Environment Committee on Oct. 26th, 2023

[Kevin Norris]

On the question of raising the maximum residue limits, that's outside of my responsibility, but I can take it back to the department.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Can you send us something in writing?

[Kevin Norris]

Yes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I would be grateful.

I'd like to get back to the Canada Water Agency.

What budgets have been allocated to the agency's mission of coordinating drinking water and groundwater contamination, particularly by pesticides and insecticides approved by the PMRA, and therefore by Health Canada, if I understand correctly?

[Kevin Norris]

AAFC is continuing to collaborate with ECCC to identify linkages between the water agency and the freshwater action plan to the agricultural sector. As you mentioned, pesticides are an important issue, and we definitely recognize that pesticides play an important role for producers in securing crop and yield and in quality research. We also know that producers are good stewards of the land, but, unfortunately, pesticides do impact water quality.

At AAFC, we do have a pest management centre. This plays an important role in undertaking research and science on the sustainable use of pesticides, including the risks of pesticides as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. Pauzé. Your time is up.

Mr. Cannings, you have the floor.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for being here today. I don't normally sit on this committee, so it's been wonderful to hear about this topic of water, which is obviously a very big and complicated subject, but also a very important one. I wish I had all day to talk to every one of you.

I'll start with Mr. Cronin, because he mentioned the mighty Columbia River, which is very important, certainly in the western context. All of my riding basically drains into the Columbia River. The Columbia River Treaty is a huge issue there. It's being renegotiated. It has been renegotiated for years now, with climate change, with increasing thoughts around ecosystem function, and with indigenous knowledge and indigenous partnerships.

However, this year, with climate change, we saw the Arrow Lakes basically dry up because all that water had to be sent to the United States under the treaty, so citizens of Nakusp, for instance.... You know, all that area was flooded in the sixties. It caused great pain and hardship then, but at least they got a functioning lake out of it for recreation. This year, that disappeared, more or less.

I'm wondering how Global Affairs is dealing with this question of climate change and ecosystem function with regard to that renegotiation. Where are we at with the whole renegotiation process?

[Niall Cronin]

With regard to the Columbia River Treaty and the Columbia River, I agree 100% on its importance. Mr. Chair, you may have seen that in the joint statement following President Biden's in-person visit, there was a reference to the two countries' commitment to modernizing the Columbia River Treaty, to accelerating work on the treaty. On the negotiations, Canada works very closely with the Province of British Columbia and with the three first nations whose traditional territories are in the basin.

We've also taken to heart efforts to engage local communities, something that wasn't done when the treaty was first negotiated in the 1960s. We want to hear those concerns and bring those to our American partners across the negotiating table to ensure that we get a modernized agreement that works for Canada and that also is reflective of issues related to climate change and making sure that this ecosystem function is a part of the modernized agreement. It is another, I think we could say, leg of the three-legged stool holding up the treaty: flood risk management, power generation and ecosystem function. Those are the priorities that we're pursuing in the negotiations with the United States.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Quickly, I'll turn to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

My father worked for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for his whole career, so I'm very thankful for the work that you do, especially in the research department. There's a big research station just next to my riding, in Summerland.

In the Okanagan Valley, where I live, the big issue is climate change. One of the big issues, other than wildfires, is the availability of water. We have an agricultural land reserve in British Columbia. Now the orchard owners, the vineyard owners, the farmers are suggesting that maybe we need an agricultural water reserve, because they're very concerned that water availability is very restricted in one of the best agricultural areas of Canada.

I'm wondering what Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is looking at on that issue, because it's of real and critical importance.

[Dr. Catherine Champagne, Environmental Scientist, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Thank you for the question.

Climate change is an important pillar of our strategic plan for science. It's trying to focus investments around building more resilient agricultural systems, including more water resilience to extremes in climate. It's also promoting, adopting and testing best management practices to help retain water in the soil and to ensure that agricultural productivity remains consistent under a changing climate.

We've invested in a number of living labs projects under the agricultural climate solutions program. This includes a site in British Columbia where our scientists are working with farmers directly and with non-governmental agencies that work with the farming community to design best management practices that are workable and feasible in each community and that meet the specific concerns in each of those regions to ensure that there's both the scientific evidence to promote the adoption of these practices and a confidence within the community that these new practices will help support resilient agriculture in the future.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The time is pretty much up.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you for those good questions.

