Environment Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

You have 45 seconds.

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

I know that you are not an environmentalist, but do you feel that the government could have other reasons, aside from health benefits, for switching to green energy?

[Dr. François Reeves]

There are many reasons to do this. There is, in particular, the pressure of climate change. Look what happened recently with Hurricane Sandy. I pay a great deal of attention to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to say. Every time that the IPCC presents its scenarios, what actually happens is always worse than the worst- case scenario presented by the IPCC. The IPCC has been talking about this issue for 20 years. We should start listening to these scientists.

As a citizen and as a doctor, events like Hurricane Sandy concern me. The hurricanes are coming up as far as New Brunswick. In Montreal, we are witnessing downpours resulting from hurricanes in Florida. We never used to see that.

I think that the consequences are significant. Climate change really is not happening just in our minds. It is going to really cost a great deal of money. In 2008, Nicholas Stern, an economist with the World Bank, said that if we continued in the same direction, if we did not change the trajectory, with the same increase, we would see, at a minimum, a cost of $6,500 billion in damages. I think that these are good incentives.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you. The time has expired.

Ms. Rempel, you have seven minutes.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming today.

I'd like to start with some questions for Mr. Ricketts.

Your community garden is actually in part of my riding of Calgary Centre-North. It's in one of the more dense urban parts of the city of Calgary, which is called Bridgeland. When I first found out about your project, it was interesting, because there is a lot of interest in urban gardening and food production in Calgary.

Something I wanted you to expand upon is the impact of the garden on the community. When I first spoke to you, you highlighted some impacts the garden has had on the seniors in the area, as well as some of the youth in the surrounding apartment complexes and whatnot—special needs youth, as well.

Could you talk about that a bit, in the context of why urban conservation is so important?

[Michael Ricketts]

One of the very interesting benefits of the garden has to do with the fact that so many young people have no idea where vegetables come from. They come by the garden, and we try to get them involved.

There's a science school that is just on top of the hill right behind us, and they have started bringing the students down. They spent a couple of years, because they had a champion at the school who was interested in the gardening, so they spent as much time as they could. Unfortunately, in school in Calgary, because it's based on an agricultural system, when you come down in May and June there's nothing happening other than the land having been prepared and seeded. Then the students come back after the summer and they get to see the harvesting.

In most places in Calgary, you have about a four-month gardening period, so whatever you can do, you do, but it did inspire the school to incorporate their own program. They've built a garden plot at the school and they're now gardening there, so the students are getting a very good first-hand awareness of what gardening is all about.

It's a great way to get the seniors involved. In fact, the reason I got involved is I'm the young kid in the garden. Marsh, for example, has been there for 80 years gardening, and fitness-wise, I'd put him up against even the doctor here, or anybody in this room. He is fantastically fit because he's living in that garden and he's working hard. It has given him a purpose, something to do, and that's why I'd like to get community gardens going for the seniors in our neighbourhood.

If you know Calgary.... Actually, I have a picture. I brought a map in case anybody wanted to see where the garden is and I have a Calgary heritage calendar that shows the garden to give you an idea of what we're talking about. They're not bilingual, but I have them in my briefcase if anyone wants to see them later.

It took me two and a half years of fighting with the city to try to protect it, and we finally got protection because we got it turned into a heritage site. I went on a speaking trail for 18 months trying to convince people that it was a community garden, and I found out as soon as I got the heritage site designation that it couldn't be a community garden, because a community garden typically is an eight-by-four plot with a hundred people in there, and we couldn't do that. That's why we have to get another place going, but what I did on the speaking trail was challenge other people to get the city involved to help them get community gardens going in the city.

I was trying to save the Bridgeland-Riverside garden. The alderman said, “Well, there are already seven community gardens in the city. We don't need any more.” Now, five years later, there are over 130 community garden initiatives in the city of Calgary. They have really taken off.

The timing was good. It was very propitious that I was doing it just as there started to be a lot of focus on the benefits of community gardens, so that's a whole other issue there.

I was trying to talk about the push-back I was facing in trying to get this saved and about how we could get past that.

One thing that happens in the city is that when a new house is built, people want to maximize their footprint on the land, so they chop down all the old trees and they plant these new trees that are never going to get back to giving the benefits that you have in the other cities. Calgary is very rapidly losing its tree growth in the communities, I think. I moved out of one of the older, well-established, very wealthy neighbourhoods in Calgary to come to Bridgeland-Riverside, because in the older wealthy places, with all this new oil money there are no trees left, because they wanted to have big houses there. I didn't want to live in a place like that.

