Transport Committee on June 1st, 2023

[Craig Stewart]

Yes. Thank you for the question.

Canada is in a very interesting position in that national adaptation strategies have been tabled by countries around the world. It's actually now a UN requirement. Certain jurisdictions, such as New Zealand and Britain, have done an excellent job of it. They essentially set up these strategies to be tabled every five years. They are reviewed in advance by doing a risk assessment: How is the country changing as a result of climate change? How is the risk profile evolving? They then develop a suite of mechanisms and programming, etc., in order to respond to that risk in an iterative manner.

Setting targets is absolutely essential. What gets measured is what gets done. New Zealand is probably the one that's the furthest ahead on this in terms of being able to essentially say that you're going to reduce the risk to wildfire by this much, using these indicators, and then measuring how you've gotten there.

In private sector business, setting targets is rote. It's what we do. We need that level of rigour if we're going to realistically reduce risk in a systemic way across this country. That committee came up with a suite of targets that we submitted to the government.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

I like this discussion about planning and preplanning. This builds on some of the testimony from the last meeting as well.

Mr. Dade, you talked about that. I come from a private sector background as well, where you have KPIs and a plan and goals and targets and milestones. Maybe you can amplify that here. You gave the example of transportation infrastructure and how we have fallen from 10th to 32nd. I think you had seven steps that you were going to suggest. Maybe you can elaborate a bit more on that in the context of planning.

[Carlo Dade]

I won't elaborate on the fall. We have a full report out on that. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it available in French as well. We didn't submit it to the committee, but it's available online.

In terms of planning, as the insurance company mentioned, the incorporation of analysis of risk and measures to mitigate risk are parts of national plans, not just in New Zealand and the U.K. They have separate plans, as you mentioned, but it's also part of their national infrastructure planning.

Infrastructure Australia is the model we're looking at for Canada. It incorporates this in its national infrastructure planning. This gives you an enforcement lens for your targets and your reductions. You don't have to then set the targets and idiosyncratically go out and search for projects to which to try to apply them. If you have a long-term national pipeline of projects and criteria, those projects—your most important projects for the long term—are vetted through these criteria. It gives you a focus to be able to enforce and have greater effectiveness for the measures.

It's something that we've been lacking that our competitors have. It's also why we've fallen in the rankings. It's not one flood. It's not one strike. It's the fact that countries don't think we have this coherent comprehensive view, and they think we don't do planning—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Mr. Dade.

Thank you very much, Mr. Muys.

Next we have Ms. O'Connell. The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

Through the course of this study, I'll say it's incredibly refreshing that in this forum, there seems to be absolutely no debate that climate change is real, that the impacts are significant and that the impacts cost Canadians dearly—not only financially, but in your communities across this country.

It's really disheartening that if we walk across the street, even just this week.... We've heard time after time during this study about the very real human impacts. Meanwhile, just across the street, we are still hearing some members claiming that these incidents are just stupid guilt trips. In dealing with the issue of climate change and infrastructure mitigation, the importance of addressing climate change and its impacts, first, is crucial, but so is how to mitigate our infrastructure in our communities to adapt for what is inevitable, unfortunately.

What I've consistently heard across the board from various spectra of witnesses is that all tools in the tool box need to be on the table. It can't be just disaster mitigation funding. There can't be just federal funding. It has to be all orders of government. It has to be private sector, public sector and research. Municipalities, of course, are on the front lines.

To the Insurance Bureau of Canada, I appreciated your comments about the Canada Infrastructure Bank, because this is just one tool—another tool in the tool box—that we've seen is doing big projects in dealing with emissions reductions, etc.

Just yesterday, Mr. Poilievre said he would cancel the Infrastructure Bank. That's one of the first things he would do. That was a $9.7-billion federal investment that has actually attracted $27 billion of overall infrastructure funding. That would either mean, if it was cancelled, that taxpayers would have to fund $27 billion just to be equivalent—meanwhile, you've asked for an increase in that—or that it would be removing other federal funding to our mayors and municipalities. They're here saying they need more of this funding for municipalities because their budgets can't handle it.

To the Insurance Bureau of Canada, can you speak to why the private sector investment, in dealing with climate change adaptation, is crucial?

In one of your answers recently, you talked about also helping to keep the pressure off municipalities. Can you elaborate on why this tool in the tool box is going to be crucial in dealing with our infrastructure gap?

[Craig Stewart]

Thank you for the question, MP O'Connell.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank has terrific promise on the adaptation side. The scale of the problem, as you've heard from witnesses, is far too great for any level of government to address alone. The private sector should be at the table. The private sector should be viewing this as an investment opportunity. We should be able to crowd private capital into these projects. We have companies with investment arms that are actively looking for projects right now. This isn't hypothetical. You need some sort of mechanism or broker to blend that capital and come up with the term sheets.

What the Infrastructure Bank does is assume risk at the front end and then at the back end, and it makes it easier, basically, for private sector capital to flow into these deals. That mechanism, in our view, is very important if we're going to meet this challenge together.

We actually hold the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We know it's taken a bit to get going. It's a very ambitious enterprise, but it's a necessary vehicle to make sure that the private sector is also at the table.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Have you heard anyone say that municipalities across the country could make up across the board the $27 billion of the investments in these projects? Has any municipality put up its hand and said it has so much funding that it can't wait to make more investments?

