Environment Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2014

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Do you know if they've been consulted, the historians and the people who have written those books that you were referring to? Are they some of the stakeholders who were consulted in this process?

[Larry Noonan]

I'm not sure of that, but I do know that in the management plan Bead Hill is mentioned, and there is a possible future for some of the things I mentioned. Personally, I'd like to see it opened up as a site where archeologists can go and other people can visit and learn.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Absolutely. That's a great idea.

I wonder if our other two witnesses can speak to the stakeholder consultations that were done. I know this has been a long process, and that you've been involved for many years. Could you tell us a bit about the consultations?

[Alan Wells]

I can comment briefly that I am impressed and envious of the consultation that has taken place between Parks Canada and first nations. The first issue is determining whom to consult with, which we always found difficult. I know they've made good progress in having ongoing consultation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

You have 30 seconds left.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I wanted to thank you—I think it was Mr. Noonan—for talking about youth and the grade 7 class. As a member of Parliament from the GTA, I know this is going to be a great park for children and young people, especially those in the urban areas around Toronto, who might not otherwise be able to experience nature in the same way as children who grow up in rural areas.

[Larry Noonan]

That's one of the things I am particularly interested in, and I have taken many classes down into the Rouge in the past.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Fabulous. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Ambler. Thank you to each of our witnesses for your testimony today, and thanks to our members for the questions.

We're going to declare a three-minute recess, and then we'll invite our other witnesses to appear at the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

I will call the meeting back to order, unless there is a technical issue we have to work out. We need to move ahead. We have very limited time, so please, members, come to your spots.

We're glad to have witnesses for the second hour: Mr. Jay Reesor, from Reesor Farm; Mr. Jim Robb, from Friends of the Rouge Watershed; and, by teleconference from the David Suzuki Foundation, Faisal Moola, director general.

We're going to proceed in that order. That will give us time to sort out any technical issues that may need to be sorted out prior to Faisal being ready.

Mr. Reesor, welcome to our committee. We will have a seven-minute opening statement, and then we'll have questions after all three of our witnesses have finished.

[Jay Reesor, Reesor Farm, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today about the importance and benefits of the inclusion of sustainable agriculture as an equal partner in the exciting reality that is Rouge national urban park.

The creation of the Rouge national urban park is something very important to me, as my wife and I have lived and worked in the federal portion of the land designated to become park since 1985. In fact, my Reesor family has lived and farmed in the current park area since 1804, when they emigrated from Pennsylvania in search of good farmland and good government and settled in the Rouge area.

It is said that my predecessors, on arrival to the area in their quest for good farmland, looked for stands of black walnut trees, which were a sign of productive agricultural soil. My park farm must indeed be productive soil, as walnut trees grow very quickly anywhere they are planted around my farm.

I’ve chosen some photographs to show you while I speak today. They were all taken on land that I farm within the boundaries of the park. I hope they give you a glimpse of the existing vibrant agricultural preserve within this urban park.

When I was a child, my family made a weekly trip into Scarborough every Sunday, down Warden Avenue to church, from our farm in Markham, Ontario. The city at that point began at Finch Avenue, about 13 kilometres from our home. Over the years, the beginning line of where rural land ends and developed land begins has gradually crept north, destroying excellent farmland. Currently, that dividing line between urban and rural begins only three kilometres from my childhood home.

Urbanization in the region has progressed at an alarming rate, I will say, and if this rate of loss continues over time, virtually all of Markham's productive farmland will be lost in my lifetime. Who will bother to preserve land to produce food when it can be sold to develop for tens of millions of dollars?

Back in 1972, however, just to the east of where I grew up, the federal government expropriated about 18,000 acres of farmland for a new Toronto international airport. Over the years since then, while private landholders were busy developing land in west Markham, the land in east Markham was inadvertently being held in a virtual farmland trust by the federal government for the eventual creation of a new airport.

Currently, however, it has been recognized that some of the federally expropriated land is now surplus to an airport, giving the Rouge national urban park an incredible opportunity to preserve valuable food-producing land close to the city for generations to come.

