National Defence Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I gavel the meeting to order.

Prior to asking our witnesses to speak, parties should take note that our next anticipated meeting is on Tuesday afternoon. However, as you know, we may anticipate a voting marathon on Tuesday afternoon or evening, or Wednesday afternoon or evening, and Thursday morning, afternoon or evening. Keep an eye on whether we are actually going to be meeting on Tuesday and/or Thursday.

With that, I'm going to invite Dr. Ferguson, associate professor at the University of Manitoba, to give his five-minute opening statement. He will be followed by Dr. Sauvé from the Université de Montréal and Dr. Feiyue Wang from the University of Manitoba.

I look forward to what all of these university professors have to say about contaminated sites.

With that, Dr. Ferguson, go ahead, please.

[Dr. Philip Ferguson, Associate Professor, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, everybody.

Good morning. My name is Dr. Philip Ferguson.

My colleague Dr. Feiyue Wang will read a treaty acknowledgement a little bit later, so I'll leave that to him.

I am a professional engineer in the field of aerospace systems and an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the Price Faculty of Engineering, University of Manitoba.

My research explores how to make aerospace technology more accessible to communities in Canada. Specifically, I study aerospace remote sensing and guidance systems on drones, airships and satellites in co-development with northern indigenous communities in Canada, such as Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut, and Churchill, Manitoba.

I'm happy to answer any questions I can on this topic, to the extent that I can, given my area of expertise.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

That's very efficient. That's great.

With that, we'll call on Dr. Sauvé.

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé, Full Professor, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Sébastien Sauvé. I am not sure that I am going to be able to be as effective as my colleague before me, but I will do my best.

I am a professor of environmental chemistry at the Université de Montréal. I work on contaminants in the environment, legacy contaminants such as lead or cadmium, but mainly emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, hormones, pesticides, plastics and, at the moment, mainly PFAS, also known as forever chemicals.

PFAS are recognized as carcinogenic, cause cholesterol problems, reduce the response to vaccines, and are suspected of affecting the liver, kidneys and thyroid. Quality criteria for PFAS in water are constantly evolving worldwide, but despite Heath Canada’s recommendations they are still not regulated in Canada.

In my research, I examine the presence of PFAS in water, fish, food, sewage sludge and the environment in general. I assume that my experience around the Bagotville military base is the reason why I was invited to testify before the committee.

We carry out water analyses using a rather original procedure: we travel around and sample publicly accessible water points, water fountains in parks or libraries, or washrooms in restaurants or convenience stores. We stop in these places, we take a sample of water from the washrooms, for example, we leave, and we do the same thing in the next village or town. I could also work with municipal governments, request permissions, and have them send me a representative sample, but you will understand that if I did that, I would still be trying to extricate myself from all the paperwork and I would not have published anything on this subject. So I analyze water that is publicly accessible.

Through this work, we have identified drinking water contamination issues in five or six Quebec cities where the drinking water system or wells were contaminated. One problem we have seen is that there was a very high level of PFAS contamination in the drinking water from the water system in La Baie, located some ten kilometres from the Bagotville military base. To confirm this, analyses were carried out in my laboratory and at the Quebec ministry of the Environment, and I assume that other federal agencies have also done this. Those analyses showed that a water table had been contaminated somewhere between Bagotville and La Baie, over a ten-kilometre stretch. This means that regardless of where the well is located in that stretch, several nearby wells are contaminated.

When I saw this, my first reaction was to inform the Quebec Ministry of the Environment, which is responsible for distributing water in this kind of situation. I quickly realized that all these people did not talk to one another much. We would like them to talk more, but that is not the case. I also informed Health Canada and the Department of National Defence, assuming that it was of interest to those departments, and the City of Saguenay. I sent this information several months before the story came out in the media, but those organizations did not see fit at that time to inform people.

In conclusion, I leave you with this question: why is it a chemistry professor's work that identified a contamination problem in the drinking water around a military base?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Dr. Wang, you have five minutes, please.

[Dr. Feiyue Wang, Professor, As an Individual]

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks, honourable members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, for inviting me to share my perspectives.

My name is Dr. Feiyue Wang. I'm a professor and a Canada research chair, tier one, in Arctic environmental chemistry at the University of Manitoba. I lead the new Churchill Marine Observatory, located in Churchill, Manitoba, which was officially opened in August this year. Some of you have probably heard about it, so thanks again for the support from the government. I'm also associate dean of research at the Riddell faculty of environment, earth and resources at the University of Manitoba.

