Evidence of meeting #43 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was great.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you, Chair.
And thank you, Mr. Ullrich, for your presentation.
This is certainly a vexing issue facing our countries. I'm interested that the cities are involved in this issue as well and can appreciate the fact that the potential economic impact is a big one. Certainly we could have you talk for a second about the....
We heard from the commission about the idea of permanent barriers and how.... You were just talking about that a second ago. But that appears to be some ways off.
4:30 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Even if we do get there, the cost to the economy, the net present-value cost, is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. I wondered if you could comment, for a moment, on how realistic it is that we'll be looking at some permanent barriers at some point down the road.
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
That's a difficult thing to translate into a specific percentage. I've been working on environmental issues in the Midwest and on the Great Lakes for 40 years, and I think this is one of the biggest challenges. Frankly, it is a bit of a long shot that there would be the broad public support to make this happen. However, the more I've gotten into this issue, working with the Great Lakes Commission, and doing this work with a consulting and engineering firm, it really does show that it's feasible to do it.
The technology for the barriers themselves is really not terribly complicated. The real issue is the cost and whether or not the benefits associated with stopping the movement of invasive species in both directions can justify that kind of cost. I think it's always difficult with things of an environmental nature, where a lot of the benefits are really long term and a little harder to quantify than the short-term costs associated with the construction.
The cost figures associated with this are really spread out over a 50-year period. They include capital costs and operational and maintenance costs. The one that appears to be most viable is in the $4-billion to $5-billion range, which is a huge amount of money. If you look just at the value of the Great Lakes fishery, which has been documented in the $7-billion range...and you don't know for sure if this would wipe out the whole fishery or do severe damage, though it probably would do a lot of damage.
The other costs that can be avoided by stopping the flow of invasive species are the costs incurred to deal with the invasive species once they get to some location. The Canadian government, I'm very pleased to see, has recently made a commitment for $17 million to deal with Asian carp. The U.S., by the end of next year, I think will have invested over $80 million just to try to stop the Asian carp.
It's the kind of thing where, whether you're looking at zebra mussels or sea lampreys, at over $20 million a year that our two governments are spending together, a lot of very major costs are imposed. My sense is that more work needs to be done on the cost-benefit analysis side of things. One of the things we hope to do in the next stage of this work is to be able to document that more.
So I am convinced that this case can be made, and I am convinced that this is the kind of thing that the public will support, but because of the large dollar figure it will take some more time.
4:30 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you.
Could you tell me a little bit more about the initiative in terms of your budget and how long you've been in existence? Does your budget come about every year, or do you have funding for the next three years, or five years? How do you work?
4:30 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Well, I spent 30 years with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a federal civil servant, and retired in 2003. It was at just about that time that former Mayor Daley of Chicago called a group of U.S. and Canadian mayors together and basically said that he felt that cities had a huge stake in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence but generally were not consulted much on decision-making and policy-making on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence. He felt that cities should have a bigger say. Rather than doing that one city at a time, they should band together. That was the thinking behind the whole organization: to give cities a seat at Great Lakes and St. Lawrence decision-making tables, to create a best practices network among cities, and to travel to Ottawa and Washington to advocate for the cities.
We started with 15 or 20 cities. Actually, there had been a previous organization called the International Association of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Mayors. We merged together and focused on water quality, water quantity, and waterfront vitality, but we have expanded to much more of a sustainability agenda.
We have a budget of about $700,000 a year. We started out at $125,000 and have grown slowly. About half of that comes from membership dues, and then the other half from government and foundation grants, so it's about fifty-fifty.
We have two full-time employees in Chicago and one part-time. The Quebec government provides us with an intern. Then we have three part-time contract employees here in Canada: one in Ottawa, one in Montreal, and one in Quebec City. We had one in Toronto until recently, but Environment Minister Bradley hired her away from us, so we're down to three.
4:35 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
You indicated earlier, I think in response to a question, that two-thirds of the cities involved were Canadian.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Yes, it's roughly two-thirds to one-third.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
That's closer to fifty-fifty. It might be a little more on the Canadian side now—maybe eight million Canadian and seven million U.S.
4:35 p.m.
NDP
Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you for that. I appreciate your dedication in trying to get to the end of this problem.
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Thank you.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much for coming today.
