Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 9 - Evidence, February 24, 2003 - Morning
REGINA, Monday, February 24, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:30 a.m. to examine and report on the impact of climate change on Canada's agriculture, forests and rural communities and the potential adaptation options focusing on primary production, practices, technologies, ecosystems and other related areas.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I am pleased to welcome everyone here to the hearing of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry in Regina.
During the course of our last study, which was called ``Farmers at Risk,'' the committee found environmental stresses to be such a pressing issue in agriculture in rural Canada that it decided to undertake a comprehensive study on the effects of climate change on agriculture. The committee is examining the expected effects of climate change on Canadian agriculture, forests and rural communities and, more importantly, it will consider how these sectors can adapt.
The committee is required to report before the end of 2003, but we hope and expect to have the report completed by the end of June at the very latest.
During our trip to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, we will hear from scientists, farmers and many other industry groups on our topic: adaptation to climate change.
I am happy that we are starting our Western swing in Saskatchewan because there are examples of forestry, agriculture and the problems of rural communities right here. The study of climate change must reflect both the values and diversity of our country.
I also want the people of Saskatchewan, particularly, and Western Canada in general, to know that they are very well represented in the upper chamber of Parliament in Ottawa. Our deputy chairman, Senator Jack Wiebe, is well known for his knowledge and forthrightness. Former chairman and well-known grains and oilseeds farmer, Senator Len Gustafson, is here and represents the province well. Someone who never lets Ottawa forget the issues and concerns of Saskatchewan is Senator David Tkachuk. If we ever get hopelessly lost or in trouble, we can always turn to the dean of the Senate, Herb Sparrow, for advice. With that sketch of the Saskatchewan background, I now turn to our first witness, Mr. Joseph Hnatiuk, to begin our hearing today.
Mr. Joe Hnatiuk, President, Ecotourism Society of Saskatchewan: Good morning. I wish to first thank the standing Senate committee and the clerk of the committee for giving us the opportunity to make a brief presentation that will discuss the potential indirect effects of climate change on ecotourism as a result of the potential effects on Canada's agriculture, forests and rural communities.
The ESS defines ecotourism as:
Tourism, which involves respectful environmentally responsible travel to relatively undisturbed and uncontaminated natural areas with the objective of studying, admiring and enjoying the scenery, its wild plants, animals and cultural features. It is focused on the non-consumptive enjoyment of nature. It does not disturb wildlife or its habitat and is sustainable; it creates socio-economic benefits for local communities and regions by ensuring that local people and communities are actively involved in delivering the ecotourism experience.
As the definition indicates, ecotourism as defined by ESS depends on Canada's and Saskatchewan's agriculture, forests and rural communities, and therefore, any impact of climate change on these sectors and the communities will have an effect on the ecotourism industry. Thus, the ecotourism industry must look closely at any adaptations that may be needed to cope with the changing environments and ecosystems.
In that regard, please allow me to offer you some of the thoughts of ESS on the potential climate change impacts on ecotourism. Please be aware that ESS does not have any scientific data to substantiate observations; these observations may include areas where research can be initiated to fill the gaps.
The following is a partial list of potential climate change impacts on ecotourism:
1. Climate change will likely bring more uncertain and dramatic weather events. More storms, droughts and floods will challenge ecotour operators to provide safety, to supply consistent product quality and to stay economically solvent.
2. Climate change will result in dry prairie wetlands more frequently than in the past. Dried-up wetlands lose their highly productive flora and fauna and reduce the quality of the product for ecotourism operators.
Our Chaplin site, which is about 150 kilometres west of Regina along the Trans-Canada Highway, is known for its shorebirds that stay there in both spring and fall. In other words, they make migratory stops when coming to the northern hemisphere and going south in the fall. They spend some time feeding and increasing their energy reserves. When the wetlands dried up in 2002, few shorebirds stopped there, leaving the shorebird reserve site empty and ecotourism operators with nothing to show but an odoriferous salt marsh. That is what it is, a very smelly salt marsh with no birds.
3. Climate change seems to be resulting in less consistent winter snow cover. This makes it difficult to plan and draw guests to snow-based winter ecotourism activities such as nature interpretation that includes dogsledding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and winter camping.
4. Climate change is forecast to cause more water shortages on the Prairies. Water quality will suffer because of the concentration of salts and pollutants. Our reputation for an unspoiled environment will suffer and ecotourism operator costs will escalate because of the extra water treatment that will be required.
5. Climate change will place additional physiological stress on plants and animals and reduce their resiliency. This will necessitate reducing carrying capacity for the use of interpretive trails, observations posts and fragile environments. It will limit the number of guests at any ecotourism attraction, resulting in loss of revenue.
6. Climate change will increase the number, severity and overall risk of wildfires. This is very worrisome to ecotourism operators, who may be isolated in relatively pristine natural areas. Increased wildfires will increase operators' liability insurance costs. It will increase an operator's costs for fire protecting facilities. It will decrease an operator's available time for running tours if fire hazards prevent access. Also, it may burn up the attractions and facilities.
7. Climate change is expected to be characterized by hot, dry springs and result in dried-out ecosystems. The outcomes are expected to increase epidemics of various pests such as grasshoppers, aphids and forest tent caterpillars, all of which cause deterioration in the quality of the product and the aesthetics of a quality outdoor experience.
8. Climate change appears to be contributing to northward extension of diseases such as Lyme disease and the West Nile virus. This will necessitate additional precautions to limit exposure to organisms such as mosquitoes and ticks, adding cost to the ecotourism operation for equipment. It will also increase insurance costs.
9. Climate change and drought will reduce water levels in watercourses more often. Ecotours involving canoeing and boat travel will be jeopardized and the quality of the aesthetics on the waterways will be compromised.
10. Climate change and droughts will lower many lake levels, which will leave wharves higher and docks high and dry, or flooded, adding to the cost of operations. Water quality in lakes will deteriorate and weed growth will be more problematic. Fish will die off more frequently. Violent fluctuations of lakes, ponds and other wetlands will add dangers to ecotourists and wildlife.
In my last point, I want to indicate there may be a bit of a positive in the sense that we can be an example of how to help reduce the impacts of climate change on the environment.
11. Ecotourism operators can use climate change as part of their interpretive and educational program to help change societal behaviour, by acting as shining examples of how to be good environmental citizens. The ecotourism operation can illustrate how to conserve energy, practice the four R's and be respectful of the ecological needs of all living creatures on earth.
Ecotourism can show visitors the results of climate change, illustrate how important it is to address greenhouse gas emissions and show what we can or cannot do to adapt to climate change.
The above are some of the potential impacts of climate change on ecotourism. The ESS will continue to work with the ecotourism industry operators and providers to help them adapt to these changes.
They will be encouraged to inform their clients of the observed changes to the ecosystem that may have occurred over time. An example of that may be the invasion of grasslands into areas that were once forested.
I want to thank you once again, Mr. Chairperson, for giving ESS the opportunity to present its views on the potential impacts of climate change on the ecotourism industry.
Senator Wiebe: Mr. Hnatiuk, I really appreciated your presentation this morning. It appears that you and your organization have taken a considerable amount of time to look at the possible effects of climate change on your industry. You have come up with some interesting adaptations and that is one of the things that we are looking at.
Ecotourism, of course, is very closely related to Mother Nature, to what happens to the landscape and that sort of thing. If what the experts are telling us does take place, we will lose a tremendous amount. Not only do we lose it from Mother Nature's perspective, but there will also be a tremendous loss in infrastructure. This is the money that your operators have invested in buildings and materials and that sort of thing.
This committee finds that many in the general public seem to be concentrating more on the mitigating effects of climate change vis-à-vis Kyoto, that once we resolve Kyoto all our problems will be over. Although scientists tell us that even if we adopt 100 per cent of what is recommended, all we will do is slow down the rate of climate change.
Adaptation, as you have demonstrated, will depend on the individuals who are actually involved in an enterprise, whether it be farming or, in your case, the ecotourism system.
How can we involve these people in adapting to the research process and how can we convince them that they should be taking a look at what could happen, as your organization has done?
Mr. Hnatiuk: That is a good question. Several of our principles clearly have this in mind. The thing that we are promoting and asking our operators to do is make sure that in order for them to become certified or accredited by our organization, ESS, they abide by these rules. By using equipment, for example, that is environmentally friendly. In other words, if there is an opportunity to go for a walk rather than take a vehicle, we certainly encourage these kinds of activities.
Use a very energy efficient vehicle or none at all. Minimize the use of Styrofoam cups, for example, and use appliances that require the least amount of energy in the facilities.
As far as adaptation is concerned, we want to make sure that they work with our society in trying to achieve these levels of conservation and minimize the use of whatever it might be that requires extra energy to produce.
There are no easy answers. I think we just have to, through our organizations, encourage them, keep talking to them, get them to present these issues to their clients and make sure the clients are well informed.
Governments are part of this whole process, and that is also one of our biggest challenges, to convince the regulatory people that this is the right approach to take. We are having real challenges here.
I do not think I have answered your question, which is a difficult one. If I had all the answers it would be very easy. We are, through our principles, trying to minimize that stress.
Senator Wiebe: We are trying to find the answer to that difficult question as well, so I certainly understand.
The provincial and federal governments have been involved, through C-CIARN, in doing a lot of the research work that is required to see how quickly climate change may become a serious problem for us. Is there any advantage to provincial and federal governments providing incentives to individuals to undertake some thoughtful processes on may happen in the future? Is that an area where the policymakers could be involved?
Mr. Hnatiuk: I think that proactive approach by both federal and provincial governments is absolutely essential. At the same time, it has to be grassroots driven as well; it has to work both ways. I do not think we can get anything done until the operators, the individuals and the clients are aware of that. That is why our industry is trying to promote that from the grassroots and asking the powers that be to help us achieve that.
Certainly, some incentives through research and even some seed money would be extremely useful. For example, if people have ideas on how to conserve energy they should be given the opportunity to develop that. If they take that step, and we expect our operators who are accredited to take that extra step, they should be given some recognition. Certainly I do not think it should be a handout; it should be some kind of incentive, saying, ``Well, you have achieved this, try the next level.'' I think that is a very useful approach.
Senator Tkachuk: Mr. Hnatiuk, I am sure you are aware of some of the problems in the northern lakes due to the hot, dry weather we have had. They are quite serious in Jackfish Lake, for example, and Cochin and Emma have dropped as well. I do not know what the conditions are like at Anglin or Turtle Lake. Perhaps you could spend some time talking about the difficulties of some of these lake operators, and specifically at Anglin where there is a quite successful ecotourism business.
Mr. Hnatiuk: As I alluded to in my presentation, the droughts in the last few years have certainly affected the lake water levels and people who use Jackfish Lake, or Anglin Lake for that matter. You mentioned an ecotour operation that is using Anglin Lake as one of its attractions. The water levels have decreased significantly; consequently, it has reduced the opportunity for water-related activities.
Certainly the fact that the water is not as high as it used to be in some areas is causing more concentrated pollutants. Also, increased growth of vegetation makes canoeing a lot more difficult, for example, in this type of situation.
It is an issue that people will have to adapt to, but I am not sure what the answers are. Perhaps they will have to reduce that type of attraction to some degree and rely more on the terrestrial, the upland and dry land types of activities. These are the kinds of things that have to be considered. You have to do your best to adapt your business.
One of the things about ecotourism is, and I tried to describe it in our definition, it is enjoying nature, but not the consumption part; in other words, it is not fishing. We have to be aware that although there is no doubt the fishing industry will suffer because of low lake levels, ecotourism is not part of that industry.
Senator Tkachuk: Why would it not include fishing that was catch and release?
Mr. Hnatiuk: That is a good point. We are still in the debate stage on that. I am not convinced personally — and I want to emphasize ``personally.'' It is not a benign type of activity, because every time you handle a fish, even very gently, it may have a very negative impact. In other words, if you were to handle, let us say a northern pike, I think you would break off some of the fish's cover, the ``slime,' if you will, and that could ultimately have a negative impact.
The other thing is, for example, even though you use barbless hooks, you will perhaps still damage the mouth of the fish and it could cause a problem. If you encourage that as part of your business in ecotourism, it becomes hard to separate them. We try to keep the door closed, because if you let it partially open, someone will say, ``Well, you allowed so-and-so, why cannot I do this?''
Another issue we have in Saskatchewan — and I stand to be corrected, although I did try to get some answers from the regulatory people — is that lakes are allocated to outfitters, the people who are in the business of guiding and outfitting. I do not really want to get into it as it is not my area, but if you were to advertise catch-and-release fishing as an ecotour operator, that would mean you have access to some lake, which means you are getting paid for that, unless you are hiring an outfitter with access to that lake, and you could be in violation of the current legislation.
Senator Tkachuk: With reference to the lake levels that I alluded to earlier, I am not sure whether it occurs every 10 years, but I grew up in the North, so I know that Jackfish Lake has been almost dry before; at one time it was dry as a bone. Emma Lake goes up and down. Are the provincial government and organizations like yours doing some serious research into whether there is a cycle to this, whether this happens on almost a predictable basis, so that ecotourism operators can be prepared for it? We cannot just wait until it happens and say, ``Now we have to do something.'' Will it happen again in 10 years or 20 years? Is anybody spending any money on trying to figure it out?
Mr. Hnatiuk: We certainly are not. As I indicated, we have no capacity to do that. I would think that there is data, and that SaskWater, for example, monitors it. I do not know of any active research that is being done.
If I could just make an observation, I think some of these events are cyclical, but they are probably of greater duration than previously. We may have had a three-year drought 50 years ago; now it is five years. I would really encourage that kind of research, by the way, to monitor that so that we do have some basis on which to plan our lives. It would be very useful to have that data and I am sure a lot of it is there, but there has not been a concentrated effort.
Senator Gustafson: It is pretty hard not to defend global warming when it is 31 below outside and there are a couple of feet of snow in Ottawa. Is there any advantage to global warming for your industry? We are known as the Great White North and many think Canada's greatest problem is that it is too cold.
Mr. Hnatiuk: Well I do not know if it is an advantage, but I think there is the opportunity to talk about these things. I mentioned in my closing remarks that we can use that as a way of interpreting and explaining, and informing people that this is a reality.
Certainly things are always dynamic and changing and we have to adapt, that is one of the key things. Rather than cross-country skiing, we may have to go hiking. Also, our operators are adapting to teaching and explaining what is happening out there and we encourage them to do that.
Senator Gustafson: In your lifetime and in this industry, have you noticed specific things?
Mr. Hnatiuk: Yes, as a matter of fact. There is a land-use planning exercise in Fort-a-la-Corne and Nisbet Forest, and we are finding that where the forest has been harvested before or burnt, it is not coming back and the grasses are starting to move in. That is because of the change to a longer dry season and the trees not being able to survive. That is a professional observation, but not scientifically substantiated at this time.
Senator Gustafson: Are you observing that the line is receding in the boreal forest?
