Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 19 - Evidence - November 3, 2005
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 3, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:35 a.m. to examine and report on emerging issues related to its mandate.
Senator Tommy Banks (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I call the meeting to order, seeing a quorum. This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, which is involved in a study on certain aspects of water. The committee has determined, because the problems and issues facing water are quite different in different parts of the country, to break its study into two parts. First we will with water in the western part of the country and then we will deal with water in the eastern part.
We have before us this morning Mr. John Carey, who has been with us before. He is the director general of the National Water Research Institute. Also with us is Mr. Donald Renaud, the director of the water priorities branch of Water Policy and Coordination Directorate. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for being here. I hope you will tell us what you want us to hear about western water issues and then enter into friendly discussion with us and answer questions. Which of you would like to begin?
John H. Carey, Director General, National Water Research Institute, Environment Canada: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thought you were going to talk about something quite different, so Mr. Renaud and I brought different information. We were given questions about overall expenditures on water by the federal government.
The Chairman: You are quite right. I was describing our present study, to which we will apply the information that you give us today. The questions we asked you are more global, as we are concerned about the overall questions of research and the like.
Mr. Carey: I can give you a broad idea in answer to some questions; others, I can answer quite specifically.
For the first time, thanks to an information-gathering exercise that Treasury Board conducted, we are able to say how much the federal government spends on water. However, I would not take that answer to the bank. Responses were voluntary and given by various departments, and those answering the questions may or may not have interpreted them in the same way. Departments were asked how much they spent directly on water-related activities and how much indirectly. Of course, ``indirect'' is subject to the interpretation of an individual.
That exercise, conducted in 2004, concluded that the federal government at that time was spending an average of approximately $750 million on activities directly or indirectly connected with water. We have one other estimate, from the Pearse commission of 1985, which estimated that the federal government was then spending $373 million on water. I am not an economist, but taking inflation into account over those years, it is likely that spending on water has either held roughly steady or perhaps declined slightly. Those are the figures that we have for overall federal spending on water.
I can give you somewhat more precise figures for Environment Canada's spending on water because of the information that we provided to that data-gathering exercise. We identified $156 million spent in Environment Canada on water for activities including science, monitoring, some water policy activities and some indirect activities supporting water. Those indirect activities include activities that dealt with contaminants in water, conducted as part of studies to regulate contaminants under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act; because the contaminants studied appear in water, those activities were listed as partially related to water in the indirect category.
We spent $89 million annually on activities related to water and well-life science; science related to wetlands as bird habitat, et cetera; conservation of water; and water use. The remaining $66 million was spent on indirect activities — toxic chemicals and other things. That is where my institute has been in the department, although a departmental reorganization has just been announced.
For Environment Canada, the figures that we have calculated for 2004 were as follows: 62 per cent of our expenditures were directed toward aquatic ecosystem health; 13.5 per cent went toward human health related to water; 11 per cent was spent on water use; 10 per cent was for avoiding water-related hazards — prediction of flood events and monitoring ice cover, for example; and 3 per cent went to advancing Canada's global water goals — things like the Millennium Development Goals for provision of safe drinking water to people around the world, targets that the UN established. In our Parliament report on plans and priorities for 2006, we have predicted that we will spend around $70 million to achieve clean, safe and secure water.
Turning to other departmental plans and priorities, Fisheries and Oceans Canada estimates spending $147 million on healthy and productive aquatic ecosystems. Natural Resources Canada, which works with us on groundwater, estimates spending $4.5 million. One might also remember that the infrastructure program funds a lot of water infrastructure — roughly $1.2 billion since 2000. A year or so ago, the federal government announced $600 million to go to Indian reserves and water quality on Indian reserves.
That is a rough estimate of current expenditures. It is the best we can do with respect to total expenditures, both from the 1980s and from today. You also asked for a pattern with respect to history. It is difficult to get total numbers, as I am sure you know. People do not collect them in general. I can give you a history of spending on water research in Environment Canada, that is, spending at the National Water Research Institute, which are the figures that I have at my disposal.
Prior to 1997, Canada had a national hydrology research institute in Saskatoon and a national water research institute in Burlington. After 1997, they combined, so any figures I give you from after 1997 would be total figures. I have added the figures from before and after 1997 together. There is now only one institute, the National Water Research Institute. I am the director general of that. We have people in Victoria, Fredericton, Saskatoon, Burlington, Gatineau, Calgary, Nanaimo, et cetera. We have people right across the country working for this single institute.
We receive an allocation, a so-called A-base budget, each year. Our scientists are very entrepreneurial and find other sources of funding for some of their research. Those sources have become more and more important to us as years go by. We call that our B-base funding.
In 1994, the combined A-base budget for the institutes was nearly $32 million. Of that, approximately $3 million went to pay for fixed costs such as heat, hydro and water to run the buildings in Burlington and Saskatoon. The remainder went to salaries and research. We added to that another $6.7 million in B-base funding from different sources.
The total in 1994 was $38.5 million for the two national water research institutes. By 1996, after program review, the A-base budget decreased to about $26 million, and the B-base budget stayed about the same at $6.5 million. By 1997, our total budget was down from $38.5 million to $29.6 million. Although it was a decrease, $30 million is still a significant amount of money to spend on water research.
The A-base contribution from Environment Canada has remained fairly constant. Two years ago, $2.5 million was added to our budget for water quality monitoring activities. Another group joined us. As of this year, our A-base budget is $29.9 million. Our B-base budget, however, has increased to $10 million.
Much of the new funds in recent years have come from program funding, that is, sunsetted funds. You may remember that some years ago, $40 million was spent over approximately four years on toxic substances research through a program called the Toxic Substances Research Initiative. Of that $40 million, about 20 per cent came to the National Water Research Institute. We were very active in going after resources.
Our A-base budget has dropped slightly over the years, but our ability to access B-base resources has increased, and the programs we are accessing have increased. We accessed the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences to do studies on the effect of climate change on our water resources, for example.
There is more bookkeeping, but we still have access to significant funds to conduct research. I have provided copies of these numbers to the clerk. There is a table of the NWRI budget over the last 10 years, both A-base and B-base, showing how we spend that. Almost $20 million of our $30 million from the government goes to salaries. Our strategy has been to put the money into people and facilities to ensure that the work can be carried out, and then to look for partners to fund the work.
