Transport Committee on June 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 72 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, the committee is meeting to study adapting infrastructure to face climate change.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I wish to inform the committee that all witnesses have been sound tested for today's meeting for the benefit of our interpreters, and all have passed the tests.

Appearing before us today as witnesses, we have, as an individual, Mr. Patrick Michell, retired chief, Kanaka Bar Indian Band, by video conference. From the Canada West Foundation, we have Mr. Carlo Dade, director of the trade and investment centre. From the Insurance Bureau of Canada, we have Chris Rol, manager and senior adviser, climate adaptation and flood policy; and Craig Stewart, vice-president, climate change and federal issues.

We also welcome Mr. Jonathan Chalifoux, mayor of the municipality of Saint‑Antoine-sur-Richelieu.

From the municipality of Norfolk County, we have Amy Martin, mayor; and Sydney Clarysse, project lead, energy and facilities. From Watershed Watch Salmon Society, we have Lina Azeez, director, habitat programs, by video conference.

We will begin now with our opening remarks, and we'll start off with Mr. Michell.

Mr. Michell, the floor is yours. You have five minutes, sir.

[Chief Patrick Michell, Retired Chief, Kanaka Bar Indian Band, As an Individual]

Thank you.

My name is Patrick Michell. I'm a resident of Lytton, British Columbia. In 29 days, it will be the two-year anniversary of the Lytton fire.

The Lytton fire wiped out an entire town, destroyed roads, destroyed electricity, destroyed communications and basically paralyzed the region for months. What happened on June 30 of 2021 wasn't unexpected. It was just unprecedented.

My community of Kanaka Bar became aware of climate change as early as 1990, when we got back on the land and saw something different. It was changing. By 1992, the word “anthropogenic” for climate change was indicated, and we came to realize as an indigenous community that the world's earth, lands and water were heating up at an unprecedented rate. This was creating these extreme weather events, which we call “heat, wind, rain and cold”.

By 2010, we'd written a document called “Memory, Loss and Sorrow....”, which basically summarized contact colonization and where my community was up until 2010. Building on the work that we had done, in 2015 we created a land use plan that assessed all the impacts on our traditional territory.

I believe it was in 2018—I don't have my document in front of me, but I've shared it with the clerk so the committee can reference it—that we created a climate change assessment and transition plan. We embarked on protecting our homes, our people, our property and our infrastructure from those extreme weather events of heat, wind, rain and cold and the ground impacts they trigger, be it drought, wind, fire, flooding or landslides.

We completed the climate change transition report and basically set about protecting ourselves by upgrading, renovating and retrofitting our infrastructure as best we could, but also by designing and building new infrastructure that could withstand this new extreme weather. We wanted to do this not because we were concerned about the economy. We were concerned about our future generations. Our future generations are entitled to have the same access—if not more—to the life and the quality of life that we enjoy today.

My community sits down and takes the resources that we have—people, time, technology and money—and we invest it in our future generations. What we've done to protect our roads, our wastewater treatment systems, our water, our electricity and our communications is not a cost. It's an investment.

In 2021, Kanaka Bar replaced its climate change transition plan with something called the “community resilience plan”. It sets out projects and programs that we'll be implementing over the next five years to once again re-establish these foundations—foundations that are resilient to extreme weather. We've now said that to be resilient means to be able to shelter in place during extreme weather events and then repair the systems that give us quality of life.

We've been warning the people who come to our region, the north end of the Fraser Canyon, for years that the infrastructure they built was built quickly and needs to be upgraded. The atmospheric river that hit the region in November of 2021 wiped out the roads—roads that are still not rebuilt—because nobody expected that much rain. We did. We warned people: Change the culvert sizes. Spend $60,000 today to save $6 million tomorrow. Do not go into our future in response mode. Change the conversation from cost to investment. Keep our roads open: To do that, replace the culverts from 1957.

The railroad was built in 1884, the CPR, and the CNR was built in 1913. They have not changed out their culverts. These rights-of-way that bisect my region, they maintain their land in a very poor way. I've said that in effect they've become dynamite fuses to our community.

