Thank you, Deputy.
I believe all members have a copy of the deck entitled “The Habitat Management Program and the Environmental Process Modernization Plan”. The deck begins with some context that I commend to the committee. In the interest of time, I won't go through the context at the front of the deck. It gives both the legal basis and the policy and practice basis for the environmental process modernization plan.
I intend to start on page 6 of the deck, where we have completed the context and are into the plan itself.
Page 6 lists the elements that are part of our environmental process modernization plan, which we introduced in 2004. There were five original elements. The first and probably the most fundamental element is the risk management framework. I will take a tiny bit more time on that than on some of the others. The second element is around streamlining regulatory reviews. The third is around coherence and predictability. The fourth is around enhancing partnerships. And the fifth is around a new management model for environmental assessments and major projects.
Those were the five initial elements; as of 2005 we added a sixth element, habitat compliance modernization.
On page 7 of the deck we look at the risk management framework. The main thing I would say with regard to the risk management framework is that it was used to make more explicit and more transparent risk management choices that were already needing to be made in terms of managing habitat. In order to do that, we developed two tools--first, the pathways of effects, and second, the risk assessment framework matrix. In addition to those, we have some guidance for staff.
On page 8 is a diagram that looks at the pathways of effects. We have a number of pathways. I've just provided one example. It looks like a complex diagram, but what it's intended to portray is that we want to make very explicit to Canadians what the effects are that we're concerned about.
At the bottom of the diagram, you'll see a series of oblong circles--whatever you call those--that talk about the effects of concern to us, such as change in sediment concentrations, change in water temperature, and so on. Those are the effects that we are trying to avoid or manage.
At the top of the diagram, you see the activities. As I say, we have quite a number of these. This particular example is around vegetation clearing. What we look at in the pathway of effect is how you get from activity to impact. We try to break the pathway of effect, indicated by the X symbols through the pathway. In this particular example, by avoiding the use of herbicides, we've broken the pathway that would have led to a change in contaminant concentrations. You see in the middle of the diagram that in this particular example, we have two where we have not broken the pathway of effect, leading us to residual impacts.
For areas where we've not been able to break the pathway through redesign of the project and we end up with residual effects, we then go to our risk assessment matrix, shown on page 9. We look at those residual effects in terms of how risky we think the remaining activity is and how sensitive the habitat is that would be affected. Is this a low, medium, or high risk in terms of the likely impacts of the activity? And by that, we're looking at things like the duration of the activity and the scale of the activity.
On the other side of the matrix, we're looking at sensitivity of fish habitat. For example, is this a species that is particularly sensitive to environmental changes? Is this a habitat area that is particularly critical because it's a species that cannot adapt to other spawning areas, for example?
That's a very quick overview of risk management. We can come back to it or we can provide additional explanation, as the committee wishes. I think it's fundamental to the changes we have introduced that we have tried to make that risk management framework explicit and design our tools according to the degree of residual risk.
Element 2 on page 10 looks at streamlining regulatory reviews. We've been looking primarily for that element, up to this point, at the new tools that would help us in particularly those areas where we're looking at low sensitivity and low risk in terms of impact--the green part, in the previous diagram. In those cases, we've developed a variety of new tools.
Our operational statements are listed in annex 1 of the deck. I won't go through them all. On page 15 you have the complete list of operational statements that have been completed and approved and are now being used as part of our streamlining of low-risk activities.
We also, in terms of streamlining, have looked at where we could look at one-window delivery in provinces. That has been particularly effective in eastern Canada. We have systems in place in New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Nova Scotia that we believe are working quite well for low-risk activities. We're still working, and we have discussions under way with other provinces.
Moving to slide 11, we have elements three and four of the EPMP. The first is on coherence and predictability in decision-making. The main issue we were attempting to address was the concern expressed to us that individual biologists were probably making different decisions, or were perceived to be making different decisions. The primary things we have introduced with EPMP are a more rigorous training program for all our habitat practitioners and a standard operating policy manual for the practitioners so we can try to get better coherence across the country and, again, make it easier for external proponents to have some confidence that there will be coherence and predictability.
Element 4 of the EPMP is about partnering. Under this element, we have worked on a number of memoranda of understanding with different groups, starting, most importantly, with provinces. In some cases, we have some of those done, which you'll see on the slide. Some are under way.
We have developed several MOUs with stakeholders. The most recent was one the minister signed with a coalition of nine conservation NGOs. We have some under development. The next one, which we hope to have available for signature, is with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, but that's at a fairly early stage compared to some of the others. The municipalities themselves had wanted to take more time in terms of preparing to work with us on that MOU.
On slide 12, you'll see the final two elements of the EPMP. The first, on environmental assessment and major projects, involves two things. It involves some organizational changes to set up major project units in each region of the country and provide some new resources to do that. That led to the development of some policy changes. Here are two, I guess, that I would outline. We had, in a number of cases, some concerns raised that for major projects that would involve an environmental assessment and might involve other departments, DFO was seen as triggering late in the process. So we introduced a policy change so we would trigger an environmental assessment for major projects earlier.
The other major policy change under that category is related to the scoping of projects to ensure that we're working effectively with provinces and other federal players in terms of environmental assessments.
The sixth element, habitat compliance modernization, has been our move, on the compliance side, to ensure that we're lining up with the risk matrix and that we introduce elements in terms of the history of the proponents when we look at possible risks related to compliance. This is where we've introduced the new habitat monitors. That's been discussed at this committee several times. The major effect of that has been to allow us, through the monitors, to check on two aspects of the mitigation measures introduced to protect habitat. One is the effectiveness of those measures; we were never really able to do that until we introduced the new habitat monitors. The other is compliance effectiveness.
In terms of the way forward, there are a couple of things I would like to emphasize on slide 13. The EPMP has been a DFO reform initiative, if you will, and it has really been focused on our DFO processes. The next step we believe we need to take is with other departments, particularly with Transport Canada, with respect to navigable waters. We recognize that there needs to be better alignment between us and Transport Canada, and we plan to work on that as the next step.
In conclusion, the other thing on slide 14 that I would like to draw to your attention, in addition to what we've already discussed, is annex 3, which is provided at the back of the deck. That shows you that there have been some increases to resources for the habitat management program over the last three years. At the departmental level there was an overall investment of $99 million that the minister has talked to you about. The habitat portion of that was $6 million, so you see that reflected in terms of the increases and also some of the funding for the new habitat monitors.
We're hopeful that the budget statement around a major projects management office may eventually also deliver some additional resources to us, but that has not yet been divided up between departments, so we do not know what the impact of that will be at this point in time.
If these numbers appear a bit different from others you see elsewhere, this does not include the attribution of enabler functions in the department to programs that you see in the main estimates. This is the program spending itself for habitat management and the increase that we've seen in the regions at the front line, and this is the overall national number for that over the last three years.
Thank you.