There are a lot of very intangible benefits and some tangible benefits as well, as we've discussed today. A lot of them are intangible. I could go on for two hours on that, but I won't.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

You made a comment earlier that I think was tongue-in-cheek, but we've actually heard a lot about it from other witnesses. You said kids didn't know where the vegetables came from, right?

What we've been trying to tease out of witnesses as part of this study is the need to develop a nature ethic, an understanding of the value of nature in urban Canadian children. How do you think that community garden initiatives can help support that goal?

[Michael Ricketts]

Again, I have this wonderful calendar, if you would like a copy. When the calendar came out, they phoned and asked us if we would like to go into the heritage calendar, simply to show that it was a huge initiative for Calgary to all of a sudden start accepting land as heritage sites. Before that it was only buildings.

They did a print run of the calendar of 460,000, one for every residence in Calgary. When they were done, I asked if I could get a couple for my friends. They said they had some left over. I asked what they were doing with them and they said they were going to recycle them; they were good that way.

I offered to take them if they didn't mind. I asked how many they had left over and they said they had 76 boxes, which turned out to be 10,000 calendars. Try to find 10,000 of your best friends to give a calendar to.

I went to all of the inner city schools and offered one calendar for every student in the elementary grades, up to grade 6. By doing that, we could get their interest in the garden and get them aware of it, and also in heritage in general. This is where you want to get young people interested, so that was a spinoff benefit that we achieved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Madame St-Denis, welcome to the environment committee. You have seven minutes.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your explanations, Dr. Reeves.

You have come here to meet with us, you have knowledge and a specialization, and you know what needs to be done. In some aspects, you represent science. And then there is the government, which has listened to you and which is probably just as convinced as you are about the nature of the problems. However, it does have some concerns that are a little bit more difficult; namely, the matter of costs.

Has academia, for example, thought about how it could go about convincing governments? We are at the federal level. You were alluding to legislation that we could adopt and which would be effective.

In your sector, you have a great deal of knowledge; how can you find a way to convince a government that it needs to pass legislation because it is more important than something else or should be given greater priority? Have you any ways to do this? Do you do any lobbying or are there any meetings with small groups? You are appearing before a committee, and that is already something. Nevertheless, do you go any further in trying to convince a government level what needs to be done? In just about every area where there are problems, people are aware of them. What is difficult is determining how to resolve them and finding the money to do so. Have you given any thought to this issue?

[Dr. François Reeves]

You have asked a very relevant question.

First of all, this is primarily an issue of knowledge. Although I am a cardiologist and a professor of medicine, five years ago I hardly knew anything about these things that I have presented. And yet, the science was there. You could say that the circle of environmentalists — I'm not talking about activists, but rather the scientists, the botanists and the climatologists — do science in a bit of a bubble. The scientific world is enormous. Indeed, 17,000 scientific articles are written daily. Just keeping abreast of your own specialty is a challenge. And yet, you find out about all kinds of extremely interesting things once you step out of your comfort zone.

I gave this presentation at Ouranos, the big climatology centre in Montreal. The people were so excited. They said that this was the first time that a doctor had spoken about this concern. To answer your question, Madam, I think that we need to have some places where these scientific walls are broken down. Moreover, your committee is an excellent forum for doing this in order to share this type of knowledge.

I am not lobbying; I'm a professor, a scientist and a doctor. When I talk to people, I address them as though I were talking to my patients, but sometimes I am talking to an audience of 30 or 300. I sometimes prefer to talk to people on an individual basis. However, I always use the same language. There are numerous political issues: the left and the right, the rich and the poor, you can list them, but I feel that the environmental issue is always, first and foremost, a question of health. For me, it is as simple as that.

Perhaps my perspective has been skewed by my professional training, but I literally look at the world through the eyes of the heart. I cannot help but always wonder whether something is good or bad for the heart. We have to bring together all of this expertise from all of the other scientists, put the puzzle pieces together to finally come up with an overall view.

We can then see that all of this can be avoided. The game plan becomes easy. We also have data showing that we will spend less money, we will spend less money on health care and we will have better insulation. There is some kind of monumental convergence taking place that shows that when you plant trees, you reduce the need for heating and air conditioning, you make the climate more temperate, purifying the water and purifying the atmosphere.

Not so long ago, I did not know that a tree was able to remove pollution at such an incredible rate, absorbing volatile organic compounds. Recently published data in Science and in Nature attest to this. Not only do they absorb CO₂, they also absorb toxins. Trees clean the air, they are very efficient air filters.

