Environment Committee on Feb. 6th, 2024

[Prof. James Famiglietti]

I think it's appropriate for a national agency. It's the same here in the United States, by the way. There is a need for a national backstopping, for example. When provinces can't agree on what to do, in particular across provinces, sometimes you need that national level of support.

There is no national water policy or plan in the United States. At least there is one in Canada. I understand it's in the process of being revised.

I think this is a perfect topic to really think about priorities for Canada and how to balance the allocation across the competing needs for water in the face of a much more variable climate.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mrs. Chatel.

Mr. Simard, the floor is yours.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Larocque, I would have liked to have met you before. I don't know whether you have heard about it, but there was a little problem in my region, at the Bagotville military base, to do with PFAS, something I was not familiar with before that. I don't want to be vulgar today, but I have been told that PFAS were called "devil's piss", since it is very hard to get rid of them once they are in the environment.

Earlier, you talked about integrated management and said we had to think about both groundwater and surface water. What can we do to manage a contaminant that is as tenacious as PFAS today? In my region, I see that some people's potable well water is contaminated by these PFAS and I assume they are also spreading in the surface water, through runoff. How can we manage to contain this?

[Prof. Marie Larocque]

That is a good question and it is certainly a major concern.

I would add that these contaminants are not within my direct range of experience, but I know a bit about the problem they pose.

Yes, integrated water management is always wise. In this case, the solution would be to have no PFAS entering the resources in the first place.

I use the term eternal contaminants since these contaminants undergo very little transformation, very slowly. Once they are in the hydrosystem, in the water cycle, they stay there. This is particularly the case in groundwater, where the residence time is very long. This is a problem, and it is one of the public's biggest concerns when contaminant levels are high.

I would say that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I might like to just propose a slightly different approach. We have only recently discovered and analyzed these concentrations. In fact, whenever we look for a contaminant in groundwater, we find it. Studies have been done where pesticides, bacteriological problems and pharmaceutical products have been found in groundwater when they were not expected. Groundwater circulates very slowly, but it is not immune to contamination.

I think the solution is prevention: taking action upstream. Now, unfortunately, we will probably have to live with these contamination problems for several decades yet.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

I have noticed that people unfortunately get concerned about these situations only when they impact them.

To your knowledge, have the types of contaminants that may be found in groundwater been characterized? I am thinking of the Government of Quebec, in particular.

[Prof. Marie Larocque]

Major efforts have been made in Quebec to learn about the aquifers, the geological formations that contain groundwater. An enormous amount of work has been done since 2009.

Additional work is being started to determine the quality of that groundwater, but it is still piecemeal. We have an overall vision of the base quality, but there is still a lot of work to do when it comes to specific contaminants like those.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

I would like you to tell me in a bit more detail about the direct impact of climate change on groundwater. Might it increase the concentration of contaminants?

[Prof. Marie Larocque]

That is a good question.

It is probably true in some cases. The impact of climate change on groundwater is felt mainly when it comes to replenishment. We are having shorter winters, less snow melt in the spring and lower levels the following summer. That can all have effects on water chemistry. When water levels are lower, the aerated zones are different and the microorganism populations that transform pollutants may therefore also be different.

To date, very little research has been done on this. In general, little research is being done on groundwater. So we still don't know a lot about how groundwater quality and pollutant content will change in the coming decades.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Right. I ask you that because I know that studies are being done in the forestry sector about carbon sequestration and capture from the perspective of climate change. In the medium and long term, the forest would sequester more carbon than we think within the soil. So the impact from that leads me to assume that a similar logic could be applied to groundwater.

[Prof. Marie Larocque]

Yes, that's possible.

In fact, groundwater is everywhere. As a result, while it has an impact on the forest and on wetlands and the shorelines of watercourses, it also has an impact on the vegetation and thus on carbon accumulation and storage. If we alter groundwater levels, we alter the water supply to bogs and their capacity to store carbon.

I do really take an integrated view.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you.

I might have a question for Ms. Rougeot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have ten seconds left.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Yes, I will be very brief.

Ms. Rougeot, you spoke earlier about your concerns regarding the forestry industry and, of course, groundwater. It seems to me that something has slipped under the radar, and that is Chalk River, where there is going to be a nuclear waste repository that will potentially be located near a potable water source that supplies all—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, you're right, but we have to move on to Ms. Collins.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Yes, I'm sorry.

We will come back to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

If Ms. Collins wants to take that up, that's up to her to decide.

Yes, Mr. Mazier.

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

I have a point of clarification.

What does PFAS stand for?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

PFAS is an emerging contaminant. I don't know the chemical term.

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

If I could have—

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Even I don't think I can pronounce the term.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I have an idea: we're going to email it to all of the committee members.

It's PFAS. Can somebody send that?

Ms. Collins, go ahead.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

Ms. Rougeot, I'll first go to you.

I want to thank you for highlighting the fact that it has been one year since the Kearl tailings ponds leak became public. Scientists and experts have been talking about the impact of the tailings ponds for decades. You held up that report from 14 years ago. When the Liberals were in opposition, they published this report and seemed to understand the need to regulate big polluters.

They've been in government for eight years now. How would you characterize their action or inaction on this file, and what do you see as the tools government has to ensure we're protecting the environment and human health from the impacts of the tailings ponds?

[Aliénor Rougeot]

What we've observed over decades—the environmental movement, impacted indigenous communities and experts—is that, across governments, whether federal or provincial, we see this lack of desire to get deep into using their tools. I think there is a tendency to look away because these are powerful companies that we know lobby hard in order to not be regulated.

However, the federal government has two readily available tools that are squarely in its jurisdiction, which could improve the situation when it comes to tailings.

The first one is the Fisheries Act, which I mentioned earlier. It is prohibited to deposit substances said to be deleterious to fish in waters that contain fish or could contain fish, or that enter into bodies that contain fish. Right now, we are told that a key barrier to enforcing the Fisheries Act is a lack of federal information when it comes to contaminants. However, the environment minister hasn't been using all the tools he could under the Fisheries Act to get more information. Some of these could be bilateral agreements with the indigenous nations living on these territories. They are there already and monitor for their own purposes. Using bilateral agreements to share responsibilities when it comes to monitoring, reporting and enforcing would be one way. Companies also conduct a lot of their own monitoring and studies. The environment minister absolutely has the power to request those internal documents to see whether there is helpful information there for enforcing the Fisheries Act.

The last one is more frequent inspections. In 2019, the Auditor General pointed out that metal mines get inspected about every 1.5 years on average. For oil sands mines, it's every 2.5 years on average. We see that there's no proactive monitoring by the federal government. It's much harder to find a violation of the Fisheries Act if you're not looking at whether there's any violation taking place.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thanks so much.

You mentioned some of the dramatic increases when it comes to pollution in the air, and you saw the report that the emissions from the oil sands are up 6,300%, which is shockingly higher than what had been reported by industry. Can you talk a little bit about what the impact of that level of emissions is on the environment and on water?