Evidence of meeting #14 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was area.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much.
I'm sorry, do you want to respond to that, from Toronto?
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
Again, Chair, I am not aware of such a use either.
Conservative
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses. I'm very appreciative of your time.
I want to start, Mr. Ullrich, with a question for you. In your introductory remarks you talked about the water quality agreement and the International Joint Commission. You also talked about strategies and practices for cleaning up the areas of concern having advanced significantly over the past 25 years.
Would you say that there is actually a very strong strategy on the part of this International Joint Commission going forward; that there is a real plan and a strategy as we approach these areas of concern?
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
There is a good strategy and practice. I don't think it is as strong as it needs to be. I need to clarify something. The International Joint Commission itself is not responsible for this. In the first instance, it's the Canadian government and the U.S. government. There were remedial action plans associated with these areas of concern. They got off to a very slow start. Part of the problem was that there wasn't any kind of implementation money and, as we've heard concerning Hamilton, some fairly significant investments were required.
I think there has been significant improvement. Hamilton harbour is really a good example now, I think, in which you get a three-party—federal, provincial, and local government....
As was raised by the previous gentleman, the whole issue of liability on the part of industry—and I don't want to venture into that too deeply, because it's very complicated and controversial—has been a key part in the cleanup on the U.S. side.
The other element of planning and strategy that has been revised in the new agreement is the lake-wide action and management plans. Those hold promise for significantly strengthening the strategies across each lake individually, such that the work on the individual areas of concern can be integrated with the broader work across the lake so that there can be a more effective strategy lake-wide and binationally.
So my short answer is that it's not strong enough yet, but I think the groundwork is there to be much better in the future.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
But essentially you have two national governments that are very involved, going forward on this, and that have actually come together to create this joint commission. The reason I asked the question is that my colleague across the way rather implied that there was no federal involvement in any of this strategy. We actually have the federal governments from both the United States and Canada involved in a strategy on the Great Lakes, so it's not as though this has been left to a willy-nilly process.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
That is a fair statement. It is not willy-nilly.
In my 40 years in this work, I have spent almost as much time with Canadians as with Americans. I was at the federal level for 30 years and worked very closely with Environment Canada. It's absolutely essential.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Very good.
Mr. D'Andrea and Mr. Murray, you both touched in your presentations on the work you did with the federal government scientists. In fact, Mr. Murray, you said they were key to the work and the success you've had in the Hamilton area. You also touched, Mr. D'Andrea, on the establishment of the Canada Centre for Inland Waters there.
Can you tell the committee how important and how instrumental the work with the Environment Canada scientists has been in being able to accomplish what you have accomplished to this point, and to being able to start with the plan that you've come up with?
City Manager, City of Hamilton
If I can, I'm going to ask John, through the chair, to respond, because he has been most closely associated with them over the last several decades.
Coordinator, Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan, City of Hamilton
It's been absolutely essential. We have technical teams that are made up of government scientists from the federal government and the provincial government and universities. We had those scientists work hand in hand, literally around a table like this, with the community stakeholders in order to come up with the remedial action plan. We couldn't have moved forward without that scientific expertise. We couldn't have even begun the task.
Hamilton is in a unique situation. Many of the other RAPs don't have a Canada Centre for Inland Waters literally on their shoreline. The one thing, when it comes to recommendations to this committee, that I can't stress enough is the importance of that scientific base, which needs to continue to be there. And it needs to be throughout the Great Lakes system, so that they're not just looking at the Hamilton harbours and the Torontos, but at the other, smaller AOCs.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much.
I'm sorry, Mr. Toet, but time flies when you're having fun.
We're going to move now to Madam Freeman for five minutes.
NDP
Mylène Freeman NDP Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
Thank you, Chair.
My questions are mostly directed at Mr. Ullrich, but if our other witnesses want to jump in with anything to add, please feel free.
My first line of thought would be to wonder how you identify and share best practices throughout the different municipalities. How are best practices different for small municipalities from those for larger municipalities, such as our guests here today represent?
