Environment Committee on May 29th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

I'm going to move now to Mr. Toet for seven minutes.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here, because it is very important subject matter that we're covering here today.

One of the things I know is always a real challenge when we deal with main estimates is that there's this real desire for people to go back and check main estimates from the previous year to the main estimates for this year, which fundamentally does not function and does not work.

We know through the supplemental process of the year before that there are a lot of adjustments to those main estimates we saw for the year before. We also know we cannot allocate funds to a particular program or a particular fund until that is actually ready to move forward.

So we always have these challenges with the supplements and trying to compare. I think it's really important that there is an understanding of that as we go through this process, because so often as I sit on these committees, I see this desire to compare main estimates from one year to the next year and it really is something that fundamentally is impossible to do. Would you agree with that statement?

[Bob Hamilton]

I agree that you have to be careful in how you do it. It is our reporting system, but you're right. The main estimates at the beginning of the year can be quite different and typically are quite different from what you actually spend at the end of the year. So you do have to compare them with caution and recognize that they are a point in time and that there will be other sources of funds that come to fruition as the year goes by.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Great, thank you.

I think it's important to have that on the record, that there is that note, because I see and hear it so often in these committees that there's the desire to do that and it really isn't very functional.

I wanted to turn to the federal contaminated sites program, the action plan we have on that. Obviously, the federal sites that are contaminated are an area of concern for many Canadians. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, but also has been done. I know there are some record investments that have been made in these programs for cleaning up these sites.

Mr. Hamilton, I'm wondering if perhaps you could give us a little detail on where we're at with the federal contaminated sites action plan and where we're looking to be going as we move forward on this.

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes, it's actually a very significant program and we play an important role at Environment Canada, but it does involve a number of different parts of government to look at these sites, whether it's Aboriginal Affairs or others.

It's a program that started in 2005 and it's scheduled to run for 15 years and it has three phases. We're investing $4.2 billion to clean up the federal contaminated sites. As of March of last year, $1.8 billion had been spent. We had remediated 1,500 sites, we had assessed 9,700 sites, and actually had created about 11,000 jobs in that process.

So it's something we take quite seriously in terms of doing a good job of assessing the sites and the need and the level of contamination, and then doing what we can to clean it up. We'll be coming up to the start of another phase of this program and it'll be important that we identify the highest priority sites and move on those. Yes, it's a very big program.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Briefly, you talked about the highest priority sites. What do you use as your measuring rod or your measuring stick for your priorities? What do you look at when you're coming up with priority cleanup sites?

[Bob Hamilton]

There area a couple of things. First, we have to decide which ones we're going to assess, and then we do an assessment on those. Then we look at things like the degree of contamination, who's going to be affected by it, and frankly some of the practical realities of addressing the situation. We try to identify those sites where we think spending the dollar will give us the biggest bang for the buck.

It's always a little bit difficult when you put competing pressures in there, but we do try to find the ones where we think each dollar we spend gives us the maximum benefit. I don't have the full list of criteria we use but that would be the basic element, where the contamination is the most serious and where we can have the biggest impact by cleaning them up.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I'll pass the rest of my time to Mr. Sopuck.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Sopuck, you have about two minutes and forty seconds.

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

Perfect.

I want to take up on something Mr. McKay talked about, the notion of volatile weather events causing damage and great harm.

I'm more familiar with the Canadian prairies situation. Not that I was around then, but looking back at the records, and looking at records is the only way to determine whether weather has gotten more volatile or not—impressions are simply not good enough—the dry years we had were in the 1930s. Then 1961 was a dry year. The 1980s were dry. The 1990s were wet. The 2000s were a combination of wet and dry years.

In terms of flooding, 1826 was the worst flood in prairie Canada that we had, then the 1950 Winnipeg flood, the 1997 flood, the 2011 flood, and the 2013 Calgary events.

The reason I'm bringing that up is that weather volatility has been with us for a long time. When people talk about extreme weather events and linking it to doing something about these extreme weather events, who immediately dive into the topic of reducing carbon emissions and dealing with climate change, there's an obvious question that arises.

