Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 16th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. McGuinty, you were referring to me--

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Stop the clock, Mr. Chair, while you're talking to me, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

--suggesting before that maybe you'd want to keep your questions on the topic we're actually dealing with today. That's all I was suggesting. I wasn't saying to stop asking questions on anything, for that matter, but this is what happens when you start asking questions that aren't in the area that the witnesses are expert in. They don't have the information, and that's to be expected.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm very confused, then, because our analyst today produced a paper for the guidance of our committee members to ask questions, in which it says the earth sciences sector of Natural Resources Canada deals with a series of things, including the climate change impacts and adaptation directorate.

So I'm asking questions about the responsibility that Mr. Gray has for this directorate, and I'm trying to get a sense, for the $5 million to $7 million that he is managing in terms of climate change impacts and adaptation research, of what are the overall signs that we're seeing--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Then I would suggest you get to it, Mr. McGuinty. We're starting the clock again, so go ahead.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Well, sir, you interrupted me. I didn't interrupt you. If you're sure, Mr. Chair, that my remarks are not in order, you should intervene. If you're not sure, perhaps we should have another discussion offline.

Mr. Gray, perhaps I could ask you to pick up from where I left off. I'm trying to get a sense here of what are you seeing, from your $5 million to $7 million? What are we seeing in terms of climate change?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

To be clear, the impacts and adaptation group does two things. One is that periodically it leads the direction of the creation of the climate change impacts report. The last one was released in 2007-08. We take the lead for management purposes, but then you have the areas of expertise: from Environment Canada there'd be a piece on biodiversity, a piece on the climate system. Agriculture would be involved, the Canadian forest service of NRCan would be involved. In those periodic publications they are looking at the impacts of a changing climate on Canada, and they include the infrastructure side of things.

When dealing with the geophysical side of things, then it is our domain, either the Geological Survey of Canada through their environmental program, or through the impacts and adaptation group.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Are we seeing any climate change impacts on the geophysical side? I don't need to know the process. What are we seeing?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

We're seeing glacial melt in our large northern glaciers. They are contracting, especially the land-based glaciers, as you know, in Greenland. With that melt would come sea-level rise. That's one parameter.

The other parameter we're seeing--this is not our domain, per se, but it has an effect--is that we're seeing, generally speaking, less polar ice. With that comes wave activity.

We're seeing increasing temperatures, ocean water and surface temperatures. Those coupled will cause permafrost to melt.

When you have permafrost at the edge of something that's normally ice, you don't have much erosion. But when you have permafrost melting, coupled with more wave activity...so instead of one week a year, or one month a year, depending how far north you are, you might be seeing two weeks, or a month-and-a-half, with something that's already melting. So you have two things happening at once that are causing coastal erosion.

That's the area where we're expanding our look to see how fast it is happening, where it is happening, and what mitigation measures, from an engineering standpoint, could happen.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Is that my time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Yes, your time is up, Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

We go now to the second round, the five-minute round, starting with Mr. Lizon.

Go ahead, please.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Good afternoon. It's good to see you again.

I would like to go back to your slide presentation. I would like to ask a few maybe more detailed questions.

With the GEM program you run, how much area is already covered by your geomapping north of 60? Is it half? Is it a quarter?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I have a copy here from the last presentation we did, but it's very small. We showed you that about 40% of the north had already been mapped to modern standards. That left 60% of the north that had not. We used the best available knowledge at the time to target what I would call the best of the best areas--the areas that were most likely to have a high probability of having energy, oil and gas, minerals, or metals.

Those were areas we targeted. We talked with the provinces and the territories. We talked with the industry. We talked with locals. From available information and from meeting with northerners and industry, we targeted the 24 areas depicted on that map.

I can't say that there are boots on the ground covering half of the remaining 60%. There are not. But we're covering a significant portion of those areas that we thought had the highest probability of having energy and minerals.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I'll go back to your geomapping tool box. Would the method used on the 40% be geophysics?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

My experts can respond, but it would generally be a series of tool boxes. I don't think the entire 40% was geophysics.

[Donna Kirkwood]

In the 40% area that is sufficiently covered, a whole slew of criteria and different tools or methods were used to produce the geoscience knowledge of that area. It could be geophysical surveys. It could be geological maps drawn from field surveying. It could be geochemical information. Dr. Gray discussed the different types of geochemical information. It could be surveying and analyzing the rocks. It could be looking at specific minerals to date the rocks.

There is a whole bunch of information of that type that brings the geological context of that area to a level we would conclude is sufficient for industry to come in on their own to do more detailed work in a specific area. They will not literally dig deeper, but they will acquire more detailed information.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

We heard a very interesting presentation here by the Canadian Space Agency, which does research in that same regard. Do you use the results of their work, and if you do, how do you marry the two together?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Yes. First of all, I want to point out that it's not all their work. We have a Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing, and I'm very proud to say that yesterday we received the William T. Pecora Award in the United States, which is the highest level of recognition for an earth observation unit. That group has been around for 40 years.

So that group works with the Canadian Space Agency to, in my terminology, “make sense” of remotely sensed information from RADARSAT-1 and RADARSAT-2.

We have scientists within the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing, and I'd be happy to come back and bring those experts with me, who develop applications that were not even thought of when these satellites were launched.

One of the applications is to look at the movement of earth. Is the earth moving one way or the other, or moving up or down? But there are other applications, not necessarily in RADARSAT. While RADARSAT can determine depth in shallow water areas and it can look at soil moisture, there are other types of satellites that we also use, such as the United States Landsat, for example. Geologists will use Landsat imagery where surface rock is available to get a gross idea of the terrain.

As I mentioned earlier, that leads you to do a little bit of inference, but you still need to get boots on the ground or to get geophysical information on the site.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Lizon.

We go now to Mr. Anderson for five minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to pursue that a little bit then. I don't know how to put this, but what percentage of work is done with what technology?

We had a gentleman in here with a gravity detection system. It sounded like a really interesting new development on the technology. He seemed to think that it would eliminate some of the need to put people on the ground. It gives a little bit more precise measurements or whatever.

I'm just wondering, then, what percentage of your data comes from which technology.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'll ask Dr. Percival to respond.

[Dr. John Percival]

We generally use a combination of methods appropriate for the geological problem that we're dealing with. Traditionally we use some kind of airborne geophysics--like the gravity system that was described--to identify the major geological features that we can then plan our work around. If there are major features, we'll go in and identify what those are geologically. Then we can use the remote information to track them for some distance, for example, so that we know where that feature is going on the ground.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

And then you put people on the ground?