I just wanted to share with the committee that I am optimistic for our collective future. The fact that this committee is looking at adapting our infrastructure for climate change gives me hope. Our children and grandchildren are worth it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, retired Chief Michell.

Next we have Mr. Dade.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Carlo Dade, Director, Trade and Investment Centre, Canada West Foundation]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting me to testify.

I will testify in English.

I'll be happy to try to answer your questions in French as well.

The approach I will take with committee today is a little bit different. I like to come at this from a different end of the spectrum in terms of how we deal with resiliency and, specifically, what we do with the recommendations and the learnings from this study. There is an opportunity, I think, to have greater effectiveness for the committee's recommendations and your learnings on resiliency.

The Canada West Foundation is the think tank—the public policy research, dissemination, education and advocacy organization—for the four western provinces and is working to create a strong west in a strong Canada.

For the past 10 years, with a collection of national organizations including the Business Council of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Construction Association, the Western Canada Roadbuilders and recently CM&E, we've been working on resolving an existential threat to Canada's prosperity, which is the decline in global perception of the quality of our transportation infrastructure.

Over the past 10 years and over several governments, there's been a consistent decline in the global rankings of Canada's transportation infrastructure. We've gone from being viewed as having top 10 infrastructure a decade ago, to 32nd globally in the specific measure of transport infrastructure from the World Economic Forum. The World Bank rankings on the logistics performance index show a similar decline for Canada.

This is a systemic problem. It's not one strike, one bad flood or one bad winter; it's a systemic problem. We've been working on a systemic solution to the problem with the aforementioned groups.

What the 10 years of research have shown—amongst other things—is that Canada is one of the few G7 and one of the few G20 countries not engaged in national infrastructure planning—long-term, 10- to 30-year planning done on a regular basis with long-term pipelines of projects. You begin to see where this leads to the work that you're doing on resiliency.

Of the recommendations in our report, there are seven steps needed in the national plan, such as collecting data, understanding the one system for supply chain and logistics that connect the entire country, and being able to turn data into decisions. There is also planning and decision-making based on criteria of national significance. These are long-term, rigorous criteria that apply across decades. This is the opportunity, I think, for the work of the committee: to think about the report you're writing and how you shape your recommendations to fit into the development of this national plan that will include these criteria.

If you want seriousness about dealing with resiliency and if you want seriousness and rigour in terms of dealing with environmental impacts, the best way I would argue, or that the research shows to be one of the most efficient ways, is to incorporate the criteria into long-term national plans. You signal to the private sector that, above and beyond the reasons that everyone presenting has shown you of the seriousness of the problem, there's another business case to do this. The long-term signal you do sends this.

I will just conclude by noting that this is not just another report recommendation. The coalition we have with the private sector has been joined by the premiers. The call for Canada's first national infrastructure plan will be put on the table at this July's Council of the Federation meeting. It has the support of premiers from coast to coast. This is something that indeed is coming.

As you think about your report and as you think about the input and the recommendations that you get, I'm here to urge you to shape those recommendations and thinking to fit into the development of a national infrastructure plan.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dade.

Next we have Mr. Stewart.

Mr. Stewart, the floor is yours for five minutes, please.

[Craig Stewart, Vice-President, Climate Change and Federal Issues, Insurance Bureau of Canada]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for inviting IBC to present to you today. Accompanying me is Ms. Chris Rol, IBC’s long-time flood expert.

Insurance Bureau of Canada is the trade association for the over 200 companies that insure cars, homes and businesses in our country. I want to recognize that we're in the city of Ottawa and on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation. I also want to recognize our firefighters at this time, many of whom are volunteers, who are working tirelessly, even as we speak, to help keep Canadians safe.

Last year I co-chaired the advisory committee on disaster resilience and security, which provided very specific recommendations for the national adaptation strategy. Our committee submitted those recommendations to Minister Blair and Minister Guilbeault. We stressed that this country lacks urgency when it comes to building resilience to climate change.

