Environment Committee on June 12th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I'd like to call this meeting of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to order. This is meeting number 29. We're continuing our study of municipal solid waste and industrial materials.

Our witnesses today include: from the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, executive director Michael Goeres; from the Neighbourhood Liaison Committee of the Highland Creek Treatment Plant, Mr. Frank Moir, co-chair; by video conference from British Columbia, for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Mr. Raymond Louie, first vice-president; and from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the Island Waste Management Corporation, with Gerry Moore.

We'll begin with 10-minute rounds of opening statements. First of all, we have the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, with Michael Goeres, the executive director.

Welcome, Michael.

[Michael Goeres, Executive Director, Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your kind invitation.

I'm delighted to appear in person before you today on behalf of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, if only because I've just come from a meeting of our deputy ministers committee and one of the key items of discussion at that meeting was waste management. We're preparing for a ministers meeting in September. As a consequence of our discussions today, waste management is going to be on the ministers' agenda.

This is timely. There's a lot happening in Canada and internationally. There is no lack of innovative approaches, both from the public policy perspective and from the business perspective.

I'll take just a moment, if I may, to tell you about CCME. First of all, we're based in Winnipeg, not Ottawa, and have been in Winnipeg since 1990. The CCME is a private association formed by environment departments to facilitate ministers and their staff. We are not a regulator. We are not a legislator. Anything we agree to is implemented by each government within its own area of competency, but the keys to what we do and the keys to any success we may have had are that we operate on collaboration and by consensus. We marshal the resources of all member departments to undertake work as directed by ministers and deputy ministers. We're working on a number of priority areas, which obviously include air, air quality, water quality, contaminated sites, and, most recently, waste management.

I've said that collaboration is one of the keys to CCME. Environment ministers have long been interested and active in waste management. Some of the key actions that governments have undertaken through CCME are as follows.

In 1989, ministers agreed to establish a target for a 50% reduction of packaging waste in this country. The goal was 50% reduction in the course of 10 years through the very active involvement of all governments, the private sector, and civil society. That goal was achieved in 1996.

In 2009, the Canada-wide action plan for extended producer responsibility was agreed upon by all governments. All governments are now currently implementing EPR within their respective areas on a wide range of waste materials.

We have an agreement with some key industry leaders to reduce packaging even further. That includes Walmart, Kraft Foods, Norampac Cascades, Starbucks, and Tim Hortons. Also, we work very closely with the Retail Council of Canada, Food & Consumer Products of Canada, and the Packaging Association of Canada.

By now everyone has seen the rather dramatic graph from the Conference Board of Canada from last year, which indicated that Canada gets a D on municipal waste generation. It ranked Canada last in the OECD, even after the United States, embarrassingly, though they were close. There's no question that we can do better, but we also have to acknowledge some of the successes and achievements so far from all levels of government and our citizens. It's not the case that governments, business, consumers, and other stakeholders have been doing nothing.

Most significantly in the last five years, EPR as a major policy approach has been adopted right across the country and, as I said, is being implemented by every provincial and territorial government. Within Nova Scotia, 42% of the waste is now diverted to landfill. In British Columbia, it's 35%. In Quebec, 29% of waste is diverted. Quebec and Manitoba have landfill levies, which they use to fund new recycling infrastructure. In British Columbia, 23 programs for EPR have already been initiated and, according to British Columbia, have created approximately 2,400 jobs and diverted over 150,000 tonnes of garbage from landfills.

There is, of course, a hugely important economic aspect to waste management. The recycling industry tells us that 119,000 jobs are created by the recycling industry, which is 10 times more jobs and revenue than the disposal side of the equation. Problematically, municipal expenditures on waste management are increasing. Between 2008 and 2010, they increased by 12%, from $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion. In our landfills, we're disposing of over $1 billion annually in the market value of those materials.

You will have heard from other witnesses about the Conference Board of Canada's recent assessment that for Ontario, for example, increasing the rate of diversion from the current 23% to 60%, which admittedly is a significant leap, would create about 13,000 jobs and increase GDP by $1.5 billion. It isn't just federal-provincial-territorial governments that are concerned. Obviously municipal governments are very key stakeholders in this. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been instrumental in bringing municipal governments and stakeholders together in the National Zero Waste Council. I'm pleased to say that I'm involved as an adviser to that group.

