Environment Committee on April 30th, 2013

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Good morning. Let's get this committee session started.

Hello to our witnesses.

My name is Megan Leslie and I am the vice-chair of this committee. I'm not normally the chair, so please bear with us as we get through this with me in this new role.

The witnesses will first have 10 minutes to make their presentation. Committee members will then be able to ask them questions.

I will give everybody a heads-up that it's possible we may have to break for votes. If votes start, we'll be notified by a light here in the room and it means that we'll have to suspend. I can't predict if that will happen, but that was just to give you a heads-up in case it does.

Perhaps we can start. We have Joe Farwell, chief administrative officer from Grand River Conservation Authority; Mary Granskou, senior adviser with the Canadian Boreal Initiative; and by video conference, all the way from Calgary, Fawn Jackson and Bob Lowe from the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

Welcome to you all.

Perhaps we can start with Mr. Farwell from the Grand River Conservation Authority.

[Joe Farwell, Chief Administrative Officer, Grand River Conservation Authority]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning. My name is Joe Farwell, and I'm the chief administrative officer for the Grand River Conservation Authority. I am pleased to have this opportunity to provide you with input on habit conservation in the context of the national conservation plan.

The Grand River Conservation Authority is one of 36 conservation authorities in Ontario that manage water, forests, and other natural resources in the most populated portions of our province. We are, by definition, a partnership of municipalities and a watershed for the management of water and natural resources across municipal boundaries.

Our watershed is located immediately west of the greater Toronto area, and at 6,800 square kilometres it's the largest watershed in southern Ontario. It's about the size of Prince Edward Island. There are 39 municipalities in our watershed, with a population of close to one million, most of whom live in the rapidly growing cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Cambridge, and Brantford. It's also one of the richest farming regions in Canada, with farmers working 70% of the land and producing an incredible variety of products.

The Grand River Conservation Authority is the oldest water management agency in Canada. It was created more than 75 years ago, when the industry leaders at the time realized that they needed to work together to address severe environmental issues of flooding, pollution, and inadequate water supplies. As a result, our river has undergone a remarkable recovery, which was highlighted in 1994 when the Grand River was the first river in a working landscape to be designated as a Canadian heritage river.

The GRCA was created, first and foremost, as a water management agency. By early in our history we learned that managing water also means protecting the land. The severity of floods and droughts are determined, in part, by the health of our wetlands and our forests.

One big part of our success over the years has been that we've adopted an integrated watershed-wide approach to managing our natural resources for both land and water. The GRCA owns more than 20,000 hectares of land. Throughout Ontario, conservation authorities own a total of 150,000 hectares, and much of that land was initially acquired for water management purposes. Land was acquired for dikes and dams, and flood plain properties were acquired to limit development.

Over the years, those parcels of land have become protected spaces, providing a host of other benefits. They provide rich and varied habitat, from forests to wetlands, and they are connecting links between our larger, natural spaces. They help protect and restore the form and function of natural ecosystems and landscapes. A good example is the Luther Marsh wildlife management area, west of Orangeville. This 5,000-hectare property was acquired in the early 1950s for a water management reservoir, but since then it has become one of the richest habitats in southern Ontario, and home to close to 250 bird species. Significantly, one reason for its success is that it's a product of many partnerships among the GRCA, provincial and federal agencies, the private sector, and the surrounding communities. These partnerships have provided the long-term vision and stability that are needed to help plan and finance the development of rich, protected habitat. These are long-range projects that needed to grow over decades, so they needed commitment to match that time.

As I mentioned earlier, most of the land in our watershed is in private hands, and about 70% of it is farmed. We've worked very closely with the farm community and our municipal partners to develop a rural water quality program. The program has encouraged farmers to adopt best management practices to protect water on their land, and by extension, water in natural space throughout the watershed. Our municipal partners provide funding for financial incentives, and in little more than a decade close to $34 million has been invested in 5,000 water protection projects. Of that total, grants amounted to $13 million, with farmers contributing more than $20 million in labour, materials, and cash.

Again, one source of its success is the strength of the partnership and the stability provided by long-range financial commitments from our funding municipalities. Building relationships is the heart of successful collaboration, and it takes time and continuity to do that. Canada's best value investment in stewardship programs like this is in the long-term commitment to the environmental farm plan. Slow and steady wins this race. Programs such as these are becoming even more important as more and more natural spaces are under stress.

