Environment Committee on April 18th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

I also want to welcome the witnesses, who are all online today, I believe. We have two panels.

For the first hour, we're pleased to have with us Martin Bureau, vice-president of innovation and head of the PFAS Center of Excellence at ALTRA. I think we've spoken before. From the Okanagan Basin Water Board, we have executive director Anna Warwick Sears. From the Prairie Provinces Water Board, we have chair Nadine Stiller.

Each witness will have five minutes for their opening remarks.

Mr. Bureau, the floor is yours.

[Martin Bureau, Vice-President, Innovation and Head of the PFAS Center of Excellence, ALTRA]

I'm honoured to be with you today.

My name is Martin Bureau, and I'm with ALTRA SANEXEN. I'm going to do my presentation in English from Seattle, where I'm—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I have a point of order. The interpreters are having trouble hearing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It seems that the interpreters are having trouble hearing you, Mr. Bureau. Is the volume too low on your end? We know the sound test was carried out successfully.

[Martin Bureau]

Yes, absolutely, and my signal is perfect.

Is the sound quality okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is the sound better for the interpreters now?

Mr. Bureau, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about where you are and how the weather is in Seattle.

[Martin Bureau]

I'm in Seattle, and the weather is beautiful. It's about 10 or 12 degrees. I'm at the Waste Connections landfill management meeting. Waste Connections is number three in North America for landfill sites, and it's adopted our technologies to treat PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Bureau, the situation is no better. So we'll try to fix the sound problems, and then we'll come back to you after the other two witnesses have presented.

Ms. Warwick Sears, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Dr. Anna Warwick Sears, Executive Director, Okanagan Basin Water Board]

Thank you.

I'm coming to you from the Okanagan Basin Water Board. We are a local government agency, a partnership of Okanagan local governments, and we have had a mandate since 1970 to take leadership on valley-wide water issues. We're one of the fastest growing regions in Canada, and we're one of the most water-stressed regions in Canada. While it's really good to see the federal investments in housing, we're going to need good drinking water to supply those homes.

I want to talk to you about two really urgent issues that require timely investment by the Government of Canada right now to avert massive costs and suffering in the near future.

The first is the impacts of extreme weather on fresh water. We had catastrophic flooding in 2017 and 2018. Last year, in addition to destroying almost 300 homes, the big West Kelowna wildfire came very close to destroying our multi-million dollar Rose Valley water treatment plant. This summer, we're worried about the Duteau plateau, which is where all of our reservoirs are on the east side of the Okanagan Valley. These reservoirs provide water for 90,000-plus residents and represent hundreds of millions of dollars of agricultural production.

Today, right now, B.C. snowpacks are at historic lows, so we're going from a drought last year into a drought this year. Water utilities are, right now, meeting to plan how to avert conflicts between drinking water for residents, farmers' irrigation and fisheries needs.

I'm here to ask the Government of Canada to further invest in disaster mitigation and adaptation funding to expand efforts to prevent damage from the floods, the droughts and the wildfires, as well as to expand water storage, upgrade irrigation systems and fund drinking water infrastructure. The time for this investment is now. It takes a while for the funding to flow, and recovery is vastly more expensive than proactive mitigation.

The second thing I want to talk about is the invasive mussels that threaten our lakes. The Government of Canada is investing heavily in managing aquatic invasive species in the Great Lakes, but right now, zero dollars are being invested to prevent the invasion of zebra and quagga mussels into western Canada. These invasive mussels are typically brought in by mussel-fouled boats. Most of these mussel-fouled boats are coming from eastern Canada, which means it's an interprovincial issue and merits federal involvement.

The Columbia, Kootenay, Okanagan and Fraser basins are all at risk from these mussels because of our water chemistry. There are projections that the invasive mussels will cause B.C. more than $139 million annually. The CBSA must also be involved because invasive mussels have just been detected in the Snake River, which is also part of the Columbia basin. Federal resources are urgently needed right now for the B.C. invasive mussel defence program.