Industry members in many sectors have accepted the responsibility of managing the life cycle of their products and are self-organizing to more efficiently develop and provide the services they require to meet government's expectations for extended producer responsibility. Major industry leaders like Walmart, Costco, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Metro stores are reshaping the way they do business, working to eliminate waste in all of its forms, and adding to their bottom line.

Last year ministers asked us as officials to develop more information for them on the state of waste management in Canada. We're currently fact-checking individual jurisdictional bits of information in that report, but it gives us a snapshot of what's going on in this country. We've identified some innovative practices in it and outlined some key challenges and opportunities for us within CCME, as federal, provincial, and territorial governments, to consider. The report itself is still being readied for public release, but I'd be very pleased to share it with the committee as soon as we have it ready. I think you'll find it of great interest and use in your deliberations.

You've heard a lot about the magnitude of the problem: 33 million tonnes of residential and non-residential waste per year. The four most populous provinces in this country have the highest total amount of waste disposed. Only about 24% of that is diverted. Nova Scotia has the lowest disposal rate, and Alberta has the highest. There's a direct correlation between municipal expenditures and the rate of diversion. Our study has indicated that quite clearly. Overall in Canada, diversion has stagnated. There's only been a 3 1/2% increase since 2000 while total disposal amounts are increasing.

We've tried to parse the really critical aspects of our particular study and then tried to focus on where we can have the most impact with the limited amount of resources and effort that we can apply to it. Two overarching observations from this particular study that we've done for ministers have really resonated with FPT governments and will be informing collaborative work amongst governments for the next while.

Two-thirds of the waste disposed in this country is non-residential. Approximately one-third of our residential waste is diverted, so that means one-third of one-third, while only 20% of our non-residential waste is diverted. Most of our efforts collectively, so far, have been focused on residential consumers and the waste that they generate, but that's not the biggest sector to address. It's important, and we have to continue to do the things we're doing, but we're trying to focus our efforts on the larger generators of waste.

Secondly, what's emerged—and you will have heard this from previous witnesses—is that lack of data is a real problem. It's a problem for governments; it's a problem for industry; it's a problem for all stakeholders in this area. Within CCME, we have defined the industrial, commercial, and institutional and the construction, renovation, and demolition sectors as our two priority areas of focus. Working with stakeholders from these sectors, we're going to start by identifying the key issues, gaps, barriers, and opportunities, so that we can identify or develop the tools and best practices that will support jurisdictions' actions. We're also very mindful of the particular circumstances of rural and remote regions. Not everything that works for large metropolitan centres works beyond their boundaries.

As well, organics waste will be receiving our attention. Biodegradable material, such as food and yard waste, constitutes approximately 40% of the residential waste stream in Canada and, based on an Ontario estimate, perhaps 20% of the non-residential waste stream. Most of that comes from the institutional and commercial sectors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I need to interrupt you here. We've gone beyond your time. Maybe you can work in some of your remaining comments later. From the material that I have, I can see you have about a page left.

To committee members, because this wasn't available in both official languages, you don't have it in front of you today. It will be distributed as soon as it's translated. I would encourage you to read it, as it's very helpful.

We'll now move to Mr. Moir for a ten-minute statement, please.

[Frank Moir, Co-Chair, Neighbourhood Liaison Committee, Highland Creek Treatment Plant]

I'm here to talk about the lessons learned from the biosolids environmental assessment that was undertaken for the Highland Creek sewage treatment plant in the city of Toronto.

My name is Frank Moir. I'm the co-chair of the Highland Creek sewage treatment plant neighbourhood liaison committee. This committee provides an information bridge between the City of Toronto plant staff and the adjacent community. We meet twice a year to discuss matters of mutual interest.