In some cases, we are being creative. In western Lake Ontario there are issues every year with respect to taste and odour of drinking water. The municipalities that conduct drinking water treatment to provide that drinking water became concerned about the complaints and about their ability to predict taste and odour events. We created the opportunity for them to band together in a consortium, which they call the Ontario Water Works Research Consortium. Each of those municipalities contributes approximately $30,000, depending on the size of the municipality, to the research pot. The pot adds up to about $300,000, and our institute, together with an institute in Cornwall, has been conducting research for the last four years on taste and odour events to determine what causes them and whether they might be predictable. The answer is that they may be.
As an aside, we have learned that the time of the year when the surface temperature in western Lake Ontario crosses 20 degrees is a crucial time. If it happens in May, it will potentially be a bad year for taste and odour events. If it happens in June, the algae that cause the taste and odour problems do not grow as much.
We can tell municipalities whether a given year might be a bad one for taste and odour; then they know to watch for winds from the southeast, which blow the surface water from the middle of the lake over to their drinking water intakes. That gives them a warning that in a couple of days there might be an event that they should watch for.
They are quite happy with that. They are now asking to apply this model to beach closures to identify exactly what is responsible for the bacteria along the beaches in Lake Ontario that cause beach closures.
That is an example of the complexity of our research funding. We have had to develop new models and find new partners. Our funding figures are not adjusted for inflation. The fact that we had $30 million in 1994 and we still have $30 million means that, when inflation is taken into account, we have lost some ability.
As I said, I do not like to cry poor because the Canadian public is still investing $30 million in our institute. We are still trying to give them value for that money. That is a summary of the best figures we have to give you an idea of who is spending what.
With respect to what other departments do in the water area, Environment Canada focuses almost solely on the aquatic environment. We do monitor water quality as well as water quantity.
Some years ago, we monitored water quantity at a few more than 4,000 sites. Nowadays, there are 2,500 sites across the country at which monitoring for water quantity is conducted by the water survey people.
We conduct research right across the country and into the Arctic on both the hydrology of aquatic ecosystems and the impact of climate change on water in those systems. For example, we do studies of water availability in the rivers flowing east from the Rockies. We could give you detailed information on those studies, which indicate that, although the total amount of water does not seem to be changing in those rivers, much of it is now coming down in the spring run-off in glacial melt and there is now much less water in midsummer. If you looked only at the total, you would not see the impact on the ecosystem, because the effects of climate change on our water resources are seasonal, regional and geographical. Therefore, taking national averages does not give you the picture.
We are also looking at things like the fresh water budget of the Arctic Ocean, which has a lot to do with circulation in the Arctic. If seasonal inputs of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean change in a large way, that could have ecosystem effects that we cannot now predict with respect to circulation in the Arctic and eventually could affect our Arctic resources. Within our department, a lot of our water-related research is focused on the toxic chemicals that are present in water quality-related issues and to a lesser extent water quantity-related issues.
We work in partnership with Natural Resources Canada and the Geological Survey of Canada on groundwater assessment studies. We are busy at the moment trying to increase attention on those studies and become more formal. We had a memorandum of understanding to cooperate with them, but we have never had a joint or integrated work plan. We have done joint projects.
When I last appeared before you, we discussed the lack of systematic information concerning groundwater. The committee in the other house asked that same question. We are trying now to establish a more formal national groundwater assessment program with our existing resources as we do not have new resources for this.
We would like to characterize our groundwater resources with respect to four points: one, how much groundwater is there and where is it; two, how is the groundwater recharged in unconfined aquifers, how much is recharged, and where are the recharge areas; three, how vulnerable are those aquifers to surface contamination; and four, what is the actual quality of the water in the aquifers.
There are emerging issues with respect to groundwater. There is a contaminant called perchlorate that we never measured before. The Americans found high concentrations of perchlorate in some of their aquifers in the middle of the country, in particular in the Ogallala aquifer, the big aquifer in the Midwest. We were interested in whether it was in Canadian groundwater as well. The answer appears to be, in the first several hundred samples we have done, not much. We do not know why it is an issue for the Americans and not us, but that is how appears right now.
In working with Natural Resources Canada, we want to focus on a national groundwater assessment program. We want to go back to first principles: if you do not collect information, you do not understand the resource, and if you do not understand the resource, you cannot manage the resource.
Health Canada produces drinking water objectives through a federal-provincial committee. These days, post- Walkerton, the policy with respect to drinking water, developed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Committee on Drinking Water, is to move beyond treatment as protection to the so-called multi-barrier approach. The focus is source water protection, first of all, then treatment and standards for treatment, operator training, and then the monitoring necessary to demonstrate that one has actually done a good job and the water is safe. Implementing the multi-barrier approach to drinking water treatment is quite important.
In the federal government, there are I believe 19 departments with some interest or other in water. The main ones for providing information to better manage our water resources are the five natural resource departments: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Health Canada. Those five actually conduct studies and provide information on water resources.
Other departments are custodial departments; Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, for example, is in the news these days. Other departments involved include the Department of National Defence, Parks Canada, and the departments that have territory and have responsibility for the management of water resources. Under our constitution, the federal government does not manage water resources; the provinces are responsible. However, we do have responsibility to manage water resources on federal sites and on federal lands, and the departments that have those lands have that responsibility.
You asked one other question with respect to federal water policy. Our federal water policy was formulated in the late 1980s and there are some who think it is out of date. The policy states that the federal government will be preoccupied in two areas with respect to water: the quality of water in our aquatic ecosystems and sustainable use of water, that is, how efficiently we use it. I suspect that if we were writing a water policy these days we would give more prominence to water availability than we did in the past. However, I think most of what is in the policy would still be a priority today. I don't think the policy is out of date with respect to its goals, although it may be that issues have changed and we might wish to add to the policy.
Perhaps my colleague would add something on the federal water policy. That is his area of specialty.
Donald Renaud, Director, Water Priorities Branch, Water Policy and Coordination Directorate, Environment Canada: The policy did lay out five strategies: water pricing, science leadership, integrated planning, legislation, and public awareness. Those are still relevant today. It included 25 policy issues, which was a unique way of packaging policy under one cover. That is the way it was done at the time.
Mr. Carey: Recent efforts have tried to better integrate those activities. Even though I mentioned some cooperative studies, to a large extent activities in those departments are carried out in isolation from other departments.
We did, in recent years, have a committee at the assistant deputy minister level, the Interdepartmental Water ADM Committee. The committee members' goal was to cooperate better, and the first thing they found was that we did not have a framework for cooperation. We had developmental mandates, but not the areas to establish priorities for cooperation. They developed a framework, which is separated into several broad areas where we can seek opportunities to cooperate.
