Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair and committee, thank you very much. It gives me great pleasure to provide you with a brief on monitoring, evaluation and reporting challenges for freshwater systems in Canada.
In Canada and globally, surface and groundwater resources are under increasing environmental threats associated with anthropogenic environmental stressors. Quantifying, understanding and predicting the changes in water quantity, quality and aquatic biota in response to these multiple stressors require a coordinated, integrated and credible monitoring, evaluation and reporting system—I refer to this as an MER system—to inform what actions are necessary to ensure the conservation, protection, security and sustainability of our water resources.
Effective design and implementation of an integrated system requires the acquisition and timely reporting of relevant environmental information. Moreover, integrated watershed management requires the ability to define appropriate baseline conditions against which to assess change, as well as identify and track any environmental impacts, and the capacity to assess and predict any cumulative effects.
In addition, a critical and ongoing gap has been associated with the recognition of and the need to use multiple knowledge systems and ways of knowing in monitoring, evaluation and reporting program design and in integrating indigenous knowledge holders in the codesign and implementation of such programs.
Using the Athabasca River basin as a case example, I would like to highlight some of the challenges and possible solutions associated with implementing an integrated and effective monitoring program.
The Athabasca River basin and associated larger Mackenzie River basin have become one of the most monitored and studied freshwater systems in Canada. However, there are substantial knowledge gaps and uncertainties in how the basin and downstream ecosystems are changing in relation to increasing environmental stressors associated with regional development and population growth.
Coupled with economic growth are increasing indigenous community concerns in living in and downstream of these developments. The committee has already had other presentations from indigenous community leaders and other representatives identifying growing concerns regarding whether the current environmental regulatory frameworks are adequate in protecting the environment upon which their way of life depends.
Where are we now?
Previous government-led and independent expert reviews of regional oil sands monitoring in the Athabasca basin found that despite long-term and long-standing commitments to implement integrated monitoring and related cumulative effects assessment, there was little tangible progress in advancing the assessment and related regulatory policies. After decades and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on environmental monitoring and research in the Athabasca basin, significant challenges remain in providing open, transparent and accessible data, which are used to only a fraction of their potential to inform “state/condition of environment” reporting and relevant environmental management decision-making and actions.
There are currently at least 10 different types of monitoring programs conducted in the basin. Open access to the data collected under many of these programs remains difficult to obtain, if not impossible. Moreover, these data have different assurance quality control practices, including analytical standards and inconsistent forms of public recording. We simply don't need another website collating fragmented data. We need systemic change in how we design and implement an effective monitoring, evaluation and reporting system.
Finally, for many monitoring programs, there are no clearly defined decision criteria and there is no on-off switch for ratcheting up or down or increasing the intensity and frequency of monitoring, which is a core principle of adaptive monitoring.
In closing, with the right commitment and expertise, it is possible to develop an adaptive framework with defined criteria for changing monitoring intensity and related reporting, thereby ensuring the best cost-effective use of scientific and technical resources.
A previous presentation made to this committee by Drs. Pietroniro and Clark from the University of Calgary provided the rationale for and recommendations on the need for a new, unified, national environmental prediction system for Canada, built on an interoperable computational framework and related data management system.
Correspondingly, properly designed monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems would provide the data necessary to support such a prediction system for fresh waters. Defragmentation of current approaches and enhancing the application of new automated monitoring and reporting technologies could provide more standardized, cost-effective and timely information to focus future efforts on areas of priority.
It is crucial to forge new partnerships to develop the next generation of monitoring and evaluation systems. Linkages with such programs as the new United Nations transdisciplinary water hub at the University of Calgary and other university-based programs can serve as incubators and accelerators to forge a national and international collaborative pathway to connect research advances to management and policy actions to environmental monitoring and prediction initiatives.