Environment Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

I call the meeting to order.

I want to welcome everyone to meeting number 57 of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development as we continue our study of urban conservation practices in Canada.

Our apologies for a little delay. We had a vote in the House of Commons.

Each of the witnesses will have up to 10 minutes for a presentation, and then we'll follow that with some questions for you.

Michael Ricketts, you may begin, please, for 10 minutes.

[Michael Ricketts, Head Gardener, Bridgeland-Riverside Vacant Lots Garden]

I'm here because I've spent a lot of time trying to conserve things in the city of Calgary. I’ve found I’ve had a lot of push-back, and a lot of the push-back comes from the aldermen in the city who have other plans for the lands.

I was very interested to find out if you're doing conservation in an urban environment. I have lots of good examples to talk about, what I've tried to do and some of the things I've achieved, but I can also tell you I had to do a lot of thinking on why the federal government would get involved. I think I have the answer. Depending on the time allowed, I can talk about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Mr. Ricketts, are you aware of the scope of the study?

[Michael Ricketts]

Of what you're doing?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Yes.

[Michael Ricketts]

I've seen your objectives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

There are seven questions, so could you use that as your framework? It still gives you quite a bit of latitude, but hearing about your local experience would be very informative.

[Michael Ricketts]

What I like about Calgary is it's almost a microcosm of every place, every constituency that's represented here. I've looked at where everybody is from. I was in the military for 20 years and I've lived all across Canada, so I've lived close to or in most of the locations where everybody is from. Calgary is totally different from the point of view that the....

In 1962 I went to a national youth conference, training for the summer. I had to do a talk about Calgary and why Calgary was unique. Everybody knows about the zoo, the Calgary Stampede, and the mountains, but nobody realizes that in Calgary, when I was growing up, there were four trees. Each tree became a park. Calgary is in the middle of the prairies, and there are no trees naturally around Calgary, except for scrub trees. Calgary is now very well treed, but every tree has been planted by somebody in the last hundred years.

It really bothers me, then, that people have the ability to chop down trees. Calgary, when I grew up, had a population of just over 100,000. Now it's well over a million, so there is no common culture in the way most of you would have a common culture in your area. Our culture is not predominantly redneck; it's a mélange. It's a grouping of everybody from everywhere. That's part of the problem.

People come in and they feel they can chop down trees, and they don't realize that the tree they've taken down took 80 to 100 years to grow and that the tree they plant won't be the same size for another hundred years. The reason for that is the chinooks, and I think everybody knows about the chinooks. They change the weather so precipitately in Calgary that trees are fooled into thinking it's spring and they start to grow. Then the weather goes back to 30 below the next day and kills off the trees.

There are a number of things I did, but the big one, which I talked to Michelle about, was this. Right in the area where I live, there are gardens. I assume they were originally community gardens. They were started in the early 1900s in Calgary. For the people who lived in Calgary to get vegetables, they had to buy them from the CPR, the Canadian Pacific Railway. The main reason for Calgary's location was that the railway went through it. Vegetables were very pricey. They were hard to come by and usually they weren't very good quality.

In 1912 a lady named Annie Gale, who went on to become one of the first female aldermen in the British Commonwealth, got together and decided.... Calgary was boom and bust all the time. There was a big bust in 1912. The economy cratered. There were all these lots in the city, so she said, “Why not turn these into vegetable gardens and allow the people who live there to grow vegetables? That will help them out. It will be a win-win situation. It will beautify the land for the city and keep it that way.”

That happened in 1912. The particular piece of land I was looking at could be traced back to the 1920s. We could trace it back as a garden since the 1920s, because the fellow who was in there gardening had moved there at the age of 10 and was still gardening there, and 80 years later—he's 90 now—he's still out in that garden gardening.

One day the city authorities came and posted that there was to be no more garden. It was going to be a condominium development. That bothered me. I took it on as a personal challenge. It took a year and a half, but we got it declared a heritage site and subsequently got it turned into a city park, so that will be there forever.

It's an absolutely beautiful area. It's a 10-minute walk from the centre of Calgary. Part of what we did when it became a city park was to put up benches. People come and sit and look at the garden. People are enthralled by it.