The first area is the impact of water quality on human health. The second area of cooperation is the health of aquatic ecosystems and aquatic biodiversity. The millennium assessment indicated that species are disappearing from aquatic ecosystems at a faster rate than they are disappearing from terrestrial systems, but we do not notice that or track it because those species are below the water. The third area of cooperation is the sustainable use of aquatic resources, whether fish or water itself. The fourth area is water-related hazards. A fifth part of the framework deals with international issues. We are trying to get a more coordinated picture of what we do internationally.
Mr. Renaud has a copy of the framework. We have been trying to push forward in those areas to develop cooperative activities between departments. Within the scientific aspects of those areas we are looking for places that we could manage jointly as integrated programs. We developed and finalized the agenda this summer; we are calling it the Federal Water Research Agenda. We have identified five areas that we think are important enough for departments to band together to manage resources, people, priorities and activities collectively rather than individually.
The deputy ministers are considering whether water should be one of the priority activities for integration of our science. It is a bit unusual for deputies, who are accountable for their resources to Parliament, to think of combining those resources with another department to manage joint activities. They have not done that very often in the past but are poised to do more of it in the future. A considerable stimulus is the appointment of Dr. Arthur Carty, former president of the National Research Council of Canada, to the position of National Science Advisor to the Prime Minister. His mandate is to push science integration across departments. It is happening, which is a positive sign. Senators might want to track that as it unfolds.
That is a broad picture of funding and of some of the activities currently underway. I would be happy to answer specific questions on our science or on similar water issues with respect to Western Canada or all of Canada.
The Chairman: Thank you. I understand that you have been talking about the matter in a global sense. Earlier I referred to the committee's current study, but we will be looking at all aspects of water. It is a complicated issue that is of increasing interest to Canadians, as I am sure you are aware.
Senator Cochrane: Mr. Carey, you have given us an overwhelming amount of information. I have concerns about many areas. We know how important the issue of water is because we have had so many things hit us up front, including the recent finding of contaminated water in an Aboriginal community in Northern Ontario. One problem here is the lack integration of all the information available to us. Environment Canada could be doing one study while five other departments do their studies. Do the departments share their findings? Is there a communication mechanism in place?
Mr. Carey: We had not been doing that; that is why we produced the framework. We have established the intention to do that because we recognize that it is important. Senator, you are absolutely correct.
Senator Cochrane: There is a great deal of redundancy.
Mr. Carey: I cannot say that there is redundancy; departments are focused on their individual missions. We have not had cooperation between departments so that one could help the other. For example, I would imagine that departmental staff at Health Canada working on drinking water sources would be keenly interested in our findings with respect to water quality of aquifers. We need to be more systematic in how we communicate so that other departments are aware of our findings earlier than they would be should they just happen to run across one of our published papers.
Senator Cochrane: How long has it been since you started communicating?
Mr. Carey: The committee began about two or three years ago.
Senator Cochrane: The results of science should be known everywhere, because that is how we learn to manage the problems.
Mr. Carey: Perhaps I misled you, senator. The results of our studies are published in publicly available reports, so they are known around the world. We do not keep our results a secret. I am implying that if we work together when we set the priorities and identify what we are to study, then the results of one would be more relevant to the other. In other words, if Health Canada communicated some of their concerns to Environment Canada, we would be able to conduct our research on those issues and support their activities. It is not that we keep our results a secret or that other departments are unaware of them. Rather, our department might be working in areas that are of lesser importance to other departments because we have not communicated our priorities one to the other, but we do that now.
Senator Cochrane: You said that five major departments deal with water.
Mr. Carey: Yes, there are five that deal with water science.
Senator Cochrane: You said that 19 departments have a branch that deals with water.
Mr. Carey: Yes, or they have an interest in water or are users of information on water. We conduct studies on water to help people manage water. For example, Correctional Service Canada is interested in water quality in terms of the source of drinking water for prisons. Other departments have an interest in water as well.
Senator Cochrane: Do we manage adequately our water resource?
Mr. Carey: No, we could do a much better job of managing the resource.
Senator Cochrane: As the Director General of the National Water Research Institute, how long have you sensed this inadequacy?
Mr. Carey: Throughout my entire career I have been trying to improve things. I joined the National Water Research Institute in 1974 and, in those days, we were concerned about the condition of the Great Lakes. We conducted a great deal of research on the Great Lakes to improve the way in which they are managed. We are doing some things much better. As we continue to look, we find new problems. I would not want my answer to be construed such that I think we are doing things badly or wrongly. Rather, we are simply not doing enough or collecting enough information to allow us to manage water better. Many people are doing the best they can with the information that they have. However, that information is incomplete. In recent years we discovered that the drugs we take pass through our bodies and end up in sewage and our sewage plants are not designed to remove those drugs. Ergo, the drugs enter the aquatic ecosystems. We find trace levels of them in some treated drinking waters. It is not a problem for people because the levels are so low. However, many people would be concerned to know that anti-epileptic drugs or anti-psychotic drugs, for example, are appearing in trace but detectable amounts in some of our drinking water. We did not know about that five years ago. If someone had thought to wonder where those elements were going, we would have realized, but we did not ask that question. That is behind what I am saying with respect to whether we could do a better job: we could if we knew more. We are exploiting our groundwater aquifers but we have incomplete information about that. I would not call that good management practice. We could improve in those areas.
Senator Cochrane: Yes, that and integrating your planning with the other five departments.
Mr. Carey: That is within our control and we are doing that. We are moving beyond integrated planning now to integrated management of the program between deputies. That is a little counter to the way in which resources are allocated. When Parliament confers on deputies the authority to spend public funds, the authority to spend falls within the mandate of the particular department. The deputies do not spend funds on someone else's priorities. They are accountable to Parliament for the degree to which their resources are spent within the mandate of their own departments. We are now grappling with the question of which areas share common priorities so that deputy ministers could band together and jointly spend resources as a single, integrated program. The areas and priorities need to be specific because of the accountabilities. It should be easy to do this work together but barriers arise when one considers the Financial Administration Act and the required accountabilities of departments.
Senator Cochrane: We still have to think about the general public and the health of people.
The Chairman: You have just said that there are impediments in the form of accountability or constraints that derive from the Financial Administration Act which get in the way of interdepartmental cooperation. Is that correct?
Mr. Carey: That is my opinion, yes.
Senator Christensen: You are dealing with water quality specifically more than water quantity. Healthy water in quantities affects the quality of water, and healthy water means a healthy environment. You must have good forests and good water management. History has shown that failed states have always had water at the root of that failure. It is a critical issue.
We are talking about antibiotics and things that are in our water systems. To what degree do we measure how much of the salt that is poured on our roads goes into our sewer systems and into our rivers that we drink our water from? Is there a measurement of that sort of thing?