We'll go now to the second round, starting with Mr. Leslie.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute released a report last week entitled “A National Agri-Food Water Action Plan”. One of its key takeaways was that “Canada has a fragmented and siloed model for water management. Data collection and reporting is far from standardized or complete.”

I appreciate AAFC's comments, Mr. Norris, on the importance of water. The challenges do exist when we shoo away water in the spring and we need it in the summer, so it's not necessarily regionally specific in that sense.

My question is to AAFC. Recognizing that it is so vital for farmers, for all types of agricultural producers and for the wet industries that are so important to rural communities, what is AAFC doing to actually develop programming that will aid farmers with drainage and with irrigation, and secondarily to aid food processors in those wet industries to make sure our communities have the necessary water and waste-water infrastructure so that we can continue to expand those industries?

[Kevin Norris]

Thanks for the question.

I recall that there is a shared jurisdiction, as many of you probably know, between the federal, provincial and territorial governments. The provinces and territories have the primary jurisdiction over land and natural resource ownership.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership is a massive investment of $3.5 billion. It just recently launched on April 1 of this year.

Under that programming, there are regionally-appropriate beneficial management practices that are available to address a multitude of agri-environmental issues, including water.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Norris.

You're right. The role of the provinces is vital, particularly in water. It seems like the relationship is, I would say, in a rocky place in the need to work together on water management. Why aren't the provinces at the table for the sustainable agriculture advisory council?

[Kevin Norris]

The sustainable agriculture advisory committee is composed of federal and sector stakeholders; however, there were specific ongoing discussions with provinces and territories bilaterally, and specific PT sessions were held during development of the strategy.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

Your colleague mentioned resiliency. Moisture and drought resilience can be achieved through gene-editing technologies. We've seen many other countries around the world, our trading partners, making large advancements. They're coming into production. Soybeans in the United States are an example. We've also seen many other benefits that can come from this technology.

We've received regulatory guidance from Health Canada. We're still waiting on the feed side of things.

What has AAFC been doing to pressure Health Canada to actually come through with this regulatory guidance to ensure that we can have this come into production in Canada soon?

[Kevin Norris]

Unfortunately, gene editing is outside of my scope. I can get back to you on that one. I do know that we work closely with Health Canada on a multitude of issues—

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'll ask the Department of Health.

Why is it taking so long? You've already approved regulatory guidance for human consumption. Why is the feed part taking so long?

[Greg Carreau]

Thank you very much for the question.

I'll have to get back to you with specifics on that.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

I'll stick with the Department of Health.

On PMRA, you've had a pilot program for the last couple of years on water monitoring, working with some agricultural groups and stakeholders, which I think is very important.

I think there was a loss of trust when Environment and Climate Change Canada was on private land last summer with black SUVs without invitation. As you look forward, there seems to be a movement towards citizen science for water monitoring.

Recognizing that the limits of detection are so small and that the chain of custody for proper procedures in water monitoring is so vital, how can you expect to expand the water monitoring program without using paid professionals? How much would that cost? Is it really reasonable to rely on trusted agronomists to work with farmers on their privately owned land versus focusing on citizen scientists?

[Greg Carreau]

Thank you for very much for the question.

I agree. With pesticides, water quality monitoring and, more generally, research and science more broadly, citizen science can be an important and powerful tool to generate data that government departments as well as academics and other partners can use.

It's an important piece of a broader complementary approach to investments in science, meaning that citizen science would not be the exclusive mechanism by which we would generate science. We would certainly invest internally with our research and monitoring capacities, as well as with academics and other partners, thereby insuring a comprehensive review from all science. We would not be relying on one specific source uniquely.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you.

There were 99 current-use pesticides detected out of 1,205 samples in this pilot program thus far. I notice that there is some reference, but not a specific reference, to levels of concern. However, when the front-end loaded part of detection.... If somebody were to go to read that website, they would be worried that there was something detected, but if it's at such a low level of parts per billion, it doesn't actually really matter at the end of the day.

How does the department go about managing how Canadians view this information, and are potentially concerned about it, without an accurate context around the monitoring and the findings?