Environment Committee on March 21st, 2024

[Frederick Wrona]

What is interesting is that one of the recommendations we placed in our brief was that an organization like the Canada water agency could perhaps facilitate the development of a national guidance framework that would provide a more standardized, cohesive and cost-effective approach to best practices and the design of what we would consider an adaptive monitoring and reporting system.

Clearly, because it's a federal government agency, maybe the start would be transboundary waters, where there's federal jurisdiction in other areas. Lessons could be learned in those systems and then be applied to provincially run watersheds or other areas, but that would be a start.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I'm going to run out of time if I keep going too far into this.

The University of Guelph is looking at habitat loss and biodiversity and at using water sampling as a way of tracking DNA to look at disappearing species. Is the technology in the right place so that we could go ahead with some of this if it were available through the regulators?

[Frederick Wrona]

It is advancing. There are national programs that were supported by and through Genome Canada. There are other genomics initiatives occurring. I sit on the board for Genome Alberta and other areas. The technologies are developing.

This comes back to the point that I was making. As Canada, we should be looking at our new technologies and approaches and applying them. COVID monitoring is an excellent example of where we were a global leader in terms of early detection in our system. I think the technology is advancing, absolutely.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor] to the University of Guelph for being involved with that part. Dr. Hebert was showing us that it's pennies per sample now when we're doing DNA sampling versus dollars and dollars per sample. Thank you for that.

I can shift over to Mandy Olsgard now.

Thank you for your presentation.

I'm looking at the seepage interception system that wasn't turned on at Kearl. We asked for data, as part of our committee, and got piles and piles of numbers, versus data that we could interpret.

Do you have a summary report that you could provide us with? That was something we were looking for.

[Mandy Olsgard]

Yes. I haven't published any of this yet, but I will provide a brief to the committee, or I will direct you to these reports. I've given several presentations on it, but no, there's not a good report that summarizes what independent researchers like me have said, or what Imperial and the AER have done. It sits in random PDFs and websites, as you've noted, so it's really difficult to piece this together in five minutes. I struggled.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's a role, I think, for our researchers. I also chair the science and research committee, and we look at our universities as trusted sources for information. Maybe there's an opportunity where the government or NSERC could support that activity.

[Mandy Olsgard]

That's a great idea.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

We'll go now to Madame Pauzé.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

Chief Haymond, thank you for being at the table with us.

I think this is our 14th meeting on freshwater. The proposed nuclear waste disposal site at Chalk River is threatening the drinking water for millions of Canadians.

I think people around the table have some doubts about opposition to this project. In fact, 140 municipalities have come out against it, and only one of the 11 indigenous nations has given it the green light.

Do you feel respected, both in terms of the consultations you took part in and reconciliation with first nations?

[Chief Lance Haymond]

Thank you for the question.

What we've learned through this process is that there are, in fact, 140 municipalities, towns and cities up and down the Ottawa River, from Ottawa to the St. Lawrence, that are opposed and are standing in solidarity with the position taken by Kebaowek that, again, the NSDF project is not the solution to deal with the nuclear waste at Chalk River.

Part of our judicial review, in fact the largest part of the argument, really relates to the fact that we were not engaged at the outset of this process. In fact, it started in 2013-14. In spite of our best efforts to identify that we wanted to be consulted, we were continually scoped out of the process. In June 2022, we went before the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and were able to present evidence and an argument that, in fact, we had not been properly consulted. They recognized that, made a procedural decision and gave us approximately nine months to provide input into the process. However, most decisions had already been taken.

Absolutely, there was a problem in terms of consultation and definitely a lack of respect. Again, I'll come back to the whole issue around the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Deep consultation is required when indigenous rights are going to be impacted directly. When we're talking about a nuclear waste dump, we're talking about the rights of the entire Algonquin nation, and any other nation that is along the Ottawa River watershed will most certainly see their rights impacted.

There has been absolutely no respect for including us appropriately in the process. That's how we ended up in a situation where there was only one solution and only one location. Again, had we been involved at the earlier stages when the initial project, the environmental assessment process, was being developed, we most certainly would have requested that additional site selections be looked at and that this one site, a kilometre from the Ottawa River, not be chosen to hold a million tonnes of nuclear waste, which is going to leach after the barriers and the synthetic liners break down in 550 years.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

The Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador and its chief, Ghislain Picard, salute your leadership on this, Chief Haymond. They remind us that protecting your ancestral lands is one of the major responsibilities. Indigenous peoples expect the government to recognize this reality, as well as the stewardship exercised by indigenous peoples to preserve their freshwater.

I think you also expect the government to acknowledge how weak the consultation held by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was. As you just explained to us, the whole process didn't work well.

What does it mean for you to be able to count on the solidarity of the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, which is made up of your allies from the very beginning?

[Chief Lance Haymond]

It's vital that we're able to demonstrate that this is an issue of utmost importance to indigenous people. The support from the Assembly of First Nations and the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador is just some of that support.