Mr. Hnatiuk: You will probably hear more about this later on this morning. Personally, I have not noticed that very much. I have noticed that the island forest, where there are severe dry conditions, as at Fort-a-la-Corne, is not coming back and grassland is appearing. Also, some of the seedlings are dying off because they have not become established. Two- or three-year-old seedlings are dying off because of the dry conditions.
The Chairman: You have made a very excellent presentation. We deeply appreciate your taking the time to come and not only make the presentation, but to answer the very tough questions that all three senators asked.
At the beginning of my remarks I introduced each of the senators here. Since that time, Senator Andreychuk, from Saskatchewan, has arrived. She too is a senator we are very proud of in Ottawa; she does wonderful work. Saskatchewan should be proud to have her as one of their representatives in Ottawa.
Before you go, I have one quick question. In point 2 you mentioned shorebirds; you did you tell us which ones you were referring to and I was interested in knowing that.
Mr. Hnatiuk: There are at least a dozen; piping plovers, and some that are very rare in Saskatchewan, like avocets. As I said, there are at least a dozen that migrate through every spring and every fall. They stop because Chaplin is salty and has the brine shrimp that they feed on to gain energy for nesting when they first land. In the fall they stop there to feed before they take off for the trip south. It is a very critical site. There is one breed whose name I do not remember, but there were only 12 of them last year, whereas usually there are about 50 to 60.
The Chairman: Is that something Ducks Unlimited has looked into?
Mr. Hnatiuk: Ducks Unlimited is an integral part of that operation, yes.
The Chairman: I would next like to call on the officials from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Neal Hardy, President, and Arita McPherson, Director. I would like to extend a very warm invitation to both of you to make a presentation.
Mr. Neal Hardy, President, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities: I think I can say, ``Good morning, friends.'' I have known you all for a long time. It is nice to see you out on this warm, sunny Saskatchewan day. Yesterday morning, when I looked at my thermometer, it was minus 42 degrees at Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan. That will give you an idea that it was fairly cold, with some wind. This morning, when I walked over here, it felt like minus 42, but I am not sure what the temperature is.
I want to thank you for allowing SARM to make this presentation to your Senate committee. It is an area in which certainly we as farmers out there and people of rural Saskatchewan have a great deal of interest. The climate change we have noticed over the last few years has been pretty dramatic, and we do not know whether that will continue or not. Our winters have changed, our summers have changed, the drought has moved in and it appears as if we could have another year of drought. We are very interested in talking about it and bringing forward some suggestions that may be of help in the long run.
I want to make it very clear before I start that I am in no way an expert on climate change. I am an ordinary farmer from the northeast, living in the bush country, one of over 50,000 farmers in Saskatchewan. I believe it is fair to say that we are all concerned about our climate, the future of agriculture and of our rural way of life, and also the cost and the value to us all that may or may not occur.
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, or SARM, as I will refer to it, would like to thank the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry for travelling across Canada to hear about the important issues of the impacts of climate change on Canada's agriculture, forests and rural communities. Climate change could present both challenges and opportunities for rural communities and agriculture.
SARM represents all 297 rural municipalities in this province and was formed in 1905 to deal with municipal and agricultural issues.
Rural municipal governments are an integral part of rural communities in Saskatchewan through their roles in economic, social and cultural development.
The responsibilities of rural municipal governments include: road construction and maintenance; bridges; pest control; economic development and land use planning and management; policing; fire protection; regional libraries; recreation; and, certainly, water.
Prairie rural communities do not necessarily put climate change as a top priority because of the multitude of issues with which they are faced: rural health care; the state of the agricultural economy; transportation costs; taxation; education, just to name a few. However, there is a reason to be concerned about the implications of climate change for rural communities. The focus of this presentation is on the potential for rural municipal revenue streams to be affected, which would change the way municipalities conduct their daily business.
The predominant industry in rural Saskatchewan is agriculture. Rural municipal governments derive a significant amount of tax revenue from agricultural land; in some RMs, there is no other industry and 100 per cent of their assessment is agricultural. Therefore, anything that affects the ability of the land to produce cash crops also affects the ability of ratepayers to pay their municipal taxes. Although modelled predictions of the effects of climate change on crops differ, some areas may experience yield increases while others experience decreases. If yield decreases in any area are greater than yield increases, certainly RMs will lose.
Again, there are varying opinions on the types of climate change that would occur. We just went through them, whether it is warmer, wetter; who knows? It is unpredictable. Prairie people are all too familiar with the effects of the 2002 drought, which gave us a reminder of what can happen when it is warm and dry for long periods.
In the northwest part of Saskatchewan there were seven consecutive years of drought. For example, the RMs of Mervin, Loon Lake and Shellbrook received less than six inches of precipitation during the 2002 growing season. Although collection of taxes has not yet been a problem, it is likely most producers used proceeds from crop insurance payments or cattle sales to pay their tax bills, as we know they sold off a lot of their herds. RM administrators in the area believe the effects of the drought will show up in 2003.
Another result of the northern drought was an increase in the number of forest fires in 2002. Seventeen of the RMs on the border of the forest experienced significant firefighting costs. The RM portion of the $4.7 million that Saskatchewan Environment spent was $1.4 million. Some of the RMs were able to absorb the cost in lower amounts, but for others it was a considerable burden. The cost to the RM of Loon Lake alone was $920,000, which was what Saskatchewan Environment billed them; it was double the RM's tax levy. It would have helped the situation if firefighting costs had been eligible under the federal-provincial disaster assistance program.
The total amount of money spent last year by Saskatchewan Environment to fight fires was $116 million. There were many RMs across the province that spent tens of thousands of dollars of their own money fighting fires, whether grass fires in the south or bush fires in the north. In fact, the RM of Mervin spent almost $300,000 of their own money fighting fires.
Some climate change models predict that the forest fringe will move northward if the climate warms. It appears that this will be the case if you watch how dry it is becoming on the southern part of our forest fringe, and has been for probably the last 10 years. It is noticeable in that area, where we see a considerable number of our poplars dying off. I believe it is actually called aspen, but we call it white poplar. We notice that a lot of our spruce trees and our swamp trees have started dying. Although we have had some dry years up to last year, we had not been dry in that area, and yet they still seem to be receding. I think there is a noticeable impact or effect of climate change on our forest fringe area.
Not only could rural municipalities lose revenue, but they could also be faced with increased expenditures. The source of the increased cost will depend on the form of climate change. If it becomes warmer and drier, it will be weed control; grasshoppers seem to be on a roll for this year too. If we have a lot of rain, and it now seems to happen at different times of the year than it used to, it will be repairing road washouts and dealing with flooding. Also, snow removal is probably the case this year in some areas. As you know, we had a flood just a couple of years ago.
Water quality and availability are already critical limiting factors in development and expansion in some rural areas. Again, the more development there is in the area, the greater the tax base. A warmer, drier climate would only exacerbate the existing problem. SARM has been a long-time advocate of improving water infrastructure for rural communities. We are pleased that the federal government injected $60 million into the Rural Water Development Program, RWDP, last year as it will help many producers and communities develop water supplies. However, water infrastructure will not be of much use if our main supplies start to dry up.
Planning should begin to address the issue of water shortages for communities and agriculture. We would like to know to what extent the federal government takes into consideration the effects of climate change when developing such a program.
Municipalities must take an active role in planning for the future and federal and provincial governments must get involved to share information and costs. Governments must take climate change into consideration in policy and program development. If the events we have described above come to pass, Saskatchewan rural municipalities would need an increase in their budgets, likely in the form of greater transfers from the province. In that case, as we know, the province will ask the federal government for more money.
These are but a few of the issues facing rural communities that would need to be addressed if the effects of climate change become more evident. We concede that much more work needs to be done to better understand how rural communities in Saskatchewan could be affected and to determine what the best responses are and what kind of adaptation strategies are necessary.
Will road construction standards need to be altered? How will the climate change affect insurance rates? These are just some of the many questions that need to be researched and answered in relation to the impacts of climate change on rural communities.
As outlined above, rural communities and the functions of rural municipal governments are tightly tied to agriculture. Agriculture is inherently dependent on climate and will have to find ways to adapt to change. Adaptation could take the form of diversification into new and different crops or livestock. Livestock are adaptable to different climates and they would use lower quality grain that might result from climate change. Both federal and provincial governments have encouraged producers to diversify into livestock for economic reasons.
However, there could be challenges to this strategy if the Prairies see an increase in serious droughts. Water and feed for livestock could quickly become limiting factors, as we saw during 2002. Statistics Canada attributes the 10 per cent decrease in Alberta's cattle herd to back-to-back years of drought.
Agriculture can also be part of the solution by reducing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In fact, agriculture is being counted on to make a significant contribution to Canada's greenhouse gas reduction targets through the creation of carbon sinks. We acknowledge the work of the federal government to get agricultural soils recognized as carbon sinks. Sinks are an important issue to SARM members, as demonstrated by the following resolution passed at the SARM 2001 annual convention:
Resolution 3-01A:
THERFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that SARM lobby for recognition of the value of carbon sequestration in agricultural land.
It will be necessary for the federal government to get the cooperation of producers, as they will decide whether or not to take action to create or maintain carbon sinks on their land. Saskatchewan producers have already taken considerable action on the creation of sinks; they have switched from summerfallow to zero tillage at the highest rate in Canada. To many producers, the issue of who gets credit for the sinks is just as significant as climate change itself. Nevertheless, it appears that the federal government has taken an approach that could actually jeopardize its own objectives for reduction of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change through carbon sequestration on agriculture land.
According to Canada's Climate Change Plan:
The Government of Canada proposes that sinks credits that accrue from business-as-usual actions will be used to reduce Canada's overall emissions reduction target, in keeping with the principles of minimizing costs to the economy, thereby benefiting all sectors, including forestry and agriculture, and no undue burden in any region of the country.
We are of the understanding that business-as-usual, or BAU, means any current best or beneficial management practices, or BMPs, such as zero tillage and seeding permanent cover adopted before 2008 would create a BAU credit that would accrue to the government. The same BMPs adopted after 2008 would create credits that belong to producers and would presumably be tradable in an emissions market.
SARM sees major flaws with the federal proposal. First, given Saskatchewan's large land base and the willingness of Saskatchewan producers to adopt the BMPs that create greenhouse gas, or GHG, offsets, the expropriation contained in this proposal would create a burden for Saskatchewan producers, who would be responsible for maintaining the sinks they create.
Next, it creates a disincentive for farmers to create new sinks before 2008, or any other government-imposed time frame, because the government would claim the carbon credits. It also creates a perverse incentive for farmers to destroy any sinks that they have created so that they do not come under government control; and the farmers would recreate the sinks in 2008 and trade them on emission markets.
There may also be potential for land values to be affected. Carbon sinks that have value in emissions markets would, presumably, increase the value of farmland with stored carbon. However, sinks owned by the government would presumably have no market value, hence the value of land would diminish.
Finally, the two pools of offset credits created by the proposed BAU offsets and tradable offsets would necessitate the setting up of complicated accounting systems, which could easily become very expensive, to keep track of which sinks belong to the government and which belong to the producer.
Canada's proposal also fails to address how farm emissions of GHG would be treated. Fuel and fertilizer used in agricultural operations, and livestock, give off GHG. Would farmers be able to use their offsets for their own operations? How would producers' liability be affected if they could not use them?
Incentives should be used to encourage agricultural producers to create and maintain GHG offsets, rather than the approach outlined in the Climate Change Plan. The federal government should support a system of tradable offsets that would benefit both the producers who create and maintain them, and industry that needs them to meet their reduction commitments.
One way this could be accomplished would be to adopt an offset lease market structure, as proposed by the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association. SARM likes many of the features the lease structure offers producers.
It reduces a producer's liability for sinks that will become saturated over time. If the credits are sold or, similarly, retained by the government, producers could end up having to pay for future emissions.
Producers maintain some flexibility to change their management practices if required in the future. A producer's ability to do so without penalties would be reduced if the credits were sold.
Producers receive the recognition and benefit for creating and maintaining the sinks.
Producers retain control of the credits and have the opportunity to use the offsets for their operations if it becomes necessary.
In conclusion, climate change is an issue that affects everyone. The implications for the rural communities of Saskatchewan would be serious because of their interconnection with agriculture. It is an issue that will require all levels of government to work together on adaptation strategies.
Rural municipalities could be affected by climate change through reduced revenues and increased expenditures. Increased government transfers to enhance municipal budgets may be required in the future. Expanded disaster assistance programs may also be necessary to cope with the costs created by catastrophic events like forest fires and widespread droughts. In particular, forest fires should be included in the federal-provincial disaster assistance program.
Planning should begin soon to address the issue of water shortages for communities and agriculture. There is still a lot of work to be done collectively on the effects of climate change on rural communities and the appropriate response strategies.
Agriculture can play a significant role in reducing GHG that contribute to climate change through agricultural soil sinks. This can best be achieved through an incentive-based system such as a lease market structure that allows producers to minimize their own risk and get the benefit of taking action. The current federal proposal creates disincentives to taking early action to create and maintain agricultural soil sinks and creates perverse incentives for destroying existing sinks.
The Chairman: I must say that this has been the best presentation we have had since we began this committee's study of the issues of adaptation in rural communities. Everything you have said has been incredibly useful and I thank you for all the time you have put into this. It is excellent.
Senator Gustafson: I would like to welcome you, Mr. Hardy, and Ms. McPherson, to this committee. I was pleased to see that the Saskatchewan rural municipalities were represented here this morning. It is my feeling that you are as close to the grassroots as you can get and no other organization really knows the situation of agriculture.
I want to say one thing: When I first went to Ottawa, Tommy Douglas told me something; in fact, he called me over in the fifth-floor cafeteria and said, ``Len, I want to talk to you.'' He said, ``Saskatchewan, because it has 40 per cent of the arable land in Canada, has a great future.'' He mentioned oil, potash and so on.
I think Saskatchewan is facing a great challenge today. It is my view that Saskatchewan can contribute a great deal to Canada because we have 40 per cent of the arable land.
This committee travelled to the United States three times, and to Europe. We spent a great deal of time finding out what they are doing. Generally, they are combining environmental issues, agricultural issues, rural development issues and even Third World issues, to some extent, in their package for dealing with agriculture.
It appears to me that, from a global standpoint, Canada is running considerably behind in dealing with this very serious issue affecting, in particular, Saskatchewan, parts of Alberta — parts of the Prairies.
You mentioned shared costs in development and the problems that agriculture is facing because of global warming, if you will, or drought situations. What has to be done, in your view, to stabilize the industry, even for the short term, but more importantly, for the long term, and for the benefit of all Canadians?
Mr. Hardy: I think it is pretty obvious what we have to do in the short term. We have to continue with no-till. I think we have to change some of our other farming practices. We have been developing the livestock industry and I think we have to continue that; there are great opportunities there.
