National Defence Committee on Nov. 26th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there. Ms. Mathyssen is well over her time.

Mr. Stewart, go ahead for five minutes.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I think this is a question for you, Ms. Evans.

What proportion of all of the sites listed on this inventory are managed by CAF or DND?

[Sarah Evans]

I apologize, Mr. Chair. I do have that data, but I will need to find the specific number for the member.

In total, there are about 24,000 sites within the federal contaminated sites inventory. About 18,000 of those are closed and about 6,000 are still active. I have the figures, so if I can't find it quickly for you, I will get back to you with those specific figures of how many of those are DND sites.

[Seth Cain]

I have the numbers at my fingertips. I had a chance to search while Sarah spoke.

DND has 1,947 contaminated sites listed in the inventory. Of those, 1,200 are closed, 627 are active and then 119 are suspected. That data is accurate to the end of last fiscal year.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Is that around 700 of the 7,000? Around 10% of the total are DND sites then, roughly.

[Sarah Evans]

That's correct. About 750 of the 6,000 active sites are DND.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

It's little higher—like 12% or something like that.

Are new chemicals being added to the list of contaminants from time to time?

[Sarah Evans]

Yes, we recently added PFAS to the federal contaminated sites inventory, as my colleague spoke about.

In terms of what we report through the inventory, we work closely with the expert departments to determine what additional chemicals should be added.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

That number of 627, was that at like 400, and then when PFAS were added, all these new sites needed to be added?

[Sarah Evans]

My understanding is that it's on existing sites. On existing sites, we've now identified additional chemicals. It can happen that sites could be closed and then reopened because additional chemicals are identified.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Is there any significant difference between per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances?

[Greg Carreau]

Thank you for the question.

It's a class of all perfluorinated compounds, which are, in essence, to be treated as a class, recognizing they all have similar uses and similar health and environmental concerns.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

When it comes to remediation for PFAS or things like TCE, are the techniques roughly the same?

If it's a soil contamination, do you dig the soil up, put a liner in, put it through a machine, clean it and then put it back, whether it's TCE or PFAS?

[Greg Carreau]

I can speak from a drinking water perspective. The treatment is very unique to the chemical and how the contaminant behaves, so a treatment for perfluorinated compounds would not necessarily be the exact same treatment as for other chemicals.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

In aggregate, is it that we're going to pump the water, treat it and put it back, with a specific routine of decontamination specific to the chemical?

Is that kind of the macro way it's done? Is that the same, or is it completely different?

[Seth Cain]

There are common approaches used—for example, removing contaminated soil from the site and taking it to a certified disposal facility where it can be treated. Another technique that's commonly used is pumping, cleaning and returning groundwater. Working it through filters is part of that process. There can be various barriers and things that are put up to allow for treatment as well.

There's a mixture, but there are common ones that get used. As to whether they work specifically in a context, that can be very site-specific.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

What if there was, at the time, proper disposal into a disposal area, but it turns out that, in terms of the disposal techniques, what they thought at the time was a proper liner for a contaminated disposal site just failed? The engineering perhaps wasn't what it maybe should have been at the time.

[Seth Cain]

Thank you for the question.

The quality of the science and information we have certainly evolves. There are circumstances where a site managed and treated in one fashion has proved to be inadequate in the long term. One situation where that is occurring these days is in relation to climate change. Certain types of risk mitigation measures put in place, such as capping or relying on the permafrost layer to keep contaminants in place, are changing in ways that we couldn't have predicted a few decades ago.

I think the short answer is, yes, and if you have any questions, I would have a site-specific example.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Mr. Collins, you have five minutes.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our witnesses.

Way back in 1995, when I was first elected, the City of Hamilton took ownership of Transport Canada lands around the John C. Munro airport. It wasn't until about 2011 that we found off-site migration of PFAS materials on neighbouring properties. We traced it back to a firefighter training facility on airport lands.

I have to tell you that, from my experience, it was not an enjoyable process to deal with either the former government or the current government in terms of receiving compensation for the contaminants that were found. In the end, government officials paid for the off-site cleanup on lands that surrounded the airport, but the private operator that operated the airport on the municipality's behalf was stuck with the bill to pay for the contaminants that were found on the airport property.