For the past decade, the debate about emissions reduction has consumed all the oxygen in the room. Governments have been playing bait and switch with climate change, amplifying catastrophic wildfires and floods to drive energy policy while slow-walking the serious changes needed to defend Canadian homes and businesses. We all know this is true. This is why we welcome your study.

Our experts on disaster resilience recommended that the national adaptation strategy adopt explicit near-term targets to reduce disaster risk and increase recovery. These five-year targets state that by 2028, for instance, mortality due to extreme heat has been reduced by 70% and annual hospitalizations by 50%; all new construction in areas at high risk of wildfire include FireSmart resilience measures; and over 20% of homes identified as being at high risk of riverine and coastal flooding are protected.

[Chris Rol, Manager and Senior Adviser, Climate Adaptation and Flood Policy, Insurance Bureau of Canada]

Designed properly, infrastructure programming can help achieve our climate adaptation targets. Here's how.

Actuaries contracted by Public Safety Canada estimate that Canada’s losses for residential flooding will amount to $2.9 billion per year, on average, for the next decade, and will grow from there. They found that only 10% of homes account for 90% of those losses, so when designing a new disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, doesn’t it make sense to focus funding on defending those at highest risk? We know where they are. If 1.5 million properties account for 90% of the risk, shouldn’t we target funding to at least protect the 300,000 of them at the highest level of risk?

Budget 2023 announced the creation of Canada’s national flood insurance program, a massive step forward for which Minister Blair and his officials at Public Safety Canada must be congratulated. When designing that program, we should learn from the American experience. They have created a linkage between the investments a community makes in flood mitigation and the premiums that residents pay for that flood insurance. This way there is a positive incentive for communities to reduce risk, and their efforts are recognized.

With that background, here are our four recommendations for your infrastructure study.

First, we strongly reinforce FCM’s recommendation that the fall economic statement should allocate $2 billion in surge funding for infrastructure that increases disaster mitigation, followed by $1 billion per year thereafter for 10 years.

Second, the Canada Infrastructure Bank should be allocated a further $2 billion for disaster mitigation and challenged to find a further $4 billion in matching private capital. The challenge is too great for the public sector to meet alone. The financial sector has an investment role to play.

Third, infrastructure funding should be prioritized to reach a near-term adaptation target to defend the 300,000 homes at highest risk of flooding by 2028.

Fourth, following the lead of the U.S., premiums for Canada’s new national flood insurance program should be designed to reflect the infrastructure investments made by communities that reduce their flood risk.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you both very much for your opening remarks.

The next speaker is Mayor Jonathan Chalifoux.

Mr. Mayor, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Jonathan Chalifoux, Mayor, Municipalité Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu]

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you very much for having me here today.

I'm going to tell you about a situation in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu. Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu and Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu are two small villages on the south shore of Montreal. Our region is located at the junction of several highways close to Contrecoeur.

In recent years, we no longer have had the opportunity to build the ice bridge that used to allow our two communities to live in symbiosis during the winter. The winter detour between the two communities is 50 kilometres. Now, with the ice bridge, the journey was 500 metres to reach the other side of the river.

During the summer, we have a summer crossing route. In fact, a cable ferry carries cars and pedestrians. However, the outlook for winter is very bleak.

In November 2018, the municipality of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu and the municipality of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu agreed to end the partnership that allowed an ice bridge to be created and used every winter between the two banks of the Richelieu River. In recent years, the opening period of the ice bridge had become less predictable and shorter. Over five years, we only managed to open the ice bridge three times. What's more, the man in charge of the bridge wanted to retire, given his age. Of course, building an ice bridge is an art. Moreover, with changing weather conditions, it is becoming impossible to create this bridge.

We also have the imminent arrival, in our neck of the woods, of a port terminal to be built in Contrecoeur with a fairly substantial maritime portion. We're trying to find solutions so that we can have a year-round crossing at Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu.

We have done some preliminary research to try to correct the problem with a bubble de-icing system to allow boats to cross during the winter. The costs involved are quite substantial. According to a 2019 study, the system alone would cost $650,000. Today, costs are now estimated at over $1 million.

