Environment Committee on May 28th, 2013

[Dr. Abimbola Abiola]

One of the things we have to do on a national basis is to be able to monitor what is happening in the wetlands. We have to develop a wetland monitoring process nationwide.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Yes.

[Dr. Abimbola Abiola]

Currently we don't even have the details on any of the wetland functionality parameters across the country.

I can go onto the Environment Canada website and get information on what the temperature is in Nunavut, or everything on what is happening in the Yukon. For our wetlands, which are a key resource to us, we don't even have information on what, for an area of land, is the quality of water in there at any particular time.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Dr. Abiola, I'm going to pick up on that. You're really picking up on something that Ducks Unlimited Canada has also asked about, the strong science and planning efforts to underpin and drive decision-making.

Can I ask Dr. Guyn, and then come back to Dr. Abiola, what that means? What does strong science look like to you?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

In my mind, first and foremost, it is having a wetland inventory. I'll go back to that, because until you know the numbers and types of wetlands that you have on a landscape, it's very difficult to build models or to be able to predict what the impacts may be of removing any of those wetlands. And having that is really the very basis for how you plan. When we do our conservation planning, having the wetland inventory is the very basic layer that you need.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Can you describe what that inventory should look like, please, and what monitoring is required, what science is required, the scientists, everything?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

There actually was a proposal put forward by the Canadian Wetland Inventory for a Canadian wetland inventory that laid out an entire approach on how to do this. It varies by region. In some locations of the country you don't need to get into that very fine detail, whereas when you get into the Prairies, you have to get down to a quarter-acre-size wetland. In other portions of the country, for example, in the boreal, you can have a lower resolution imagery. It depends on the types of wetlands you have.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Can you table that report with the committee?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

Yes. Absolutely.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

And very specifically your recommendations.

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

Absolutely. I'd be pleased to.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Terrific.

Something else you talked about was major landscape investment. What does that look like?

[Jim Brennan]

Last year, we held an advocacy day in Ottawa. One of the things we talked about at that time was a $250 million investment, about $50 million a year just for wetlands, matched by privately raised funds. We believe that something on that scale is required to address the level of loss, particularly on the restoration side of the equation. We certainly have a document we can table with you that goes into more detail on a regional basis of what it is we're looking at.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Duncan.

We move now to Madam Quach for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for providing us with very concrete information today.

I will start with the representatives from Ducks Unlimited Canada, but I am not sure who exactly to direct my questions to.

I was astonished and pleasantly surprised to see that, on pages 7 and 23, you talked at length about economic benefits from tourism, investments made by Ducks Unlimited, as well as simple economic spinoffs spread over a four-year period. You talked about $77.1 million in GDP, the equivalent of almost 1,000 full-time jobs.

We do not hear about those benefits often. When we talk about conserving the environment, a number of people are afraid that investing in this sector will cost the economy money. In fact, you are creating jobs and economic activity.

Could you elaborate on those spinoffs?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

I can address it a little bit, not that I'm an expert on the economic side of things. But it was the same sort of thing. We had questions as well: what are the economic benefits of doing this conservation work? That's why we partnered with Mark Anielski to do this assessment, where he came in and got all of our data and came back with a report that highlighted some of those economic benefits.

I'll tell you basically how he did it, but this is definitely not my forté. He has used an input/output model used in economic input analysis of capital projects. It was based on the 2008 input/output multipliers developed by Statistics Canada for B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Essentially we gave him our data on how much land we had secured, whether it was wetlands, whether it was uplands, and he used basic science information to help determine some of those output multipliers.

That's about as much detail as I can give you, but it's a standard economic approach to developing those kinds of statistics.

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

Mr. Brennan, do you have something to add to that?

[Jim Brennan]

Before I came into this role, I was responsible for the habitat program in Ontario, so I can speak to the southern Ontario development program investment. Certainly we learned a lot from that undertaking because it was a source of funds that drew attention to what we've been doing all along, for 75 years in Canada, which is hiring local contractors, sourcing supplies for habitat construction, hiring people to monitor and oversee the work—right across Ontario, in the case of this program, but also in the Prairies, where we've done a great deal of work, and in the Atlantic provinces and so on.

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

That creates lasting jobs in our communities and regions. So it is very good for the regions.

You also talked about a 37-year period and sequestered carbon. During a period like that, the drainage of wetlands could cause carbon to be released in the atmosphere, which would exacerbate climate change. You said that the drainage of nearly 6,000 wetland basins resulted in the release of 34,000 tonnes of carbon.

Could you tell us more about the purpose of wetlands, the importance of conserving them and their connection to carbon sequestration? Could you also tell us about the impact on the environment and people's health?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

I can talk a bit about it. Some wetlands in particular are very good at storing or sequestering carbon in the wetland vegetation. What happens is that when those wetlands are drained, they're no longer sequestering that carbon, and then, even worse, when they're cultivated or broken, that soil is turned over and the carbon that has been stored in that vegetation is then released through greenhouse gases.

That was based on some of the research we did in southern Manitoba. We have equipment and instruments out there that were actually measuring the release of greenhouse gases from these drained wetlands. That was just some of the early work that has been done on it.

I think one positive thing that has come out of it is that wetland restoration is being thought about as a protocol in Alberta for mitigating climate change. We're just waiting to see whether that's going to be approved. It has gone through all of the scientific review. We're hoping that wetland restoration will become an approved protocol.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Merci, Madam Quach.

We'll move now to Mr. Lunney for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Thanks for contributing to a great discussion here.

First, just as a clarification about the proposal for inventory that Kirsty Duncan was asking about, was it Ducks Unlimited that prepared that proposal?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

It was done in conjunction with Environment Canada.

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

Okay. Thanks.

Ducks Unlimited was the main—

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

We were one of the parties, one of the partners.