Environment Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2012

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Reeves, on this idea of changing the way funding is allocated, when I heard your testimony, I thought a lot about how the Health Canada could actually be implicated. I'm out of time, but if you could answer later that would be great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you.

My apologies. We have three more questioners and 15 minutes, so I have to keep it tight.

Ms. Ambler, you have five minutes.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here today.

Dr. Reeves, taking into consideration that the government has a number of initiatives and programs to monitor clean air and airborne pollutants, such as the air quality management system, what do you see as the federal government's role in ensuring that urban Canadians have cleaner air?

[Dr. François Reeves]

First of all, you need good data.

I think you had something exceptional here last week. It was at the Canadian Space Agency, in order to develop a protocol with the geomaticians at the Université de Montréal,

the Université du Québec à Montréal

and McGill University and the engineers at the Space Agency to use their satellites, especially Landsat 5 and RADARSAT, to constantly monitor the rate of pollution on the ground and correlate it with what's going on with the ground sensors and finally with our database in cardiology, because I'm a cardiologist. I know people in oncology and cancer are doing the same.

Having funding to achieve good measurements, good data, is definitely a plus, and this is a federal issue since we're working with the Canadian Space Agency.

That's the first thing—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I appreciate that. Thank you—

[Dr. François Reeves]

The second thing that I think the Canadian government should do is to match their rules to what's going on. Obama just implemented a new rule to decrease vehicle emissions; I don't know the exact numbers, but I think we should go that way.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Sorry; you said, “decrease emissions of”...?

[Dr. François Reeves]

Of fossil fuels.

I can tell you something. I have two hybrid cars, one for me and one for my wife. It cost me, I think, $80,000 more to get those two hybrid cars, and I had no support for that. Why? If you go anywhere in Europe, you get support for that.

The only place you're welcome if you have a hybrid car is at IKEA, because there is private parking for every hybrid or electric car.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Right.

My understanding is that we do have certain programs, and there are surcharges for cars that aren't environmentally friendly, but your suggestion is that we need them for the ones that are, rather than doing it in a punitive way.

[Dr. François Reeves]

The point is that if we really think about it, we should support people in that endeavour.

Also, if you want to transform something, it's difficult when it's the individual. I'm a doctor; it's easy for me to buy a hybrid, but for other people it's not that easy. Alternatively, you can have a lot of fleets, complete vehicle parks filled within the city by different levels of government.

When you buy a bunch electric cars, you drop all the prices, and in that way you insert them into society. I was astonished when I was in Zermatt in Switzerland, because in Zermatt not a single gas car goes in the city, only electric, and we can go through it—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

We have some unique challenges in Canada simply with regard to our size, and electric.... However, that's not really the road I want to go down.

So having good data and matching our programs with the U.S.—those would be your suggestions?

[Dr. François Reeves]

Those will be very good steps.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That would be a good start. Okay, wonderful.

Mr. Maciver, do you know anything about the emerging practice called eco-landscaping? For example, an organization might plant a row of evergreen trees alongside a building in order to reduce the effects of wind chill, thus reducing the need for central heating and in turn reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Could you please tell us what you know about eco-landscaping, and if you're aware of any best practices or recent developments in this field?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

You have 10 seconds.

[Don Maciver]

I've never heard of that term, but it sounds like a stewardship initiative. We have been involved in those as they relate to water.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

Doctor, I have also had two hybrids. I have found the new vehicles to be just as fuel-efficient as my hybrids, so hybrids are not the be-all. They're very good, but that technology is maybe not keeping up with what's out there. They keep our vehicles running very clean, absolutely. The newer vehicles are very clean, and with the ultimate goal of reducing emissions.

Mr. Brahmi is next.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will let the professor answer the question asked by my colleague from Halifax. The question was, do you think it would be useful or desirable to use a part of Health Canada's funding to subsidize urban conservation?

