Evidence of meeting #110 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fire.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:45 a.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
I think you bring up a good point—the municipalities. The pest doesn't know the end of the municipality's borders.
11:45 a.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
The pest doesn't know the end of the province's borders, or in fact, if you want to take this broader, the Canadian and North American culture, as Richard was discussing.
My sense is that this would largely be a proactive role that the federal government would play. Are there estimates as to how much this would cost? Have you given your...?
11:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
To do the prevention, do you mean?
11:45 a.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
It's to do the prevention piece properly; that is, from funding where we are now, in your estimation, to where it needs to be for us to do a better job.
11:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
I don't know that anyone has actually sat down and done that work, but we would be happy to do it.
I don't know. It's hard to say. I think that would have to incorporate research. It would have to incorporate emergency response, and it could incorporate that fund that we're suggesting, which would be there and easily accessible. I think there are similar collaborative models for fire response in Canada that we could use as a model for an invasive species emergency response fund.
11:45 a.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
I think that is some necessary work that needs to be done, to look at the full funding envelope that we need to get early intervention strategies off the ground, in a coordinating effort to go forward and do that capacity. I hope we find a grant or a proposal, or something to that effect, to make that happen.
I was interested in hearing about your citizen scientists and their role in the community. Can you flesh that out a little more for me?
11:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
The idea around our citizen science network is that we first generate interest. That might be through social media, website usage, or approaching the groups that already have these types of folks in there, naturalist groups and things like that.
Once we have an interest and people wanting to learn more, we hold specific training workshops in these communities where people are trying to set up these networks. We have champions in these communities who spearhead this type of thing. We might go in and do training specifically on aquatic invasive species or terrestrial invasive species, or a combination. Then those people are trained on identification.
These people are out in nature anyway. They already have their cameras and they're going out for their own enjoyment. If they happen to stumble upon an invasive species that has never been identified in that region, then we promote a tool for them to report that. There are tools in place. We would like to see a national tool for that.
11:45 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
There are other citizen science networks or other organizations that run something similar in other provinces, but there's not necessarily one national citizen science network in place.
In terms of being able to have a national reporting tool as well for them to be able to report that information, right now, some provinces have online reporting tools. Ontario has EDDMapS.org. That's online, and it comes with an app as well, and there are others.
We would definitely promote the idea of having one national reporting tool that the data feeds into and one app that people can download and use when they're out enjoying nature.
11:45 a.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Is there early intervention technology that would feed into this work that would then allow people to go in, as you say, when that one tree is identified, and get it out early and do that intervention piece? Have you had successes on that here in Canada? As well, are there new technologies coming out that make that even quicker and easier to do?
11:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
Thunder Bay is a good example of that, where we engaged our network. Within a week of their originally finding EAB in Thunder Bay, we had our network on the ground doing monitoring.
They found how many more trees?
11:50 a.m.
Partnership and Science Manager, Invasive Species Centre
They found a few more infested trees in the area.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency was leading a delimitation survey around the infested tree, but we had already established a network of citizen scientists in the area and we had already done training on emerald ash borer identification prior to the initial detection. Therefore, when it was detected, it was easy for us to get our volunteers out on the ground.
We had assigned different streets in different areas of the city for people to cover. They did find more infested trees close to the initial infestation, but we quickly reported that information to the CFIA to include in their data.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to have to stop you there. Thanks.
Mr. Falk, you have five minutes.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for coming to the committee. You've done an excellent job of informing us about the work you do, as well as a little more about these invasive species.
I'll just follow up a bit on Mr. Hehr's questions.
When the volunteers in your organization identify an invasive species, what is your typical plan of action?
11:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Invasive Species Centre
I'll use invasive forest pests as an example, since that's why we're here. We have an insect diagnostician on staff at the ISC. If the citizen is out in the environment and find what they think is a potential sighting, we encourage them to report that through the EDDMapS tool. If not, it can come directly to us.
That would go in. It would come to our diagnostician with either a photo or an actual sample. If he's able to diagnose it from that, we then inform the regulatory people who would need to be involved. That might be the provincial forest health team, it might be CFIA or it might be CFS. It depends on what the species is.
From there, we would be involved in helping CFIA respond, or in this case, we helped CFIA respond with their survey. We would engage the municipality along the way as well. That's the process we take for forest pests.
Our partner, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, actually has people on staff who do verifications of all the reports that come in through their online tool. If it's a report of an Asian carp, it goes to DFO. They have different folks who identify those.
We all have a process delineated so that it goes to the right authorities to be able to respond. It's very quick.
The final step is that once the regulatory authorities are ready to get the information out to the public, we're able to do so very quickly. We have pest alert functions on our forest invasives website where we can send that information, that bulletin, very quickly so that all the networks are on the lookout for that species.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Okay, thank you.
When you've identified an infestation, you've indicated that removing the tree, if it's an isolated tree, works just fine.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Partnership and Science Manager, Invasive Species Centre
We don't personally do the eradications. We would inform our partners who would actually do the on-the-ground work. In terms of tree removal, whether they could just chip it or burn it usually depends on the insect.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
You don't really eradicate the insect when you just chip it. Is that right?
11:50 a.m.
Partnership and Science Manager, Invasive Species Centre
It depends on the insect. It also depends on the life stage of the insect. If it's larvae under the bark and you chip up the tree, it can't complete its life cycle. However, for something such as the mountain pine beetle, the approach is cutting and burning the trees and then also doing the delimitation survey in the area to determine if it really is only one tree or if there are others in the area that you'd have to address as well.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Can you comment on the effect that these raging forest fires in B.C. have had on the mountain pine beetle?
11:50 a.m.
Partnership and Science Manager, Invasive Species Centre
The relationship between the mountain pine beetle and fire is still an ongoing area of study. The history of fire suppression is one of the factors that led to the mountain pine beetle outbreak in the first place. Now that there are all these standing dead trees, there are some who hypothesize that it could contribute to more forest fires or more intense forest fires.
It's an ongoing area of study to look at their relationship, but the mountain pine beetle could be one of the contributing factors to the recent forest fires we've seen.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Could forest fires, as a natural consequence, be effective in controlling the mountain pine beetle population?