Environment Committee on Sept. 19th, 2017

Evidence of meeting #71 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was places.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

Heritage Preservation and Protection in Canada

Committee Business

Election of Vice-Chairs

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Joëlle Montminy Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs and Cultural Heritage Directorate, Parks Canada Agency

Natalie Bull Executive Director, National Trust for Canada

Richard Alway Chair, Heritage Designations and Programs, Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada

Martin Magne As an Individual

Genevieve Charrois Director, Cultural Heritage Policies, Parks Canada Agency

10:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs and Cultural Heritage Directorate, Parks Canada Agency

Joëlle Montminy

I don't think we have this information right now. We are currently conducting some kind of an assessment, trying to understand the impact of climate change on the conservation of our cultural resources. We are just in the early days of doing that, so I wouldn't have a percentage per se that would be impacted directly. I could just tell you that it's impacted by climate change. I would give you the example of erosion, for instance, and I think I've included a couple of images in the deck that I circulated that show erosion is a reality at a number of our sites. Think of the permafrost challenges that we're facing, for instance, in Dawson City, and our beautiful site there.

There are significant challenges, but I wouldn't be able to give you the exact number in terms of the impact on our cultural resources.

10:30 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

Your example of erosion, there's basically no cure, no way to address that. It's just inevitable.

10:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs and Cultural Heritage Directorate, Parks Canada Agency

Joëlle Montminy

No, absolutely not. There are a number of mitigation measures that we put in place, and there are several ways to do this. We could build structures in order to better support the structure. We could go all the way up to moving the structure, but losing the building is the last resort.

10:30 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

How much money would you have to spend for this kind of mitigation compared with other maintenance support to similar buildings?

10:30 a.m.

Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs and Cultural Heritage Directorate, Parks Canada Agency

Joëlle Montminy

These are the choices that we have to make. As we assess all of our sites, we have to make these choices.

10:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Thank you very much. It's been an excellent session and we really appreciate our guests for sharing their wisdom with us.

We have a lot of questions that are still potentially going to come out. You've also heard questions that we didn't get complete answers to. We'd love you to send us anything that you want to still share with us based on the questions you heard. We'll be looking forward to that. We have a short study, so if you could do it fairly soon, that would be much appreciated.

Also, I think the analysts may have some more questions that they want to explore, to get a bit more detail, if that's possible. Would you be prepared to entertain their questions and then they can put that in part of the study? Again, it's a fairly quick turnaround, and I apologize for doing that, but we are doing this for three weeks and then we'll get into report writing, so we just want to make sure we have that.

Thanks again for your time.

[Proceedings continue in camera]