National Defence Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Well, if it's our munitions, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Well, if it's our munitions is a big question—

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Yes, and it would have been, or I would not have asked the question.

Garrison Petawawa is just south of Chalk River Laboratories, which do nuclear research. Are there records to identify where munitions and chemicals used for testing were buried on AECL property, which is also Crown land?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

That, I can provide some information on.

We have tracked that there was a small quantity of some obsolete chemical agent, as well as some arsenic, I believe, that has been encased in an eight cubic metre concrete block. It was buried in AECL at a site that was dedicated to the management of waste and low-level radioactive waste. Subsequently, we worked with AECL.

DND and AECL worked together to dig that up and then properly dispose of it.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

It has been dug up and properly disposed of.

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

It has been.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

All right, so they are not going to come across that when they ameliorate the land.

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

No.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Are you aware of the sarin and the VX that were stored at Suffield? You said “various agents”, but do you know about those specific agents?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

I don't know the list of specific agents that are dealt with at Suffield. Suffield, of course, is our centre for defence against biological and chemical weapons, but I don't know exactly what they have in inventory there or what's on site.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay.

Next is Ms. Lalonde for five minutes, please.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

I thank the witnesses for being here today.

During the study, we've been looking at different types of contaminants found on DND sites, as you mentioned, including the TCE and the PFAS.

Can you give the committee an overview of the different types of contaminants that the federal contamination site inventory monitors? Could you also give an overview of the different ways in which they affect human health, please?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

I can speak to the contaminants, or at least some of them that we monitor, but I would turn it over in terms of impacts on human health, I think.

Defence of course has locations across the country. We've been in operation for a very long period of time, and defence is a business that requires the use of a number of different types of chemicals, things like TCE, which is used to degrease metal parts. As you can imagine, in the context of military vehicle assembly, there's TCE used. There's benzene. Arsenic is another common substance that is used.

As well, there are lots of sites contaminated with petrochemicals and hydrocarbons, and then, increasingly, what we're seeing recently are more and more PFAS as a result of the use of firefighting foams.

I'd say those are the most common elements that we discover on contaminated sites.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

I would like to know what the impact is on the day-to-day reality of anyone who would have been exposed. What would they have seen, or what would a person have felt?

[BGen Colleen Forestier]

I think it's important to identify that being close to a hazard doesn't necessarily constitute an exposure, and being exposed does not necessarily constitute having any ill health effects, even if it's a known hazard.

A lot of the challenge becomes identifying what that particular hazard is, what the risk of that individual's or group of individuals' exposure looks like and what that potential health effect is, depending on the length of time or the amount of exposure over time. Even two people in the same space may have two very different types of exposure.

With regard to the types of health effects, it would be highly dependent on if it is a chemical, a physical, a biological or a radiological hazard. It would depend on the specific item, the specific chemical or whatever it is, as well as the amount of exposure that individual had.

In rare cases, there might be an acute health effect, where the individual feels ill or unwell, or has an effect immediately. Certainly that would be handled in that particular acute situation. In other situations, it may be a much longer timeline. As we know, cigarettes and lung cancer is a good example.

What I'm trying to get at is that it's highly dependent, highly variable. The main goal is to identify the exposure, to identify the individuals who may have been exposed, and then to appropriately mitigate risk and to monitor as required if that particular exposure is of concern.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much for this.

To end my questions, how has DND and the CAF collaborated with other government departments, with other levels of government and with stakeholders to deal with these contaminated sites? We heard from Treasury Board. We've heard from Health Canada, and also from Environment and Climate Change Canada. How does that all factor in?

You were supposed to come first, so I would like to have your perspective on that close collaboration, please.

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

Yes, it is a very close collaboration. It's a relatively tight-knit community.

We, as a custodian department, along with other colleague custodian departments, depend quite heavily on a lot of the expertise that you would have had before you last week, represented by Health Canada and other expert departments.

All of those departments, the experts as well as the custodian departments, work together to do the governance for the FCSAP, so there's a very active, ongoing discussion around how to best manage that program. Also, there are a lot lessons learned exchanges among all of our custodial departments.

I would add that we work very closely with allies on this as well. We are not the only military facing these problems, so we would like to leverage lessons from our allies. In fact, if you look across the Five Eyes in particular, we have very similar regimes in place. We all prioritize human health and the environment. We all lean forward on transparency and online inventories. We're all leaning into PFAS now, because it's a growing problem for all of the countries. We work very closely with the Australians and the Americans, in particular, on PFAS. We sit on a number of technical groups and—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you, Madam Lalonde.

Ms. Normandin, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Hammerschmidt, I want to come back to what was mentioned. I understand that you knew before November 2022 that there was a risk of contamination.

I'd like to know two things. First, on what date were provincial or municipal authorities notified? Second, at that time, what was the highest rate of contamination on record in a water source outside the Bagotville site? When the situation was discovered, researchers collected samples with a contamination rate of 129 nanograms per litre of water. What was the rate recorded on your end?

I imagine you don't have that information on hand, but I would appreciate it if you could send it to the committee. Furthermore, when a contaminated site is discovered, that information is passed on to the legal department or the Department of Justice, since there is a risk of lawsuits or individual claims. At what point are they involved in the process?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

Thank you for the question.

In terms of specifics about the levels that were discovered, as well as when exactly we were in touch with the City of Saguenay, unless Mr. Sattar has specific information, we can provide that to you separately.

In terms of litigation, are you referring to Valcartier and Shannon?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Generally speaking, when the Department of Defence determines that a site is contaminated, at what point does it inform the Department of Justice or the legal department? Is that immediate or can it take time?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

We maintain an ongoing conversation with our Justice colleagues that are in National Defence. They have a general awareness of Defence's inventory of contaminated sites. We will engage them proactively if we see a potential for litigation around any contamination.

While they won't know the specifics of each and every single site in our inventory on a regular basis, we have that open conversation with them and engage them when we know there is something that could result in litigation of some sort.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

You have two and a half minutes, Ms. Mathyssen, plus a couple of seconds.