Environment Committee on May 28th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

You have 20 seconds for Ducks Unlimited to respond.

[Greg Siekaniec]

I would add, in the big picture of wetland conservation, that you are increasing and maintaining your biological diversity, you are maintaining and improving water quality, you are decreasing soil erosion, you are reducing flooding for downstream recipients of water, and you are remediating nutrients in wetlands.

Those are just some of the values provided that all relate to the climate change aspect we all face.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Merci beaucoup, M. Choquette.

We move now to Ms. Rempel for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to continue on the line of questioning with regard to the national inventory. I would also like to see this document. I think it's something the Conservatives can certainly support looking into. We have heard over and over again that this is something that's potentially within our jurisdiction to facilitate as well. Certainly as a committee we would be interested in looking into that.

I also wanted to continue along the lines of questioning about the recommendation for specific laws and regulations that you put forward. I'd like to give you a little bit more time to drill down into that with some specificity, with a focus on where potential regulation is needed to meet gaps. Perhaps you could give an example of an outstanding gap in legislation, for example, and of how we could address that within the federal scope, as well as the alternatives to regulation, if there are any.

I'll let Ducks Unlimited start, and I'd like to reserve one minute at the end for Olds College.

[Jim Brennan]

In our presentation, one of the things we tried to draw attention to is that there's some shared responsibility. The full implementation of some of the federal wetland policy is certainly a start. We think the federal government can play a leadership role vis-à-vis the work done by the various provinces.

There's a very uneven approach to wetland protection on the regulatory side.

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

How so?

[Jim Brennan]

From the slides you can see that in the Atlantic provinces there's a much higher level of regulatory safeguards, and where loss occurs, there are mechanisms in place to compensate for that loss.

On the regulatory side, we think that's a good model that all provinces should look at. To just pick up on something Mr. Choquette asked earlier, you either pay for habitat restoration and protect what you have or you pay for it downstream. We have a study on our website that focuses on the Black River subwatershed of Lake Simcoe. It relates to the fact that there have been water quality issues in that lake—and the federal government has certainly made some significant investments in terms of cleaning up Lake Simcoe, which we acknowledge and congratulate you for—but certainly the level of loss in the Simcoe watershed, if you were to remove all the remaining wetlands, would be equivalent to putting about 250,000 bags of fertilizer a year into that lake.

The municipality of East Gwillimbury has had to build a water treatment plant at Sutton in order to remove the nitrogen and phosphorous that are going into the lake out of the watershed. You're either spending money ahead of the game or your spending money after the fact. That's why maintaining the base of habitat on the landscape is so important.

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

Fair enough. And just to continue on that point and to re-emphasize, as somebody who grew up on Grand Beach, when I see that picture of Grand Beach it just strikes my heart. I was out at Oak Hammock Marsh, and I saw the presentation on the loss of wetlands. This is something we absolutely need to act on.

When you talk about federal leadership and working with the provinces, what does that look like? Being respective of jurisdiction, what are you asking for?

[Jim Brennan]

Certainly we're looking for a round table discussion along the lines of what was recommended in the 1991 plan and trying to harmonize approaches to wetland conservation on the landscape. The federal government has, and will continue to have, a very important role to play, given that migratory birds use the wetlands and those habitats are critical to migratory bird species.

Certainly we want a collaborative dialogue on looking at best practices across the country. There are some very good practices we can point to in the United States as well that Greg is familiar with and that we could take a look at.

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

Thank you.

Do I have—?

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

You have 20 seconds.

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

I'd like to give Olds College some time to answer my colleague Mr. Lunney's question with respect to its practices on using wetlands to treat waste water.

[Dr. Abimbola Abiola]

Some of the research we are doing here is to look at plants that have an amazing ability to take pollutants out of water. Those are either hyperaccumulators or hyperdegraders of different types of contaminants. But the type of work we do is basically applied research, working with industry partners on specific problems.

We have a few of those plants now, which we are propagating and which are being used for environmental reclamation.

One other, probably more important point I will suggest is that in terms of leadership, it becomes a priority for the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment to work together to develop everything from guidelines to policies regarding wetland conservation for this country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

[Dr. Abimbola Abiola]

They have various policies—

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Rempel.

We're going to move on to Ms. Leslie for five minutes.

Maybe we'll get a chance to weave your point into a future answer.

Ms. Leslie.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, all of you, for your testimony.

Ducks Unlimited, there were a number of pieces of your presentation that really piqued my interest. When you were talking about the role wetlands play in reducing things such natural occurrences as floods, I was thinking about the insurance industry association.

I'm getting big nods.

They've been pretty...activist, you might say, in their fight against climate change, saying that they are the ones who are going to be on the hook. Given the big nods here at the table, I assume you've been in touch with them or have been working with them in some way, or that you are aware of their work.

[Jim Brennan]

Yes. We've had some preliminary discussions with them. Some of our volunteer leadership are working in that sector, so certainly there have been some preliminary discussions about this issue.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Have you found that looking at this through the flood lens is something that resonates when you're talking to farming organizations—the nuts and bolts of recognizing that this pays off in the long run?

[Jim Brennan]

It certainly is starting to.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Is it tougher?

[Jim Brennan]

This is really a question that might be better put to some of the provincial governments. They tend to deal with them more on issues such as this than we do. Our work with farmers is very much focused on the program delivery side of things—our winter wheat program, for example, and some of our habitat retention and upland retention efforts.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

When you were talking about carbon capture and storage—essentially the amount of carbon dioxide that is trapped in many of these wetlands—I was thinking about the Canadian boreal initiative. They were here recently, but I also met with them not too long ago, and we talked about the amount of carbon that is captured and stored in wetlands and about its being a CCS technology that has been proven to work, unlike many of the others.

It got me thinking about the available funding for things such as carbon capture and storage, but all the funding I could find available is really driven toward the technology side, toward developing new technologies for CCS.

I am assuming you can't access any of that funding if you ask, let us restore these wetlands; let us take that money and store the carbon in a way that we know works. Because it's a technology fund, I assume you're shut out.

[Jim Brennan]

That's my understanding, yes.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I have been thinking about the Migratory Birds Convention Act. I recognize that it's a pretty narrow act, in that it deals only with the hunting, commercialization, or trafficking of certain species. Habitat protection is not specifically in that act. If we're looking at the protection of habitat for these migratory birds, if we're looking at protecting wetlands in particular, is that something best served through this convention act, or is it something that would fit more under the Canada Wildlife Act?

I'm thinking about how to get at active habitat protection. What legal tool, what law, are we using?