Evidence of meeting #48 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Zero is what I was told by our finance department.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
You're saying 500 homes a year. The program has been in effect for...?
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
We've been in effect since 2010 or—I wasn't mayor yet when I got that program in, so yes.
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
I had three. They're not fun.
Having said that, are you familiar with the Ontario source water protection that was initiated to municipalities that allowed resources for not only—I guess not municipalities, but for homes to secure their source or septics close to wells, close to where you draw your source from as a municipality, to go in and clean up our own outlier problems that we had and identify them?
I look at that role as municipal leaders. It was a five-year committee, and I believe it stretched to six years, seven years, and it's still sitting, but we as municipalities have a lot on our plates. I know you, as mayor, 66% of the services you provide...and you look at your water plants, you look at blue-green algae coming at us, and you look at this. There is lots on a municipality's back, so I commend you in being the face behind this.
You could look at this and say it's a municipal or provincial issue, but as leaders, it's a Canadian issue for older municipalities. I was a mayor of an older municipality; this does scare me. I know a lot of newer municipalities...and I think the Ontario building code was taken out in that range, maybe in 1975.
Do you have any idea of the percentage of houses in Hamilton that have lead contamination or lead in their property lines?
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
No. On the source water thing, although I am of course aware of it, I wasn't interested in source water with regard to this. I was concerned about the water coming out of the tap. Funnily enough, though, if lead accumulates within the household and it goes through the household and becomes an effluent, then it might become a federal issue, but I doubt very much that enough lead is being discharged into Lake Ontario that it's going to have that effect.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
But it has to be looked at, and that's a federal regulation responsibility.
Liberal
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to go back to the questions I asked earlier. I think we all agree on the importance of this dossier which relates to public health. That said, I am still trying to determine what we could do. You are a Liberal member. This issue affects municipalities and provinces. In fact, in Quebec, all of the data has been compiled. The issue here is the quality of water. Like me, some members here were once mayors. Our objective is to provide a good quality of life to citizens. We are directly responsible for that. If we do not do that, we will be held publicly responsible and citizens will make a decision subsequently.
This involves service lines that belong to municipalities, and pipes that are on residents' land, and so are private property. We are talking either about residents, or the owners of private buildings. The government has launched an ambitious infrastructure program. All it has to do is include its conditions with transfer payments to the provinces. I am still trying to see what the committee can do to help things go forward.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities does not seem to want to make this a priority. It is in contact with the representatives of municipalities everywhere. If this were an urgent issue for it, it would be the first to act. I imagine that we will hear from lawyers tomorrow morning regarding class action suits against locations that are aware of the problem but are doing nothing to support their citizens.
Could you tell me what you expect from us that your government cannot already do in the context of its next budget, which it will table in three weeks?
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
I have to go back to your preamble. Your preamble is not really correct, because this is an issue that is in many minds an old issue from days gone by. We have other problems now; we have new problems.
What I've been telling you, and I'll repeat it, is that there has been new information over the last five to 10 years of the devastating effects on the developing brains of children.
In my case, I had to fight to get the public works department to address the issue in a broader way:
“Well, here's what the province said, and that's all we're doing”.
“Well, let's do more.”
“Well I don't want to spend the money on that.”
“Okay, let's check the blood lead levels then.”
And so, one thing after another. Now I'm reading that in other parts of Canada, medical officers of health are saying, “Well, we'll keep an eye on it.”
I guarantee you that—depending on how this matter is dealt with in the national media, such as the feature that I understand is coming forward on The National next week, which I saw advertised last night—it'll change the perspective on this.
The FCM has tons of problems before them. I think what we need to do is ask them how they think they can incorporate our values into their organization.
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
I will reformulate the question.
I think we all agree with what you have been saying, with the facts. No one is challenging them. That said, the research done by my team indicates that a fair number of municipalities that are aware of the issue have already begun to act. Others are recalcitrant or delinquent; I don't know what term one should use in this case. The buildings, for instance the schools, fall under provincial jurisdiction. The provinces also build the hospitals. The municipal service lines are paid for through government programs. I am still trying to see what more we can do, aside from what the Liberal government can do, as it has an ambitious infrastructure program.