I want to acknowledge that we're here meeting on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation.

To talk a bit about my own background, I'm an environmental chemist, and I study contaminants in the environment, especially in Arctic and northern Canada. It might sound counterintuitive but, despite the remoteness of its location, Arctic and northern Canada receives more than its fair share of many contaminants, either transported from the south or from local sources such as mining and, in this case, military operations. The contaminants that I study the most are legacy contaminants: Those are the ones that were, primarily, used in the past. The ones that I study the most are mercury as well as emerging Arctic contaminants such as microplastics, and, increasingly, we worry about oil spills. My research addresses the sources of these contaminants; their movement; their changes in the air, snow, ice and waters; their risk to the health of ecosystems and humans; and, of course, ultimately, what we can do to reduce and mitigate the risk.

From that background, it should not come as a surprise that I call your special attention to the Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces contaminated sites in northern and Arctic Canada. One location I work at the most is Churchill, and many of you would know that, from the 1950s to the 1980s, Churchill saw extensive rocket-launching activities by the U.S. army and Canadian government. There are, of course, many Distant Early Warning Line stations throughout the Arctic and, in addition, there are ongoing military operations across northern and Arctic Canada.

Contaminated sites in northern and Arctic Canada are of particular concern for several reasons. The very first thing is that the northern environment is highly vulnerable. Those sites are located in remote and, often, culturally and ecologically sensitive and vulnerable regions. Also, because of the remoteness, they tend to be forgotten. They are poorly documented and even poorly monitored. They are also long-lasting, given that the region has relatively lower temperatures and is covered with seasonal snow and ice, and sometimes perennial ice. The contaminants at those sites are more persistent, probably, compared with those in southern locations.

One area that I study the most are complications due to climate change. If you have contaminants in the environment, ongoing climate change makes things even more complicated in terms of the impact and how to mitigate that. However, when I point out the challenges in northern and Arctic Canada with respect to the sites, I also want to make the committee aware that, in this country, we have great capacity to actually address those issues. Many researchers in Canada, including me, are global leaders when it comes to northern contaminants, and throughout the country we have many state-of-the-art laboratories—of course, including my colleague from the University of Montreal. There are also a lot of research facilities in the south that could help, and there's a network of northern colleges and fuel stations in the north. Throughout the decades of research there's also extensive experience, with knowledge co-development, with indigenous and northern communities. This is demonstrated by many community-based monitoring programs.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my perspectives. I'm happy to speak more to any of those points and beyond if there are questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Dr. Wang.

For a six-minute round, we have Mr. Allison.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

To our guests, thank you for being here.

Dr. Sauvé, one thing I've learned since I've been up here is that departments don't really speak to each other—you just alluded to that pretty well—and we haven't even added in municipal and provincial levels on top of that. Maybe that's a discussion for a whole other day, but given your experiences with that, do you have any thoughts for us on how we could do a better job of not being so siloed? I'm talking federally about departments that don't necessarily talk to each other.

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

It's a tough question.

My experience has been more within the provincial level or within what you would think would be friendly zones. Public health does not necessarily get the information that the environment department gets, etc., and you get the same thing at the federal level.

There's no easy solution, but maybe having centralized data might be a start where newly generated data is available for all government agencies. That might be one way—at least there's some forced sharing of information that would help in a case like this.

Usually the information has to be accessible—but it's hidden or it's not shared. If someone knew that the report existed, they could get at it, but they just don't know.

I'm not sure which mechanism can break down those silos. I don't think it's an easy task.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

That's fair.

Along those lines of sharing information, certainly with AI and a number of things that are going on now, do you see that playing a role?

You talked about how you were physically mapping out spots in trying to figure out.... Do you think there's a role for AI to try to come up with some type analysis that this is how we expect things are going to travel and move in a certain way?

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

In a case like this, I think AI might be useful in collating the data, getting the data together and making it easier to find the appropriate data. I think that's probably more where I would think it's useful.

Some AI—I haven't done that yet, maybe I should—might be useful in predicting areas that would need to be sampled or where there's a higher risk of contamination. We did a fairly thorough sampling, but it's partly random, and there are areas of the country that need to be sampled to see whether the drinking water is tainted or not.

There are definitely ways—but I'm not sure how—where AI can help better plan that sampling, because sampling is very expensive. Yes, the analysis in the lab is expensive because you need fancy instruments, but oftentimes—and it's probably even more true for my colleague—getting out there and getting the samples back to the lab is very costly.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Do you have any comments on that?

