Environment Committee on June 10th, 2019

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It isn't a red card like in soccer. Our chair is very flexible.

Madam Commissioner, it is with considerable emotion that I address you today. This is probably the last time we'll have the opportunity to work with you as commissioner. In your presentation, you said that you hope parliamentarians and Canadians will find these reports and recommendations useful and worthy of follow-up, not and in the future.

We met at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. You have witnessed my outbursts about the fact that accountability, reporting, follow-up and implementation of recommendations are not automatic. I think we need to develop a system to make parliamentarians, public servants and all those involved in the decisions and suggestions you submit to us accountable. I commit before you and everyone else to do this follow-up if I'm still here for the 43rd Parliament. It's been a pleasure to work with you.

I'll now move on to the report on aquatic invasive species. In paragraph 1.44, you talk a little about what has been done since 2015. You mention the Aquatic Invasive Species Regulations, which came into force in 2015. In that paragraph, you state that, “By 2018, [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] had still not arrived at a process for choosing species to include when the Regulations are next revised.”

Since my time is limited, I'll jump right to the end of paragraph 1.46, which reads:

At the time of our audit, the Department had developed draft work plans for its Aquatic Invasive Species National Core Program but had not finalized strategic directions for the program to guide its planning and resource allocation.

Madam Commissioner, I have the privilege of representing the riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier. There are many lakes and invasive species. We have to act now. There was a settlement in 2015, but it is 2019 and almost nothing has been done.

I am addressing you, Madam Commissioner, but also the representatives of other departments who may want to round out your answer.

What must be implemented now to reduce the invasion of these species? Installing a cleaning station at the entrance and exit of a lake limits proliferation, but there are other things you can do as well. Can you give us some suggestions for a solution so that we can solve the problem in the next few years?

[Julie Gelfand]

In five seconds, I'll tell you that it would involve implementing the recommendations at the end of our report.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

As always.

[Julie Gelfand]

I'll take 10 seconds more to tell you that Fisheries and Oceans Canada needs certain information. However, at present, it has no information on the number of species that pose a threat to us, the pathways of entry and the locations of these species in Canada. The department needs to address these deficiencies and find this information. It must develop action plans to prevent invasions that may occur, but it must also know which species pose a threat to us. We lack information, including risk assessments and a strategic plan. This is the third audit in 20 years that we've done in this area, and there is still a lot of work to be done.

I'll turn things over to the representative for Fisheries and Oceans Canada so that he can round out my answer.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Mr. Winfield, you have the floor.

[Nicholas Winfield, Director General, Ecosystems Management, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

In 2017 the government invested $43.8 million in the national aquatic invasive species program. It's the first time that we've had a national program. We are two years in. We achieved our staffing levels this year, and have 20 dedicated staff across the country who are focusing on aquatic invasive species. They're working with the provinces.

I think your question on establishing priorities in addressing invasive species was very important, because the provinces manage the fishery within their jurisdiction, and the federal government is responsible for ensuring, through this regulation, the prevention of the transport, possession and import across borders, between provinces and between states.

The federal role, really, is to support coordination with the provinces, working with the U.S. and the Canada Border Services Agency, to prevent the movement of aquatic invasive species. In 2017, to complement the regulation that came in in 2013, for the first time we had the capacity to start this work.

We received the commissioner's report with open arms, because it aligned very much with the direction we were undertaking. Clearly there was not sufficient evidence when the commissioner was doing her report to demonstrate that all of these measures had been put in place, but we fully accept the recommendations. We do have staff who are now working on these recommendations, and they were very much aligned with our objectives that began in 2017. We stopped work to go through this audit, in order to reconfirm that we were doing the right kind of work.

The key message I want to convey is how important our collaboration with Canada Border Services Agency and with the provinces and territories is. We work with them through national committees, and they are very interested in getting the support from DFO on both the border issues and the science issues, to identify where the threats are.

I do feel that we have an—

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Excuse me, Mr. Winfield, but I don't have much time left. Thank you for your answer, but I'm not necessarily satisfied. I think you shouldn't have to wait until the Commissioner's audit to do a self-assessment. You should have done it beforehand.

My next question is for the people from the Department of the Environment.

I'd like to know who's responsible for the Tata Steel dump in Quebec. There's red water there. The news showed a bear drinking there.

Is it Quebec's responsibility or Canada's? It is a joint responsibility? I think that place is polluted.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Could we get just a very, very brief answer? We are out of time.

[Heather McCready, Deputy Chief Enforcement Officer, Department of the Environment]

Hi. It's Heather McCready from Environment and Climate Change Canada. I am the Deputy Chief Enforcement Officer. As with many things having to do with water, the jurisdiction is shared between the province and the federal government.

So, both are responsible.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

Mr. Stetski, we go over to you now for your six minutes of questions.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Commissioner. It's good to see you—unfortunately, perhaps for the last time. I'll direct my questions to you, and you can redirect them appropriately.

My riding is Kootenay—Columbia, located in southeastern British Columbia. My question is for Fisheries and Oceans. I was regional manager with the B.C. Ministry of the Environment, responsible for fish and wildlife, from 2002 to 2009. In the first two years, one of my tasks, unfortunately, was to cut 27% of my staff. I had to make decisions on whether to keep fish biologists or wildlife biologists. At that point Fisheries and Oceans Canada had staff in the Kootenays. They had five staff. I sat down with the manager at the time. He showed me their organization chart. They were going to have six biologists and six fisheries enforcement officers in the Kootenays, and so I cut a fish biologist and kept a wildlife biologist as one step.

