Evidence of meeting #130 for National Defence in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pfas.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Has the situation improved, or is it still the same problem?
Full Professor, As an Individual
Well, the treatment in place in the areas that were treated, for the most part, were below the threshold of 30 recommended by Health Canada, except one sample at the end of the network that seemed to be around 40—so one of them was above 30, probably because it was a bit further down the aqueduct network. The few samples from wells that were not treated or had not been through the treatment that's been in place were still around 80, or something, so well above the threshold of 30.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Have you been able to rule out any other sources of the contamination, other than CFB Bagotville?
Full Professor, As an Individual
We can't rule out any other source of firefighting foam. It's compatible with contamination from firefighting foam. The Bagotville base uses firefighting foam, so that seems to be, in our logic, the most plausible explanation.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Would the municipality not be using the same type of foam in their operations, and in practice?
Full Professor, As an Individual
Well, firefighters would use this on a chemical fire. If you have a big industry using chemicals or hydrocarbons, or if you have an oil spill, you would use this. However, if a house is burning, you just use water. You don't use that. It's really just for a chemical fire, or hydrocarbons.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
In the subsequent tests you've done, you still haven't had much of a conversation with the Canadian Armed Forces and National Defence to go over your findings.
Full Professor, As an Individual
I haven't pursued the conversation.
I must say that, the way the situation in La Baie was presented to the media, I didn't get a good communication link with either the city of La Baie or local public health. The initial, nice conversation with Defence has sort of shut down. Nobody liked that I presented the data.
December 5th, 2024 / 9:10 a.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay.
Well, I think one of the recommendations we'll want to make is to ensure those conversations take place, going forward.
Professor Wang and Professor Ferguson, we've had conversations in the past.
I want to talk about mitigation, especially with the experience you guys had up at Churchill at the rocket facility and the old base there.
What can we be doing to ensure these legacy contaminated sites are properly mitigated, in order to protect local populations and the environment?
Associate Professor, As an Individual
I can jump in on that.
Thanks very much.
I think the biggest thing we can do is collect data. Data is what will inform these decisions. As you've heard from my colleagues, there is so much that can be done—different sampling across different areas.
I also want to echo what my colleagues said about artificial intelligence. It can be used—if used appropriately—to collect data and look for patterns in that data. However, we need to collect that data and transmit it to people who know how to handle it and can actually crunch it in a way that will tell us those answers.
It's all about data. It's about collecting that information and looking at it.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
We need to have that data line. However, how do we then fix it? Where's the mitigation? How do we contain it and ensure it's removed from the site?
Professor, As an Individual
First of all, I have to say that, at this time, we don't really know too much about what's left there. I'm using Churchill only as an example. That's the site I know the most. Still, we don't have much information. A lot of these things were poorly documented and even poorly studied. The first thing is that we need to identify what kind of contaminants are there. Is it qualified as a contaminated site, for example? Then we start to look into how to mitigate it. One good source we could use, in addition to scientific testing, is information from the community. Many folks are still there and know the operation.
The other part of mitigation is making sure that any new development will follow a very different model. You mentioned the Churchill Marine Observatory that I'm leading and the kind of research we're doing. We want to make sure that we learn the lessons from the past and engage community folks from the very beginning, so it's transparent and they are fully engaged in this process. We hope, as our study in Churchill is ongoing, and that kind of—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Unfortunately, we have to leave it there. I apologize for cutting people off, but it is what it is.
Mr. Collins, don't let me cut you off. You have five minutes.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning to our witnesses.
Dr. Sauvé, coming from the municipal sector in the city of Hamilton, where we've had a lot of industry and contaminated properties over a period of a century and a half, I have found that, when dealing with contamination and public health-related matters, the community wants to know as much information as possible, as soon as possible, to ensure they can take measures within or around their home to protect their health and the health of their family.
You described a situation very similar to a couple of situations I've dealt with in Hamilton. I had the opportunity at our last meeting to ask government officials about transparency—what policies the government has around transparency. They noted that, in 2019, they improved policies around transparency and gave some examples of how they're trying to make those policies better. You described a situation where it looks like there's some room for improvement. This committee is undertaking this study to look for recommendations to improve policies. I know you dealt with, probably, three levels of government in the La Baie situation.
Can you provide specific recommendations the federal government can take into consideration for the purpose of improving the transparency measures we have in place today?
Full Professor, As an Individual
Again, it's a tricky question. There's no easy solution. As has been mentioned by my colleagues, I think getting as much data easily, or getting data that can be found easily.... It's not just acquiring the data, but also getting access to it so that people can understand and can get access to the data. I think that would help quite a bit.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
If I could interject, I think if government officials were here, they would probably point to the government website to say that they list all of the contaminated properties that we have here, and that information is there for the public to review. I don't think, based on your comments, that's good enough.
Full Professor, As an Individual
Have you tried to find that data on your website that has all of it? It's very difficult to find. Even sometimes I work with someone from some ministry, and they say, “Hey, it's all on the website.” I ask if they can send me the exact link, because I will not be able to find it.
In terms of “findability”, it's important. Yes, sometimes the data is out there, but it's difficult to find. It's that one step.
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
That's fair enough. Thank you for that.
The other question I had was about compensation. There are instances where—the term we use is “custodian”—we're the custodian of these sites with legacy contaminants, and sometimes those contaminants find their way off a property. You've highlighted the impact it had on a community. I've dealt with that situation with both the federal and the provincial governments, and it's not easy getting compensation for individual property owners and/or for the community at large. It's almost like pulling teeth, and it can take many years in order to just get basic compensation. It always seemed like, in my mind, we were never fully compensated for the issues we were dealing with.
You've described a situation where there's still an impact today. Do you have recommendations around compensation as it relates to the government knowing its site has caused this problem? What recourse should there be for individual residents or for a whole community that's been impacted by those issues?
Full Professor, As an Individual
It's tricky, and it goes back to maybe your earlier question about liabilities, tools and means that are intermingled among what is federal, what is provincial and what is municipal. I'm not a constitutionalist expert, but maybe make the rules or the processes through which we deal with these more clear. Everybody's sort of touchy, and nobody wants to put their toes in the water because they don't want to get the liability for the whole thing. Just recognizing that there's a problem then becomes a liability.
Liberal
Liberal
Chad Collins Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Okay. Mr. Wang, can I quickly ask you that same question about compensation for communities? You're dealing with Churchill, and I'm sure there are impacts there.
Professor, As an Individual
In 30 seconds, there's no way I can say it. However, one thing I do want to say is that you just need to avoid.... There are lessons to be learned from something like the Grassy Narrows kind of compensation. That should be something the government really seriously thinks about, and we should avoid any other cases like that. That's absolutely not the way to go when it comes to compensation.
I hope that's within 30 seconds. It's the first time I'm on time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Yes, exactly. You have three seconds left.
On behalf of the committee, I want to thank—