Environment Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Conrad deBarros]

There's an excellent research study that is currently going on and is providing excellent results through Carleton University, which is showing that fish are using the habitat for spawning, for rearing, so it's creating an excellent fish habitat. Other birds and things are also using the habitats as well.

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

Excellent.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

Mr. McKay, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to each one of you.

I live quite close to Highland Creek, and I have quite a keen interest in the Rouge River—two of the more degraded watersheds that you're responsible for, Mr. deBarros.

I kind of lived the whole business of hardening and stripping, particularly in the Highland Creek, and the consequences of rather poor urban design. So I think your points are well taken.

Currently the federal government has an area of study in the Rouge River. The Rouge River, at its lower part at least, is probably the ideal river for wetlands and for filtering water and all of that sort of stuff, at least as ideal as you can make it in the urban circumstances in which it finds itself. What relationship is there between the Rouge Park and TRCA in terms of not only the management of the park and the quality of the water, but also the expansion of the authorities into the northern reaches of the Rouge watershed, with particular reference to the airport lands and the anticipation that the airport will just do exactly what you're most concerned about, which is the hardening of the surface and ruining the downstream watershed?

[Conrad deBarros]

Geez, that's a—

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

It's only a minor question.

[Conrad deBarros]

Yes, it's a minor question.

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

Focus on the relationship.

[Conrad deBarros]

First of all, in terms of the relationship between the TRCA and Parks Canada, they've worked very closely together in trying to establish the federal urban park in Rouge River. There is a watershed plan for the Rouge River that....

As a matter of fact, one of the responsibilities or one of the roles that the TRCA provides is for all of those watersheds that I identified within the area of concern; and realize that the Toronto and region conservation's jurisdiction is much broader than that. For all of the watersheds, they have watershed plans that are in place looking to mitigate the types of impacts that would result from the development of lands in those watersheds, and to be able to try to accommodate the development as it proceeds.

It's a really tough thing, though, because what you're really looking at is that in those areas that are already built up, you don't have the flexibility to take some proactive—

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

But this particular area that I'm thinking of, to the north of the 407, for instance, is not built up; you do have an opportunity.

[Conrad deBarros]

That's right.

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

Are you putting down markers so that you can actually preserve the quality of the water?

[Conrad deBarros]

That would be worked on with the TRCA and...with the airport lands ready to be built out. It's been done in Duffins Creek and it will be done in the Rouge River as well.

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

Are you part of the study?

[Conrad deBarros]

I am not involved in it directly. I deal with—

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

Is the TRCA?

[Conrad deBarros]

The TRCA would be involved, yes. Their other staff would be the ones involved in that.

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

I take your point on urban growth, except I don't know what you're saying about what we can do about it.

[Conrad deBarros]

The question was asked about what measures should be taken. Chris mentioned green infrastructure; you can call it low-impact development or whatever. That's what you would apply to those new, urbanizing areas where you have the ability to implement that. One of the problems we have with implementing low-impact development right now in Canada is that a lot of the measures are very well known and used in Europe and in the U.S.A., but we don't have the experience and the information on how these measures perform in Canada under the climatic conditions we have.

So if you're a developer looking to develop, you're going to use the old method because your engineer's going to know exactly how to engineer that, how to size it, and put it in. TRCA, with the help of the Credit Valley Conservation Authority and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, established the sustainable technology evaluation program, which is generating the types of engineering and design data, performance data, that's required to develop that kind of thing. But we need to do it on a broader scale.

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

I understand that for new developments such as those on the Lake Simcoe watershed, where you're putting in a few wetlands and—

[Conrad deBarros]

Well, it's more than wetlands. It's actually changing the whole urban landscape. It's how you actually have your residential and commercial lots.

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

Okay. It's how you organize those.

[Conrad deBarros]

How you organize, how it's built....

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

What would you do with a place like Scarborough, though, which was—

[Conrad deBarros]

That's the other side, or the other shoe that needs to come down: how do we deal with these built-up areas? There are some examples being applied right now within the jurisdiction of the Toronto and region conservation area. One of them is the sustainable neighbourhood retrofit program, which is called SNAP for short. They're looking at getting into neighbourhoods.

As Chris talked about, changing behaviour is really working at the residential level to change people's attitudes towards their property, to change it around from straight mowed lawns and to try to change it up, so that we can now have.... The way you treat stormwater is that you treat it at the source to try to reduce the impact, you treat it as it's being conveyed to the tributaries, and you deal with it at end of pipe.