The minister made the point that Canada has 2% of carbon emissions in the world. That's a fact; it's not an opinion. So if Canada, for example, were to completely eliminate carbon emissions—or, say, cut them in half so we are now 1% of the world's carbon emissions—would we change the weather? That's the implication of those kinds of statements. Would we see any change in this volatility?

[Bob Hamilton]

I'll take a couple of angles at that.

Yes, it's true that we are 2% of global emissions. It is a global problem, and if we're going to be tackling it, everybody has to contribute. In fact, that's been an approach that Canada has taken to the international negotiations for a number of years, that it's important to get all of the emitters around the table. We all have a role to play, but everybody has to be there. We're a player, but we're relatively small. By ourselves, we are not going to influence the course of climate change.

At the same time, we take our commitment seriously in terms of trying to meet our targets for Copenhagen and do what we can on mitigation. But the other side of what we're looking at that's in the global discussions for our domestic plans is adaptation and doing the best we can to put information out there and help people adapt to these extreme weather events, because when they happen they do cost money. They obviously cause people discomfort and distress, and we need to figure out ways to help adapt to those situations.

We do try to take on mitigation where we can, in the context of all the other and admittedly some much larger players than us. But on the adaptation side, as the minister said, we've put a significant amount of money toward adaptation to try to help deal with this whenever we have it. Because no matter how successful we are on the mitigation front, we're probably still going to have to deal with some adaptation issues in Canada and elsewhere.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

Mr. McKay, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you.

For the benefit of Mr. Sopuck, I recommend him reading the Insurance Bureau of Canada's policy report, which is where I was getting my figures from. The insurance folks are taking it pretty seriously.

I agree completely with the latter part of your answer that the mitigation and adaptation needs to get going and get going quickly, because the taxpayer of Canada is going to be the backstop. This leads to kind of an interesting theoretical question because the insurance industry is starting to recognize this and is figuring out what products they can actually price, because they see it as, if you will, a market opportunity. The more they price the market, the less is the chance that taxpayers will have to pick up the tab.

Out of curiosity, is Environment Canada engaged in any conversations with the insurance industry about, as you say, the burden of the risk of extreme catastrophic weather events?

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes, it's a good point. We do actually have discussions with the insurance industry. As you say, their business is dealing with these things when they happen, so they're conscious of trying to figure out what they predict will happen in the future and trying to map out what they should be doing in terms of premiums and policies, etc. So we do talk to them.

The other people who are quite interested in this are really those who have significant investments in infrastructure going forward, and the federal government would be one party, whether it's a hydroelectric dam.... Even business operations out there are starting to look at weather pattern changes. If they see these, does that have any impact on how they are going to operate in the future? I think there's a number of not only insurance companies but business interests and others that are looking at what we know about the future and what the climate will present to us, extreme weather events and otherwise, and it's a prediction. It's still something that isn't black and white, but you can actually do some modelling—

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

But there are trend lines....

[Bob Hamilton]

—and try to predict what you think can happen. At Environment Canada, we're looking at ways to improve the information we can put out there about what we think might happen, so that others, whether it's a business, a municipality, or an insurance company, can use that to better understand, at least, what the models are telling us.

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

That's my core point. As you flatline your budget, or you hope in the next couple of years to get back to baseline funding, you're actually going behind, because the events are reasonably predictable. To go on a flatline budget is actually to go behind. So your ability to contribute to the data needs, at least, of the insurance industry is becoming more and more circumscribed.

[Bob Hamilton]

I would say as you look at running an organization like we are, sometimes you have to deal not just with a flatline budget but a declining budget. It's to find ways to do your job and allocate your priorities such that you can deliver on them. In a world of a flatlining budget, it doesn't mean we have to spend the exact same amount on every activity, so it's part of the challenge to do that.

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

I don't disagree that you move things around, but overall, for the last six years, this budget's been a flatline budget.

In the little time I have left, Rouge Park, how many square kilometres are we working on now?

[Alan Latourelle]

With the boundary that's been identified, 58 square kilometres is what we—

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

How much are you negotiating for? Anything else?

[Alan Latourelle]

We have agreement now with everyone except Markham, which we're still having discussions with.

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

Is there additional...beyond the 58 kilometres?

[Alan Latourelle]

No, that is the boundary of the park that we have consent on.

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

So there's no chance of getting anything more than 58 kilometres.