Another thing that we seem to ignore out here is the forest fringe area. We do not appear to be doing too much, other than maybe right in the main part of the forest, to re-establish that. We seem to be just sort of whittling away and pushing back. I think that needs to be part of a bigger package in regards to, in particular, greenhouse gases.
I think we have to continue to diversify and we have to continue no-till, or as close to no-till as we can get. We certainly have to move into the livestock industry, which means we must seed a lot of green forage, which also maintains and builds up our soil. It retains carbon sinks and builds up the value of our soils. That is the way I would see us focusing in the short term.
Senator Gustafson: You know that these things all take money and the farmers are hard pressed right now due to input costs, et cetera. This makes it difficult to take the proper environmental approach to the situation. What has to be done, in your opinion, to correct the safety nets so that farmers can take the proper environmental approach to the problems?
Mr. Hardy: That is the long-term part. I think our safety nets are a start; I do not think what we have is bad. I think we need more money for the bigger picture because we will have to do more than what is available under the Agriculture Policy Framework.
Certainly, we are just approaching the cornerstones right now of food safety, food quality, environmental concerns, and we have to keep working with both the federal and provincial governments and producers. I think that is an area that will require a lot of cooperation among the producers, the province and the federal government, and it will take money to make it happen.
When you look at who will be paying for all the environmental safety planning that is to be put in place, to date I have not seen anything that says that producers will at least break even. I think it will be almost a net cost to them.
We have not been involved deeply enough to really form an honest opinion of what will be needed to establish the environmental and food safety controls that I believe you and I will want in the future. I do not think it is just the Europeans and Americans who will want it; we will want it.
We are concerned about a lot of things. How much we spray our crops. I think we are concerned about how we handle our food. I think it is bigger than just the farmer. We can do a lot to control food safety out there, we can use products that are identified as safe, but how much is sprayed at the elevator? What is put into it when it is made into flour? What is put into it to make bread? I would like to know that. I think that is the big food safety question. I think as producers, we can produce a pretty clean raw product. If you have been in Europe, you will know that they may spray 10 or 12 times, where we spray once. There is a big difference.
Senator Tkachuk: And they are worried about genetically modified foods.
Ms. Arita McPherson, Director, Agriculture Policy, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities: I think Neal captured it fairly well. One point I would like to add is that food safety and environmental quality are consumer-driven concerns; that is the position that SARM is taking. Therefore, we would like to see consumers pay for that in some way. It should not be only the producers' responsibility to pay for environmental changes that they may have to make on their farm, or the environmental safety audits that will have to take place.
Senator Wiebe: Just to follow up on that last comment, about who is responsible for paying, a good portion of your presentation, which I thought was excellent, dealt with the value of carbon sinks and the tradable offsets. This is where I personally strongly disagree with the position the federal government is taking. That is, that it intends to trade them with other countries. To my mind, that lets the other country off the hook by paying money to Canadians to offset what they are not doing.
The largest part of the problem with global warming has been cause by society. Society has decided to be more dependent on buses and other vehicles to go back and forth to work. Industry is responsible for a tremendous amount of the CO2 emissions.
Not all global warming or climate change will be bad. It could have a very positive effect for farmers, in that they will be rewarded, you might say, for the carbon sink work that they are doing. My position is that because society as a whole has contributed dramatically to the causes of climate change, it should, through the federal government, pay the farmers for the work that they do in regard to carbon sinks. I think the responsibility is certainly on society because society has generated the CO2.
That is the argument and the fight that I will be having with the federal government; I would like to know your views.
Mr. Hardy: That is the view of most producers in this province. I believe Statistics Canada's last report in 2001 stated that there were 65 million acres of farmland and grasslands in this province. Most of that can be a collector of carbon. However, we have to manage our farming practices very well to be able to do that, and if we are to be part of the big picture of greenhouse gas emission controls. You have to do something with legumes, for example, and everything else you grow. What you do with them is very important – how you handle them, how you seed and all the rest.
Producers in the future will need some way of managing the system financially because of the other costs that they will have in relation to food quality, environmental concerns, what sprays we use, and maybe the lack of fertilizer. I think carbon sinks could be one way, but you have to be able to manage it yourself. If somebody in Ottawa or somebody in the province is managing them for you, then when the table is turned and you start releasing from carbon sinks, who pays, and how can you afford that? To that point, you would not have accrued or acquired any dollar value for them.
We totally agree. We believe that farmers should be able to manage the value of carbon sinks as they develop their farming practices. It has to be that way for long-term farming.
Senator Tkachuk: Neal, help me with this carbon sink stuff. I do not understand carbon sinks well, whether it is agriculture or forestry. You mentioned releasing carbons. Are you talking about summerfallow?
Mr. Hardy: That is correct. If you work up a field, you start releasing what has been stored there. The decay comes from whatever is in the soil and it releases some of those carbons into the air. Now you are an emitter of carbon and not a retainer. If you talk to some of the people involved, they will tell you that eventually, over time, you could release most of that carbon unless you use really good farming practices. That is why it is very important that farmers get credit for them.
Ms. McPherson: The other aspect is that carbon sinks can become saturated because the soil can only store so much carbon. Once the sink is saturated, if you look at it on a whole-farm basis, your machinery, fertilizers and livestock are still emitting greenhouse gases. In that situation, the farmer could be a net emitter instead of a net reducer of greenhouse gas.
The Chairman: One of the things you can do is to plant trees around those areas and let them assist in controlling some of the carbon dioxide.
Ms. McPherson: Trees are one of the other kinds of sinks, but there are problems with that.
The Chairman: SARM is very active in Saskatchewan, as I well know, and certainly is often discussing the kinds of issues that I hear about later in Ottawa.
You tell me that you will not be in a position to receive the credits before 2008 and the government will benefit up to that point. What kinds of discussions did the federal government hold leading up to the Kyoto signing and how did this anomaly come about?
Ms. McPherson: During the first negotiating phase, it was whether or not agricultural soils could be included in sinks. The Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association was very active in trying to get agricultural soils included as sinks, and we follow much of what they do on issues. We first saw the 2008 business-as-usual scenario when Canada's climate change plan document was released late last year, or early this year. I believe that came as a surprise to quite a few groups in Saskatchewan, as well as other places. As far as I know, there was no negotiation on what that date would be.
Senator Andreychuk: Is this unusual, or is this true for other areas in the Kyoto plan?
Ms. McPherson: The 2008 business-as-usual situation is only in the agriculture and forestry section, I believe, because they are the only two industries that can contribute sinks.
Senator Andreychuk: I meant more globally. Has your organization had any ongoing negotiations or discussions with the federal government over the last five to ten years as to how to implement Kyoto, what the costs might be and who should bear them?
Ms. McPherson: No, we have not had a lot of negotiation with them on this issue, but it is something in which we will be more interested in the future.
Senator Andreychuk: Do you know why there were no discussions?
Mr. Hardy: To be honest with you, I do not. It may be partly our fault, too. We have a lot of issues to deal with and we thought Kyoto was a long way away. We never thought they would just implement it without a lot of discussion, without approaching organizations like ours, and producers, who will be one of the collectors of greenhouse gases. I think it caught us by surprise. Like everybody else, we assumed they would make some kind of a decision. We have spoken to people involved in soil conservation — we have been involved with John Bennett. There have been a few very brief discussions at the provincial level, and at the federal level, almost nothing.
I do not want to blame it all on the federal government because we did not initiate anything either. I felt, and our board felt, that it would probably be quite a long time before we would get around to discussing it. There were more important issues at the time, including drought and forest fires and the local issues. We are working on a large Agriculture Policy Framework package, and the bottom line is, we just have not been involved.
Senator Andreychuk: We have heard frequently that farmers should diversify, change and adapt, because of climate change and other reasons, such as global markets, et cetera. Are you aware of any sort of plan to deal with this in a more systematic way?
You talked about not knowing who should pay the costs, what those costs may be, for changing and adapting, both to climate change on the one hand, and also trade realities on the other. Have there been any discussions with you as to how this could be done on a national basis, or even on a provincial basis, so that it is more systematic, fairer to producers, and better understood by consumers that it may cost them more, et cetera?
Mr. Hardy: My understanding is that there has been very little discussion of it at any level. This committee is the first with which we have been directly involved in discussing this. As mentioned earlier, we have talked to some of the people involved in soil conservation and to some provincial officials, but there has been very little at the federal level. We have not been involved in that and I am not aware of other groups being involved, other than very briefly, if at all.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you both very much for the excellent presentation. You really did hit the key matters that we need to discuss, that we are worried about and to which we have to give a lot more thought. Your presentation will help us focus on these important issues.
Mr. Michael Mehta, Professor, University of Saskatchewan: Honourable senators, it is indeed a pleasure to be here today. Before I make some of my substantive comments, I want to give you a little background information on the kind of work that I do.
I am an environmental sociologist. I specialize mostly in the areas of risk communication and risk perception. I have done a fair amount of work over the years on public perceptions of nuclear power, blood supply safety, genetically modified foods and, more recently, nanotechnology.
The other hat I wear is as Director of the Sociology of Biotechnology Program at the University of Saskatchewan. It is a relatively new program; we have been in existence for about three years. We teach social scientists and scientists about the social impacts of biotechnology, with a strong emphasis on agricultural biotechnology.
In that vein, my specific work has to do with the impacts on rural communities of the introduction of genetically modified crops. I have done quite a bit of work recently on Roundup Ready wheat.
What is germane today to my talk on adaptive capacity and social cohesion is some of the work that I have been doing with Professor Ben Bradshaw of Simon Fraser University and Professor Barry Smit of the University of Guelph. The three of us hold a Climate Change Action Fund project specifically to look at the ways in which farmers compare multiple risks, including climate change.
I have a team doing interviews across Saskatchewan. Teams are also doing this across British Columbia and Ontario. The three teams are interested in finding out the ways in which organic and conventional farmers differ in their approach to climate change. Also, how animal and crop farmers differ.
Today I will give you some very preliminary results, as we only went out into the field in the past six or seven weeks. My research assistant just got back from Swift Current yesterday, where she did six interviews that I have not seen yet. I would like to start with some fairly basic opening remarks about climate change and adaptation.
You have probably heard a fair amount on adaptation; I am not sure if you have heard a lot about the social implications of adaptation and why some people and some organizations are better adapters than others, and that is what I would like to turn to.
Clearly, climate change is a social phenomenon. It will create winners and losers, as you have heard, mostly due to the direct and indirect impacts on a range of sectors — agriculture, forestry and others. It is also quite clear that these impacts will vary across regions, time horizons and, of course, affected individuals.
In the context of examining climate change within rural Canada, I think it is useful to look at the social impacts that climate change has had on what we call the ``social fabric.'' You are probably aware that over the past several decades, rural communities in Canada, and in particular, agricultural communities, have been changing dramatically: in population, due to migration; in composition, due to the changing nature of agriculture; and in a variety of other ways such as the increasing size of farms, and so on.
In addition to these social changes that are occurring in farming, there are biogeographical changes that are also being pushed by climate change. I am quite interested in the intersection between these biogeographical or biophysical changes from climate change and the social changes that are occurring.
I think it is fairly clear from a sociologist's perspective that you cannot examine climate change in a vacuum. Climate change is not only the product of human action, it is also something that can be mediated or adapted to in various ways, according to the way in which different social actors interact with one another.
I would like to suggest that the biggest problem we see in the sociology of climate change is how do we foster adaptive capacity? How do we define adaptive capacity, and what is the relationship between it and the social fabric?
Adaptive capacity, as I have indicated, is a social phenomenon. It has been defined in the literature as the ability of a system or an individual to adjust to climatic variability, often by minimizing the likelihood and consequences of adverse outcomes.
If you are familiar with the literature on risk, you will see that this is fairly similar to the definitions that are given for risk, and more particularly, for the concept of risk management. As such, adaptive capacity, in its fairly narrowly defined way, is akin to risk management. Risk, of course, is defined generally as probability times consequence. In a sense, if adaptive capacity is similar to risk management, you can put safeguards between yourself and the risk, or the hazard, more particularly, and you can reduce your exposure. You can reduce, as we call it in adaptive capacity literature, your ``vulnerability.''
Now if we take risk being equivalent to adaptive capacity as a starting point, clearly a failure to adapt under various climatic conditions is akin or very similar to a failure to manage risk adequately.
Adaptive capacity is a lot more than simply exposure to a hazard; it is a lot more than balancing the adverse outcomes and the probabilities of these adverse outcomes occurring. Some of the behavioural institutional variables that we are looking at in our study funded by the Climate Change Action Fund include examining the role of such things as trust in terms of forming that adaptive capacity. Is there trust in the science of climate change? Is there trust in the sources of information about climate change, specifically around forecasting?
Other social determinants include, of course, wealth. Wealth, as we know, will determine risk by providing protective advantages. For instance, if you buy an automobile with anti-lock brakes and other kinds of safety features built into it, you have essentially reduced your risk by purchasing safeguards. Wealth indirectly, through a wide array of examples, provides some type of protective benefit against exposure.
Other social determinants include how individuals perceive risk; individual farmers, individual communities, individual decision makers, even collective decision makers. More importantly, not only how they perceive risk, but also how they perceive it in light of their tolerance for risk. Risk is not just a negative; risk implies, by its very definition, taking a risk in order to potentially get some kind of benefit.
For instance, you invest in stock — which you might not want to do nowadays — not just because it is risky, but also because you expect some kind of benefit from it.
Herein lies the balance in climate change between the creation of situations, or risk, that tip the balance of winners and losers in certain directions.
Some of the other social determinants of adaptive capacity that we are considering include factors like the age of the farmers, their experience, the type and the size and the scale of the farm, and whether and how these things affect adaptive capacity. As you probably know, in the literature, the issue of latency or time horizon is quite important. How do individual farmers and other kinds of decision makers, for example, respond to climate-related stimuli and the various outcomes? There is an assumption here that awareness is key.
All of these things interact, and we can examine the ways in which trust, wealth and so on affect adaptive capacity, at least on an individual level.
Obviously, adaptive capacity exists on a continuum. There are some individuals and some organizations that have high adaptive capacity under certain scenarios. However, adaptive capacity is also evanescent to a large extent; it is changing; it is dynamic. The reason it is dynamic is that no one individual actor can predict with certainty what is happening with climate.
One of the things that you are aware of, and that comes up in climate change literature, is that climate change is not just a trend towards overall global warming. In some parts of the world, some parts of the country, even, there is warming; there is cooling in other parts. There is greater variability in precipitation. In a sense, climate change is really about variation, and therefore a dynamic form of adaptive capacity is quite essential.
When I talk about dynamic adaptive capacity, I am adding an extra wrinkle here to the definition of ``adaptive capacity'' that I have given you, specifically in terms of the ways in which it is similar to risk management.
