Environment Committee on Feb. 27th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. van Koeverden, you're the last questioner in this round. You have four minutes.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Somebody from our side actually looked up the numbers. Between 2006 and 2014, the federal government invested about $500 million, specifically in roadways and related infrastructure. From 2015 to the present, it's been $1.6 billion. It's triple, actually.

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

On a point of order, what does that have to do with the study?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. van Koeverden, if you could, keep your comments focused on the water study.

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

That was really important.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

I appreciate the guidance from Mr. Mazier.

I will go back to my question for the chief regarding the impact this has had on his community. Before I do, I will preface my question by highlighting a trip we took last week to meet with the Mushkegowuk Council—six or seven first nations were represented at the meeting—where we committed to protecting 86,000 square kilometres of coastal territory.

One of the reasons I felt so strongly about going up and joining this meeting was the experiences I've had on this committee advocating for your community and other first nations communities in Alberta that have been affected by process-affected water and the mining activities that have had such a devastating impact on the health of your communities. I'm proud to be part of a government that is pursuing more opportunities to protect particularly sensitive environmental territory from this development, which is just proven to be unsustainable and unhealthy for communities.

Chief, it's back to you on anything else you'd like to say regarding the impact. As I wanted to say at the closing of your last speech, you should never have to beg for attention. I'll commit myself right now to making sure that anytime you need the attention of the federal government, we're here for you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Do you have a question for the chief?

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

He didn't finish last time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Chief Tuccaro.

[Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro]

First, I'd like to thank you for being an advocate for us.

With regard to us having to beg for this House study, it's something we feel, as Mikisew people, should be owed to us. We're always having to wait for the other communities in the hamlet of Fort Chipewyan.

As we're waiting for everyone to be on board with the House study—and getting the feds on board as well—we're losing people by the week, like I said. We need some clear answers about what is actually happening.

I'll continue to beg for this House study until it comes to fruition for us. It's a baseline for my people to see exactly what's going on. As I made reference to earlier, one of my previous chiefs tabled this 20 years ago. A lot of the stuff that was tabled then is still a concern to us.

Thank you.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Chief.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about a minute.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I have a quick question for Mr. Faveri.

We talk about the four Rs—this was in my notes to ask about—and Guelph is quite involved in precision agriculture. As to the monitoring systems that go with that, including drones and other technology, could you bring forward to our committee how we would measure contamination getting into streams?

[Tim Faveri]

Technology has grown quite a bit over the last number of years, and it's really been the focus of the industry to get better data and monitoring. Right now, still, I would say the best way to monitor is through the taking of soil samples and water samples adjacent to farms.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you to our witnesses. This was a very informative discussion. You've given us a lot of food for thought, and the report at the end of our study will certainly reflect that.

We will now take a quick break to bring in the next panel.

Thank you again. I hope we'll have the pleasure of seeing you again, Chief Tuccaro, when we visit Fort Chipewyan, hopefully in May.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We are now back with our second panel.

We'll start with Mr. Michael Miltenberger, special adviser for the Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources.

All the tests have been done, and the sound meets the standard.

Mr. Miltenberger, please lead us off for five minutes.

[J. Michael Miltenberger, Special Adviser, Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources]

Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here to listen to this spirited debate.

I'm the special adviser to CIER. Before I became the special adviser, I did 20 years in the legislature in the Northwest Territories. I did 14 years in cabinet and nine as an environment minister, and in those nine years, I was finance minister for seven at the same time. It's a pleasure to be back inside the ropes briefly.

CIER is a national organization headquartered in Winnipeg. It was formed by eight first nation chiefs about 30 years ago, chiefs like Phil Fontaine, Manny Jules, Matthew Coon Come and Roger Augustine. It has completed in its time and continues to complete hundreds of programs with indigenous communities across the country, projects such as climate change planning, species-at-risk management, energy literacy, watershed planning, ecological restoration and natural infrastructure, to name some.

The project I will be focusing on today is about collaborative water governance.

Currently in our country, our systems of water governance are inadequate. The status quo is not working. No one government can do it alone, especially when it comes to water. Existing decision-making over water is fragmented and siloed. Federal, provincial and territorial governments make their decisions about water within their respective jurisdictions without processes in place to collaborate with indigenous governments, which are on the front lines of combatting the ongoing water crisis and hold inherent rights over the water in their territories.

Collaborative governance structures are critical to good water governance and to recognizing the inherent rights and authorities of indigenous nations. The collaborative leadership initiative is a process developed by CIER to build collaboration on shared water challenges between indigenous and non-indigenous elected leaders and their administrations. It focuses on two orders of government, indigenous and municipal, because most water decisions are made at the local level, and these two orders of government often have no structured mechanism for collaboration.