This is another neat statistic. I talked about the diversity of Calgary. When you go into the garden, you get a real picture of what Calgary is like. There are people from everywhere. The only person actually born in Calgary is Marsh Libids, who is the fellow who moved there in the 1930s. Everybody else is from England, Holland, Afghanistan, or Vietnam. I'm thinking about who else is around the table. There are 12 gardeners in there. Everybody except for Marsh is from someplace else.

It's a very neat location. It's a very interesting way to get people together and to mix with and meet other people.

There's a huge demand for people to get into the garden. Unfortunately, the garden has to be kept as a historic site. They have to show it the way it always was, so we can't take a lot of people in there; otherwise, it would be just little small community garden plots. I'm pushing to get some more land now to make community gardens.

In that neighbourhood, part of our problem is that the city has decided they want to densify to get more people into that neighbourhood. They took over all the recreational land for the community centre and they've turned it into sites for high-rises to be built to bring more people into that area.

This is where I start thinking of your involvement. They don't have the vision and the realization that by bringing in lots of people, they're taking away all the recreational land. There is nothing for young people to do in that neighbourhood. I think that might tie in with what Dr. Reeves is going to talk about in a little while. We've got all these young people with nothing to do. Well, they find things to do.

I also protect the natural growth prairie area, which seems to have a fire once or twice a year. I know at least a couple of them have been caused by young people, but a couple have also been caused by homeless people who wander through that neighbourhood because it's so close to downtown.

There are many issues there, but to sum up, what I would look for and what I would see the role of the federal government to be would be to supply some sort of overriding vision for what green space in the city should be and how it should be used.

I think many of the problems we have come from the nearsightedness of city planners who don't see beyond an immediate problem they have to solve, as well as the constant changing of aldermen every three years, who also don't really have a take on what's going on. They make decisions that often are developer-driven. For some reason, if a developer sees green space in the middle of the city, they can think of a thousand things they can do there. That causes many problems when trying to preserve stuff.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Well done. Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Dr. Reeves. You have up to 10 minutes.

[Dr. François Reeves, Interventional Cardiologist, Faculty of Medicine, Associate Professor of Medicine, Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for this privilege and for being invited to this committee. For the sake of time, since we have 10 minutes, I'll do my presentation in French. It's really a matter of fluency.

I am an interventional cardiologist. I was head of the cardiac catheterization laboratories at the Notre-Dame hospital, at the Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, and at the Cité-de-la-Santé. I created 42 research protocols. I am an associate professor of medicine and I've had students. So regarding a university career in interventional cardiology,

I mean, to implant stents to dilate arteries,

that is my life.

Five years ago, I wrote a scientific popularization book called Prévenir l'infarctus ou y survivre. This book led me to read documentation that an interventional cardiologist wouldn't normally read, whether on public health or environmental health.

Obviously, when people have a heart attack, they always ask why it happened to them. That has been the case for a long time. That is what is shown here. Why do we have heart disease or atherosclerotic heart disease? The Framingham study, which began in the United States in 1948 and is still ongoing today, has shown us the following.

The main risk factors are tobacco, heredity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, sedentariness, obesity, and stress. With the recent literature, we may ask, did Framingham say everything about this situation?

There are a few facts that I want to mention. This was the beginning of my research five years ago, and actually I'm planning to establish a chair of environmental cardiology at Montreal University, and it is going forward.

Heart disease is rare in animals. Heart disease was rare in humanity before the industrial era. Just ask the anthropologists: there are many studies about that. Heart disease is rare in humanity living outside the industrialized world.

However, you may induce heart disease in animals and they are, in fact, a very good bench test for all of our devices: pacemakers, medications, heart valves, etc.. You always see a dramatic increase of cardiac morbidity following a traditional industrial revolution.

For the book Planète Coeur, which I brought, I obtained the numbers from Statistics Canada. I know we have to submit documents in both languages, but for those who are interested, I would like to specify that the 500 studies that I will summarize here in 10 minutes are condensed in Planète Coeur. The book was published by Éditions du CHU Sainte-Justine. I brought copies. It is in French, but an agreement was signed to have it published in English and it is currently being translated. I know I'm departing from the rules by not submitting the documents right now in French and in English, but for those who are interested, the French version is available immediately and the English version will be within a year.