I define ``dynamic adaptive capacity'' as the capacity of actors to acknowledge and respond to climatic variability — that is the first part of adaptive capacity — and to do so in a socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and flexible fashion. Dynamic adaptive capacity is key because of the variability to which I just alluded. Dynamic adaptive capacity recognizes that adaptive capacity is not something that an individual farmer or an individual organization can possess in a vacuum. They have to do something about climate change, in terms of adaptation, relative to what others are doing.
This is a very different model from what most of us are used to, especially if one thinks of farming as an industry, which it is. We tend to think of the individual farmers as producing their crops in a relative degree of isolation.
Although there are some cases of resource conflicts, and, of course, historically there have been many resource conflicts over, for example, distribution of water, we assume that the individual farmers are able to prosper in certain ways, according to their own skills.
As some actors adapt to climate change in particular ways, they create exposure or, more specifically, increase the risk, for others. The issue of climate change and adaptive capacity is quite interesting because it brings us back to a more realistic approach to understanding the connection between farming and the environment.
In a sense, it is a bit ironic, and sad, that it had to be forced on society in this way. I think there is now a growing realization that in order to make true improvements in adaptive capacity at an individual level, we need to foster mechanisms for collective adaptation. This is where my concept of dynamic adaptive capacity comes into play.
How do you build dynamic adaptive capacity, and what, more specifically, is it in terms of how individuals and organizations interact?
Well, dynamic adaptive capacity is similar to centralized planning. Instead of allowing individuals to adapt independently of what others are doing, a more collective planning process is necessary. This is probably more difficult now than in the past because of the forces that I alluded to at the very beginning of my talk, about what is happening in agriculture, namely, what is referred to as the ``breakdown in social cohesion.''
Farming communities are changing, and because social cohesion is changing, the networking is changing and the level of trust in communities is changing as a result of various things, including, by the way, the introduction of genetically modified crops – which I can elaborate on if you wish. It is much more difficult to have this kind of centralized planning.
As a result, we see two things happening. On the one hand, we see dynamic adaptive capacity becoming more essential because you have to make decisions about adaptive capacity in light of what others are doing collectively. On the other hand, you see a change in the social cohesiveness of agricultural communities that makes this very process much more difficult.
Where does this leave us? Well, adaptive capacity as we currently understand it is essentially a social construct; it exists only in a relative sense. It can be fostered or depleted in various ways, depending on the exchange relationships that occur between individuals. In other words, it can be fostered or depleted based on the degree of social cohesion in an agricultural community.
Adaptive capacity is dynamic because no one actor is perfectly adapted to all climatic events. Theoretically, vulnerability can never equal zero. Of course, we also, as I have suggested, see that individual responses to climate change can weaken the ability of others to adapt, and therefore we see a direct relationship between adaptive capacity and social cohesion.
To make dynamic adaptive capacity work, we need to foster social cohesion in agricultural communities. I think this might be a little different from the way you are currently thinking about adaptive capacity. Most people think of adaptive capacity, and most of the literature tends to think of it, as mechanisms for fostering the ability of individual actors, or even some industries, to adapt. That includes a range of things like adaptation, mitigation, such as sinks and credits, and other kinds of incentive systems.
What I am suggesting is a little different. Dynamic adaptive capacity requires that we first build or rebuild social cohesion in agricultural communities. Without the social cohesiveness side of the equation, dynamic adaptive capacity will not be built. You will simply have efforts to build individual adaptive capacity, which, as I have indicated, can benefit some at the expense of others.
In conclusion, I would like to suggest that it is essential to be aware of these links between adaptive capacity and social cohesion. Having an appreciation of these links will give individuals like yourselves, as well as other kinds of policy makers, an opportunity to evaluate different adaptive responses in terms of equity issues, environmental sustainability concerns and potential impacts on the social cohesiveness of agricultural communities across the country.
The Chairman: You have given us a new approach to the whole concept of adaptive capacity. Instead of looking at it on an individual basis, you are suggesting we take a much more holistic approach.
Senator Tkachuk: That was really excellent, although I am not sure I understood it.
You say that dynamic adaptive capacity allows policy makers and others an opportunity to evaluate different adaptive responses in terms of equity, environmental sustainability and potential impacts on social cohesion in rural communities.
I think I know what you are talking about. Is not part of the problem of communities responding to crises, the people who are declaring the crises? In other words, it is no wonder that people in rural communities are undergoing a lot of stress. It is no wonder that they have difficulty adapting. It is no wonder that communities are having difficulty solving problems, because here is what happens: genetically modified food, we will all die; climate change, disasters will occur, oceans will flood, New York will disappear, there will be drought, there will be forest fires and the whole world will come to an end.
In other words, it is the way in which the issues are being heaped on communities. Nothing is reasonably and scientifically discussed any more. People are pushing the envelope to achieve ideological change or a particular pet policy issue. I noticed it over climate change. It is a catastrophic policy.
How can a community in Wilkie or Weirdale, where I come from, or Smeaton react to this weight of material that is descending upon them? Half of which is not true, to my way of thinking and from what I read. How can they sift through it for what is true and what is not? How can we fix the situation when all we see around us is catastrophic consequences?
Mr. Mehta: I understand your ideological concerns; a lot of people believe similar things.
I am not suggesting that we necessarily need to deal with some of the myths, at least not directly. People will have different beliefs about the safety of the environment, depending on a range of things. It could be political orientation, their experience, their age, their sex and so on.
To deal specifically with your question of how we can get rural communities, very small communities that may be economically disadvantaged, to make these kinds of direction changes, I think it is fairly clear that all the choices we make about what to grow, when to plant it, what kinds of incentives to put in place and so on, essentially boil down to social choices.
For instance, in our recent interviews with farmers in Davidson, Saskatchewan, there was a noticeable difference between organic and conventional farmers in how adaptable they believe they personally are with respect to climate change. I found that to be quite interesting, because ideologically, there are huge differences between organic and conventional farmers; there are political differences, as well.
The organic farmers generally believed they were more adaptable to climate change as a result of polyculture and low tillage, as well as a range of other things that they do, and that their small size, relatively speaking, provided them with some buffer against climate variability. That was quite a surprise.
Clearly there is an intersection here between public concerns, for example, about genetically modified foods, and the ability to adapt to climate change.
One of the other projects for which I have just recently received funding through Genome Canada is to explore how producers compare different abiotic stress traits in terms of market pressure, risks, consumer acceptance, international markets and trade. I have not actually gone into the field yet; it is brand new.
The proposal is to find out whether or not they want cold tolerance, drought tolerance or some combination of the two. Whether they want saline resistance, and so on, and how they believe these different kinds of characteristics will be accepted in the marketplace in general.
There is a connection here between the marketplace and what farmers can and cannot do, or are willing to do, but it is not so direct.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you use your studies to assist policy makers? Is that the object? For example, on Kyoto and the things that will have to be done to adopt that, do you communicate to them ways that will decrease the stress level and increase the ability to adapt?
Mr. Mehta: Ideally, yes. No one wants his work to sit in a journal in a library, gathering dust. What animates me personally is to have actual policy motives for my work.
Senator Tkachuk: Is it not too centrally motivated? In other words, the central planning aspect bothers me a little. I am not a big believer in central planning; nonetheless, it will help central planners achieve policy objectives. Who receives this information? Does it go to government, and is it widely distributed?
Mr. Mehta: It is distributed via my Web site, as well as through peer review, through events like this. I do not believe it is designed specifically for central planners. Certainly some of the recommendations could be used at a regional level.
Senator Tkachuk: It is interesting work.
Senator Wiebe: The dynamic adaptive capacity aspect is a unique approach. I think it is very functional when change is gradual. However, we may not have that luxury as far as climate is concerned. I think farmers have been one of the best examples of how to adapt. They have adapted very much over the years. As an example, I will refer to the Dirty Thirties and what happened during the dry years in the 1990s. Farmers were able to produce good crops with less rain than in the driest year in the Dirty Thirties.
My nightmare about adapting to climate change is whether it can be sustainable over a long period of time.
Prior to the 1930s, Saskatchewan had a population of one and a half million people; after the 1930s, we had a population of one million. That was a pretty dramatic change; we lost 500,000 people in this province. Even with what we have learned about adaptation over the last number of years, if we have another prolonged period of drought, what dramatic effect will that have on our province? How can we start laying the groundwork today to ensure that that kind of dramatic effect does not occur in the future?
Mr. Mehta: Clearly a different model for agriculture is needed in the province of Saskatchewan. The model that has been in place for decades is one of bulk commodity production and the assumption that the more you produce, the better off everyone is. Of course, we are all aware of the decades of surplus, and we are aware of some of the current concerns over trade implications. Some people, for example, are quite concerned about exporting genetically modified crops and losing markets as a result.
One of the mechanisms that I propose, and others have done so much more vocally, is that we consider growing bio- fuel crops. I worked with an organization called BIOCAP Canada at Queen's University, which is very much interested in the transition to what is called a carbohydrate-based economy.
The Chairman: You are talking about something that is very close to the heart of Senator Wiebe. He has brought it up on several occasions.
Mr. Mehta: Oh, wonderful! Moving towards a carbohydrate-based economy is quite a shift, not only for bio-fuel production, but bio-plastics, polymers, multipliers and everything else. I think if you take my concept of social cohesion and dynamic adaptive capacity with even a little skepticism, it is pretty clear that by moving towards regional production of bio-fuel, we have an opportunity for rural revitalization, which would have the benefit of creating greater social cohesion and all kinds of networks while perhaps reversing migration from rural communities and adding more value to the province.
I think those kinds of measures can be much more sensitive to climate variability than growing crops essentially just for food. There is quite a range of crops that can survive under all kinds of climate conditions that may not be acceptable on the market as food products, but do have tremendous value in these other applications.
Senator Wiebe: I am very happy to hear that answer.
Senator Andreychuk: My question is for a little more information. The Saskatchewan Institute on Public Policy and the two universities have done quite a lot of work on social cohesion in Saskatchewan. You are now looking at adaptation to change. Will your research lead to recommendations on policy issues to assist governments, or is it to assist individual farmers?
Social cohesion, as I understand it, relates to how individuals within communities, particularly rural communities, can sustain a quality of life and a measure of independence to do the things that they want.
It would seem to me that to talk about adaptive capacity is to give them the tools to be able to make the changes. That will support society, but it will also support their own perspectives on how they wish to live in a community.
It is not the central planning that bothers me, but rather where you are putting your emphasis; is it on governments to induce change, or is it on the individual?
Mr. Mehta: That is a very interesting question, because there have been all kinds of corrective actions on the part of the federal government to facilitate social cohesion in various ways – for example, Heritage Canada programs, commercials and so on. There is an assumption that you can build social cohesion through understanding the history.
Whether that works or not I cannot say. However, in agricultural communities, social cohesion has to be fostered, created and reinforced at the individual and collective level, but it also has to be facilitated by these larger-scale kinds of programs. I am not quite sure what that relationship is.
I will give you an example of why there is some confusion. When I was interviewing organic and conventional farmers in Davidson, Saskatchewan, I asked them specifically whether they thought they had equal opportunities and the same kinds of incentives to adapt to climate change. The conventional farmers had no problem; they felt that they had some protection, although not enough, of course. The organic farmers believe that crop insurance and other kinds of systems discriminate against them. This is because they are using what they consider to be more sustainable agricultural practices, which involved no-till in some cases, or certain kinds of other practices that were less intense in terms of application of herbicides and pesticides. They believed that they were being discriminated against by crop insurance and this was a barrier for them.
Of course, when you have this kind of belief, correct or not, on a local level, you have a framework for a breakdown of social cohesion and it is much more difficult to achieve collective action for dynamic adaptive capacity on a larger scale.
Senator Gustafson: I have several questions. You indicated there are winners and losers. I am usually an optimist, but when it comes to agriculture in Saskatchewan, I am fearful. As Senator Wiebe has said, we have lost a number of farmers and we are heading into a time when we could lose greater numbers. Some are becoming bigger farmers, not because they want to, but because it is the only way they can survive. With input costs the way they are it is questionable whether they will survive unless something changes.
We have a cheap food policy in Canada. Canadians eat more cheaply than probably any people in the world because of the political situation — I am not talking about Liberal, Conservative or NDP now, I am talking about the situation that exists in the country. There are more people living in the urban centres, and as we have seen in the last budget, they get the attention.
It is not a matter of producing cheaper food; my goodness, we produce bread for six cents a loaf. We have diversified, we have gone to zero-till, and the farmers have adapted, as Senator Wiebe said, in every possible way. However, unless the country accepts the responsibility of looking after this arable land, if you will, from an environmental and an economic standpoint, we will be in big trouble.
It seems that we do not have a handle on a real solution to the problem. The big companies that are processing the food are making big money. If you look at who holds some of the most important portfolios in Canada, they are in the food production business, not farming — winners and losers.
Mr. Mehta: It is certainly an interesting observation. Clearly, one of the trends, as you suggested and I mentioned earlier, is that we are seeing rural migration; that is evident. Farms are getting larger. All of these things break down the social cohesion of agricultural communities and make adaptive capacity on a collective level much more difficult to achieve.
How do we reverse that? Referring to Senator Wiebe's interest, I think we need to change the direction in which agriculture currently is running, which is towards bulk commodity production, and move towards these value-added products. We live in a globalized world and there are many countries that can provide us with these raw materials, these bulk food products, at an even cheaper price than we are currently paying in some cases.
We should not be squandering our talents, our science, our farming or our land for bulk commodity production. I really believe that we should be working on developing these kinds of new products for the carbohydrate-based economy.
If we do that adequately, we will create new centres of industrial and social activity across rural Canada.
Senator Gustafson: Just one quick observation. We had an organic plant right here in Regina; it went bankrupt. Saskatchewan Wheat Pool diversified into various areas of business; it is in trouble. In Europe, for instance, they have made the environment, rural development, Third World, agriculture and forestry the responsibility of the whole society. Here we are saying the farmers have to carry the load alone. They cannot.
Mr. Mehta: This is not unique to farming; there are a lot of sectors of the economy that have similar kinds of concerns. I do take your point.
The Chairman: I would like to welcome Mark Johnston, Senior Research Scientist from the Saskatchewan Research Council.
Mr. Johnston, you have the floor.
Mr. Mark Johnston, Senior Research Scientist, Saskatchewan Research Council and Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative: Mr. Chairman, I will be using this PowerPoint slide that you see on the screen beside me, and with some luck the technology will work.
I would extend my appreciation to the committee for undertaking this study to examine the impacts and the adaptions in the context of climate change. As you all know, Kyoto and its related communication activities have caught the nation's attention and most of the budget seems to be allocated to that area. Those of us interested in impacts and adaptations are glad to see attention being paid to this area. We are most appreciative of that.
I would also indicate that the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, an important impact-adaptation-based research centre with offices here in Regina and also in Manitoba and Alberta, is currently undertaking a wide range of activities in the areas of impacts and adaptations in forestry, agriculture, water resources and other areas. A lot of work has been done in this area through PARC, and I would like to recognize that contribution.
