Environment Committee on May 12th, 2016

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

You have a unique situation there in that you have the endangered species, the caribou. I believe they roam through your area. Are they staying in the area? They seem to be focused around the Willmore.

[Sue Feddema-Leonard]

The caribou population has decreased. There are a lot of people who have a lot to say about it, but our elders said that back in 1949 there were no elk here, no ravens, and no whitetail. The cycle of life keeps changing. The caribou are declining, but other populations are increasing, and that's just part of the cycle of life. That's the way elders up here view it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

How much time do I have left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I'll go to our mining association.

My riding of Yellowhead has a fair number of coal mining activities, coal-generated electricity, and of course oil and gas. The mining industry has been very active for many years and has reclaimed the land, in particular in an area called Wabamun. I remember that when I was a kid there was a big black hole there that was uglier than sin, but when you drive through there now it's pristine rolling farmland. It's agricultural land and cattle land that people come from Edmonton to enjoy.

Do you find that industry is very co-operative towards reclaiming the land after they've looked after the natural resources that they've tried to pull from it? In Canada, are the standards very strong compared to those of other countries?

[Nadim Kara]

That's a great question. Thank you.

I should start by clarifying that we do represent exploration and development, so our sister association is the Mining Association of Canada, and they do some phenomenal work in supporting their members to work on reclamation.

In general, what I can say is that in every jurisdiction there are strong closure plan requirements as part of the mining acts, so today's industry is not the same as it was 50 years ago. The regulatory process now mandates that reclamation be considered right from the beginning, and there are financial assurance requirements to ensure that the public doesn't have to hold the bag if it doesn't work out, if a company goes bankrupt and so on.

What we're seeing is that the combination of societal expectations is changing, which leads to regulatory change and corporate behavioural change. Together they are coming into the regulatory system to mandate those sorts of things. There is phenomenal innovation from the technology side. Across Canada, you can see some great stories of biodiversity actually increasing after a mine closure on a particular parcel of land. At a later date, I'd be happy to share some examples of that in writing with this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We're out of time.

Next is John Aldag, but I should introduce Jean Rioux, who is with us and is standing in for Will Amos.

Thank you for joining us today.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

I have a short question for Mr. Eric Reder.

You spoke about a species at risk, the caribou, and to my knowledge there are caribou in Quebec and Labrador. You say that there are not many on federal land. Am I to understand that the province doesn't do its work to ensure the conservation of the caribou?

[Eric Reder]

Thank you for the question.

I have been working on caribou for nine years now. I will give you an example of the work the provincial government has done. In 2011, it released an action plan for the most at-risk caribou in Manitoba, which are those on the Ontario border. It was put out as a draft in 2011; now it is 2016, and we have never seen the updated version of it. The federal Species at Risk Act said that caribou were supposed to have federal recovery strategies in place years ago. We had to bring legal action to the federal government, through the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice. We got them to improve their recovery strategies from what was put in place, but a lot of what happened federally was that it was deferred to the province.

The simple timelines the province has put forward.... Even though we have an Endangered Species Act in the province, there is a caveat that says the minister can decide otherwise, so there are no real legal teeth to hold the province to account. What we find with the Species at Risk Act—and this goes across caribou and all species; on the west coast, orcas are a really important one that we are working on—is that the science coming from the provinces that the federal government accepts is often being assembled with industry, and the socio-economic decisions are getting mixed into that science before it even gets to the federal government.

Of course, we know that socio-economic considerations are going to drive development decisions and conservation decisions, but we need to see the science and the proper plans put forward, and then be able to say, publicly, as a society, “Can we afford to save this species?” When we have that conversation in public, more people understand the state we are in and the number of species that we are driving to this place.

The answer to your question is that the Province of Manitoba has not done enough to look after woodland caribou in Manitoba.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

What about Quebec and Newfoundland?

[Eric Reder]

We get into a different subspecies of caribou, migratory versus the stationary boreal woodland ones that I specifically deal with. In the science we see going to the federal government from British Columbia, where we specialize, and from Manitoba, we see the same problem, which is that sometimes the science is a little clouded before it gets to the federal government. If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the federal government should pay closer attention to the stuff that is coming from the provinces. Obviously, the provinces have a vested interest in ensuring they continue to have development, and sometimes the caribou get in the way of that.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a question for John.

I grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan that has been in the family for over a hundred years. When you speak about the ethic that landowners have, I completely understand that.

I would like to know from the Cattlemen's Association perspective if there are any incentives or other practices that work for you that you would like to see continued to ensure sustainable practices. Are there programs that don't exist right now that the Cattlemen's Association has talked about and would like support for from the government to be able to implement to help the sustainable practices?