I represent the kind of riding that has 42 municipalities, all very small towns. Obviously, their realities are very different from those of a city. How do you identify, share, and differ in best practices?
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
It's a lot more difficult than it should be. In theory you would think that all of the cities would say, we're doing these great things and we want everyone to know about them. Honestly, people in cities are, first of all, so busy dealing with the next crisis that even being able to sit down and write down the key elements of it so that we can put it up on our website.... That's essentially how we try to do it, so that people have access to the website. That's the number one way that we do it.
Second, believe it or not, as I explained before, Mayor Hobbs talks with Mayor Hartwell and says, this is how we did it. That's not a very efficient way of doing it, but in fact it does work. You can't get it out to enough people.
Third, such things as this municipal adaptation and resilient service are ways in which we're trying to more systematically go out to all of the communities asking how they are dealing with this, that, and the other thing and match up that information with technical expertise wherever we might be able to get some outside assistance, then compile it and deliver it through a series of webinars, which we are doing right now. It shouldn't be as hard as it is, but it is.
A lot of good ideas come out of our smaller communities, and they don't necessarily translate directly into a best practice.
Let me give just one brief example, on access to beaches for disabled people. Racine, Wisconsin put out a little wooden platform so that a man in a wheelchair could get out to the water and get into it. He was so thrilled; he had never been able to get into the water. The next week I saw one in Chicago down at the Ohio Street Beach. It was just like that; it wasn't an accident—it was right after the annual meeting.
So it's not as systematic as it should be, but those are the ways we try to get the best practices out.
Executive Director, Engineering and Construction Services, City of Toronto
To perhaps build on David's point, we hosted through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative a couple of very focused workshops that I recall quite vividly to your point. One was dealing with combines or overflows and it was best practices of municipalities within the Great Lakes basin. We learned an awful lot from each other, failures as well as successes.
Another one was a beach symposium where we heard lessons learned from beach management both in terms of water quality as well as beach grooming, drawing on experiences from both sides of the border. To David's point, I think we need to do more of that as an industry and municipal staff. The opportunities are limited as David said because we are so focused day-to-day on the impending or the current crisis. But we need to have more opportunities to just take a step back and get more engaged.
NDP
Mylène Freeman NDP Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC
I'm interested in what would be the major topics that could be shared. You said beaches but obviously if you are talking about waste water management that's clearly going to be very different from small municipalities to large municipalities.
What other issues would be good? Earlier you were talking about dealing with flooding, etc. Maybe you could name off a few of those things that could be...?
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Mr. Chair, if I could give one example that is really going all across the Great Lakes, big, medium, and small cities, it is phragmites, these invasive plants that are coming in and turning our wetlands into monocultures where they don't function effectively as a habitat or from a water quality or a flood control standpoint. They are like our kidneys on the Great Lakes. They are incredibly important. I go places where there are miles and miles of phragmites. They are hitting cities of all sizes. That would just be one example of where best practices would be helpful.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much, Madam Freeman.
We now move to Mr. Shipley. Welcome, sir.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
On a point of order, could we get a definition of phragmites?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
I think there might have been one just prior to his statement.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
I knew I would have to come to my true confessions, I am an English major lawyer. A recovering lawyer, though....
They are a plant that is not native. I don't think it's native at all to the U.S. or Canada. It has been introduced. Maybe John can bail me out on this but it is a tall and unfortunately very beautiful plant that has these leafy ends. It is not like the purple loosestrife, which is pretty too, unfortunately. It is better if they are not pretty. The phragmites are very tall and they have thousands of seeds on them. The establish themselves and basically squeeze out all the other plants. I don't know technically if there's a biologist in the house who can bail me out.
John, are you familiar with this?
Coordinator, Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan, City of Hamilton
The only suggestion I have is when you're driving down the 401 and you see the very tall plants that look like a marsh cattail but they are much taller and they have a feathery top. Those are phragmites.