From a historical point of view, at the turn of the century in Canada, cardiovascular mortality was low. It was the same in the United States. It peaked in 1950, exactly at the same time as in the United States. Then, what was called an American epidemic happened. During that period, one in three Americans had an acute heart attack at age 50.

That was the main reason Americans carried out the Framingham study: because one American out of three was having a heart attack by the age of 50. Looking at the people here, you see the number it represents. What we see also is a huge difference between many countries.

On this slide from the World Health Organization, we can see the cardiovascular mortality rates in Europe. They vary between 60 and 700 per 100,000 people. Let's take the case of the main countries: Switzerland, Austria, Poland and Russia. In Switzerland and France, the cardiovascular mortality rate is 60 per 100,000 people. In Ukraine or Russia, that rate is multiplied by 10. We are therefore talking about a 1,000% difference in cardiovascular mortality, which is huge in medicine. It is one more indication that allows us to see that it is not just classic risk factors that determine these differences.

On the planet, some groups live outside the industrial world. For example, there are the Tsimanes, who live near the Amazon in Bolivia. Well into old age, they have practically no atherosclerotic heart disease. It appears that cardiology is an environmental specialty. That is what we deduced four or five years ago. Based on the time and place where you live, your risk of having an acute heart attack varies.

It's the same for stroke. It's the same disease. It's a vascular disease. Your risk of having a stroke or a heart attack is totally different according to the place you live.

Let's go straight to the conclusion. If we're talking about a cardio-protective city, what would be the environmental prescriptions of an expert in environmental cardiology?

First, we would need to eradicate food nano-aggressors.

Second, we would need to eradicate airborne nano-aggressors.

Third, we would need to eradicate fossil fuels, reconnect with nature through renewable energies, and achieve a 25% urban canopy, that is to say tree coverage in urban areas.

We therefore need to redefine atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart disease, by three triads: what we are, that is cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes; what we do, that is sedentarity, obesity and tobacco; and where we are, that is environment, food and urbanism. That last triad is important. Yet, it was completely underestimated until 10 or 20 years ago, and I will talk mainly about that.

To properly understand the importance of interaction with the environment, we need to know the following. In one day, I eat 1 kg of food, I drink the equivalent of 2 kg and I breathe in 20,000 litres of air. That means 20 kg of air go through our lungs every day. There is a constant exchange. You know the brain cannot go without oxygen for more than five seconds, otherwise you lose consciousness immediately. It is these exchanges with the environment that have been underestimated until now.

Let's see what we would need for a city to be cardio-protective. I will give you a cardiologist's point of view.

In a city, what is good and what isn't? Food nano-aggressors need to be eradicated, because I think they are part of the environment. In fact, the bread you eat is not the same as the bread eaten in Japan or France. Without getting into food too much, I would say three things are important: trans fats must be avoided at all costs, excess salt must be diminished and regulated, and finally, industrial sugars must be eliminated, i.e. glucose-fructose syrup. If Canadians eliminate excess salt, trans fats and glucose-fructose syrup, their risks decrease a lot. The numbers are significant: we are talking about a 50% lower diabetes risk and cardiometabolic risk. I believe industrial food, as it is served, is part of the environment.

Next, airborne nano-aggressors and fossil fuels need to be eradicated. The history of humanity teaches us many lessons. Think of the Great London Smog in December 1952. It shows us that every time pollution peaks, the mortality rate skyrockets. In three days, the Great London Smog alone caused 12,000 deaths. It was in 1952.

More recently, pollutant rates have continued to be measured and links have been made between them and cardiovascular mortality rates. In fact, when we look at this slide—which was presented in Circulation, one of our bibles—we see that it was enough to have the day's pollution rate to predict the mortality rate. In fact, we are increasingly realizing that they are directly related.

