Environment Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Mary Granskou]

Thank you for that.

Actually, in my rush to use my 10 minutes effectively I skipped over the recommendation. There is a program that currently does support land use planning. It's under Aboriginal Affairs. It's focused right now on supporting first nations on reserve lands, which are much smaller areas than what we're talking about and what provinces are working on in many parts of the country.

Our recommendation would be to adjust those terms of reference so that the current funding envelope could go to provincial exercises that engage over a broader area with all the right interests, be they first nation companies, northern municipalities, environmental groups, and others.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

You also mentioned you're moving to implementation plans. What specific recommendation would you give the committee to help with implementation, particularly including first nations, for example?

[Mary Granskou]

There are places where Canada is engaged, such as the Northwest Territories.

One of the questions that comes up, and back to an earlier question.... We need to ensure that the implementation capacity is there. For instance, if the federal government or if Canada were a party to a land use plan and were part of an implementation agreement, that would ensure that the resources would be effective into the future, whether they were a lead party in that case or not. Often there are other partners who want to play a stewardship role, who also participate in implementation. There are examples in different parts of the country.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

You talked about sustainability. Is there anything you want to say about finances?

[Mary Granskou]

In terms of finances—this is very much a theme with our other colleagues, as well—we're moving to a place of creative partnership. The capacity that any dollar can bring now can be replicated by others. We're in a very interesting time in Canada in terms of being able to advance very innovative and strategic partnerships for habitat conservation.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I appreciate that.

Mr. Farwell, I'm going to pick up on the partnerships piece. What would the recommendations be to this committee—very specific recommendations—on how we help you do partnerships?

[Joe Farwell]

We've worked through the environmental farm plan for many years. Filing an environmental farm plan is one of the requirements to get funding support from our rural water quality program. Continuing to develop and enhance the environmental farm plan is an important contribution the federal government could make.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

So the recommendation would be to build on the environmental farm plan.

[Joe Farwell]

Continue to support and build on the environmental farm plan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

You also talked about marginal lands and your rural water quality program. Is there a recommendation you would like to make to the committee regarding how land might be acquired to limit development?

[Joe Farwell]

I don't actually have a recommendation that's specific to our watershed.

We're an organization that owns a lot of land, 20,000 hectares. We're in a very highly populated watershed. We find that the landowners do as good a job managing the land as we're able to. The land is part of an active farming community. We recognize that it has to be drained in the places it's farmed. Acquiring more land may not actually be a solution, and it's certainly not necessarily, in southwestern Ontario, the best value.

The best value comes in working with the people who already own the land to implement practices that conserve it.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

You talked about marginal lands. Could you expand on that, please?

[Joe Farwell]

There's a real potential threat with the high value of cropping right now. We've seen an awful lot of land that hasn't been tiled. There's an awful lot of drainage equipment out on the landscape right now in our watershed. Some of the lands that were not really profitable to farm five years ago might all of a sudden be profitable. That's a reality we're facing in our watershed, and we're not sure there's a quick and easy solution.

We provide incentives to plant forests and preserve them, through our rural water quality program, but incentives aren't really strong enough in the face of really high value corn, and things like that.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

So the recommendation to this committee would be what, please?

[Joe Farwell]

To provide some local assistance, possibly, for some of these environmental goods and services.

Mr. Lowe referenced that it's the public good that benefits from environmental goods and services, and it is quite appropriate that the public contribute to some of that.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

My last question will be to Mr. Lowe.

Could you make a specific recommendation to the committee, please? You've talked about the lack of communication between Agriculture Canada and Environment Canada.

[Fawn Jackson]

Only last week I was in Mexico City at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. It's an agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Previously, when the meeting was held in Canada, we had somebody from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, as well as somebody from the Canadian Wildlife Service, as well as the producer organizations. Each country is represented.

I think that when we all get in the same room, we have lots of similar goals. I think it's simply working together and understanding how we can collaborate, how we can combine resources, and how we can combine expertise, so it's a new way of thinking in terms of getting people with common goals in the room, even though they come from different backgrounds. There's great opportunity there that we can build on in the future.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Pilon, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Farwell.

The Grand River is located in your area. It is an area with high-density residential development and urban sprawl. What are the consequences of the development on fauna, on flora and, especially, on wetlands in that area? Do you think that most wetlands can be restored quickly or does that vary, all circumstances being different?

[Joe Farwell]

Thank you.

Certainly, I think all circumstances are different. Our watershed is highly populated, so of course that's going to impact people. People live in five major cities and throughout the watershed the majority is farmed. A big portion of our watershed, if you go back 200 years, would have been forested, wetlands and grasslands, like much of the country, I guess. I would say there certainly have been impacts.

In terms of restoring wetlands, there are places for it. They can be restored. A lot of times when there's a city where there once was a wetland, you're not going to restore that wetland, so it becomes important that you have some place like Luther Marsh and other similar wetlands.

The other piece we've started to really pay attention to is restoring riparian corridors in order for habitat species to migrate along the corridors, so little sections and buffers along our rivers and streams get some incremental benefit connecting nodes of habitat. We're never going to turn southwestern Ontario back into a wetland or a forest, but we can do our best to preserve what we have for wetlands and connect the ones that we can.

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

I have another question for you. During your presentation, you said that your conservation authority had an integrated approach, that it seeks to protect both land and water. Could you tell us more about this approach? Do you recommend that the federal government have a similar approach?

[Joe Farwell]

I would certainly recommend that the federal government adopt a similar approach. We're fundamentally a water management agency, but a long time ago folks recognized that you cannot manage water effectively without understanding what's happening on the landscape. That's why we do things like plant trees. Runoff from a farm field that's been fully cultivated can be of a much different quality than runoff from a forest, or a farm field that's been put under conservation tillage. We think that the two have to be considered together, and through our water management planning, we work with both water and land. If you try to separate the two, you won't help either one of them.

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

Ms. Granskou, your organization aims to protect sustainable commercial interests and ensure long-term economic advantages for northern communities. In your opinion, has our country progressed toward achieving these goals?

[Mary Granskou]

Yes, we definitely have. If we compare where we are now to where we were ten years ago, we've now developed a depth of experience in advancing solutions that meet the needs of everyone around the table. That's quite heartening. There's a long history of stewardship agreements in southern Canada. In northern Canada, I think we're creating the space and the experience and taking that same model forward, so we are very encouraged.

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

I only have 30 seconds left. I will continue during the next round.