Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 19th, 2018

[Annette Bergeron]

Yes. Excellent. It's hard to get.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

You have a lot of important things to talk about in terms of climate vulnerability and climate resiliency. If we start out with the protocol, could you tell us a little more about how it actually works and how it's being implemented?

You talked about it receiving some national attention. I would appreciate if you would you expand on that a little bit.

[David Lapp]

This protocol has been applied to over 50 projects in Canada, at all levels of government. These are owners of infrastructure. We've done federal, provincial and municipal infrastructure.

It's a screening-level qualitative risk assessment process that involves not only engineers but other professions and disciplines. First of all, you need the climate scientists. Climate data is extremely important, and you have to work with the climate scientists to figure out how often certain climate events are going to exceed the capacity of your infrastructure. For example, if you get 150 millimetres of rain in five hours, is that going to have an effect on that infrastructure? What are the chances of that happening now and in the future? It kind of gives you the probability side of the risk equation.

Then you use experts and data—if you have data on operations—on the infrastructure to determine what the consequences are if that threshold is exceeded. It could be damage, failure, loss of service or reduced service. There are different levels of consequences. You get a triage of risks: high, medium and low risks.

High risks are all you need to know. If it's high risk, you go forward with action. It helps you to prioritize where you should spend your money to make the infrastructure and the system that supports it more resilient. It's all about levels of service and making sure that you're keeping people safe and that they can continue to work and have their quality of life. That extends not only to southern Canada but of course to northern Canada too.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

One of the things you said in your presentation is that there's inadequate data. Could you tell me a bit about what we're missing and where it could possibly come from?

I'm keeping you busy.

[David Lapp]

That's okay.

Climate data is always a challenge, because climate is a highly variable parameter. To give you an example, I think it was about 13 years ago that in Toronto there was a big failure on Finch Avenue. That failure was from 150 millimetres of very localized rain. At the same time that rain was falling there, at the Toronto airport there was 30 millimetres of rain. There are highly local variations, and we don't necessarily have enough measuring stations to acquire enough data to understand the local situations.

Often the climate scientist has to use proxies, noting that this is the closest station we have and maybe there's a hill or a mountain in between, and then through professional judgment they can make some projections, but it's never a correlation.

The other aspect is, of course, information around water flows and that sort of thing. Our stream flow data network has declined over the years, and we need to beef that up again because with water, there's both the supply and the flooding. You need to work out models, and these models need data. If you don't have the data, then you have to put in proxies. It creates more uncertainty, and uncertainty creates more risk. That's the notion.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

You talked about several projects that are using this process, but obviously not everyone is using it, which is a concern.

Is there an example of a country in the world that's doing more of this work, and how is that working out for that country?

[David Lapp]

It's an interesting question, because we actually have been applying the protocol internationally in some other countries. In this particular space, a lot of the countries around the world are just realizing that they need to do this kind of work.

Costa Rica is one country we've done a lot of work with. Costa Rica has a national adaptation plan that includes infrastructure planning and that sort of thing, and they're assessing risks. We're working with them to apply the protocol, and they want to adopt it as their national tool to do their infrastructure.

I think there's a recognition that it's needed. I attend a lot of the United Nations framework convention meetings. It's just coming around to be realized that this work is an early step. If you want to assess climate as a black box, how do we start to understand it? Let's understand our risks first. Then we can decide what kind of actions to take, instead of just this brute force idea of “Let's just try to spend a lot of money, and maybe it will work and maybe it won't.” Let's be smart about it.

Because of all the uncertainties of future climate, we don't know how fast it's going to happen and how much is going to happen. We have models and all that, and they're working on it, but there's still a lot of uncertainty. We have to find ways to deal with that. Risk management is becoming more and more of a standardized practice in engineering, because that's just the way the world is going.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Yes, because of all the climate change.

