Environment Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[Julie Gelfand]

In each of these cases it's slightly different.

In the case of flood-plain maps, Environment and Climate Change Canada has not been producing them since 1996. The national guidelines are obsolete, and we've made a recommendation that Public Safety Canada develop guidelines and standards for flood-plain maps. Public Safety Canada did a study and indicated that it would take about five to 10 years to update the current maps, costing about $365 million.

It's important for people to know that about 35% of Canadian residences are not flood-plain mapped. Of the 65% that are mapped, 50% of those maps are out of date. These maps are important, particularly if you want to try to get flood-plain insurance.

In the case of the intensity duration of frequency curves, Environment and Climate Change Canada produces a few. They're not done consistently and systematically, but they do provide some methodology. Because it's such an important tool, what we've suggested is that they figure out, with the provinces and territories, and any other partner, how to get that information produced.

The bottom line is that we did not see an overall strategy. Have they gone out and asked decision-makers what information they need, and then tried to figure out how to meet those needs? What we found instead was that departments did what their mandate was and decided “yes” or “no”, we'll provide it, but there was no overall strategy to find out what decision-makers needed at the municipal level, what we can produce, and how we can provide that.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Do you know why they weren't doing that, and what were the barriers?

[Julie Gelfand]

You'd have to ask the department that.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

In terms of Health Canada, do they perform pre-market testing on cosmetics and consumer products? Perhaps you can provide your input, as well as Health Canada. Does Health Canada know or verify what is in products before they reach the marketplace?

As a second question, why did you not attach timelines for the agencies to come into line with your recommendations? It seems that it's easy to agree with something if there's no deadline to comply.

[Julie Gelfand]

That's a great question.

Cosmetics and most consumer products are not tested prior to being put on the shelves. Consumers need to understand that. That's the important part. I am not aware of any government that can or does test potentially 30,000 new products ahead of time, so what Health Canada operates is a post-market system. What is important to Health Canada, or what kicks their product safety system into gear, is safety incidents. I had one myself, and the more people I talk to, particularly women, the more I find out they've had a problem with their mascara, or their foundation, or their lipstick. Nobody realizes that Health Canada never gets that information.

We've been encouraging consumers to please call Health Canada if they do have a reaction to their shampoo or their mascara. Call Health Canada because it's with those safety incident reports that their system kicks into gear and they start looking at the risk. It would be virtually impossible, I think, for any government to pretest these products before they are put on the market.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

It's not practical. It has to be reactive.

[Julie Gelfand]

It's pretty much reactive.

On your question of timelines, it is not my understanding that we normally put timelines into our recommendations. I should tell you that Health Canada has already provided to us their action plan for this chapter, and that's a good thing. It does have timelines. I haven't had a chance to look at it, because I've been too busy releasing the report, but it's a great thing to see a department come up with an action plan so quickly.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

As a last question, Public Safety Canada estimates that every dollar invested in mitigation saves $3 to $5 in future recovery costs. Can you provide a little more detail on this?

[Julie Gelfand]

We can give you one example that we put in our report, which is the Red River Floodway in Manitoba, where they spent $50-odd million in the 1960s, and have probably saved over $8 billion in flood risks. Yes, absolutely, that information is correct. There are more examples of that, but that's the one we put in our report.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Great, thank you very much.

I want to reiterate that I appreciate the work the commission is doing in these two studies and past ones, so thank you. It's helpful, not only I'm sure for the government, but also for the opposition to get this information and, obviously, for all Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'm going to start with Mr. Fortin. You talked about your work with municipalities, and asset management plans, and developing those plans. I think it's extremely important that we do those, because all municipalities need to be prepared. Having been a municipal politician as well, I think that one of the problems we might be running into with the federal gas tax fund, or various different municipal infrastructure funding that comes from other levels of government, is that municipalities start to become dependent on it, and they're not planning their own asset management.

In the City of Kingston, in 1997, we introduced a 1% tax increase annually to build a pool of money for the purpose of infrastructure renewal. We, in Kingston, had started to develop an asset management plan well in advance of needing the particular assets. One of the concerns we always had about doing that was that being responsible and not having this dire-straits need at the last minute meant that we might not be taken as seriously when applying for infrastructure funding. I'm curious if you could comment on that and what the department's position would be on how you approach municipalities that do have these plans versus municipalities that don't.

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

That's a very good question.

Considering that we are a fairly young department, we have realized from working with the various partners, municipalities, and provinces that not everybody is at the same level from an asset management point of view. Some have very sophisticated plans, and some others don't have the same capacity in place.

Building on that, coming out of the recent budget, we have decided to partner with the FCM so they will have the capacity to go on the ground and to connect with municipalities that need some help with—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'm sorry for interrupting, but I have limited time here.

That's in order to help them create the plans, correct?

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

Yes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

What about the implementation of the plans? How will you view municipalities who have the plans versus municipalities who haven't chosen to go down that route?

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

The problem is that in some cases it creates a gap. When investing in infrastructure, it can become a burden in the future because it still needs to be maintained. This is also part of the asset management plan itself. It's not just to build capacity on the asset management plan, but it's also to maintain that. That's why we are right in the middle of negotiations with the FCM right now, so that we can cover both aspects of that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Ms. MacDonald, it's nice to see you again after your time with Corrections Canada in Kingston.

You talked about the change in the number of disasters occurring that are over $500 million. Prior to 1995 it was only three, and since 1996 to 2009 there was one per year. Can you qualify how you determine what a disaster is? Is what we're calling a disaster today the same thing we were calling a disaster back in 1995? I just want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples here.

[Lori MacDonald]

What we do, Mark, is we take a look at the request that comes from the province or territory with respect to a disaster financial assistance arrangement. If any province or territory puts in a request for what would be counted as a disaster, under a very specific definition that I don't have with me today—

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Who defines that definition?

[Lori MacDonald]

In our department we have a definition, but it's triggered by a request from the province or territory. Fort McMurray would be an example of that. The province or territory would put forward a request for assistance, and then we would count that in our category of statistics in terms of looking at that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I don't want to phrase this is in a way that implies I'm not believing that the disasters are legitimate, but I do know that an emergency preparedness plan by a municipality, for example, is quite vague—at least in Ontario in my experience—in terms of when you can activate it. I'm curious to know whether we're just seeing more activations of those declarations now than we were in the past. I want to get a sense of whether it is the case that this is really a change as a result of severe weather patterns that we're seeing now.

[Lori MacDonald]

We work very closely with Environment and Climate Change Canada as well as NRCan in terms of determining those with respect to how we define a disaster. It is very clear in terms of the science and in terms of the data that we are seeing an increase with respect to disasters. We are seeing that through the requests as well from the provinces and territories for disaster relief funding through the disaster financial assistance arrangement program.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay.

I saved you for the end, Ms. Gelfand, because you're a bit of a regular around here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!