Highland Creek is one of the four treatment plants in the city of Toronto. The plant was built in 1955 and is located at the mouth of Highland Creek in eastern Scarborough. There are four plants in the city. The main plant, Ashbridges Bay, is right downtown. There's one in the west, the Humber, and a small one up on the Don River.

What is a biosolid? A biosolid—sludge—is the highly odorous solid-liquid material left after the treatment of sewage. It contains pathogens, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, heavy metals, various industrial chemicals, pharmaceutically active compounds, and other emerging substances of concern. It is not just human waste. It's 25% solid and 75% water.

What is the issue? In 2002 the newly amalgamated City of Toronto wanted to solve the problem of sludge disposal at its four sewage treatment plants. It was decided to undertake a biosolids master plan class environmental assessment.

This is a municipal class environmental assessment, and is managed by the proponent, which in this case is the City of Toronto. Proponents must follow the planning process set out in the provincially approved class EA document. All class EA reports must be submitted to the provincial Minister of the Environment for final approval. If there remain significant environmental concerns that are not resolved through the class EA process, the minister may decide to intervene.

As far as Highland Creek EA was concerned, there were three main steps. The first step was to define the problem; the second step, to identify possible solutions to solve the problem; and the third step, to identify the preferred solution to solve the problem.

In the first stage, the city needed to define the problem. The city needed a safe and environmentally acceptable solution for biosolids disposal for the next 20 years. The sewage treatment plant was built in the 1950s, and Highland Creek had sludge incinerators installed in 1975. They have been operating continuously since then. However, the incineration equipment is outdated and needs replacement.

Eleven alternative solutions, in step two, were looked at for Highland Creek, and then a short list of three possible solutions was selected: continue on-site incineration; land application, sometimes called beneficial use; and landfilling or landfill cover. The results of the analysis were reviewed with interested agencies and the public.

In step three, the preferred solution was selected. The three shortlisted options were evaluated for 21 environmental, social, and economic indicators. The highest-scoring option, and the preferred alternative for Highland Creek, was for new updated incinerators with enhanced emission controls. In October 2009 the final report was tabled for a 30-day public review and there were no objections. Council accepted the solution for three of the plants, but not for Highland Creek. More studies were requested.

The staff undertook the additional studies, but again recommended the incinerator upgrade for Highland Creek because it was the least-cost solution, it had the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, and it had the least negative social impact on the community. It provided a safe and reliable solution familiar to plant operators. It was preferred by the local community because it avoided having five large odorous sludge trucks passing through seven kilometres of local streets every morning.

Then council reversed the environmental assessment decision. In June 2010 council ignored the EA recommendation and voted to implement agricultural land spreading, with landfill as a backup.

The community was shocked to hear council's decision. Letters were written to newspapers; 1,500 signed petitions were submitted, requesting the city restudy the issue; presentations were made to various city committees; and a meeting was held with Ministry of the Environment staff to express our concerns that the city had acted illegally.

The city, however, had a problem. Many councillors wanted their solution implemented, but council hadn't approved the environmental assessment report for Highland Creek. So the city said they had to hold another public meeting to inform the community of council's decision. They had that meeting, and they reported the city's preference for land-spreading. However, there was very strong community support for the incinerator upgrade.

Staff promised to issue a revised biosolids master plan report for 30-day public review by early 2012. However, they did not deliver.

Just to give you a little history—I have some pictures for you in the final PowerPoint presentation—sludge trucks are big, long trucks that are loaded from the top and tip out. They have canvas rollback covers. They don't have a sealed cover on top. When this thing drives down the highway, the canvas stops the rain getting in but it doesn't stop the odours getting out.

The route in Highland Creek is seven kilometres from the treatment plant through a very busy neighbourhood in eastern Scarborough. It goes up across Kingston Road, along Lawrence and Morningside, up past the new Centennial computer centre, past the new aquatic centre that's being built for the Pan Am Games, and to the 401. Then it goes we're not sure where.

This is distinctly different from the situation in Ashbridges Bay, where the plant is only half a kilometre from the Gardiner Expressway. The trucks don't go through any residential areas. But these areas are residential and commercial, and include schools.

