Environment Committee on Nov. 24th, 2014

[Larry Conrad]

We aren't there because I don't believe we're going to get there. It's a struggle. You'll always have something that you can't divert from waste. Asbestos waste, for instance; you deal with asbestos waste in kitchen tiles and whatnot.

I think we need to set realistic and obtainable goals. I think what we as municipal people have done in the past is to say that we can divert 90% of our garbage, or 70% of our garbage. I think we've set some unrealistic goals. I think 50% right now is very achievable. With an EFW or energy-from-waste component, or using some of the biomass capabilities from waste products, I think we can get to the next 20%. Getting to 90% will take a lot of time and effort and a lot of changes.

In the past I've talked about Crest toothpaste. People buy Crest toothpaste, and it's in a package. When people say, “Why do we need a package for Crest toothpaste?”, I ask them, “Would your wife or your mother go out and buy a tube of Crest toothpaste that wasn't properly sealed? How would they know it wasn't contaminated?” Some of those things we're always going to get. We need to get packagers to become more involved in their packaging.

We're going there with the EPR program, or environmental producer responsibility program—sorry for all the acronyms—but in each province around the country they're very limited. They're very indirect. We need to nationalize them, if we can, and roll them out. One does not fit all, but everybody should be involved in those kinds of programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Go ahead, Mr. Harley.

[Dale Harley]

I want to disagree with Larry, I'm sorry. Maybe not 100% is possible, but I do believe that 99.9% is possible.

I think there are really two things keeping us from getting there. The first thing is alternatives that are cheaper. When I say “alternatives”, I'm talking about landfilling. As a former municipal politician who had a landfill in my municipality, it was just so damn attractive to save money by shipping it off there. It was short-term thinking, because landfills are long-term problems.

If you created the stick part of what I was getting at before by making it more expensive by putting in place a landfill tax, you would find that people would be a lot more interested in finding an alternative. Once you have the stick, match it with the carrot, which is the social marketing to make people aware of what they can do to become more responsible. Particularly youth today are much more likely to jump on that bandwagon.

It won't happen overnight, but I do believe it can be done. We have a saying in our business, “Making more from waste”. We feel that waste is an asset. It's a resource that needs to be managed properly, not only for the betterment of the environment but to make money. I'm all for doing that as well.

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

Yes, but again, that making money depends on a subsidy, to be quite blunt. That's what you're asking for, which is fair ball. Anybody can ask for what they want. But the issue for me—

[Dale Harley]

I'm not asking for a subsidy, sir. I'm asking for a level playing field. I'm asking municipalities and governments to stop subsidizing people—

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

You are asking for a landfill tax, and a tax is a tax is a tax. Call it what you want; it's asking the public to pony up more money to go to the 99% diversion. This is a legitimate request—I am not saying it's not—but let's call it what it is.

The interesting thing is that there is an old saying, “To govern is to choose.” When one looks at the environmental priorities for a region, Mr. Harley, would the diversion of waste from a landfill be the absolute number one environmental priority of any municipality?

[Dale Harley]

The answer to that would depend on where the municipality was located and what the situation was. Where I came from, we had a landfill that the city itself had been running for numerous years, and quite frankly, doing a crappy job at it. As a result, we had some environmental challenges that were going to cost millions of dollars to fix. We were using taxpayers' money to subsidize a shell game to make them think that they were saving money by not having to pay to have their waste disposed of through tag a bag, or something else, and instead paid money behind them to be able to fix the environmental damages that they had caused.

To answer your question, it depends.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Choquette, go ahead.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I disagree with Mr. Sopuck, of course. What is important is the polluter pays principle. At the moment, we give $1.3 billion to the oil and gas industry. We could use that money to encourage practices other than pollution. That is what the polluter pays principle is. Good practices must be supported and practices generating more pollution must be discouraged. We want what we can call ecological practices.

It has always surprised me that we are doing a federal-level study like this on managing municipal waste. That is why I see it as important for you to talk about. Mostly, municipalities and provinces take care of managing waste, but we have heard witnesses say that Canada's waste management record is the worst in the world. I was really surprised to learn that; I did not know. I would like to give you another chance to talk about your recommendations.

Mr. Harley, I think you talked about a national program to reduce waste to zero. Could you go into that idea more?

Mr. Conrad, I think you talked about a greenhouse gas registry and about carbon credits. Could you talk about what people call the cap-and-trade system?