Mr. Carey: Yes, there is.
Senator Christensen: What does it tell us?
Mr. Carey: Generally speaking, that the salt concentrations are below guidelines.
Senator Christensen: With the money we have been spending, how well do we have our water cycle and aquifers mapped? Unless we have a good baseline of taking measurements, how can we tell what is happening in those water cycles?
Mr. Carey: Regarding water cycle surface water, we measure the surface water at about 2,400 sites across Canada. We have extrapolated information from others. We understand the water cycle with respect to surface water fairly well. We are trying to do a better job of forecasting water availability.
We are trying to link our hydrologic models that deal with surface water quantity with climate models so that we can run scenarios. We try to predict in the spring what the summer might look like with respect to water availability across the country, and we also try to run climate scenarios for the future.
With respect to surface water, we understand things fairly well. With respect to groundwater, I do not believe that is the case. I know we exploit our groundwater, and I know there are folks within provinces and municipalities who know where groundwater is. I do not believe we manage aquifers as water bodies to the extent that we should.
Senator Christensen: We do not have a good mapping of our Canadian aquifers.
Mr. Carey: We do not. Some of those aquifers are international and would cross boundaries. Some of them cross provincial boundaries, and most of them cross municipal boundaries.
Our political system does not lend itself to easy decisions with respect to aquifers or watershed issues. We are trying to encourage folks within a watershed to employ integrated water resource management practices so that conflicting demands within a watershed can be considered, rather than having a municipality look at a specific problem in isolation from other problems within a watershed.
Senator Christensen: Do we have inventories of glacier density, et cetera?
Mr. Carey: We do. We have a glacier inventory in Saskatoon at my institute. These days, we have gone back to our files and we are busy digitizing pictures of the glaciers from 10 or 20 years ago. We will be making those available on the website for people to look at. Our glaciers are receding.
Senator Christensen: In the way we have been managing and studying our water, have the methods been improving or getting worse?
Mr. Carey: I think that the management of our water quality is getting better. We have focused a lot of our attention on that. With respect to water use, we have not focused much attention on that. We do things that are hard to understand and almost defy logic.
The United Kingdom has resorted to private water treatment for their drinking water. As soon as that happened, the companies realized that there was an issue with non-billable water. That is, they were treating it and no one was paying for it at the other end; it did not reach the consumer. Companies devoted a lot of time towards finding out why those water losses were happening, because they were spending money treating water that they were not able to sell.
We have not done that in this country. The non-billable water in some cities in the United Kingdom is down below 10 per cent now. In most of our cities, it is above 25 per cent and as high as 40 per cent. The water treated in our plants is lost before it reaches the consumers. With respect to leaks, we do not know where that water goes. We have not done studies. That makes no sense. It points to the fact that Canadians think they have a lot of water, and they do not treat it as seriously as other countries do. We are among the largest per capita water users in the world.
Senator Christensen: When I was in London a few years ago, I was talking to an engineer who worked in the water system in London. They said that every glass of water had passed through six people by the time you got it. They are very efficient with their water use.
What responsibilities have been devolved to the provinces over the years?
Mr. Carey: I would not say it has been happening over the years. The provinces have responsibility for management of resources within their territory, and water is included in that. Provinces have primary responsibility for water management, except in some specific cases such as international waters like the Great Lakes or interprovincial waters where the federal government may be involved. We do monitoring in the prairie provinces at interprovincial boundaries to support the activities of the prairie provinces' water boards.
Senator Milne: Are navigable waters a federal responsibility?
Mr. Carey: They are the responsibility of Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, but I was referring to management of water quality.
The Chairman: There are international laws, undertakings, agreements and treaties dealing with rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries. Are there any such laws dealing with aquifers that cross international boundaries, or are they bound by the same laws? Do we know that?
Mr. Carey: I should be careful here; I do not know of any. I would not say there are none, but I do not know of any laws specifically between our country and the United States.
I know we have boundary waters issues. At the Abbotsford aquifer in British Columbia, for example, we have Canadian contamination of the aquifer reaching Americans. We also had some concerns underneath a deep aquifer in the Sarnia area. There is contamination there due to the disposal of chemical wastes in old salt mines with the potential to contaminate the aquifer and lead to issues in the United States and vice versa.
We have boundary waters issues with respect to aquifers, but we do not have the equivalent of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement or the Boundary Waters Treaty, for example.
Senator Angus: Mr. Carey and Mr. Renaud, thank you very much for coming here. Thank you, Mr. Carey, especially for your candour and frankness. Listening to your recitation of the facts, which is what we want to hear, I am not at all surprised about the recent tragic events with the native population living in Kashechewan. I think you appreciate that we are on television and that a great body of Canadians is watching this hearing not only on television but also on the Internet. It is wonderful that you have been so frank.
I have a few questions to see if we can find a way through the maze or if this committee, with your help, can make some positive contribution. I then have two specific questions for which you can leave the answers to the end.
Have you seen the article about water in The Hill Times from the day before yesterday? It had a five-column headline that stated, ``Libs have known about contaminated water reserves since 2001.'' It then cites an interview given by Senator Grafstein and talks about his bill on water, Bill S-42. Do you know about Bill S-42? Are you and your colleagues familiar with what it is trying to achieve?
The main question is the following: one of our main roles here is to forge recommendations on intelligible and intelligent public policy. On the issue of water, we all want to ensure the quality of our lakes, rivers, oceans and drinking water across the country. We want to make a contribution to helping to secure our water resources in terms of sustainability for generations to come. We have been told time and time again by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Ms. Gélinas, whose report is before us and all parliamentarians, that we have both the tools and the money, but that we lack implementation and action in the country.
In regard to water, I put to you this question: what, in your view as an expert — and I believe you have frustration as we do — is most needed in Canada at the moment? What are the most pressing issues? What are the most important actions that should be taken by the government right now? How can our committee on the environment help you achieve your objectives? We want to work with you and help you in any way we can to achieve a better environment water-wise.
Mr. Carey: Thank you for that question and opportunity. With respect to your initial questions, I did not read the article and I am not familiar with that bill.
Senator Angus: It is a private bill that, hopefully, will go through.
Mr. Carey: Perhaps this is too candid, but I focus on the management of science and my colleagues deal with the water policy and its laws. I often am the last to know about things like that within our group.