[Craig Stewart]

No, of course not.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Of course not. Thank you.

I don't know that I have much more time.

Mayor Martin, you mentioned about the gapping. I just want to be clear. The ICIP program was actually prioritized by the provincial government. I believe that's where you're referring to the gapping of municipalities. In our programming of application base, it's based on the merit of the project and not in combination with where you're located or the size of the municipality.

[Amy Martin]

I would just suggest, if there was any flow-through funding to the province, maybe a partnership on how it's sent down to us.

However, yes, I understand. Thank you.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

I share those frustrations on how they've distributed those monies. I'll be sure to raise that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. O'Connell.

Mr. Barsalou-Duval, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with Mr. Chalifoux, from Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu.

You've come to talk to us today about a difficulty you're experiencing. You no longer have an ice bridge, in winter, and it has become very difficult to get to the other side. I'm sure you're not the only ones in Quebec and Canada in this situation. I assume there are ice bridges elsewhere in Quebec and Canada, which are also threatened by climate change.

On this committee, when my colleagues presented initiatives that encroached on Quebec's areas of jurisdiction, I bristled. In this case, however, waterways are a federal jurisdiction. In my opinion, the federal government has a role to play in helping communities that can no longer use the infrastructure they used to use that has disappeared because of climate change.

How could the federal government support you in this transition, so that you can still have connections? I imagine everyone considers these links necessary for their community.

[Jonathan Chalifoux]

It's obvious that the federal government will have to provide money. It will also have to help us with permits for private shipowners crossing the river. We have no control over these cable ferries that have been on the Richelieu River for years. As a municipality, we should have the right to impose obligations on these private operators. It doesn't matter how good a project we present—a system that thaws the ice, or the little ice that's left—if these shipowners don't want to sign up to it, it's going to be problematic. We should have a say.

In my opinion, the most beautiful thing was the ice bridge. It was as if the two banks of the river came together to create an entirely different dynamic during the freezing period. That's now lost. The repercussions aren't just economic, it's deeper than that. There's the social aspect. The people of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu and Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu have worked together for centuries. With the disappearance of the ice bridge, families see each other less.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Barsalou-Duval.

Next we have Ms. Zarrillo.

The floor is yours. You have two and a half minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

I'm going to ask Mayor Martin and go back to the Insurance Bureau. This is just to talk about the abandoned wells a little bit.

I'm interested to know if you believe that industry needs to be accountable today for the contamination and negative impacts that were not considered 50 years ago. How would that look?

[Amy Martin]

Thank you for the question.

The answer is yes. However, in our experience, we have a very difficult time tracking down those private landowners. Those businesses have closed. They've gone bankrupt. The members who were associated with that business have passed. That is when we see the deterioration of the infrastructure that occurred in the capping of the well. It's not for lack of trying.

The answer is yes, but I believe it's difficult to do.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Can you just give this committee a little bit of an idea of that challenge? Is the federal government helping in any way to find out who those landowners are to get some accountability and assistance?

[Amy Martin]

To my knowledge, the federal participation currently on gas wells is limited. We have seen provincial funding come through, but I know that it's not enough and I know that it's not sustainable. It's a knee-jerk reaction to a problem. It's not a proactive approach to how we're going to handle them in the future and our planning for the next stages.

We know in Wheatley, Ontario, there was a rather large explosion in the downtown core urban centre with regard to a gas well, as well as in Norfolk County. It's reactive. It is trying to monitor it, cap it and then move on to the next one.

I'm not very well versed in the exact role of the federal level at this point in time. To my understanding there isn't funding coming home to the provincial level to be distributed to municipalities.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Okay. That is a risk.

I'm going to ask the same question to the Insurance Bureau around whether or not industry needs to be accountable for that contamination. Again, 50 years ago, this wasn't on the table.

How would that look?

[Craig Stewart]

It's not an area we've spent a lot of time on. It's been an issue, as I understand it, since the 1990s. It's been a known issue in Ontario, which the government has had to grapple with.

The reality is that these are unfunded liabilities, at the end of the day. Those should be addressed somehow at the outset—through bonds or whatever—when these companies are set up. Now that they're gone, I don't know exactly how they could be tackled. Ideally, going forward, this sort of situation shouldn't be permitted to exist.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Zarrillo.

Thank you, Mr. Stewart.

Next, we have Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Lewis, the floor is yours. You have five minutes.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses this morning.

The first question, through you, Mr. Chair, is for Mr. Dade.

I love the fact that you're talking about long-term planning. You mentioned 10- to 30-year forward planning. I would suggest that's probably not enough. I think we need further planning than that. In a previous life, I worked with a company that fixed sewers without digging them up. It's called cured-in-place pipe. Ironically, we did a lot of work at Haldimand and Norfolk. As a matter of fact, we fixed the manholes at your local landfill, so I'm very acutely aware.

The reason I bring that up, Mr. Dade, about planning....

By the way, I don't own the company anymore. I have no interest there, so there is zero conflict of interest.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

I bring it up because it's important to suggest saving money and stretching municipal dollars further. This type of technology costs 20¢ to 25¢—the cost of original open cut, dig and replace.

I'm curious. What other industries, sir, are you looking at for the 10- to 30-year plan, and how can the government help be a conduit—pardon the pun—to ensure municipalities are getting great opportunities to save money and stretch those tax dollars further?