Fisheries Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

What do you think ought to be the priority? Is it repairing the old docks, building new ones or enhancing safety standards?

[Michael Barron]

All those need to happen, because there are some wharves that fishermen are using that aren't divested, that are federally protected and that are not receiving any work, because there are not enough vessels at that harbour.

What seems to happen with small crafts and harbours is, if it is a harbour that is not as busy, it goes lower down the priority chain. When the funding is allocated, the bigger harbours are always getting it and the smaller ones are left with scraps.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens.

We'll go to Mr. Bachrach. I can guarantee there's no pressure on him. I'm sure Lisa Marie will grade you afterward and let you know how you made out.

You have six minutes or less.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to members of the committee for allowing me to sub in in the place of my colleague and participate in this interesting discussion. I have promised I'll behave myself. We'll let Ms. Barron be the judge.

I wanted to start my questions with one to Ms. Fuller. Most of this conversation has focused on adaptation to the impacts of climate change that we know are coming and that, in many ways, are already here. You spoke in your presentation about the importance of mitigation. These two concepts are very different in some ways, especially when it comes to the time frame over which they need to take place.

How do we ensure that the conversation about mitigation doesn't get lost as we deal with the very immediate imperative for adaptation and things like dredging, rebuilding wharves and that kind of thing?

How do we ensure that the long-term need for us to drive down emissions and mitigate the worst impacts of climate change doesn't get lost in the conversation?

[Susanna Fuller]

That has and will continue to be the challenge, and we will have to keep being able to react to emergencies that are going to increase in frequency and intensity.

At the same time, I mentioned some of the work we've been doing in the fishing industry. When I read budget 2021, for example, there was quite a bit in there about the agricultural industry and helping agriculture shift to lower emissions and adapt to climate change, but there was absolutely nothing in there on the fishing industry.

Fishermen like Michael Barron and those who I grew up with in Cape Breton have been left out of the conversations, whether they are on adaptation or mitigation. We haven't included people who rely on the ocean in a lot of these conversations and in our policy discussions, and there's a huge opportunity to do that. We'll have to prioritize both at the same time, if that is possible.

Canada is doing quite a bit on its emissions reduction plan. I don't see the fishing industry included in it right now. I know there are some efforts to build some lower-emission lobster vessels. Oceans North is really pleased to be part of that, and we'll be launching an initiative in the next couple of weeks.

However, we have to include the people who are most impacted in being part of the solution. I would encourage the Canadian government to do that in all the ways it possibly can.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Ms. Fuller.

I'll turn now to Mr. Barron on the same theme.

You mentioned that the impacts of climate change are very much here. I'm curious about what you've observed in your conversations with fishermen when it comes to their perceptions of the issue and their openness to technological changes or changes in practices that drive down emissions and start to deal with the actual source of the problem.

I can imagine that it would be hard, when you're out there in a boat, to connect maybe switching to an electric motor to this huge global challenge of climate change and the impact it's having.

Do you see people's thinking shifting in that way?

[Michael Barron]

There's not so much a complete shift. The discussion has been had and I have sat in on a presentation on hybrid engines and stuff.

One thing I'd like you to know is that wild captured fish is one of the lowest-carbon protein sources. In wild fisheries, for example, it is one to five kilograms of carbon per kilogram of fish caught, whereas red meat production is 50 to 750 kilograms of carbon. That's one thing that has to be discussed here, too. You have to understand.

When you mention these hybrid engines, you have to understand that when we're out in the elements, the one thing with running a diesel engine is that we're guaranteed to get home.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Yes.

[Michael Barron]

When we have to rely on potential solar power and stuff where it's still so new, it leaves industry with a lot of questions.

We're open to having a discussion. Thank you.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks, Mr. Barron.

Mr. Leys, you mentioned that these coastal storms have forced engineers to revisit the design parameters for infrastructure and move away from a reliance on historic parameters towards relying on projections of future change.

Could you talk a little about how that process takes place and on what future predictions engineers are now basing the design parameters? Are there standards for sizing or designing infrastructure?

[Vincent Leys]

There are no standards in terms of a definite guidebook for now. Certainly the official projections from the IPCC are what we use for, first of all, sea level rise. Depending on the emissions scenarios, you get different rates of sea level rise anywhere from today to into the next century.

We use that for flood and inundation levels. We also use that as input conditions for wave modelling, for example. When we look at wave forces, the amount of wave energy that hits the structure will depend on the water depth. You can imagine that as sea levels are rising that will allow bigger waves to come closer to shore. We do use that.

The more tricky thing is about developing.... I was mentioning these changes in storm intensity. There is no clear consensus yet as to what to use in terms of increasing hurricane intensity and/or frequency. It's an area of evolving science. In terms of storm surge statistics, we use the past because that's what we have.

I mentioned that the calculations have to be updated. With Fiona, the data point now lies outside the range of what has been historically observed. All of a sudden, your extreme one per cent probability storm gets higher because hurricane Fiona is now part of the statistics.

It's an evolving practice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach. You've lived up to Ms. Barron's expectations of extra time, as well.

We'll now go to Mr. Perkins for five minutes or less, please.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again, witnesses, for being here today.

I'd like to just follow up, as a start, Mr. Leys, on something you said. You said the costing is around $1 million to Mr. Kelloway's questions in terms of wharf repair or wharf replacement. On the south shore of Nova Scotia, as you know, going from Prospect all the way down to the tip of Shelburne County, I have lots of small craft harbours, probably the most in the country, and just as many devolved wharves that used to be small craft harbours.