The next slide covers things that you have heard about before. What are we looking at in terms of climate change in the Prairies? There will be a general trend toward increasing temperatures, although that will be variable. It will not always be warm but it certainly will be, in general, warmer than it is now. Winter temperatures are increasing more than summer temperatures and nighttime temperatures are increasing more than daytime temperatures.
The picture regarding precipitation is considerably less clear. It is very difficult to model precipitation adequately, so we do not have a very good handle on how precipitation will change. There may be small increases or even decreases during certain times of the year but, generally speaking, on an annual basis, we are expecting more precipitation.
I should also indicate that my remarks will be primarily focused on the Prairie provinces.
Annually, there will be an increase in precipitation, but there may possibly be a decrease in some areas. However, the picture is kind of cloudy on that. No pun intended.
There will be increased evaporation. When we talk about forests and agriculture, it is not precipitation per se that is important, it is the amount of water in the soil. Therefore, even if precipitation does increase slightly or stays the same, we are expecting more evaporation, which represents a loss of soil moisture. It is the latest evaporation picture that is, perhaps, more important at the site-specific level when we are talking about growing crops of various kinds.
There will potentially be a decrease in soil moisture during the growing season, at least. There will be a longer growing season, and associated with a longer growing season is a longer forest fire season. I will come back to that later.
We are expecting increases in atmospheric CO2 but, of course, we have already seen that. I did some work on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Since 1910, on a global basis, we have had higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 150,000 years. Since 1910, the atmosphere has been in a state with which we have had no experience. It is important to keep that in mind.
The climate change picture is expected to include increased extreme events: higher-intensity rainfalls and perhaps flooding, and short-term events associated with those kinds of activities. There will be increased variability in water flow and an earlier snow melt, hence earlier peak flows in streams in the springtime.
How do these various environmental factors affect forests? Increases in temperature are important to trees because it controls things like how fast trees grow and how quickly nutrients are available in soil. Both the air temperature and the soil temperature are important to the functioning of forests.
Moisture availability, of course, is important because trees are plants and they need water to grow. The water in the soil is an important factor. I will come back to that.
Just as a farmer puts fertilizer on the field to make the plants grow faster, forests also need nutrients to grow. Of course, we do not fertilize forests because you could never make a buck doing that. Therefore, the amount of naturally occurring nutrients in soil is very important. Nitrogen, in particular, in boreal forest tends to be a limiting factor, therefore, nitrogen availability is very important to the functioning of forests. We are expecting climate change to affect that, and I will talk about that in a moment.
I will deal now with atmospheric CO2 concentration. Plants take up CO2 from the atmosphere. They store carbon in their tissues and then put it back into the soil as they die. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is the fundamental driver as to how much carbon uptake plants do. The CO2 concentration and the effect that it has on plant growth depends on other factors as well.
More specifically, how do these environmental factors translate into impacts on forests? We are expecting changes to productivity. I said ``changes,'' I did not say ``increases'' or ``decreases,'' because that would result in quite a variable picture. I will come back to that in detail later. However, we do know that growth rates are likely to change, in some ways for the better and in some ways for the worse.
We expect rather large changes to the disturbance regimes in the boreal forest. You may have heard some of this in previous presentations. Certainly, changes in forest fires and changes in insects are of particular importance in this part of the world. Some of the concern relates to the scale of those disturbances and their impacts on the forestry industry.
We expect changes in the species of trees that grow in the forest and there may be some implications of that for adaptation responses. For example, if we thought it would be a good idea to put new species into the forest, as has been done in agriculture for many years, we may find we have a problem because the biodiversity kinds of policies we have now may not allow that. There is an issue related to species composition, both in terms of natural changes and also in terms of how adaptation might look at changing species composition as a management response.
We are expecting shifts to the forest boundary. Currently, for example, the forest boundary in Saskatchewan goes roughly along through Meadow Lake, Prince Albert and Hudson Bay. We expect that boundary will probably shift considerably. Previous work has shown that boundary to be related to moisture availability, therefore, as moisture availability changes, that boundary will probably also shift. Clearly, if a forestry company is not very far away from that boundary and suddenly the forest is up at La Ronge, let us say, 200 kilometres to the north of where it is today, that will be quite important to the forest company's ability to provide jobs.
I will talk a little bit about productivity. We did some work up near Montreal Lake in North-central Saskatchewan. We were trying to determine the impact of soil moisture on the ability of plants to grow biomass. The Biomass Index is a number that represents the ability of plants to produce biomass. In this scheme, a bigger number is better in terms of biomass production. Across the bottom of the slide we show different climate change scenarios: 1961 to 1990, which is considered to be the normal or current climate; and then scenarios for 2020, 2050 and 2080. You may have seen these at other presentations.
The question is: How do conditions change across those different scenarios and those different dates with respect to biomass productivity, and how is that affected by soil moisture availability?
In the diagram ``Dry soils'' represents a sandy soil with low water-holding capacity. The numerical designation for that is 50 millimetres.
The important aspect I want to point out in this diagram is the pattern of how productivity changes over time. On dry soils, productivity simply declines. It gets dryer very quickly and it gets dryer to the extent of affecting biomass productivity almost immediately. As we encounter wetter and wetter conditions in the medium soils, or medium water- holding capacity, we see that productivity goes up in the first two decades and then starts to decline. In soils with the highest amount of water-holding capacity, which we might call the wetter soils, we see productivity simply increases throughout the range of scenarios.
The important point here is not the numbers but the pattern that is shown by that diagram, which indicates that the increase or decrease in productivity into the future will be very much site-specific. Some sites will probably lose productivity, virtually right away. Those would be the dry sites. Other sites are at the other extreme in that they will probably increase in productivity through the foreseeable future because the supplies of water are adequate due to the soil conditions.
As you have heard many times before, this is a good-news-bad-news story. It depends on where you are trying to practice forestry and it depends on the proportion of your landscape that is made up of those different soil types. It also depends on your ability to selectively target forest management activities at sites that might tend to give you a bigger payoff in terms of maintaining or increasing productivity.
You may find yourself in a situation where you consider not practicing forestry on those drought-prone dry sites. Areas like Fort a la Corne in Central Saskatchewan come to mind, where they are right on the boundary between grassland and forest. They currently have tree cover but the effort required to maintain that tree cover over the long term may be more than it is worth in terms of returns from the forest industry.
Forest companies may want to focus their efforts on sites where they know that productivity can be maintained over the long term. We have a very limited ability to add nutrients to the site, to irrigate, or do all the things that agricultural people do. We are pretty much stuck with the natural situation, and we want to try to use the advantages that nature has given us as much as possible. We might see an increased focusing on forestry activity away from poor, drought- prone, nutrient-poor sites and toward the richer and wetter sites because it is much more likely that productivity can be maintained over the long term.
As we know, forestry is a long-term business. Decisions that are made today do not pay off for 50 to 75 years, therefore, we have to start thinking about these kinds of issues now because decisions about where and when to plant today will affect forest composition and forest growth for a very long time. We must keep that in mind.
What about the impact of soil warming? Generally speaking, warming is better in the case of soil because the microbial populations in the soil that cause nitrogen to be released will probably be operating at faster rates. More nitrogen will be released which, potentially, will be available for benefit of the trees. The boreal forest, in particular, is limited by nitrogen availability because, for most of the year, the soil is generally cold and wet and nasty. Therefore, nitrogen is in short supply.
The problem is that all other things are not equal so that, even if the soil does warm up and nitrogen is made available, it will still depend on other factors such as water availability, for example. Even if nitrogen is more available on a drought-prone site, that nitrogen may not actually get into the plants where it is needed to do its work. We have to keep in mind that these factors must be considered in concert, not individually.
Generally speaking, soil warming will probably be a good thing as long as the soil moisture status is adequate, because it will cause more nitrogen to be released.
I will now discuss the effect of increased carbon dioxide. Currently, we are at 370 parts-per-million as compared to 280 parts-per-million in the pre-industrial period. That is considerable increase of 30 per cent or so. The dogma of a few years ago was that, since we will have increased CO2, we will simply have a much faster-growing forest because the trees will not have to work as hard to take up carbon dioxide as it will be available in greater amounts. It is like somebody giving you a shot of oxygen. You do not have to work as hard to get oxygen into your lungs. The same applies to trees — with more CO2 in the atmosphere, the trees will not have to work as hard to take up CO2.
The problem is, once again, the ability of trees to take up carbon dioxide is limited by other factors, particularly nitrogen availability. Nitrogen is part of what provides the machinery for CO2 uptake to occur. As we have said, if nitrogen availability is constrained by drought or some other factor then, even with more CO2 in the atmosphere, the trees may not be able to take advantage of that. It is not just simply a free ride – that we will get a fertilization effect from CO2. It may occur under the right circumstances, but there is no guarantee.
Recently, some interesting work was done in Northern Wisconsin in which they exposed a stand of aspen trees to increased levels of CO2. They also exposed those same trees to increased levels of ozone. The result was that the impact of ozone completely mitigated the increased growth due to CO2. That means that, if we had a situation in which ozone levels were higher, which is certainly the case around large cities, then, even if there were the potential for a CO2 fertilization effect from the CO2 itself, it may well be offset by other constituents in the atmosphere that are, essentially, air pollution. We cannot simply take it for granted that increased CO2 will be a good thing. It may be under some circumstances, but it will not necessarily lead to a much faster growing forest, as some people had thought earlier.
It has also been shown by physiological studies that whatever response the plants have to increased CO2, it is often short term. The plants enjoy a brief period of increased growth because of the CO2 concentrations; then they reach a new equilibrium and that impact declines and, in fact, may disappear completely. Once again, this idea of getting a free ride based on the fact that CO2 is increasing is probably largely suspect and may only occur under a very restricted set of circumstances.
You have probably already heard about forest fires. Someone mentioned that a few minutes ago. I will try not to be as dramatic as some others. However, we are expecting a warmer and drier climate and that alone will make fires more severe when they occur, and they may occur more frequently. There may also be increased sources of the cause of fires, that is, lightning. Overall, we are expecting an increase in fire severity and an increase in area of burn. Those are related, but they are not the same thing.
The diagram illustrates some work done by the Canadian Forest Service in the last couple of years. It indicates somewhere between a 30 per cent and a 50 per cent increase in the index that they use to represent the severity of the fire season. It is called the Seasonal Severity Index. It is an accumulation of all the fire weather that has occurred during a particular fire season. They are suggesting a 30 per cent to 50 per cent increase in that index of fire severity over the long term, the next 50 to 100 years, which is under a doubling of the CO2 in the atmosphere.
It is obviously very difficult to do an adequately predict fire impacts. However, I think it is a fairly safe bet that the fire environment will increase in severity and so the likelihood of increased numbers of fires, increased size of fires and increased severity of fires are all pretty high. Some other work done by the CFS suggests a 50 to 75 per cent increase in area of burn.
This is very much speculation at this point. I do not think we can base decisions on this. However, we do need to be aware that there will be more fire in the environment.
One possible approach or response to that would be to say we will simply increase our provincial forest fire fighting budgets by 100 per cent to put out more fires. I worked for the provincial government for quite a while before coming to the Research Council and I know very well that that will not happen. That kind of budgetary resource does not exist. We will simply have to adapt to live with more fire in the environment. We will have to make choices about which fires to put out and which ones not to put out because we will be unable to put them all out. We will have carefully prioritize areas that deserve the highest levels of protection as opposed to those areas that merit less protection. This will cause us to be more careful in deciding how we carry out fire protection in the province.
Another set of issues relates to the disturbance as it pertains to insects. Experimental work has shown that drought increases the vulnerability of forest tree species to insects because, as the foliage gets drier, carbohydrate levels increase and insects are attracted to those trees.
Work in Saskatchewan shows that jack pine budworm increases under drought conditions. Some recent work in the Meadow Lake area of Northwestern Saskatchewan shows that the forest tent caterpillar, which is the pest of aspen trees, is also associated with drought in the forest fringe area. Some very interesting work in Alberta has shown that the forest tent caterpillar may also be in higher numbers when the forest is fragmented as opposed to being a large contiguous block.
This raises an interesting and difficult question about how land use practices interact with climate change effects. For example, if we see increasing development in the forest that causes the large, contiguous forest to be broken up into smaller and smaller fragments because of road construction or urban development, or whatever the purpose is, that may, in turn, increase the likelihood of forest tent caterpillar outbreaks.
The reason for that is that in a contiguous forest the predators that eat the forest tent caterpillar are at higher numbers. In the fragmented forest, the forest tent caterpillar is still there but the predators that eat the forest tent caterpillar are at lower numbers. The control factors are at lower levels in a fragmented forest.
An important issue here relates to how land use effects will interact with climate change effects in forests. I think that is an important issue that has not been addressed adequately.
I will now turn to changes in species composition. Obviously, whenever the environment changes species become more or less adapted and they often change, they often move. Typically that is accommodated by the process of migration. For example, when glaciers left the continent 10,000 years ago, trees began to expand across the landscape through a process of seed dispersal. The problem today is that we have a landscape that is heavily fragmented by agriculture, by roads, by urban development. The may prevent that seed dispersal process from occurring as quickly as it needs to in order for those changes to happen. In fact, the ability of species to migrate to keep up with climate change, if you will, may be quite limited because of what we have done to the landscapes around them.
The rate of climate change will be much greater than it has been in the past. The ability of species to keep up with that change will be limited.
I will conclude with an illustration of one potential future scenario. I do not want to call this a prediction but simply one possibility of what could happen. This is based on the work of my colleague Ted Hogg in Edmonton. You may hear about some of his work tomorrow in Edmonton.
It shows that the border of the current boreal forest could potentially move towards La Ronge and up into that area. More importantly, you can see two large portions of boreal forest divided in half by an alleyway of aspen parkland that goes up along the Alberta border. It may be difficult for a critter to migrate across that area to survive because it would involve crossing a new type of habitat.
There are large-scale effects of a change in boreal forest of the magnitude shown in this diagram, not only for natural processes such as wildlife migration, but also, clearly, if you are a forestry company in Prince Albert and suddenly the source of your material is 200 kilometres further north, that is a big change in your operations as it relates to the cost of transportation and other things. Clearly, it would have major effects on the forest industry.
Senator Wiebe: Thank you, Mr. Johnston, for providing us with a Saskatchewan point of view in regards to research. A number of scientists, representatives of national research councils, have made presentations to us in Ottawa. The overall picture they presented was similar to yours.
Your last slide concerns me. It demonstrates a situation similar to what C-CIARN and the other groups have said to our committee. What concerns me is the yellow area which is basically the Palliser Triangle. In order to have rain you first must have heat to cause evaporation. We will not run out of water in this earth, unless we pump it into the ground. It is a matter of where that rain will fall.
Mr. Johnston: It is also a matter of when that rain will fall.
Senator Wiebe: Yes. Could you elaborate on how that will affect a Palliser Triangle?