In summary, local governments in B.C. are facing intense threats to fresh water from the extreme weather events and from these invasive aquatic species. The costs of prevention and proactive mitigation are small compared to the extreme costs of repairing or even managing the damage. These are national-scale challenges that can't simply be transferred to the provinces or local communities. We're risking losing our local ecosystems, our salmon runs, our quality of life and our cultural values, and we're risking severely impacting local communities.

We're asking the government to invest in local government flood, drought and wildfire mitigation. We're also asking that the federal government provide equivalent resources to western Canada as are given to eastern Canada so that we can prevent aquatic invasive species, particularly invasive mussels, from coming to our area. We also request that the federal government fully implement the recommendations of the report on aquatic invasive species by then commissioner Julie Gelfand. I believe this came out in 2019.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Dr. Warwick Sears.

We'll go now to Ms. Stiller for five minutes.

[Nadine Stiller, Chair, Prairie Provinces Water Board]

Mr. Chair, my name is Nadine Stiller, and I have been chair of the Prairie Provinces Water Board since 2018. I'm also the executive director with the new Canada water agency branch within Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Today I'm representing the Prairie Provinces Water Board.

I'm honoured to be joining you from Treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinabe, Ininew, Oji-Cree, Dene and Dakota peoples and homeland of the Métis nation.

Water management in Canada is a shared responsibility between all levels of government, and the legal framework for water management is complex. In summary, the provinces hold primary responsibility for water quality, water use and allocation within their borders, including drinking water and waste-water services. The federal government is responsible for fresh water generally through national regulations and monitoring programs. Both levels of government deliver programs to promote healthy aquatic ecosystems.

In the Prairies, water generally flows eastward from the Rockies in Alberta through Saskatchewan to Manitoba before draining into Lake Winnipeg and Hudson Bay. Managing water effectively across the Prairies is critical for both economic prosperity and the well-being of its residents, including a significant indigenous population. This unique system relies heavily on snow-melt runoff, so precipitation variability makes the region highly susceptible to extreme conditions like droughts and floods. Droughts that are long lasting after multiple years pose the greatest challenge. Climate change is intensifying these variations, making strong interjurisdictional collaboration essential.

The Prairie Provinces Water Board was established in 1948 by the three provinces and the federal government. However, by the 1960s, the growing water demands from provinces indicated the need for a more robust system. In 1969, the master agreement on apportionment was established, and the board focused on the equitable sharing of transboundary waters in the Prairies. While it has no enforcement mechanism, the agreement is a powerful instrument that fosters co-operation, enables dispute resolution between provinces and has proven its function for over 50 years.

Schedules A and B of the agreement establish a fifty-fifty formula for annual natural flows between adjacent provinces. Each province uses and/or receives 50% of the natural flow. The board determines the natural flow computation methodology and calculates apportionment balances. Schedule E, introduced in 1992, specifically addresses water quality for 12 transboundary water bodies. The federal government performs water quality monitoring that supports a five-year cycle review of water quality objectives. Additionally, a new schedule F for co-operation on groundwater and aquifer management is in the process of being added to the master agreement.

There are three key factors that contribute to the board's success.

First, the master agreement on apportionment commits provinces to a fair portioning of water, protecting both water quantity and quality. Provinces benefit from long-term planning certainty through knowing their water allocation and responsibilities.

Second, consensus-based decision-making allows issues to be addressed before they escalate into conflicts.

Third, the board, comprised of senior water resource officials, fosters collaboration across similar mandates and shared goals with equal decision-making power.

The board is supported by a secretariat and four permanent committees that include hydrology, flow forecasting, water quality and groundwater. The board is cost shared equally between federal and provincial governments. Environment and Climate Change Canada funds and conducts water monitoring activities at the transboundary locations. The board's strength lies in its commitment to consensus by involving all parties, which fosters a spirit of co-operation and mutual respect amongst provincial governments, the primary water regulators. The collaborative approach has ensured consistent compliance with the master agreement.

