Environment Committee on March 27th, 2014

[Dr. Jeff Ridal]

My only feedback to you is that certainly there are people who study the cost of a loss of beneficial uses. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head; that's not what I do. We know, for example, that for invasive species, there are really billions of dollars' worth of impacts.

I would say that it's a sort of plea. I know that's the evidence you folks need in order to make those.... There's a plea for us to see more people actually involved and actually doing those cost estimates. Sometimes you say, well, what is the value of a wetland? What is the value of being able to swim at a beach?

We can do that; I have done some work at beaches and that sort of thing. It's amazing how it adds up. You can throw that into an economic model. For one little beach along the St. Lawrence River, it's a loss of $200,000 a year of economic revenue, so those are significant.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I guess my question was driving more at what kinds of things we can be doing to be effective, to have it not being a situation of had we known that in 1990. What are the things we can be doing to prevent being in that situation?

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Bruce.

[Dr. James Bruce]

On the question of toxic chemicals or chemicals of mutual concern, as they're sometimes called now, I think we need to take the kind of approach you suggested, a more preventive approach. I think our approach now is mostly to assume that all chemicals in the environment are benign until proven otherwise, rather than having some kind of rigorous review to ensure that nothing of a seriously damaging nature gets into our waters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Excuse me, Bruce, but we're going to have to come back again later.

We move now to Mr. Sopuck for seven minutes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

I really appreciated the testimony from the witnesses. Your expertise is evident and we are benefiting from it.

Dr. Ridal, I was looking at your slide on rural projects that lists erosion control, fencing projects, farming BMPs, shoreline stabilization, and so on. Let's just take a tributary, for example, where the riparian area is bare, and then you grass it, revegetate it, plant trees, and so on. Can we quantify the phosphorus reduction from those kinds of activities?

[Dr. Jeff Ridal]

The best way is actually to do the modelling based on the actual particular activity. What we have seen, and I've talked to people who do this, is that it is actually really tricky to go to one site and say that this is how much we've lost or how much we've improved. What I would tell you from my experience is that when we look at tributaries right now within the St. Lawrence that, given the soil characteristics and given the type of land use characteristics are at 100%, when you compare those to similar tributaries for which best management practices are used, they are down in the 50% to 60% range. That gives you an idea that there is about a 40% improvement. We actually use that approach to set the delisting targets.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

That's most helpful.

In my previous life, I've been involved with agricultural conservation policy. What I hear, Dr. Ridal, is that we do have the tools in our toolkit to manage landscapes in a holistic way, but the issue really is one of scale, isn't it? We're not doing these treatments over enough of the landscape.

[Dr. Jeff Ridal]

That's right.

It's an interesting comment. It's interesting in relation to Dr. Taylor's comment about why you would pick on one farmer versus the other. It really is a sense of scale. What we really need across the Great Lakes is a program of implementation of best management practices. The greater the scale, the greater the uptake within the watershed, the more improvements you'll see.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Of course, I would argue that we need a program of such a scale right across the country, but that's a discussion for another time. Our chairman knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm a very strong proponent. If you look at our report on the national conservation plan, in which we make recommendations to the government, one of the recommendations was that Canadian agricultural policy should be changed to something more along the lines of European and American agricultural policy, in which they have major landscape-scale ecological goods and services programs. That will solve many problems at the same time.

That's just a comment on my part. I know that you all agree with it.

Dr. Ridal, in terms of your restoration councils, I was interested in the composition of them. Were farm groups like the OFA and others part of those stewardship councils?

[Dr. Jeff Ridal]

With regard to the stewardship councils that we were involved with, that we were working with, those stewardship programs in Ontario are actually focused on non-agricultural landowners and those particular problems, but there were.... I didn't actually include the OFA, but it was represented. In fact, the chair of the restoration council is a member of the OFA and is a farmer.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

It's just that even though their numbers might be small, farmers control an inordinate amount of land. I'm a farmer myself, and I think a couple of members on this committee are as well, so I think it's a group that really has to be front and centre in all of these. I'm sure you are aware of that.

Dr. Taylor, when I looked at the graph in your presentation, I was shocked at the decline in fish biomass. What is the cause of the decline in fish biomass from, let's say, 1986 to 2006? That's a staggering loss of biomass.

[Dr. William Taylor]

Yes, and it's poorly understood.

I think some of the fisheries people say that we've cut back phosphorus too much. I don't believe that myself, although it might be part of the answer. I think they've stocked too many fish. I think they've stocked large numbers of fish without considering what the ecosystem can support. Those fish have mopped up their prey and have starved themselves to death.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Would that be the salmon you're talking about primarily?

[Dr. William Taylor]

Of the returning fish, 85% are wild, but they're still stocking huge numbers of fish into the lake, and those fish are simply starving.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Dr. Taylor, I was very interested in your comments about the size of the organisms and the phosphorus moving up the food chain, and I think it's a long or a short food chain.

Given that these small organisms like your copepods and daphnia are terrific fish food, why would the phosphorus stop there? You would think that would improve fish production.

[Dr. William Taylor]

When there is too much phosphorus and you get blooms of those same algae that are harmful to humans, they are also unsuitable food for those zooplanktons. They can't feed on them and they're toxic.

In some cases it's because if there are not enough top predators those alewives will get so abundant that they mop up all the zooplankton, and again, there's no way for that phosphorus to get up the food chain, which is a situation we had in the 1960s and 1970s.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Dr. Taylor, you talked about managing the area as an ecosystem. We could all say that, and I mean that with the greatest respect, it's difficult to do. Can you give us any specifics about what you mean by that? What on-the-ground activities would you like to see happen as we march toward managing our ecosystems?

[Dr. William Taylor]

I would like to see the mandate of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission broadened to managing the whole fishery, not just the native species as they focus on now, and I would like to see the management of the water quality, which is mostly given to the IJC and the management of the fishery, which is the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.... I think those two organizations don't coordinate their activities and work toward common objectives. In fact, they have different agendas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much.

We'll move now to Mr. McKay for seven minutes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I join with Mr. Woodworth in saying this is a very excellent panel. You're also very depressing. I'm thinking about, was it Pogo who said, “We have met the enemy...and he is us”. That is, in some respects, the political problem we have here, that it's us. There is no bad guy out there doing it; a whole bunch of things are going on.

Dr. Bruce, at the end of your presentation you talked about ozone treatments being put in the sewers, but you didn't expand on that. What does that mean and what's the significance of that?

[Dr. James Bruce]

What has been found recently is that if you use ozone in water treatment, or in waste water treatment, you can remove many of those harmful chemicals that are getting to be pervasive in our water systems, the endocrine disrupters and the flame retardants and other things, which we know are toxic to some of the ecosystem, and probably to humans, although we're not too sure. Ozonization of either the water when it's treated in the water treatment plant will take out most of these chemicals, or ozonization in the waste water treatment will prevent them from getting into the environment in the first place.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

In a Coles Notes version, what is the operative aspect of ozone that removes or neutralizes some of these contaminants?

[Dr. James Bruce]

I have a paper at home that would give you the chemical reaction and I would be happy to send it to you.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I suppose I shouldn't really ask for it because then I'll be obliged to read it.