The cable ferry is operated by a private company, which has no interest in offering this service during the winter period, although there is the possibility of doing so.

We are therefore turning to the federal government. We need solutions.

There are three ferries on the Richelieu River, but municipalities have no say in the operation of these ferries, since private companies operate them. We'd like the federal government to give us a say in the renewal of permits and agreements for the river crossing. This would enable us to set conditions so that municipalities can benefit year-round.

We could even buy back these ferries to have a longer-term strategy. Responsibility for this service could be transferred to the Société des traversiers du Québec; we could even create an intermunicipal board that would be responsible for it. We need to look further ahead. We need help to build new, modern, electrified ferries, which would enable us to have year-round ferry routes by eliminating ice with ice-breaking ferries.

We'll soon be lucky enough to have a National Shipbuilding Strategy in Sorel-Tracy, which could be put to good use in a project.

Federal government support is essential to maintaining a vital year-round axis for our communities along the Richelieu River. One example is Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, where a year-round ferry route has been in operation for several years. The economic boom on Bell Island has been most positive.

We want to have a year-round system for our communities. This would finally allow us to create links with surrounding municipalities, both for fire and police services, to help us better manage both towns. We could even, one day, merge some municipalities and set up an efficient system between two communities.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.

Next, we have Mayor Amy Martin.

Mayor Martin, the floor is yours. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Amy Martin, Mayor, Municipality of Norfolk County]

Thank you very much for the invitation to appear before the standing committee to provide testimony on the critical infrastructure needs as they relate to climate change in my home community.

My name is Amy Martin, and I am the mayor of Norfolk County, a single-tier municipality of close to 70,000 people located in southwestern Ontario.

I'm pleased to be here today in person in the city of Ottawa, which is built upon the unceded Algonquin Anishinabe territory.

I would also like to take a moment to recognize our MP, Dr. Leslyn Lewis.

In part, my testimony includes details relevant to Norfolk County, but also the following recommendations for the committee.

We recognize that successful actions related to climate change go beyond municipal boundaries, and that the federal government is best positioned to provide comprehensive, coordinated supports to the local level. Therefore, we ask that the Government of Canada provide local governments with dedicated, ongoing additional funding in support of critical infrastructure needs that respond to climate change.

Furthermore, we encourage levelling the playing field by way of giving consideration to large, mid-sized and small municipal applications, and having them judged fairly. Rural and urban municipalities of our size are typically competing against the GTA—the greater Toronto area—for funding and resources.

To start, I'd also like to acknowledge the role that FCM has played in helping municipalities, including Norfolk County, in drafting a climate adaptation plan. Without this funding, we would not have a plan.

Norfolk County is located on the shores of Lake Erie, home to one of the five Great Lakes in Canada. We cover 1,600 square kilometres of sandy shores, rich agricultural soil and a forest that sees 25% tree coverage. We're home to a UNESCO world biosphere in Long Point. We are the top Canadian producers of asparagus, tart cherries, ginseng, peppers, pumpkins, squash and zucchini. We have countless Ontario top producers as well. All of this to say that climate change and the environment are very important to us.

Wind, snow and ice storms; power outages and potential power shortages to come; floods and shoreline erosion; and, most concerning, water and waste-water quantity and quality concerns, coupled with far-reaching food security alerts—the growing infrastructure gaps Norfolk County faces are alarming. The climate concerns that are associated with the gaps are staggering, yet largely unfunded.

A previous FCM deputation informed you all of the infrastructure gap that many municipalities are facing, with high demands for repair and/or replacement totalling an estimated $175 billion, and these figures do not account for climate change infrastructure.

One project in isolation, in Norfolk County, totals over $390 million. Our interurban water infrastructure upgrade plan adds much-needed capacity and efficiency, as well as a safer water drinking system for our community. With infrastructure upgrades like these, we don't have resources left over to prioritize climate change initiatives. We simply don't collect enough money to address our critical in-house concerns.

Norfolk County has an annual $119-million operating budget; however, we only budget for $102,000 in climate change initiatives, totalling 0.0019% of our annual funding. This happens for many reasons, mostly because of our resources and our internal debt limits, but we simply can't prioritize more.