Thank you on behalf of the Prairie Provinces Water Board for this opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

That was very interesting.

Mr. Bureau, we'll go back to you. If everything is working, the floor is yours.

[Martin Bureau]

That's perfect.

I'm pleased to address you again. Can you confirm that the sound is good?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, it is.

[Martin Bureau]

Thank you.

In 2001, our company, ALTRA, had already started to treat PFAS. We were contracted to remediate soil and groundwater that had been contaminated by AFFF, which is aqueous film-forming foam that is full of PFAS, because of a leaking tank on a Canadian military base. We treated 4.5 million litres of groundwater using a combination of our own technology at the time—foam fractionation and media filtration—achieving removal efficiency of 99%.

Another major project was completed in 2013 after the terrible Lac-Mégantic accident, where we treated all the water that was used to put out the fire after those 72 railcars blew up. The petroleum fire was extinguished in two days using nearly 1,000 litres of concentrated AFFF and more than 64 million litres of water. ALTRA treated all that hydrocarbon- and AFFF-contaminated fire water, achieving 99.6% removal.

In 2022, we executed the largest PFAS remediation project in Canada at the Canadian Forces Base Borden. We dealt with 10 million litres of highly contaminated AFFF- and hydrocarbon-contaminated groundwater as well.

After many pilots and testing of over 10,000 PFAS samples in our lab in Montreal, we have developed an expertise that we're spreading throughout North America. Now we are operating the first of its kind “clean water as a service” PFAS treatment plant, which aims at achieving a guaranteed level of PFAS removal in contaminated leachates at Waste Connections'—which is the third-largest landfill management company in North America—landfills in Rosemount and Rich Valley, Minnesota.

As you well know, PFAS, the forever chemicals, are everywhere and they vary from site to site. They end up in our surface water, groundwater, leachates and effluents from whatever sources they origin from—industries, contaminated sites, landfills, airports, military bases and so on—which we then have to treat downstream at drinking water treatment plants or waste-water treatment plants. At that stage, the concentration turns out to be very low. It's too high for our health, but it's still very diluted.

We have seen just recently in La Presse that a Sainte-Cécile-de-Milton aquifer was contaminated by PFAS from a well-suspected, close by, upstream source. Treatment costs at that level become extremely high. A large, publicly owned treatment plant could easily spend, on a daily basis, half a million dollars to treat PFAS, for consumables only.

This is not the solution. PFAS needs to be treated, addressed, captured or eliminated at its source. First and foremost, we need to eliminate its use in manufacturing processes and in manufactured goods. We also need to eliminate emissions from the various sources, wherever they are—whether they are solid, liquid or gaseous, especially focusing on liquids because this is the most urgent and most important type of emission to deal with right now. That's what ALTRA is dedicated to doing.

The bottom line is that our water resources face escalating strain and demand urgent action. Current efforts have proven insufficient in integrating resilience into our strategies for safeguarding and conserving water resources.

Canada must act promptly. We propose the following actions.

The use of PFAS must be strictly prohibited across a range of applications in Canada. We also need to include comprehensive declaration of their content, to ensure transparency and safety for consumers and the environment whenever they are used.

We also need clear and robust regulatory actions. It is vital to enact the draft objectives for PFAS in Canadian drinking water before the end of 2024. From these drinking water criteria, we can then derive surface water, groundwater and soil criteria and so on, and then act.

It is imperative that the federal government, through its key agencies, expedite the issuance of much-anticipated RFPs for comprehensive PFAS decontamination across the country. This includes orphan sites, airports, military bases and brownfields under the federal jurisdiction.

Financial support must also be provided to other levels of government in Canada to address PFAS contamination resulting from federal sites, like we have seen in aquifers downstream of military bases and airport sites throughout the country and especially in Quebec last fall.

Finally, it is essential to allocate specific funding to support the demonstration and implementation of innovative, made-in-Canada solutions for PFAS decontamination. This strategic investment will not only advance the effectiveness of remediation efforts, but it will also spotlight Canada's capability to innovate and lead in the environmental seat on the global stage.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Bureau. That was very interesting.