There are some things that we cannot do all at once. We have the current state of affairs, and we also have the objective we are hoping to achieve. Just as we want everyone to have health, an income and protection, we want things for the environment, the first thing being knowledge, I am convinced.

That is why I wrote a book. I give courses and I make presentations to various groups. When people are knowledgeable about things, they make demands. The politicians will have to take action if the people are asking them to do so. I know that the politicians in some cities were 10 years ahead of the general public, but these politicians were being kept back because people were not aware of the situation.

The whole issue of knowledge channels, dissemination and places like this one, namely where there is an interface for knowledge, is vital. These interfaces are fertile ground. Whether we are talking about water, the earth, the forest's edge, a shoal or a large bed, fertility is always the greatest in these interfaces. This has always been the case.

The same thing applies to human thought. We are particularly fertile in the interfaces. So I'm suggesting that we multiply this type of interaction with decision-makers, who have to make choices regarding many difficult issues and who have to sign the cheques at the end of the year. As far as I'm concerned, the only way to make advances is through knowledge.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you. You have 20 seconds.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Twenty seconds? It's too short.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

We'll begin our five-minute round. On these five-minute rounds, I'm going to have to cut people off. Keep it tight, because otherwise we won't have enough opportunities for questions.

We'll begin the five minutes with Ms. Leslie.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses. I've learned quite a bit today.

Mr. Ricketts, I wanted to start with you. I'm from Halifax, and there's this gardener for HRM, the Halifax Regional Municipality, David McLearn, and he, unbeknownst to anyone, started replacing flowers with vegetables in the city gardens—sort of a guerrilla gardener—and then he'd harvest these vegetables and bring them to Hope Cottage, which is one of the soup kitchens.

He didn't get permission and he did it for a few years before anyone noticed. Now he is getting all kinds of awards for how innovative he has been, and the city holds him up as a hero. I'm sure if they had found out a couple years earlier they probably would have stopped it from happening.

I tell that story because I think it illustrates how government is often behind community when it comes to these innovative initiatives. I think about the fact that there is an opportunity here for the federal government to promote or support these kinds of initiatives.

I'm not asking a question here about creating new money for something like urban gardens, but when we have federal funding, can you think of ways that we could maybe innovatively consider federal funding so that it could support projects like this? For example, we have had some people at committee who discussed how changing the way the infrastructure money is granted and including urban conservation in infrastructure funding might help. Can you see ways that the federal government could help the work that you're doing in that way, using the funding that's available?

[Michael Ricketts]

We had a lot of success at the municipal level because we were right off the radar screen. Now it's grown to be very important. It's a major part of the parks area to have community gardens.

I gave this a lot of thought before I came today, and the thing that's bothering me most is the fact that at the municipal level there isn't the insight that you're gaining here today, where you can come up with policy that would help direct a lot of these things. I think if you do understand and pull this all together, then you can guide the municipal people. They get away from the problems that we experience, which are due in large part to the fact that development is driven by the developers and is very short term.

I see a great need for having a vision for where we should go. I would put a lot of money into trying to get that together so that we can educate people, because if you get something out there, the people, the citizens, will learn, and then they can drive it. Right now it's real grassroots fighting.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

It seems as though maybe the best decisions are made at the ground level, but the federal government could be more creative in the way that it works with municipalities around this issue.

[Michael Ricketts]

Yes.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Okay. Thanks.

Mr. Maciver, I looked at your brief—thanks very much for distributing this—and I note that in your conclusion you talked about using documents from Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans. On page 3 of your brief you talk about the great relationship you've had with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, how fish habitat protection programs are undertaken with a memorandum of understanding with DFO under section 35 of the FIsheries Act. You have gotten quite a bit of training, and it's been a model relationship.

Has the conservation authority put thought into how that relationship will change, now that fish habitat protection is no longer in this act?

[Don Maciver]

Not at all, because we have been told by DFO that it is business as usual until we are told otherwise. Until we know what the “otherwise” is, we are unable to decide how that is going to impact our programs.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Fair enough.

It's not so good to work with hypotheticals. Is there anything you are worried about for the future that we should keep an eye out for?

[Don Maciver]

I would be worried about a total loss of fish habitat protection. If that does happen, then we are looking at ways we could achieve the same objectives using our own legislation, but it's an uncertain landscape that we are working in.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks. Fair enough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

You have 10 seconds.