Mr. Johnston: In general, the precipitation picture is a bit confusing. We are expecting more precipitation overall, but most of that is expected to fall in the winter. We can expect snowier, wetter winters. Most of the increased precipitation will not occur during the summertime. The expectation is that, during the growing season, there will be less available soil moisture. As you point out, the Palliser Triangle is already a pretty dry place.
In terms of cropping practices and other things that require soil moisture during the growing season, the likelihood that that will continue to be a productive enterprise will decline in that southwest corner, which is where the largest concern lies with regard to agriculture.
Senator Wiebe: Looking at that scenario one adaption program would involve providing more storage facilities for the moisture that we get in the wintertime so that we could make use of it during the drier times in summer.
Mr. Johnston: Trying to capture the increase in spring melt runoff is particularly important because that is when the majority of the water will be available.
Senator Gustafson: I used to go hunting up north in my younger years when there seemed to be miles and miles of willow and brush before the tree line. What is happening, and what will happen to that area? Will the climate change mean that there will be more agricultural land? Some of that land is very fertile but, of course, some is bog. Will agriculture push further into the north?
Mr. Johnston: That is a very interesting question. Many people have simplistically said that farming should just move north. That happened during the 1930s, so why can it not happen again? We must keep in mind that climate per se is not what agriculture and forestry respond to. For the most part they respond to local circumstances, what they experience directly in their environment.
We come back to the importance of looking at things like soils and topography that determine the radiation balance, the amount of water that stays on the site, the time at which snow melts – things that are indirectly related to climate. If we view that perspective when looking at site-specific factors, then we will conclude that some areas may be appropriate for agriculture in the north. However, we cannot simply assume that we can, in a wholesale way, shift the agricultural zone 200 kilometres north because soil limitations are severe.
The other factor is that the solar radiation regime will not change, so the amount of daylight is not a factor of climate change.
Senator Gustafson: Do you have any statistics to indicate how much land is being ``reclaimed'' — and that may be an inappropriate word — for agricultural use now?
Mr. Johnston: I do not have a number. However, I believe it is relatively minor because most of the really good agricultural land is already in production. What is left over is generally the marginal areas. In fact, in another life I am also very active in agro-forestry and tree planting and we are trying to encourage farmers to plant trees back on land that was forest covered 100 years ago, since it is turning out not to be very good for agriculture.
The Chairman: What kinds of trees are you recommending be planted?
Mr. Johnston: The most popular choice right now is a fast-growing species of poplar called hybrid poplar. It matures in 20 years.
The Chairman: We heard about that in Ottawa. You are certainly not recommending spruce, firs or pines.
Mr. Johnston: Not unless they can be modified so that they will grow faster.
Senator Tkachuk: What is the basis of Mr. Hogg's map? How many years were involved in the prediction, and is it based on present temperatures and how they have changed in the last 100 years, or on predicted future temperatures?
Mr. Johnston: He has actually produced two maps. The one I did not show represents the current distribution of the forest types. This is a future scenario to 2050, I think. I am not sure what date it represents.
He analyzed the current forest condition and looked at a moisture index that signifies whether there is excess soil moisture or a deficit in soil moisture. The line that separates an excess from a deficit across the Prairies closely represents the current boundary of the forest. That means, in order to have trees, you must have an excess of soil moisture on an annual basis so that inputs are greater than outputs through evaporation.
That represents the current situation. He ran a climate change scenario which comes from the climate modellers you have heard about. He then reapplied that same moisture index to the landscape. In other words, drew that line a second time and assumed that the line still represented where trees would grow and where they would not.
The boundary on that map between the forest and the grassland is a remapping of that moisture index boundary under a future climate.
Senator Tkachuk: Is that any more reliable than the Farmers' Almanac?
Mr. Johnston: Ted himself is the one who told me that this is not a prediction; it is a projection of what we understand today. He is not saying this will happen, he is saying this is one thing that might happen.
Senator Tkachuk: Perhaps 100 things could happen, depending on the rainfall in one particular year, or how cold it gets in one year.
Mr. Johnston: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: What is the purpose of the map?
Mr. Johnston: This is a crucial point and I am glad that you raised it. The purpose of this map is not to say here is what will happen in the future; the purpose of this map is to illustrate something that might happen in the future. It is to encourage you to ask questions about how we might respond to something like that.
What does a change like this mean to forest companies? They better start thinking about this now because the decisions they make today may play out in that kind of environment.
This is also an important issue for wildlife managers who are concerned about animal migration. Whether it applies to this exact location is not the issue, the point is that we need to start thinking about these kinds of things now because they will have long-term consequences.
Senator Tkachuk: Scientists were saying 25 years ago, in the 1970s, that the climate would get colder. We were talking about all the changes we would have to make in that eventuality. We have only been talking about this in the last 20 years.
Mr. Johnston: Maybe a little longer.
Senator Tkachuk: You are saying that all of a sudden we will have this major increase in temperature, but what happens if it all changes in 10 years? Who will pay for the mess we will have created? What if these winters continue and we have more moderate summers? Who will pay for it all in 10 years? Who will be responsible for that?
Mr. Johnston: I think that is the argument on adaptation, as you heard in the previous presentation. To the extent that we can adapt to these things, particularly to the extent we can adapt early, those costs will be less. If we wait until we actually see the kinds of things that we are projecting here, trying to adapt after the fact will be infinitely more expensive than it will be to start thinking about this now.
The issue here is not necessarily climate change but just simply climate. How robust is our society to climate variability today?
Clearly, with the drought we saw that, in some cases, it is not very robust. Forget about climate change. We can do a lot of work in adjusting our agricultural and forestry production systems to the current climate and do a better job. That alone would go a long way towards building a system that would be more resilient in the event that this kind of climate change does occur.
Senator Tkachuk: In the 1930s we had a 10-year drought. Temperatures were hot, and we adapted fairly well. We learned a lot during that decade. If that happened again for 10 years would we be prepared?
Mr. Johnston: Many people believe that the Dirty Thirties could not occur again because of changes in practices. We are doing low-till agriculture and many other agricultural practices came about as a result of those experiences. We have learned a lot. I think the impacts of a 10-year drought would be considerable, but not to the extent they were in the 1930s because many of the practices that caused the dust bowl and so forth have disappeared.
The Chairman: The next presentation will be from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Mr. Phil Adkins, who was at one of our hearings in Ottawa.
Mr. Phil Adkins, Acting Manager, Prairie Agroclimate Unit, Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: It is certainly a privilege to appear before this committee once again.
I would like to introduce the gentlemen sitting with me at the table. Mr. Gerry Steranko, Acting Manager of our Operational Planning Division, is working on the design and implementation of programs. Woth me also is Mr. Bill Harron, Project Leader for the National Land and Water Information Service, NLWIS. You will hear a little bit about that later on in the presentation.
I will not spend too much time on history. This committee is well aware of the historical perspective on climate change or climate variability on the Prairies. The Department of Agriculture has been involved in helping farmers adapt on the Prairies since agriculture started on the Prairies.
As was mentioned in the last presentation during the question period, in the 1930s there was a drought of record. It was then that the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, PFRA, was established to try to deal with the drought.
The words that appear on the slide are taken directly from the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act. That quote has significant applicability here today, 68 years later, as we prepare for climate change. There is no question that climate change will necessitate our accelerating the adaptation process.
The third slide is a historical perspective of droughts on the Prairies. It shows maps with the percentage of average precipitation for 1936, 1961 and 2002. The intention in showing you this was to just point out how droughts vary in intensity and extent. In 1961 it appears, by the red area, that the drought was most severe in Eastern Saskatchewan.
Slide four shows the extent of the 2002 drought in the Prairies region of Canada — the red area being record dry. The year 2002 was most interesting in that it was a unique example of climate variability and possibly climate change. The red areas show the areas affected by the record-setting drought. They are the northern areas, areas not traditionally prone to droughts. The drought-prone Palliser Triangle area had record and extremely wet areas in 2002.
As you will see in the fifth slide, simulations indicate that climate change would significantly impact the Prairies. You have certainly heard a lot about that in your hearings. I would highlight two anticipated impacts that are shown in red on that slide.
The droughts that we are familiar with will change. The expectation is that they will be more frequent and longer. We can also expect opportunities to grow new crops and to develop new areas for agriculture.
Slide six deals with the fact that challenges and opportunities presented by climate change are a shared responsibility requiring the coordinated effort of all levels of government. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada recognizes that we have a very important, ongoing role here. In addition, we must partner with the private sector industry.
The new Agricultural Policy Framework programming will build on AAFC experience on the Prairies to strengthen support for adaptation nationally through new initiatives and transitions aimed at specific outcomes, in particular, on- farm action through programs, and through the provision of knowledge and information.
Slide No. 8 is basically an outline for what follows in the presentation. Our initiatives will support adaptation nationally through water programming, shelter belt centre programs, range development and management, a green cover program, environmental farm planning and beneficial management practices, BMPs. Our initiatives will also support the National Land and Water Information Service, and the provision of agroclimate information.
Our water programs support adaptation in many ways. There are strategic studies to determine secure water supplies for agricultural areas; secure supplies being the key. Developing proposals for both individual and large-scale projects is part of that. We support it by irrigation efficiency research and demonstrations from a water, energy and nutrient use perspective. PFRA's Rural Water Development Program has been with the organization since 1935, helping to develop secure water supplies on the Prairies. A good example of the adaptation to the variability of the climate on the Prairies is rural water pipelines.
The Chairman: Can you just tell us how those work before you continue, please?
Mr. Adkins: Rural water pipelines are typically involved in supplying water directly to individual farms, as well as, in many instances, rural communities. The water is derived from a secure, drought-proof source and delivered directly to the user through a pipeline.
The Chairman: Like a lake, for instance?
Mr. Adkins: In Saskatchewan the most secure sources are probably from the South Saskatchewan river system and the North Saskatchewan river system or some groundwater resources. Often the source is a city or a community that has a good supply and that is willing to expand its treatment facilities to share with the rural areas.
These pipelines are not inexpensive. The cost is in the order of $16,000 per mile, about $10,000 per kilometre. The length of pipeline varies depending on the number of subscribers and the number of communities included in the project. On average, the subscribers or farmers are about one and a half kilometres apart.
Rural water pipelines are not the solution for all areas. In Southwest Saskatchewan where you have very large ranches, there is a different type of farming from that found in the Regina area, for example, and the costs of pipelines can be prohibitive due to the distance between the individual farms.
The PFRA Rural Water Development Program will transition into a national water supply expansion program under the Agriculture Policy Framework.
I will not turn to slide No. 10. The main elements of the new program will continue to be individual and multi-user infrastructure development. The rural pipeline is a good example of the multi-user infrastructure. Strategic water planning to support the growth of the agriculture sector will also be a part of that program. Climate variability and climate change will be a key planning consideration.
An example of that is the climate change scenario development that is underway for Prairie water supplies in the South Saskatchewan River Basin which is supported by the Climate Change Action Fund which, of course, comes through the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative here in Regina. I believe this committee has had a presentation from that group as well.
I should mention that the National Water Supply Expansion Program is a $60 million program over four years.
Another program that has been with the department for a number of years is the shelter belt program, which supports multiple-objective programming that includes climate change adaptation. Shelter belt planning, of course, attempts to modify the local climate for the benefit of crops. We are talking of microclimate here, of course.
Approximately 5.5 million tree seedlings are distributed annually to Prairie farmers and these seedlings are adapted to the Prairie climate. That distribution comes from the PFRA Shelterbelt Centre at Indian Head, which is just east of here. Under the Agriculture Policy Framework, there will be new initiatives for shelter belts across Canada.
I will now turn to slide No. 12. In terms of range development and management, probably the best example of that is the establishment of 87 community pastures across the Prairies. These are currently owned and managed by PFRA.
Cropland and rangeland that was unable to cope with drought was converted or adapted into these managed community pastures. A series of programs has supported and followed that work, culminating now under the APF with the Green Cover Program.
The Green Cover Program certainly supports adaptation in a number of ways. It will provide $110 million over five years. The cornerstone of that new program will be the conversion of environmentally sensitive cultivated land to perennial cover.
There will also be a national focus for shelter belt planning through the Shelterbelt Enhancement Program, with $10 million over five years, as part of that $110 million.
In addition, there will be technical assistance for enhanced rangeland management and riparian areas.
In summary, the Green Cover Program will contribute to the environment priority of APF with up to 1.6 million hectares of land in Canada benefiting from improved management. We estimate it would mean about 400,000 hectares of conversion on the Prairies.
Our environmental work is linked through new initiatives under the Agriculture Policy Framework. We will build on past work to formalize and implement beneficial management practices and the development and implementation of Environmental Farm Plans, or EFPs, based on nationally accepted principles. It is important to note that these initiatives will consider the need to adapt to climate change and encourage the required flexibility.
We are also just getting started on a National Agricultural Water Strategy to provide a strategic context for water programming. It is in the preliminary stages of development, but it will address quantity and quality issues in a changing climate.
Another important aspect is making operational the National Land and Water Information Service. Indeed, $20 million has been allocated to that under the Agriculture Policy Framework. Included in that will be agroclimate activities as an important aspect of our role in support of adaptation.
The Prairie Agroclimate Unit, with which I am quite familiar, will be expanded under the APF to become a national endeavour.
Enhanced, or interpreted, climate information is an essential element of adaptation and there are three key areas of support, as we see it: climate monitoring and reporting, for example, drought conditions or excess moisture conditions; practical climate change scenario development related to agricultural activities and related to agricultural areas; early warning of seasonal climate risks and opportunities specific to agriculture. This work will require strong partnerships within AAFC and with organizations such as the Meteorological Service of Canada and Environment Canada, not to mention American agencies.
Desertification is certainly a climate change concern. You were speaking during the last session about the Palliser Triangle area, which is certainly an area that is prone to desertification.
Under the authority of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD, Canada plays a key role globally as both a donor country and also as an affected country. Our department in PFRA is responsible for the technical activities related to that undertaking.
Slide No. 18 illustrates an exciting new venture that is being launched under the Agriculture Policy Framework and being led by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Climate change certainly crosses political boundaries. The Mexicans and the Americans are quite interested in collaborating with us in monitoring drought on a continental basis. Monitoring is a key component of supporting adaptation because we need to recognize the changes that are occurring and track them.
In closing, I would suggest that, with the Agriculture Policy Framework, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is well- positioned to help the agriculture sector adapt to increasing uncertainty in our weather and climate.
I would thank you very much, again, for this opportunity. We would be pleased to entertain any questions that the committee might have.
Senator Tkachuk: In the 1980s the provincial government established SaskWater to build water infrastructure in the province because we had bad drinking water in areas like Kindersley and Saltcoats. In talking about water strategy and pipelines, are you talking about maintaining the status quo or about improving water quality for drinking? Are you talking about improving and increasing the amount of water for agricultural use?
Mr. Adkins: You have mentioned an area that will help me answer the question through an illustration.
