Evidence of meeting #20 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 chemicals.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Toet. Unfortunately, your time is up.
We'll move now to Ms. Hughes, for seven minutes.
April 3rd, 2014 / 4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Thank you very much. I'm glad to be at this committee. This is certainly a subject that's near and dear to my heart. The fact of the matter is Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing has not only Lake Huron, but Lake Superior as well. I think your testimony is quite enlightening.
Mrs. Conant, you indicate in your documentation about the R and D investment, that a total of 77% of Canada's research and development, R and D, occurs within the Great Lakes basin.
I'm just wondering, has there been a reduction in that funding?
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Water Network
That's a Stats Canada number, so I was speaking to the numbers in terms of my personal experience with it. That's not separated out in that chart in terms of the federal or Ontario funding per se. That statement is in taking the whole basin, so Canada and the U.S. together, and including the private and public sectors.
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think there are some in the report that I gave you that speak to the research and development funding by sector, by federal and provincial sector.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Yes, it says $6 billion, including both federal R and D and support for university-based research.
Has there been a reduction in funding in R and D? We know there has been in other departments and I'm wondering about this particular one here.
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Water Network
The statistics that it's taken from.... If you look over time, it's one of those questions where it depends on how you do the numbers, in terms of corrected for a given year. In general, the overall funding for R and D went up slightly in the late 2000s, and then I think it went down slightly over the last few years. There's been a shift in where that funding occurs. I think if you divide it by per capita then you do see a bit of a decrease over the last few years. I can find the numbers for you. They're in that same Stats Canada package. There has been a bit of a decline, but not a huge one.
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Water Network
That speaks to the overall investment that.... One of the concerns is there has been a big decline in terms of benchmarking Canada's performance against other countries in the OECD and elsewhere, in the ability to leverage that private sector component on top of the public. That has certainly been one of the concerns. It's one of the concerns behind why the networks of centres of excellence program exists. It's to try to improve that collective private sector and public sector investment in R and D.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Blais, you indicate that there are emerging chemicals and you mentioned some of them that you are seeing.
I'm just wondering if there are certain areas that you.... You indicated down by the Detroit....
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Do you specifically know where these are actually coming from? Is it from an industry?
4:25 p.m.
Professor, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
No, a lot of these emerging issues are like flame retardants and these perfluorinated carboxylic acids, and that sort of thing. They tend to be found around urban centres.
They're products that we use. The brominated flame retardants are used in computers. They're used in house products. They're used in building materials.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Could you provide a list to the committee of some of the highest ones that we should be concerned with?
4:25 p.m.
Professor, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes, certainly. I think that—
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Would you be able to table that with the committee? You don't have to do that right now, but if you could table it with the committee, I think that would be of interest to us because of the impact it's having on the Great Lakes.
Mr. Florean, Manitoulin Island, it's God's country. We know that the lake levels there have been impacted quite a bit, and that certainly affects the fisheries and the economy.
How can we quantify the economic benefits, the impact it's actually having on the economy, on the fishery, and on the Great Lakes as a whole? Is it important for us to start tackling that now?
4:30 p.m.
Council Member and Technical Advisor, Manitoulin Area Stewardship Council
I'll give the example of a study undertaken by the Washington, D.C. based Brookings Institution and more recently in partnership with the University of Toronto based Mowat Centre.
They did an evaluation within the context of what's called the north coast initiative of the United States, all the Great Lakes along their northern boundary. Their economy has declined to the point where all this industry has left for states and outside of country where it's more economically viable for them. The Great Lakes were in great decline, so the Brookings Institution was tasked to do a north coast initiative strategy. It outlined a number of things to revitalize that area because the infrastructure still existed. I'm using this as an example because it's right there; it's just across the border and it's the same context.
The Great Lakes are very important because you can attract industry to the zone. You have 18% of the world's fresh water sitting in that one basin. You also still have infrastructure: schools, roads, hospitals, commercial venues, etc. Everything was contingent upon the health of the Great Lakes, so they carried out a Great Lakes restoration study. It demonstrated that for an investment of $26 billion in that entire coastal area, including upgrading of sewage infrastructure, restoring up to 500,000 acres of coastal wetlands, eliminating dams that were impeding fish migration, and cleaning up toxic blobs in the St. Clair River, they would garner $50 billion in large-scale regional benefits and $30 million in that immediate area.
