Environment Committee on Dec. 8th, 2016

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

Thank you.

It feels like a bit of a homecoming day. It's fantastic to see many former Parks Canada colleagues here, all of them highly respected in the area. It was an organization I know I've talked about before. I was part of it for more than three decades, and I'm proud to see the work that continues to go into the organization.

I'm mostly going to do a quick, shameless bit of public service announcement encouraging everybody to go online and get their Discovery Pass for 2017 as part of Canada's 150 celebrations. I understand there's been a great uptake, and I look forward to seeing Rouge welcoming many people into 2017 and beyond.

I'm going to start with a quick acknowledgement because we get into the clause-by-clause later today.

Mr. Watson, I recognize the elements of this that are outside of the Rouge, the changes that are going to be made to the new parks and historic sites account to be used in a broader manner. I was able to speak to that in the House. I've worked in parks that have passed that establishment threshold and could benefit from this kind of access to ongoing funds. I hope my colleagues will support that piece when we get to it. I also had the opportunity to work in Wood Buffalo from 1986 to 1991 and was there under the 1984 plan that had committed to the excision of lands for Garden River as a reserve, and it's great to see that happening.

With that, I'm now going to move to Rouge and this question of ecological integrity because that's the key issue we need to understand today.

Mr. Watson, I'd like to get your perspective as the head of Parks Canada Agency. We've heard the former head, Mr. Latourelle, speak about the issues and concerns.

Would you be able to give us a sense of where the agency's thinking is today on this question of ecological integrity, and why it is important today to have it as part of this legislation that we're considering?

[Daniel Watson]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think the first reason it's important is that the province was very clear that without changes to the legislation it was not going to transfer the land. Having an entire contiguous body of land under a single regime that is a known regime, that builds on an institution that is the oldest national park service in the world, is infinitely better than having a situation in which you have two, three, four, or several blocks of land under several different regimes, maybe for a considerable period of time.

As people have noted, this work has been going on for some 30 or 40 years. At different points in time, people have gotten very close to things. Certainly, the opportunity to get the transfer under way—and I can confirm that the discussions have been very serious and are moving forward and that we have a time frame now in sight, next year—provides a very exciting opportunity to bring this single block of land, from the shores of Lake Ontario all the way up to the Oak Ridges Moraine, under a single piece of legislation to govern the whole thing.

The province's insistence on changes that they judged acceptable—and they have seen the language around ecological integrity—is something we have been able to manage in conversations with a broad range of players. Agriculture has been mentioned, but we've also worked with first nations in these conversations, as an important part of this. We're obviously trying to be very true to the core purpose of Parks Canada, as reflected by the fact that what is imported here is in fact the very language from the Canada National Parks Act.

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

Okay, great. Thank you.

The next question I have for you is this. We heard from Mr. Robb today the request or suggestion of an amendment to the bill that's before us. In the handout that we received, the request is that the park management plan will support and complement the implementation of pre-existing Oak Ridges Moraine, Greenbelt, Rouge Park, and Watershed conservation plans.

I'm wondering whether you could offer a comment, from Parks Canada's perspective, about whether that is an appropriate amendment to put forward. As I read it, it seems to include more policy pieces, which may not be appropriate within a legislative framework, but before we get to the debate, I'd like to get the agency's perspective on this amendment, so that we'll have it when we deliberate this today.

[Daniel Watson]

The first I saw of it was when it was shown here, so this is a short-term assessment. I guess I would say a couple of things, though.

The first is that Canada's national parks are national treasures, and they're for all Canadians. We have learned, sometimes the hard way, over the last 130 years that consultations with all Canadians are a very important part of making sure that these treasures reflect the values that we want to see in them and reflect the realities that we expect to see in a national park system.

At the same time, we recognize that there are people in local areas who are more affected by some of those decisions than people may be on the other side of the country, so we work very hard to make sure that we both bring a national perspective to things and also pay close attention to what people locally are interested in and are hoping to see.

To build into legislation something that is very local in nature, when the process for consulting on those things did not extend to the 35 million Canadians whose heritage we are very much trying to make them understand is theirs.... Those processes don't give the type of involvement, the type of room for consideration, that one would expect to see in the national institution.