It is due to fossil fuels and fine particles. Every time we burn fuel oil, oil, coal or any fossil fuel, particles are emitted into the air. We breathe those fumes, which have two properties. That is why we call them ultrafine or fine dust: the particulates are so fine that they make their way directly from people's lungs into their arteries. Moreover, they are so toxic that they trigger an enzymatic cascade of inflammation and lead to thrombosis and arrhythmia, and then heart attacks, strokes and sudden deaths.

I will give you a very simple example from one of the studies reviewed. Groups of rats were fed a normal diet and others were fed a high-fat diet. The rats' aortas were sacrificed. The aorta is in blue. The red part in the middle is the atherosclerosis. That is what blocks arteries, which we unblock everyday with our teams using bypass grafts, especially. We see that a rat with a high-fat diet has a larger atherosclerosis section than a rat with a normal diet. No one is surprised. However, there is one interesting thing in these experiments by Valentin Fuster, done at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Valentin Fuster is one of the biggest stars in fundamental cardiology. With polluted air, this effect is amplified. Consequently, eating junk food in a polluted downtown area causes major sections of atherosclerosis, which leads to strokes and heart attacks.

Many studies have identified the links. We see that every time there is an increase of 10 micrograms per m³ of particles emitted by fossil fuels, there is a 10% to 25% increase in heart attacks and sudden deaths.

This is a brief summary of the studies on this topic. It has been studied a lot from a mechanistic and physiological perspective. It is now a branch of physiology that could be called ecophysiology, the cardiovascular influence of air pollution on our environment.

We wondered if it was that important compared with other factors. Yes, it is an important cardiovascular factor. In 2008, information was published in Canada revealing that pollution caused 20,000 excess deaths, 5,000 to 11,000 cardiovascular deaths, 33,000 to 67,000 cardiac hospitalizations, 1.5 million hospital days, at a cost of $9.1 billion. These are excess deaths, following pollution peaks. It goes beyond chronic pollution, which is an environment that is always polluted.

Reconnecting with nature, using renewable energy as an alternative and achieving a 25% urban canopy, would that have advantages? In the United States, a very large-scale study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that for 500,000 Americans followed over 14 years, decreasing the fine particle rate improved life expectancy. There are even neighbourhoods where life expectancy increased by four or five years because pollutants had been reduced. This is a rock-solid study: 500,000 patients were followed.

I will now say a few words about urban heat islands and revegetation.

In Quebec, studies were conducted with the help of the Canadian Space Agency and images from the RADARSAT and Landsat 5 satellites. They documented very high ground temperatures, in this case urban heat islands. I think the most important thing to understand is that not only do urban heat islands appear where there are no trees, but also that the rise in temperature increases the toxicity of pollutants. A study on this subject was conducted in Atlanta and New York.

A great study was published in The Lancet. This British study, which had 40 million subjects, showed the link between living in a green area and cardiovascular health. It can be summarized as follows: if you live in a green area rather than in a mineralized, polluted area, you cut in half the difference in mortality that exists between the rich and the poor.

If a city eliminates food nano-aggressors, i.e. trans fats, excess salt, glucose-fructose and phosphoric acid, as well as airborne nano-aggressors like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, fine particles, ultrafine particles and volatile organic compounds, and it becomes a green and active environment, with a 20% to 25% canopy, it can expect a 25% to 75% reduction in cardiovascular diseases. Obviously, it won't be the same in Lyon as in Beijing.

Salim Yusuf, one of my eminent colleagues from McMaster University, said that heart disease was rare in 1830, but he wondered if it could become rare once again in 2050. It is a challenge we all face.

Those were, in 10 minutes, my thoughts on the links between the environment and heart health. They are much more significant than I thought at the beginning of my practice. It was a pleasure to talk about them to this committee.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

Next we have Mr. Maciver, from the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority. You have 10 minutes.

[Don Maciver, Director of Planning, Rideau Valley Conservation Authority]

Thank you.

Thank you for having me. I have a lot to say, and my wife felt I should write it down to keep it short.

My name is Donald Maciver. I'm the director of planning at the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, which is right here in Ottawa. By training, experience, and accreditation, I'm a professional planner, and I've been with the conservation authority for 35 years.

