Environment Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Jay Famiglietti]

I don't want to hog the microphone too much because I've already spoken on this a little bit, but I do like the idea of picking three or four focus areas. Imagine them as bullet points. These would be focus areas like climate change and how that's impacting flooding; creating and mobilizing observations and making data available, which many nations around the world don't do a great job at; looking at the Canada Water Act and thinking about modernizing it and, again, having the inclusivity in there, including groundwater and what we know about climate change and all of these things that are missing. Those are three bullet points right there.

You're right, with water we could go on and on. I appreciate your comment that maybe it's better to focus on a few key things and make some progress than try to do too many things.

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

My second question is somewhat related and it is for Dr. Rudolph.

You mentioned federal leadership on groundwater. What does that look like? It is a provincial jurisdiction. We do some work at NRCan in measuring groundwater. What does federal leadership on groundwater look like? The answer, I guess, would feed into Dr. Famiglietti's response about the Canada water agency having a component that looks at groundwater. What does it look like?

[David Rudolph]

That's a great question.

It's part of the challenge in managing groundwater, and it always has been. It's not just Canada that has that issue. I worked in California for quite some time, and they have very similar issues with state versus federal initiatives.

In the United States the federal government provides access and the compilation of data, as Jay made reference to, that I think only the federal government has the ability to pull together and combine to make that information available to the provincial authorities for making decisions that are appropriate.

The Canadian water agency, based on your suggestion, could help work on priority issues that are relevant provincially. So starting where Amina works and going across Canada—to Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba—the provincial water issues are very different. Flooding is a critical issue in some areas. In some areas it's abandoned oil wells, and in the north it's thawing permafrost that's happening very quickly and impacting all of the infrastructure up there.

In the Canadian government, you have NRCan, Environment Canada, Agriculture Canada and forestry all working in water and providing phenomenal insight in many different areas. If we could facilitate that to the provincial authorities to help them in their decision-making, it would give federal guidance in a way that I think would coordinate it.

I really like your idea of focusing on specific priority issues.

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

Thank you.

I think I'll give it over to my colleague. My next question is quite involved. It was for Dr. Stoddart, but maybe we can chat off-line.

Lloyd.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thanks, Francis.

Thank you to all of you for your presentations.

I want to drill a little bit more into the Canada Water Agency, whose creation is a campaign commitment by the Liberal Party. In our campaign we looked at how to tie municipal, provincial and federal water jurisdictions together. I'm wondering what currently exists. We have the global institute. I'm wondering how the universities collaborate. Is there a network of water researchers that we would be tying into?

Dr. Rudolph, you work with Dr. Parker in Guelph. She's a Canada research chair in groundwater. Our drinking water in Guelph doesn't come from a lake or a river; it comes from the ground. It's very important for our community to be able to get the best technologies we can, looking at the Netherlands and other institutes around the world.

How does the network exist right now, and how could we tie into that?

[David Rudolph]

In Ontario—and I can speak mostly from that point of view—what normally works is that the municipalities reach out to the universities when there's a problem and a question. Whether it be how much water is drawn for water bottling or a specific contamination problem, they integrate with the university researchers individually and work on the problem.

At the provincial level, it tends to be a bit broader. It's almost policy development. They reach out to individuals at institutions to help with developing policy. That tends to work reasonably well, but it's a case-by-case type of operation. It's not a fixed network that says we can call on this group or that group.

Many of the institutions are developing...as Jay leads at Saskatchewan university. At Waterloo university we have the Water Institute, which combines about 140 different researchers. If you phone one number at the Water Institute and say there are serious problems with E. coli outbreaks in a certain area and you ask who to talk to, you immediately get funnelled toward them.

That's the type of network—

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor for seven minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations.

We know that two-thirds of the human body is composed of water. This must be what we call an essential service. I'm saying that water quality is important.

Mr. Famiglietti, in your presentation, you spoke of resource protection and groundwater pollution. You mentioned pollutants that have unknown health effects.

On a broader level, with respect to chemical pollutants, are there any best practices for regulating companies in the chemical sector?

[Jay Famiglietti]

That's an excellent question, and I would love to answer it if I possibly could, but it was Dave who was making those comments.

[David Rudolph]

Very interestingly, the compounds we're looking at that are appearing in the environment entered the environment probably decades ago and are moving toward release into streams through slow groundwater movement. The problem is the legacy of the release so many years ago. I would say that most of our companies are very well regulated now and are very careful with many of their compounds and chemicals. It's the historical use of those chemicals that is now coming back to hit us.

In Canada we were always protected by our volume of water and the overall dilution that the systems would provide. But because we've been doing this for five to six decades, we're now at a stage that we're starting to see it arrive at public supply wells, in streams and rivers. Places that the rest of the world had to deal with decades ago are now happening in Canada, but it's a legacy problem of when these were released.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you for your response.

