Environment Committee on Nov. 28th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

You have 15 seconds.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

We'll let it go. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Choquette, you have five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. It was really very interesting.

Mr. Koch, I would like to say that I visited Olds College with our committee colleagues this year. It was very interesting. We visited your wetlands project, and it was really extremely enriching.

Mr. Savard, I wanted to congratulate you on your project. It's really a great initiative. I also congratulate Mr. Kendall and Ms. Barocas for what you have done in education. I myself supported a green school project in Drummondville, the Duvernay school. So I know what you are doing is very difficult. It takes an incredibly large amount of mobilization. Congratulations! I know how much energy it takes.

My first question is for Ms. Blais.

You spoke a bit about a tool that you developed or that you helped develop to determine the best places for urban planning that are more beneficial for nature, the environment and urban conservation. Could you elaborate on that?

[Andréanne Blais]

Yes, in Quebec we have the environmental quality act, which states that wetlands can be developed, with authorization. This legislation is very controversial right now, as some MPs may know. It has led to very big discussions about planning and about the ecological importance of these wetlands. Of course, as we discussed earlier, education about the importance of wetlands is very relevant, in particular, as the person from Alberta mentioned, with respect to the ecological goods and services these wetlands provide to society.

Clearly, society being what it is, we must use natural resources, as mentioned earlier, in a sustainable way and, to do that, we think that planning is really the basis of this process. So, it is important to identify the wetlands that are a priority. The tool we developed uses a five-level priority scale. It can be adapted to the number of priority levels that we want and to the geographical unit desired, be it the RCMs, municipalities, drainage basins, or at the provincial or national level. In addition, this priority methodology can be exported.

In short, we base things on the surface area of the wetland, its connectivity with other areas, on its ecological diversity, the disruptions inside and outside that area, and also its fragmentation. All those criteria, combined with the presence of species at risk and how rare the environment is, give a priority rating to this area that people can include in planning. So, upstream of development, people can know whether they will have difficulty getting their authorization certificate or if it will be easier to get it.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Blais.

Indeed, we spoke about education, about the importance of having tools to ensure we know which locations and environments need to be protected, but we must also trust science, as my colleague mentioned earlier. Science is very important. I know that there is a program, the habitat stewardship program, that you have submitted requests to. You have dealt with that program for a few years now. I don't know how many years, exactly. There were cuts recently, unfortunately. It has just been brought back by the Minister of the Environment, who was with us a few weeks ago, and told us that the funding is back. But could this issue of unstable funding have a negative impact on a conservation policy? Should we instead have stable funding? What repercussions are being felt in our community?

[Andréanne Blais]

Basically, the grant program that was cut last year drastically cut our projects on the ground. We had a very strong cranberry development in central Quebec, in the wetlands where there are a number of species at risk, provincially and nationally. Last year, because of this cut, although our project had been said to be one of the best, we were about to exceed our funding. The projects would have taken place, but were not realized because of a lack of funding. Stewardship with private owners is important. We really focus on voluntary stewardship, so on educating owners. Last year, we were unable to carry out our projects.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

So one of your recommendations would be to provide stable funding to programs that can help with conservation.

[Andréanne Blais]

In federal jurisdictions, exactly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

You have five seconds.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

I will come back to this later. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Mr. Toet, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to all of our guests here today. I was very appreciative of your input.

Mr. Koch, I was also fortunate to be in the group at Olds College this spring. I saw your man-made wetlands area and was intrigued by what you've done and some of the work you're doing. In your brief, when you answered some of the study's questions, you talked about using existing wetlands, but also about the ability to construct wetlands to be used in stormwater and runoff management. You referred to it in several places, the impact this could have on reducing infrastructure costs. I was hoping you could expand a bit on that. Maybe you could give us examples of some of the practices you've been able to bring forward and implement in an urban environment through the research and work done at Olds College with your students.

[Gord Koch]

We've been fortunate to have a 20-acre site. We just finished construction this summer. Half of it was funded through the industry, as part of the Urban Development Institute, and with some of the green industry partners. The intent was to better the constructed wetlands practices that are currently happening. Both Calgary and Edmonton, as part of their land-use planning and land-use bylaws, support and promote the use of constructed wetlands, particularly in new urban developments. In effect, we're trying to slow down runoff into the existing infrastructure. As we build out, we get more hard surfaces and a greater volume of water, and our existing infrastructure can no longer support the rush of water going through the systems. By creating constructed wetlands in our communities, we have the ability to slow that down, to clean our water or cleanse it out through the proper use of planting regimes. In some cases, we reuse it for irrigation of public spaces, as well as for sediment removal. So what we're putting back into our river basins is of reasonably good quality after passing through a built environment.

We're still looking at improving the systems. This is not to say that it's totally bulletproof, or that it's the silver bullet, for that matter. Through our students and programs, as well as through research funding, we're looking at different kinds of plant materials, what the benefits are, what toxins they can pull out of the water. Whatever we can find, we're putting that out to industry and to government agencies. We're also negotiating with a couple of partners on looking at brownfield restoration within the city environment and how can we build water treatment through a constructed wetland in those cases.