In the report that was written to come up with the initial estimates—and there's a pretty substantial range between the $3.25 billion and $9.5 billion—they must have projected some timeframes. What sort of timeframes would we be looking at if those kinds of projects and that money were, in a hypothetical world, to be approved for that range? How long would it take to put in a physical barrier for the $3 billion project, and how long would it take for the $9 billion project?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Roughly, the timeframes are actually quite similar. The interesting thing about this situation is that not only are the barriers themselves the least costly and the easiest to put in, but the entire plumbing structure in the whole Chicago land area is dependent on the flows here. The construction work has to be integrated with other things that are being done with regard to water quality and flood control. If they were just going to build some barriers, put them in, and not worry about anything else, it could probably be done in three or four years or something like that. However, because of additional flood-control work and additional water-quality treatment work, the best estimate our consulting engineers came up with was that basically, to get the first stage of barriers in was going to take until 2022, and to complete the entire project, until about 2029. Obviously, that causes great concern because of what's going to happen in the interim. That's why the electric barrier is so important.
The other thing is the sampling for environmental DNA, and there's a lot of intensive commercial fishing being done, which we think is absolutely essential and critical in the short term, but not something we could rely on in the long term.
Those are not dates that I like, but this was the reality our consulting engineers advised us of.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
When you mentioned electronic barriers as a solution, you said “commercial” fishing nets. Are you saying there's a commercial fishing market for the Asian carp right now?
4:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Yes, there is, which is very interesting.
Unfortunately, one of the markets is Canada. I think you are aware that the Canadian border patrol has interdicted six shipments of Asian carp at Sarnia, Port Huron, and Windsor-Detroit. However, most of the intensive commercial fishing being done on the Illinois River, and somewhat on the Mississippi River, is oriented towards markets in China. There have been state subsidies for fishermen in Illinois.
I don't know the quantities that are being shipped. The idea is to get the populations down as much as possible so there isn't continued pressure towards the Great Lakes. It appears that there is some success in this, but the carp's ability to reproduce and to consume all of the plankton in the water system is phenomenal. It's felt that in the long term this probably would not work, but in the short and mid term it would be a good technique.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
I want to just stick on that point for a minute, because typically we have an innate ability to really take advantage of markets when markets are good.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ryan Leef Conservative Yukon, YT
I think humans are great at that.
Are there barriers to trade right now that could be facilitated by the Canadian or American government enhancing that commercial market? My line of thinking is that if we had a viable market, then with limited barriers and limited red tape we probably could go further. Or is it as wide open as it can get? Do you see any barriers right now that would...? Perhaps it's not economically feasible, or there's too much red tape, or there's not a really good market in China for it, or we just haven't expanded anywhere else.
I appreciate your comment that in the short term it's okay, but we need to think bigger and longer term. I'm not trying to minimize that; I'm just wondering if there is anything that's keeping us at this ceiling for a market for Asian carp.
4:40 p.m.
Executive Director, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative
Well, it's interesting. Again, I'm not an expert in this field, but I have picked up bits and pieces from those who are working specifically on the commercial fishing. Apparently some of the most significant market restraints were within the U.S. itself. For some reason, apparently, carp were not deemed suitable for either cat food or dog food. Also it was deemed not suitable, by I guess the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for providing food to hungry people.
So it was easier to export it than it was to move it around within the United States. I don't know if there were any efforts to export to Canada other than the illegal efforts over the bridges of the Detroit and St. Clair rivers.
On the international market side of things, I don't think there were that many impediments. I think it was really just an issue of cost. It was necessary, apparently, that the State of Illinois government provide some subsidies to the commercial fishermen—though it didn't have the money to do this—so that it would actually pay to be able to ship these to China.
My understanding is that these are viewed as relatively high-quality Asian carp back in China. I've eaten them. I find a good Canadian pickerel or something a lot tastier, but apparently the markets really aren't developing in the U.S.
There's another little concern about this, if I might mention it. To the extent that a good market is developed for this, then there obviously would be a constituency that would be supporting the continuation of it. I think the fear is that Asian carp will be viewed as a positive thing, and then it's okay that they get into the Great Lakes even if they might damage some other things.
It's a little tricky, and I would defer to your fisheries experts on this, which all of you are, and DFO. There's a little concern about pushing the market development a little too much.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