In terms of the planning process, outside of the legislation, we would fully expect that anybody who wanted to bring a perspective on what was the right thing to do in a national park or a national urban park would do so, and we would expect to see that issue play out.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kent.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you very much again, Chair.

Just as a comment for the record to Mr. Watson's point that he felt that Ontario wouldn't transfer the Ontario lands without ecological integrity, I think the record should show that ecological integrity was a secondary condition of the Ontario government. The first condition was an ask for $100 million as payment for the transfer of the lands.

But my question is to Ms. Sumner.

In response to the Ontario claim that the Rouge National Urban Park, as originally provided for in Bill C-40, is not up to Ontario standards, I wonder whether you could share with the committee what the specific provincial legislation is that applies to the current provincial Rouge lands that the federal government didn't meet in the original legislation.

[Janet Sumner]

Certainly. I think I referenced the Oak Ridges Moraine act, which actually has in it the promise of hydrological and ecological integrity. I can get the official language and forward it to the committee for your consideration, but that is one piece of legislation that actually includes that in there, from Ontario. We support that because for us it was also about it qualifying and being considered a protected area under IUCN standards. It was both of those things.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

To Mr. Latourelle, in the four years that the consultations and development of the Rouge National Urban Park plan was in the works, were you able to have any consultations at all with Ontario Parks with regard to their conditions, their priorities, or the interaction of federal and provincial law?

[Alan Latourelle]

I'm being cautious because I want to be careful not to share information that I've had through that process. I think the only comment I'll make is that we had a very positive, productive relationship with the Ontario officials. We worked hard together to actually get to the agreement that's been signed with Ontario. From there, we worked very successfully with all the landowners at the landowners' table, as they were the first ones we wanted to engage because they had to provide their lands to the park.

I think since then, throughout all of this, we consulted with about 20,000 Canadians at that time. We spent a huge amount of time working and building the relationship with farmers, for example, who, I would say when we started, would have been against a park. We built a relationship one contact at a time as an agency at that time.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you.

Again, coming back to the point, I believe everyone around this table does want to see the park completed, the Bill C-18 amendments notwithstanding. I wonder, Mr. Watson, of the $143.7 million committed by the previous government for the first 10-year development of the park, we know that, under Superintendent Veinotte a lot of work has been going on for the lands already controlled federally. I'm just wondering if you could update us on the amount of expenditure to date and the accomplishments to date.

[Daniel Watson]

Sir, in terms of the accomplishments, a number of things are going on, and I'll get to the numbers here in a moment. I may have to get back with the specifics.

We've begun, in partnership with the conservation authority, to offer programming. One of the biggest things that we've done so far is to have schoolchildren attending from across the GTA, and they've participated in a whole range of projects. We had over 300 public events last year from all across the community: hiking activities, learning to camp. It is in fact our premier “learn to camp” place across the country. We've been doing bioblitzes as well, which gets people involved in counting different species and engaging in them.

We have just under 40 staff there at this point in time, so having gone from just a handful, we're up to nearly 40 at this point in time, as we get ready, moving into the future.

In terms of the other work, obviously working with the province, I can, just in answer to an earlier question, confirm that the province has in fact responded to the park management plan draft at this point in time. They did so in the month of September. We have spent $2.5 million to date in conservation, and I'd be happy to provide a more detailed breakdown later on if that's of interest.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you very much, and congratulations on that. It's only regrettable that Ontario, in delaying transfer of the lands, has allowed dumping of garbage, poaching, all sorts of traffic-control issues and so forth to happen, and we look forward, as speedily as possible, to completing that transfer in whatever form Bill C-18 eventually emerges.

[Daniel Watson]

I'm pleased to report that some of the 40 are law enforcement officers down there looking for speeders and dumpers and other people like that.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

That's good to hear.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much. That's great.

Mr. Amos.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to all of the witnesses. We appreciate that five minutes each is not a lot of time, and you have been very concise. I'll try to do the same.

First, I should say thank you to all of you for your respective involvement in this file. I think we can all agree that this is a really important Canadian initiative and no matter what the outcome of this legislative debate, we're on the right path.

I would like Mr. Watson to help us look forward. This park initiative is a really interesting example of intergovernmental collaboration. It's a complicated one involving all sorts of levels of government.

