Environment Committee on June 19th, 2017

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

That's great. Thank you.

Ms. MacDonald, it's nice to see you again. It's been a number of years, I think, since we had the opportunity to interact.

You talked about the past and present flood plain mapping activities. Can you give us a sense, for the layperson, of why that's useful and how that information serves the public?

[Lori MacDonald]

Absolutely. Thank you very much for the question.

To go back to the point I made earlier, everyone who's involved in any kind of decision-making with respect to urban planning, with respect to disaster mitigation, or with respect to emergency management has to start with the foundation of someplace, and the foundation for us is flood plain mapping. They can make informed decisions with respect to not only what's happening now in their communities but also where they're going in the future in terms of planning, and then what that means from a preparation perspective in terms of disaster mitigation.

As I said earlier, we know that the vast majority of communities across the country are actually built on flood plains, so it puts a significant economic cost on a community in terms of not having that information—

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

That's great.

I'm sorry, but I'm pressed for time. The reason I'm asking that is that right now in terms of Lake Ontario, for example—I know you're very familiar with the Kingston area—there is some flooding in the Kingston area on some roads in particular—such as Abingdon Road—that are quite low. A lot of that is because the lake is dammed up, and it hasn't been released. I think they just started to release that in the middle of June.

Some of the flood activity is as a result of natural occurrences—that's an oxymoron, because if we believe in climate change, they're really man-made occurrences—but some of this is also for strategic reasons, such as preventing the release of water from Lake Ontario in order to protect downstream municipalities or communities, and in the process, you're flooding some of the upstream ones.

Who makes those decisions about opening that up? Is that emergency preparedness? How do you balance out the decision to protect one city and say it's okay to flood another city in the process?

[Lori MacDonald]

Really, those decisions are made at the grassroots level—the municipal, city, or provincial level—in terms of those risk assessments they make about what the impact is going to be on the broader community overall.

One of the things we encourage in our conversations is that people look at risk assessments, flood plain mapping, small-scale and large-scale structural mitigation measures to actually try to offset some of those dire impacts when they have to make those kinds of decisions. It's really about getting them to a place where they are making corporate informed decisions versus “this is a dire problem right now and we have to fix this particular situation”. That's where we're going.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

That's—

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

Just a number question? It's very quick.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

Do you have a sense as to what the impact is in terms of dollars with respect to climate change?

[Lori MacDonald]

I can tell you that, just as an example, right now we have 76 open files on disaster financial assistance arrangements. I'll use that as one marker. Right now, I have a $1.8-billion liability against that, of those ones that are still open. That's a five-year range that I'm looking at. We've probably already paid out $2.3 billion of that. To use that one indicator, it's significant. If I use Fort McMurray, it's even greater.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. Thank you for that detail. That was good.

Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you very much.

Following up on Mr. Gerretsen's comments, what usually happens in my area is that it backs up. It doesn't back up into a city; it backs up onto farmland. The farmland isn't seen as being valuable as cities are. As a result, much of the farmland gets flooded to protect the ones downstream.

I'm interested in how flood plain mapping is done. Is it done by a model or by actual events?

[Lori MacDonald]

It's done by a model. There are various kinds of flood plain mapping.

On one hand, the Insurance Bureau of Canada will talk about the flood plain mapping that they do. It's a very high-level mapping that takes a picture. That doesn't give you the granularity that you would see in flood plain mapping that municipalities or provinces are doing right now, as an example, with some of the funding they're getting through the natural disaster mitigation program.

There's high-level flood plain mapping that gives you a snapshot or a picture, and then there's flood plain mapping that's very technical and detailed.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I was concerned about just using models. We just had it in agriculture in terms of doing a model on the neonic issue without using in-field testing. The models actually don't represent what happens on the ground. Sometime we have to be cautious about using just computer models.