[Dr. François Reeves]

I will draw a parallel with what was done in Quebec. The Ministry of Health granted tens of millions of dollars to the Climate Change Action Plan, or CCAP. If I remember correctly, the Institut national de santé publique received approximately $36 million for all of Quebec to regreen and counter urban heat islands that caused the most concern. Many projects were carried out throughout the province. We held our event Journée de l'Arbre de la santé at the same time as the National Tree Day. I was also happy to meet Mr. Royal Galipeau before coming here, because he was the MP who proposed having such a day.

In the last five years, we've been carrying out a major greening initiative in hospitals, health centres, residential and long-term care centres (CHSLD) and local community services centres (CLSC). We are currently working in the cities of Laval, Montreal, Quebec City and Trois-Rivières. The objective of this joint program with the Ministry of Health is to reduce climate aggressors for vulnerable individuals. This program focuses particularly on regreening areas where the poorest and oldest individuals live. This partnership is currently supporting joint activities between the health and environmental sectors. I believe that it's extremely important to have scientists from both of these fields working together.

What strikes me as a doctor, is that in the human body we can measure everything right down to the exact angstrom, picogram or nanometre. We have no problem measuring levels of HDL, LDL, glucose, blood pressure and so on, but we have no idea what's in the environment. This is quite strange given that the environment completely changes and influences our degree of risk.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Professor. I would like to stop you there, because we have very little time. In addition, your answer to my first question was complete.

I was very impressed with the diagram you showed us. We could see the difference between rats on a normal diet and those on a fatty diet. The graphs are quite clear and really show the impact of air pollution on overall cardiovascular health.

One element you did not mention was reversibility. Once the human body has absorbed heavy metals, it cannot get rid of them. In terms of cardiovascular health, which means cholesterol and... Help me here, you're the specialist.

[Dr. François Reeves]

You mean atherosclerosis.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

That's it. Have any studies been done to show whether adopting an urban conservation policy would lead to a reduction in the rate or reversibility of atherosclerosis in most people?

[Dr. François Reeves]

Yes, in the study I told you about that involved 500,000 Americans, we saw that life expectancy increased in all the cities where pollutant rates had been reduced. Life expectancy even increased by four to five years in entire neighbourhoods.

We can draw a parallel with tobacco. In the end, knowledge on this topic included knowledge on the environment. However, it was easy with tobacco. It was the first factor in Framingham. First, people either smoked or didn't. There was a clear line. Next, we could see how much they smoked: 5, 10, 25 cigarettes or three packs per day.

Measuring how many pollutants we are exposed to is a lot of work. It was a very complex undertaking. As soon as everyone started measuring, we got all of this new data. And it is very clear: what comes out of something that uses diesel is much more toxic than what comes out of a cigarette.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

So the human body is able to recover. Perfect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lunney, you have the last five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, for the record, I would like to raise an objection to Ms. Leslie's allegation that we're somehow trashing habitat protection. I think your answer from DFO was that they said to you that it is more or less business as usual. The effective regulation is simply to target the waterways where the fish actually are and to have greater effect on the fish and the fisheries.

Now I want to say what a fascinating discussion we've been having today. I wanted to say, Dr. Reeves, that your passion for taking on nano-aggressors, both food and airborne, is very well articulated. We appreciate that. You fleshed that out a little bit. We are making progress with some of those noxious gases, as was mentioned by my colleague Bob, and as you acknowledged in Montreal. We have more to do, but we're making some progress in that area.

I appreciate what you said about trees being a filter and so on. I'm fortune to live on Vancouver Island. We're on 10 acres with forest all around us, and I sure miss it when I'm here in Ottawa in more of a concrete setting. I want to say there are some great areas in Ottawa, and I'm getting to that.

I just wanted to ask about breast cancer, Dr. Reeves, because we have you here. There's a lot of interest in that today. For example, a couple of major studies show that vitamin D deficiency has a major role in breast cancer risk reduction of up to 69%. Some people think we could save a heck of a lot of money if people got more vitamin D exposure. I'm wondering whether you think, as part of our urbanization, that we're actually spending more time indoors—we're clothed, we're not getting the exposure—and that the drastically low vitamin D levels that Canadians have is part of what contributes to the cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.