In Port Mouton, for example, DFO recently did a rebuilding of the breakwall. That alone, just on the breakwall, cost $5 million, and it's already being breached because they didn't build it high enough in one corner. Everybody knows Lunenburg. It has one public wharf, which is a small craft harbour. It's a historic wharf that has existed for about 140 years. It's called the Railway Wharf. The engineering estimates come in, and it's not a very big wharf, at $15 million just to replace it.

DFO estimated—and I haven't seen an update—that in the path of hurricane Fiona over 100 small craft harbour wharves were damaged. Some were left with some operational problems, and over 20 wharves were demolished. That's just the small craft harbour wharves. It does not include the ones that DFO has devolved to communities. I'm having a hard time seeing the government's $100 million for hurricane Fiona wharf relief. They've increased, in the economic statement, Fiona relief to $1 billion, but the economic statement doesn't allocate any more than $100 million for wharf relief. When I look at those numbers, I see that just to repair the 100 wharves alone is going to be about half a billion dollars. That's if you can find the engineering help and construction help like your company provides.

Are you sure that when we have to complete the north shore of P.E.I. where the wharves are all demolished, it's going to cost only $1 million or $2 million for those wharves, when in my own riding it's costing $15 million for a wharf?

[Vincent Leys]

I apologize for that. The $1-million figure was an order of magnitude in terms of a starting point. Typically you can't get much done for less than $1 million, so in an order-of-magnitude sense, is it $1 million, $10 million or $100 million for a harbour? I was saying, as a starting point, that it's $1 million per structure, but of course if the structure is substantial, it could be $10 million.

I'm sorry about that. You are correct to clarify that.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Can I ask you another question that's been bugging me? I've had chats with lots of members about it.

In terms of building back stronger wharves, which we have an opportunity to do here because we have an unusual amount of money that we didn't have before to deal with small craft harbours, are we going to build them back? Are the engineering firms going to build back wharves the same way, with the same old 150-year-old-plus technology of treated wooden wharves?

In British Columbia, they're building them with steel tubes on floating concrete wharves, and they have large vessels on them. They seem much sturdier. I don't understand why in Atlantic Canada we're still building wharves the way we did 140 years ago.

[Vincent Leys]

Cost would be part of the answer to that. You have a certain budget to allocate to the entire area of small craft harbours, and steel tends to be, of course, on the more expensive end of things. That would be the primary reason, I think.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

If we have to keep replacing them because of storms, it would probably be cheaper, but that's just a wild guess.

Thank you very much, though, for those answers.

Mr. Barron, you talked about the damaged harbours that aren't small craft harbours. I think there are a lot of them beyond the ones that the minister and the Department of Fisheries are focusing on in terms of small craft harbours. Those used to be small craft harbours and were usually devolved to a community group or a not-for-profit group to manage that hadn't had the capital to keep them up to speed or the ability to charge enough wharfage fees to maintain them as effectively as possible.

Do you think DFO or ACOA—or the special programs out of ACOA—should go to those harbours as well?

[Michael Barron]

I definitely think the programs, especially from ACOA, should go to harbours like that, and actually one avenue we are looking at for our membership is to help them through ACOA. That may be the perfect route for them to go, and I hope the federal government will help move it in this direction, to ACOA, to make sure these people receive assistance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins.

We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less, please.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, and thank you very much to all the witnesses for appearing.

First, I think I'll continue the cost discussion for now.

Ms. Bakos, I know the Intact Centre has done some work over the years on the cost of climate change on infrastructure.

I think you, Ms. Eyquem, referred to insurance costs and the effect on the housing market.

Do you have estimates on the insurance costs accrued from Fiona so far?

[Kathryn Bakos]

Not specifically for Fiona, but if we look at the insurable catastrophic loss claims for Canada, we can look between 1983 to 2008. Losses ranged from approximately $250 million to $450 million. From 2009 onward to 2021, losses averaged $1.96 billion. That is insurable losses.

If you multiply that amount by three to four times, and if you take into consideration the B.C. floods and mudslides and what happened in Fiona, it's five to six times that amount that is uninsurable losses. That's money coming out of budgets for hospitals, schools and infrastructure development, so that's coming out of government budgets.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I'm glad you covered that, because part of my follow-up question was on the uninsurable costs.

Can you comment on the costs of infrastructure investments? I might add that the $100 million promised so far is a start in what the federal government is committing to, but regardless we can see that we may need to go a lot further than that.

If you compare the cost of infrastructure investments in the first place—solid infrastructure investments looking to the future—to the recurring cost of destruction, including loss of income, loss of economic opportunities, lost homes, insurance costs and uninsurable costs, is there any comparator there?

[Kathryn Bakos]

I'll flip it to my colleague, Joanna, as well, but I will say that in a cost-avoidance perspective, for every dollar spent in adaptation and protecting communities against risk of loss, you actually end up saving, on average, $3 to $8 over a 10-year period in the long term. That's a low estimate. It could be as high as $15 to $62, some research has shown, and some research has even shown $250, but again, that's in cost avoidance and over a 10-year period.

Joanna, do you have anything else to add?

[Joanna Eyquem]

I would just maybe add that often we're focused on reducing risks, but there is also an opportunity through adaptation to make things better. I would refer to the Ville de Percé example. The cost benefit of that project was actually 68:1, according to the cost-benefit analysis, due to the increase in the tourism industry because it was linked to revitalization of the promenade as well.

There is actually opportunity in adaptation to make things better, not just to contain risk.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Yes, it's a remarkable return on investment, then, if we look at the next 50 to 100 years.

Mr. Leys, briefly, you talked about the fact that in Fiona the recently renovated or rebuilt wharves did the best, I think. Could you tell me the specific features? Was it the very newness or was it the height of the wharves, or what were the features that really were related to resiliency?