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

[Annette Bergeron, President, Engineers Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the opportunity.

On behalf of Engineers Canada, I am very pleased to discuss the engineering profession's efforts towards safeguarding Canada's northern infrastructure in the face of Canada's changing climate. I'm also here to tell you about the profession's work in assisting indigenous and remote communities build capacity to achieve their desired outcomes for the planning, design, construction and operation of northern infrastructure projects.

Engineers Canada is the national organization that represents the 12 provincial and territorial associations that regulate the practice of engineering in Canada and license the country's almost 300,000 engineers. Together we work to advance the engineering profession in the public interest.

Canada's most severe infrastructure gaps can be seen in the northern, remote and indigenous communities. In 2017, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada calculated that the infrastructure gap across first nation reserves alone would reach $9.7 billion by 2018.

Although the frequency of climate-related disasters is expected to increase, northern, remote and indigenous communities are far from prepared to adequately withstand climate-related risks, thus further widening the infrastructure gap in these communities. This stems not only from inadequate national climate data, but also from the lack of consistent assessment procedures to properly address climate risks to infrastructure.

This brings me to our first recommendation: that climate vulnerability assessments be carried out on northern, remote and indigenous infrastructure projects to inform and prioritize adaptation actions that address potential risks associated with a changing climate.

Resilient infrastructure is the driving force behind productive societies, stable industries and increased public confidence. With objective climate vulnerability assessments, infrastructure owners and managers can gain an early awareness of the potential impacts that extreme weather events could have on infrastructure serving indigenous, remote and northern communities.

Engineers Canada, in partnership with Natural Resources Canada, developed a climate risk assessment tool that greatly enhances the resilience of infrastructure projects. The public infrastructure engineering vulnerability committee protocol, also known as the PIEVC protocol, systematically reviews historical climate information and consequences to define current climate risks and vulnerabilities. It projects the severity and probability of future climate extreme events.

This information can be used to make informed engineering judgments to prioritize what components require adaptation, as well as how to adapt them, such as making design adjustments or changes to operational or maintenance procedures.

The PIEVC protocol has already been applied to select northern and remote infrastructure projects, including Yellowknife's Highway 3, as well as the Moose Factory first nation's water and waste-water infrastructure. It has also been used to assess climate risks to three northern airports, located in Churchill, Inuvik and Cambridge Bay.

Engineers Canada takes pride in working alongside first nations communities and indigenous engineers to develop local capacity to plan, design, construct and operate climate-resilient infrastructure. One recent example is our work alongside the Mohawk Akwesasne reserve in Ontario to apply the PIEVC protocol to assess climate risks to their water and waste-water infrastructure in collaboration with the Ontario First Nations Technical Services Corporation. This work included the development of a first nations tool kit that incorporates climate risk assessments as a part of indigenous community asset management plans.

We strongly believe that the federal government must work to build the capacity for indigenous communities to assess, plan and manage their infrastructure.

In addition, Engineers Canada is currently working on initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion in the profession and reflect Canadian society. This includes supporting programs that increase the number of indigenous people entering, thriving and remaining in the engineering profession.

Madam Chair, the PIEVC protocol has received national attention. The government's recent climate lens lists Engineers Canada's PIEVC protocol as one of three methodologies for assessing climate change resilience that is consistent with ISO 31000. While this investment is an important first step, Engineers Canada encourages the federal government to adopt assessment and prevention tools, such as PIEVC, to be a condition for funding approvals across all federal government departments that own or operate infrastructure or provide services to others. We also urge the requirement for climate risk assessments to become an integral part of environmental impact assessments for northern, remote and indigenous infrastructure projects.

This brings me to my final recommendation: that licensed engineers in Canada be included in the design, maintenance, rehabilitation and decommissioning of Canada's northern, remote and indigenous infrastructure.

In Canada, engineering is regulated under provincial and territorial law by the 12 engineering regulators. The regulators are entrusted to hold engineers accountable for practising in a professional, ethical and competent manner and in compliance with the applicable provincial or territorial engineering act, code of ethics or legal framework in place. Technical and professional standards of conduct are set, revised, maintained and enforced by the regulators for all professional engineers in their jurisdiction. Engineers are required to work with the public interest in mind and to uphold public safety.

For this reason, Engineers Canada strongly supports and encourages the direct involvement of licensed engineers in the design, construction, maintenance, evaluation, use and alteration of all engineering work related to the northern, remote or indigenous infrastructure in Canada—not only to increase transparency and public confidence, but also to uphold public safety and accountability on all infrastructure projects.

Madam Chair, thank you for allowing Engineers Canada to present to the committee today on this important topic.