With respect to what I see as priority, first, and we have touched on this already this morning, is better information to manage the resource. With the best will in the world, if you do not actually know what it is you are managing and how much you have, you will not be able to identify areas in need of immediate attention. We would not manage our bank accounts without monitoring what was in them and trying to do some planning, but we attempt to management natural resources without a good understanding of how much we have, how much is renewable and whether we are spending capital or living off the interest. The very first thing I would do is develop better information and trend monitoring of the state and the status, that is, better indicators that would allow us to say what is happening with this resource.
Second, we need the next generation of treatment technologies, et cetera. We had a time in this country when we just discharged our waste and thought it would go away. We learned that that is not correct. We learned as a result of problems that came from the Great Lakes. Those were the most visible problems and they were related to nutrients. Consequently, we devised treatment programs for those effluents. We expect those treatment plants to do more than take out nutrients, but we did not design them to do that. They were never designed to meet the expectations we have of them now. We need to rethink our waste water treatment practices.
I have already mentioned that there are billions of dollars going into water infrastructure. This is a big ticket item, if we have to do that. We will have to manage those costs well. If we looked at reinvesting in our water treatment systems, I believe we would conclude that there is a lot of water in those systems that does not need to be there and that could be reused in some way, for example to put out fires or to water golf courses. When we have to reinvest in new treatment systems, I believe that the size of the bill will tell us that we need to manage those costs in some way. We will end up with more sustainable water use strategies for our cities, for example, and with more creative ways of reusing or recycling water to keep it out of the water treatment systems so that we do not have to spend big bucks to treat it. That will require change in our attitudes towards water. Countries like Australia and Israel have very severe water problems. Israel has 12 different grades of water treatment. They treat water, to a certain degree, in relation to how it will be used. The highest degree of treatment is for drinking water. However, they do not use drinking water to put out fires; they have other approaches. We will get there somehow. Sustainable water use strategies that are more creative than the cavalier attitudes that we grew up with is another area that I would focus on. Better information, better technologies, and better strategies to management it.
Senator Angus: Listening to you, and also with the data we already have from other experts and from the commissioner, I cannot resist the comment that what we really need is a department of water. If I were ever Prime Minister, I think that would be the first thing I would want to do. Perhaps those in a party that is more likely to present the next Prime Minister might take that on board.
Ms. Gélinas' report also notes that between 1995 and 2003, almost $2 billion was spent to build and operate drinking water and sewage systems on First Nations communities. Between 2003 and 2008, a further $1.8 billion will be devoted to these projects. Unless strong action is taken, the report concludes that it is unlikely that that money, including $600 million invested in the First Nations Water Management Strategy, will result in safer drinking water in the future.
It seems that money is not the only issue here. You have confirmed that. We have heard that millions have been spent on infrastructure costs but, with the lack of human skills to actually operate these water management sites, water contamination will likely persist. I would ask for your comment on that.
Mr. Carey: As I mentioned before, part of the multi-barrier approach is performance of those systems, and that includes operator training and monitoring of the systems. Where we fall down is in the monitoring. You can install a system, but without monitoring how that system is performing, you will not know that you are doing a bad job. You will assume that the system is there and is working. We heard recently, from a reserve in Northern Ontario, that the operator of the equipment had said the equipment was too complex to operate and he was not given the training for that equipment.
If we are to apply a multi-barrier approach, we must ensure that people have the capability to use the technology we install, and we have to monitor that they are actually doing it correctly. That is what happened in Walkerton. They had the technology there, but it was not being used correctly. The monitoring was not sufficient to identify that problem. That is a valid comment. We could do a much better job with operator training.
Senator Angus: Mr. Chairman, I think we should start a campaign of ``Carey for Commissioner of Water.''
The Chairman: I have fond memories from the old radio days of the water commissioner, whose name was Willard W. Waterman. He played the Great Gildersleeve on radio.
Before I go to Senator Lavigne, the next questioner, I should explain, Dr. Carey, and for those who are watching at home, that the proposed legislation to which Senator Angus referred, and which has been authored by Senator Grafstein, is to include water in the Food and Drugs Act. There would then be federally set, not guidelines, but specific requirements for the safety of water that comes out of the end of any tap. His point, as I understand it, is that bottled water is subject to that kind of federal scrutiny, which is more glaring than elsewhere. Ice cubes are. Bubble gum is. However, water, the only thing without which we cannot live, is not.
Senator Angus: Basically, he is advocating that water is a human right. It is very sympathetic.
The Chairman: Exactly. This committee passed that legislation once before. It fell off the Order Paper. I suspect they will deal with it again.
Mr. Carey: It was Bill S-18 before. I do believe I have heard of that.
[Translation]
Senator Lavigne: Mr. Renaud, the last time you appeared before the committee, I asked a lady who was with you if there was information available about the rivers and lakes in Quebec. I wrote her to ask for that information, and she wrote back saying exactly the same thing you said earlier.
[English]
I do not look at politics. Nothing is connected to your department, and you cannot get an answer. We ask questions, we send letters, and we get the answer that, ``It is not my department.'' You said that you were adding an office here in Gatineau; is that correct?
Mr. Carey: Yes.
Senator Lavigne: Do you have another one in Quebec, or just one?
Mr. Carey: At the moment, just one.
Senator Lavigne: I am often asked about, for example, the wood that was used in docks, which had a preservative in it. This wood was put into the water for 20 years, although they have not used it now for about 15 years. I am asked if there is now mercury in the water, and I cannot answer because I do not know. I need somebody who can answer the question for me when I am asked by people in my riding or elsewhere in Quebec. Who can I call? Do you have the name of the person who can provide an answer for me?
Mr. Carey: You are correct that the various aspects of water in our department have been disconnected and worked independently. I mentioned earlier that we are undergoing a reorganization. It was just announced yesterday by our deputy minister. Most of the water-related aspects of the department will be brought under a single director general. That will be me. The person you will have to contact in the future, I guess, is me.
Senator Lavigne: Senator Spivak's bill is on the table, and you should know about that. I asked questions about boats on the water and what can happen when the gas from Sea-Doos goes into the water, because she asked me to speak on the bill. I did not want to because I did not know the answers. People in Quebec ask questions about water. It is normal. After Walkerton, they asked, ``Are we drinking good water, or do we have to buy water? What can we do? Can you tell us what to do?''
You just talked about a book. Can we get a copy of the book you mentioned?
Mr. Carey: That would be the policy. It is from 1987.
Senator Lavigne: 1997?
Mr. Carey: 1987. It is on our website as well.
Senator Lavigne: 1987.
Mr. Carey: It is the federal water policy.
Senator Lavigne: Nothing is up to date. We are now in 2005, not 1987.
Mr. Carey: The goals of the policy — focus on water quality and on water use — are just as valid today.