In 2005 Toronto was trucking its sludge to Michigan, and one of the trucks spilled right in the middle of the town of Flat Rock. What happened was that the truck came to a halt—the sludge is basically solid, but when you shake it, it goes to liquid—so it all spilled over the front of the truck right onto the street. It took two days to clean up. Six to nine months later, the State of Michigan closed the border to Toronto sludge and also garbage. At that point, Toronto had to make very rapid alternative arrangements.

What are other communities doing? The adjacent regions of York and Durham, which are to the north and east of the city, and Peel on the west all use sludge incineration with emission controls. This is also the case for many large North American and European cities. Many food producers will not accept produce grown on land fertilized with biosolids.

The city finally backed down in the summer of 2012. They met with Ministry of the Environment staff to discuss the situation. The MOE staff cautioned that the city might have trouble getting the biosolids master plan EA approved because of community opposition. Requests to the Minister of the Environment for a bump-up, if successful, could have delayed the work on all four plants. The city staff decided to close off the existing biosolids master plan for the three plants and do a new EA for Highland Creek.

Council agreed in November 2013 to the new EA. The work started in April 2014 and will take 12 to 18 months. All possible options for sludge disposal will be considered and evaluated. Public consultation will be an important part of the process. The first meeting is scheduled for next week.

In conclusion, there were some lessons learned. By not accepting the preferred solution recommended in this class environmental assessment, the city council did not adhere to the principles of the municipal class EA. The city staff were unable to rewrite the final biosolids master plan report to justify city council's decision. And the threat that the minister might not approve the EA because of opposition from the Highland Creek community was sufficient to trigger a new EA for Highland Creek.

I will conclude by saying that environmental assessment is an important and effective tool to ensure that citizens' voices are heard. Getting involved in community affairs is important.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much, Mr. Moir.

We'll now go to Burnaby, British Columbia, via video conference. From the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, we have Mr. Raymond Louie, first vice-president.

Mr. Louie, please proceed with your ten-minute opening statement.

[Raymond Louie, First Vice-President, Federation of Canadian Municipalities]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon to you and the committee members.

I am honoured to have the opportunity to present to the committee this afternoon. I am the first vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and I'm also the vice-chair of the Metro Vancouver regional district, which is a federation of 22 local governments here in the Greater Vancouver area.

Today l'm speaking on behalf of the National Zero Waste Council, which has been developed by Metro Vancouver and the FCM to find fundamental solutions to a problem that all of us face here in our country and can only be seriously addressed through national action.

I know we've distributed our material to all of you. I hope you have it in front of you. I'll be referring to my slides and asking for the committee members to turn your pages as I reference them. I hope you also have our National Zero Waste Council brochure, introducing who we are and what we do. I'll be happy to take any questions afterwards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We have both of those materials. Thank you for providing them to us.

[Raymond Louie]

Thank you very much.

You'll see on the agenda what I hope to go through with you today, including how we perceive the problem and the areas we will be focusing on, through the five working groups. I will close with some opportunities, which I hope the federal government will take seriously and engage in with us at the National Zero Waste Council.

Slide 3, which says “too much garbage” at the top, shows that in the 2013 report released by the Conference Board of Canada, Canada ranked below our 17 peers in terms of waste generation. That really is the crux of our problem. Our local governments across Canada spend close to $3 billion annually to deal with our waste. These are taxpayers' dollars that, at a time when we have major infrastructure gaps that we need to address—such as waste water, transit, and housing affordability—could be, I think, better spent and redirected to those issues if we would be more efficient in terms of our waste generation and our waste management.

Slide 4 highlights the costs to us and pays attention to not just the cost but the environmental issues. We are generating too much waste. Managing our waste involves not only the environmental issues at the front end but also the upstream impacts. A third of the greenhouse gas emissions that we create, which do such things as raising our sea levels, come from industry and agriculture. Now, both of these are important, and we need the products that industry makes and farmers provide for us, but, of course, in certain instances, and through experience.... The UN food agency, for instance, put out a report in 2013 that shows about a third of our food is thrown away. This food never ends up on our plates. If we can eliminate this food waste, that means that about a third of the water we expend to produce that food, a third of the fertilizer, a third of the transportation costs, and so on can be saved, and those energies and monies can be redirected elsewhere again.

