Environment Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[Vincent Ngan]

I will try to answer, although I am not in the waste management aspect.

To give you some statistics, in Canada, methane generated by landfills has increased by almost 6% since 2005, from 970 kilotonnes to 1,027 kilotonnes, primarily due to the growth of population and the generation of degradable organic waste in municipal landfills.

That being said, the increase in methane generation has also been offset by an increase in the capture of methane in municipal landfills, from 32% to a total of 44% in 2016. A lot has been done due to the fact that provincial governments put in place regulatory requirements and measures that the major landfills have carbon capture mechanisms.

Government funding to support low-carbon initiatives also contributed to the reduction of landfill methane emissions, such as funding provided through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, direct funding provided by the Government of New Brunswick, and Quebec's biogas program. Some landfills in Quebec and B.C. have generated carbon offsets in the California market as well.

Based on recent research conducted by our department, landfill gas capture systems are in place or under development at approximately 94 out of 130 of the largest landfills in Canada, and an additional 23 out of 149 medium-sized landfills that serve a population of 12,000 to 50,000.

This is the progress that has been made, so definitely there are good practices. A case in point is that the landfills that do not have capture systems have developed some, and for those that have capture systems, they've found ways to improve efficiency. There are definitely provincial and federal efforts to together help reduce the generation of methane in landfills.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I have only about 45 seconds, so I'll ask a short one and maybe go to Natural Resources.

We know that severe weather and climate change are real problems. Forest fires are important for new growth, but also contribute to GHG emissions.

How can we best manage forests to ensure proper growth while managing public safety and environmental concerns?

[Beth MacNeil]

Thank you.

I'm going to turn to Dr. Kurz.

You have 35 seconds.

[Dr. Werner Kurz, Senior Research Scientist, Canadian Forest Service, Department of Natural Resources]

No challenge at all.

The fundamental issue with forest fires and their increases over time—and they have increased threefold in the last 50 years in terms of area annually burned—is that we have a combination of warming temperatures, reduced precipitation and increased periods of drought that together have led to an increase in forest fires.

How we can best manage forests is a longer question, but it would include reducing fuel loads. There is a recognition that in some areas of the country, a century of fire suppression has resulted in forest conditions that have a significant amount of fuels within them. There are ways to manage these and also then use some of these fuels—the wood—in climate change mitigation strategies.

With the allotted time, I'll leave it at that. I'm happy to come back to this later.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Perfect. Thank you for the comments.

We're going to move now over to Mr. Lake, for six minutes.

[Mike Lake, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC]

In the spirit of non-partisanship and co-operation, I'm going to pass my time on to Wayne Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, Kootenay—Columbia, NDP]

Thank you. I am going to pass my six minutes back to Mr. Lake in a minute.

Thank you for being here today.

My first question will be for Agriculture.

I have a bill, which is in the Senate, Bill C-281, to celebrate national local food day on the Friday before Thanksgiving every year.

The purpose of it is to shine a spotlight on the importance of local food across the country. As you know, it's important for food security and for the local economies. It's also important for the environment, particularly in the reduction of carbon emissions, to grow your food locally rather than shipping it in from across the country or around the world.

Are there any financial incentives in the packages you mentioned, Mr. Parry, or perhaps Mr. Fox, since you're in innovation, that the people in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia and other local growers across the country can access out of this funding you mentioned earlier?

[John Fox]

As Matt mentioned earlier in his opening remarks, part of the reason for our framework is to try to align federal and provincial activities to make sure they're moving in the right direction.

Federal activities tend to be, on the marketing side, focused on export activities. We have a lot of work that we do with provinces on exportability.

The provinces themselves look at linking local producers with local markets. Under the cost-shared arrangements that we have in place, some provinces—not all provinces, and it varies by provinces—have put in place supports to local farmers' markets, mechanisms by which they'll support either the enhancements of those local farmers' markets, or linking local producers into those farmers' markets. However, those exist at the provincial level.

[Wayne Stetski]

You said you provide funding through provinces to do this. Could you, therefore, you put in some requirements in terms of benefiting local growers when you're handing out money to the provinces?

[John Fox]

The framework is a five-year start and finish. This is the first year of the five-year framework. What provinces do under the cost-share arrangements is provide the full range of what they intend.... There's $2 billion tied up in these frameworks, and they'll submit to us what their intended programming is and what their priorities are, and then we negotiate an agreement that lasts five years. Those agreements are now all in place with all provinces, and they're rolling out their programs now. Those agreements can be made public.