There is, of course, the pressure caused by urban growth. Although Ontario and many of the municipalities in our watershed are working hard to promote intensification of our urban areas, it's inevitable that the urban boundaries will grow. Second, high commodity prices encourage farmers to start growing crops on marginal lands, and this can put pressure on woodlands and wetlands. In those circumstances it's even more important to ensure that our publicly owned, protected spaces are well managed now and into the long-term future.

One final point I'd like to make is that any national plan has to include regional plans that are fine-tuned to local ecological and environmental needs. A plan for lands in the Great Lakes Basin will look much different from one for the Prairies or the Rockies, even if the underlying goals are the same.

It's in our nature to look at things from a watershed perspective, and we think any national plan should also have that view in mind. It's been our experience that federally funded programs, which we've been able to take advantage of, tend to be focused on the needs of specific species. We would prefer to look at a broader context to the natural environment and its ecosystems. If you can protect or enhance an ecosystem, the needs of a species will be met.

The federal government can create a vision and expectations for conserving natural spaces. It can promote the fact that healthy ecosystems, public health, and economic well-being are all tied together. It can recognize that conserving natural spaces can provide great social benefits to Canadians. The federal government can integrate these goals and principles into the full range of federal environmental programs and cost-sharing partnerships.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'd be happy to respond to questions now or later.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thanks very much. Your testimony will certainly be helpful.

We'll actually hear from all the witnesses and then we'll begin the questioning rounds, so thanks very much for that.

Ms. Granskou, from the Canadian Boreal Initiative, would you like to begin?

[Mary Granskou, Senior Advisor, Canadian Boreal Initiative]

Thank you. Good morning Madam Chair and members of the committee.

I apologize for making my presentation in English.

My French is not sufficiently good that I can be well understood.

We're here today to talk about habitat conservation, and I'd like to start with a brief summary of who we are.

The Canadian Boreal Initiative is guided by a vision and a framework that was negotiated across a broad group of leading resource companies, conservation organizations, and first nations. Those members around our table—and we call this group the Boreal Leadership Council—comprise leading resource and financial companies in Canada, including the TD Bank, Suncor, Al-Pac, and Domtar. They also include first nations across the country from the Kaska to Treaty 8 to Poplar River First Nation to the Innu Nation in Labrador. They also include environment and conservation organizations such as Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and others.

We were launched about a decade ago. We're actually heading into our second decade of work supported by a strategic partnership among Ducks Unlimited Canada; Ducks Unlimited, Inc.; and the Pew Environment Group. They all share a commitment to work to protect species that move across international boundaries, such as ducks and geese that reside in the boreal for part of their year. We act as a secretariat to our council, and our collective goals are to achieve a balance between sustainable resource development and protection of about half of Canada's boreal region, all in a manner that respects and advances aboriginal rights and interests.

We get behind real solutions. For instance, many of our aboriginal partners are bringing forward land use plans that balance development and protection in unique and sustainable ways. They are increasingly enjoying the support of governments and are coming on stream now in an implementation phase in a number of areas of the country. We work across the energy, forestry, and mining sectors as well as with banks and conservation organizations, as I've mentioned. In our experience, the objectives that we support—encouraging world-class, sustainable development and marrying that with world-class conservation—are mutually reinforcing in many places. As a testament to that fact, our goals are increasingly being brought into government's objectives moving forward. We work with all levels of government—federal, provincial, territorial, and aboriginal—on a range of interests.

I will just mention the boreal region, which as you know, stretches across the country from Newfoundland and Labrador through to the Yukon. It spans over half of Canada. It's an area of very rich natural resources and rich conservation and wildlife values. There's no question that the boreal is an economic engine for northern economies. Many of these communities also want to see how development can be balanced with ways of protecting their traditional livelihoods, wildlife lands, and waters. Planning for this integrated sustainability is key, and we're tremendously focused on supporting that.

There is a proud history of support within Parliament for land and water conservation including recent and newly expanded national parks, such as the Nahanni in the Northwest Territories. We're pleased to see the committee studying this question of habitat conservation and to see the federal role in supporting this.

I essentially have five major recommendations. The first is that we encourage the committee to continue its support for national parks and national wildlife areas. They're vitally important to completing the network of Canada's protected areas, as you know. They are flagship programs that are highly valued by millions of Canadians, and they protect nature in ways that are celebrated around the world.

On the federal programs that are needed to create national parks and to effectively manage sites such as natural wildlife areas through time, it's very important to recognize that the need for ongoing support is vitally important. So we encourage you to continue to look at that.

Our second area of recommendation is around the Northwest Territories in particular, which is undergoing a change in jurisdiction in how the responsibilities for land and water are managed. As you know, there has been a recent devolution agreement in the Northwest Territories, and this is a tremendously important time. We are just encouraging the committee to ask questions about devolution in terms of seeking assurance that the mechanisms are there to consider, create, and manage the new protected areas that are coming on stream.

