Environment Committee on April 1st, 2014

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

Thank you.

Dr. Ciborowski, I see from your bio that your specialty is benthic invertebrates. Can you discuss the succession of the benthic invertebrate community in a lake, and use Lake Erie as an example, from the pristine condition to what it is now, based on the input of phosphorus? How does it change?

[Dr. Jan Ciborowski]

It depends on what part of the lake you're looking at, because we have a shallow western base—

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

Take the worst part.

[Dr. Jan Ciborowski]

Okay. The western basin is a case in point, which is perhaps the best study of the Great Lakes because it's been subject to pollution for the longest time. When conditions are good, the water mixes, there's enough oxygen there, and the mayflies come out as fish flies and do very well. They require oxygen at the bottom of the lake because they burrow into the sediments. If you have periods of calm, or you have elevated nutrients and the algae drop to the bottom, the oxygen levels drop to zero, the mayflies die, and the animals that are able to take their place are bloodworms or oligochaetes, and they're indicative of polluted conditions.

Western Lake Erie is constantly being turned over, so that's one of the examples of an extreme. You might have lots of oxygen for most of the year, but all you need is five days of zero oxygen to wipe out that population, wipe out the food base for the fish.

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

Are the mayflies completely gone from Lake Erie?

[Dr. Jan Ciborowski]

They recovered in 1992. That's what got me my start there. There wasn't supposed to be any there, and they had recovered very well. They're missing from the eastern part near Leamington. That's the one part of the lake where they haven't returned. But the populations are doing better and worse from year to year, and we're still trying to find out why that cyclic loss is going on. They seem to be recovering, but they're not restored. The pattern of the mayflies there now, when we say they're there, is the complete reverse to what it was before the 1950s when we first lost them permanently.

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

Okay.

To the representatives from Ducks Unlimited, where are the wetlands being lost, and exactly why are they being lost? What's happening on the land out there?

[Mark Gloutney]

We think that loss is happening from a multitude of different sources. Urban expansion, urban development, and industrial expansion are eating into the wetlands and having an impact there. There is some ongoing loss on the agricultural landscape, so those are the main drivers of change of wetlands. If you looked historically you would have said it was all agriculture. I think it's shifted now, where the main drivers are expansion.

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

Again to the Ducks Unlimited folks, the concept of habitat banking is getting a lot of interest whereby wetland loss in one area is mitigated in another area, and sometimes it's two to one. I think that has the possibility to unleash a lot of money from the industrial community to perhaps flow into the agricultural community to restore and recreate wetlands.

Would you think that changing federal policy to strongly encourage habitat banking and off-site mitigation would be a good idea?

[James Brennan]

Yes, we have certainly said that before this committee in the past, and again we would think that would certainly be a viable approach.

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

Okay.

In terms of the best management practices, Ms. Muter, I think you talked about voluntary best management practices being what the agricultural community prefers. But the issue on the agricultural landscape, in terms of activities there, is actually one of scale, isn't it? We know what to do, but what's being done is being done on such a small scale it's really not making much of a difference.

Is that a fair characterization?

[Mary Muter]

I think it is a fair characterization and I think there are communities, for instance around Lake Simcoe, where they have started to work with the farmers, and they're a unique group. You need to bring them on board. You can't just impose regulations on them if they're not going to be happy with them, so it's much better to work with them.

I know that a farmer down in Ohio formed some kind of a group and he started to encourage other farmers to carry out the same types of practices. So it can spread and I think that's the best way to make it happen.

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

Would you support a program or an initiative if government were to propose it, of actually setting up a large-scale ecological goods and services program across Canada where farmers are paid out of the agricultural envelope to deliver environmental services to the public at large?

[Mary Muter]

I think that's a great idea because I know this farmer who started this down in Ohio said that it cost him a lot of money to switch over to get different types of equipment. He had to basically give up using the type of equipment he had been using.

It took him several years before his crops matched what they were before. He had stopped using fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides, and simply by changing his farming method he was able to save money on those expenses, but the conversion cost money. So there was an incentive, yes.

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

Because both the Americans and the Europeans have very large-scale environmental incentive programs and Canada seems to be the only country that doesn't do it. I personally am an avid proponent of this particular approach because I firmly believe that the issue is one of scale. It's not an issue that we don't know what to do.

In terms of the best management practices, I don't know who to direct this question to. But in terms of the reduction of phosphorous going into the Great Lakes, do we have quantitative information on the effects of certain best management practices on reducing phosphorous input into waterways and then into the Great Lakes?

[Dr. Jan Ciborowski]

One of the problems we have is that we have surprisingly little information. This is a point I wasn't able to make, but despite all the efforts, all the attempts, the funding for doing the basic research, as Mr. Sweetnam said, just doesn't seem to be there. If you have only so many dollars, you put it into restoration and not into finding out whether it works or not. That's one of our real limitations, that we don't have the appropriate evidence of how much and how effective it is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

We're going to have to move now to Mr. McKay for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to start with Ms. Muter's last comment about Lake Superior being 99% glacial and 1% surface. I'm not quite sure I understand that comment.

[Mary Muter]

It's all of the Great Lakes—99% is left from the retreat of the ice age, so it's a glacial deposit. One per cent is a renewable resource that's renewed by rainfall and snowfall precipitation.

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

Of all of the water in the Great Lakes, 1% is renewable—

[Mary Muter]

That's correct.

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

—and the rest is historical.

[Mary Muter]

That's correct.

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

Really? You learn something every day.

[Mary Muter]

Right, and if you think about the water being lost down the St. Clair River, that is glacial deposit that's being lost down the St. Clair River due to the increased outflow.