The same argument can be made for industry. We produce a number of products that provide good service to us. But, of course, they wear out too quickly; they're expensive to repair; and in many cases they cannot be repaired. They all end up in the garbage dump, but that's not the end of the story. Oftentimes that is the end of the story for consumers, but at the municipal level, we know about the energy that goes into producing these products, whether it be mining for the resources, manufacturing the product, distributing it, or retailing it. All that disappears from the value equation and instead there is a cost item for the local municipalities as we need to deal with that waste.

The next slide says, “toward a circular economy”. To address this problem, we need to internalize the costs of waste generation at the production phase; we need to educate the marketplace about the costs of this; and we need to make better and more effective choices. We need to get at the root cause and prevent waste from being generated in the first place. We need to move away from what we have now, which is a linear economy, in which we extract resources to produce the products, we distribute them, and then we end up having the situation I previously described. This is all done without any incentive to consider the garbage that is generated at the end of that process.

Instead, we need to shift to a more efficient economy, which is a circular economy, in which products are better designed and can be repaired, recycled, and reused at what appears to be the end of their useful life. Through a circular economy, we hope that waste will be reduced at all stages of the supply chain.

Slide 6 says, “prevention is better than cure”. Changes of this magnitude are, frankly, largely out of the control of local governments. That's the reason for the building of this national organization, in collaboration with the FCM and Metro Vancouver. But even nationally, this challenge is daunting because of the international nature of economies around the world. Thankfully, we find that we're not alone. For instance, the British government recently released a policy paper, “Prevention is better than cure: The role of waste prevention in moving to a more resource efficient economy”. You'll see the ministerial forward. I won't read it to you, but you can refer to it.

The next slide on the World Economic Forum shows that, again, as I stated earlier, we're not in this alone. The World Economic Forum makes the same point that it is to our advantage to move to a circular economy. It states:

Linear consumption is reaching its limits. A circular economy has benefits.... This is a trillion-dollar opportunity, with huge potential for innovation, job creation and economic growth.

The next slide shows our National Zero Waste Council's vision and mission. I'll just read the vision to you: “Canada united in the achievement of zero waste, now and for future generations.” I would highlight the words “future generations”. Our mission is to “act collaboratively” with all sectors and find common ground that heads towards our goals.

The next slide is on strategic directions. Our council is currently working on two strategic directions: catalyzing change in the design of products and packaging to allow them to be more easily reused, recovered, and recycled, and promoting behaviour change amongst the sectors of society, with the goal of reducing the amount of waste entering the waste stream.

The next slide shows our governance structure. We have a chair; a vice-chair; a management board; a collaboration board; five working groups; a secretariat, which Metro Vancouver is currently; and our members, which are wide and diverse. It is a multi-stakeholder council, with groups such as the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, the Canadian Stewardship Services Alliance, and the prestigious Cradle to Cradle institute from California. We hope to continue to grow that list. That's part of the reason why we're here today talking to you.

The next slide is on priority areas. The council has three priority areas: building public awareness, policy harmonization, and knowledge exchange.

We also have five working groups. I'll go through them briefly for you. The next slide is on working groups, as shown on page 12. First is a national communications campaign group aimed at strengthening public awareness. Again, there is additional language there, but I'll leave it to you to go through the more specific language of these various working groups.

The next slide, slide 13, is on the working group on food waste. A food working group is looking at opportunities for policy harmonization that could best keep food out of our garbage and bring forward measures driven on a Canada-wide scale, including advancing federal and provincial tax incentives for food donations.

Slide 14 is on the product and packaging design group, which is aiming to increase the understanding of barriers that stand in the way of reducing packaging waste and also to increase the recovery of packaging materials. This includes identifying and addressing the technical, regulatory, and behavioural impediments. Of particular note, we're looking for policy harmonization Canada-wide.

The next slide is on the circular economy. We touched on that earlier.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

You have just one minute.