The Kindersley-Kerrobert area has chronic water problems, whether related to quality or shortages. Studies are underway to look at a large scheme, a regional water supply system, based on the South Saskatchewan River Basin supply that would deliver water to communities in the area as well as to farmers, producers, in the area. One thing that scheme will not do is deliver the vast quantities of water required for irrigation over such a large area, but it certainly will get water to the farm in order to support livestock operations. That is the type of strategy we are looking at. We are, clearly, looking ahead and trying to improve both the quality and the quantity.
Senator Tkachuk: Often when we talk about strategies we talk in grand terms. Is there any research being done on little things we can do? For example, we used to have a cistern system in this province where rainfall would be gathered from roofs, collected in a cistern, and used for drinking water and for animals. Why should we not gather that water up and use it? We cannot rely solely on these big, grand schemes which will cost a lot of money. There will be demands from people to pump more to allow them to irrigate, and I do not think that is a good thing to do.
Mr. Adkins: That is a good point. We need to take a balanced perspective, including looking at more efficient use of the water we do have through water conservation measures, et cetera.
As to harvesting water, there is a project that we helped to fund, under the Rural Water Development Program, south of Saskatoon where an individual is actually collecting rainwater. A plastic membrane has been laid out in the area to collect rainwater. Then the water is collected in a small open reservoir and the it is used to irrigate Saskatoon bushes.
Certainly, things can be done without involving large-scale infrastructure. However, many of the residents of the Kindersley-Kerrobert-Rosetown area that suffers from chronic water shortages, are very interested and very involved in the strategic studies that are underway now. Some of them recognize that there are no low-cost solutions. They will need to pull together in order to put together a rather large project to meet their long-term needs.
The Chairman: Have you done tests to determine whether, if you were to drill a series of wells in that area, there would be enough groundwater left?
Mr. Adkins: There have been fairly extensive groundwater investigations in the area.
The Chairman: With what result?
Mr. Adkins: With the result that the secure supplies are of very poor quality. We then get into a question of economics as to whether or not to treat the water that is there or to bring better quality water in from elsewhere.
The Chairman: At great cost.
Mr. Adkins: It would be at great cost, yes. Treating the very highly saline groundwater on the Prairies can also be very expensive.
It is an excellent question, Mr. Chair, because the groundwater resource is not as well understood as it should be on the Prairies. There is room to do much more work in identifying the extent and the availability of that resource.
Senator Wiebe: For the last number of years PFRA has been somewhat ignored by the Department of Agriculture, therefore, I am pleased, even thrilled, with the fact that, under the new APF, PFRA will now have a more demanding role to play in the future, particularly in Western Canada, with respect to climate change. I am very excited about that.
The success of adaptation will depend a lot on the attitudes of individual producers and farmers, and their early involvement in the process. Can you tell me how you, through PFRA, or we as policy-makers, can involve farmers in the adaptation and the research policies that will be required?
Mr. Adkins: One of the major methods to engage producers in the delivery of some of these programs will be through so-called third-party delivery. That is, getting the producer organizations directly involved in sorting out the details of the new program. They will be also involved, perhaps, in assisting the government agency, whether it be PFRA or someone else, in delivering the program. One of the keys is early stakeholder involvement in the details of development and delivery.
Senator Wiebe: My next question may not necessarily be within your responsibility or your area of expertise. However, you did mention it on page 16. I am referring to climate monitoring and reporting. We managed to forestall Environment Canada changing some of the weather station situations in this province. I just say forestall because it is basically on hold.
I think that one of the effects of climate change will be the extremes. I am talking about extreme rain, extreme snow, extreme cold. The need for adequate weather reporting to our farming institutions and people of Saskatchewan is vital and key. Rather than decreasing the amount of human bodies that actually do the one-the-ground work in terms of weather reporting, we should be increasing the number of stations we have in this province.
I certainly hope that PFRA, which has led the way in so many other areas, will do the same thing in regards to the weather-reporting situation that could deteriorate in Western Canada as a result of some cost-saving measures by Environment Canada.
Mr. Adkins: Yes, the acquisition of weather information, which ultimately becomes climate information, is certainly very important to agriculture across the country. As governments struggle with budgets, we must identify other ways of gathering that information, more cost-effective ways.
PFRA and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have engaged in a partnership with the Meteorological Service of Canada. We are concerned that the needs of the agricultural industry must continue to be served, and we must find ways to do that.
Senator Wiebe: Can I take it from that answer that I do have an ally?
Mr. Adkins: Yes.
Senator Gustafson: There is no question that PFRA has been one of the highlights in agriculture in Saskatchewan.
I have a question about the new crops. I farm in the south, right along the U.S. border. We have moved to canola, to mustard, and to sunflowers. What new crops are available? We have tried peas and they do not do very well.
Mr. Adkins: That is really outside my area of expertise. Bill, would you be interested in helping me out with that one?
Mr. Bill Harron, Project Leader, National Land and Water Information Service, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada: We will see new crops move into this area if the predicted changes in Mr. Johnston's presentation come about. Some of the new crops will be due to imperatives. It may be we will have heat units to grow corn, if the water is available. That is one of the areas that I think we are looking at under adaptation to climate change.
Senator Gustafson: What is your view on hard red spring wheat? There is a great defence in Canada to protect the hard red spring wheat and not to grow the soft varieties that the Americans grow that produce more volume. In fact, I understand the Wheat Board is doing some work right now to test the seed that is being put into the ground to make sure it is not the American variety, the softer variety. Do you think that is a potential?
Mr. Harron: To follow Phil's line, you are getting out of my area.
Senator Gustafson: Do not pass the buck, now.
Mr. Harron: I think there will be a role for hard red spring wheat. What we have to do in terms of adaptation is decide where it would be appropriate to grow it based on potential climate changes. Some of the work we have done and the work SRC has done shows that some of these areas shift. However, there will still be a role for hard red spring wheat as part of the Canadian agricultural economy.
Senator Gustafson: It is pretty hard to keep it pure if other varieties, which have higher yields, are coming across the line.
Mr. Harron: That, I am staying away from.
The Chairman: My question, relates to your slide on page 18. For people reading this transcript, it shows a picture of the North American Drought Monitor. You have a colour scheme with the colour D3 being red, and it says, ``Drought — Extreme.'' I see that most of the red is in the United States, not in Canada. In the United States it runs everywhere from the Southern Dakotas straight down to the southern tip of California. I see an opportunity for Canadian farmers and business people. If, in fact, these areas will be in extreme drought, American farmers will be unable to produce their traditional crops such as corn, wheat, canolas, grains, and so on. It seems to me that this provides a wonderful opportunity for Canadians to adapt and take over that supply-and-demand situation.
Is your department focusing on that? What opportunities do you see and what research and studies are you doing so that we can begin to capitalize on that as Canadians, and Canadians in farming in Western Canada?
Mr. Adkins: That is an excellent observation. I might add to that by indicating that those areas of the United States are becoming water short. They have a pretty good understanding of their groundwater, and they are exhausting groundwater supplies in some areas. Their surface water supplies are very limited for the development that they have there. There certainly is an opportunity.
Our department is certainly looking at the types of crops they are growing and whether we could adapt and grow them here, particularly under climate change scenarios. We are just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of recognizing that opportunity.
The Chairman: You cannot tell us that you doing more than that?
Mr. Adkins: Not at this point. The first step is to make the producers aware of this opportunity. The innovation, the expertise and the drive of Canadian farmers will cause them to seize this opportunity. As a body of government we want to let them know that that opportunity is out there and provide any tools that they might need to take advantage of it. Those tools are mainly research related, and specifically related to the adaptation of crop varieties in our area.
The Chairman: On your map, the big red circle, which indicates extreme drought, the D3 area of your map, is not in Saskatchewan. Am I correct that most of it is in Alberta?
Mr. Adkins: Yes, it is. I should point out that this map is just a draft. Your observation is correct. In fact, on page 4 we give a little more detail of the drought situation in Western Canada. You can clearly see that the area of record drought in 2002 is an area that is not used to drought. Much of it is in Alberta.
The Chairman: If there is an area or a province that could take advantage of the extreme drought conditions that are likely to take place throughout the growing area of the Western United States, would it be Saskatchewan?
Mr. Adkins: I would think that is a fair generalization, yes.
The Chairman: I would like to thank you and your associates for coming. We will read and study your paper in more detail. Thank you for your presentation.
Honourable senators, the final presentation before lunch is on behalf of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society and Nature Saskatchewan.
Ms. Silvia Lac, Volunteer, Nature Saskatchewan: Senators, I am a forester by background. For the last couple of years I have worked on the carbon sequestration potential of the forestry systems for the southern boreal forest in Saskatchewan. I will speak today of the implications of climate change for Saskatchewan forestry and agriculture.
Joining me at the table is Ann Coxworth, from the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, and Wayne Pepper from Nature Saskatchewan. I am speaking on behalf of the two societies, Nature Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Environmental Society.
At the outset, I would like to talk about climate change prediction tools. The best tools we have so far are the general circulation models that operate on a global scale. Although these models have been greatly enhanced, there are still parameters that are difficult to predict, especially precipitation. The general circulation models cannot represent terrestrial biomes such as agriculture and forestry. That is partly because we lack the computer power to link the models we have, or the biomes to the general circulation models.
We lack the knowledge to transfer information across the scales. We lack the basic knowledge of how ecosystems function as well as data collection. The difficulty is in estimating real emissions on a regional or biome level, resulting in uncertainties about the timing, location, rate of change and potential benefits from climate change.
Estimates on a regional or biome level are done using the predictions for the general circulation models acknowledging historical records or past climatic events. Clearly, past climatic events are not exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide concentration.
Nevertheless, general circulation models are the best models, the most reliable we have. They predict for Canada that the temperature will increase. It will increase more in the winter than in the summer. We are not likely to see a steady increase in temperature, but there will be places where temperature anomalies will change with time. We will have an increase in temperature and that will cause precipitation to increase. However, increased precipitation will not compensate for increased evapotranspiration, which means droughts will occur.
Ecosystems are predicted to migrate northwards. The problem is that the biophysical response is likely to happen at a slower rate than the migration rate, which means climatic conditions will shift faster than ecosystems can adapt. What we are likely to see is a change in the land use pattern, such as agriculture replacing the forestry area as we know now.
Some predictions for Saskatchewan forestry include that the boreal forest will shrink as a result of the southern boundary migrating northwards faster than the northern boundary. The shrink in the forest will cause a reduction in its area, in the biomass, carbon stock and a move toward younger age classes.
The boreal forest growth and productivity is expected to increase in good sites, in the north and central portions of the boreal forest. It will decrease in the southern part of the boreal forest where droughts are expected to increase.
What will happen with the forestry, the wildlife and the communities? Will forestry migrate northward and shrink the forest to a point where it is no longer economically viable? How will the wildlife adapt to a shrinking and changing habitat occurring at the same time? What choices will communities make? Will they move northward to wherever the forestry companies are based?
Thus far we know that the forest has physiological intolerance to climate change: flowering, pollination, seed formation, germination and competitive success. Some studies show that conifers are less likely to adapt in both boundaries of the boreal forest, northern and southern. This is because they will have problems in producing viable seeds. In the southern boundary of the boreal forests we are also likely to see increased seedling mortality.
What we are likely to see here is new dynamics on how the species occupy the space and a new species composition.
Nevertheless, there are signs of ongoing adaptation. In the northern boreal forest, spruce trees have shown accelerated physiological development. In the southern boundary of the boreal forest, aspen have shown a 26-day advance in spring blooming.
We also have predicted that fires will increase in frequency, duration and intensity. There are many estimates as to how large an area will be affected. I have heard 30 per cent, 50 per cent or 75 per cent more areas will be affected by fires compared to now.
We are also likely to see increases in insect disturbance. A particular concern is in relation to alien species. North American forests are particularly susceptible to European and Asian species of insects. While 300 species successfully migrated from Europe and Asia to North America, only 34 species made the reverse journey. It is also harder to plan how we will control new diseases as the insects can cause different damage here as compared to their country of origin.
We are also likely to see shorter disturbance cycles, decreasing the health and resiliency of the forest. How many fires can a forest and an ecosystem take until one day it is completely unproductive and can no longer regenerate?
The drought of 1988 has been largely compared to the climate change effects. That resulted in reduced volume growth in the forest and increased seedling mortality. There was also increased disturbance, especially fire, tent caterpillar and spruce budworm.
We can also expect peatlands and wetlands to dry out, further increasing the carbon dioxide emissions and methane emissions. That will result in a decline in wildlife habitat and a decline in the general ecosystem health. From 1987 to 1988 we had a 44 per cent decline in wetlands, a 16 per cent decline in the duck breeding population and a five-to-ten- fold increase in waterfowl mortality.
We do have some adaptation and mitigation strategies to suggest for the Saskatchewan forestry. We would suggest that we prevent land use conversion to secondary or managed forest, especially of wetlands, peatlands and riparian areas. We can also restore the degraded areas, restoring some carbon sequestration potential.
We can adjust our policies and policy-making processes to protect wildlife habitat and soil and water quality. We can plan for industry to shift to cleaner technology — using more fuel-efficient machinery or moving away from fossil fuels. We can also increase the efficiency of our commercial forestry carbon sequestration, using the wood for long- lived products as opposed to short-lived products — panel board for construction material, for example, as opposed to printing paper.
We can also increase our recycling efficiency. The more efficiently we can keep the carbon in a product the longer we are saving it from returning to the atmosphere. We can also increase our rotation length for the maximum ecosystem carbon sequestration, as opposed to the maximum volume above-ground accumulation as it is now.
We can help regeneration by planting from seed and choosing harvesting and site preparation techniques that disturb the soil less and keep its carbon sequestration potential. We can also increase our protection from disturbances by reducing our response time.
Special attention has to be given to the opening of new roads. We should use shared roads to the maximum possible. When we open new roads, we place further constraints on wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors.
We should increase our research and monitoring of the adaptation of vegetation and wildlife and the adaptation of those other different disturbance regimes.
We can increase our participation in international monitoring efforts, as we have done in regard to alien pests and wildlife. We could be more effective in acquiring the data on a local level to increase the modelling or the monitoring capacity of these incentives. We could also extend that to other occurrences in soil and water quality.
We can improve our understanding of climate change and improve the models of regional and biome estimates to include also the forest.
We also have some predictions for Saskatchewan agriculture. We will have extended growing seasons, although those will likely be limited by the low availability of moisture. Yields have been predicted to be decreased from 10 to 30 per cent, with summer crops being more affected than the crops that grow in the spring. There will be an increased need for irrigation; nevertheless history tells us that irrigation is not sustainable in the long-term and we often end up with saline or degraded soils.
The combined effect of droughts and irrigation is likely to result in an increase in disputes over good quality water for both livestock and human consumption.
We are also likely to see an increase in insect infestation.
Will agriculture migrate north wherever there is available moisture? How many soils will be appropriate for agriculture? Will agriculture shrink just like the forestry sector?
