Fisheries committee  Thank you, and greetings to the chair and to the members of the committee. Ontario Power Generation appreciates the opportunity to make a delegation to the standing committee today. I'm also here today in my capacity as chair of the fisheries working group for WaterPower Canada.

Fisheries committee  I'm happy to take a stab at that one. I think there's a hierarchical approach to offsetting. First you look to avoid, offset and mitigate. Once you get to your offsetting measures, I think some of the evolution in our thinking around fish habitat management is the prioritization

Fisheries committee  I think there are multiple approaches to that. I think that today the proponent, a company like OPG, would be responsible for the offsetting habitat for the life of their project—for the life or the timeline of their nuclear power facility, for example. In the case of a third p

Fisheries committee  Sure. In cases of nuclear power facilities or hydroelectric facilities, you're talking about a decade of investment leading up to your project, but a lot of projects aren't that size. A lot of the projects simply aren't as large as these large provincially led investments. To ask

Fisheries committee  That's a great segue to third party banking, because when established organizations such as Nature Conservancy Canada are making these, it can be a bit more transactional, so you can make a smaller window for that. As a proponent, you could come to the table with a project. You

Fisheries committee  I'll probably stay within my wheelhouse on the Fisheries Act, but I don't discount your question. There is an opportunity—I think Mr. Norris alluded to this—for a stackable benefit opportunity. If the Fisheries Act is the enabling legislation, you can look to wetland creation as

Fisheries committee  I would agree. At OPG we have a biodiversity program that is largely seen as being above compliance or outside of the compliance window. One of the programs we support is the Bring Back the Salmon program, which is done through the anglers and hunters association of Ontario.

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's OFAH, and we are the larger corporate sponsor. That is driven largely by the fact that these are the communities we live in and a lot of our staff and workers are members of those organizations. We are making those investments outside of the compliance window, so I wo

Fisheries committee  Well, I don't think we've seen that yet, simply because our generation lasts so long. We're still on our first generation of....

Fisheries committee  That's a great question. I think that comes down to the hierarchical approach that the regulator is bound to pursue, so I can see that as a potential criticism. Having been part of many projects while I have worked in the industry over the past 20 years, I haven't seen that appro

Fisheries committee  Sure. I can speak only to the Big Island wetland project. We have an advisory team that includes a research scientist from DFO and different universities. They look at the accounting of our credits. They are actually measuring the productivity of our bank and ensuring that it is

Fisheries committee  I can try. I may have to get back to you on that one, though. That's a good question for our corporate team at OPG to see what was involved in the environmental assessment in terms of consultation. I don't want to speak on their behalf, but I can absolutely get you that informati

Fisheries committee  Again, I would have to get back to you. I can't speak off the top of my head.

Fisheries committee  Sure. Absolutely. With a large project like a new nuclear project, you're trying to quantify the potential impacts of the facility in advance, so there's a lot of teamwork and a lot of collaboration that go into assessing the impact of the new facility. Once that is establishe

Fisheries committee  I'm looking through our notes. We're doing annual reporting, so I have our annual report here for 2018. I believe that project was undertaken around 2013.