Environment Committee on Feb. 20th, 2020

[Helen Ryan]

We are a party to the Basel Convention.

The elements that I'm speaking to are with respect to a change that was made to the control and export of hazardous waste and hazardous recycled materials. Recycled material and domestic waste are not included in the definition of hazardous waste or hazardous recycled products. However, in the country of the Philippines, their regulations define plastic material as hazardous, so we had to amend our regulations to mirror a provision that says “but if a country does this, we will allow it.” That brought us into full conformity with the Basel Convention.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay, thank you very much for that. I'm glad we signed it.

Ms. Geller, I have a question on food waste, which is of particular interest to me. We know that in Canada about 20% of all the food produced becomes avoidable food waste in a year. This is a significant problem because it emits about 21 million tonnes of CO₂, which adds to our annual emissions. Fortunately, we've signed on to the UN 2030 sustainable development goals, which have set a target of halving food waste by 2030.

What is the department's opinion on that, and in what direction are we moving, just so we have an idea?

[Hilary Geller]

I am going to turn it over to my very busy colleague, Helen Ryan, who, among all of her other responsibilities, also deals with food waste from a regulatory perspective, working closely with Agriculture Canada. She'll be happy to talk about that.

If we have time, I'd be happy to talk about some of the concepts around circularity, of which this is a part.

[Helen Ryan]

One of the things that I would say with respect to this area is that we collaborate very closely with our provincial and territorial counterparts under the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. We have a waste working group, and one product that was recently developed is around food waste and the practices that can be put in place to help reduce and manage food waste. Under that working group, there are also commitments to help reduce our overall waste, which includes food waste.

In addition, as Hilary mentioned, we work collaboratively with other departments, and Agriculture in particular, around what we can do to target the reduction of food waste, both at the table and in the production of it upstream.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mazier, I'd like to pronounce your name in a French way.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

What is it in French? That's okay, not a problem. I have to learn it anyway. Duolingo gave up on me a long time ago.

Thank you. Those were great presentations.

I'm from Manitoba, right in the middle, by Brandon, Manitoba. My riding is Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.

Modelling is a very interesting topic, when we have all of this data and we look at it, looking at different studies and the results of them over the years. When the modelling becomes something, how do you look at it, and what become the criteria for looking at modelling?

Across many departments—there was one statement Mr. Jones made—do you use the same model? Do you use the same criteria when you're analyzing? When you go across government departments and you say, these are the criteria we're going to use for all departments, from Parks to space and technology, how do you determine what model to use and what is going to be in those models?

[Matt Jones]

I can probably take the answer only so far.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay.

[Matt Jones]

There is a dedicated economic modelling team within our organization in the strategic policy branch, and the head of that modelling group isn't here with us today.

I can tell you that we have one climate model that we use for multiple purposes within Environment Canada. We don't have competing models across different departments. There has been agreement for quite some time that the one model, for the sake of consistency and completeness, is the E3MC model.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay, when you're looking, for example, at food production, you would ask what the climate model looks like in food production, or what the climate model looks like for automotive production, or what the environmental impact is of mining aluminum in Canada.

Do you look at the environmental impact, or do you look at the economic impact? What is the wanted outcome of those models?

[Matt Jones]

It would be helpful to have the experts here.

I can tell you that the data sources for the model, which are the foundation of the analysis, come from a number of sources—everywhere from Statistics Canada to other federal agencies—so that we have credible and consistent data sources. They're run through the model. It is a general equilibrium model that produces both economic and emissions outcomes. When they run scenarios, particularly when we do regulatory impact assessment, they can look at the impacts on the economy and the GDP.

The key is to have a credible model, consistent data and credible assumptions. We try to be very transparent with that. We do release publicly our big analyses, in terms of both our emission projections and the regulatory impact assessments for each of our regulatory measures.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

The government has implied or suggested that it wants to get to zero emissions by 2050.

What model are you going to be using? How would that impact all your departments? How far do we have to go with that, to say that we're zero emissions? What criteria are we going to be using to actually make that realistic?

[Matt Jones]

Net zero by 2050 is a driver for a lot of the analysis we're doing right now. Of course, there are a number of different pathways that can get you to net zero. Related to that is what the definition of net zero is. There are a number of definitions out there, both within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UNFCCC and other academic approaches. In general terms, it's emissions minus removals. Removals can be from natural sources like trees and soils. It can be from technological sources, like carbon capture and storage technology or direct air capture. It could even potentially be minus offsets, such as emission reductions achieved elsewhere.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay, great. Can we have the team lead person come before the committee and present on modelling?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, we can discuss it at committee business next week.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Mr. Scarpaleggia, you have five minutes.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, congratulations on this extraordinarily clear and detailed presentation. It's very succinct and rich in information.

My question will interest my colleague, Mr. Schiefke, because his riding is contiguous to mine—upstream from mine. My question is for Ms. Campbell.

You talked about predicting environmental conditions, including with respect to water. Can you take us step by step through how you would approach a flooding situation like the ones we've experienced in the last two out of three years along the Ottawa River, Rivière des Prairies, the St. Lawrence River and so on? How do you work with the provincial authorities to help predict what the water levels will be? That's my first question.

[Diane Campbell]

Sure. Thank you for that question.

It's a multistep process. It starts with actually monitoring the environment. The data that we start with is what's happening with water levels and flows. We run the stations. It's a bit of a collaborative program, so there are stations that are of interest to the provinces, like Ontario and Quebec, and ones where the water is moving interprovincially or internationally where we have the most interest. We collect all the data, though, and it's supported through a cost recovery program. We maintain the data quality control. We maintain the data flow to make sure that the information—the data itself—gets to the provincial governments very quickly.

Quebec is a little different from the rest of the provinces because they collect their own data and we acquire it and make it available. That's a small difference, but it doesn't materially change the speed at which the data is shared.

It starts with data, and then, in those two jurisdictions, the provinces have their own flood forecasting centres. We feed the forecasting centres in two ways. The weather part of the enterprise is continually doing the forecasting of what the conditions are, such as how much rainfall there is. We look, on a season by season basis, to see whether we're going to have a wetter season ahead of us. There's a fair amount of uncertainty with a seasonal scale prediction versus a daily weather forecast, but nevertheless that's part of what we will give them. We will update that on a monthly and then weekly basis as it starts to get to the spring freshet season.

The other thing we do is track the amount of precipitation that has happened in the winter. The snow pack, the rate of melt and the intensity and duration of rainfall are all the major conditions that determine whether we're going to have a flooding kind of event like the ones we had in the region for those two years you've described.

That's the principal engine. You spoke about modelling generally. I described the weather modelling enterprise. It's a very complex atmosphere, ocean and ice model. The last component that we're working on now through our science is to bring in the hydrological modelling component. Our vision is that, within a few years, we hope to provide the same kind of predictive outputs to the provinces and territories as we do with weather forecasting. The science isn't quite there.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Could you clarify a bit? When you say “hydrological”.... My understanding is that you are saying the Province of Quebec has its own model. Is its model considered hydrological? I'm not clear on that.

[Diane Campbell]

Yes. They're considered hydrological models, which means they are fairly time-bound and near-term models, so they're very short-term predictions that will really give something in the order of days.

Our contribution to improving that would be that, by coupling and bringing forward these more sophisticated global models, we would try to advance the early predictions further upstream into multi-days, and maybe into weeks or seasons.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Does that use satellite information?

[Diane Campbell]

We definitely use satellite information in the basic weather—

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

In terms of water flows....

[Diane Campbell]

Actually, we're looking at that in terms of exploring new techniques for water levels and flows.