Environment Committee on April 18th, 2024

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

Hypothetically speaking, if Ms. Pauzé wanted to transport this radioactive waste to her riding, to Repentigny, how many trips does the commission think it would take? It would apparently take 47,000 trips of radioactive waste for it to be transported to Repentigny, for example.

Was that in the commission's decision?

[Haidy Tadros]

Thank you again for the question.

The quantities of low-level radioactive waste that were discussed for this file are indeed within the commission's rationale for a decision, and that's part of the background and the context in which CNSC staff did their work as well as what the commission had to look at to rationalize its decision.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have questions for the Nuclear Safety Commission as well, but it won't take long.

Ladies, I would like to begin by saying that I read in your speaking notes that you are on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. When I read that sentence, I immediately thought of the community of Kebaowek, an Algonquin first nation that is calling for meaningful consultation on the nuclear waste disposal project at Chalk River. You're declaring that you're on their traditional unceded territory, but I think your organization could start by being more sensitive to them. That would be more credible. I won't belabour the point.

There are a lot of things I want to get clarification on. In particular, I'd like you to send the committee a written response on the independent environmental monitoring program, or IEMP, that you mentioned in your remarks. Since you say that the program is independent, I'd like you to explain to us in writing how it is independent, how it works and to whom it reports. You also say that indigenous people will be involved in this independent environmental monitoring program, but will they really be?

Ms. Tadros, in your opening remarks, you said that you incorporate national and international best practices into your regulatory framework. If cabinet asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an ARTEMIS review, would you welcome that approach? I'm asking you to answer only yes or no, because I have other questions to ask, this time for Mr. Lasserre.

[Haidy Tadros]

Yes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Excellent. We will work on that.

Mr. Lasserre, you're a member of CentrEau. You focused your research on the geopolitics of water in particular, a theme that I think we haven't talked much about in our meetings. If I were to ask you what would merit the attention of the Government of Canada on water as a strategic issue, what would you say?

[Frédéric Lasserre]

That's a very relevant question, and I thank you for it.

I touched on it very quickly, in that it's part of an ongoing debate in Canada. We've been wondering for several decades whether there's indeed pressure from our American neighbours to buy up part of Canada's freshwater resource.

I think that these fears are largely fuelled by reports that are circulating and that have been echoed in the media. It's also true that there were consultations and reflections from American states, professional organizations such as the National Association of Conservation Districts, but also engineering companies, which obviously saw an interest in promoting this idea.

In short, several players helped fuel the idea that there might be a demand from the Americans to improve their more critical water supply situation by turning to Canada, a country where this myth of water abundance prevails. Instead of imposing restrictions and better governance of the resource, which requires effort, the Americans could say to themselves that they need only look to Canada. As I was saying, this debate has been going on for decades.

However, to my knowledge, there has never been a formal request by any U.S. government to try to buy water from Canada. However, this concern has led to bills to try to improve water governance and limit the possibility of exporting water from Canada to the United States. However, this is a dynamic issue in that, as I mentioned, the United States is also facing the effects of climate change and the relative scarcity of the resource.

That said, the opportunity to look to another source—essentially Canada—always arises in the public debate, especially in the western United States. I'm not saying that there's any danger of this happening. I'm just saying that it's still part of the public debate in the western United States.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Do you see this resource as a source of geopolitical tensions in the short or medium term? We're not able to predict climate cycles. As we know, floods and droughts are more severe and more frequent, and the impacts are different.

I'd like to ask you whether that's the case between Canada and the United States, but you have so much experience that we could also talk about what's happening elsewhere in the world.

[Frédéric Lasserre]

I could go on and on about the geopolitical tensions associated with the water resource. It's certainly a factor that contributes to geopolitical tensions elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Middle East, the Nile basin and central Asia.

I could go on and on with examples where tensions arising from the sharing of water resources contribute to the deterioration of relations between states, even if those tensions aren't the only factor involved. Even within societies, this sometimes fuels extremely serious social tensions. Take, for example, the Cauvery river basin in southern India, where there are regular riots that claim victims every summer.

We're lucky in Canada and the U.S.—

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Since everything is going to be much more serious in the future, do you think this could generate geopolitical tensions between Canada and the United States?

[Frédéric Lasserre]

Yes. That's a possibility, as I said a moment ago, but I wouldn't want to sound alarmist. I'm not telling you that it will happen, contrary to what may have been announced in the public debate in previous years. I'm simply saying to keep that possibility in mind.

It would depend a lot on the speed at which climate change is taking place, especially in the western United States. In other words, given the current structure of use in the United States, where about 80% of the water is consumed by the agricultural sector, and the speed of climate change, to what extent will governments and economic agents, mainly the agricultural sector, be able to have time to adapt and change their practices to take this new reality into account?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Lasserre. We'll have to leave it there.

Ms. Collins now has the floor.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here.