You talked a lot about working with indigenous communities and being able to do assessments of the vulnerability within those communities. Are you called in to do some of those assessments so that those communities and others can apply for extra resources to deal with some of those infrastructure concerns?

[David Lapp]

Go ahead, Annette.

[Annette Bergeron]

We would like to see capacity built within those communities. Second, we'd like to see more indigenous engineers reside in the communities. They would have the best knowledge for how to proceed with infrastructure projects and on climate vulnerability.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Questioning now moves to MP Robillard.

[Yves Robillard]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank all of the witnesses for their excellent testimony.

My questions will be in French and are addressed to Ms. Bergeron, who is the president of Engineers Canada.

Could you provide examples of innovations in the engineering field that could help improve Canada's transportation system in the North?

[David Lapp]

I think you have to be strategic about it. An example is that there are a number of resource projects in the Northwest Territories that exist where, if you had a road that connected all of these projects and went up to a marine terminal on the Arctic coast, that could stimulate a huge amount of economic activity. I know of at least five or six mines that basically just need this road. If you can then create that road, it creates the opportunity for economic development of those mines to finance that road and to also create a transportation corridor, that sort of thing, for those particular projects.

I think you have to sort of tie a number of things together. The other aspect is, of course, the ice roads that were mentioned. Climate change is definitely reducing the effectiveness and the duration of ice roads. They have been a good mechanism to enable cost-effective transport to some of the mines, but I think, again, if you had this permanent road that went through—and I know that the Northwest Territories government has done some studies on that—to where that route would take it, that's a backbone for transportation.

As far as marine transportation goes, I think the comments of Yukon are well founded, based on my knowledge of that industry. We need to make sure, from a sovereignty perspective, that we are providing those services. If we don't provide those services, we're negating our sovereignty, and there's also the environmental impact and that sort of thing.

I think some of these aids to navigation need to be put in place to enable more effective transportation.

[Annette Bergeron]

Very briefly, we've mentioned the highway from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, and that's an award-winning highway. It recently won an award. It might not seem that innovative, but these highways are very challenging to build. It was an award-winning highway, according to peers.

[Yves Robillard]

Thank you.

How could the engineering profession help develop and modernize the government's plan?

[Annette Bergeron]

I think one of the initiatives that I mentioned in my testimony, the adoption of this new protocol, is one of the three methodologies listed as part of the new climate lens. I think the climate lens will be one of the modernizing aspects of how we move forward on climate vulnerability.

David, do you want to add to that?

[David Lapp]

Yes, I think having that vulnerability assessment piece enables us to determine the issues and the problems that need to be solved with innovation and technology that engineers can provide. Also, I think studying the performance of existing highways is important. I know there are certain issues around the Dempster Highway, for example, that need to be lessons learned, and that sort of thing, so that engineers can learn from that and then bring it into the standard of practice.

[Yves Robillard]

Thank you.

I will share the rest of my time with colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We're going now to MP Will Amos. We're at the end of the meeting, unless we wish to....

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

This is less a question to our witnesses and more of a point of information and a bit of a statement at the end, because we are, as our chair always notes, on Algonquin territory.

In the past few days, a witness who came before us in the last year, Chief Harry St. Denis from the Wolf Lake First Nation, one of the communities in the Algonquin nation, passed away. I thought it would be appropriate to remark on the local leader and regional leader who had given so much not just to his own community but across the Algonquin nation, and to our country, frankly, because contributions like his in the context of our study on specific land claims really help us to move this process of reconciliation forward.

Let's have a moment of respect, if you would, for the late Chief Harry St. Denis.

Thank you, Chair.

[A moment of silence observed]

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank our presenters for coming in and for coming to the video studio.

We've had an interesting debate. All your comments and your briefs will be included in a report that each member of Parliament will have a copy of and the government will be responding to.

Your comments and advice are taken very seriously. We really appreciate your co-operation and your participation.

Thank you. Meegwetch. Goodbye.

The meeting is adjourned.