[Raymond Louie]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, maybe what I'll do, then, is move right to the end, which is the most important part. Slide 17 is about the federal role. What we hope is that you engage with the National Zero Waste Council; that you develop a Canada-wide strategy to reduce waste; that you develop incentives for producers and consumers; and that you reduce waste.

These three final points are on the slide, but I'd like to make them for you. First, we know that we all produce too much waste and that we need to do better. Second, local governments bear the brunt of this in facing the direct costs of waste management, but with little scope to solve the problem. Third, we need the federal government—it's the missing piece—to address this issue.

I'll leave it at that. I hope the committee has the opportunity to read the rest of the material.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much, Mr. Louie.

You've left us with very good material. I'm sure committee members will be looking at it in more detail. Also, in your responses to questions that committee members may have a little later, you're free to make any points that you were unable to make in your presentation.

We'll move now to the Island Waste Management Corporation and Mr. Gerry Moore, the chief executive officer, from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. It's great to have witnesses from coast to coast today.

Welcome, Mr. Moore.

[Gerry Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Island Waste Management Corporation]

Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be here this afternoon. It's late afternoon here Atlantic time.

I wanted to give you a little bit of the history of Island Waste Management. Island Waste Management is a provincial crown corporation that administers and provides solid waste management and services for Prince Edward Island. Waste is managed on a provincial basis in P.E.I. as compared to normal municipal bases in other parts of the country. I guess our geography has something to do with that.

Island Waste Management's mandate is to deliver a cost-effective and environmentally responsible waste management system for the residential and the commercial sectors of our province. It is a corporation organized under a board of directors with the day-to-day operations administered by me, the chief executive officer. We also have a mix of private and commercial identities that do a lot of the business we do.

We're fully integrated. We collect for every home in the province, and we do that via a commercial tendering process for contractors to collect the goods. All of our organic material collected province-wide goes into a central composting facility that processes all the organics collected on the island. That's a $20 million facility.

In addition to that we have under contract an energy-from-waste facility that takes the non-recyclable and non-compostable items and turns it into steam energy used as the central heating system for the University of Prince Edward Island and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, and it's on a grid that does a lot of commercial power. Both provincial and federal buildings use that for heat.

As for our history, Prince Edward Island isn't really blessed with a lot of areas that can house landfills without being close to someone. Unlike other jurisdictions, trying to source a landfill can be somewhat difficult. The province and the community understood that. At the time Island Waste Management was created, we had roughly 35 municipal dump sites in the province. Those have all been closed. We only have one municipal landfill now.

We generate roughly about 100,000 metric tonnes of waste annually, and we have diverted well over 50% of that waste since this program was put in place.

We have programs for many goods. In addition to compost and recyclables, we also have a used tire program. We also have an electronic waste disposal. And very similar to other jurisdictions we have a whole host of items we would divert under our program. We're well under way with our program.

An issue that we think that perhaps the federal government can assist us with is that there really isn't any financial consideration given for those who are attempting or trying or actually making an effort to divert. Again, on our own, this is totally funded by the taxpayers of the province. We charge a homeowner rate to every individual in the province to collect the waste curbside. It's separate from any property, municipal, sales tax, or anything. It's an Island Waste Management fee that's charged to each homeowner in the province. We charge that fee on a full cost-recovery basis.

We have made tremendous strides, most notably with the closure of 34 of the 35 landfills that were in the province. Really our concern is that given that there's no either incentive or disincentive for those who may want to do it a different way, the cheapest thing to do is to place all waste in the ground. It's not the right thing to do, but it's the cheapest thing to do. But there's no financial consideration given to municipalities or provincial jurisdictions that want to attempt to do it the right way.

In addition to that, what we've found in the recycling market is that there are ever-changing packaging materials and goods are not clearly identified as to the recyclability of their materials. As an example, you will note that for many packages you get from a grocery store, for instance, it is almost impossible to find out if that material is recyclable or not. One thing I would like to pass on is our feeling that it's hard to recycle something if it's not clearly marked as recyclable. We feel it's important for the federal government to take a role in having packaging materials clearly identified as to their makeup, so that if they are recyclable, they can be recycled.