The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority is one of Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities. Conservation authorities are pretty well unique to Ontario, although there is a similar construct in a couple of instances in Saskatchewan, I understand. Legislation enabling the creation of conservation authorities in Ontario came into effect around 1946. Part of the idea was to put the boys coming back from the war to work, not anticipating the post-war industrial boom.

There were three fundamental principles in forming these bodies: people living closest to the problems were best equipped to identify and resolve environmental problems; the watershed jurisdiction was preferred, as it transcended municipal boundaries; and at the time, and for a considerable period of time following that, the sharing of cost between the province and the local communities was a principle.

Following the devastation in southern Ontario that occurred because of Hurricane Hazel—81 lives were lost, and in today's dollars, about a billion dollars' worth of damage was done—the Ontario government made a policy decision that water quantity control should be done on a watershed basis as well, and conservation authorities really took off after that point in time. While the concept dates back to 1946, the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, for instance, wasn't formed until 1966.

Conservation authorities conserve natural resources for everyone's benefit. In the City of Ottawa we're one of three conservation authorities that conduct business within the political boundaries of Ottawa, with the Rideau being the one with the largest population. Some of you will be aware that the Rideau is a designated Canadian heritage river, in recognition of its outstanding historical and recreational values, but it is also inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site, so it's quite an asset to our community.

In my brief, I've described some of the nuts and bolts of what we do, but I'll just hit the topics in this commentary here.

We're responsible for flood warning and for flood information, and for monitoring related to drought response, so you probably heard our name if you were around this summer. We provide science-based planning advice to municipal approval authorities associated with their own development approval job. We regulate development on hazard lands. We protect fish habitat. We do water quality monitoring. We're responsible for watershed-based drinking water source protection. We do watershed and sub-watershed planning. We have quite a large stewardship services program—planting trees, correcting erosion, fixing wells, fixing septic systems, that type of thing—and we own over 2,300 hectares of land for the public enjoyment.

Today, however, I want to talk to you more particularly about looking forward and about making plans. Our member municipalities have come to see the river system as an economic asset to be valued and integrated into their long-range development plans, but I think as far as individuals are concerned we have a battle to wage here, because the challenge may be to reconnect people with the environment rather than to connect them—to ensure the population at large understands their connection to the landscape and the environment as well as the consequences of these connections.

I like to say that in the recent past, Canadians lived off the land; now many of them just live on the land. Rapid and uncontrolled development is transforming urban areas.

Most of you will be aware that we have in excess of 7 billion people on the planet. In Ontario our population is expected to grow by more than 32% by 2036, and that will push the GTA's share of the population in Ontario to over 50%. In this area, in Ottawa, by 2031, we're expected to grow by 30%, and what that's going to mean is that we're going to need another 145,000 homes by 2031. That's going to cover a lot of the landscape.

Comprehensive planning is required to address such growth pressure, and this is where the opportunity of urban conservation comes in. Urban conservation, from my understanding, has been a construct that until recently has dealt with the built environment, with buildings, with architecture, with circulation routes, that type of thing, but more recently, UNESCO has been looking at the meaning of it, and my understanding is that now they also recommend that it take into account the natural environment that cities are involved in.

You asked what best practices are. As conservation authorities, we believe a best practice is a concept called integrated watershed management. Integrated watershed management presents an opportunity for effectively ensuring that topography, geomorphology, and natural features and systems on and under the land are protected and that the resilience necessary to address climate change and other realities is integrated into future plans.

Integrated watershed management is increasingly being adopted in Canadian and international jurisdictions as a fundamental way for managing water resources. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment incorporated IWM into a report they did, called “Strategic Directions for Water”. Many provinces are incorporating IWM into their water management strategies, including Ontario.

Integrated watershed management is the process of managing human activities and natural resources on a watershed basis, taking into account or recognizing that there are also social and economic issues that have to be dealt with together with the environment, and it incorporates community interests in order to manage water resources sustainably.