I would tend to advise you to go and see the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities to suggest that they impose conditions or launch an awareness program through Health Canada in order to apprise all municipalities of this problem. They are in a position to let them know that they have work to do. This remains a matter of provincial and municipal jurisdiction. We simply need to find a way of informing these people.
Can you tell me clearly what you expect from the committee, so that I may promote it, so that a study can be done and so that you can move this forward?
For the time being, I am still trying to understand.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
If you did conduct a study, the study would bring recommendations to the federal government, which would bring awareness. I'm not exactly sure how you can fine-tune the infrastructure programs to address this problem specifically, but I would think that in your conversations, you could come up with a resolution one way or another on that.
Also, and I said this earlier, if you take the old lead pipe out but leave the lead service lines connected, you have a worse situation than you did when you started. Depending on water chemistry, an old lead main line and lead service pipes may not introduce that much lead into a household, but if you change the water chemistry, if you change this pipe to another pipe, and then you have lead...and then you change something again. So who's to coordinate it? Is that something that's different in St. John's, Newfoundland and Kamloops, B.C.? I don't think it is.
This government may eventually face the same problem that the U.S. federal government is facing in Flint, which is class action. Did nobody think about this? Does nobody care about this? What do we do about this?
We hear that, “Well, it's the municipalities.” I can't accept that. I think there is a role for this committee to play, because what I'm talking about is infrastructure problems in Canadian municipalities, and there's money available. How does it get directed there? I don't know. I'd like to see it, but smarter heads than mine will have to determine that.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
This goes back to the Ontario program that was at the source. I look at what you're saying here. I look at testing at the taps not as a municipal problem but as a Canadian problem, because I think it's safe to say that every province is affected by this and it's a matter of bringing it into the limelight.
It goes back to whether we as leaders gate this down the road. I know you are probably not going to take no for an answer, but that being said, a federal program in leadership would be better than what we have now, let alone funding....
I commend you for bringing this here today.
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
When you look at municipalities and their systems, how much lead do you think is in the ground that municipalities own?
Liberal
Neil Ellis Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
Most municipalities don't even know their water sources. That's how long ago they were built, and they were not mapped. I know we still have some wooden pipes. I know municipalities are tested weekly or twice weekly, so we stress in Ontario that water must be safe, but we forget the end source coming out of the tap.
I support what you're saying here today. It shows leadership. Thanks for coming.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you so much. It is a complicated problem. I didn't expect to come here and a have sudden agreement and say, “Of course. All we have to do is this and that will get that fixed.” But I'm concerned about a mother coming home with a newborn baby, turning on the tap to mix formula, and unwittingly diminishing the growth of the child's brain because we didn't do much about it, if anything.
Health Canada has looked at this and is looking at reducing what's called the MAC, the maximum acceptable concentration, from the current number to half that number. That's based on the research that Bruce Lanphear at Simon Fraser University and others have done, which says that we have a bigger problem than we thought. As I said, it's gone down. For the general population, lead is not a big problem, but for a newborn baby in a poor home, that's a problem.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
A little earlier, Mr. Bratina, we talked about the idea of maybe disclosing the presence of lead piping on real estate listings, etc. Do you have any other thoughts seeing as you have lived with this? Are there any other recommendations that you would like to write for us at this moment?
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
What I would offer is to hear testimony from the City of Hamilton. There was a great article, after I left the mayor's office, about a guy buying a house, his first house. He had a newborn baby. He went to the city's website and said, “Oh, lead. Free test.” The city came over to test his house and told him that he had lead. He thought, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? The city said, “Well, we have a loan program, you can take the pipe out and board over it. Or, you could have a filter on your pipe.”
That situation is easily occurring in Hamilton. If somebody with a young child goes to the city's website, they can get this information. That's not happening in many communities across the country. Why not? Why 10 years later are people waking up to find out that there is a lead problem in their households and wondering what they are going to do about it? Health officials are saying that they will just monitor the situation, and generally speaking the population is okay. I'm repeating what I said earlier, but it's the same point.
