Environment Committee on Sept. 29th, 2016

[The Chair (Mrs. Deborah Schulte (King—Vaughan, Lib.)), Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I call the meeting to order.

We'll get started, seeing that our guests are here and everyone who is going to be here is here. Welcome.

We are studying federal protected areas and conservation objectives.

I will ask that we have 15 minutes at the end of the meeting to go into committee business. We'll need to adopt our subcommittee report. We'll do that at the end of the meeting, if you don't mind, so that we can give our guests full attention and not delay their statements.

I want to welcome Ken Hardie, who is standing in for John Aldag. Thank you very much for coming back and joining us.

We have Rémi Massé standing in for Mark Gerretsen. Thank you very much for that.

Terry Sheehan is standing in for Darren Fisher.

We have a lot of stand-ins today. Everybody is running around trying to do a lot of things.

Wayne Stetski is standing in for Linda Duncan on this particular study. You've been with us the whole way through, so you are not really a stand-in, but we want to recognize that. Welcome to all.

We have three witnesses with us today. From Oceans North Canada, we have Trevor Taylor, who is the director of fisheries conservation. Welcome, Trevor, and thank you.

We have two witnesses from World Wildlife Fund-Canada: David Miller, president and chief executive officer, and Paul Crowley, vice-president, Arctic. Welcome, and thank you.

I will turn the floor over to you. Who would like to go first?

[Trevor Taylor, Director of Fisheries Conservation, Oceans North Canada]

Sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you, Trevor.

You have 10 minutes. We have a little process here. When you get within a minute of the end, I am going to hold up a little yellow card, just so I am not interrupting you, and when I hold up the red card, please wrap up, because that's the end of the 10 minutes. We always have a lot of questions, so we want to make sure we leave enough time for questions.

The floor is yours.

[Trevor Taylor]

Thank you, and I'll try to abide by that. I timed it at ten and a half minutes, and when I turn up my Newfoundlandspeak, it'll probably be eight and a half.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee, for the invitation to contribute to your study on protected areas and conservation objectives, including the potential for indigenous conservation initiatives.

My name, as you know now, is Trevor Taylor, fisheries conservation director for Oceans North Canada, a partnership of the Pew Charitable Trusts and Ducks Unlimited Canada. Oceans North promotes science-based and community-based conservation of Canada's northern seas consistent with Inuit land claims and traditional practices.

We support Arctic-ready industrial rules and standards for sustainable commercial fishing, environmentally responsible offshore hydrocarbon development, and safe Arctic shipping.

To be clear, Oceans North does not represent the Inuit. There are numerous Inuit organizations and talented leaders who can speak for themselves, but our approach to promoting and supporting ecological conservation in the Arctic deliberately begins with establishing partnerships with Inuit communities and organizations on shared objectives.

We do this for a simple reason. We do not believe that conservation projects or policies in the Canadian Arctic can be successful unless the Inuit drive it. Inuit have a legal claim on the land and sea of the Arctic, possess sophisticated traditional ecological knowledge about it, and are deeply invested in its future. A few examples illustrating our approach are included in our submission in front of you, but suffice it to say that we operate in each of the four Inuit land claims areas, as well as across Davis Strait in Greenland.

The Arctic is vitally important to Canada and makes up 68% of Canada's total shore. It stretches 165,000 kilometres from Baffin Island in the east to across the high Arctic archipelago, to the Mackenzie River delta and Yukon in the west. Just about every one of the 52 or 53 Inuit communities in Canada is built directly on the shore of the ocean, on tidewater.

Every square kilometre of the Arctic Ocean is associated with an Inuit land claim settled with the federal government. Protection of special marine areas in the Arctic should be part of the spirit and intent of implementing those Inuit land claims agreements in the ocean. Marine conservation areas, one of the subjects of the committee's inquiry, can provide an innovative part of the answer for Canada's Arctic ocean. Properly created and financed, these areas have the potential to protect key areas of ocean essential for Inuit communities and Arctic wildlife. These areas can be used to monitor the pace and extent of climate change and provide jobs and training opportunities for Inuit experts.

The good news is that the new federal government has committed to playing a major leadership role in the creation of a network of marine protected areas in the Arctic. To fully realize this commitment, though, the federal government must acknowledge and incorporate Inuit leadership in the identification, establishment, and ongoing management of key marine areas.

As map 1, which we've distributed to the committee, illustrates, in the Canadian Arctic Inuit experts have already identified over half of Arctic Ocean areas as important biological habitat that are needed to maintain a thriving marine ecosystem essential for continued use.

