Evidence of meeting #89 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1 p.m.
Professor and Researcher, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Okay.
I would just say that, at that scale, we were in a much better position to explain what was happening for those communities of organisms. So I think those large watersheds are very helpful in terms of forecasting.
1 p.m.
Bloc
Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you. I'm sorry to have rushed you, but I have only three minutes, and I would like to hear what you have to say on another subject.
Some water management experts believe that we need to have a very frank discussion on the resource usage conflicts. Ms. Orihel talked about it, in a way. We used to think of the resource strictly from an economic and infrastructure point of view, for example. Now we're talking about biodiversity and resource preservation.
Can you quickly give us your thoughts on usage conflicts?
1 p.m.
Professor and Researcher, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Usage conflicts are enormous and also affect drinking water, for example. I'm thinking in particular of Lac Saint-Charles in Quebec City. There is a lot of fighting over the use of that water. That is why we need to bring together stakeholders from a watershed, which may affect a waterway of interest like this one, to talk about their expectations, especially in the context of the coming climate change.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
Mr. Hudon, I see your hand is up. Do you have a brief comment to add?
1 p.m.
Member, Forum for Leadership on Water
Yes, thank you. If I may, on the topic of usage conflicts, I would like to give the example of the St. Lawrence action plan in Quebec. Since its inception, this mechanism has helped mitigate water usage conflicts in the St. Lawrence River, as well as at the mouth of its tributaries, whether by users of the waterways or by the surrounding communities involved. Today, we have mechanisms that have been in place for more than 20 years, and that contribute to the sustainable development of this majestic body of water, the St. Lawrence River.
1:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
Mr. Hudon, could you send us details on those mechanisms, as well as examples?
1:05 p.m.
Liberal
1:05 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for coming back. This is really interesting testimony.
Dr. Orihel, I was reading on your Wikipedia page that the magazine Nature dubbed you “Lady of the Lakes” after your work to save the Experimental Lakes Area. I remember studying limnology at the University of Victoria with a fellow named Rick Nordin. He told us about the importance of the Experimental Lakes Area. Of course, the funding for it was cut under the Harper government, so perhaps I'll start just by thanking you for that really important work.
Part of this study is dealing with the tailings ponds. You may be familiar with the testimony that we heard from a number of witnesses on that topic, including, most notably, the Alberta Energy Regulator. I think one of the pieces that's been missing is a sense of the scale and scope of the issue in a national context. From your testimony today, it sounds like there are some promising treatments that could be employed for tailings.
Maybe you can just talk for the rest of the time and provide the committee with some context that we can include in the report. I'm keen to know how much tailings are out there on the land base, how the tailings ponds in the oil sands region rank in terms of environmental liabilities in this country, how much of the tailings are currently being treated and what the long-term plan is for this area. I've flown over the oil sands and it's absolutely astounding, the scale of what's involved.
I know there are a lot of environmental liabilities in this country, not just from mines but from other developments as well. Can you just provide the committee with a high-level sense of what we're dealing with here?
1:05 p.m.
Associate Professor in Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Queen's University, As an Individual
Absolutely. I'd be happy to.
I'll back up right to the beginning with.... Am I allowed to use a whiteboard to just draw a very quick picture?
1:05 p.m.
Associate Professor in Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Queen's University, As an Individual
I'll just draw a picture like this. This is the cross-section of the Athabasca River. The oil sands sit like this. Near the Athabasca River the oil sands are shallow, so near the Athabasca River oil sands are mined with surface mining, big pits. Further away from the oil sands, where the deposit is deeper—200 metres or so—that's where the industry uses in situ techniques, where they basically go down and have to blast it out from here.
The tailings pond issue that we're talking about is only an issue in the surface mining area right beside the Athabasca River. That's the first thing to understand. Why are the tailings ponds there? Well, when they're mining they just have a bunch of rock and they want to get that bitumen out of the rock, so the industry figured out how to boil it, basically. They boil it up and they're able to take off that bitumen layer. They need a lot of water to boil up and extract out the bitumen, so that's why there's a need to extract water from the Athabasca River.
When they're boiling it all up, they're not only pulling up the bitumen; they're creating this tailings slurry. That tailings slurry has to go to a tailings pond and settle. That overlying water, once it settles, can be reused and it can go back into the processing. Actually, to the industry's credit, they've increased the rate at which they recycle the water over time, but the problem with this recycling, reusing the water over and over again, is that it becomes more and more contaminated every time it goes back. Even though it makes sense, from a policy perspective, to encourage the industry to recycle their water, what it has created is a big problem with these massive ponds on the landscape of highly toxic water.
This is highly toxic water. We're not talking about subtle effects. Animals that are in contact with this water, land on this water, die. These are not subtle effects.
These are just open systems. These tailings ponds are basically mines, mine pits. They're not a sealed unit. They leak. There are drainage ponds around that leak bitumen and pump—
1:10 p.m.
Associate Professor in Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Queen's University, As an Individual
Yes.
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I have let the time go because it's very interesting, but I have to go now to Mr. Leslie.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think we need more white boards around this committee. I strongly encourage that, actually.
I would like to start with Ms. McFadyen, given that the Assiniboine is quite literally in my backyard. Our family farm is almost due south of the Assiniboine River. The Hoop and Holler was cut in 2011. The first field it went onto was one of our fields, so I am acutely aware of the impacts of overland flooding and the potential lack of availability of water.
Obviously, it's critical for irrigation in our area for vegetables, for the value-added processing in my hometown of Portage la Prairie with Simplot, McCain and Roquette, and of course for drinking water to various nearby communities.