This is all the more detrimental to a community when we have a climate adaptation plan that has identified Norfolk County as very high risk, compared to other years, for flooding, which is directly associated with our high risk of delay in first responders. Our high risk of power outages attributable to adverse wind, snow and ice storms is directly related to our high risk of contamination and flooding of drinking water systems, which pushes surface material into our water sources. Our high risk of supercharging and flooding of stormwater management is also listed.

In 2023, we simply cannot allow this to occur, yet municipalities aren't equipped with the financial resources to update our infrastructure.

Our climate adaptation plan warns of the high risk of decreased agricultural output and productivity. This is attributed to development and increases to drought and temperature changes. Drought puts us at very high risk of greater demand for municipal water supply and depleted groundwater resources.

The list goes on and on, totalling 18 initiatives from moderate to very high risk, and 13 of 18 are high or very high for Norfolk County. We simply cannot afford to fulfill our routine infrastructure upgrades such as keeping our taps on, let alone switching our focus to climate change initiatives that we fundamentally agree with.

This testimony doesn't allow time for a discussion on shoreline protection, greening our assets or planning sustainable housing initiatives with our planning department, despite the fact that we know our population will grow by 50% in the coming years.

However, we respectfully submit our testimony and recommendations to the committee, and we would be happy to supply you with any additional information, including our studies, upon your request.

I have brought the lovely Sydney Clarysse here with me today, our project lead at Norfolk county, to speak to any energy or facility needs that may suit the committee.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mayor Martin.

I have a quick note. We did conduct a study on a particular aspect of shoreline erosion. I invite you to peruse that in your free time.

Next we will have Ms. Azeez.

Ms. Azeez, the floor is yours. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Lina Azeez, Director, Habitat Programs, Watershed Watch Salmon Society]

Thank you for the invitation to speak to this committee about adapting infrastructure to face climate change in Canada.

My name is Lina Azeez. I am the habitat programs director at Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

We are a salmon conservation organization based in British Columbia. I'm calling from my home in Port Coquitlam on unceded Kwikwetlem territory.

I am also representing the indigenous-led lower Fraser flood plains coalition. We are a group of organizations and experts with the shared goal of helping B.C.'s flood recovery and management efforts achieve the best possible outcomes by addressing systemic challenges and improving flood planning for our region.

The Fraser River is one of the world's greatest wild salmon rivers. Salmon are a keystone species and integral to the cultural security of Fraser first nations, the local economy and the very identity of British Columbians.

The lower Fraser, roughly from Hope to the Salish Sea, is heavily populated and developed, with agriculture, industry and homes filling in the flood plain that is protected by about 600 kilometres of dikes, over 100 pump stations and 500 floodgates. Many of these flood structures are either blocking side channels, tributaries and sloughs that should be salmon habitat or killing salmon outright, so we are working to ensure that salmon and their habitats are better considered in flood mitigation and adaptation strategies.

A 2015 provincial dike assessment found that 90% of dikes do not meet current standards and are not well adapted for the changing climate, which is bringing us bigger and more frequent floods. We also have aging and undersized floodgates and pump stations. These deficiencies are putting our region at extreme risk of climate-induced high water events like the kind we experienced in November 2021. It has been estimated that the recovery cost of that single flooding event will top $5 billion.

We need to invest in flood mitigation. As noted in the national adaptation strategy, each dollar invested in mitigation and preparedness saves as much as $15 in disaster recovery, yet we also know from the lower Fraser dike assessment that we need new approaches to managing flood risks because upgrading all the existing dikes was found to be “prohibitively expensive”. Fortunately, we are not stuck with the flood management options designed in the last century, but we need to be proactive and thoughtful in moving forward with proven, modern solutions.

Together with lower Fraser local governments and first nations, the LFFC identified five principles for a made-in-B.C. approach that incorporates the pillars of the “Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction” and commitments of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the Government of Canada is a signatory to. These principles are reducing risk and adapting to climate change, advancing reconciliation, ensuring thriving salmon in coastal and freshwater ecosystems, supporting sustainable economic and resilient communities into the future, and ensuring that everyone is part of the solution.