Fast-forward to today, there are no fisheries officers left in the Kootenays. I'm wondering whether that may have contributed to the fact that these invasive species have not been properly identified, and whether there's an opportunity to fix that going forward and to get some staff back in the Kootenays.

[Julie Gelfand]

It's probably best to ask the department.

[Nicholas Winfield]

In last year's budget, $284 million was announced for a reinvestment in restoring lost protections, which included the staffing of new biologists and new fishery officers. So we are staffing up in B.C. under the modernization agenda. Within this $43.8 million investment over five years, we are also increasing our staff by six new fishery officers. Granted, that's across the country. Those fishery officers will be focusing on areas where there is a high threat of invasive species entry—so primarily in Quebec and Ontario, but B.C. is also increasingly of concern with respect to sea lampreys moving in from the U.S. and from the east moving west.

Specifically in the Kootenays, I would say that, no, there will be no new individuals, but with respect to staff in the Pacific region, we are retaining our existing office structure—Kamloops is the nearest office—and those staff will be working in the east Kootenays as well as on the Fraser.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

We'll certainly continue to push to have them brought back to the Kootenays, because they were very important for freshwater protection.

Related to that, the Province of B.C. now has check stations when you come into the province, where they pull over all vessels of any kind. It could be a canoe. It could be boats. I stopped last year and checked with them to see what they'd found over the course of the summer. At that point, they had found three or four boats with mussels on them, and they were all from Ontario.

What happens, of course, is that they are sealed and the owners are told that they are not allowed to put their boats in the water. They've towed their boats all the way from Ontario and, absolutely, I don't want them in the water, but how does a boat get all the way from Ontario to British Columbia before they find out they're carrying mussels? Do no other provinces have check stations across the country? Should they not have something in place, potentially in conjunction with the federal government?

[Nicholas Winfield]

Definitely, I think the key issue is to identify the modes of transmission. We do recognize that Ontario is the source for zebra mussels going west, and in every direction. Your point is well taken: We should indeed be beefing up at the provincial borders for these species.

[Julie Gelfand]

In our audit, we didn't actually look at the transport between provinces. We were looking at it between borders, so the U.S.-Canada border. We did find generally that both CBSA and fisheries officers were not being provided with enough training and materials to know what to look for and how to deal with it if they did find it. For the staff who are there, the CBSA staff in particular, they need to have more support. The fisheries officers also need more support. Both of them need more support for when they do find that coming up from the south. We didn't look at interprovincial....

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I just felt badly for the boat owners who hauled their boats all the way from Ontario and weren't allowed to put them in the water in British Columbia when they got there. That needs to change going forward.

I have a question quickly on oil and gas subsidies. I know that the Department of Finance apparently disagreed with one of the recommendations, but in your view what percentage of subsidies, if you're even able to take a guess, are actually being reported currently? We hear anything from one billion to two billion dollars' worth of subsidies. Do we have any idea what the subsidy actually is for the oil and gas industry?

[Julie Gelfand]

That's a great question. We didn't actually look at that in particular. You have to remember that the federal government's commitment is to reduce inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, so if a fossil fuel subsidy is considered and deemed to be efficient, there's no commitment to reduce that. It's only if they're deemed to be inefficient. Our colleague was telling you some of the things they considered in the definition of “inefficient”, which at least from my perspective, I looked at and thought in the case of both departments, didn't seem like a really solid definition of what inefficient fossil fuel subsidies were. It was a series of considerations, as opposed to a definition. Canada still hasn't defined what, from my perspective, “inefficient” means.

In terms of the non-tax side, Environment Canada only looked at 23 of 200 federal organizations. It didn't look at a whole series of organizations that we thought they could have looked at. On the tax side, there are still some benchmark tax measures that need to be looked at. There are 12 benchmark tax measures. They've reviewed two of them, so there are still 10 more to review; at least at the time of our audit, that's what we found. They may have been completed since then, but when our audit finished, they still had that to do.

Therefore, I can't give you a number and the numbers vary by which organization.... Sorry, I can't give you a number.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We're out of time on this one, but our representative from Finance would like to make a brief comment, so I'll give him the floor for a minute.

[Andrew Marsland]

Yes, I just wanted to clarify, and I think the commissioner did clarify it at the end. As of the time of the audit in June 2018, we had looked at two of the benchmark measures. Our commitment was to look at them by the end of 2018 and we met that commitment.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you.

Mr. Fisher, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Julie, I'm sorry to see you go. This is our last time together, but thank you for the last three and a half years.... Well, it's been three and a half for me.

[Julie Gelfand]

It's three and a half for you, yes. For those guys, I was around as well.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

Tunicates are a big problem in Nova Scotia. Minister Bernadette Jordan's riding of South Shore—St. Margarets is home to very popular and pre-eminent mussel farms. Mussel farms on the South Shore have been dealing with invasive tunicates attaching themselves to the mussels, and hurting and destroying the businesses. The socio-economic risks seem very, very high.

I was concerned to read in your report that DFO “did not implement adequate measures to prevent invasive species from becoming established” in our waters. I'm not sure if you want to comment on that, or should I go directly to Mr. Winfield? Do you have a comment on that portion of your report?