Environment Committee on Dec. 8th, 2016

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

In your testimony you referred to the potential for the current drafting of proposed section 6 to possibly lead to divisive campaigns to restrict visitors and close down agriculture. Is that something you've seen in the past? Could expand a little bit on why you would have that concern based on the current drafting of Bill C-18?

[Alan Latourelle]

I've seen this in the past in terms of specific areas within the country. I think in the Rouge, to be very frank, when all of this started, that's where everyone was at. There were a lot of different perspectives during the initial two years of our process. My concern is to make sure that people don't use Parks Canada and the Rouge Park in every state of the park report.

Like Stephen has mentioned, if 70% of it is disturbed, we want to acknowledge success. We don't want people to come back in five years from now in the first state of our park report and bash Parks Canada and the people of the Rouge because the park is not meeting the ecological integrity standard. It won't in the first five years, that's for sure. In the first 25 years, it won't.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

You also mentioned that, as a practical reality, you felt that the nature of the lands made it impossible to achieve ecological integrity as it's currently defined in this bill.

[Alan Latourelle]

I think the reality is that as people assess ecological integrity, there are different aspects of it in terms of the ecological integrators internationally and within Parks Canada. Disturbance is one clearly, and fragmentation is another one. In this case, huge fragmentation is a reality of this place. I'm not saying that we shouldn't create a park, because otherwise we wouldn't have started the process, but I think by putting in place the ecological integrity standard within a very fragmented park, my concern is that it's going to take so much time that, basically, over the next 25 years, a lot of money will be spent. People here today all want it, and all want that standard and celebrate it. In 10 or 15 years from now, different people will be around, and they may be using the fact that Parks Canada has not met that standard negatively. That's my main concern.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I share my colleague Mr. Kent's concern that the process somewhere along the way became highly politicized. Mr. Kent suggested that at some point in time the provincial government in Ontario asked for a payment of $100 million for the transfer of provincial lands into this park.

Are you independently aware of that request actually having been made?

[Alan Latourelle]

I cannot answer that question today. I'm sorry.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Do you have the information, or do you simply not...?

[Alan Latourelle]

I don't have the information. It's been documented in the press. In Parliament it has been stated. There is documentation, I'm sure, in Parks Canada, but I think it would be unfair for me to share internal information about Parks Canada that is very specific.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right, but you can confirm that ecological integrity was not one of the priorities raised originally, when discussions about transfer of provincial lands—

[Alan Latourelle]

The agreement is a public document. In the agreement it is very clear that those words are not there.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Right, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay.

Next up we have Mr. Garretsen.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to start with a question that I'm relaying from another member; the member for Pickering—Uxbridge asked me to ask this. I believe this is for Parks Canada, if you could provide some insight.

Green Durham Association has submitted a brief, and in it they ask for two small gateways to connect the future residents of Seaton and the community of Claremont, both of which are in the city of Pickering. The two land connections are owned by Transport Canada but were not transferred in this legislation.

Do you know what the process would be or how we can ensure that these connections are made, which would then allow the Rouge Park to connect to the Trans Canada Trail through Uxbridge?

[Daniel Watson]

I have an answer for that. We have an excellent field unit superintendent by the name of Pam Veinotte, who is here today and would be pleased to get the information to the questioner and to set up a meeting to have a conversation about it.

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

Thank you. I'll definitely pass that along.

Moving over to the discussion about ecological integrity—Mr. Woodley or somebody else or whoever wants to can jump in on this—can you offer some information as to what the practical effect will be on park management? What does it practically mean?

Mr. Robb?

[Jim Robb]

Let me start. I'll just give you a couple of comments.

This legislation is separate from the Canada National Parks Act, so although it adopts the ecological integrity definition, it is a separate piece of legislation and it flows from 30 years ago.

The roots of this flow from a report called “Parks 2000” by John Theberge. In that “Parks 2000” report, John Theberge laid out that new types of parks that Parks Canada would create might involve more partnerships. They already involve many partnerships, but perhaps more partnerships.

The Rouge is a model of that, and in moving to a new model wherein you have these partnerships and you're bringing parks to people, the idea is that you cannot be high-handed, that you can actually support what has already been done, such as the greenbelt plan.

The basis for the Rouge legislation and plans is the greenbelt plan of 2005. They gave the Rouge the policy priority in that area. Ecological integrity and practicality, as Dr. Woodley said, are relative, and in the Rouge, Environment Canada has actually—for Great Lakes “areas of concern”, which the Rouge is—put down definitions of what they think ecological integrity means. Those definitions are based on whether the biodiversity is similar to what that area could support, whether the water running through the rivers is clean, and whether it meets standards.

