Environment Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

[Silvia D'Amelio]

I honestly couldn't tell you, because we just about did away with memberships this past year.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Oh. I used to have one.

You have many chapters.

[Silvia D'Amelio]

We have supporters. We have volunteers. We're at 10,000 to 20,000 and growing every day. It's constantly ebbing and flowing.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Right.

You talked about different organizations, some of them government, in the sense of Parks Canada, the fisheries department, and the rest of it, and then you talked about NGOs. How is your relationship with the government agencies you work with?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

It's good, actually.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Can you give me an example?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

We have a lot of partnerships with different provincial agencies and even with federal agencies.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

The federal ones are the ones I'm thinking of.

[Silvia D'Amelio]

We've been active in advising on changes to the federal Fisheries Act over the last five years, and that's ongoing. We've been active in the comments and revisions to the RFCPP, the funding program.

Currently we're working with a number of NGOs. We just came out of two days of meetings on the potential establishment of a fish habitat strategy or national plan. Along with a lot of not-for-profit organizations, we are lucky to be able to interact with the federal government in a variety of different ways.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Do you do joint projects, let's say with Ducks Unlimited, which I'm very familiar with? Do you do joint projects with NGOs?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

With other NGOs, absolutely, including Ducks Unlimited.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Can you give me an example?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

There's Cows and Fish. We probably have about 15 or 20 projects on the ground with them.

I know of a couple of projects with Ducks Unlimited in Ontario, where it has done the wetland work and we've done the adjoining stream work, mostly on private lands in that case.

We have a number of them. With OFAH, actually, we were the lead before it took the lead on the Atlantic salmon restoration or repatriation program.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You mentioned invasive species. Quagga mussels and zebra mussels have been a huge issue that is coming west. What's your role in that?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

That's a really tough one. We've just launched a new campaign and fund. It's called “Stop the Spread”, and it is raising money to increase education and stop the spread of not only invasives but pathogens as well, in looking at things like VHS and whirling disease.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

How are you dealing with whirling disease?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

How do you deal with whirling disease? You can't get rid of it, but you can attempt to stop the spread. The reality with whirling disease is that it's likely in a lot more places than we've looked.

Whirling disease requires a very specific set of conditions to express itself. Amazingly enough, those conditions are high water temperature, poor water quality, and low water oxygen. In theory, then, if we clean up our water, whether whirling disease is there or not, it should not be expressed. Keeping our watersheds healthy is important.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Let's go back to the mussels for a minute. What exact activities are you doing, other than education. Is it just education?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

The invasive species issue has not been a priority for TUC in the past. It has just come to the forefront for us in, I would say, the last three months. We're starting with education. We're going to be developing cleaning kits for boats and anglers and a variety of other tools.

We are active right now with the provincial government in Alberta in dealing with whirling disease. We're going to be helping with some of the monitoring and assessment. We're getting involved where we can, but we don't want to step on other people's toes.

OFAH has a great program on invasive species in Ontario. We're likely to partner with it instead of starting something new.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Is there any ask that you would have at the federal level in sitting here and listening to this? What's something that you would say would help you?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

Do you mean with regard to invasive species or generally?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Anything generally.

[Silvia D'Amelio]

I'm going to say right now that the increased communication and willingness to hear what the not-for-profits are doing is a massive step, but I think the biggest thing we can do in this country is to recognize that not only is the health of our watersheds paramount in our own health and the health of our fishes and animals, but it's actually an economic benefit. We're starting to see that if we can clean up our waters upstream, it's cheaper to treat water in municipalities.

When we start actually bringing that into the economics of how we run our country, our provinces, and our municipalities, they don't have to conflict. I think that if we start accounting for that, we'll see major gains in this country.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You said “conflict”. Where's the conflict?

[Silvia D'Amelio]

There's a general belief that being environmentally friendly is costly, but it's actually not if you run the numbers in the long term. It can be quite beneficial.