Provincial ministers responsible for emergency management and the B.C. flood strategy have voiced their support for these principles. We ask that the federal government also support the principles aligned with federal commitments to Sendai, legal obligations under UNDA and salmon recovery. Essentially, infrastructure for a changing climate must be multi-beneficial. This means keeping our communities safe while also supporting salmon recovery and other values. This can be accomplished through integrated planning and sustained proactive funding.

For example, natural defences, also referred to as nature-based solutions, have to be ranked highly in funding programs such as the DMAF and DFAA, which make large infrastructure investments part of disaster recovery. At present, DFAA requires building back to the same standards and encourages communities to rebuild in high-risk areas that might otherwise not be covered by private insurance because they can be confident of a government bailout. This is inherently counter to the concept of adaptation. We need modernized flood plain maps, identification of risk and a focus on resilience and adaptation planning.

Natural flood defences can include making room for rivers to flood safely, restoration and protection of wetlands and flood plains, increased absorption capacity in upper watersheds, strategic relocations and supporting farmers in flood plains to adapt their agricultural practices.

There are many natural infrastructure and fish-friendly solutions that will keep our communities safe and build resilience into the ecosystem, allowing salmon and other species to thrive. These solutions all need to be supported by DMAF, DFAA and other federal infrastructure funding streams with big, bold and creative investments.

The watershed security fund can also help, and we'd like to see federal matching funds to support watershed health, which in turn can directly benefit our built environment. In our region, DMAF has supported the innovative living dike project in Boundary Bay. Projects like this should be the norm not the novelty.

In summary, adapting our infrastructure to be resilient to a changing climate in the lower Fraser requires two key components: sustained funding for a regional flood resilience plan based on the five principles; and funding and incentives for multi-beneficial, nature-based and fish-friendly infrastructure solutions. This is essential for community and for ecosystem health and safety, and it is necessary to ensure that supply chain networks and that communities in regions, like the lower Fraser, are not subject to repeated disruptions.

A principled, strategic approach offers a way forward in a complex region like the lower Fraser.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to any questions

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Ms. Azeez.

We'll begin our line of questioning today with Dr. Lewis.

Dr. Lewis, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for coming today.

My first question is for Mayor Martin.

Mayor, I want to thank you for your testimony and for your presentation today to the committee. I appreciate your leadership in Norfolk, and I appreciate the work that you're doing for our community.

You mentioned a bit about the damages that have been caused by regular flooding and, largely, by the infrastructure gap. Is there sufficient government attention and priority given to municipalities like Norfolk when it comes to the safety and the climate-related concerns that are having real impacts, not projected years in the future but right now, today?

[Amy Martin]

Thank you for the question.

In my opinion, no. Otherwise, we would be regularly applying into those funding streams, and we would have a plan to further adapt to the level of flooding that we're seeing in our communities.

If I may just piggyback on that, the other issue is that a lot of private property ownership is mixed in with the municipal lands. We can do our part if the funding becomes available, but what happens to those private landowners? Are they doing their part as well?

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you.

You also spoke about high risks and high-risk areas that aren't being addressed and funded proactively. I'm concerned—and I know that you are well aware of this situation—about the orphaned gas wells that the government is not addressing. That's a significant issue that is posing an ongoing health and safety environmental concern. It may not fit into the disaster mitigation and adaptation funding presently, but, if left unresolved, there may be catastrophic damage from explosions and from environmental leaks. Can you speak to that issue?

[Amy Martin]

Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. I didn't have enough time to fit that into my testimony.

Ontario alone has 26,000—that we know of—abandoned gas wells. That doesn't mean all of them are leaking or are erupting, but it does mean that we don't know when they're going to leak and to erupt. Norfolk County is home to 2,600 with one leaking gas well right now in our community that has cost us over $1 million. With an all-hands-on-deck approach, with all our staff, from our health unit to our operations and roads team, trying to manage hydrogen sulphide and a leaking gas well, we've had to evacuate community members. We're ill-equipped to handle this with our finances and resources.