We hope the committee recognizes the integral role that engineers play in Canada's norther infrastructure.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

Now we go to Yukon, and we have Peter Turner and Kells Boland. Welcome.

You can start whenever you're ready.

[Peter Turner, President, Yukon Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

My name is Peter Turner. I'm president or executive director of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce. The Yukon chamber develops policies and positions through a number of sector-specific policy committees, including our transportation and infrastructure committee, which is chaired by Kells Boland. Kells will speak in a moment.

In the absence of a comparable territorial chamber in Nunavut, and until very recently an unstaffed Northwest Territories chamber, the Yukon chamber also provides a pan-northern voice, perspective, and engagement on subjects impacting northern businesses. For example, we are currently working with Global Affairs Canada and the Arctic Economic Council to help recruit council members for the AEC.

This pan-northern perspective extends to some of the work that our transportation and infrastructure committee undertakes, and I'd like to introduce the chair of the committee, Kells Boland. Mr. Boland is a principal of the Calgary- and Whitehorse-based PROLOG Canada, which focuses on transportation infrastructure across Canada. I'll turn it over to Kells at this point.

[Kells Boland, Vice-Chair, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair, Yukon Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Peter.

Good afternoon.

I'd like to confirm that you have a copy of my PowerPoint deck that I can refer to as I go along.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We do. Thank you.

[Kells Boland]

The Yukon Chamber of Commerce has recommended a pan-territorial transportation strategy with a territorial corridors coordinating agency. That recommendation has been adopted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce through its territorial policy committee.

I would like to give you a bit of background for that strategy recommendation we put forward, and to do that in terms of current and mid-term future Arctic ports and corridors, all in light of the context of a warming north.

You can turn the page to the first slide. That is illustrating that a warming north means a longer navigation season, which is attracting more ships to the Arctic. I'm sure everybody's aware, but I will just repeat that in Canada, our Northwest Passage cannot really compete with the equivalent, which is the Russian Northeast Passage or the Russian Northern Sea route, as a shortcut between northern Europe and northern Asia. However, we are seeing an influx of what is known as destinational shipping. From our perspective, that's resource shipping, shipping that's going from resource development projects, or will go from future resource development projects, in the Arctic to offshore export positions.

In this picture here is Milne Inlet. That's the port for the export facility for the Mary River Mine at the top northern tip of Baffin Island and for Baffinland mining. That facility right now, over the summer period, which is about two and a half months, is moving about one shipload a week. That's a huge increase in the amount of traffic on the eastern side of the Northwest Passage into the eastern Arctic.

We have other projects as well that have tested the full transit. Nordic Orion took a bulk shipment of coal from the west coast of Canada to Finland in 2013. In 2014 Nunavik took a nickel shipment from Voisey's Bay to Japan. Ships are testing out the prospects of the increasing viability of what amounts to an Arctic seaway across our northern coast.

We've also seen more Arctic cruises moving up to the very large cruise ships. The Crystal Serenity, with 1,600 passengers, did a full transit in both 2016 and 2017, and it will probably be back with more.

In addition, we're seeing increased Chinese and Russian research voyages based on their icebreakers moving through our Northwest Passage, and potentially migrants, smugglers, and worse could be increasing the concern with the threat of marine activity in the Arctic.

The next page shows you that the Russians remain at the forefront of Arctic marine transportation for the same reasons we're going to be experiencing more marine transportation, not because of their shortcut between northern Europe and northern China but because they too are exporting their resources from the Arctic through their Arctic marine seaway, which is the Northern Sea route.

This is the Yamal Peninsula LNG project. It's not dissimilar to the prospects we have for the Mackenzie Delta or that Alaska has for the North Slope. At some point in the future, we might well see Canada and Alaska mimicking the investment of the Yamal LNG project in Canada with this sort of LNG tanker and terminal technology.

The next side basically shows that we're going to have increasing requirements to support what amounts to an Arctic seaway. That's in terms of ice navigation and escort assistance for search and rescue, salvage and spill response, and surveillance and interdiction. The Royal Canadian Navy has under construction a fleet of Arctic offshore patrol ships, the first one of which is already in sea trials. We're looking forward to the Coast Guard bringing in a heavy icebreaker, the Diefenbaker, at some point, and meanwhile leasing some icebreakers that will provide some interim capability in the north.

You get a sense of the requirement: It's not just seeing a lot of commercial ships, but the need to provide some support for those commercial ships by protecting this new seaway.

If you look at the next page, you'll get a sense of the infrastructure we have in place, and that is basically two ports, Milne Inlet and Nanasivik, which is a repurposed mine site that is now a naval refuelling deepwater facility.