I would like to know what your recommendations to the federal government are.

The floor is yours.

[Dale Harley]

In terms of a national program, you are right, sir. When I was asked to come here, my first reaction was, why am I coming to address a federal committee? Municipal waste is the responsibility of the municipality. Waste from the ICI sector is the responsibility of the provinces. The advantage was that I had to do a little bit of research, and I started looking at where programs were successful and where programs were not successful. I found that programs were successful when there was a national program that encouraged all jurisdictions to be active participants in working toward a collective goal. If some jurisdictions had one set of rules and other jurisdictions had another, you ended up in a situation where people started shipping waste.

One of the biggest deterrents to waste management solutions in Ontario is Michigan. You can ship your waste across the border, dump it in somebody else's backyard, and have somebody else take care of it. I think we should be responsible, and that's where you, as the federal government, should be responsible, in terms of ensuring that a national program is in place.

I want to touch very briefly on your comment about put or pay. I am a little sensitive about that, because my Ottawa facility has had a contract dispute with the City of Ottawa about put or pay. When I came back to making the argument about the design, build, own, operate, my shareholders need to invest millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. We can't help a municipality do that by building a multimillion-dollar facility but not receiving enough waste to be able to justify that investment. Put or pay helps keep both parties honest. It encourages the municipalities to send you the waste, and it makes you honest by making sure that you build the right capacity to be able to deal with what you need to deal with.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

I think you only have 30 seconds left, Mr. Conrad.

Did you talk about the cap-and-trade system? What did you mean exactly?

[Larry Conrad]

Well, I would say it's a good idea. I would say that if we look at how we can fund some of the crowdfunding stuff that we've done—the anaerobic digester that's built in Toronto is one of those crowdfunding things—the cap and trade is an important system that can be put in place to help raise funds for viable projects and make waste projects look at other things besides energy as electrical energy. That's what I would say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

Mr. Toet, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Harley and Mr. Conrad. This is very interesting.

I just want to start with a question for both of you. What's the source of energy you use in your facilities?

[Dale Harley]

I'm spending too much time talking, so I'll give Larry an opportunity.

[Larry Conrad]

We use almost exclusively electrical energy in our facilities to do all of our powering. Most facilities around do that. Not too many are self-sustaining, although I have this dream that one day we can co-digest anaerobic sludge from the waste water treatment plant, and sludge from our SSO facility at our waste water treatment plant in either Clarkson or Lakeview, and produce enough power so that you have an off-loop plant treating waste. I think that would be cool, but most of our energy uses electricity.

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

Mr. Harley.

[Dale Harley]

Most of our energy use is electricity as well, but I'd like to stress that we do not use electricity to heat the material. That's actually done naturally by the composting process itself. Where we're using electricity is predominantly in the operation of our fans to make sure that the air is moving through the process to be able to encourage the composting process in the tunnel, and also to ensure that we keep our building under negative air pressure.

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

What about your Greenmills facility in the Netherlands? How familiar are you with that?

[Dale Harley]

Do you know what? An excellent question. Invite me back on December 20 when I come back. I'm going over there for a tour. I'll be honest, I'm very new in this job. I just started in August of this year as their general manager, and I've yet to learn everything, but that's one of my facilities that I'm really looking forward to touring.

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

You'll enjoy that. I was actually there about a year and a half ago, and they do supply their own energy for their own facility there. I think if you're going to come here and preach about energy from waste and things like this, I think it's really helpful if, going forward, we really look at it—

[Dale Harley]

I will accept that's a justifiable criticism.

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

In principle, there's nothing better than being able to say, look, we're doing actually what we're talking about.

[Dale Harley]

Yes.

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

The other point I wanted to make was regarding a landfill tax that we had talked about, and Mr. Sopuck had raised that. I think the key component there, and I hope you'd agree with it, is that it only works if there's an alternative. We have facilities, I know, in Winnipeg. There's a landfill tax there that you pay if you bring your own materials there, but it's the only alternative you have. So it really has no effect in forcing people to do otherwise. It's only a way of raising funds for the landfill itself.

I just wanted to ask you a question, Mr. Harley, regarding your product. You talked about your AA compost and the supply and demand for that product. You said that the demand essentially is outstripping the supply. I'm just wondering about two things on that. What's the attraction to the product? Why are you having such a high demand on this product?