We're encouraged by some of the recent statements by GNWT, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and the assurance that the support will be there federally as well to continue to support the working groups that are working on broadly supported proposals for new protected areas, and also the land withdrawals that provide interim protection for these areas until they can be designated. There are new sites that are coming on stream. What is really needed now is a process to drive forward. Right now the GNWT is developing a mineral strategy to guide mining, and we need a retooling of the protected areas strategy as a companion initiative.

Our third area is supporting tools for effective wildlife mitigation. I will focus on two areas in particular. One is the species at risk regime, and the second is comprehensive environmental assessment. Both of those are building blocks for habitat conservation across the country.

We would like to simply say about the Species at Risk Act that now is the time for stability. We would encourage that now is not the time to reopen it. What we really need is time to bring the cooperative work that's happening right now to fruition. Chief among those is.... I'll give an example of one we're engaged in, which is called the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which involves the entire forestry sector, working with first nations, environmental groups, and governments to advance their forestry plans and at the same time protect caribou that are within their licence agreements.

There are many other examples of good collaboration.

The second area within the mitigation tools is environmental assessment. I just want to flag that there is one project in particular, Ontario's Ring of Fire, that would really benefit from another look at how environmental assessment can be done in that region. It is one of the most important mineral finds in our generation in Canada, and it makes sense to get it right.

Right now I just wanted to flag that the current comprehensive study will likely not meet the particular needs of the first nation communities. What is going to be helpful in creating a foundation for both development and habitat protection in that very large region would be to bump up the review to a panel review in that case.

The other mention I want to make is that supporting land use planning is one of the key tools to reconcile development with habitat conservation in the north of Canada. There are many examples across the country, including in Alberta and Manitoba. They are emerging in Ontario. They're moving in that direction in Quebec and in Labrador. In British Columbia there are agreements around land use plans, and in the Northwest Territories. It's a very broadly scoped tool, and it's regionally defined and adjusted. These are processes that advance only with the support of the parties, which are the first nations and the governments in the regions in question.

We would just like to finish by encouraging the federal government to support land use planning as a key mechanism for both wildlife habitat and development, and a number of provinces would welcome the same.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thanks very much, Ms. Granskou. I'm sure you'll get lots of questions in the main round.

We've heard from a conservation authority, as well as a conservation coalition. Now we're going to hear a bit from the industry perspective and some of the conservation measures that the Cattlemen's Association has taken.

Mr. Lowe, I believe you'll be testifying, and Ms. Jackson, you're available for questions. Is that correct?

[Fawn Jackson, Manager, Environmental Affairs, Canadian Cattlemen's Association]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

I'll give you the two-minute mark when you have about two minutes left.

Go ahead.

[Bob Lowe, Vice-Chair, Environment Committee, Canadian Cattlemen's Association]

Madam Chair and committee members, my name is Bob Lowe. My family and I farm in Alberta near the town of Nanton. Beside me is Fawn Jackson, the environmental manager for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.

Thank you for the invitation to speak on behalf of Canada's beef producers with regard to the national conservation plan for Canada. As vice-chair of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association environment committee this area is of great interest and importance to me.

Ranchers are in a unique position when it comes to business and the environment as we are able to own and operate dynamic, profitable businesses within a natural habitat that supply many ecosystem services to the Canadian public. We feel there are many opportunities for us to collaborate to reach conservation goals through a stewardship approach. Ranchers hold the front line on North America's threatened and disappearing grasslands. Grasslands sequester much carbon for us, play a key role in storing and filtering water, and are the home to an abundance of species at risk. Needless to say we have an important role to play.

Ranchers have been and will continue to be involved in habitat conservation as it is the nature of our business. As ranches are passed down from generation to generation, an enormous amount of regionally specific environmental knowledge is accumulated. Ranchers have partnered successfully with many environmentally oriented organizations such as Ducks Unlimited Canada, Cows and Fish, MULTISAR, and provincial organizations such as the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority, Manitoba Conservation Districts Association, and Alberta's rangeland management branch.

The key to the success of these collaborations has been the emphasis on stewardship approaches to conservation, as well as the dual priority of helping ranchers reach their operational goals. Many of these organizations face declining financial resources despite the fact that the importance of their work continues to grow as they help to achieve conservation and economic goals for Canada.