I wonder if you can comment on what lessons have been learned about the nature of how Parks Canada co-operates with other governments and what can be improved going forward. I would invite you not to limit this just to Ontario, but how does this help us consider, and how should we consider this as a committee, given that we're about to write another report on the broader context? How does it speak to that kind of co-operation?

[Daniel Watson]

Thank you very much for the question.

I would say that setting up a national park is a breathtaking experience. Parks Canada has done it 46 times, and they are always complicated. Part of this is about the creation of a park from 1922, with the business of the Garden River excision here. That is a park that, while it was created almost 100 years ago, still isn't finished. If you talk to the Mikisew Cree, if you talk to the Garden River First Nation, if you talk to the GNWT, or if you talk to the province of Alberta, they sure aren't finished talking to us either on this.

These things are always complicated. They are complicated when you have different orders of government. They are complicated when you have very passionate interests that are brought to them. They are complicated whether there are 20 million people living within a short drive away from it, or whether in some of our northern parks there is nobody living within a two-hour's drive because you can't drive there. They are always very challenging.

I think what's important that we relearn about this is that if parks are going to be successful in the long term, then there has to be enough common ground built into the starting point to allow people to continue to work together. We have learned that again and again. There are points in time in this country where we barred first nations people from participating in parks and from doing things they had done there for thousands of years. We learned the hard way that was wrong.

There are other places where we went in and we evicted people as a way of creating parks. We discovered that didn't make for the types of relationships you needed to be successful going forward.

There were other points in time where we thought we understood what was important to go on in that park, and we didn't ask a whole lot of other people. We learned that didn't make for a very successful park.

I think it's probably a good idea that we're 130 years in before we tried something as complex as Rouge National Urban Park. We learned a lot of lessons along the way. The core of that is you have to listen to people. The core of that is it's not always our stories as an agency, but it's a broad range of Canadian stories that need to be brought to bear. That's something we've learned. Patience is something you relearn in this business again and again.

To me, those would be some of the key lessons we've learned that we can take forward.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

I would like to give the opportunity for my colleague to continue with the line of questioning he has.

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

I'm going to turn to Mr. Woodley.

You touched a bit on this related to the ecological integrity, but I was going through some of the Bill C-40, which is the original legislation for Rouge National Urban Park, and I came across a figure from whatever the point in time was. There's a quote that says, “Our own Parks Canada experts have determined that approximately 72% of the current Rouge Park is disturbed.”

I would like to get your thoughts related to ecological integrity. That seems like a high level of disturbance. Is that enough reason to not consider ecological integrity? I think you touched on this a bit, but I would like to get your further thoughts on looking at that level of disturbance and how ecological integrity may be appropriate to have within this legislation dealing with this kind of level of disturbance.

[Dr. Stephen Woodley]

I think the fundamental point about the Rouge is that it's the very best of what remains, and it's important to protect that. It has values that don't exist anywhere else in the GTA.

Yes, it has been disturbed. Parks Canada has a history of dealing rather well with disturbed landscapes. If you look at P.E.I. or if you look at St. Lawrence islands, they both had high degrees of disturbance, and there have been major restoration efforts there to improve ecological integrity on those sites.

Again, I would go back to it's being a relativist kind of opportunity, and the Rouge remains the best opportunity. The Rouge is a visionary place because it's going to connect the people of Toronto and visitors to Toronto with nature, and that's visionary and a great opportunity.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much. We appreciate that.

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to all our witnesses.

I have a question for Mr. Latourelle. Looking at Bill C-18 and the proposed subsection 6(1) that actually highlights the ecological integrity, it also refers to the protection of natural processes. I think that's probably also signalled in the definition of ecological integrity, where it talks about rates of change and supporting processes. What do you understand that to mean? Should we be concerned that there are processes we would just have to let happen? What are your comments?

[Alan Latourelle]

I'll speak from experience. For example, one of the natural processes that has usually been used, in which Parks Canada is an international leader, is prescribed burns, for example, for ecological reasons and also in terms of fire management.

What we did in Parks Canada and what we've been doing for several decades is manage those responsibly. That's the type of natural processes that we would manage, but always considering the local reality. There are places where we've done a lot of burns historically, in Banff for example, and managed those. There are other places such as Grasslands National Park where we've been a lot more conservative in our approach when we were doing it. I say we were doing it, but I think natural processes are those types of things. The use of fire is one example, but again, with a responsible approach and a local engagement approach.