[Dr. Feiyue Wang]

I agree.

I think on the AI side, equally, there's a lot of room to play as well, especially when we talk about those emerging contaminants. There are just too many of them. We talk about the thousands, the tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands when it comes to PFAS alone, for example.

Often, the traditional way of doing this analysis, one compound at a time, simply doesn't cut it. With AI, there's definitely room to play. AI will play a role, not necessarily in identifying individual compounds but a group of compounds. Ultimately, when it comes to effects, to risk reduction, that might actually play a major role there.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

And also, as it relates to those who have obviously been affected by it...maybe what they could be expected, based on the contaminant, to find in humans, possibly....

[Dr. Feiyue Wang]

Yes, especially in cases when you're trying to pinpoint what chemicals. If we think about the health impacts experienced by staff or by committee members, often there are so many other complicating factors, not necessarily from that contaminated site, but there might be other exposures as well. How do we actually deal with this mixture of exposures? That's where I think AI potentially could play a major role.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Yes, go ahead.

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

There's still some concern. AI will be trained by the existing data, so with new emerging contaminants, new threats, something different, it won't see that. Yes, it's a tool, but it's not a magic solution either.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Further to that, then, in helping with diagnosis, if we understand what the contaminants are and what the challenges are, then I guess potentially over time that would also help us when we're trying to deal with our vets or with people who have been affected by the contamination. They may also help drive the solutions in terms of how we fix that.

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

It could help in finding the most cost-efficient solutions, because for some of those, there are different options to do the treatment and to remediate, and it's probably going to be very efficient. Well, in that situation, given the data that we know, this solution or this type of treatment should be more efficient. In matching conditions to treatment options, that might be actually a useful tool.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

We go to Dr. Powlowski for six minutes.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Professor Sauvé, you talked about contamination of the water supply between La Baie and Bagotville. Is that with PFAS? I don't think you said it, but you were talking to [Inaudible—Editor] PFAS. My understanding is that PFAS are pretty ubiquitous. I remember The New York Times citing one study, which seemed more like a meta-analysis, that seemed to find, as I recall, that 30% to 40% of water supplies have some PFAS in them. Do you think, necessarily, that this contamination was from a military site? You also mentioned five or six other cities in Quebec, which also have some contamination. Is that right?

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

In that work and the work that continued, we sampled a few more than 500 sites or drinking-water sources across Quebec. Two of those 500 were without any PFAS detected, because our instruments were not good enough, I guess, but we have very good detection limits. Not being able to see PFAS is pretty rare. Within that dataset of about 500, I guess the average is around two nanograms per litre for the sum of all PFAS detected. At La Baie, we were between 100 and 200 in the tap water or the wells. Some of the wells had up to 300. There's no way that, with an average of two and a 95th percentile in terms of the distribution within that Quebec dataset—the 95th was at 13—if you have samples that are 100 or 200, it's just random contamination. There's no way.

In that case, the assumption that it comes from the military base is an assumption. We can't demonstrate that unless we know exactly what had been used in terms of foams. Basically, these would be coming from firefighting foams that would have been used at the airport, or for some of the military exercises that have been done at Bagotville. The pattern of the PFAS that we see in the water is compatible with its being residue from firefighting foam, but we can't prove it.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

My understanding is that there are thousands of kinds of PFAS, so when you are looking at it, you do try to categorize that. There are certain ones that are associated with firefighting foam, so you have a pretty good idea that's where it came from. Is that right?

[Dr. Sébastien Sauvé]

Yes. There are thousands of different PFAS, but some of them are more theoretical. You can imagine chemical Legos of how you can structure those PFAS. We do measure 80 different PFAS and we can look for 200 more, but we usually find between 15 and 35. We never find.... Some of those are fairly rare and the concentrations are low.

Usually, on a contaminated site we'll find 30 to 35, and then you get a sort of fingerprint, in terms of the different concentrations that we observe in that fingerprint. Then you can see some are very high, some are low. I've compared it to a fruit salad. Then, if you get a fruit salad that has oranges, apples and blueberries, and you don't see blueberries very often, this is a strange fruit salad. Then, at some point, one fruit salad has a lot of cranberries, and you rarely see the cranberries, so you know something's funny. This is an easy image, but that's a bit of what we do when we're measuring 80 PFAS, and there's a peculiar signature in La Baie.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

What's considered to be a dangerous level of PFAS? You mentioned two to three in some areas, and 100 to 200 around La Baie and Bagotville.