Scientists are finding that earlier targets, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity's 10% goal, are inadequate to maintain the basic ecological services humans need oceans to produce. For example, a recent examination of over 140 studies concluded that meeting basic environmental and human needs would require protecting 30% to 50% of ocean habitat. In addition, one of the fathers of modern biodiversity science, E.O. Wilson, recently issued an urgent call for protecting half of the earth's habitat as a way to prevent massive extinctions.

I apologize to the translators. All of the “Hs” are in there; it's just that they may be in the wrong order or may be in the wrong spots. Okay? That's a Newfoundland problem. Actually, it's not a Newfoundland problem; it's everybody else's problem. We are perfectly fine with it.

Emerging scientific thought is converging with Inuit knowledge on the importance of protecting Canada's Arctic Ocean habitat; however, less than 1% of the Arctic is currently protected.

How do we fill this gap? We suggest the principles that follow for proceeding with the implementation of the commitment to establish a network of marine protected areas in the Canadian Arctic.

Number one: to protect key ocean habitat important for maintaining Inuit use, Inuit, in partnership with the federal government, should select areas already identified by Inuit as being important to their culture and the wildlife they depend on.

Number two is that management and monitoring of these areas should be led by Inuit, resulting in significant jobs and training opportunities.

Number three is that Canada must uphold Inuit rights and continued use of ocean areas as legally mandated under land claims with the crown and morally required under international human rights norms.

Some of this might be self-evident, but it bears repeating.

The resulting network of marine protected areas should allow for Inuit hunting and fishing, but preclude mineral leasing, seismic testing, and industrial fishing. Areas should be integrated into an Arctic shipping policy in which Inuit play a significant role in designating and managing vessel corridors. As our second map illustrates, shipping routes overlap with identified ecological and cultural areas. Special standards should be established and classified by risk for ships travelling through biologically and culturally important areas.

Inuit and government researchers have worked together to integrate with western science the traditional knowledge built up over the generations to identify ecologically and biologically significant areas, such as Lancaster Sound in Nunavut, Prince Albert Sound in the Northwest Territories, and the Torngat fjords in Labrador. These kinds of areas, rich in biological productivity and important for Inuit communities, should be at the top of the government's list for protection.

Areas selected should be identified by Inuit as important for traditional activities, such as hunting, fishing, and travelling. They should be near northern communities to maximize continued use by people and local conservation jobs for monitoring and management, and they should be an ocean habitat that provides an abundance of key Arctic animals, birds, and fish, and other ecosystem services. We would be protecting abundance, in short.

The information needed to select these kinds of areas is held by numerous Inuit organizations and communities, as well as territorial and federal governments, scientists, NGOs, and industry. These principles, applied to the government's conservation targets in the Arctic, will result in a network of Arctic places important for people and the environment.

A network of marine conservation areas in the Arctic used by nearby Inuit communities provides a platform for the delivery of federal jobs, benefits, and services to local communities in support of natural resources management, as well as economic, social, and cultural well-being and resilience. Possibilities include jobs and training for management and operation of the marine conservation areas, community-based monitoring of ecological trends in climate change, vessel monitoring in key ecological and culturally important areas, and other services that could take advantage of Inuit ties to special areas or economies of scale from a community-based trained workforce, and so on.

Delivery of the desired programs could be enhanced through an Arctic-wide Inuit coastal stewardship program that could be developed along with the conservation areas. This would provide a baseline of capacity and a platform to enhance the delivery of desired programs. By ensuring that economic benefits are tied directly to the conservation objectives, a program like this would also enhance their durability.

Such a program of benefits would require the federal government to re-examine its current practices with respect to the use of Inuit impact and benefit agreements that have been employed for protected areas by Parks Canada and the DFO. In our opinion, the current approach and thinking around the negotiation of these agreements are inadequate for the task ahead.

The current thinking in these departments appears to be satisfied with fulfilling what are seen as the minimum legally required steps to accommodate Inuit rights. The current approach seems to think of benefits to Inuit communities as a kind of programmatic add-on or afterthought when it's perceived by the federal government that there may be impacts on traditional use and occupancy in protected areas.

We need to flip that script.