I would also want to highlight the fact that we have support from groups of non-indigenous Canadians. As I mentioned previously, 140 municipalities support and are concerned about this project.

We've done a lot of work to raise awareness and raise the profile of this issue. The support is not only coming from indigenous organizations. It's coming from non-indigenous environmental groups and municipalities. More importantly, with our efforts, we've recently raised the profile of this issue with the Quebec government. A letter from Minister Lafrenière and Minister Charette was sent to Minister Guilbeault, reminding Canada that it has a responsibility to protect the environment and to ensure that first nations like mine are given a fair process.

In that letter, they also indicated that they wanted Canada to take a closer look and really take into consideration the merits of what we've asked. It's that this process and the licensing of the NSDF be stopped, so that we could take a step back, really look at the issue in its entirety and make sure that, in deliberations and in choosing a technology and a way to deal with nuclear waste, it would be done respectfully.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Bachrach, it's nice to have you back with us.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back. I enjoyed my time at this committee when I was sitting in for my colleague, Ms. Collins.

I know this study is very close to your heart, Mr. Chair. It's good to see it continuing.

I was with the committee for some of the testimony around the Kearl oil sands project and the spills and seepage into the environment from that project. It was extremely troubling to hear the testimony from the Athabasca Fort Chipewyan First Nation about the devastating health impacts that they've suffered downstream and to get a sense that the regulators who are responsible for overseeing and protecting the environment seem to be pretty wholly captured by the industry.

I know that Ms. Olsgard has been before the committee before talking about the seepage from the tailings ponds.

Today, Ms. Olsgard, you've brought in a new aspect of concern, which has to do with the release of waste-water effluent from these projects. Listening to your testimony made me think about my home community of Smithers. It's a small municipality of about 5,000 people on the bank of the Bulkley River. They have an old municipal waste-water treatment plant. For a number of years, they have been struggling with compliance with federal regulations around waste-water discharge. They've been getting repeated letters from the federal government warning them that they're out of compliance and threatening consequences if they don't build better infrastructure and treat their effluent better. They're still waiting on a grant from the same government that's sending the letters, but that's a separate issue.

It just seems like the federal regulator, in this case, is being very proactive with very small communities that have limited financial resources.

Are we seeing the same kind of proactive regulation when it comes to these huge oil sands companies that are releasing all of this waste-water effluent into the rivers of the oil sands region?

[Mandy Olsgard]

In my discussion with representatives from Environment Canada, no one was aware that these releases existed until I did the review of the industrial waste-water reports. The regulator had approved them through a provincial process and was regulating them through provincial mechanisms. I can't find any evidence that Environment Canada actually knew that there were over 40 approved discharges of non-tailings water. I can't say that letters have been issued. Maybe Fisheries and Oceans Canada or Environment Canada was issuing them directly to the operators—Suncor, Syncrude or Imperial—but I don't have access to that.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

At this point you have no knowledge of any correspondence between the federal government, the provincial government and the oil sands operators regarding compliance? I believe you said it was surface water guidelines that are being exceeded.

[Mandy Olsgard]

Yes, even the provincial government.... The Alberta Energy Regulator receives these industrial waste-water reports, weekly, monthly and annually. They are independently managing the exceedances that are being reported. Something that's important here is that, through that provincial approval process, the AER actually allows for areas to be impacted. They call them acute and chronic mixing zones. They allow for exceedances of guidelines in these zones. This is not something, in my understanding, that's allowed under the Fisheries Act. I think there's a real disconnect here between what's occurring under approval by the Alberta Energy Regulator and what's allowed under the Fisheries Act.

We've seen a couple of these incidents being reported by the AER on their incidents and compliance dashboard since the Kearl incident. The TSS exceedance that was noted at the Suncor mine was because their industrial waste water exceeded a provincial approver limit. It's the first time that we've seen that publicly notified.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You indicated earlier that you know that these exceedances go back further than that.

Am I understanding that correctly?

[Mandy Olsgard]

Again, there are two issues.

On the groundwater seepage, that contaminated groundwater, from the reports I reviewed—the furthest I went back was the 2020 report—Imperial stated that they identify these exceedances in 2019. That's when they determined not to turn the seepage interception system on.

With respect to the industrial waste-water releases, those go back as long as they've been approved. It could be decades.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You mentioned the federal Fisheries Act. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about what sections or what components of the act you feel would be relevant if these exceedances that we're seeing when it comes to industrial waste-water effluent were properly regulated or followed up on by the federal government. What parts of the Fisheries Act would come into play?

[Mandy Olsgard]

It's either section 35 or 36. I can't remember on the hot spot. It would be the deposition of deleterious substances to the environment, in my view.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Moving to the issue of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about 15 seconds.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'll cede the rest of my time back to you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I think we had a good discussion, a really good discussion.

We only got one round in, but it was a very powerful round.

Go ahead, Madame Pauzé.