Senator Lavigne: I also heard of another book about ``la loi sur le littoral,'' but I do not know if it is federal or provincial. It is a big, thick book. I saw it but do not have one. I would like to have one so that I can answer people's questions about the policies. We have to know those answers. We are the committee for the environment. We need to have answers. In the future, I will write to you. If I do not get an answer, you will come back to the committee and answer to the committee.
Mr. Carey: Sometimes the answer is, ``I don't know,'' but it is an answer.
Senator Lavigne: I went to a meeting about a hydroelectric project. The environment department had said yes, but the fisheries department said, ``No, there are fish there, so you cannot touch the water.'' On the one hand, they talk about making good, clean electricity, and on the other hand, they say, ``Oh, do not touch that river; you have fish.'' It is hard to know the right answer when you talk about water.
It is also hard to know if we are drinking good water or not. Some say, yes, you can drink the water from the pump. Some say you are better to buy water. Most of the companies that put the water in bottles are American. Our money is going to the United States, but the water is coming from here. I think Senator Spivak is right in bringing forward a law saying that we do not want more Sea-Doos on the water. Can we know what these things are doing to our water? Can we manage our water and make the profit here in Canada? Most of the American companies are buying here and taking the profit and going away with it.
We will have to look at that resource. We have to keep it for us. We have two things in Canada: clean electricity and water. It is supposed to be clean. Will we take care of it? That is really important. That is the only question I have.
The Chairman: Now we know where to write.
Senator Lavigne: We know now.
Senator Angus: You also know the answer; it is, ``I do not know.''
Mr. Carey: A report on sustainable development indicators is about to be released for the first time. There will be three such reports. The Prime Minister announced that he wanted these three initially, one on greenhouse gas emissions, one on air quality and one on water quality. We worked on the water quality indicator with the cooperation of all provinces. It is just their first effort. We will improve it.
The intention is that we will report annually on a water quality indicator for the country based on the degree to which water at a specific site meets the water quality objectives related to the uses at that site. The Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment has a water quality index related to objectives for that site.
We have put together the first national picture. The coverage across the country is incomplete. We know that the coverage in some provinces is not good enough. We will be improving that. We have secured new resources to do so; $5 million this year will go towards improving that picture.
That report will give you some of the information you are looking for. The Province of Quebec provided information on many sites for the calculation of the index, and they are included in the indicator. The report has not been released yet, but the draft is being reviewed and we expect it to be released this fall, before Christmas.
Senator Adams: I will start with water treatment. We are supposed to have good water in the Arctic, in the community where I live. We have a department, but I do not know how the system works between Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the reserve community — how they manage the water quality. What happened in that community in Northern Ontario, where people have been affected by the water, is that nobody knew how to operate the equipment. I think there should be some kind of a regulation for samples to be collected regularly and sent to a lab for testing. I do not know how the system works; but after Walkerton, all the communities in Nunavut and the territories had their water quality tested in the lab.
I used to be an electrician. When I was working in Churchill, I used to work with the chemicals to treat the water — on the timing and everything. The chlorine was in a powder form at one time. It was mixed and went into the water. I do not know the system today. You may have a system now that puts it in water treatment plants.
In our community, Public Works used to operate everything for the water and sewer systems. Now they are managed by the municipality. I look after all the water meters; we pay so much per litre every month. In the municipalities, you depend on the taxpayers in the community for funds. If the equipment is too old or in bad repair, there may not be funds to replace it. How are we able to manage that? It was different when the Department of Public Works handled it; they had qualified technicians to deal with it.
Municipalities will only give them so much in the budget every year to operate the water and sewer systems. I do not know what the best answer is for how to look after water.
Mr. Carey: You raised an important issue with respect to how treatment systems are managed and funded. It has always amazed me the preoccupation municipalities have with that last cent in water, which is fundamental to life. We seem to be willing to pay for bottled water, but municipalities are worried about charging more for a better quality of water out of the tap.
I do not understand that. My own family buys bottled water and I drink it from time to time too. It costs an awful lot more than the water coming out of my tap, which frankly is just as good. Yet, somehow, if it is coming out of our taxes, we focus on it and we are less willing to pay for it.
I think we need social scientists to look at the psychology of how we value our water to help us understand why we will not pay for it in taxes but we will pay a higher price for water in a bottle. I cannot answer that. It is a preoccupation and it is a problem. If you are focused on cutting costs, how do you maintain treatment systems on which our lives depend?
Senator Adams: There should be some regulation — perhaps have Health Canada or some department like that manage the water quality. Municipalities should understand the issue. Where I live, in Rankin Inlet, we fish in the same waters that we use for drinking water. If the fish are not dying and something goes wrong, at least the fish are not dying.
The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development told our caucus yesterday that they are going to rebuild that community in Northern Ontario. It will cost millions, yet there is no economy there. Why would we rebuild that community?
We heard that that community was built in 1957. At that time, it was not bad. There were people trapping and hunting. Now the fur trade is gone and there are no fish. Why would we spend another few hundred million dollars to rebuild that community when, in another 50 years, the crisis may happen again? I think we should look into the future, especially in reserve areas.
Everybody talks about how much we will have to spend again for the First Nations. The Inuit are part of the First Nations, although we are a little different. They have 1800 people in that community, and they brought 250 here to Ottawa when they evacuated it. How much did it cost taxpayers to bring those people here?
The Chairman: With respect, Senator Adams, that is an interesting question, but it is not one we can reasonably ask our witness today.
Senator Adams: What happened with the water?
The Chairman: That is the question. It is certainly true that prevention would be a better strategy.
Senator Adams: Ontario has a department of Indian affairs as well. It is difficult to know how the responsibility is divided between the federal and the provincial levels.
The Chairman: Part of the answer is the new cooperation to which Dr. Carey has referred. We must hope that it goes in that direction, and that will go a long way toward answering your question.
Senator Milne: Thank you for coming, gentlemen.
You say that you are now trying to formulate a national groundwater assessment system. How many of the five departments are involved in that?
Mr. Carey: At the moment there are two: Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada. I expect that Health Canada will be part of it in the future as well.
Senator Milne: How far along are you on that, and what sort of resources do you need to speed it up?
Mr. Carey: At the moment, we are using existing resources. We have cooperated in the assessment of several aquifers already. It takes two or three years per aquifer. We are putting several million dollars of our resources into that.
We have done it in a more ad hoc way than we think we need to do. We are now formulating a plan to prioritize the aquifers and give an indication of how many we can do over the next decade. We have not yet put the plan together. We have met to discuss it and agreed to put it together, and now we are busy trying to do that.