We need to see the new shared leadership model as situating Inuit communities not as one aspect of or an adjunct or add-on to protected areas, but as constituting the very core of the planning, establishment, and management of protected areas. This new model of shared leadership would incorporate but also go beyond existing and enhanced ecological conservation measures and after-the-fact compensation or impact and benefit agreements. It should start with an essential role for Inuit communities at the front end of the design process. As well, it should incorporate funded support for locally delivered services to local communities in support of their economic, social, and cultural well-being and resilience.

Generally speaking, the 20th century approach to protected area creation has not provided an essential role to the indigenous people who are most intimately acquainted with many of these places—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Trevor, may I just hold you for a minute?

Do I have unanimous consent to let Trevor carry on? He's probably got another minute or two.

[Trevor Taylor]

It's two paragraphs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

There's a little bit to go. Are you okay with that? Are we all good?

[Voices]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay, please carry on. Thank you.

[Trevor Taylor]

Thank you.

Generally speaking, the 20th century approach to protected area creation has not provided an essential role to the indigenous people who are most intimately acquainted with many of these places. In traditional models, the general Canadian public has been the main audience, and programs are geared at educating and engaging visitors. In the north, however, Inuit maintain a fundamental and uninterrupted relationship with these natural areas.

We have heard that the Arctic is not a park. This notion reflects the idea that parks are perceived as places separate from people, where nature is to be preserved and undisturbed, but people in the north, in particular, are part of that nature and those places. Northern MPAs should reflect that and should strive to reset this model and to primarily serve the communities that use, manage, and protect them. These protected areas should be integrated into many aspects of community life and should serve as a tool and platform for broader local investments. We see the task of establishing a network of marine protected areas in the Arctic as both an historic opportunity and a heavy responsibility.

That said, we could not be more enthusiastic about the recent bold steps toward this goal. We are encouraged by the actions thus far and believe it is not overdramatizing to say that we are at a crossroads with respect to Canada's relationship with the Arctic and Inuit. We are headed in the right direction. The question is whether we have the imagination and political will—“will” generally is probably a better term—to move forward in a meaningful way.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much, Trevor.

What we're going to do is listen to all the witnesses. Paul and David can do their presentations, and then we'll start rounds of questioning, if you don't mind.

David, please go ahead.

[David Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer, World Wildlife Fund-Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm David Miller and the president over World Wildlife Fund-Canada. I'm joined by Paul Crowley, who is our vice-president, Arctic.

I'll give a couple of introductory remarks, and then Paul will give the substance of our presentation today.

For nearly 50 years, WWF-Canada has worked to protect nature here and internationally. We are Canada's largest international conservation organization. We have offices in Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, St. John's, and with relevance today, Iqaluit and Inuvik, and we have the active support of more than 150,000 Canadians.

We work in places that are unique and ecologically important so that nature, wildlife, habitat, and people thrive together.

We do this by working with communities, with industry, with academia and government, drawing on science, and by doing so we focus our efforts in Canada on increasing marine protection, on habitat-friendly renewable energy, on freshwater health, sustainable fisheries, and wildlife habitat conservation.

Today we'll share recommendations that we think are bold and whose time has come, especially considering that the changing climate is altering the Arctic environment faster than any other on the planet and putting species and people at risk.

Mr. Crowley will tell you about the dated practice of insisting on mineral and energy resource assessments before an area can be considered for protection. You'll hear how the Canadian Petroleum Resources Act puts oil and gas ahead of all other concerns in the Canadian Arctic and why it's time that stopped, and you'll learn about a respectful approach to marine protected areas that puts Inuit at the helm.

We will offer you concrete suggestions for conservation and sustainable development in this iconic but rapidly changing Canada environment.

On behalf of World Wildlife Fund-Canada, I say how heartened we are to see the work of the committee, and we're happy to support it in any way we can.

I'd now like to turn the podium over to Mr. Crowley.

[Paul Crowley, Vice-President, Arctic, World Wildlife Fund-Canada]

Thank you, David.

As Trevor said earlier, we approach our work with a community-first approach. We know that in the long term, conservation will only be sustainable in the Arctic if it's community driven and community supported and provides benefits to those communities.

We have a long-time presence in Nunavut. I have been there for over 20 years now and I am based there. I know that working with communities is often difficult, and it's difficult for governments to do when they're far away. However, it is incredibly rewarding, and ultimately it is the only path to truly sustainable change.

We're thrilled with Canada's commitment toward marine conservation. We're thrilled that it was adopted in the government platform and then repeated in the Obama-Trudeau joint statement. It was said there to be a milestone and not a destination. We think that's important.