Productive food-producing land is a valuable natural resource, just as a Carolinian forest or wetland is a valuable natural resource. The founders of the former Rouge Park had a vision for a property, a park, that protected nature and gave no real protection or encouragement to food-producing land, but they ran into obstacles. Unable to fulfill the dream for various reasons, they came to Parks Canada as the logical next step to help them implement their vision.

I am very pleased that our park system, in their draft management plan, has shown their intention and commitment to sustainable food production in this exciting new type of park. If the federal park system doesn't intentionally protect the natural resource of productive food-producing land, who will?

There are few places in a city where a person can get a view beyond simply down the street. Only open space can provide a vista, and agricultural fields provide an excellent opportunity for a park visitor to see the bigger picture, to have a view, to see beyond the forest and the trees, to see a sunrise or a sunset over an expanse of land, and to actually see the amazing natural and cultural heritage of the park.

Although forested land is beautiful and necessary in a park setting, I don’t believe that the value of open agricultural space should be diminished as an important ingredient in a park visitor's appreciation of the outdoors. Agriculture's open spaces can be vital to the park's overall success.

As a farmer, I am asking myself difficult questions within the new Rouge national urban park reality, recognizing that the status quo of food production in a park must change in some circumstances. Will trail development through agricultural land, perhaps through my fields, take place? Will I be asked by the park, for example, to identify the least productive 5% of my leased agricultural land for potential wetland creation or other park purposes? Will I be required to submit a provincial environmental farm plan prior to being granted a lease in the park, or could I be asked to identify an appropriate site on some of my leased park land for a community garden?

To each of these questions, if I were asked, I would heartily say “yes”. I am willing and wanting to work with park authorities to enhance a viable, modern, and environmentally sustainable food-producing systems in this urban park.

Since the creation of the park, with one of its stated purposes being to promote a vibrant farming community, realities have and will continue to change for all of us who have an interest in the Rouge lands. For every farmer, leaseholder, and Rouge River advocacy group, and individual, for all of us, it's going to change.

There is a vision of a near urban park equally embracing nature, food production, and our cultural heritage. I would implore each of us to work diligently to overcome stumbling blocks to the creation of this park for the common good. The park is now in the hands of our respected national park service, and I believe our collective job currently is to support them in their work to create a model that can be an example urban park for the rest of the country and the world.

Sincerely, all the best to you and your colleagues as you work together to fulfill the vision of the park.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Reesor.

We'll move now to Mr. Robb, for a seven-minute statement.

Mr. Robb.

[Jim Robb, General Manager, Friends of the Rouge Watershed]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to address the committee.

Whenever I come to Ottawa and I'm given this opportunity to talk to legislators, I really am impressed with the country I live in, so thank you. It makes me feel really good about the country I live in.

First I would like to say that Friends of the Rouge support farming in the Rouge Park—continued farming, long-term farming. Our question is about where the balance lies. I'd like to just give you a little bit of information about where we are.

In the world context, we're in the greatest extinction that's been known for millions and millions of years. It's one of the three or four big extinctions in hundreds of millions of years. We're losing many species. We have global climate change happening and it's affecting our communities, causing multi-millions, even billions, of dollars in damage in our communities.

Within this area, I'd like to draw you to this particular park. This is a picture of me 30 years ago in the eighties. The Save the Rouge Valley System were really the promoters of this park and the people who helped to protect this land. Going back 30 or 40 years, people such as Lois James and others encouraged the land to stay in agriculture and green space rather than be developed for housing. If it weren't for the efforts of tens of thousands of people, this land would already be developed.

When we worked on this it was very much a community initiative; there were thousands of people, literally, showing up at public meetings. The east end of the GTA love the Rouge; they've worked on it for decades and they will continue to work on it. Their commitment's there. So you can see all three parties supported it.

What happened back then is that the Mulroney government—which was very good on the environment, I must say—actually nudged the Liberal government of David Peterson, which wasn't quite sure about how much they'd leave on the table as undeveloped land. The Mulroney government played a really important job in urging Premier Peterson to do the right thing. It's almost a karma circle now that the province is trying to urge the federal government to do the right thing.

