Environment Committee on May 17th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I'm told there is no interpretation again.

Ms. Pauzé, am I right that there is no interpretation?

Do we know why the interpretation is not working, Madam Clerk? Is it a technical problem or a microphone problem?

[The Clerk]

That make of microphone does not work very well with our system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We have no interpretation, so we'll have to stop there, Mr. Andrews.

We will go now to Mr. Gage, from the West Coast Environmental Law Association, for five minutes.

[Andrew Gage, Staff Counsel, West Coast Environmental Law Association]

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today from the territory of the Lekwungen-speaking people in Victoria, B.C.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Do we have interpretation, Madam Clerk?

Go ahead, Mr. Gage. I would move the microphone up a bit, though.

[Andrew Gage]

I'm the head of West Coast Environmental Law's climate program, the author of several reports and submissions on Canadian climate law and a member, as Alan mentioned, of a coalition of organizations that really want Bill C-12 to be a real climate change accountability law.

In 1992 under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, Canada played a leadership role in negotiating the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the governments of the world agreed to “[stabilize] greenhouse gas concentrations [and] prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” In 1992, I still had a full head of hair. I have waited my entire adult life for Canada to deliver.

Canada set specific targets in 1997 under Prime Minister Chrétien and then in 2010 under Prime Minister Harper, but as a country, we continue to miss every climate target set. My daughter at age 15 is now organizing climate strikes, worried about her future. The challenge is that climate change doesn't follow election cycles. Too often governments claim credit for setting targets and then push off the work and ignore the difficult choices necessary to meet those targets. We need accountability.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, here is the definition of accountability: “the quality or state of being accountable, especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions”. At their core, climate accountability laws insulate climate policy from the election cycle by making each administration accountable for keeping the government on track to achieve both short- and medium-term climate targets.

Bill C-12 fails in a number of respects. First, as drafted, and as Alan noted, clauses 9 and 10 don't clearly require the minister to show how the country will achieve the climate targets that have been set by the government. Rather, the minister is required to identify measures and strategies that the federal government intends to take that will contribute to achieving the 2050 target.

Second, because Bill C-12 sets only one target at a time—initially a mid-term target for 2030 and then short-term targets of five years each thereafter—it never requires governments to consider both short- and mid-term action at the same time or to be held accountable on both time scales. Generally, international climate accountability laws achieve those short- and mid-term targets through rolling short-term targets that, together, plot a path to one mid-term target further down the road. For example, the U.K.'s Climate Change Act, when it was enacted in 2008, established three targets, known as carbon budgets, covering the next 15 years. When the first budget was finished, a new budget extending out to 2027 was established and so on. We're now expecting the sixth budget, which will extend to 2037, in July of this year. Each U.K. government is therefore accountable both for achieving a target within the next five years and for putting in place measures that will help achieve future targets further out.

By setting a first target for 2030, with the first progress report not until 2027 or 2028, Bill C-12 invites cynical claims that it creates accountability for only future governments. The post-2030 targets set for just five years at a time are equally problematic. Five years is simply not enough time in which to roll out new programs, to see them deliver significant emissions reductions and to get the results we're looking for, nor does a single five-year target give an administration an incentive to look beyond those five years and put in place the measures that will help future governments achieve their five-year targets.

Here's what we need from Bill C-12: rolling five-year milestone targets—not one target at a time—supplemented by robust plans, set at least 10 years ahead, preferably 15. For example, in 2025, a target for 2035 should be set, and a new 10-year plan would then update the second half of the existing plan and incorporate new measures to extend the road map out to 2035.

Second, we need to require immediate action, ideally by setting a 2025 target reflecting the expected emissions reductions from Canada's climate plan or, alternatively, simply requiring all plans to identify emissions reductions for each year covered by the plan.

Third, we need frequent and earlier progress reports much more often than every five years, ideally annually, and starting by 2023 at the latest. As Alan mentioned, plans that actually set out a road map to achieving the milestone targets are key.

It's impossible to separate these aspects of accountability from the other important requirements that my co-panellists have already mentioned and that are referred to in our submissions.

Despite its name, Bill C-12 does not yet deliver on the promise of climate accountability. We hope that you will make the amendments necessary to bring it up to where it needs to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We will go to our first round of questions.

