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.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
You touched on whitebark pine and the pine beetle situation in the Rockies. I wondered if you could expand on that. What are you doing?
You mentioned nursery programs. Is white pine blister rust a problem there as well?
So it's both. I know in some places they're using the pheromone trapping method. This is a treeline species, so it has its own issues. I don't know if you could expand on that.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Ecosystem Scientist, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation Directorate, Parks Canada Agency
Yes, we're using the same standards, basically, that are recommended by the national recovery strategy for the species. It tries to avoid the attack by using pheromone traps that capture the vectors before they hit the tree. We have little nursery-grown seedlings that are, as far as we can say, trying to promote disease-resistant individuals for replanting.
I'm missing something here, Darlene.
12:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
We have planted 4,000 to date, and there will be more plantings this fall in the Jasper area specifically for that species.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Ecosystem Scientist, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation Directorate, Parks Canada Agency
Yes. We're recreating patches of habitat that are pretty bare and limiting the direct contact of potentially infected trees. We're replanting in those islands, hopefully with success. This is a new type of treatment.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Parks Canada, for coming in and giving us some more information about the various species that are taking over our forests.
Being from Calgary, I have an understanding of the mountain pine beetle. It's my understanding that as a result of climate change and the continuing warming of the planet, the mountain pine beetle is not contained, as a result of the climate not being below freezing or below -10°C or some number like that for more than 14 or 20 days straight. That's my understanding of the mountain pine beetle.
12:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
That's correct. That's my understanding as well.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Ecosystem Scientist, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation Directorate, Parks Canada Agency
Yes.
12:40 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Given the state of the pine beetle—and following up on Mr. Calkins' question—why are we not just trying to eradicate it as a species? If this is going to continually happen, I think we're fighting a losing battle. Is there any possible way to do that, or is that just impossible or just unwise?
12:45 p.m.
Chief Ecosystem Scientist, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation Directorate, Parks Canada Agency
I guess everybody wishes that they were able to find a silver bullet. There is a technological issue here, which is that we don't know of an effective means of eradicating it.
There's another major contributing factor. One limiting factor was removed with global warming. Another thing that's not a limiting factor but is a factor that promotes the spread of this, I think, is referred to as monoculture, and there are some forest enhancement practices of the past that lead to a fairly homogenous stand. Obviously if you have a disease and a susceptibility, and every tree in a large area is susceptible, then you reach epidemic levels.
The way we are trying to manage our mandate to manage for ecological integrity is to have much more diverse forest types, with more mosaic, more age range, within an established patch, and those types of forests are much less susceptible to large-scale infestation and large-scale impact. Normally, the types of habitats that we are trying to restore and to establish and maintain are less prone to being highly impacted compared with commercially harvested lands. That's true for most of those pests, if not all. That's true for the spruce budworm and other types of insect pests.
12:45 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Ms. Upton, in your presentation, I believe you said that 93,000 hectares of the 200,000 hectares in Jasper National Park are already affected by the mountain pine beetle. Is this correct?
12:45 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
That's correct.
12:45 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
One of the strategies in war was that—we're coming across the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I—when a hill was obviously lost, they would retreat, dig another trench and have a go at it there. Seemingly, Jasper National Park may fit that analogy. Can you tell me why don't we just retreat and try to put up a barrier somewhere else? Is that just not effective forest management?
12:45 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
That is, in fact, really what we are doing in several instances. A large part of our program is managing the impact of the deadfall and the forest fire challenges that come with that. Where we are doing mechanical removals, single treatments or even using prescribed burns is in looking at the landscape, looking at those areas that are not impacted, working the boundaries of the park and using those techniques to create a break that would prevent the spread.
As Gilles mentioned, one of the challenges is that they will do large overflights from time to time, so they have the ability to move large distances quite quickly.
If you have a diverse forest with a good age distribution, they'll be self-limited within that forest, but the challenge we have with past practices of forest suppression and monocultures in other areas—we all deal with our individual challenges—is that getting our forest back to that state is going to take time. We've been actively doing that with prescribed burns and other actions, but it will take time to get to a forest that's more resilient.
As you said, your strategy is really what we are trying to do, and that is to use techniques very strategically to limit the spread.
12:45 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
How is your coordination between your organization, Parks Canada, and those areas immediately outside your jurisdiction? Are there coordinating arms that are performing some of that work? Are you getting assistance? If you were to tell people you were doing a prescribed burn and wanted to limit flight there, could you ask them to operate in another area? Are you seeing a coordinating body that is helping you? Is that piece in place, or does that need to be strengthened?
12:45 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
That exists. In the case of the mountain pine beetle, for example, there was a working group established in 2015 with Parks Canada, Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Forest Service, and the Government of Alberta. That would be the landowners as well as the expertise in the management of that species, with the monitoring and tracking of that species being done through the Canadian Forest Service.
12:50 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Are you getting the appropriate level of funding to battle this mountain pine beetle and other invasive species that are coming into the parks system?
12:50 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
We have a very good budget for our efforts. As I mentioned, in Jasper alone, we had 1.8 million dollars' worth of effort related to the mountain pine beetle. Each park has active monitoring programs, resource conservation staff, biologists. Every park in sight has relationships, as required, with outside organizations. There is a lot of coordination on certain issues and this would be a great example of one of those.
In addition, we've recently received, through the government, some more money in last year's budget, so there will be more resources going towards ecological integrity in our efforts.
12:50 p.m.
Calgary Centre, Lib.
Do you have any overarching advice for us? What should the federal government be doing that it's not doing?
12:50 p.m.
Chief Ecosystem Scientist, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation Directorate, Parks Canada Agency
Maintain and enhance surveillance capacity. The recipe would be this: We will be successful when we have very early detection, when we have people actively scouting, always being nervous and looking for the spread or emergence of invasive species.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thanks very much to both of you for attending and giving us your feedback.
Ms. Upton, we met many years ago when you were involved with the Rideau Canal and the Trent-Severn Waterway system. It's good to see you once again, though in a different capacity. Maybe if there's time, I might sneak in a waterway question at the end.
12:50 p.m.
Vice-President, Protected Areas Establishment and Conservation, Parks Canada Agency
Perfect.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
In terms of techniques used to limit the spread of these species, what kind of infrastructure—such as roads—still exists within the Parks Canada-managed areas that could be used to get to where you need to be to create a buffer zone, or that type of thing?