We'll now go to questions from members.

Mr. Kram, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today.

There is a lot to cover, so it's a shame that I have only six minutes, Mr. Chair.

Let's start with Monsieur Bureau.

First of all, thank you for all of the work you do on PFAS decontamination. I am wondering if you can share with the committee where PFAS comes from. When you suggest that PFAS should be strictly prohibited, what would be some of the implications of prohibiting PFAS?

[Martin Bureau]

PFAS are useful chemical compounds that have been used for a lot of applications in our world, whether for Gore-Tex, for Teflon anti-stick pans or to put out fires. They have this inherent property of not being affected by the environment—the extreme environment in particular—so that turns into a burn-resistant, stain-resistant or friction-resistant component.

As a result, they end up in almost everything we fabricate, including the textiles around us—if someone is wearing polyester—and the varnishes on our tables. They're also in all those sites where hydrocarbon fires have been put out or where we have tested foams for their quality of putting out fires of hydrocarbons.

Firemen have tested new foams by essentially digging a hole, putting in some diesel, using the foam and then leaving the foam to put out the fire. The result is that this has sunk into the ground and into the aquifer. That's one of the very important sources of PFAS in our community, and they are also linked with military bases and airports.

We then have the industries that use them. Then there are landfills that, as a result of all of our uses, end up with those PFAS, which then up in their leachate or their emissions. As a result, we have PFAS in our blood. I have PFAS in my blood. There's, in fact, no blood sample that does not contain PFAS in general. I have never tested a sample for suspected PFAS that did not have PFAS in it.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Are there readily available alternatives to PFAS that could be used, or are they necessary for that particular type of firefighting foam or for other uses?

I understand we don't want PFAS in our bloodstreams and PFAS in our waterways, but at the same time if they're necessary to put out fires, there certainly are some benefits as well.

[Martin Bureau]

The simple answer is, yes, there are alternatives, and they work.

The thing is that this is a family of products that have proven performance. As a result, and because our regulations are done in a certain way, this molecule is being banned or this other molecule is being banned. However, we chemists are very clever at adding new branches to the molecules. That changes the name and then it's a whole new molecule. We need to ban the whole family of fluorine-based compounds for all those non-essential uses.

There are a few exceptions. If there were only exceptions, we wouldn't be in the position we are in now. Yes, alternatives exist.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Bureau.

I would like to switch gears now to Ms. Stiller.

Ms. Stiller, you spoke in your opening statement about the new schedule F for the co-operation on groundwater and aquifer management.

How can this schedule be implemented while we are, at the same time, respecting the rights of farmers, ranchers and other landowners?

[Nadine Stiller]

The schedule is not yet added to the master agreement. It's in process. We're waiting for one of the provincial governments to complete its order in council.

There is the committee of the Prairie Provinces Water Board on groundwater, at which all the provincial regulators and federal experts come together to determine areas that need to be studied or analyzed and to recommend preventative action. The work is done from a compliance perspective with the Master Agreement on Apportionment, but all of the partners, all of the members of the board, are very clearly vested in the Prairies and understand the importance of the relationship with the agricultural community, so we don't engage necessarily directly. It's also very early days in terms of how schedule F will be implemented.

There are many other non-governmental organizations across the Prairies that engage directly with the agricultural sector to promote and implement best practices to prevent and mitigate pollution in both surface water and subsurface aquifers.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

This committee has also heard several times about the economic and environmental benefits of irrigation projects. Can you share your thoughts on how the Canada water agency could play a positive role? Also, what is the best way to move forward with major irrigation projects?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We only have about 20 seconds. You could also try to work that in somehow later on in an answer to a question, but go ahead, Ms. Stiller.

[Nadine Stiller]

The provinces are fundamentally the regulators of irrigation development within their borders. The board I'm representing today really serves a monitoring and compliance function to make sure that the water quality and quantity parameters accorded in the master agreement are met.