The level of resources we have is several million dollars a year. If we had more, we would accelerate the assessments.
Senator Milne: How can you assess aquifers when, in many places, you do not know what the aquifers are? What sort of basic research and what funding is needed for that?
Mr. Carey: We actually have a lot of information available to us, if we could access it. The people who drill wells are required to keep logs of what they encounter on the way down and they are required to test the water they encounter. In many provinces, those logs are accessible. Our problem is that there is no standard record keeping. It is quite an exercise to access those logs and relate one to another in order to compare them.
There is a lot of information available telling us that there is water down there. We do not know things like how long the water has been down there. We can use isotopes to tell us the last time the water was in contact with the atmosphere, and that may tell us that the water was deposited there at the time of the last glaciation; if that is the case, it is probably pretty clean and not vulnerable to contamination by surface activity. If the water was last in contact with the atmosphere 40 years ago, we would worry more about the potential for it to have been contaminated through agriculture or other sources.
We have techniques available to us and we have some information about where the water is. We do not have a comprehensive picture of how much is there, how vulnerable it might be and its actual quality.
Aquifers that are confined, which means that there is no flow in or out, are a natural capital. They are like a mine. We can take the water out and, once we use it, it is gone. In unconfined aquifers, the water comes in and goes out. We can use the water and it will be replenished. We need to identify the kind of aquifer it is and how much water is there. For unconfined aquifers, which regenerate, we need to identify the rate of regeneration, because that tells us how much we might be able to use in a sustainable way.
Senator Milne: To come back to my question, what sort of extra resources do you need to do that?
Mr. Carey: I do not want to say that the sky is the limit, but we would like to have a program funded at about $10 million a year. With that, we could make three to four times the effort that we do now. We do not have that right now, so we are putting a few million dollars in per year and doing it over a longer period of time. This will happen; the only question is how long it will take.
Senator Milne: You mentioned the international aquifer near Sarnia and the concerns about its being polluted because of the storage of industrial chemicals in the old salt mines. They are now storing natural gas in those old salt mines. What effect does that have on an aquifer, if any?
Mr. Carey: I do not know that it has an effect in those salt mines. We concluded that they were pretty confined and there was no leakage.
Senator Milne: That is why they are storing gas in them.
You said that they are finding perchlorate in aquifers in the United States and that we are not finding that here. What is the source of perchlorate?
Mr. Carey: That is an interesting question. I know what some of the sources of perchlorate are. Perchlorate is used in rocket fuel and in various military applications. It is an explosive and a propellant. It is also used to set off air bags in cars.
Perchlorate has been found in the groundwater in more than 35 states in the United States. That was a surprise, because it is found in areas where there has been no known rocket fuel. It was not a surprise to find it in areas that manufactured rocket fuel or around defence bases. We find it in groundwater around some of our defence bases, too. However, the elevated levels that were observed were not related to any point source. Perchlorate is highly oxidized and it is not easy to make. We were puzzled that there would be an apparent natural source.
Some people have said it is formed in lightning, so maybe there is some in the rain. I do not know. It is very stable. In the past, we have had different climate regimes and we have had evaporation. Perchlorate is very stable, like chloride. Another theory is that some of the groundwater in an aquifer is related to previous evaporative events and the perchlorate has become more concentrated.
The answer is that we do not actually know. There is a suggestion in the United States as well that fertilizer from some places in South America may be contaminated with perchlorate. We thought we should check it out because we have potash deposits in Western Canada and we were concerned about that, but that has not been the case here. Our levels of perchlorate are well within guidelines for human health effects.
Senator Milne: It is encouraging to know that we will not blow up.
Mr. Chairman, we have had a lot of information about all the things that we no longer measure in our water, or that people have suggested we should measure. Perhaps we could collate all that information to show what is happening right now. Ignorance is not bliss.
The Chairman: As a matter of fact, that is the substance of a report we will be considering very soon. Dr. Carey and others have made well known to us the lack of information, which is a condition precedent for doing anything about an issue.
Senator Buchanan: We all understand that the four main sources of water for consumption are deep artesian wells, surface wells, municipal water systems and bottled water, although there might be others. It interests me that all of the artesian wells, surface wells and municipal systems fall under provincial jurisdiction. As far as I know, bottled water is not regulated by any level of government. Is that correct?
Mr. Carey: I do not know the answer to that.
Mr. Renaud: The bottles are regulated but the water is not regulated.
Senator Buchanan: I do not recall the name of the gentleman from British Columbia who was on television last week in Halifax, but he is a scientist who indicated very clearly that he does not drink bottled water. Rather, he drinks tap water because he cannot discern any difference between tap water and bottled water. In fact, he claims that tap water is better than bottled water. What do you think about that?
Mr. Carey: I would agree with him because tap water is better regulated and so we should have more confidence in it.
Senator Milne: Much of the bottled water comes straight from a tap somewhere.
Senator Buchanan: That is right. You would be surprised to know just how much bottled water comes from municipal water systems.
Have you found good cooperation between federal and provincial governments with respect to water science research and development and, in particular, drinking water?
Mr. Carey: Aquatic ecosystems, not drinking water, are my area of expertise. With respect to aquatic ecosystems, there is good cooperation. With respect to drinking water, a collegial federal-provincial group set drinking water objectives. In such specific areas there is excellent cooperation. Similarly, there is a master agreement between the federal government and the provinces with respect to water quantity information. As well, there are individual federal- provincial agreements. It is managed as a single program, in some cases by the provinces and in other cases by the federal government. There are some excellent examples of cooperation.
About five years ago, David Anderson, who was then Minister of the Environment, went to a meeting of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and invited the provincial representatives to help set federal priorities. The federal government funds much of the science in our universities and in our federal departments. In the budget cutting over the last decade, many provincial agencies cut their water science capacity and looked to the federal government to do it.
Therefore, our department invited the provinces to help us set the priorities. They requested a better transfer of information to them to help them make decisions. If the science is left to one level of government, then you have to have communication of the priorities for that science and the results of that science with the other levels of government. We took some steps to improve that, and there is a very good level of cooperation.
The Chairman: Honourable senators, I will take a moment for committee business. During the week after next, which has been designated as a committee week, it is a plan to meet on Thursday, November 17, at 8:30 a.m. for most of the day rather than have our meetings split throughout the week. We will hear from three panels of witnesses and read through a report that will address Senator Milne's question about the committee's next report. Senators may assume that unless advised otherwise, that will be the case. We should know for certain by the end of today or early next week.