[Wayne Stetski]

All right.

Turning to forestry, my colleague Richard Cannings from South Okanagan—West Kootenay has a bill before the Senate as well, Bill C-354 on the use of wood. It's asking government to do an analysis of the carbon footprints of structural materials. His initial emphasis, of course, was wood and supporting the various mills in our ridings. To what extent could increasing the use of wood products in construction help reduce the use of more carbon-intensive materials?

[Beth MacNeil]

Tony, would you like to take that?

[Tony Lemprière, Senior Manager, Climate Change Policy, Canadian Forest Service, Department of Natural Resources]

Yes. Thank you for that question.

I think all of the analysis that we have done in the Canadian Forest Service of NRCan—and has also been done elsewhere in the world—does indicate that using wood can make a contribution to climate change mitigation, in particular, using long-lived wood products in construction where they can replace other more emissions-intensive materials like concrete or steel.

As the assistant deputy minister mentioned, NRCan does have a program, the GCWood, or green construction through wood program that is aimed at essentially supporting those types of efforts. That program does a number of things. It's seeking to support demonstration projects for more use of wood in what might be called non-traditional construction, tall wooden buildings, for example, or commercial buildings or bridges.

The program is also going to support efforts to have building codes changed in 2020 or 2025 to allow taller buildings to make more use of wood.

Finally, it's going to support educational and training programs for architects, engineers, etc., and the development of tools that they can use so that wood construction or wood-based construction becomes something that they're more aware of and interested in.

The short answer is, yes, there is a lot of potential that we see from using wood for construction.

[Wayne Stetski]

I want to turn to the Paris targets and forestry again. What do you see as the role of forests in terms of meeting Canada's Paris targets? I understand there might have been some changes in what's going to count and not count towards meeting that target. Could you address that for a minute, please?

[Beth MacNeil]

I've spent hours figuring that out. We call it LULUCF: land use, land use change and forestry.

Tony or Werner, who would like to explain in plain language?

[Wayne Stetski]

Along with that, I might add that we already did a protected area study, and we had several people before us who suggested we should be protecting 50% of our boreal forests moving forwards. If that becomes part of the conversation, that would be interesting.

[Tony Lemprière]

It's a very important question and, indeed, under the Paris Agreement and through the whole history of international climate change negotiations and efforts, there has been a lot of interest in the use of forests to contribute to mitigation targets under the Paris Agreement and in previous agreements.

One thing I think really informs that is that we know addressing climate change is a huge challenge, so all sectors have to be involved.

I'll try to finish up quickly.

In terms of Canada, we certainly do see a lot of potential for forests and the use of wood to contribute to our 2030 emission reduction target and in the longer term for post-2030 targets as well. Given the warning that I had to end, I'll stop there, and we can hopefully discuss this through additional questions.

[The Chair]

Right, and now, with the regular rotation we would move to Mr. Stetski for six minutes, and with the spirit of collaboration we've seen so far, we'll see if he's going to keep going.

[Wayne Stetski]

I would love to offer my six minutes to Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake]

Thank you, Mr. Stetski.

I'd like to start by putting three motions on notice, if I could.

I'm going to start with this one:

That the Committee undertake a study of Clean Growth and Climate Change in Canada: Carbon Pricing, and that the study consist of no less than six meetings with witnesses.

The second notice of motion is this:

That the Committee undertake a study on the egregious environmental violations of Volkswagen to determine why the Canadian Government has not taken any action on this issue.

For the third notice, I'm hoping maybe we can get unanimous consent to discuss this motion now, but I'll put it on notice and see where we go with that. It is:

That the Committee invite the Minister of the Environment to appear before the Committee at any time over the next two weeks to answer questions on the Supplementary Estimates (A), 2018-19.

I'll put that on notice and ask for unanimous consent of the committee to discuss and dispose of it now so we can move on.

[The Chair]

To Mr. Lake's point on the third notice of motion, normally 48 hours' advance notice would need to be given to move to debate on the motion and—

[Mike Lake]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair]

Yes.

[Mike Lake]

As a very brief explanation, it seemed at the last meeting there was no mechanism to have this discussion and that's why I'm asking for unanimous consent today.