So what do we have? In southern Ontario less than a quarter of one per cent is in national parks. We have 60% in agriculture. We have this slice of land; it's 100 square kilometres plus of public land. It's already in the greenbelt natural heritage system. It was designated greenbelt natural heritage system because it's one of the few natural links between the lake and the moraine. It's in Canada's most endangered eco-zone, Carolinian and mixed wood. One-third of our endangered species are in this eco-zone, and a third of Canada's population. Less than three-quarters of a per cent is in provincial and national parks combined, whereas 60% is in agriculture and 18% is urban.

This map is really important. If you look at this map, you'll see the stripe in the middle, the agricultural area. When the Rouge Park was created in 1995 there was a balancing that occurred, which was that the provincial government said they were creating a 10,500-acre park and creating a 8,300-acre agriculture preserve at the same time. So there was this balance. The park would be mainly natural, but with farmland, and the agriculture preserve would be mainly farmland, with some natural.

What happened to that balance? In the late nineties, when the government of Mike Harris was in, Paul Calandra was, I think, an assistant to cabinet minister Steve Gilchrist, and they decided to sell the land. But they wanted to give it back at an affordable price to people leasing it, so they gave it back for $4,000 an acre—no competitive bid, right of first refusal. What was the key clause? The key clause was that you had to sign on that it would stay farmland forever. So the land went to the tenant farmers. Unfortunately, what happened is it was flipped to developers. Groups like Friends of the Rouge and the Rouge Duffins Greenspace Coalition had to work for five years in really nasty fights to try to protect this land. In fact, it got so nasty that some of the farm community formed a community association that actually funnelled money from developers to beat Conservative Janet Ecker in the election. Full-page ads were taken out.

In that context—and Mr. Calandra was there when that happened—it still doesn't make it right to totally rejig that balance.

I can also tell you that Friends of the Rouge delivered hundreds of thousands of flyers over the year, including 10,000 in the middle of the winter, to create a Markham food belt for the rest of Markham to be farmland outside the existing urban area. What happened? The farmers stood shoulder to shoulder with the developers at the meetings, and they said, “We don't want you to create a greenbelt or a food belt; we want to be able to sell the land to the highest bidder.” We lost 7:6. Jim Jones cast the deciding vote.

We have always supported farms. We were there at all the OMB hearings. I seldom had farmers with me at the OMB hearings when I was trying to protect farmland and green space. We respect the farm community. I apologize if some things have been blown out of proportion in the media. I'm sure you all know about that. You say nine perfectly reasonable, sensible things and one that's a little edgy, and it's the edgy one....

You can see the greenbelt context. The Rouge was put in the greenbelt in 2005 and you can see this little wedge that goes through the urban sprawl. The dark green is the greenbelt natural heritage system, and you'll see the light green over in Duffins-Rouge Agricultural Preserve. That's more on the country side. That was in recognition that the Duffins-Rouge Agricultural Preserve was to be mainly agricultural. That's the provincial greenbelt plan.

Let me read just a few things here that you don't have in front of you, regarding the existing legislation the province is asking you to meet or exceed as well as the ecological integrity. The Rouge Watershed plan already says that its goal is “protecting and enhancing its ecological and cultural integrity within the context of a...natural...system”. That was in 2007. If you go to the Greenbelt plan, it says that policies of this plan “collectively support biodiversity and overall ecological integrity”. The minister's letter said those things weren't there. If you go to the Oak Ridges Moraine conservation plan, it says, “protecting the ecological and hydrological integrity of the Oak Ridges Moraine Area”. That's the first priority. The minister's letter says it's missing from the legislation. The 1994 Rouge Park management plan in section 10 talks about how “protecting the ecological integrity of the Rouge Watershed is a necessity”.

So ecological integrity is already there in spades. Also, you would have heard evidence that this isn't a protected area. It doesn't even meet the international standards unless you give priority to ecological integrity.