It's an evolving and continuous process through which decisions are made for the sustainable use, development, restoration, and protection of ecosystem features, functions, and linkages. IWM allows us to address multiple issues and objectives and enables us to plan within a very complex and uncertain environment. This approach allows us to protect important water resources while at the same time addressing critical issues such as the current and future impacts of rapid growth and climate change.

To add to this, we have to recognize the changing landscape in Ontario. There are 36 conservation authorities in Ontario right now, and they're limited to only 10% of the geography. Conservation authorities affect roughly 12 million people in the province--that's 90% of the population--and in addition to that, we also have to recognize that there are other things happening on the land, like agriculture.

We believe that this approach will help support one of the province's leading industries, which contributes more than $33 billion to the economy every year. The importance of agriculture, coupled with the rapid rate of urban development, creates significant pressures on Ontario's environment and seriously challenges the health and security of our future water and land resources, which are critical to the environment, to the economy, and most importantly to the health of Ontario residents, as we just learned from the doctor.

There is no denial that threats to Ontario's water and land resources, such as urbanization and climate change, are significant and growing larger. Managing impacts is a key in ensuring a sustainable economy and sustainable resources. Keeping water clean requires maintaining a healthy land resource so as to protect water quality and quantity. All society benefits.

It is preferable to do it this way, in an organized way, and to anticipate problems rather than to have to react to them. Here in Ottawa right now, the city is embarking on a $250 million dollar plan. It's called the Ottawa River action plan, and it is aimed at improving the quality of water discharges to the Ottawa River.

Any of you familiar with the local media know that there have been some horror stories over the last five years. In doing this, the city is adopting a watershed approach to implementation of the plan to ensure that the full range of pollutant sources and impacts are addressed. It's not just the Ottawa River, but also all the water sources that flow into it, one of which is the Rideau.

I would like to highlight as a best practice our watershed report card initiative, which I have here, although unfortunately it is not bilingual. It clearly and graphically provides a report for residents on watershed health. The RVCA has completed watershed report cards for the middle Rideau, the Tay River, and the Jock River in southwest Ottawa. A similar report is being prepared for the lower Rideau, the part that flows through the city. It will be available next year and will be in both of our official languages.

With this information, decisions regarding future development can be supported with current and scientifically valid knowledge. Stewardship programs can also target areas of concern, resulting in cost-effective improvements on the ground geared to improving land and water health in partnership with the community.

A key tool in how we determine health from a land cover or ecosystem health perspective is based on thresholds established in an Environment Canada publication called “How Much Habitat is Enough?”. The environmental thresholds described in this thing are based on that Environment Canada publication.

Other useful aquatic habitat approaches we utilize come from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, with whom we have a formal relationship, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. We believe this is a tool to ensure people understand their connection to the landscape and to the environment, as well as the consequences of these connections.

It takes the scale down to a level at which people can understand what is happening where they actually live, so they can understand the impacts of what they do on the environment.

In closing, I was asked what the role of the federal government should be in urban conservation. I was asked what I want from the federal government.

I was a little taken aback with that. I can't say I really want anything. The reality is that our day-to-day interaction with the federal government in this area is quite limited, in spite of having a federal waterway that runs down the spine of our watershed. What I would like to see is for this relationship to change and for the Government of Canada to become a leader in urban conservation.

Particularly, we would like to see recognition that the watershed uniquely serves as a rational scale for this perspective.

Decision-makers must be equipped with facts and tools to deal with ecological services, public health, and social benefits. Continued use of science is essential. The brief has reference documents we use routinely, developed by the federal government, and we would hope that these documents would continue to be made available and kept current.

In past years, the federal government has had many grant programs aimed at reducing energy use in homes and buildings; for larger infrastructure projects, the federal government could ask that a conservation plan be available to support those types of grant programs.

Finally, adoption of an integrated watershed management approach to managing water and resources could be a keystone not only for urban conservation but also for a reinvigorated federal water policy. Application of urban conservation practices, including the use of an integrated watershed management approach, will, we believe, lead to the creation of healthy, sustainable communities. We also believe that as conservation authorities, we are more than able to be a partner in these practices.

I thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

We'll begin with Mr. Sopuck.

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

Thank you.

