Environment Committee on Dec. 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Taylor Roy, you have 30 seconds.

[Leah Taylor Roy, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

We do have the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, the Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition and a number of groups that have been working to protect it.

What do you think could be the most impactful thing to do to convince people? It seems like governments, development, and greed seem to always trump listening and respecting nature, as my colleague Mr. Deltell has said.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Be brief.

[David O'Connor]

Honestly, if we had all the resources in the world, we would bring people to the lakes to show them what they stand to lose, or the already lost causes. We have lakes that will never be the same again. We discussed how we should react to the presence of invasive mussels. However, sometimes we can't do anything and we must mourn the loss of a lake.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

If I understand correctly, people would need to be brought there so that they can see with their own eyes what has happened.

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gilvesy, you talked a lot about natural infrastructure being built by farmers and ranchers to limit the release of fertilizers into freshwater basins. On the one hand, there is the use of fertilizers, and what you are doing is good. On the other hand, there is the issue of pesticides, which are being used more and more, and that is very worrisome both for the health of the environment and for human health.

Could infrastructure similar to what you have put in place that is beneficial to natural structures be used to limit the spread of pesticides?

[Bryan Gilvesy]

I hope everyone bears in mind that in talking about restoring natural infrastructure, we have to capture all manner of things from entering the freshwater courses, be it topsoil, pesticides or perhaps fertilizers. These pieces of land—these natural spaces—that we create provide a wonderful way to buffer our water from all the activities that we humans have on our lands.

It's about recognizing that this isn't just about one particular thing. This is about all the things that—

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I'm sorry for interrupting. What I understand is that the buffer zones you have can also be effective against pesticides.

I have enough time left to ask Andrew Stegemann, from Our Living Waters, a question.

In his presentation two weeks ago, Mr. Pentland from the Forum for Leadership on Water talked about your organization's priorities. I was a little surprised to learn that you had set your priorities for the next 10 years. It seems to me that chemicals management cannot wait 10 years.

Should your priorities be placed in a different order to focus on the growing and harmful use of agrochemicals?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 30 seconds.

[Andrew Stegemann]

I'm sorry. I don't recall that recommendation. My recommendations weren't based on 10 years, either. Perhaps it was a different conversation.

However, I will say this: I think water data is a very important consideration when it comes to thinking about the health of waters. It's very important to understand that if you count the 167 sub-watersheds across Canada, we only have sufficient accessible data to assess the overall health of 40% of those watersheds—that's 57. We literally do not know the health of our waters. I think this is a massive issue when it comes to contaminants and chemicals.

My colleague Dominique Monchamp can speak especially well about the need for data.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I'm going to have to stop you there.

I'll say to the committee that we have a module on data. We have some very interesting witnesses lined up to address that particular issue. Thank you for the segue into that module, which will come later.

We'll go now to Mr. Garrison for two and a half minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to go to Mr. O'Connor.

Thank you for your emphasis on the prevention of the spread of invasive species. Rather, I'm not going to thank you, because you're going to cause me to out myself about my favourite lake, which actually isn't in my riding.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I represent a riding that perhaps has more saltwater bays than freshwater lakes. In my question, you will see my favourite lake get exposed here.

My question to you, I know, is a leading one. We often see how monitoring the spread of invasive species is left to non-profits and volunteer organizations in this country, which do this work with great dedication but with very slender or almost no resources. In one case, for three years, the Okanagan and Similkameen Invasive Species Society—Okanagan Lake is my favourite lake—has been asking people who own docks to do monitoring, in order to try to catch invasive mussels before they spread through the lake.

I'm asking this leading question, because I know it's true: Almost everywhere, it's volunteers doing the work to prevent the spread of invasive species.

That's my question.

[David O'Connor]

Volunteers spend an enormous amount of time saving lakes. I mentioned Bleu Massawippi earlier. They are scientific divers who dive down in the lake and pick up the mussels by hand. We are talking about hundreds of people who are committed to the cause and who conduct hundreds of dives a year. When they travel, they do three dives of about an hour each in the same day, in sometimes quite cold waters. If we had to pay these people, we would never have the budget for it.

That is why I am interested in what's going on elsewhere. In some places, licences for boats need to be renewed, instead of being issued for life or for a longer term, and some of that money is directed to those kinds of control programs. If we did something like that, we would be a little less reliant on volunteers and we would be able to support more management programs, monitoring programs, and so on. A big role the government can play is to disperse funds to support local initiatives.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

One of the things that volunteer groups have been doing in the Okanagan is trying to convince the public that there's an economic cost as well as an environmental cost to invasive species, whether it's loss of fish habitat or recreational waters that change. Do we see that in most of the organizations—that we're able to convince the public it's worth spending money on this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Answer quickly, please.

[David O'Connor]

Yes. Above all, the recreation and tourism sector represents a major economic cost. Think of a beautiful beach anywhere in the country. If the sand is covered with zebra mussel shells that cut your feet as soon as you try to get into the water, or if the water has such a dense bed of water milfoil that you could almost walk on it and you really can't swim in it, who wants to go into such a lake?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Who wants to visit a bed and breakfast or any place by such a lake?

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. O'Connor, for coming back to our committee. Your passion for the issue of invasive species is very evident and very much appreciated.

In your opening statement, you talked about the role that Transport Canada can play in this issue. I wonder if you could provide for us any examples of current laws on the books that are not currently being enforced and if there's more a matter of enforcement than of changing the laws that exist. If there are any examples, I would find that very helpful.

[David O'Connor]

I'm not too familiar with all the existing legislation.

What I talked about mainly concerns the ballast water regulations. When the Transport Canada website mentions ballast water, it's mostly about large merchant ships going across oceans. That doesn't take into account the fact that almost all boats have ballasts, live wells, or closed spaces that hold water. These are the spaces that are the most problematic for introducing new species into an area.

The current version of the regulations requires a ballast water filtration and sterilization system. So there is legislation that provides for measures that should apply, but that is not the case. For example, it should apply to all boats sold in Canada for water sports, but they don't have those systems.

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

When you're talking about “all boats”, how big or small are we talking? You mentioned ocean-going freighters, but are we talking about boats as small as boats that could be towed by an SUV or a pickup truck?

[David O'Connor]

Yes. There are boats for water sports that are about 16 feet long that have 200- or 300-litre ballasts.

You can go into a store and buy a big ballast bag to put in the 12-foot boat that you received from your grandfather, for example. In principle, even that could be considered a watercraft with a ballast.

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

When it comes to protecting our lakes from invasive species, would there be the most benefit to having this monitoring and this enforcement in place at the Canada-U.S. border, or are we talking about interprovincial borders where it might be more beneficial? If you could speak to that, it would be very helpful.

[David O'Connor]

It's not just the national or provincial border. The reality is that any movement between two bodies of water can be problematic. One of the problems with our current approach, especially in my region, is that a washing and decontamination station could become mandatory for all lakes. With 3,000 lakes in the Eastern Townships and $50,000 per washing station, the cost would be $135 million for a region of less than a million residents. In a context where the cost of living is increasing, the taxes needed to fund that would be considerable.

The focus should not be on borders, but rather on where a large number of boats move, especially around contaminated sites.

So this is not really about borders. The important thing is to deploy our resources intelligently and efficiently.