The other part, which goes back to the previous guest, was to the loss of wetlands through urban development, and identifying natural wetlands and what could be lost. In Alberta it's essentially a three-for-one: if you disturb a hectare, you put back three hectares. So we are trying to replace or replicate what we're disturbing.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Savard, I was very intrigued by the project you did at the school. You talked about the timeframe. Now that you've done it—and you indicated you had been helping out on a couple of other projects—that timeframe must have really tightened up.

[Robert Savard]

It basically takes a lot less time. For the next school that I'll build next summer, we started in September. A year is enough time because we have put the methodology and procedure in place and it is working well.

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

I have one other question on that.

You talked about the student and community involvement in the project. I want you to comment a little bit on the benefits—not only about the benefits of the finished product, which you talked about quite extensively in your presentation, but what about the benefits of the community and the students being involved in creating this environment, taking away this asphalt and creating a much greener environment—

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Unfortunately, the time has expired, so we'll have to get that answered later. I'm sorry.

Monsieur Choquette, you have five minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will continue with Mr. Husk.

I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Husk, for your UMQ video clip that you made recently. It was very interesting and very well done. I'm also thinking about the fact that we both participated in this summer's campaign to leave the car at home when commuting to work. So we cycled to work this summer. This is the kind of thing you spoke about earlier—active transportation—that we need to encourage. I think it's important to talk about it.

You talked about the FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and the fact that it was given a green fund of $550 million. On Monday, a representative from the green fund came to appear before us, and I asked her if projects are sometimes turned down. She told me that it happens often, if not all the time, because she can only give funds to the best projects since there currently isn't enough money.

As you may know, $1.3 billion is currently being paid annually as a subsidy to oil, gas and other fossil fuel industries. So that would be money we could transfer to the green fund to have infrastructures that improve energy efficiency. I am also thinking, for example, about our next university in Drummondville, about the library and about exhibition centres where we could have a solar wall, a green roof and things like that, but you need funding for that.

You spoke about eco-conditional funding. Could you elaborate on that?

[John Husk]

Thank you, Mr. Choquette.

When we talk about eco-conditional support, it means giving grants or amounts that meet ecological criteria. So, these criteria become a condition for the money to be paid out.

Earlier, I spoke about land use planning. In this case, the eco-conditions could be not to give money for developing agricultural lands, in wetlands or for developments where the density is too low. However, if more money was given to building infrastructures that the federal government participates in, the conditions could address rainwater management. The government could require the municipality or any other developer to do a study on the life cycle of a building. The municipality or developer would have to show that a LEED—or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—building results in a 5% to 10% cost surplus compared with a standard building. But the building won't exist for just five years. So the payback—if I may use that expression—will be over the long term, if you take into account the fact that buildings these days last for 40 to 60 years.

In short, an eco-condition could be that the municipality needs 10% more, representing a certain amount, but if it can prove that the additional investment from governments would be profitable over 8 to 12 years and that it would then be profitable, that would be positive. The fact that there is a gain and that the municipalities are paying means that taxpayers pay less.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Husk.

To summarize what you said, even if the government provided more funding in the long term, we would be better off investing in LEED infrastructures or, for example—I'm thinking about a larger development—in a transit-oriented development transportation link to encourage the use of active transportation or public transit.

Along those lines, I would like to know what you think about Olivia Chow's position. She proposed a national public transit strategy. Should this be part of an urban conservation strategy? If we have a strategy, we pay attention to our urban planning and our public transit. So could that foster urban conservation?

[John Husk]

I agree. I am the chair of the CIty of Drummondville's public transit committee, and public transit works and is profitable with a certain level of urban density. We aren't talking about 20-storey condos, cheek by jowl, but about an acceptable number of condos. That means that such a strategy could be used to promote better urban planning because people would be less motivated to take their car.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Woodworth, you have five minutes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

Welcome to our committee. I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to ask Mr. Koch some questions.

I was most intrigued by your paper, quite frankly. If I were going to write a report for our study, I would probably write it along the lines that you did, with that kind of basic information. With your permission, I'd like to delve into a few things more closely.

I'm looking at page 4 and the statement that:

An urban conservation framework should provide the criteria that recognizes ecosystems in the built environment…and the relationship to the environmental, economic, social and cultural attributes of a community.

I wonder if you could expand on that. What kind of criteria are you talking about?

[Gord Koch]

I guess, Mr. Woodworth, we're trying to label a very broad scope of what I call “deliverables”.

For me, it's really difficult. This is a personal perspective of wrapping my head around a title or a label and saying that urban conservation is a specific thing. In a broader scope, when I'm in a classroom teaching about sustainable sites and we're going out and having our students promote green roofs to a client, I've got to be able to knit essentially all those categories together, to really promote and understand what the net outcome is at the end of the day.

What are the inputs relative to environmental benefits? I hate getting into dollars, but there's still the economic implication in both the short and long term. How do we maintain it? How do we carry it on? What are the benefits from a societal standpoint? Are we really creating a space that people are getting something from, whether it's health and well-being or whether it's building a strong community? Again, folding in cultural attributes, we're a country that's pretty much a melting pot. We know that. When folks come in from other areas, it's the ability for them to identify what we consider urban conservation.

I know that's not an exact answer, but I guess I'm trying to cover the generalized statement about urban conservation. At the end of the day, what are the measurables that we're looking for or seeking out?