The Mowat Centre has been working with them and trying to quantify the benefit of these actions. We have been impacted by lower water levels In our area. If you can believe this, the north channel of the eastern Georgian Bay coastal area has among the most diverse and most productive fish habitat in the Great Lakes. With the decline of the water level, suddenly a lot of these habitats in which fish spawn and which they need as rearing habitat are gone. That productive cycle is eliminated.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
4:30 p.m.
NDP
Carol Hughes NDP Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
We'll move now to Mr. Storseth, for seven minutes.
4:30 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Mr. Chair, I'll be sure to share any time I have left with Mr. Williamson.
Mr. Florean, the model you've been discussing with regard to stewardship programs seems to be very successful. You mentioned the cost being less compared to a government model that you have a lot of experience with. How's the effectiveness?
4:30 p.m.
Council Member and Technical Advisor, Manitoulin Area Stewardship Council
There were 46 councils across the province of Ontario. Most of them focused within a county basis. I happened to work on the eastern Georgian Bay and the Manitoulin councils. The cost including the salaries, office space, meals, and everything, of these full-time coordinators and their support, plus the $10,000 of seed funding, totalled approximately $5 million across all the council areas.
Each council consisted of 10 to 15 people, and these were key people from within their respective communities. They came from across the communities. They weren't directed by OMNR but some guidelines were set and the council coordinators that were provided to them were the people who did their bidding. They got everything and made sure they were within the confines of legislative and policy standards. They garnered $26 million of cash and in kind from outside sources, so $5 million turned into $26 million.
They were able to beat the bushes: corporations, members of the public, fundraisers on an annual basis. Unfortunately, we just vaporized under budget cutbacks.
The net benefit is—I gave you the examples of those other groups, such as the one for elk restoration, the United Walleye Club, or whatever—that they in turn multiplied the effects, because one would engage 10, and 10 would engage 10 more.
Suddenly the community became engaged, instead of sitting back and waiting for big brother government to do it for them, as that wasn't happening. What was happening, though, was that governments only had the capacity to react to issues—that's where we ended up—and they have even less at this point in time.
You engage and work together with the public, support them with enough resources to maintain them and move forward, and you achieve some very solid results.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Community ownership would be far greater under this model. It would increase the educational component for youth and everybody else.
4:35 p.m.
Council Member and Technical Advisor, Manitoulin Area Stewardship Council
It's all incorporated. It's all part of the whole process.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
What about the effectiveness of the program itself, comparatively? I'm not talking just about dollars and cents but about actual achievement.
4:35 p.m.
Council Member and Technical Advisor, Manitoulin Area Stewardship Council
As I mentioned, in our case we have restored Manitoulin Island. You have to look at Manitoulin. It's a big slab of limestone about 160 kilometres in length, and it slopes southwards in a big, gradual slope. All sorts of cold-water streams emerge from it. We represent 30% of the Ontario side of the main Lake Huron basin.
Those fisheries.... We did studies in 2000 that showed that 70% of those streams were negatively impacted by 150 years of land use practices. Some of them didn't even function anymore. Today, after all the strategic planning, we have entire rivers monitored and assessed, and for every linear metre along that river, we can tell you whether it needs anything done and how much it would cost per linear metre.
In the nine kilometres of in-stream habitat we have managed to do to date—nine kilometres plus adjacent area up to 30 metres away from the stream, so that there's a riparian buffer—we helped to work with local agricultural producers, who retired those portions of land and provided fencing for them and did all the work. We're getting a quantifiable 193% increase in aquatic life. That includes fish. That in turn goes back to restore what is in the Great Lakes.
Also, we are tourism dependent, and this means that people start coming. They're starting to say, “Wow, this is incredible; it must be the work these people are doing.” These are outsiders who come from all over.