As has been pointed to earlier, there is a developing consensus around the world that 10% will not be enough. The figure of 30% has been put forward by the World Parks Congress as a number that is probably a bare minimum. In the Arctic, in a region that is experiencing so much change, 30% is probably not sufficient. We're probably looking at a much higher number, closer to 50%, as was stated earlier.

With regard to how to get there, the first step is to finish what has started. When looking at the national marine conservation area for Lancaster Sound that the communities have been requesting for over 30 years, it would be timely to get on with that and to protect the whole region that the communities have been asking for.

There's also a great opportunity in the Arctic to move toward the interim goals of 5% and 10%, particularly when we look at the government's approach of ensuring that large pristine areas are protected. The Arctic certainly has many of those.

We know that ecologically and biologically significant areas have been broadly identified, mapped, and described within Canada's Arctic marine environment. That should be the starting point for new consultations with northern communities for new marine protected areas.

We do have to streamline this approach. Seven years, which is the minimum that it has taken up to now to create a marine protected area, just won't get us to those goals in a timely way.

We offer some recommendations.

Identification of sites should be community driven. There's no disagreement on that. Inuit are the holders of traditional and local knowledge. They are the ones who bear all of the risks and receive the benefits associated with the marine use in their areas.

We must also look at other biologically important areas that may not be immediately adjacent to communities but that are still important for the biodiversity of the region, to ensure that the areas close to these communities are also well connected.

Looking at ecologically and biologically significant areas that are outside of immediate adjacency from communities or outside of land claim areas is also very important.

We suggest the last ice area. The last ice area is the area where summer sea ice is going to retreat to over the coming decades. We know from projections that the last summer sea ice—summer sea ice is an incredibly important habitat, as is the ice edge—is retreating, and the last remnants of it will be in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago or north of the Arctic Archipelago. We propose that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should be looking for significant protection for this area.

We also suggest an area called the Pikialasorsuaq. That's a Greenlandic word for “upwelling” and refers to the North Water Polynya, the most productive polynya in the Arctic. A polynya is an area that stays free of ice, even in the winter. This area, which is shared between Greenland and Canada, with much of it on the Canadian side, is the most important area in which to feed for plankton and phytoplankton in all of the eastern Arctic waters.

At the moment there is an Inuit-led commission, the Pikialasorsuaq Commission, that is considering the future of this area. Certainly the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should be looking to their report, which is due out by the end of this calendar year, but we submit that we should be looking for the department to engage in discussions of the possible protection of the area as a large pristine area.

We also believe that there needs to be thought given to Inuit impact and benefit agreements to streamline the process. In a region where poverty is endemic, these agreements are extremely important for community and economic development, and there is economic and community development that can happen from conservation.

We also know that across the Arctic there are four land claim regions, and each holds different sets of rights. We recommend that the Government of Canada create an equitable and transparent financing formula, as well as high minimum standards, for community management for the impact and benefit agreements across all four land claims. It's critical that these negotiations be transparent, parallel, and rise to the highest level, not fall to the lowest floor. It's critical that these negotiations begin with Inuit organizations immediately and in parallel to the identification process.

With regard to minimum standards, setting minimum standards for the creation of marine protected areas does not end up being a completely new negotiation of regulations for each one. Setting minimum standards is important to not only streamline the process but also to ensure that protected areas are not just paper parks or lines on a map, that they actually do protect the biodiversity and provide benefit for the communities that are nearby.

Mineral and energy resource assessments, or MERAs, are currently required before an area is protected by a policy that was adopted some time ago. They often take a lot of time and they end up stalling the process. In the case of the Lancaster Sound national marine conservation area, the MERA has been a bone of contention.

We submit that this policy should be revisited. It is discretionary. Its application should be revisited, and it should be updated into the modern era to reflect all of the concerns that communities have now, not just the concerns about petroleum development.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Crowley, hang on a minute. We are over your time. We are probably about another minute and a bit until the end.

Do I have unanimous consent to continue?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. I am sorry to interrupt. I needed to do that. Thank you.

[Paul Crowley]

Thank you.

On the MERAs, we are just reflecting that Parks Canada itself has also recommended that this policy be updated.

Regarding oil and gas, we submit that marine protected areas should exclude all oil and gas development, including seismic activity. It's just not compatible with protection.

At the moment, officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have told us that they are not entertaining marine protected areas where there may be existing oil and gas rights. This is under the 30-year-old Canada Petroleum Resources Act, which gave petroleum absolute priority over every other value and did not consider any other value. We think this is wrong and should be changed. We also believe that it is wrong-headed to provide indefinite rights, as the Canada Petroleum Resources Act does. To give indefinite rights is just not defensible.