We do have some adaptation and mitigation strategies to recommend for Saskatchewan agriculture. We would recommend that we Prevent land use conversion, especially wetlands, peatlands and riparian areas. We know that, when we bring these areas into production, we lose the carbon, especially in peatlands and wetlands where we lose a lot more carbon for a lot longer, as they are great reservoirs.
We can also restore the marginal lands and disturbed croplands.
We can improve our policy and policy-making process to protect and monitor wildlife, soil and water quality.
We can reduce our use of tillage and summerfallow. The less we expose our soils and the less we disrupt the structure of our soils the more we keep them productive and keep their carbon sequestration potential. One example I have for the zero tillage is from Indian Head, and the conclusion from this study was that wheat under zero tillage had higher yields during drought as compared to wheat under tillage.
We can also increase our farm diversification. The more we have different activities in the same farm, the less likely they are to all be affected equally by the same extreme climatic events. That will affect the economics of the farming activity. Farm diversification can be increased by the addition of different products, adding a livestock operation, or forestry. One example is from Star City, which is close to Melfort. The drought of 2002 delayed the rain and, although this caused wheat to give such low yields that it was considered a failure, canola received just the right amount of water and gave good yields.
We can also incorporate clean technology by using more fuel-efficient machinery or machinery that does not use fossil fuels. One example of this is the biogas power system which uses methane emissions from manure to produce electricity and heat. This technology has been used in Europe for more than 20 years. Just recently some communities in Alberta have started to import it.
We should improve or restrict our use of pesticides, choosing the best timing and limiting the application to just when weeds are at the economic injury level. Sprayers should be calibrated more often, especially between applications of different pesticides. Perhaps, instead of chemical controls, non-chemical controls could be used. Some examples are: crop rotation, biological control, or using non-chemical and chemical controls in an integrated, pest-management approach.
Manure management could be improved by choosing the best application methods: soil injection for liquid manure; surface application followed by soil incorporation for solid manure. Timing of applications could also be improved, the best time being right after planting. The best storage devices should be used, such as sealed, covered tanks for liquid manure, for at least 200 days; and covered storage pads for solid manure.
Our use of mineral fertilizers could be improved by choosing the best application method: soil injection for liquid fertilizer and anhydrous ammonia; and banding for dry fertilizer. Again, the best time to apply being right after planting. Oversupply caused by discounting the nutrients that are already gathered in the manure should be avoided. If we oversupply an area with nutrients, we are likely to have nitrous oxide emissions. If we under supply an area with nutrients, we can deplete our soils, have low productivity and lower carbon sequestration potential.
Soil tests should be done at least every three years. The more frequently we do soil tests, the less likely we are to oversupply or under supply an area with nutrients. We can improve our understanding of climate change and the models of regional and biome estimates to incorporate not only yield values but also everything that is related in the cropland ecosystem.
In conclusion, climate change calls for community long-term thinking where everyone, including researchers, industry, government, non-government organizations has different tools but a common goal: to mitigate and to adapt to climate change.
There are things we all can do as the general public. We can improve our consumption choices, reduce our level of consumption and adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Researchers can evaluate sustainable options. Industry can increase its efficiency in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, turning it into carbon or greenhouse sinks as opposed to sources of emissions. Government can bring all the players together, educate the public and incorporate all the government and non-governmental organizations and research into their policies and everyday business. Government can also focus the research to evaluate the sustainable options that are considered best by all these players.
Government can also bring to the table the international experience, what has been tried elsewhere – what worked, what did not work, and why.
Government can also focus more research on the monitoring and conservation of native biodiversity, species, genetic, ecosystems and habitats, supporting changes by providing tax relief or subsidies for companies to import clean technology or to change to clean technology. There should be more programs such as the PFRA Shelterbelt Centre and more trials and monitoring done at a local level. Farmers often wonder what the numbers mean for them. There should be more ongoing activities close to where they are that would help make it relevant to their realities.
Finally, we need to raise our understanding of community thinking. Not only thinking in a community on a local level but raise that to a global level. We have much to gain in exchanging international experience, we can exchange technology, policy, experience in policy-making processes and lifestyles. I have some examples from Brazil, where they have had cars that run on ethanol for more than 20 years. In the policy-making process, Brazil has legislation that conserves the riparian areas and avoids it being converted to any other land use.
A lifestyle example is Curitiba, which has been largely cited as an example of a city that has been optimized for the climate change context. It has improved its transportation system and closed the downtown area where people are only allowed to walk. They do not need their cars. They mostly use the public transportation system.
Another example is São Paulo, a city of 18 million people where, depending on the number of your licence plate, there are different days of the week on which you can use your car.
That is the message I have for today. I hope to be able to answer some of your questions.
The Chairman: Thank you very much for that excellent presentation. What I like about it is that you have a number of down-to-earth and practical recommendations and suggestions about things that people can do to adapt. That is the essence of our study, that is, concepts of adaptation.
One area of your presentation where you did not say a lot about adaptation that I would like to ask you about relates to forest fires. You and many witnesses have told us that climate change is here and there will be several severe effects flowing from the changing climate. One of them is that there will be more insects and more disease. The boreal forest is moving north, and we will have a lot more forest fires. No one has said what we should be doing to adapt, to try to do something to prevent the severe damage from forest fires.
What scientific things are being done today such as cutting away certain portions of the forest so that fire cannot leap to another part? What scientific steps are being taken today to try to mitigate the damage and the losses that can come from an increasing number of forest fires? Adaptation is the issue.
Ms Lac: I am not sure. I have knowledge no of that. However, I think there have been many studies of the fire fighting issue. I know that some people think that we may see a different geographical distribution of fire suppression capacity from what we know now. Research will change the way we fight forest fires. I do not know how, but I know that people are looking at ways to improve the geographical distribution so as to be able to respond to fires in less time.
The Chairman: You said that, if we continue to disregard our forests and not look after them by cutting too much and doing other things, we may reach a point where the forest will not regenerate. Can you explain to me what that means, because, even when there is a fire there is regeneration? Under what circumstances would a forest not regenerate?
Ms. Lac: Forests regenerate in cycles, as we know, in the periods of return that we have had so far. Once that changes, once we have shorter periods that the forests can grow until the next fire, that may impose a new set of restrictions.
The Chairman: I now understand.
Senator Tkachuk: Your suggestions on agriculture I think constitute good agricultural practice whatever happens in the climate change model. Obviously, everybody wants to reduce the amount of pesticide used. That involves farm input costs that we would like to reduce in any event. We do need more government money for research and development. I would like to see more dollars being spent on pure research.
You mentioned Brazil and their use of ethanol. That is news to me. Did they mandate the use of ethanol in Brazil? Is it a government edict?
Ms. Lac: The government has had a program for over 20 years to produce ethanol from sugarcane plantations. However, there was always a choice as to what car you bought. You could buy a car run on ethanol or one run on gasoline. It never was the case that they only had ethanol cars.
Senator Tkachuk: Do they subsidize the use of ethanol?
Ms. Lac: Yes, they subsidize the program.
Senator Tkachuk: Is that not why they are cutting down the forest, though, to grow more sugarcane?
Ms. Lac: It is a different historical process with sugarcane. There are areas that were converted to sugarcane long ago.
Senator Tkachuk: I heard that a lot of agriculture was moving into the rain forest, so that they could grow more sugarcane.
Ms Lac: I do not think that is exactly what, or the only thing, that is taking place. The problem of deforestation is mostly caused by the building of roads. When new development takes place, people must be allowed to have access to the forest to farm and do perform activities that give some sort of return. The major problem is the opening of new roads in the forest.
Senator Tkachuk: Perhaps you would look at some ideas that would be helpful to Canadians. I do not mean to put down what you have said, but it is 30 below zero here today. The reason people use automobiles in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia is to get from one place to another in this cold climate. We use energy to heat our homes to survive. We do not have the luxury of warm weather, and we do not have the luxury of living in a small space. Canadians are spread over this large land mass. We are very efficient in the use of energy, probably more efficient than most people in the world. We do not waste it; we need it. That is where we should be focusing our ideas. Maybe Russia does it better, but I doubt it. We probably do it better than anybody else.
Ms. Lac: I have to disagree that we are using our resources efficiently. I would like Ms. Coxworth to comment on that. I think she would like to have some input here.
Ms. Ann Coxworth, Volunteer Program Coordinator, Saskatchewan Environmental Society: Senator, you have hit on a point where we agree. The main focus of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society is to improve efficiency. I think we all know that it would be possible for us to double the efficiency of the vehicles we drive. Yes, we are dependent on our vehicles, but we know how to build vehicles which are much more efficient than the ones we drive now. What we need are programs to make those vehicles more readily available and attractive to the public.
We do know how to keep our houses warm using far less fuel than we use now. We have in Saskatoon the most energy efficient house in Canada, and it does not even have a furnace, it does not need one.
The Chairman: How is it heated?
Ms. Coxworth: Water is heated with solar energy and warm water is circulated throughout the house. That is supplemented by the waste heat from the appliances. The house is so well insulated that body heat from people in the house is retained. It has air-to-air heat exchangers so you do not lose heat when you ventilate the house.
We know how to do these things. The first priority has to be to find ways of getting that knowledge more widely adopted.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think economics will drive that? I know that many people in the Okanagan Valley are using water heating now and that there are more and more people using sunshine for heating their homes, using dual thermal energy. It is happening because people are figuring out that it is cheaper to do it that way than to use natural gas, for example.
Ms. Coxworth: It will happen faster if we stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.
Senator Tkachuk: How shall we do that?
Ms. Coxworth: I do not know the details of the subsidies that are available for fossil fuel exploration and development, but they are certainly there.
Senator Tkachuk: We give them a tax deduction to explore, which we do for any research and development in any business. It is not a subsidy.
Senator Gustafson: You made reference in your report to wheat grown under drought conditions at Indian Head. Is that a specific variety? You also mentioned Star City wheat.
Ms. Lac: It is not Star City wheat; it is wheat grown in Star City. That is the area where the study was done.
Senator Gustafson: Is that a special variety of wheat? Why can you produce more wheat at Indian Head than at Macoun?
Ms. Lac: I do not have that level of detail offhand, but I can check my papers.
Senator Tkachuk: Was the research at Star City conducted by the federal government at the agriculture research station there? I think those are two research stations, one at Indian Head and one at Melfort.
The Chairman: You were talking about farm diversification and you mentioned wheat and canola in 2002, and you suggested it gave a greater yield.
Ms. Lac: Yes. I have yield information but I do not have all of the details with me today.
The Chairman: What yield information do you have?
Ms. Lac: I have the yield averaged over 12 years with zero tillage, 32 bushels per acre and, in the year of drought, 10 bushels an acre. With conventional tillage, 30 bushels an acres, and in the year of drought, 5 bushels an acre.
Senator Gustafson: That is interesting. If you could provide us with those details I would appreciate it.
Ms. Lac: I will try to send you the paper.
Senator Wiebe: At the start of your presentation you talked about the shrinking boreal forest and a concern that this might be taken over by farming practices. Would the soil be suitable for that? Farmers have always been very aggressive in clearing land. If there was a good soil base, and good moisture, I think they would cut down trees and they would plant. As the boreal forest shrinks, will the land that is available be suitable for growing, say, wheat or canola? Alternatively, should we be concentrating on developing new varieties of trees that would grow well in that soil in that climate?
Ms. Lac: We cannot keep moving the forestry north and advancing the natural ecosystems. We can choose species that are adapting and try to use those species to recover the lost area in the southern boreal forest, the area that is migrating. We can increase areas of aspen and change the industry to accommodate the shift in species as opposed to moving the industry northwards.
Senator Wiebe: I want to echo the sentiments of the chair. You have certainly given us some tremendous recommendations and some good food for thought. It will give us some extra work when we get back to Ottawa.
I would comment on the idea of only being allowed to drive your car on alternate days. Some members of my family live in Mexico and they tell me that, in order to get around, some individuals buy two cars and they drive one on one day and the other one on the other day. The advantage is, though, that because they have bought newer cars those are more fuel efficient, so the net effect is still beneficial. Somehow we have to get around having two licence plates.
Ms. Lac: That also happens in São Paulo. However, if we at least start to do that, it will shift our thinking. With good public education people would be ashamed of doing that. People would travel with their friends on a certain day of the week, instead of having one person per car.
Senator Gustafson: Today it is popular to drive a four-wheel drive vehicle that does 20 miles to the gallon. I have driven them on my farm and places where they are necessary. However, city dwellers are driving them now because it is a fad. You can buy a car that will give you 35 miles to the gallon. We do a lot of talking about how we can adapt, but are we ready to pay the price? Maybe vanity keeps us from that, I do not know.
Ms. Lac: I do not think people choose big cars because they are fuel efficient or not. What other options are there if they want a big car that runs with other kinds of fuel? I do not think they are buying them just so they can burn more fuel.
Senator Gustafson: A four-wheel drive car takes a lot more fuel. There is no question about it. I have four-wheel drive trucks on my farm, where I need them. However, there are lots of them on the road today being driven in situations where any kind of an automobile, big or small, would get more miles per gallon than a four-wheel drive.
Ms. Lac: My point is they are not selecting them just to cause emissions. Their preference is based on different criteria. It may be a matter of taste, or perhaps they want a car that can accommodate more kids. A different approach may be found by way of public education. I think it is important to leave options open. If I want a big car, if I want a van, what fuel options do I have?
Senator Tkachuk: Whose responsibility is it? Is it the individual's responsibility or is it the government's responsibility to provide ``clean'' vehicles so that the person can buy a big car? How can we male decisions that do not make economic sense?
Ms. Lac: I do not think it is a pointing-finger issue. Everybody has to do his or her part. I do not think government can do it alone, and the people cannot do it alone. It is a matter of getting together and deciding what kinds of technologies we accept, what kind of changes we will make, and what we as people are willing to give up. We need stronger public education. We must get together more often to discuss what is acceptable to the public, that is, what options are considered best by everybody. We cannot just consider what is thought to be best by one sector — research, or the government alone. That would not be popular. What you need to do is incorporate all the major players into your thinking processes so that when you are evaluating the options, you are evaluating options that are accepted by all the players in society. Public education is also a key process.
Senator Tkachuk: Is that to reduce carbon dioxide, or is that to decrease the use of fossil fuels ``just because''?
Ms. Lac: It is not a matter of ``just because.'' Our climate is not changing just because; it is changing because we caused it. We all caused it by making wrong choices. Now we have to improve the choices we make so as to be more efficient, and so as to have a whole society with a common goal.
Senator Tkachuk: Like China, India and all those other countries?
Ms. Lac: Maybe those countries have lessons to teach us. I think they do, just as we have lessons to teach them as well.
The Chairman: Ms. Lac, as you can tell, we have many more questions that we would like to put because your paper did stimulate a lot of good, intelligent discussion. We thank you and those who came with you very much for your presentation.
The committee adjourned.