When first implemented in Manitoba in 2017, when the idea was presented to the chiefs, 11 indigenous governments and 16 municipal leaders agreed to engage in coming together for the first time in 150 years. Through a series of gatherings, the leaders built trust, learned about each others' communities and water challenges and began to think like a region.

CLI Manitoba advanced the development of a reconciliation framework while building a co-governance table where government-to-government decisions are made. Having elected decision-makers at the table was a critical factor in its success. The leaders collaboratively worked towards a range of shared priorities, particularly the health of Lake Winnipeg, with water at the centre of these efforts. After the CLI process carried on for a series of meetings, in 2019 there was a historic MOU signed between all the parties—the elected municipal leaders and chiefs—at Lower Fort Garry. I will direct you to a very powerful 20-minute documentary that summarizes the CLI Manitoba process on the CIER website.

Building off of this, the national CIER project, which was based on the success of the CLI process in Manitoba, allowed us to secure funding from the BHP Foundation to implement the CLI process with partners in other regions across Canada. This is a five-year project that recently passed its midway point and is generating valuable learnings and building collaborative water governance rooted in reconciliation. We're working with partners across Canada, including the Northwest Territories and British Columbia, as well as further parties in the Northwest Territories and elsewhere, to help create the conditions to change the way water is governed. Our goal is to scale up this work significantly, so we are also creating the resources, tools and learning networks to enable the growth of the CLI model on a big scale.

In the brief we have provided, we have recommendations on how the federal government can better support these collaborate governance initiatives, which I'd be happy to discuss in the questions and answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Miltenberger.

We will now go to Jimmy Bouchard, support representative at the Conseil régional de l'environnement et du développement durable du Saguenay-Lac-Saint‑Jean.

Mr. Bouchard, you have five minutes for your opening remarks. Please go ahead.

[Jimmy Bouchard, Support Representative, Conseil régional de l'environnement et du développement durable du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, it's an honour to be with you today on behalf of the Conseil régional de l’environnement et du développement durable du Saguenay–Lac-Saint- Jean. Today, I would like to talk to you about three topics that I believe are essential to your work on freshwater.

The first is control and regulation of emerging contaminants in drinking water. Quebec is currently facing an unprecedented wave of drinking water sources that are contaminated with perfluorinated compounds, PFAS and PFOS. Nearly a dozen municipalities are waging war on these perennial pollutants. The federal government is currently revising its regulations to establish a standard that, to date, has remained a recommendation.

It is high time for federal authorities to act decisively to ensure quality water for Canadians across the country. In my region of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, the city of Saguenay, more specifically, the borough of La Baie, is facing this scourge. It seems very likely that the source of the contamination is the Bagotville military base, which is under federal jurisdiction. It appears that this is not the only case in Canada. The federal government must act swiftly by adopting a strict standard and assume its responsibilities across the country.

Second, I would like to talk to you about invasive alien aquatic plants. The degradation of water bodies is well under way in several regions of Quebec. Estrie, Montérégie, Laurentides and Abitibi-Témiscamingue are facing unprecedented invasions. In some northern regions of Quebec, the problem is not as severe. In other words, there is still time to protect our water bodies from these invasive species. It is no longer a question of IF they will be affected, but WHEN. Elsewhere in the world, governments have moved quickly to curb this problem. For now, washing boat hulls seems to be the most effective preventive measure. In Quebec, municipalities have the power to require such a measure. Obviously, they must have cleaning infrastructure in place to carry out this obligation.

The federal government can and must act on two fronts. First, it must significantly improve its assistance programs to build boat washing stations. Second, it must pass legislation to control the washing of boats across the country. This can be done in a variety of ways, for example, by requiring ballast water filtration devices and by requiring boats operating on waterways to show proof of washing.

The third issue I want to discuss with you today is the underfunding of water infrastructure. In Quebec alone, the water infrastructure asset maintenance deficit is nearly $35 billion. This amount goes up with every year that passes due to infrastructure underfunding at the various levels of government.

The federal government has a key role to play in ensuring that funding is sufficient to have a chance of resolving the situation within an acceptable time frame. It must recognize the importance of local municipalities in building resilience to climate change and addressing water issues in cities. If it wishes to be taken seriously in its intention to put in place an effective strategy to protect freshwater, it seems clear to me that priority must be given to the rehabilitation, maintenance and improvement of municipal stormwater, groundwater, surface water and waste water catchment, filtration and treatment works.

I would suggest greater flexibility when allocating funding from the various programs. Take the example of the clean water and waste water fund program. Financial assistance is granted on a per capita basis. While natural and seemingly fair, this method of allocating funding has some major shortcomings. For municipalities with a population of 6,500 or less, there is the possibility of adjustment, but it is often insufficient. For larger cities, various criteria should be taken into account, for example, the amount of infrastructure, in absolute numbers or in kilometres of pipe, and the environmental impact of the projects presented.