In addition, Iqaluit is getting a deepwater dock, and Churchill has just been reconnected with the Hudson Bay Railway.

In essence, our only deepwater facilities in the Arctic are in the eastern Arctic. If you turn the page, you'll get a sense of the void that we have in the western Arctic. If any of these ships—whether they're navy ships, Coast Guard ships, or commercial ships—is in trouble, there is no place to find deepwater east of Baffin Island, and that is all the way across the north coast of Alaska right around to Dutch Harbour in the Aleutian Islands.

Three potential places for deepwater in the western Arctic are Grays Bay in Nunavut; Tuk, which is problematic because of the long channel entrance; and King Point on the north coast of Yukon.

I'll just come inland for a minute and talk about how the warming north is impacting what was, and still is, a Canadian innovation, which is ice road extensions of all-weather roads. This is the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Road, which goes out to the diamond mines on the border between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. The season for that winter road is contracting. As a result of that, especially fuel may have to be flown in, as it was in one of the years in the past when the season was extremely short.

The next page shows you that we are transitioning from these winter road extensions to all-weather roads; that's a picture of the construction of the Inuvik to Tuk highway, which is now complete.

If you turn the page again, you'll get a sense of the wish list of new highway corridors connecting to current and future Arctic ports. If you start over in the far west, there's the Dalton Highway, which goes to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. There's our Dempster Highway that goes through Yukon to Inuvik and now extends to Tuk. Then you have the Mackenzie Valley highway. That's on the wish list of new highways to Arctic ports.

I mentioned Grays Bay before. There's the Grays Bay port and road project that would connect Yellowknife right through the Slave Geologic Province, where all the diamond mines are, as well as some base metal mines further north in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut right to Grays Bay.

In Nunavut itself, the Nunavut-Manitoba highway connects the Kivalliq region of Nunavut to the Manitoba highway system. I've shown there in Milne Inlet, in the Baffinland mines, the Mary River Mine. They want to go closer to all-season production. They're currently at four million tonnes a year and they'd be going to 12 million tonnes a year, and they would build a railway to do that. They'll replace the 100-kilometre tote road that trucks iron ore to Milne Inlet with a railway that does that, and ultimately goes to Steensby Inlet, which is a port they propose for their ultimate expansion in Foxe Basin.

As I just mentioned, the technology is available. Railway technology is old technology, but you can certainly upgrade it, and the Baffinland mines corporation is actually doing that with respect to the Mary River mine. On a broader scale, we're looking at crude by rail, bitumen by rail, and that's available to us now as an alternative to pipeline.

Part of the impetus for that, which I'm sure you're familiar with, is that the oil sands in Alberta are constrained by pipeline access. They cannot access world markets through export pipelines. Again, bitumen by rail is the prospect that the Alberta government has looked at, a railway from Fort McMurray through Yukon to Delta Junction and then the Alaska pipeline down to Valdez and their export access to world markets and world market prices for bitumen, which they cannot achieve at the moment.

On the other hand, maybe it's pipelines that go northbound instead. Everybody is familiar with the Mackenzie pipeline that was proposed in order to bring delta gas into the south. Maybe it should be the other way around. A pipeline could move bitumen to the north. It could also pick up the Canol shale prospect, which is right adjacent to Norman Wells. Then we're into Arctic ports for the export of oil and gas resources.

If you turn the page one more time, you'll see a myriad of possibilities. My time is almost up, so I won't go through each one. The point is that the myriad of possibilities is a myriad of planning lapses. I'll just touch on these: Arctic ports and northern corridors suffer from dis-integrated plans; northern infrastructure investment is unfolding somewhat haphazardly; projects are often multi-jurisdictional, but they lack a coordinating entity.

The last page contains our recommendations for a strategy: umbrella planning in a territorial corridors coordinating agency; incubating seaway, port and corridor authorities; and collectively advancing northern infrastructure with multi-user, cross-jurisdictional cost-sharing.

I hope I didn't exceed my time by too much. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

It's just good that you had such pretty maps, Mr. Boland, and that I like maps, because you definitely exceeded my timeline.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I'm sure I'll hear about that.

You did a wonderful presentation with a regional overview. We found it very fascinating, I think, so I really appreciate it.

We'll start our questioning with MP Bossio.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, presenters, for being here today. We've heard from quite a few presenters over the last number of weeks and sessions.

To the Yukon chamber, in the age of climate change, climate resiliency and adaptation, and our concerns about our ability to meet our GHG emissions targets under the Paris accord, a lot of the suggestions you have here are very driven by oil and gas and infrastructure. This is in an age when we're trying to move away from subsidizing that sector to the level we have in the past.