I'm thinking of a scenario right now where our affordable housing strategy and national housing strategy will use Department of National Defence lands and transfer those properties to non-profit service providers. From a municipal perspective, we had enough resources to deal with the federal lawyers and all the ministry officials to defend our rights as landowners and seek compensation. I can't imagine a scenario where a non-profit housing provider would have the same types of resources if they found contaminants on their properties years later.

I'd like to ask you a question in terms of the current scenario. I'll use the example in Hamilton. I've given you the bare-bones version of what happened. It certainly left a bad taste in our ratepayers' mouths. Municipal council certainly could have some very colourful language to use in terms of how we dealt with that situation. How do we avoid those scenarios in terms of knowing that non-profit housing providers are going to use former DND lands? If they find surprises in the future, they don't have deep pockets.

I'm looking for your recommendations to the committee so that we can improve the legislation we have right now and ensure that this doesn't happen to someone who doesn't have the resources to fight the federal government.

[Sarah Evans]

I can start, Mr. Chair.

Certainly, within the directive on the management of real property, whenever a site is being disposed of, it's required that custodians are transparent about whatever information they have. Following up with regard to legal liability for something that may be discovered years down the line, that's something that would have to be specified within the agreement in terms of the sale of the property, but it certainly is a requirement that the department would have to be clear and up front with whatever information is known at the time.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

A couple of times during your testimony, you mentioned that these sites were used and abused decades ago. I'll use the Hamilton airport scenario as an example. The records just don't exist in terms of trying to find out who did what way back when. It's an airport in the middle of a farmer's field. We know that there was a training facility there, and we have people who used to work there who testified on our behalf, who said that these activities occurred when the federal government owned the property.

Again, non-profits don't have the ability to go back in time. They won't be able to do their due diligence in terms of hiring firms to go out and find that information. I understand that we can only deal with the information that we have in hand at the time when those land transfers take place. However, I think it's incumbent on the federal government to take responsibility for some of these legacy issues that come up and are a surprise.

I come from Hamilton. We've used and abused many of our waterfront lands for industrial purposes for good reason. The steel that we built in Hamilton has built not just our city, our province, but our country and many other parts of the world, but there are surprises that come up.

I'm looking to you for some kind of hope that there's an opportunity to change the legislation so that it doesn't make non-profit housing providers jump through hoops in order to get the compensation they deserve when a surprise comes up. I know you're not lawyers. Everyone's trying to deal with risk and those issues that come with it, and sometimes there's a hefty price tag. The current system doesn't work for many, and I'm just looking for recommendations that might improve the legislation that we have now so that others don't have to face the same.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

It looks like you're going to get something in writing someday.

That brings the second round to a close. I propose to run a third round of questions, and I think Mr. Tolmie is up.

With that, we'll start with Mr. Tolmie.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd just like to piggyback on something that my colleague Mrs. Gallant brought up earlier.

I spent some time in the U.K., in London. There would be a number of times when they would shut down parts of a block or a city because of unexploded bombs that had been dropped in World War II. They were considered dangerous. They weren't considered dormant. They were considered a risk to the community around them.

When Mrs. Gallant asked the question earlier about a base that is located in her riding, I was a little disappointed that there were some questions about where she was going and the fact that there could be things like anthrax, nerve gas and even mustard gas that may be located in a site on or close to the base and that there might be people who are exposed to that. They're going to be remediating that. I don't care whether it's 100 years or 50 years. I think that's a concern, and that's a valid concern that should be brought up.

I would like to know if those chemicals are on your list: anthrax, mustard gas, nerve gas or any types of agents that the military may have used.

[Seth Cain]

For my part, I would have to ask our experts about those types of chemicals. I say that in part because those are not the common types of contaminants that we find on the vast majority of federal contaminated sites. I think I could take that question away and send a response back to the committee. They're not the types of contaminants that we see. This may be, in some cases, the first time I've ever heard of them in a federal context of a contaminated site, so we would have to look into it.