The City of Saguenay, for example, has as many water facilities, from pumping stations to filtration and treatment facilities, as the City of Montreal—but a population that is 15 times smaller. The objective of the program, which is part of the federal infrastructure plan, to further accelerate economic growth and job creation needs to be reviewed by integrating and prioritizing the environmental gains of submitted projects.

In closing, I would like to draw your attention to governance in terms of environmental jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is delegated by level of government, from municipalities to the provinces and from the provinces to the federal government. The result is a lack of alignment in this delegation of authority. Shared jurisdiction regularly generates conflicts and differences of opinion. All the points I have raised highlight this state of affairs. I sincerely believe that the federal government would do well to look into this issue and grant Quebec exclusive jurisdiction, or at least precedence, over environmental matters.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard.

We'll now turn to Mark Fisher, president and chief executive officer of the Council of the Great Lakes Region.

Mr. Fisher, you have five minutes.

[Mark Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Council of the Great Lakes Region]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I'm pleased to be here today to offer some freshwater perspectives from the standpoint of the Great Lakes region.

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region, which is shared by the United States and Canada, comprises eight states—from New York to Minnesota—and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. For millennia, however, as we all know, this region has also been the traditional territory for many indigenous nations and peoples. Today, it serves as a vital economic and ecological region for both countries.

For example, it has roughly $6 trillion U.S. in economic activity, which represents close to 10% of global GDP. This region, if it were a country, would represent the third-largest economy in the world. It would be behind only the United States and China and ahead of major economies such as Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Unsurprisingly, border crossings in this mega-region are among the busiest in the world, because the provinces and states in this region trade more with each other than with any other country in the world. Over 50 million jobs—one-third of the combined American-Canadian workforce—depend on the region's commerce and cross-border trade.

At the heart of this economic region is one of the largest freshwater systems in the world: the five Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. Over 20% of the world's surface fresh water flows through these lakes before reaching the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Atlantic Ocean. They sustain 50% of Canada's economic activity and 60% of the country's population, as well as important climatic and ecosystem functions along the way.

While this inland freshwater sea is vast in size, the Great Lakes are a finite natural resource. In fact, it is estimated that only 1% of these waters are renewed on an annual basis by precipitation, groundwater and runoff. Moreover, since the lakes turn over and replenish very slowly—anywhere from years to centuries in the case of Lake Superior—they are extremely sensitive to pollution and climate change.

The binational Council of the Great Lakes Region is working to accelerate the regional transition to a sustainable future by uniquely bringing diverse perspectives and interests together across borders and sectors to explore and solve the most pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges as one Great Lakes region. By bringing the environment and economy together in our work and by promoting sustainability in the region's academic research, public policy choices, business decisions, local and regional planning, and capital investments, CGLR is ensuring our regional economy is growing responsibly, our people are thriving and our environment and the Great Lakes are protected for future generations. In other words, we are finding ways to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

For the sake of time, the council would like to offer four freshwater recommendations for your consideration. More details about each have been provided in this submission to the committee, which I hope you have.

The first recommendation would be more funding. It is required to accelerate restoration work at seven toxic hot spots or areas of concern—in Canada, there are 12 of them, five binational—that are currently not in recovery or delisted as areas of concern.

We must increase funding for Great Lakes science and environmental conservation efforts to deepen and accelerate progress on all annexes of the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

We must move faster to create an independent Canada water agency with the right capacity, making it both a whole-of-government effort and a national call to action to respond to Canada's and the world's growing water challenges.

Finally, the federal government should move responsibility for the blue economy strategy from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to the Canada water agency, and every effort should be made to release a pan-Canadian blue economy strategy with a supporting action plan as soon as possible.

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I'd be pleased to take your questions when the time is appropriate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

Last but not least, from CropLife Canada, we have Mr. Pierre Petelle, president and chief executive officer, who is accompanied by Ms. Terri Stewart, executive director of chemistry.

Mr. Petelle, go ahead, please.

[Pierre Petelle, President and Chief Executive Officer, CropLife Canada]

Good afternoon, Chair and committee members.

As you mentioned, my name is Pierre Petelle. I'm the president and CEO of CropLife Canada. I'll be sharing my time with Terri Stewart, our executive director of chemistry.

Thank you for inviting us to participate in your study today of fresh water in Canada.

We're pleased to highlight some of the many ways that Canada's plant sciences sector is actively contributing to Canada's environmental sustainability by protecting our biodiversity and ensuring clean air, soil—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We seem to be having trouble with interpretation.

We have it now.

Go ahead, Mr. Petelle. I'm sorry.

[Pierre Petelle]

Would you like me to repeat that part?