What I hear from our provincial partners is that, for the federal government's additional funding to the provincial partners, to make its way down to the municipalities, it would go a long way. I think we're going to see this as a really systemic, deep-seated issue in all of Ontario—I can't speak to outside of Ontario—in the coming years. We know we have 2,600 in Norfolk County alone, and one gas well with over $1 million.

There are a lot of health and safety risks, and our EMS team isn't equipped to respond either. We don't have in-house monitoring to determine if it's a high-risk area, and if we need to be evacuating our residents. Is it something our fire department deals with? Is it something the health unit deals with? It's a big issue, and I think we're going to hear about it a lot in the coming years.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I'm also concerned about the federal programs and that they aren't sufficiently assessing the needs of small communities like Norfolk. Meanwhile, basic infrastructure needs are not being prioritized correctly. I'm thinking of things such as water infrastructure upgrades, which are essential and have problems that get exacerbated with flooding. Could you speak to that for a moment?

[Amy Martin]

Yes. Thank you for your comments. I couldn't agree more.

It's $390 million and growing every day just to upgrade our five waste-water and water treatment plants and to try to amalgamate them into one facility that is state-of-the-art and that has high-end technology that helps us if there's a flood. It elevates the systems. It preserves the quality and the quantity.

I've put some pictures in our submissions for the members to review as well that are quite alarming in fact. In Norfolk County alone, we have one community with a full stop, a full moratorium, on development as we were in a 2,500 cubic metre deficit of water daily.

When municipalities can't afford to upgrade their infrastructure that simply keeps the taps on in 2023, I just don't know how we get creative and bold and how we make investments that can help us create sustainable communities for years to come. A lot of climate change initiatives are directly tied into the groundwater—the quality, the quantity and the infrastructure with which we pump that water.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

In saying that, are there any specific changes you believe government could make to better prioritize the more equitable distribution of federal funding to smaller municipalities like Norfolk?

[Amy Martin]

Thank you. Yes, I skirted that first part of your question.

Absolutely. As I said, we were put into a basket where we're competing with the greater Toronto area, but we're massive. We're a small municipality and we have “county” in our name, but that's more of a branding strategy than representative of what we are. We need to be treated equally and given consideration of size. I think some of the provincial methods we're seeing are audits of our books to determine how much funding we have: Do you have the money and resources? What are your debt limits? Can you take on additional funding?

If the federal government could review those types of things, instead of simply gapping us together with other municipalities with the same population size, I think it would go a long way.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mayor Martin.

Next, we have Mr. Rogers.

Before I turn the floor over to you, Mr. Rogers, on behalf of this committee and the 12 or so Canadians watching us on CPAC right now, I would like to wish you a happy 70th birthday in advance, my good man.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. I'm looking forward to it on Saturday with my family.

We have some great witnesses here today.

I welcome all of you. I thank you for your background and the information you're bringing to this committee. I think it's extremely important we hear from the municipal sector, the Insurance Bureau and so on. Any recommendations, of course, we truly appreciate.

As a past mayor and member of the FCM—I sat on the board for four years—I truly understand where Mayor Martin is coming from. I know the FCM has put forward tremendous programs on behalf of municipalities across the country, big and small. I think our government has responded very well. In many of their programs, they've announced.... For example, the gas tax fund was doubled. In other programs, in terms of infrastructure, there's been a tremendous amount of money spent across the entire country.

Of course, I realize the challenges you have as a mayor. I've been there. I understand where you're coming from. There never seems to be enough money to deal with the issues. Thank you for your comments.

Chief Patrick, I particularly enjoyed your commentary when you talked about extreme weather events, protecting future generations and investing in preventative measures. You referenced, of course, the Lytton fire and the floods in B.C. It seemed as if you had a couple of other preventative measures you wanted to talk about, or things you'd like us, as a government, to invest in to support all towns across this country in terms of wildfires and catastrophes.

Chief, do you want to make a comment or two further on that?