I have Mr. Jeneroux, Mr. Saini, Madame Michaud and Mr. Bachrach speaking. If that's not correct, let me know when the time comes.

Are you leading off, Mr. Jeneroux?

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

I sure am, Mr. Chair. Thanks for checking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, everybody, for putting together your presentations. I know it's not easy to come before committee here like this, but again, I appreciate your taking the time today.

I'd like to go to Dr. Bergen. I had some questions for you at the start, but then as you were going through your presentation I was quite blown away by some of the information that you shared and some of the work that the Cattlemen's Association is already doing. You started talking a little bit about the uses of research and development, and how some of this work has already impacted the environment. I'm hoping that you can expand on that with maybe some acute examples that you could share with the committee.

I'll also open it up, obviously, to Fawn if she's available with her headset now.

[Dr. Reynold Bergen]

Certainly. Thanks for the question.

The first thing I'd point out is that, as I mentioned earlier, over a 30-year period we managed to reduce our emissions, per kilogram of beef, by 15%. That was between 1981 and 2011. Those dates are important, because that was before the beef industry really started to pay very specific attention to the environment. It was always understood that the environment was important, because so many of these are intergenerational farms and you're not going to keep these things going if you're not taking care of the environment you're living and working in.

Those improvements—and this is getting to the research point—happen because of steady incremental improvements in plant breeding, animal breeding, animal nutrition, animal health and so on. All of those things stack up together, not only to improve production efficiency and productivity but also to reduce emissions. In order to move forward, we need to do two things. One is to continue those investments in the steady, slow incremental things that have generated those improvements and will continue to, but the other is to invest in some of the more novel things that are very specifically environmentally focused.

A couple of examples—the ones that I mentioned actually—are nutritional supplements. There are a few of them. Some of them are kind of mundane. They are just simple dietary things. Feeding distillers' grains that are left over from biofuel production has been shown to reduce emissions by 5%. There are a number of more novel ones like biochar, algae, lemongrass, sprouted barley and whatnot. Those are, I would say, unproven. They've certainly been investigated in the lab, but before you know whether they're effective in cattle, you need to do large-scale feeding trials. Those haven't been done yet and that's important, because if cows don't eat it you're not going to get the benefit.

There are a couple of new additives that have been tested and are showing promise. Probably the most promising one is a product called 3-NOP, which is developed by a Dutch company called Royal DSM. The product name is Bovaer. The point is that this feed additive can reduce emissions by 20% to 70% in feedlot diets. That's not lab stuff. That's not modelling. That's work that's been done in large-scale commercial feedlot trials.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

That was one I was hoping you'd talk about.

I'm sorry. I hate to cut you off, Dr. Bergen. I just have a short amount of time.

[Dr. Reynold Bergen]

Yes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

From what I understand it's yet to be approved by the government. You're welcome to get into that, but I won't dwell on that at this particular point.

If we could tie it back to Bill C-12, with all the research and development and, really, the leading way that the Cattlemen's Association has been going forward on the environment, what are some of the reservations that you have with C-12? Do you think the bill balances GHG emission goals and economic factors fairly?

[Dr. Reynold Bergen]

I'll talk a little bit more about that product and then I'll throw it over to Fawn for the specific issues around Bill C-12.

This product hasn't been approved, but it's not a C-12 issue. It is a regulatory issue. Canada has a veterinary drug approval process for things that go in feed and things that are for animal health, but it does not have a regulatory path for products that are specifically designed for environmental improvements.

That's not what you asked. I'll let Fawn answer what you did.

[Fawn Jackson, Director, Policy and International Relations, Canadian Cattlemen's Association]

With Bill C-12 we want to make sure that there's holistic policy analysis done and that folks from the agriculture community are there to understand and advise on it.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Do you mean on the advisory panel? Is that what you mean, Ms. Jackson, or is it broader, in terms of the way Bill C-12 pins the cattlemen ranchers into a hole, if you will?

[Fawn Jackson]

Certainly we would want to see folks from the agriculture sector represented on the advisory council, so that when we charge forward on initiatives for climate change we're considering all of the factors that could impact both the environment but also, of course, the economy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Saini, you have the floor now.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of the witnesses for coming today. It's great to have all of you.