How can you do this? You don't have to throw out the farmland. You do it through zoning, so you scientifically define a sustainable natural heritage system, and you apply ecological integrity to that. Then outside that area, you apply something like net gain and watershed health. We can do this. We can make it work. We can sit down with reasonable people.

Unfortunately the advisory committee that was promised to be set up two years ago wasn't, so as the Right Hon. Joe Clark, former Prime Minister, said just two days ago, we need these committees like the environmental round table and the Rouge Park advisory committee because they help people to, instead of being antagonistic, work on win-win solutions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Robb, you're well over your time. Hopefully you'll be able to work some of your further responses into the answers to questions.

[Jim Robb]

You do have our recommendations also.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

We do. We have all the printed material in front of us.

We'll move now to Mr. Moola, director general for Ontario and northern Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation. We're doing this by teleconference.

Mr. Moola, welcome.

[Dr. Faisal Moola, Director General, Ontario and Northern Canada, David Suzuki Foundation]

Yes, hello. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to share with the committee recommendations by the David Suzuki Foundation for Bill C-40, An Act respecting the Rouge National Urban Park.

My name is Faisal Moola. I'm the director general for Ontario and Northern Canada with the David Suzuki Foundation and a professor of forestry at the University of Toronto. I'm terribly sorry that I'm unable to provide my comments to the committee in person, and I'm very appreciative of the opportunity to participate by phone.

Mr. Chair and honourable members, three years ago almost to the day, in 2011, I had the honour of joining the then-environment minister Peter Kent at the historic Miller Lash House near Old Kingston Road in the Rouge at the first stakeholders' meeting held following the government's announcement of its intention to create a national park in the Rouge. In addition to Minister Kent, we were joined by members of the Conservative caucus, such as MPs Michael Chong, Paul Calandra, Corneliu Chisu; elected members of the opposition; local municipal leaders; senior executives of Parks Canada; representatives from the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the York Region Federation of Agriculture; and, of course, local advocates who have fought for over 30 years to protect the forests, fields, and farmland that are at the heart of the Rouge national urban park.

We rolled up our proverbial sleeves and sharpened our pencils and by the end of the day we had banged out 10 consensus principles to guide the establishment and management of the Rouge Urban National Park. These principles address a diverse set of issues, ensuring inclusive, progressive governance led by Parks Canada to foster a culture of community engagement and respect and partnership. However, one principle has stood out consistently for the many years of subsequent public consultation and planning that have followed the inaugural meeting of government leaders and stakeholders originally tasked with drafting a vision for the park. To quote from the guiding principles for Rouge national urban park, drafted by the stakeholders at Parks Canada's visioning workshop, held on November 9, 2011, principle 6 is to “Maintain and improve ecological health and scientific integrity” of the park.

For several years now, Parks Canada has expressed a preference for managing the Rouge national urban park under an ecosystem health framework rather than an ecological integrity framework to distinguish national urban parks from other national parks. Indeed, maximizing ecological health features prominently in both Parks Canada's original discussion paper and the Rouge national urban park concept. To quote:

Past and current stewards of Rouge Park have made great strides in protecting and improving its ecological health. In order to continue to protect the variety of habitats within the park for generations to come, Parks Canada will adopt a conservation approach that fosters the interaction of people and nature while also maintaining and restoring species and habitat diversity.

Past and current stewards of Rouge Park have made great strides in protecting and improving its ecological health. In order to continue to protect the ecological health of the Rouge Park for generations to come, Parks Canada will need to adopt a conservation approach based on international best practice that is focused on maintaining, conserving, and restoring species and habitat, within a landscape context that emphasizes the interaction of humans and nature and that gives Rouge Park its distinct ecological, cultural, scenic, and community values.

Maximizing ecological health was even referenced by the government when it introduced Bill C-40 to the House this past June.

My point in going to these earlier references to ecological health is to argue that since the initiation of the planning process to establish a national park in the Rouge, the government has made considerable progress in advancing ecological health as an overarching management objective for the park. However, in the drafting of Bill C-40, this earlier explicit reference to maximizing ecological health has been dropped. There is no reference to ecological health in the bill, nor to ecological integrity for that matter. Instead, clause 6 of the bill offers a highly discretionary approach for the protection and restoration of nature or the benefits that are provided to humans, such as the provision of clean air, clean water, and healthy food, attributes that we believe are at the heart of sustaining ecological health in the park.

