Environment Committee on Feb. 27th, 2019

[Michael Nadler]

I would encourage all of you to read the Gwaii Haanas management plan that was tabled recently in Parliament. Under our legislation under the National Parks Act, these management plans must be tabled in Parliament. That plan really truly is a statement on co-management and collaborative management of both land and water.

If there's one area where Parks Canada is striving to strengthen our work, it's in managing terrestrial spaces and adjacent waters. Gwaii Haanas is an excellent example. Above all, it's an example of collaboration and true co-management of a protected place with indigenous peoples. That management plan is a product of a collaborative government arrangement and reflects the aspirations of the Haida as well as the Government of Canada and all Canadians.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

To move on to the pan-Canadian framework, can you give us an update, Matt, on how that's rolling along and on further advancements that you see in the near future?

[Matt Jones]

There have been a number of developments recently. Somewhere here I have a bit of an itemized list, but the high points are numerous. I think a lot is happening on green infrastructure and bilateral agreements with provinces on the infrastructure side. When it comes to regulatory developments, there have been a number of draft regulations published that John could tell you more about, including our efforts to accelerate the phase-out of coal-powered power plants. Carbon pricing, of course, is moving forward, as is well known and well documented.

In terms of some of the funding programs, I know our colleagues at NRCan have launched a number of programs and have completed a number of intakes of project proposals, including for communities that are looking to move off diesel generation, which of course, as the committee knows well, is a dirty form of heat and electricity generation as well as an expensive one. There are a number of projects moving forward there, again, including in a number of indigenous communities. The low-carbon economy fund continues to invest in programs and projects with provinces.

We've done a call for proposals and have evaluated proposals related to a sub-stream of the low carbon economy fund that's targeting individual projects. One has been announced. That was the project in downtown Toronto that takes cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario and uses it to cool office towers. We're expanding that project. That's just one example of many to come, so we can expect some announcements on a number of those in the near future.

We also have another sub-fund of the low-carbon economy fund that targets smaller projects. The view was that we didn't want indigenous communities having to compete with multinational corporations, so we have a big project fund and a smaller one. For that intake, the deadline for proposals is in March. We're expecting a collection of projects then, which we will then evaluate and hopefully move forward with funding. There's a lot more that we could probably talk about, but those are some of the highlights.

John, is there anything you'd like to add on the regulatory side?

[John Moffet, Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Stewardship Branch, Department of the Environment]

The one additional major regulatory item that we continue to work on, which Matt did mention, is the first draft of the regulation for the clean fuel standard that will—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I was just going to ask you about that, so that's good.

[John Moffet]

That will require a reduction of the carbon intensity of fuels in Canada over a period of about a decade, and it will apply to all fuels essentially—liquid, solid and gaseous fuels. The goal of the regulation will be to reduce emissions by about 30 megatonnes by 2030. We plan to publish the draft regulation that's applicable to the liquid fuel stream by this spring or early summer, and then bring in the rest of the regulation over the next few years as we refine the details and continue consultations with industry.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's fantastic.

[The Chair]

I'm going to jump in, Mike.

Looking at the clock, I see that we're going a bit late. We had originally invited our guests to be here from 3:30 to 4:30. I do want to see if our guests will be able to stay a bit longer.

Does anybody have any day care pickups or anything like that you need to deal with?

Okay, what I'd like to do is then move over to the three colleagues who haven't had a chance. They were in a six-minute slot. We're not going to go into the final portion of our meeting, the report review, today. We'll just stay with this. I would like the colleagues on this side to have a bit of time.

Madame Trudel still has more time. If you decide you would like more questions just wave at any point, and we'll inject you into it. We won't go right to the end, but I would like Darren, Joe and Julie to have some time for interaction as well. Then, Madame Trudel, if you have more, just let us know.

Darren, Joe or Julie, do you have anything?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't have a whole lot to ask, but I'm interested in the climate risk-assessment money. There was money last year and there's money this year. What types of things is Parks Canada doing under that climate-risk assessment? I think the money has been similar the last couple of years. Is this something that you think we are going to need more significant amounts of money in order to mitigate the risks of climate change?

[Michael Nadler]

Parks Canada manages a very large asset base. A number of our assets are heritage places, and some of those risk being impacted by climate change. Others include significant transportation infrastructures. Indeed, as the committee is probably aware, we're responsible for a number of provincial numbered highways, as well as elements of the Trans-Canada Highway system.

Transport Canada has a program evaluation of those assets—or their assessments, at least—to assess the possible risks to those important transportation corridors from climate change. We have a number of these highways and are concerned about the risk of climate change to those assets. We'll continue to work with Transport Canada on their assessment.