Further support of these programs will have positive impacts on achieving both conservation and agricultural objectives. One way to achieve support for these programs would be through the Species at Risk Act habitat stewardship program. A portion of the habitat stewardship fund should be placed aside specifically for agriculture. The programs that get the funding should be supported by agricultural producers, and the funding should be timely and accessible. There could be potential for the agricultural industry to administer these funds to ensure the highest amount of efficiency and effectiveness.

The Canadian beef industry supports the intention of the Species at Risk Act to protect and recover wildlife species at risk in Canada. We encourage this government to take a made-in-Canada stewardship approach to protecting species at risk, and avoid the confrontational atmosphere south of the border. The Canadian beef industry encourages the government to do everything possible to implement an act that is truly based on the stewardship approach and respects private landowner rights, as we will be able to achieve much greater success through collaborative stewardship than cumbersome regulation.

We believe that regulators have to keep two basic principles in mind. Number one, if a species at risk is viewed as a liability to the land manager it will always be at risk. Number two, if a species at risk is found on a rancher's land it must be assumed that the land manager is doing things right.

The government can help to foster improved relationships between agriculture and conservation as collaborative stewardship efforts will help optimize the output of both. We need stronger ties between Environment Canada, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and a regulatory environment that supports a stewardship approach.

The Government of Canada could also help by creating a seed fund for ecosystem service programs. Farmers and ranchers do their best to manage their lands in the most sustainable manner possible. However, financial or other resource constraints may limit the uptake of new environmental technologies or practices. The benefits derived from positive environmental management practices may also be greater than those received by the individual producer with the broader public benefiting, and consequently the incentive to invest at an individual level may be below the optimal level. Financial support would enable and incent producers to adopt practices that enhance ecosystem services provided to society. As a friend of mine said, “If it's for the public good, perhaps the public should pay”.

The CCA has a vision for a national framework for ecosystem service programs that are delivered regionally. To make any ecosystem service program successful it is recognized that local solutions must address local priorities with both buyers and sellers involved. We thus encourage this government to develop a program that local groups could apply to in order to access seed money to support regional ecosystem service programs.

Thank you for the opportunity to present. I look forward to Fawn answering your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thanks very much, Mr. Lowe. You came well under time, but the information was all there, so thank you.

We will now go to questions.

Mr. Sopuck, you have seven minutes.

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

Thanks.

Ms. Granskou, you talked about the partners in the Canadian Boreal Initiative. You talked about aboriginal communities, governments, and companies. One group of people were conspicuously absent from that list, and that's the natural resource communities themselves. I didn't hear anything about the Thompsons, the Prince Alberts, the Timminses, and so on. Are those municipalities and towns part of this, because those are natural resource dependent communities?

[Mary Granskou]

Absolutely, they're very much a part of the regional solutions that we support. For instance, any land use planning process needs to engage the communities that are in their region and in the surrounding region, so I appreciate that.

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

I understand what you said, that they need to be engaged, but as you listed out the partners in the Boreal Forest Initiative, those communities were conspicuous by their absence. I strongly recommend that they be respected for their contributions, their presence in the boreal forest, and that their influence be felt.

Ms. Granskou, you talked about balancing development and protection, and that sounds like a zero-sum game. Having been in the forest industry in the past...you take a working forest and the second growth that comes up can be a treasure trove of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Do you think development and conservation are mutually exclusive?

[Mary Granskou]

In our view—and it's borne through experience of the solutions that we've been supporting—the two can travel together. You can make decisions around the most highly valued areas for wildlife, at the same time as you make decisions around what are the most highly valued areas for development in a region. There are times when there is an overlap, but many times there are ways to recognize, in a boreal context, that you can move forward and protect an adequate level of both.

Perhaps I could just take 10 more seconds. One of the features of a land use plan is that they are renewed, so in essence they're evergreen. They're not developed once. They are renewed typically in regular cycles so that as new information emerges, you can adjust your plans accordingly.

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

Yes, except, again, the dichotomy between development and conservation came out in your answer as well.... I firmly believe you can have both development and conservation on the same hectare of land. Again, listening to Mr. Lowe's testimony, from the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, should teach us all that the way the ranching community operates, that same hectare of land delivers both at exactly the same time and place, so I have real difficulty with this dichotomy.

Mr. Farwell, on page 3 of your presentation, you talked about providing financial incentives to producers to basically deliver ecosystem services, to use Mr. Lowe's phrase. Can you go into a bit more detail about that? I find that very interesting.