I guess I'd like to know your thoughts around that and your justification for putting federal money towards further subsidies to the oil and gas sector when there have already been significant subsidies there and we've committed to phasing them out by 2025.

[Kells Boland]

I'm not an apologist for the oil and gas sector, but if they're going to come through our backyard, we have good ways of accommodating that. The ports that I mentioned are not necessarily oil and gas ports. LNG is not as emissions-intensive as bitumen and crude oil. We have a resource in the Mackenzie Delta that is available for LNG export, which is attractive in Asia.

I think that's a little bit of a different aspect, although maybe not the answer you're looking for, with regard to zero emissions. What we didn't touch on is—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

In a sense, I'm also looking at this aspect. Considering we're essentially moving in that direction as a planet, I want to see the types of development we're doing that look more into the long-term future. What could some of the other uses of the ports be?

You spoke about cruise ships. I think tourism is absolutely an aspect of it. That's one side. I would have thought that one area you really would have focused on here, being the chamber and being a multi-faceted organization, was digital infrastructure. I do think that is absolutely an area that's very much under-resourced and that needs some significant investment.

[Kells Boland]

Well, we certainly support what amounts to a redundancy for Yukon with respect to fibre optic, and that will be a fibre optic cable up the Dempster Highway that ties into the Inuvik Satellite Station. It provides redundancy and it provides a lot of community connection that wasn't available before. Also, it works for both NWT and us.

With respect to greenhouse gas emissions, what we haven't touched on here—because we're starting from Arctic ports and coming with the southbound corridor—is a national program of hydroelectric transmission lines that extend into the north. If the federal government were to bite off that kind of nation-building investment when we have barely 40,000 ratepayers in Yukon and not all of them are grid-connected, so they can't afford that kind of a connection—for example, to Site C in B.C—then if that were there, we'd be talking about having no need for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the north and not providing the support that you're concerned with to oil and gas.

[Peter Turner]

Could I add to that, please?

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Sure, please do.

[Peter Turner]

I attended a workshop in Iqaluit in August of this year, and one of the main elements that came out of it was a recommendation to look at a hard connection for Internet. What I'm really talking about is an undersea fibre optic cable to Nunavut.

The reality is that it's going to cost a lot of money, probably the better part of $1 billion, and I recognize that it services a relatively small population. However, if we are not going to leave them on the far side of the digital divide, it's going to have to become a reality at some point. The current solution, which is just to build more satellite dishes, is scalable, but there are absolutely no economies of scale in satellite connectivity for Internet. The rest of us depend on fibre optic cable, where the more traffic there is, the more that cost is amortized over the infrastructure, but we will never gain those economies of scale with satellite transmission, so we are fully in support of this.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'd like to pursue our discussion of the ports, gentlemen. Once again, beyond the single use you had proposed—oil and gas—what other opportunities for long-term economic development are available? What are the other areas we could look to?

[Kells Boland]

Exactly what is required is a seaway that supports research efforts, which are currently based on icebreakers. However, we're seeing a lot of other non-Arctic countries taking an interest in the Arctic. They need a base for their research activity, so this allows them to become more efficient and safer in that sort of activity.

Ultimately, whether it's oil and gas or subsea minerals, there needs to be a land base for that sort of exploration and development. That's an aspect of it.

As I started out saying with regard to the whole cruise ship thing, the ports aren't to encourage cruise ships; it's more in terms of protecting the safety of navigation for cruise ships. In two cases, there are no communities where these ports are going to be located. There's no place to host 1,600 people off a cruise ship. They would be the sort of facilities where, if 1,600 people on a cruise ship were in some way in extremis, they would have the ability to evacuate them en masse. They don't currently have this.

It's much more about safety of navigation in terms of an emerging seaway, which is going to see commerce that may or may not originate in Canada but will go through Canada. I see that as the equivalent of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and it's something that could be looked at from a cost recovery point of view, with tolls for other ships going through it. That would be the economic activity associated—

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'm sorry. I wanted to ask one more quick—

Oh, I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

I'm sorry. I did give you extra time, since I....

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's understood. That's fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We're going to move on to MP Waugh.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to those on teleconference as well as to those here.

I'll go to the engineers first.

Your speech seemed to tell me that the engineering is being left out. You made a plea to those of us around the table to not forget engineering. That tells me you think you are being left out. Where are you being left out?

[Annette Bergeron]

Part of my testimony was to ensure that licensed engineers are included for assessments of climate vulnerabilities in the various aspects of infrastructure projects. It's not always a federal government requirement to have licensed engineers. Our request is that you actively use licensed engineers, who are held to ethical standards, in the deployment of these projects.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Do you have an example for us of a project that was completed that did not have your association involved, and that now has issues?