In terms of our built heritage assets, those are internal risks that Parks Canada must manage, and we do that on our own. A number of our places are being assessed for mitigations that we might implement to protect them from the impacts of climate change.

You're absolutely right, Mr. Fisher, there's an increasing number of those properties that we have to assess right now.

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

It's not just speculation that you'll need to ask for more each year.

[Michael Nadler]

We would work with Transport Canada on the transportation side of the equation. We are now assessing our own assets regularly in terms of climate change considerations both in the north and across southern Canada.

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

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair]

Joe and then Julie.

[Joe Peschisolido, Steveston—Richmond East, Lib.]

I'm good.

[The Chair]

Julie, do you have anything?

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you so much.

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for being with us today.

I think it was the presentation made by you, Mr. Kerr—thank you so much—that I have a couple of questions on. It says, under the proposed impact assessment act, that the agency will become the lead organization. I think you're going to be doing a number of pilots to see how to get it all started.

Just for my own understanding, how is this pilot also going to benefit the companies that are trying to do some of the development that might require the use of our new legislation? Maybe you could talk to that.

[Christine Loth-Bown]

We're currently looking at assessments that are in the current system with particular companies that have approached us to say they would like to do a pilot with us to test some of the ideas laid out in Bill C-69, because they see many benefits in that piece of legislation. These are primarily around the early planning segment, so they can sit down and look at the early planning and at how we can do the tailored impact statement guidelines and look the consultation plans. We've been approached by companies to test those. There are a couple cases that our operations staff are working on with companies to lay that out.

Some of the companies have said that what they find particularly appealing about what's proposed in Bill C-69 is that early planning and the ability to scope. There is this certainty of process in terms of the information required, as well as the certainty around whom to consult and engage at the end.

Another aspect of the question, and what Alan talked about in the presentation, is a regional assessment that we are currently conducting off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. We're doing that with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the offshore petroleum board. The objective of this pilot—and we're working with proponents who are doing exploratory drilling offshore—is to look at exploratory wells and do a regional assessment.

It's in that particular regional geography, but it's also specific to a type of activity, which is exploratory drilling. The intent behind that was discussed in a consultation paper we did with respect to the project list on designated physical activities. The day the legislation was tabled, there was also a consultation paper that went out to look at reviewing the regulation on the designation project of activities. What it says in that paper is that, if the regional assessment is to be successful, there would be an opportunity to potentially exempt those activities from a further impact assessment.

On the one hand, you're doing a regional assessment to assure Canadians that the activity has been assessed, but because exploratory drilling has a very quick turnaround time, you're not asking a proponent to do a lengthy process for a very short activity. You're getting the environmental assurance, but doing it more expeditiously.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

That's helpful.

I have another question. It seems as though we've transferred additional dollars to Environment and Climate Change Canada for the elders of the Assembly of First Nations to consult broadly with elders across Canada.

There is such diversity of opinion around, in many ways, development and how to actually conduct these types of assessments. I wonder if you can talk for a couple of minutes about whether the Assembly of First Nations will actually summarize what they're hearing or we will be with them every step of the way and we should provide a bit of a summary. Could you maybe talk a little bit about the process and how we get to some sort of a conclusion?

[Christine Loth-Bown]

I'll take that one as well.

You raised the point of collaborative policy development. We attempt to do collaborative policy development across the board, but in particular in areas like indigenous knowledge, it's really important that it is indigenous community members who are leading our perspective on how we treat indigenous knowledge.

In this particular case, it is the elders of the Assembly of First Nations who are hosting sessions across the country to talk to other elders about indigenous knowledge, how it should be defined, how it should be treated, and how it should be used. They will then provide a report back to us collectively for us to use in the work we do.

In the case of the Environmental Assessment Agency, we need to be putting out a policy framework and guidance on how indigenous knowledge is used in impact assessments. This will be an extremely important tool for us to bring into that policy work.

At the same time, we also have colleagues who are hosting workshops across the country to talk about our indigenous knowledge policy as well. It's a bit of a twofold thing, because the AFN work is specifically directed towards elders, but we also wanted the workshops across the country to speak to communities and other organizations across indigenous knowledge. We're doing both and we'll take that feedback and then design a policy in a collaborative way.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you.

[John Moffet]

Maybe I'll elaborate a little bit just to emphasize that in this process, we're not privileging the AFN as the spokespeople for all indigenous knowledge holders. We're really asking them to be conveners as a way to reach out to indigenous elders, to your point that there are a range of perspectives. So we haven't gone to one organization and said, “Give us your views.” We've gone to them, as a convenor, to reach out to a subset, and then we are arranging other initiatives as well so that we have the full perspective.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you. That's very helpful.

[The Chair]

Madam Trudel, do you...?

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

No.