Dr. Reeves, I'm intensely interested in what you had to say. You made some comments about urbanism. I look with unease at the urban intensification around the world and wonder if that's actually good for us, given that it's not our nature, as a species, to live that way.

In your view, does urban intensification have negative human health consequences?

[Dr. François Reeves]

Of course, it depends on the way it is done. We have all travelled. In medicine, we have the opportunity to go to conferences around the world.

I've made this presentation in Beijing, New Delhi, Los Angeles, and Geneva. I can tell you that you have some examples that are beauties, especially in Switzerland, which might be a good model for how to build the future of our cities in Canada while avoiding other bad examples.

For sure, the pressure is high, and I think you mentioned that so well. We are 7 billion people—that's a fact. We can attenuate and have a long-term vision of what type of city we want. Where do you want to live? What are your preferences? Do you have facts? Do you have evidence? Do you have good science behind that? That's the reason I've picked all those. It's nothing compared with what we have on the environment. It's not just one science that can handle that.

I think we have a lot of good examples all around the world, especially in Germany, France, Spain, and many places in the States. I think in the States we have the world's best drop in emissions from fossil fuels. There are many good examples.

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

I was really interested in your map of the United States and your comment that as air quality improved in light of technological improvements, we saw an increase in human health indices.

In Canada our record in reducing SO₂ and NO₂ has been pretty good, but you talked about the ultrafine particles. Are we able to eliminate those, or reduce them? Have we tackled those sufficiently yet?

[Dr. François Reeves]

We haven't, not that much.

What you mention is very interesting. If we compare the rates of SO₂ and NO₂ and fine particles in Montreal—I know this region quite well—we see that from the seventies up to now, there's been a dramatic drop of SO₂ and NO₂. What were we breathing in the seventies? It's incredible. Now it's better.

However, we have an average of about 15 micrograms of fine particles per cubic metre. The average is 15 micrograms, which is not that good. If you look at downtown Montreal, only one day out of three is considered “good”. Two-thirds of the days are “good enough”, and 60 a year are “bad”.

Very recently, a study from Boston's Harvard University said that when you go from a “good” day in terms of pollution to a “good enough” day, which is an average, you increase the rate of strokes in the city of Boston by 25% to 40%. Boston and Montreal have a lot of similarities there.

So it's not good enough. We should continue with those studies, because it's a way to have better health globally.

I love to implant stents, to save lives, to put in valves. It's fun, but honestly I would say to the people around me, “Don't need me.” I wasn't at all aware of the environment as a measurable part five years ago, I can tell you, but now the science is there, and we can have this conviction. It's the same as for physical activity and smoking: the environment is as important as that.

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

I was pretty interested in the paper you handed out along with your PowerPoint about the Japanese concept of forest bathing. I'm interested in the relationship between time spent in nature and human health outcomes.

Has any quantitative work been done on this relationship?

[Dr. François Reeves]

It's very good that you point that out.

I mentioned to you that we breathe about 20 kilograms of air a day. That's huge. That's enormous. The exchange of gases is especially fast, faster than that of solids and liquids, for sure.

Since 1982 the Japanese government has considered tree-bathing—it's called shinrin-yoku—a health activity. The Japanese measure blood pressure, heart rate, heart variation, the immune system, and finally the stress system very precisely, especially by dosing the cortisol in the blood.

For all those parameters, while you're in the green milieu, compared with the same people in the urban milieu, you have a very significant drop in blood pressure, comparable to a very good anti-hypertensive drug, simply by being among trees. Afterwards, they found out that trees emit a lot of what I'll call “tree proteins”. That's been known by botanists for years, but now we see they have a direct impact on man.

It's easy to understand. For example, tobacco is a plant. You smoke it; you have effects. Cocaine is a plant; when you smoke it, sniff it, or whatever, you have effects. It is deleterious, and it's the same for opium, etc. You have the direct influence of plants by air.

They are deadly or harmful.

However, we can have positive activity directly on various parts of our system, of our anatomy.

I'm thinking especially of our central nervous system, our cardiac system and our immune system.

