Environment Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's very good. My impression is that this rural water quality program, by controlling the amount of fertilizer and manure that goes into the Grand River, is having an impact with respect to the health of the Great Lakes, specifically Lake Erie. Am I right about that?

[Joe Farwell]

That's absolutely right, and that was the main draw to pull the federal group into the discussion of our water management plan, so the federal government has representation on the development of a watershed plan because of its interest in Lake Erie.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's very good. I'm hoping this committee might get to a study of the Great Lakes watershed overall, and if so, we may have you back to tell us a little more about that.

I was also interested in the species work that GRCA has done, and I'm remembering a federally assisted program to protect or recover eagles in the Grand River watershed. Am I remembering that correctly?

[Joe Farwell]

We deal with a really wide range of programs and seek funding sources where we can, but I'm not familiar with that one.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay. It relates to the area of ecosystems management that I wanted to ask you about because there is a value to being species-specific in some cases. But I also understood you to say that there might be other value in taking a broader ecosystems approach. Is that correct?

[Joe Farwell]

Absolutely—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

If we could have a quick answer, it would be great.

[Joe Farwell]

Yes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All right, we're out of time. I would like to explore it but—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

You can go ahead. The answer was yes. That was a quick answer.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I have more questions. I would have asked a few more, but I'll stop there.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Thank you.

We can't always predict what happens around votes, but it seems there is less likelihood that we'll be going into votes, so it seems we are going to have our full time here today.

Next we have Ms. Rempel. Maybe you want to continue with Mr. Woodworth's questioning, or maybe not. It's up to you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The spice of life: we never know what's going to happen.

Ms. Granskou, you said a few things that I wanted to give you an opportunity to tease out. You and your organization have appeared before committee before, and one of the things I think we all appreciated is the level of effort that went into putting a partnership together. You achieved that.

One of the questions we are looking at right now is best practices for habitat conservation, and one of the themes you'll notice that's coming up in questioning with all groups is how we can maintain a working landscape. How can we acknowledge the fact that there are economic demands on our land, and how can we balance that with the need for conservation?

Could you make some brief remarks to the committee about how that partnership was put together? How did you get all these groups with disparate interests to the table in a depoliticized fashion, and what have been some of the best practices for maintaining that partnership?

[Mary Granskou]

Sure, thank you for the question.

The partnership arose because there were increasing conflicts, so in essence that was a driver for all the parties around that initial table, to explore whether they could work together way before the framework came along, which was our consensus document. The solutions were not as evident then, and there was strong leadership by some of the members on all the interests. Whether it was the resource sector, the first nations, or the conservation organizations, they wanted to work on solutions, so the framework came out of that desire to drive to another place.

The partnership has been held together through direct experience and results. The results we have seen and have supported are driving further work together, so the more we see actual implementation of land use plans.... They won't be perfect solutions, but they are today's agreements around finding a way to accommodate interests and to move forward on our shared objectives. Alberta's Lower Athabasca regional plan is one where our membership table in Alberta was very active in making recommendations.

We look forward to continued new practices and informing that process as we move forward in addressing questions.

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

To drill down a little bit more, who brought that first group to the table? What was the impetus or the catalyst for actually getting the discussion on forming a partnership together? Was there a specific instance? I'm simply curious, because it seems to be working well.

[Mary Granskou]

It is. As I mentioned, there were leaders who were feeling there had to be another way and actually wanted to test the model. Could a broadly based, sector-based approach work in a landscape that is so vast? It really was a major experiment.

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

Further to your comments on land use planning, over the last couple of years this is a theme that's been recurrent in this committee. When we look at cumulative impact assessment, especially when it comes to habitat management, do you think that is the best place within a land use planning framework because it informs policy, rather than looking at it on a case-by-case basis?

[Mary Granskou]

Let me use a live example. I don't mean to keep coming back to Ontario, but I refer to the Ring of Fire because it's coming on stream. What do we need? We need land use planning and the province has committed to that. We need to financially support that, which is a challenge. We need environmental assessment that's going to lay the table for the whole region, so that the right decisions and the right information can be gathered to make those decisions. We also need a table for a provincial-first nations dialogue.

We're hopeful that some of those steps are going to be taken in what we hope will be real terms in the near future. You need all of those in order to advance. It's not one single solution, but it's how they fit together cohesively.

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

Great, thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

That's all the time you have, I'm sorry.

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

Really? I didn't compliment you and I still got cut off.

[A voice]

It doesn't work.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Megan Leslie]

Now we go to Ms. Duncan, who has five minutes as well.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Granskou, I'm going to be short. Would your recommendation to this committee be that SARA needs stability—don't open it—and it needs implementation?

[Mary Granskou]

Yes, and we're not saying never to do that, but right now we're at a very formational time in terms of being able to land solutions.