Finally, we submit that the revisions of the Oceans Act that are coming our way should consider new approaches, such as Inuit marine protected areas where, when there is a clear expression of a desire to protect the marine area by the community, a rapid process—not a 30-year process—to deploy that protection should ensue, driven by the community itself and assisted by the Government of Canada. Inuit conservation management, allowing for continued harvesting and community uses, would be paramount.

I'd just like to conclude.

The Arctic is a heritage that is important not only to the communities that are there; it's also a heritage that Canada holds for the rest of the planet as well. It is vital for the well-being of communities. It's also vital for the planet. We believe that a minimum goal of 30% protection over the long term, perhaps more, is what we should be aiming for.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

We'll open the floor to questions.

I want to welcome Michael McLeod, who is standing in for Mark Gerretsen.

Go ahead, Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses. It's wonderful to see such committed and reputable conservation organizations testifying before us today.

In the interest of full disclosure, in a past life prior to being elected, I served as legal counsel on issues of offshore drilling projects in the Beaufort for WWF.

My first question goes to Mr. Taylor.

I've been impressed with the work that Oceans North has done, particularly the Inuit-first approach and the collaboration with communities. I commend the integrated shipping framework report that you came out with recently to all members here. It's actually a crucial piece in the marine protected areas discussion.

Would Oceans North agree with WWF's assessment of the need to review the approach to prioritizing mineral and energy resource assessments prior to the establishment of conservation? Is that something that Oceans North is on side with as well? That would lend strength to the recommendation that we might consider making.

[Trevor Taylor]

Absolutely. We would certainly agree and support that type of recommendation.

It seems preposterous that it takes 30 or 40 years. In the case of Lancaster Sound, there's been a 40-year discussion in trying to get a park established, but it would be less than 40 months, probably, if an oil company wanted to come in today and do something in that same area by going through the regulatory hoops and whatnot. I don't know what the exact timeline would be, but relatively speaking, there are orders of magnitude and differences there.

That has been the priority. Our priorities need to be re-examined. There are other values in the Canadian Arctic in particular that need to be considered and protected. We would fully support the observation of World Wildlife Fund on this matter.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

In regard to Mr. Crowley's suggestion that a review of the CPRA, the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, is necessary, would you agree that the approach of the CPRA to enable issuances of exploration licences be made subject to a broader marine planning exercise whereby conservation priorities ought to be identified first, prior to the issuance of licences that would lead to exploratory opportunities in oil and gas?

Is that something you would agree with? I will put the same question to Mr. Taylor.

[Paul Crowley]

Yes. Our view is that the whole of the regulatory regime for oil and gas in the Arctic needs to be reviewed. It is dated. It dates back to the late 1970s, when there was only one value put forward, and that was to encourage exploration.

In the interim, we know that other values have become more known. Certainly, community values were already there, but we know more of them now. Other economic values, such as like fishing and conservation, are also present. Furthermore, we're in a new world of climate change, where eventually there will be a hard cap on greenhouse gases, and Canada will have to live in that world.

The whole of the regulatory regime for oil and gas should be updated. Other jurisdictions—for instance, Norway—do conduct strategic environmental assessments on a region before they allow for permits within that region for oil and gas rights. They have a planning approach that Canada does not have yet.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Taylor, how would you react to that?

[Trevor Taylor]

I'd agree.

I want to observe very generally on this point that after 40 or 50 years, maybe it's time to sit back and reflect on our whole approach in the Arctic as it relates to resource development.

We're not anti-resource development, not by any stretch of the imagination. Just to bring up a related topic, actually, there is the Baffinland mine. We think it would quite likely be a very positive development for Nunavut.

That said, we have to bear in mind that for 40 or 50 years some people have chased the dream of Arctic oil and gas, and with one small exception, there has been no oil and gas hauled out of the Canadian Arctic—well, two minor exceptions, I guess.

Regarding mines, can you tell me what the longest-operating mine in the Canadian Arctic has been? It's less than 25 years. There's no mine in the Canadian Arctic that has lasted longer than 25 years. Are these important? Yes. If they can be done in a sustainable way, great, but these things are not big economic drivers. They're not big taxation or royalty drivers, so it's time to look at it a bit differently.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Miller wanted to have a few words on that, but maybe we can pick it up with subsequent questioning.

Mr. Fast is next.