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

Thank you very much. It was most interesting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Mr. Pilon, you have seven minutes.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for their presentations. It was very interesting. We have a real variety of witnesses today.

I will put a question to Mr. Reeves.

You covered a subject that we practically haven't addressed until now, or even not at all, the effects of the environment on health.

Can you indicate to us how, in your opinion, an effective urban conservation plan could solve this problem?

[Dr. François Reeves]

In fact, my second-last slide addressed that.

First, I am convinced of the importance of a city's influence on our quality of life. In Canada, as in most countries, we have three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal. I believe the municipal world influences our way of life the most. In fact, in one city, the disease and mortality rates can be completely different from one neighbourhood to another based on the environment. If laws, regulations or practices are changed in those areas, everything changes.

Why does a Swiss person in Geneva have one tenth of the heart disease risk of a Russian person in Moscow? If you bring a one-day-old Russian baby to Geneva and you bring a one-day-old Swiss baby to Moscow, the statistics will be the opposite. Many studies in the world show that if twins live in different environments, the environment will have more influence than genetics. Okinawa, in Japan, is a city famous for its 100-year-old residents. People live well into old age; many of them live 100 years. The descendants of the residents of Okinawa who emigrated to Hawaii experienced a decrease in their life expectancy and an increase in their cardiovascular mortality rate. The descendants of the residents of Okinawa who went to Los Angeles had the same rates as Americans.

Consequently, the environment has a huge influence, even for people who have the same genes. I think that, locally, it's what influences us directly. In nice cities like Portland, or some cities in Germany whose names I forget, efforts have been made. These effects are measured directly.

The three levels of government must act consistently if we want a better quality of life in cities. In fact, we want to spend less on health care. Excess morbidity due to pollution costs us $9 billion a year. That is an impressive number. We need to start thinking about that.

I'll say again that in 1830, heart diseases were rare. We caused them. Now, we need to reflect on this. We don't want to lose our quality of life, our means, our energy, our comfort or anything else, but we can be more efficient. We can do it that way. We can say we're fortunate to live in Canada, because we have everything. It's a matter of balancing choices. We need to look to the future with this in mind.

I'll come back to eradicating food nano-aggressors. It's legislation that, in many ways, concerns the federal government. There are airborne nano-aggressors, those we emit and those we regulate. Finally, there are green environments. In an environment with many trees, as was mentioned, there is a real decrease in the cardiovascular mortality rate and, especially, a reduction in the gap between the rich and the poor. That is what struck me most. I don't know of any medication that decreases socioeconomic inequalities for diseases as much as a green environment. In my opinion, the study published in The Lancet by Richard Mitchell from the University of Glasgow is very important, because it has 40 million subjects.

That about summarizes my response to that subject.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

We are also told that investing in green energy or green projects is not worthwhile, as these things are expensive and do not make any money.

And yet, we know that investing in green energy usually leads to the creation of three jobs, whereas investing this same amount in conventional energy leads to the creation of only one job. Do you think that we would see the same type of benefits and the same consequences, namely fewer health problems and therefore more money for the Canadian government, were we to invest in green energy instead of fossil fuel energy, as we are currently doing?

[Dr. François Reeves]

I sincerely believe that this would be the case. That is why I talked about conversion. We certainly do not want to breathe in sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A recent study conducted in Montreal demonstrated that there was a higher breast cancer rate found around polluted roadways because breast cancer is one of those cancers triggered by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. Women living near polluted roadways are more likely to develop breast cancer than those who live 200 metres further away. This was a joint study done by McGill University and the Université de Montréal.

Similarly, people living alongside highways and polluted roadways are more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke.

By removing the problem, you reduce these diseases significantly. Making the switch to green energy is a question of sustainability, and I will let the environmentalists debate that issue. However, from our point of view, it is clear that if you live in a place with clean air, you use only green energy as your source of energy and you halt the deviant behaviour of our industrial world — something I refer to as General Bouffe — which has perverted the intrinsic quality of our food, you will see the rate of coronary heart disease drop off to the levels we saw in the 1800s. Yes, there were heart attacks in 1800, but they occurred only rarely.