Evidence of meeting #41 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was garbage.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
Mr. Mills, you talked about the FCM. I sat on the FCM green fund, which you're probably familiar with, for about five years.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
We did a lot of innovative work a decade ago and that was great. The municipalities wanted to participate in the green fund because we had the ability to pay down the interest rate a little bit. That technique is gone now because of low interest rates. The green fund, talking to people about it now and about its.... This is a fund that has probably most of that information collected within it. It has done all measures of feasibility studies on all techniques for municipalities on waste disposal, on renewable energy, on clean water, sewers, all those things, but it's stalled right now because it doesn't have any financial incentive built into its system to encourage municipalities to do these things.
The idea of the green fund was, of course, that by municipalities accepting a green portfolio on the work that they're doing they would get a preferred interest rate. Their feasibility would be covered. Now there's nothing there anymore. That's a sad fact right now. Do you think we need a new fund to generate interest among municipalities to do the right thing?
We were moving in that direction, but it's not there at the FCM right now.
As an Individual
To answer that, again I'm most familiar with my own community, but if I look at a newspaper article here from November 20, it's about the landfill in Red Deer. Part of their business plan is to be very green, but they're bragging about their garbage facility. It's not modern. It's old. They need the guidance of the FCM, the province, and the feds to actually realize what it really means to recycle all of our garbage, to not have a landfill anymore.
It just makes me see red when I see someone bragging about how green they are, because it's all talk. It's not really doing the thing.
I've been to some FCM meetings and so on and have heard the talk, but it's the action that really counts. That's where we need these early adapters and this is where the feds could come in a lot, and the provinces, and as the other gentleman mentioned, encourage those places and present them as poster places of how these guys did something.
I think once we did that, this thing would take off. I think your entrepreneurs and companies would jump into that too, because they see dollars to be made.
A municipality also has to know they can make money from their garbage. There has to be a shared income as part of any contract with any company. That would be a necessity, because then there's an incentive to be part of it and build the thing.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
Thank you very much.
Are you still running your house on renewable energy, or have you moved to something else?
As an Individual
Yes. I have 28 solar panels and 60 solar tubes and I'm planning to put up another bank of 100 solar panels, but the government might not let me sell that much green energy into the grid, so I'll have to fight that too.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
We have a few minutes, possibly three to four minutes for Mrs. Ambler and then we're going to end this part of the meeting.
Mrs. Ambler.
December 3rd, 2014 / 4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Thank you very much, Bob, for coming to talk with us today and for your terrific presentation.
I'm the one at the family picnic who goes through the garbage bags and takes out the glass bottles and the plastic bottles, so I totally get where you're coming from. I really appreciate the work that you do, because it hurts me to put something like that in the garbage knowing that it's going to go to a landfill.
I was concerned and disappointed when I heard about all the passing of the buck among levels of government that you faced when you first got involved with this issue and tried to find out more about it. I'm wondering, this is a vast country, there must be some municipalities and regions that are doing good things and that can be held up as examples for others. Do you know of any? Can you tell us about those?
As an Individual
I guess Edmonton would like to think that they are at the front end of this, because they have taken some action and not just talked about it. They haven't quite gone far enough to get rid of all of that material and they still have part of a landfill.
I was interested in the gentleman who presented to you about how P.E.I. has closed 34 of its 35 landfills. That has to be a huge achievement. I don't know a lot about it, but that would be something to follow up on as well.
There are leaders in Germany. There are cities like Berlin, for instance, that have really moved forward in terms of what is an alternative. Their water table is very high. They can't put garbage very deep, and so it becomes a necessity to find another way.
The Netherlands, as I mentioned, haul it to eastern Europe. That's not an answer. That's the worst answer.
In terms of Canada, I would say we've moved quite a long way. I don't want to make it sound like we are really back in great grandpa's age because we do have blue boxes and we do recycle way more than we ever did before, but we have to go a lot farther. We have to end—100% end—all landfilling in Canada. That has to be the goal.
Okay, so what are you going to do with that garbage? Well, that garbage has a value and that's the major point. We need to put that out to industry and say to them that there's money to be made here. I am familiar with China and some of the cities there that are doing things. They are developing new technologies. They will be selling it if we don't get on the bandwagon.
Conservative
Stella Ambler Conservative Mississauga South, ON
Speaking of landfills, looking way into the future now and into the landfills that we can't deny exist all across the country in all of our neighbourhoods and communities, can anything be done to remediate these sites so many years later? Is there any technology out there or have you seen or heard of any promising technologies to kind of...? I guess I'm talking more now about going back in time.
Maybe we should not bother, because maybe there are no hazards or toxin risks associated with these existing landfills anymore; I don't know. Should we just leave them alone?
As an Individual
Let me go back to Barcelona and some of the other Spanish examples where they have actually outlawed landfills and have actually said you must recycle all of your old landfills.
The problem is that when they take the cap off, now they have a chemical cocktail and they have no idea what they're dealing with. In one case it created a plume of dangerous gas, which killed the cap operator that opened it. They had to evacuate a whole community because of this toxic gas. They didn't know that was going to happen. So you don't know what's in there. And remember: the old landfills had no liners. Those are leaking and seeping into adjacent land. We have a huge liability out there.
In the case of our landfills, if a landfill is up to about 10 years old, I'm told that it still has enough energy value in it to be recycled. You could dig up an eight- or ten-year-old landfill and turn it into value. Anything older than that and you have such a mix of chemicals and a loss of energy that it might not be economical. But maybe you have to do it anyway.
In the case of Spain, what they've done is drilled holes and put gas collectors in. They collect liquid and gas, and then they treat it to try to decontaminate it. Those pipes are like three feet apart and there are hundreds of miles of pipe throughout that landfill. It's a very costly process.
Should we be dealing with it? Yes, but let's deal with the new garbage first.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Harold Albrecht
Okay.
Thank you very much, Mr. Mills, for taking the time to be present today and for your answers to the questions of our members. We appreciate your sharing your expertise with us.
We'll have a three-minute recess and we'll reconvene in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]