Being a pharmacist, I want to take more of a health lens to certain issues.

Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers and Dr. Howard, you're both physicians. Can you describe to all of us the health and health system impacts of climate change, if we continue along the current emissions pathway?

[Dr. Courtney Howard, Emergency Physician and Planetary Health Researcher and Policy Worker, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment]

Thanks.

I am speaking to you from a house in Yellowknife's Dene territory that is atop permafrost. This part of the world is already 2.5°C warmer than it was when an 80-year-old elder was born. We're deep into adaptation. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on our foundation here to try to keep it from sliding down into Great Slave Lake. In 2014 we had, in fact, two and a half months of wildfire smoke, and it ringed Yellowknife. It didn't really even matter which way the wind was blowing, because there was a fire in almost every direction.

We published a study in the British Medical Journal Open recently showing that in fact we had a full doubling of our emergency department visits for asthma over the course of that time.

We did community-based interviews and asked people how it felt to live in smoke for that long. We got all sorts of answers, such as they felt isolated, they felt anxious, they didn't have enough physical activity, they felt disconnected from the land and it made them really worry about what climate change means for their children.

I'm a sort of voice from the future, in a way, because as Minister Wilkinson pointed out earlier, the north is warming at triple the global rate. What we need to know is that we're going to get worse until mid-century. Since I've done the wildfire research, I often get the question from media, “Dr. Howard, is this a new normal?” I have to say, no, it's not. It's going to get worse.

We need to prepare our hospitals for this adaptation that's already built in. “Canada's Changing Climate Report”, produced by Environment and Climate Change Canada, showed that we will continue to warm until at least the 2040s. That's when a child born today will only be in their twenties.

We need to make sure that our hospitals have adequate ventilation. We actually had to close our operating room for part of that summer, because it was filled with smoke and we couldn't operate. From having presented with some architects at a national architecture conference, we did an audience poll, and only about 40% of the audience were taking into account future projections of precipitation and heat as they built the buildings of the future.

We see from COVID, then, that not preparing for something does not protect you when it happens. Even to just adapt to what we're already facing, we have a lot to do.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I just want to give Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers a chance, if she wants to add something.

[Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers]

I would like to add one thing.

I briefly mentioned that Quebec and the south of Canada will have heat waves. In line with that, some estimates can be made.

A few years ago, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec estimated that, in the next 50 years, extreme heat was going to cost 20,000 people their lives in Quebec alone. That is huge. It is distressing to realize that those deaths will primarily occur in urban areas. The people at risk are those presenting with various vulnerabilities to heat. The phenomenon has become worse because of a number of environmental factors.

I feel that it is important to mention the number of annual deaths related to air pollution. This is closely tied to climate change. A recent Health Canada report estimated that 15,300 people died because of air pollution in 2016. The pollution cost the Canadian economy $120 billion, which is certainly no small amount.

The more studies we do, the more we realize that pollution is too toxic for almost all organs and all parts of the body. A recent Harvard University study found that pollution was responsible for 18% of premature deaths around the world. At this moment, therefore, one in every five people in the world is dying as a result of air pollution.

Those figures concern us greatly as physicians. As I mentioned, I can't give patients a miracle pump that prevents them from breathing polluted air. We breathe the air every day. It's therefore important to have a climate plan that addresses greenhouse gas emissions and has a goal of improving air quality, and adapting to it.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I don't mean to interrupt. I have one more question.

I'll go back to Dr. Howard for maybe 30 seconds, and then Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers.

Can you explain the links between climate change, habitat change and the risk of further pandemics of a zoonotic origin?

I'm sorry. Can you do that in 30 seconds or less?

[Dr. Courtney Howard]

Sure.

To take a local example that can be extrapolated, last year we flew elders from around the territory down and sat around a map of the NWT and had people draw where different animals have gone in their lifetimes. We ended up with, “The beavers used to be here and now they're here; and the fish used to be here”.

Essentially, most of the infectious diseases, the new ones we've had over the past several decades, have come from animals. Therefore, as habitats change, as we have further biodiversity loss and everything is moving around, we end up in the position of having animals and vectors and humans in novel proximity and that's what puts us at risk of further zoonotic transfer events of further viruses and pandemics.