To quote from clause 6 of the bill:

The Minister must, in the management of the Park, take into consideration the protection of its natural ecosystems and cultural landscapes and the maintenance of its native wildlife and of the health of those ecosystems.

The David Suzuki Foundation believes that the government should adopt the earlier approach that Parks Canada had advanced and make maximizing ecological health an overarching priority for managing the park. While there are a number of elements of Bill C-40 that we support, such as the strong prohibitions against resource development in the park, we believe that the bill must be improved with surgical amendments to properly define and prioritize ecological health in the management of the park. By doing so, the government will create a strong legislative and policy framework for the park that protects core ecological values, such as the habitat of endangered species, while allowing for human land use, such as agriculture, to continue within a broader sustainability context.

Indeed, we do not believe that maximizing ecological health and support for agriculture are mutually exclusive objectives in the park. The David Suzuki Foundation supports sustainable farming in the park. Several years ago we published a major study documenting the contribution that farming, if well managed, can make to producing not just market wealth, but non-market economic benefits as well, something commonly referred to as “ecosystem services”. A summary of this study was provided to committee members earlier. We found, for example, that croplands, conservatively, produce an additional $380 per hectare in non-market benefits, such as agricultural pollination and the sequestration and storage of greenhouse gas emissions by agricultural soils, the point being that these non-market benefits are over and above the market benefits that farming generates.

There are numerous examples from other jurisdictions where sustainable farming and the protection and restoration of nature are happening in a coordinated and complementary fashion, often guided by a strong legislative and policy regime that prioritizes ecological health and its constituent attributes, such as the protection and restoration of ecosystems. For example, in Cuyahoga Valley National Park a number of private farms are in operation under long-term leases despite the fact that the legislative and policy regime governing Cuyahoga Park is subject to the National Park Service Organic Act, which clearly prioritizes the conservation of nature. Eleven working farms were operating in Cuyahoga in 2009. The number of farms in the park is set to expand to 14 by 2015.

Closer to home, Parks Canada is already working closely with local ranchers who are grazing their cattle herds within Grasslands National Park. The fact that this program even exists is a reflection of the willingness on the part of Parks Canada to work with the agricultural community to support farming within a management regime that continues to prioritize nature. The David Suzuki Foundation would like to see the same in the Rouge, as well.

We believe that Bill C-40 captures many of the core values that motivated stakeholders and local communities to come together to advocate for a national park in the Rouge in the first place. We're nearly there. But the David Suzuki Foundation believes that Bill C-40 requires surgical amendments to explicitly define and prioritize ecological health if those values are to be effectively protected and stewarded well into the future.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. Moola.

I'm going to move now to questions.

I just want to ask our members to please direct their questions specifically to a person. Especially with Mr. Moola being here by phone, it's important to indicate that right up front.

We'll move first to Mr. Calandra, for seven minutes.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Robb, the September 2 letter from Minister Duguid states that he arrived at this position after discussions with stakeholders and local citizens. Are you one of the stakeholders consulted on this?

[Jim Robb]

Yes, sir.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

In your statement you said that an advisory committee is such an important part, that it's something you want to see happen right away.

But we heard from farmers, not only today but also previously to this, that they were not informed of this. We heard from York Region that they were not informed of this. We heard from Altona that they were not informed of this. The federal government found out about it through The Toronto Star.

Did you ask Minister Duguid whether he had advised people in the same format that you now want to see the federal government move into?

[Jim Robb]

Thank you for that question, Mr. Calandra.

I believe that what Mr. Duguid is doing is.... There's been 24 years of intensive stakeholder and public planning—

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

No, I'm not asking that. That's not my question.

[Jim Robb]

Mr. Duguid is essentially upholding the plans developed over the last 24 years with huge public and stakeholder—

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

So basically you're saying no, you didn't. That is not the type of consultation.... So do as I say, not as I do.