[John Masswohl]

There certainly are. I probably couldn't name them all off the top of my head here for you, but we can follow up with that.

There are a number of things. I mentioned our award program to reward people for doing the right things. You hear a number of things.... For example, you want to conserve riparian areas, and there are certain practices that farmers might undertake so that they don't have to have the cattle go to the streams and drink. In terms of putting equipment in, could there be financial assistance so that they can do that instead of what they might have done in the past?

One of the things that we are working on right now.... You may have heard in the last couple of weeks about the Earls restaurant, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one minute.

[John Masswohl]

There is a scenario where, again, very well-intentioned.... They wanted to focus on one aspect, humane treatment of animals. Of course, that is a huge concern of ours, but we want to look at it in the whole context of sustainability. We have been working on taking our verified beef production program, which is how we help farmers do certain things and tell them what the good practices are, and developing that into verified beef production plus. There will be certain capital costs and equipment costs associated with that, and we would be looking for some government assistance as we roll out verified beef production plus to help farmers implement some of those concepts and practices.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you.

Mr. Shields, you're up.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate all the witnesses today. There are varied opinions and information. It's really good.

I think one of the things that came up from the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, which John mentioned, is the holistic report.

John, you mentioned the sage grouse and the swift fox. A few years ago they said, “Let's put the swift fox back in here”, and the ranchers in the area knew, “Yup, you know what's for breakfast—sage grouse.” Then along come the protected species authorities to protect the sage grouse. That's the isolation piece.

You talked about wetlands. When they were worried about the leopard frog disappearing, they were fencing off wetlands so that the cattle couldn't use them. The ranchers said, “The buffalo stir up the mud. What are you guys doing? We were doing the same with the cattle.”

They fenced off those wetlands and the leopard frogs were gone, because the cattle were doing the same thing as the buffalo.

Your concept of a holistic view, I think, is really good. Is there anything more you'd like to say about that?

[John Masswohl]

I guess we just have to remember what was happening before the Europeans came, settled, and domesticated the land. The buffalo were there and the native people were there. The practice of having cattle on the land is replicating what was natural before we were out there.

If Bob were here, he would remember names, places, and dates. I remember the concepts.

There are areas that have just been left and set aside to go wild. We have taken the cattle and the animals out of those, and those places have become completely unproductive and uninhabitable for anything. The species at risk that were there have left because that habitat is no longer suitable for them anyway. You have to ask yourself why the burrowing owl is where it is, and why the sage grouse is where it is. It's because ranchers are taking care of that land and providing habitat for them.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

To the mining industry, in a sense of investigation, the guy who spent 20 years looking for diamonds.... There was a lot of prospecting and a lot of work. He is also the largest donor to the University of Toronto, as a former graduate there. At $50 million, I think he is the largest donor to a university.

With regard to the piece about the Diavik diamond mine, could you tell us a bit more about the co-operation among people and what it does for the industry and the aboriginal people there?

[Nadim Kara]

Thanks for that question.

One of the most profound impacts of those diamond mines has been multiple generations of aboriginal people around those sites being able to participate in the economic opportunities that were generated to leverage those economic opportunities to improve quality of life and to advance future generations' ability to do it. What we've seen with some of those mines is that as employment levels increase, families of aboriginal people from local communities start off doing fairly basic work, and then, because these are long-life mines, their children and grandchildren get educated and move up that employment chain.

There are business development opportunities that those mines have created. A significant portion of the revenues that come out of the mines are ploughed back into the local communities through procurement. With these long mine lives, aboriginal people have been able to establish scores of businesses that would not exist in that part of the world without the economic leverage of the diamond mines.

Those are two very specific examples.

All of the communities around the mines have signed agreements with the companies that establish the mines. Those agreements have provisions for both skills training and employment. There are business development opportunities such as having first choice to get into the supply chain, and communities can use revenue streams from the diamond mines to build up their own capacity as a community.

Those are a few examples.

This is not restricted to just those areas, of course. There are about 400 agreements, I think, between communities and companies around Canada. Each of those agreements is an opportunity for aboriginal people to leverage the development of natural resources for their own well-being, while including provisions for mitigating any potential environmental impacts or impacts on their aboriginal and treaty rights. We have quite a phenomenal architecture of informal and formal governance mechanisms in Canada to take care of the social and environmental impacts while creating the opportunities.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

It took him 20 years of prospecting to find it, though.

[Nadim Kara]

It did indeed.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Prospecting has to be part of it. It took 20 years to find those locations, and what an economic benefit it has been in that region.