Environment Committee on Feb. 25th, 2014

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, according to supplementary estimates (C) 2013-14, over $37 million will be cut from the budget for cleaning up contaminated sites. However, environmental liabilities such as those in the Great Lakes have to be handled. Therefore, I move the following motion:

That the Committee invite the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of the Environment, to appear before the Committee on the Supplementary Estimates (C) 2013-14 before Thursday, March 6, 2014, and that this meeting be televised.

Of course, we can choose a date that will be convenient for the minister.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Chair, I move that we go in camera so we can discuss committee business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We have a motion to move in camera to discuss committee business.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

I call for a recorded division.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

A recorded vote has been requested.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

We'll ask our witnesses and anyone else in the room who's not part of the committee to recess for, hopefully, a very short time. We hope to get back to you, considering the fact that you've come all this way to appear as witnesses.

I'm going to suspend for 30 seconds.

[Proceedings continue in camera]

[Public proceedings resume]

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Woodworth, you have seven minutes, please.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much. I'll return to Mr. Farwell if I may and just ask a little bit about the issue of waste water treatment plants.

Some of the terminology that you use I'm not familiar with, so I'll have to ask you to slow it down a little bit for me. One of the terms that I wondered about was “optimization” of waste water treatment plants. What did you mean by that?

[Joe Farwell]

Optimization is really building a community of practice among actual waste water treatment plant operators. They actually tweak their systems to get them to maximize the extraction of nutrients and harmful things from the sewage stream and create a better quality of practice. What it results in is really the deferral or possibly even cancelling of major capital upgrades and just working the plants to their fullest possible capacity rather than just putting more dollars into building more capacity. So it's really a process that we work with.

There's a pilot under way in the Grand River watershed where we're working with specific treatment plant operators to improve their plants.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

My recall was that the Government of Canada had put some money into the Waterloo region waste water treatment plant in either the past year or the year before and that there were upgrades being made. Are you familiar with any of that?

[Joe Farwell]

I'm not familiar with the funding arrangement but I am familiar that the Region of Waterloo has gone through and is in the middle of some very major upgrades to the treatment plants. We expect to see some significant gains in water quality in the Grand as a result.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Would the Region of Waterloo be one of the more populated or heavier depositors through waste water into the Grand or not?

[Joe Farwell]

It is the most populated municipality in the watershed. It is close to half the population of the Grand River watershed. So what the region does with their treatment plants is really important to the quality of the Grand.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I do have one other question to try to understand something from your comments, Mr. Farwell. There was a reference to the lack of connectivity in the Grand River and that was in fact a barrier to realizing the potential economic benefit of fisheries. I wondered if you could just expand on that a little bit. What do you mean by lack of connectivity? What might be done about it? How can the Government of Canada contribute?

[Joe Farwell]

The lack of connectivity in the Grand is a direct result of a small dam. There are a number of small dams on the Grand. These dams were put in possibly 100 to 150 years ago. Some of them are very old. Our communities are built up around them. They were used to power mills and sawmills, so they were an important part of the history of our communities. In this case there's a dam about seven kilometres upstream from the lake that is a barrier to walleye movement. There is a fishway in place and it will move certain species of fish but it's been a challenge to get walleye to move through that.

Canada has traditionally housed the experts in fishways through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Certainly they can help us with the science to understand how we can improve our fishway to move fish up through that system more effectively. Trout are relatively easy to get over a fishway because they can jump. Walleye actually swim through fishways, so it's a lot more difficult to get a fishway that moves walleye upstream. That's the connectivity piece.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Very good; thank you very much.

Chief Adams-Phillips, or perhaps Chief Ransom or whoever, I have a note—and I hope I got it right—that the Akwesasne have been actively involved in some of the remedial plans for the St. Lawrence. We often talk about these things in a vacuum around this table and I wondered if you could give me a description of one or two of the remedial plans that your community has been engaged in, what the timeframe was, and how it came out?

[Jim Ransom]

In regard to the remedial action plans, half of our battle was at the beginning. The St. Lawrence River is one river but you have two remedial action plans, one Canadian and one American, and it just didn't make sense to us. The fish don't recognize the border, the water doesn't recognize the border, but countries chose to recognize it. That just means you're doubling your effort in that way.

In regard to the remediation of the river, I think we've been working very closely with all parties involved. The biggest remediation activities have occurred on the American side of the river. Because of our involvement, we've helped to drive $500 million in environmental cleanups of hazardous waste sites, including removal of PCB-contaminated sediments from the river in front of industries and the cleanup of toxic waste dumps on the shorelines.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

What was that amount again?

[Jim Ransom]

It was $500 million.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Who were the contributors to that $500 million? I assume it didn't all come from one pocket.

[Jim Ransom]

It was three plants in particular, including General Motors Central Foundry, which is now no longer there. They are currently remediating that site and have allocated $125 million to the site cleanup. It's not enough. They've discovered that the more they dig, the more contamination they find. That cleanup is going on right now.

There's also Reynolds Metals Company and Alcoa, two aluminum smelters; that's occurring. On the Canadian side, Domtar was the single biggest source of mercury. It's no longer there.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That $500 million, is that all private money then, or were there any government contributors?

[Jim Ransom]

It's all by the companies themselves, but it was mandated by U.S. federal environmental laws.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Are there any other kinds of remedial action plans that your community has helped to implement?

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Woodworth, I have to suspend there.

We have five minutes left, and I will now go to Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I want to look just briefly at the Grand River. I've been looking at pictures of it. It's not a really large river. What's the rate of flow?