I will open it up with the CNSC.

The determination for Chalk River that the CNSC put forward was that the CNL adequately consulted and accommodated indigenous groups, yet 10 out of the 11 federally recognized Algonquin communities have objected to the project for years. In our parliamentary study on nuclear waste, we heard testimony about this, yet the project was approved in January. It really begs the question of how the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is complying with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how these communities are going to have free, prior and informed consent around projects.

I understand that you probably can't speak too much to this, but if you have a very brief comment, please go ahead.

[Haidy Tadros]

Thank you for the question. You're right. I don't mean to be—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Excuse me. There is a point of order.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Chair, on that, I don't know why the witness can't speak freely.

We're trying to get to the bottom of what the risk is to the water and what the risk is to those people, and you keep on telling us to refer to the document. I don't know. I just hope you become a bit more open with what your testimony is actually saying.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

From my limited experience, I don't think that's a point of order. Anyway, the point has been made, even though it may not be a point of order.

Go ahead, Ms. Collins.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I want to ask a few other questions of the other witnesses.

In particular, I have concerns about water privatization and the commodification of water, especially when I think about everyday Canadians but also people around the world who have these deep concerns. One of the things you mentioned that struck me was that, in Ontario, the bottling industry pays around just $500 for every 1,000 cubic metres of groundwater it extracts. That seems appalling.

Can you speak a bit about how we can hold these kinds of industries more accountable, and what is required to make sure they aren't extracting water to the detriment of communities?

[Roy Brouwer]

Foremost, what is needed is that we value the resource itself, because what they're paying for is an administrative fee that is not related in any way to the water they are extracting. It used to be $3.72, or something like that, per 1,000 cubic metres. That's almost a million litres.

They just added $500 to that after they had a two- or three-year moratorium here in Ontario, I believe, on issuing any further permits to the bottling industry. It is completely unclear to me, from the outside, where that $500 comes from. It's still very low. I pay five times more for a litre of water in Kitchener-Waterloo, where 80% of my drinking water is groundwater.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you so much.

Dr. Lasserre, I'm just curious whether you have any comments around the privatization of water and also around industry's impact on groundwater and bodies of water.

[Frédéric Lasserre]

This debate on the appropriateness of pricing water rather than privatizing it, in order to conserve and better manage the resource, is relatively old. It's true that many studies and, in particular, many water governance initiatives, particularly in Europe, include water pricing, not only because water is privatized, but also because it's a lever for changing behaviour and making users pay for the cost of the resource. This is the user‑pay and polluter‑pay idea.

From a strictly economic point of view, it has been relatively well demonstrated that, when you pay for the resource at variable costs, that is to say in proportion to the quantity consumed, and not according to the current fee structure, which is generally a fixed rate, you do indeed see changes in behaviour. I know there are places where rates are set in proportion to the volume consumed, but, contrary to an idea that is widely held in many regions of Canada, there's a fixed rate in most places, including many municipalities in Quebec. People pay because it's included in their municipal taxes, but they often don't know it, so there's no impact on consumption related to water pricing.

So there is a whole debate about the political relevance of implementing this pricing. A frequent association in public debate is that the introduction of pricing could be a first step towards privatization, which is frightening. In fact, there have been a lot of reports on the excesses of privatization as carried out in Europe over the past two decades. However, this association between pricing, which may well be practised by public authorities, and privatization, where resource governance is effectively delegated to the private sector, isn't necessarily justified. We know that the aim of a private company is to make a profit, which is perfectly legitimate, and this means that we sometimes lose control of the pricing structure.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

One of the things that I'm really concerned about is the low snowfall and the impacts of reduced snowpacks. In particular, B.C. and the western provinces are experiencing multi-year droughts.

Can you talk a little bit about some of your research around how this is impacting Canada and what the government needs to do to address it?

[Frédéric Lasserre]

That's another vast question. In the mountains of both Canada and the United States, we are indeed seeing not necessarily a major decrease in precipitation over the whole year but a change in precipitation patterns. Before the advent of climate change two or three decades ago, when it started to become very noticeable, a high proportion of winter precipitation fell as snow. This meant that a reservoir of snow accumulated throughout the winter, and gradually melted from spring and summer onwards. This made it possible to have a relatively substantial flow rate in rivers that descended from the mountain ranges, providing water precisely when it was needed, that is, during the summer period, essentially for irrigation.

What we are seeing more and more is that the overall amount of drinking water that falls during the year doesn't decrease that much, but falls more and more in the form of rain in the winter, which has a number of consequences. First of all, the accumulation of snow cover is much less. As a result, in spring and summer, there will be a lot less snow melting and feeding the flow of the rivers—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately, because we're out of time.

We're going to move to the second round. We're going to reduce the time for each committee member from five minutes to three minutes so that we can finish more or less on time.

Mr. Leslie, you have the floor.