Ms. Di Paolo, I was wondering about the gas tax fund. For Ontario, you're absolutely right: this is how it's supposed to work. AMO runs that. They do it for about one-half of a per cent for administration. That's how it really should work. I think those are the types of models that as governments we need to be promoting. When those monies funnel through, they actually go to the municipalities, and the administrative cost is very low.

But you've mentioned that it's not meeting the objectives of the plan, that it's not meeting the environmental objectives, I guess. Who determines that? There's a difference if they're not meeting some of the conditions in a large urban area versus meeting the conditions in a rural area. A lot of that in my area gets used to do bridges and to do roads. The great thing about it is its flexibility, because if you don't use it one year, you reserve it, and it's indexed. I'm wondering how it doesn't meet the objectives of the plan in terms of the environment.

[Laura Di Paolo]

As my colleague mentioned earlier, those are the findings of the report of the CESD last year. The program does have various objectives. The main objective is to provide the predictable funding to municipalities to invest in community infrastructure and to support and encourage long-term municipal asset management planning.

When the program was originally designed, it did have some more environmentally focused outcomes. Over the years, the program has evolved to include more assets eligible for funding so that we could do a better job of meeting the needs of communities and municipalities with the fund.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Is it that they aren't recording what they want? Or is it just a misfunction?

[Laura Di Paolo]

Part of the issue is more around how we report out on the outcomes themselves. What we generally get from the municipalities in terms of information that comes through the provinces in their annual reports is very much around the infrastructure that was built, how much money was spent, and project start and end dates. It's very concrete in that we know the funding was used for funding of a particular asset.

As for going in and determining what outcomes were achieved through the projects, that has gone beyond the program reporting. In 2018, however, we will be receiving our five-year outcomes report, from 2014-15 to 2018. That will provide more information on the actual outcomes that have been achieved for the program.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I want to go back and comment on this whole issue of flood insurance. One of the comments was that the lack of action on climate change is having an impact on flooding.

I would not think that the people now are any smarter than the people were a little while ago, but here's what I am wondering about, which happens in large urban areas, which I'm close to, as well as in rural areas. You have the influence of professionals who have buildings built in flood plains. They do. I went by a 25-acre parcel that was all treed. They stripped the trees out, brought in five feet of dirt, and now there are houses on it. I don't understand that, when I have trouble building a drive shed because somebody else believes that it may be on a flood plain.

I think one of the concerns is that the influence of professionals on councils has a large impact on where the housing is going to be, and the result is that the homeowner gets stuck with the insurance because somebody else nodded their head. Then, when it goes wrong, the professionals tend to go out the back door, and the homeowners and the municipalities get hung with it.

That's just a comment. I really do get concerned about this insurance issue, because somebody allowed them to do that, and it's the homeowner who gets caught with it. Are there discussions about how they may rectify that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. We are really over time, so can you make it a very short answer?

[Lori MacDonald]

Yes, there are conversations on that. It's one of the reasons why we are talking with provinces and territories at the municipal level with respect to their urban planning: because those are the decisions that get made that ultimately have impacts on the individual citizen down the road. Those conversations are lively and well.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bratina.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, on infrastructure, what scrutiny is given to projects when municipalities offer their request?

I have a specific reason for asking that. It was controversial in my case, where $30 million of gas tax money was given to renovate city hall. It came under—I have to look it up, because it was back in 2009—“community energy systems”. The infrastructure deficit of the city now approaches $200 million a year. There are roads and bridges and all kinds of things that need to be fixed.

Does the application get a rubber stamp when it comes to the department for approval? How does that work?

[Bogdan Makuc]

Under the gas tax fund, we actually don't approve the projects. The federal government does not have a role in the approval of those. The funds are transferred to municipalities, and municipalities are allowed to make the decisions on which projects to invest in—within a framework, within some guidelines.

For that project in particular, I don't know the details, but I suspect that it would have had a reduction in the use of energy, so it would have contributed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and thus been within the framework.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

In energy bills?

[Bogdan Makuc]

Energy bills, yes. More practically, yes.