[Joe Farwell]

Certainly. We have a long-standing history of working with the farm community in our watershed. It actually dates back probably 25 to 30 years, whether it's through tree planting or buffering riparian watercourses. About 20 years ago, one of our major municipalities adopted a program where they recognized that the contribution of pollution, manure, things like that, to the watercourses from the farm community could be reduced by buffering streams and building manure storages and carrying out conservation tillage. So they adopted a program, and we deliver their program on their behalf, where they'll provide capital funding to farmers to carry out stewardship programs, as Mr. Lowe pointed out. It's been an extremely successful program. The farmers actually contribute about two-thirds of the overall cost, so when we talk about partnerships, that's a long-standing partnership we've had with the farm community.

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

Mr. Farwell, again, your testimony was very congruent with that of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, even though you're from vastly different parts of the country. The ranching and farm community has been pushing strongly for a nationwide ecological goods and services program. It crops up all the time. Would the conservation authorities in Ontario, in your view, be supportive of a nationwide incentive-based ecological goods and services program on the farmed landscape?

[Joe Farwell]

I can certainly say that a similar type of program is what we're delivering through the rural water quality program, and it makes a lot of sense. We're working with the landowners. As I mentioned, 70% of our watershed is farmed. Almost all of our watershed is owned by private people. We have to work with the public to actually achieve goals. We can't possibly achieve it on our own.

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

I was interested in Luther Marsh, the wetland restoration. In my experience on the prairie landscape wetlands are actually one of the easiest habitats to restore, even when they're gone. Is that your experience as well? Could you talk about Luther Marsh, from where it was when it was purchased to how now it's a functioning marsh? What was the process there?

[Joe Farwell]

Luther Marsh's history is that it was a poorly drained portion of Ontario with soils conducive to the formation of wetlands, so very high-organic soils. In the 1950s, they recognized that it would be important to have a large water storage feature at that site, partially for flood control but mostly water supply. The water from our reservoirs is used to dilute the effluent from the sewage treatment plants for roughly a million people, so storage of water is very important to us. This wetland, essentially, was a wet area and now it's a standing marsh, and it actually is almost self-sustaining. It's a relatively easy site to restore. Put water there, and if the underlying soils are correct a wetland will emerge.

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

That's interesting, because just outside Winnipeg we have Oak Hammock Marsh. The process is exactly the same. It was a poorly drained marsh that producers were struggling with, and public authorities purchased the land in the sixties, reflooded it, managed it as a marsh, and it was brought back. So I very much appreciate that Luther Marsh example. Again, the hand of human beings can be light on the land if we take that stewardship approach.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thanks very much, Mr. Sopuck. We've started off a pretty good conversation here.

We will now go to Ms. Quach.

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

Thank you, Madam new Chair of the day.

I would like to thank the witnesses for sharing this important information with us. It is really very relevant.

I will first ask Ms. Granskou a question.

Could you tell us more about the five recommendations you shared with us at the end of your presentation? The first talks about supporting national parks and national wildlife areas. Ultimately, you're proposing an increase in funding programs and help for managing the sites.

Recently, Parks Canada had its budget cut by $29 million, and scientists, including biologists, were let go.

We are wondering how, in these conditions, we can continue to protect parks, habitats and ecosystems. It becomes even more important to reinvest in these programs.

What do you think of these cuts?

[Mary Granskou]

I'll just start by mentioning that as governments in Canada struggle to regain our footing in the economy, we recognize that budgets do change. What we're flagging is that when there's an opportunity to reinvest, we would stand behind these programs as being a great investment for wildlife habitat protection in Canada. There's no question that Parks Canada, like other departments, will need to reprofile some of their capacity in order to address the need.

But I guess I'll finish by saying that there are many partners in Canada who are committed to working with the federal and other governments to support our parks and their management capacity and abilities, to showcase Canada's great strengths on park management. There are many partners in Canada who are putting their shoulders to the wheel to help in this time.

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

I would like to add that our parks can be very profitable thanks to tourism. The more we invest to properly manage and protect them, the more we can benefit from them in an environmentally friendly way — I am thinking here of eco-tourism — and the more we can profit.

You talked about the importance of environmental assessments and gave examples of them. How can they contribute to creating a balance between development on the one hand, and protecting the environment and habitats, on the other?

[Mary Granskou]

I'll use an example in the Ontario Ring of Fire region. As all of you know, an environmental assessment is a tool to lay the table for solutions. When you're working in a northern context, one of the fundamentally important steps that needs to be taken is to allow for northern municipalities and northern aboriginal communities to be able to be heard, so that any of the partnerships and solutions flowing from those assessments can then be informed by the collective experience and information that's drawn in the assessment process.

I could go on. This is a lengthy conversation, but in that particular case, that is really one of the fundamental realities, or opportunities, we would say.