These would be my initial comments. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much. That's very helpful, Mr. Moore.

We're going to now proceed to the committee members and their questions.

We'll begin with Mr. Woodworth, please, for seven minutes.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As always, my thanks to the witnesses today for your helpful evidence.

I am going to direct most of my questions to you, Mr. Goeres. The reason for doing so is that I have developed an interest in extended producer responsibility and I'm aware of the good work your group is doing in that area. I'm hoping that you can give me some further details. I really only have four questions for you.

The first is this. The way it's working right now, every province is working on its own extended producer responsibility program, stewardship and otherwise. Why doesn't the Government of Canada simply legislate and regulate extended producer responsibility across the country? Or to put it another way, are there barriers or advantages to working in the collaborative manner that the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment is pursuing?

[Michael Goeres]

I would argue that without the collaborative approach from the federal-provincial-territorial ministers of government, we would not have achieved the 2009 Canada-wide action plan for extended producer responsibility, which was begun by ministers collectively in 2000. The development of that took a very long time. That plan represents a consensus of governments at that time.

The intent was that the basic policy requirements of that plan, which we call CAP EPR, would be the basis for a common policy approach, recognizing the constitutional responsibilities of each order of government and, therefore, that each province and territory, with its municipal partners, would implement the broad outlines and the broad intent of CAP EPR as it saw fit for its own particular circumstances.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Do you mind if I translate that into language that I think might be understandable to my constituents? That is, it's the provinces and municipalities that really are the front-line people charged with delivering these programs. Therefore, it only makes sense that they should be involved in the development of the policies and standards. Is that a correct rephrasing of what you said?

[Michael Goeres]

In part it is. The responsibility for the collection aspects of CAP EPR have been in most cases delegated to municipalities through provincial power. The intent of extended producer responsibility is to impose the responsibility for the life cycle of a product on the producers. The challenge that governments are confronting, of course, is putting that policy into practice on the ground. The chosen methodology so far has been to utilize the existing collection systems and the existing municipal infrastructures.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Here's my second question. That plan you've mentioned, which I believe was published in October of 2009, included a provision for a phase one, with a commitment to work towards managing a number of products and materials in operational EPR programs within six years of the adoption of the CAP. Now, I'm assuming that the adoption was 2009, and six years takes us to 2015. I appreciate the complexity of the issues, but could you give us a status report on phase one? Is it going to meet that 2015 target? What can you tell us? Is there in fact a report that's been prepared with that status information?

[Michael Goeres]

In fact there is a report. It is going to be published, I would estimate, within three weeks, and it will show that every province and territory either has or will have by that deadline the appropriate regulatory or legislative requirements in place to enable EPR programs for the range of materials.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

That's excellent. I hope, Mr. Chair, we'll perhaps be able to get a copy of that if and when it's issued, before we finish our report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Woodworth, he is nodding that it will be available.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Good.

I will ask my third question really with a kind of amazement, because often on this environment committee, of which I am the longest-serving member, when we encounter a problem, I'm always amazed to find that governments are already responding to it and are on top of it. I'd just like to know a little bit about the role of Environment Canada and the Canadian environment minister within the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. What contribution is made federally to that work?

[Michael Goeres]

I assume that means besides money.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

It's money too. Just give me some notion of how much of the funding comes from the Government of Canada, for example.

[Michael Goeres]

It's one-third of the funding, and that's been the practice since 1964 when the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, then resource ministers, was created. It's been a very long practice.

Environment Canada plays a very important role. The environment itself is an area of shared responsibility, as you know. Environment Canada also has a depth in its science capacity and, frankly, a depth in its human resources that individual provinces don't have. The counter to that is that a number of provinces have a depth of expertise in particular areas that Environment Canada does not have, and together they are much greater than the sum of their individual parts.

The federal minister is one of the 14 ministers around the table. This is a somewhat different forum in that it is not a federal-provincial-territorial forum. It is a federal, provincial, and territorial forum. Each minister sits as a minister of the environment within his or her own right. There is no co-chairing. There is an annual rotation around the table. Every member takes a turn.