One of Manitoba's heroes, I would say, is Duff Roblin. The foresight he had for a relatively small amount of money back in the sixties to build the Portage diversion and a number of other physical water management tools has paid off a thousand times over in terms of protection of farmland, physical structures and entire communities.
I'm of the view that we're going to need a similar round of that as we have a continuation of ebbs and flows in water availability and as we look to seek economic prosperity across our rural areas.
Ms. McFadyen, having looked through the future demand expectations, how do you think we can go about managing the future demand requirements out of the Assiniboine, recognizing the challenges of that? What role does the federal government have to play? What would you recommend in the sense of cost-sharing models that the federal government could step up in order to support the major infrastructure projects that we need to manage our water in your region?
1:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Assiniboine River Basin Inititative
With respect to future demands, as you know, Mr. Leslie, the Assiniboine covers the Qu’Appelle and Souris sub-basins as well as the Assiniboine. Currently, there is the Prairie Provinces Water Board in place, which has federal members and provincial representatives that deal with apportionment and water quality.
When we speak to what's going on in the landscape right now in the Assiniboine, we are in essence moving into a dry cycle or a drought again. Talking to landowners and those who work at the grassroots level, the conversation goes back to small, off-mainstem reservoirs that can assist producers and local communities. Those cost money to build as well as to maintain.
We're not talking about large structures like the Shellmouth Dam that's in place in Manitoba on the Assiniboine, or the Grant Devine or Rafferty dams. We're talking of mainstem opportunities to allow producers and communities to take advantage of those spring runoffs or those rains, to control flooding but also to have water in reserve at times of dry cycles.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you.
Have there been any major federal investments in the past eight years towards water management projects?
Second, just to get two questions in at once, what are your thoughts on the potential Treherne dam project that has been on the books for many years and seems to ebb and flow in terms of its availability? What impact did that have in terms of water retention for our economic needs for drinking water, particularly as we have potatoes shifting acres, so that we could better manage this water on the landscapes?
1:15 p.m.
Executive Director, Assiniboine River Basin Inititative
From a federal perspective, the Lake Winnipeg basin initiative developed and delivered projects out there, but focusing on water quality certainly would impact the Lake Winnipeg side of things.
The Government of Manitoba has set up a conservation trust for the local watershed associations to access for project-based work with landowners and communities. That's in place, but those are all very small projects.
The Treherne dam project is much larger. It impacts landowners as well. When you start talking about some of those projects, there is considerable investment, and it needs to also have.... If there's a willingness or a want from a federal perspective, it should also have some federal support in that regard.
1:15 p.m.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
For a project like that or any similar project across the country, would it be possible for the province and municipalities alone to move forward without federal support? If you had to put a percentage on what the federal government would need to come in with, what would you state that at?
1:15 p.m.
Executive Director, Assiniboine River Basin Inititative
Some of those larger projects have become cost-prohibitive to municipalities and the provincial government. It needs to be a tripartite agreement to move forward. It depends on the scope of the project and the size. I can't necessarily put dollars on it, but it should be a cost share with the province and the federal government.
Municipalities are strapped, as you know, and the tax base of Manitoba and Saskatchewan's rural areas is getting smaller and smaller as citizens move to larger centres, so you're already strapping that municipality from a tax point of view. It's imperative on these fronts that both the provincial and federal governments come forward.
1:15 p.m.
Conservative
Branden Leslie Conservative Portage—Lisgar, MB
Thank you.
Quickly, on the international component, is there any concern, given that so many of our waterways flow through the United States as well, that the collaboration between the two countries may be at risk of breaking down and that we could see water being retained on the United States side and not flowing through?
In the big picture going forward, are there general concerns about the interjurisdictional boundaries that they cross?
1:15 p.m.
Executive Director, Assiniboine River Basin Inititative
There have been for some. I can't speak for eastern Canada. Here in the western part of the world, I know they're working on some....
The Columbia River has been a point of contention. We have not seen it yet in the International Souris River Board. The Souris River is unique in the sense that it starts in Saskatchewan, goes into North Dakota and comes back into Manitoba. It crosses that international boundary twice.
Under the guidance of the International Joint Commission, which is long-standing, they work on water apportionment based on natural flows, as well as water quality. Certainly, the Red River in Manitoba flows from North Dakota and Minnesota into Manitoba.
As we get into various situations, we are probably going to see concerns raised with regard to water flow across international boundaries. I think it's imperative that the new Canada water agency does not work in a silo but with other organizations, such as the International Joint Commission, which is responsible for those waters along the Canada-U.S. boundary, including the Great Lakes.
1:15 p.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for returning to have this discussion.
I'm going to start with Mr. Hudon.
I've sat on some committees. Prior to being elected federally, I sat on a few citizenship committees at the City of Guelph, where we were looking at our waste-water study, which eventually became a 50-year waste-water plan. We also looked at Guelph's water supply strategy. Water was part of our community energy initiative on how to reduce our water use per capita by 50% while we increased our population by 50%, because Guelph is fed by ground water. There is a limited capacity for water in Guelph.
Many people say that water is a governance issue. The Forum for Leadership on Water has provided us, as a municipality, with information to help with our governance in a municipal context, which then also has to connect to other levels of governance—provincial and national governance. We have the Ontario Water Works Association and Water Canada. It is a complex area.
Could you comment on water as a governance, and what we can do federally to try to help coordinate with agencies such as the one that you work with?