I have one or two questions, one being quasi-political, for the witnesses. You made the point that constitutionally the management of water resources with certain exceptions is under provincial jurisdiction. You said that the provinces are asking the feds to pay for the research and provide them with the resulting information. We are accustomed to that kind of request, but does it make sense? Why are the provinces wanting to do less with respect to gleaning the information relevant to addressing the water issues?
Mr. Carey: I would say that it is a key element of the federal water policy. We pointed out that that policy is from 1987 though it is still relevant. In the policy, the federal government said that it would focus on water science and technology. The answer to your question is that the federal government said in the 1987 policy that such science and technology was one of their priorities and the provinces did not want to duplicate the effort and could very well spend their money elsewhere. That is the short answer to your question. At that time, the federal government took the leadership role and said that it would do it.
The Chairman: If the federal government takes leadership in that area, it is less likely that the provinces will object to it.
Mr. Carey: Exactly. When then Minister Anderson offered the opportunity to the provinces to help set federal priorities for science, there was unanimous acceptance. It was a short discussion.
The Chairman: With respect to furthering the question asked by several senators today, most recently by Senator Milne, you said that your institute is doing its best with the available resources but that it could do more if given the opportunity. Beyond the $30 million that you have in your A-base budget, how much money could you reasonably and prudently use?
Mr. Carey: Given the current size of the National Water Research Institute, we would like to have another $10 million to $20 million so that we could be much more effective. While I value the partnerships, managing them takes a great deal of time and effort. Managing the resources of 30 or 40 different people coming into the NWRI from across the country is a big preoccupation for us in terms of the legal how-to. If we had that increased amount of funding in our budget today, we could spend more time doing studies and science. Our staff members are active in producing 150 to 250 scientific publications on water each year. It would be easier if we had that money in our budget so that we could better manage our work. On top of the $10 million that we raise outside the NWRI, perhaps prudently, between $10 million and $20 million more in our budget would go a long way.
Senator Kenny: With such a question, I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. What does the taxpayer get for $10 million? It is likely that you do not have an answer now but it would be most interesting for the committee to know what the taxpayer would receive in return for that extra $10 million to NWRI.
Mr. Carey: I have already indicated one area today: we would accelerate our aquifer assessment program with partners.
Senator Kenny: What do the taxpayers get?
Mr. Carey: They get better information to manage the resource.
Senator Kenny: It would be helpful if that were spelled out. Producing papers and doing research sounds fun, but on what and why? How will we move ahead with it? In other words, what change would we see in society if that happened? For example, think of me at Tim Hortons explaining to somebody why another $10 million is going into your shop. What should I say to this person?
Mr. Carey: For years I took a bus in Hamilton on the way to Burlington. It was a one and a half hour trip with steel workers. At some point, those steel workers discovered I was a federal employee. Every day I would be asked a question from a newspaper about something going on. I do not need to think about Tim Hortons; I can think about what I would say to those steel workers.
You raise a valid question. At the National Water Research Institute, we have organized our program around 12 priorities that we think are information needs for Canadians to better manage water resources. There are priorities such as a better understanding of the impact of climate change on our water resources and of the toxicology of chemicals and their impacts on aquatic ecosystems. We have identified new contaminants in the rain in the last few years even as PCBs go down. We do not just do general science. We are organized around those priorities, and we have asked the provinces to validate those priorities. You receive new knowledge in specific areas that we think are priority needs for Canadians.
Senator Kenny: Could we ask the witness to provide the committee with something in writing in that regard?
Mr. Carey: I would be happy to do that.
The Chairman: If you had that information, it would be helpful to be able to say this is exactly what the issue is. That is not being addressed now. People think we do not have enough information that can be addressed. I do not know if you could get very specific.
Mr. Carey: I have a list establishing a national wetlands inventory so that we can understand what we have, how we are protecting it, and whether or not we are losing it and so that we can establish a trend. It is a wetlands monitoring program.
We might establish integrated water resource management projects in places like the Okanagan Basin and the South Saskatchewan River Basin where we have significant water conflict issues. I have a list of scientific things, but it does not address water management issues.
The Chairman: There are others who do water management and do not know what to do. Your input would be helpful to us.
You talked about the content of trace elements found in water being below the guidelines. Who sets the guidelines? How much confidence can we have that those guidelines are in fact right?
My corollary question is with respect to what goes into groundwater from whatever source, such as from runoff, for example. Are guidelines for that okay, or do we need hard lines that are regulated as opposed to guidelines? Moses did not come down from the mountain with 10 suggestions or guidelines.
Mr. Carey: The guidelines are set through federal and provincial bodies. For surface water, the Canadian ecosystem quality guidelines are led by Environment Canada and a group from our agency. They work through the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment to establish the guidelines, and then the provinces are responsible for converting the guidelines into standards that are enforceable. There is a similar process for drinking water.
These are science-based guidelines. Where we have information that pertains to them, you can be quite confident that there is a scientific basis behind it and there is another conservative assumption.
You do not just reach a toxic level and then back off. We look at what is known about the toxicology of some of these substances. Then we establish conservative numbers. It is orders of magnitude in some cases and low in concentration.
I believe you can have confidence in the guidelines. Unfortunately, sometimes our science changes and tells us that there are things we did not know. All we can do is base our guidelines on things we do know. We have a process that attempts to base the things we know on science; it is applied, and I have confidence in it.
Senator Cochrane: You have mentioned better utilization of water. You also mentioned countries that are taking advantage of the water and using it in more ways than for the betterment of everybody.
What relationship do we have with the countries that have shown that their research is doing everything possible to use water in better ways? Do we have a relationship with those countries?
Mr. Carey: Scientifically, we cooperate with them and share information at conferences. I do not know of a relationship with them at the water management level.
Senator Cochrane: Did you mention Israel's being one of those countries?
Mr. Carey: I mentioned Israel because they have a philosophy of water reuse and recycling; they have a framework for making decisions on water quality and have standards of water quality for each reuse. We do not do that.
In Alberta, they are developing some standards for water reuse. They are the closest to having a water reuse strategy.
Senator Cochrane: We are always learning from someone who has done it right.
Mr. Carey: There are international associations, for example the International Water Association, who put out monthly magazines that tell us about such activities. That is where I learn about them. We do not visit them very often, but we learn and share information through the international associations.
Senator Cochrane: I think sharing is very important, especially with people like that.
The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Carey and Mr. Renaud, thank you for being with us. I want to reiterate the expression of gratitude from Senator Angus earlier for your candour and directness. I wish all witnesses were as forthcoming as you. It is very helpful to our work.
The committee adjourned.