There are already, then, criteria established by Environment Canada for what ecological integrity would mean in the Rouge. In the Rouge, the Environment Canada standards are that 50% to 60% of the park landscape would, in the long term—and this could be 40 or 50 years away—be in a natural sort of cover, and that natural cover could include some types of agricultural use.

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

How is that different from what is currently out there, which is that the minister consider the health of the ecosystems?

[Jim Robb]

We actually went to an Ecojustice lawyer, John Swaigen, who literally wrote the book on environmental law. He was one of the founders of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. I worked with him when I was a vice-chair with the environmental assessment board with the province. He was the chair of the environmental appeal board.

John's advice to us, after researching it, was that ecological health is very ill-defined. It's defined in so many different ways. In Canada, thanks to Parks Canada, we already have a good definition for ecological integrity.

People in the GTA want a first-class park. They don't want a second-class park, so what you are doing today is giving the GTA an opportunity, long term, to have a first-class national park. Right now it may be fragmented, but I've travelled east and west to many of our parks, and I love them all. I came back to an area that I used to bicycle to when I was a kid, and I found this to be the most biologically rich area in Canada.

It's really special. Even Lord Simcoe knew that. Lord Simcoe asked for a land grant in the Rouge as one of his perks of being the lieutenant-governor way back in the late 1700s.

Ecological integrity is an aspirational goal. It will take a century for us to get close to it. Also, because there were first nations farms in the past, which have been a part of its landscape for hundreds of years, that will be part of the ecological integrity in this area.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Aldag will take my last minute.

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

I'll jump over to Mr. Robb. I think in my first round of questioning you were trying to get in, and I don't know if you still have something you want to share.

[Jim Robb]

It was basically that thing that you have separate legislation. We've heard things like we don't want to undermine this high, lofty ideal of ecological integrity that is applicable to some of our parks way out there in the great north and other places. That's true, but this is a separate piece of legislation, number one, so it's not directly under the National Parks Act that governs the other parks.

As Dr. Woodley said, if you go to many of our parks, if you go to Riding Mountain, you find there is the highway, the golf course, a sewage treatment plant, a cottage community, and leases on the land. It's the same in Jasper. Five of our parks are much smaller than the Rouge. The Rouge has the potential to be over 100 square kilometres. There are still another 30-plus square kilometres of public land out there that could gradually be added.

The Rouge has this amazing potential that you don't want to underestimate by saying, “It's a bit tattered right now, so we won't try to make it into a really beautiful quilt for our country. We'll leave it tattered.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

The last round of questioning is with Mr. Stetski.

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

Thank you.

I started my career working as a park naturalist at Pacific Rim and Rev-Glacier, and in Manitoba and B.C. parks. I'm really excited by the opportunity the Rouge presents to talk about the national parks story, ecological integrity, and the importance of agriculture and getting people back in touch with nature.

Now that the editorial is out of the way, I'd like to give Mr. Robb an opportunity to talk again to his proposal and tell us why he thinks that's so important. Is it because you don't want to waste all the good work that was done over the years or are you concerned that a new management plan might not be as ecologically involved as those? I'm just trying to understand a little better.

[Jim Robb]

Thank you.

We have such amazing environmental challenges: climate change, Great Lakes health, biodiversity. The World Wildlife Fund put out a report about a month ago that said, I think, that more than a half of our wildlife populations are in danger worldwide. When we have a park of public land like this, it's really important that we look at the opportunities for making it better for the public in the future. Because we have separate legislation, ecological integrity should apply.

I'd like to say in terms of connecting people with nature that we came to Ottawa 30 years ago, in 1987, with the help of the Honourable Pauline Browes, and we pitched to Parks Canada then that they should create a national park in the Rouge. With many parks you have more urban people. You have people who come from the most diverse city of our entire globe, and you want to reach out to them and connect them with our distant national parks.

The station wagon story really touched my heart, because every year we went out west to see my mother's family on Vancouver Island, and we went through our national parks and through the U.S. national parks every year; and I developed the love.

My wife's from Trinidad, and she came to Canada when she was 10. Some of her teachers took her out to the parks, and we now go camping and canoeing all over Canada. That's our vacation.

What I'm saying is that you need to reach out to urban and multicultural communities like Toronto and tell them about this wonderful nature. They get exposure to it in the Rouge, and then you open the door for them to explore our wonderful country and all the other national parks. This makes Parks Canada more relevant to a larger population in the future, so there will be more support and funding to protect these wonderful heritage areas.

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

Could you speak specifically to your amendment and the importance of those plans?