I'm pleased with Mr. Scarpaleggia's question about provincial jurisdiction. I'm happy to hear that the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces will be respected. However, we know that water treatment is also under municipal jurisdiction in many cases, particularly when it comes to water purification processes.

What do you think of Quebec's current water management practices?

[David Rudolph]

Yes, personally I wish I were more familiar with Quebec's system. I'm not really able to comment on it directly.

Certainly one thing Quebec is doing is working on protection of source water. They've led Canada in many ways in providing information on how to manage datasets to be able to predict impacts on a longer term, broader, watershed scale. Quebec has done a really good job at that. They've also been doing an excellent job at compiling data and getting it ready and accessible for scientists and government authorities to use.

I think that Quebec's ahead in many ways compared with other provinces, but I can't really comment on the technology and the treatment component of it. But certainly infrastructure is struggling.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Do you maintain ties with organizations in Quebec that work on water management issues?

I'll now ask a supplementary question regarding the International Joint Commission, which was created by the United States and Canada. Quebec is also involved in water management because a large freshwater basin feeds into our St. Lawrence River.

Are there any ties between these organizations and your organization?

[David Rudolph]

The ties that I'm most familiar with are with INRS in Quebec City, and NRCan and the Geological Survey of Canada. From a federal level, those are the groups—which are of course stationed in Quebec—that are the most influential in understanding and managing the St. Lawrence Seaway and, as you say, a huge drainage basin through Quebec and the surrounding areas into the St. Lawrence River.

I'm not clear on how that interacts with municipal and provincial governments.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

What are your interactions with the International Joint Commission with regard to the Great Lakes?

[David Rudolph]

The International Joint Commission provides continuous monitoring of the giant Great Lakes watershed and feeds the information, as they finish their studies, into different levels of government. I see it probably fed primarily to provincial levels, and that information is being acted on continuously. It's giving people updates particularly on the health of the Great Lakes. Right now that's been a major issue; nutrient loading to the Great Lakes, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and how that changes.

The other one that Jay's team has been working on is the levels in the lakes and what the flow rates are there. These have been were extremely high over the last few years and they have been working on what that means for managing transport and distribution in the lakes.

So, I think the International Joint Commission has done tremendous work. My only worry is that it doesn't get its results out to everyone who can use them, and that comes back to this jurisdictional management problem and communication. A Canadian water agency would really help with that.

Thank you.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I have one last question.

In 2015, Canada and 192 other United Nations member states adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. One goal was to ensure a clean water supply and water purification.

Is your organization participating in the agenda? Is it helping to achieve this goal?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You'll have to give a 30-second answer.

[David Rudolph]

When you say “our” agencies, do you mean the universities overall, or our university particularly? The Water Institute was involved in it from a global point of view, looking at which areas were most stressed to get fresh water to individuals. Certainly one of the areas was our own indigenous communities, and that stays as a high point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

Madam Collins, you'll get the same time as everybody else did.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

Thanks so much for your presentations.

It's so clear that our fresh water resources are so critical to the health and well-being of our ecosystems, our communities, our local economies. In 2012, the Navigable Waters Protection Act was replaced by the Harper government with an act that stripped federal protections from 99% of navigable waters. Then, in the last parliament, the Liberals brought in the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, which broadened some of those protections for waterways, but didn't fully restore the protections that were lost.

In your view, what has been the impact of that kind of original loss of those crucial protections and also the failure to fully restore navigable waters protection for all Canadian waterways?

[Jay Famiglietti]

I'm looking at Amina and hoping that she's going to bail us out.

Let me plead the fact that I am a new Canadian. I've just become a permanent resident, and I've been here for less than two years, so I don't know the answer.

[David Rudolph]

I'm about the same. I tend to work underground rather than above ground. Maybe, specifically, if you tell us what you think the issues are.... Are they in terms of navigation, in terms of access to the waterways, in terms of protection?

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

They're, really, in terms of protection. I know that, kind of case by case, communities were advocating to restore those protections for their waterways. I'm thinking particularly of a community just north of my riding that fought very hard to make sure that those waterways that had lost the protection under that original Navigable Waters Protection Act were restored, and they haven't been.

[David Rudolph]

I'll make one point on that. One of the biggest threats is that our overall flow in the navigable waterways is changing rapidly, and it comes back to what Jay was talking about earlier. Because of climate change, we have a much more fluctuating base flow and runoff cycle. Without having control and being able to manage those waterways now, I think that people will be at risk of not knowing exactly when it'll be safe to navigate them, what's coming up, and what should be expected—flood conditions versus very low-flow conditions.

Your point is probably really well taken: that as we move forward now with climate change potentially impacting these flows, it's even more important than it was before.