 years in the private sector. I was absolutely stunned with how little money our city has, even though we're one of the few cities in Canada that has no debt. We issued our first-ever debt this year. I started in the basement at city hall. I went to shipping and receiving. I worked my way right through every department. I asked to see their books and asked them what they did. They are lean and mean and deliver services in a very cost-effective way. Then I wondered what the problem was.

To me the problem is that municipalities own 65% of the infrastructure and we get 9¢ on the dollar. That is absolutely the number one problem. I wonder if anybody in this room can tell me how that math works. How can you maintain, build, and replace 65% of the infrastructure in the country when you've only got 9¢ on the dollar? It absolutely makes no sense.

I agree with you. I think all three levels need to sit down. We really need to understand that what makes Canada successful, and what will make Canada successful in the future, is how vibrant our cities are and how great our infrastructure is.

A friend of mine is doing some jobs in China right now. He's building precincts in China. This is funny. They built 40 kilometres of LRT in two years. How in the heck did they do that? They had no environmental assessment. He was the lead architect. He asked the Chinese fellows about environmental assessments, and they asked him what he meant. He told them they are done to find out whether it's going to be positive or negative, and his Chinese counterpart looked at him and said that it's going to be positive because it's public transit.

There are a lot of ways we can find efficiencies at all three levels and help each other, I'm quite sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Those are interesting suggestions.

Ms. Quach, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of you for coming and giving us more information about this.

I will continue along the same lines. I would like to speak about how to make all our ecological activities beneficial. Ms. Smith and Mr. Garand, you both spoke about this. You spoke about the impact of climate change on urban conservation and how, by taking on climate change, the federal government could help reduce the climate disruption that destroys infrastructures, farmland, waterways and so on. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy indicated that, by 2020, the economic repercussions of climate change could reach $5 billion a year.

What role could the federal government play with respect to climate change, a role that could have a positive impact on urban conservation?