Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 10 - Evidence - September 21, 2009 - Afternoon meeting
YELLOWKNIFE, Monday, September 21, 2009
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 1:17 p.m. to study issues relating to the federal government's current and evolving policy framework for managing Canada's fisheries and oceans (topic: matters related to the Canadian Coast Guard and fisheries in the Western Arctic).
Senator Bill Rompkey (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I would like to call this meeting to order.
I want to welcome our witnesses from Environment Canada: Randal Cripps, who is Regional Director General of the Prairie and Northern Region; Bruce MacDonald, who is Manager of Northern Conservation; and Cheryl Baraniecki, who is Manager of Environmental Assessments.
We will begin with Mr. Cripps.
Randal Cripps, Regional Director General, Prairie and Northern Region, Environment Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair and senators, for the invitation to speak today. I understand it is the first time Environment Canada has had the opportunity to appear before this committee, so we are excited to be here.
Environment Canada has a mandate to protect the environment, conserve Canada's natural heritage and provide weather and environmental predictions to keep Canadians informed and safe. We work to repair the damage of the past, to understand the environmental changes expected in the future and to collect and pass on this knowledge to develop, implement and enforce policies that enable sustainable development.
An overview of the Prairie and Northern Region's programs and activities in the Western Arctic will be shared, along with national initiatives that the region supports, including the Canadian Ice Service and research supported by Environment Canada's Science and Technology Branch.
First is the work of the Canadian Wildlife Service. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has already presented information on their work regarding species at risk. Our role focuses on terrestrial species at risk, migratory birds and northern protected areas.
We are increasingly concerned about endangered, threatened and species of special concern that are all affected by the marine environment. Environment Canada is focused on Arctic species such as the polar bear, caribou and ivory gull. At this time, only the ivory gull is currently listed under the Species at Risk Act.
Of note are polar bears, of which an estimated two-thirds of the world's population resides in Canada. One of the threats to polar bears is thought to be climate change which is resulting in decreased sea ice, less habitat and less access to prey. Other threats include increasing Arctic development such as oil and gas development and marine shipping. Polar bears are being considered by the Minister of the Environment for listing under the Species at Risk Act as a species of special concern.
Another large component of the Canadian Wildlife Service is migratory birds and enforcement measures under the Migratory Birds Convention Act of 1994. The Arctic supports globally significant populations of seabirds, shorebirds, sea ducks, and geese. Many of these species migrate through marine environments and breed in dense numbers on coastal cliffs and shorelines, making them susceptible to localized threats. In the event of a shipping accident or an oil spill near a migration route or nesting colony, the likelihood of serious harm to wildlife is certain.
Environment Canada's protected areas include national wildlife areas designated under the Canada Wildlife Act and migratory bird sanctuaries designated under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. This network is supporting conservation of Arctic biodiversity and contains critically important habitat for marine and terrestrial species at risk and migratory birds. Migratory bird sanctuaries in the Northwest Territories occur within the Beaufort Sea region and also have connectivity with the marine environment.
Environment Canada is continuing to expand its northern network. In cooperation with INAC, we are sponsoring up to six new protected areas in the Northwest Territories and we are in the process of designating new protected areas in Nunavut under the recently signed Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement under the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement.
With community support, we are working towards creating a new Arctic national wildlife area across an extensive area off the coast of Baffin Island near Clyde River. This area is a pristine late summer and fall feeding and resting stopover for a large portion of the threatened Davis Strait-Baffin Bay bowhead whale population.
Next is our Environmental Protection Operations Division which manages activities related to environmental emergencies, environmental assessment and disposal-at-sea regulations. When an Arctic marine environment emergency occurs, Environment Canada responds in accordance with the procedures set out in the Spills Working Agreements with the three territorial governments. These agreements establish roles and responsibilities for regulatory authorities responding to different types of spills occurring in the three northern territories and their contiguous waters.
Environment Canada's key role in the event of an environmental emergency is to provide support and consolidated expert environmental advice to the lead response agency. Environment Canada also maintains and operates a 24-hour pollution response capability providing spill response, guidance or direction.
Environment Canada is involved in environmental assessments and project regulatory approvals in the North, participating in these processes both as a regulator and as specialist or expert advisors. Environment Canada's key regulatory responsibilities in the North include but are not limited to those under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Fisheries Act and the Migratory Birds Convention Act.
Specific to the marine environment, Environment Canada's advice includes environmental emergency preparedness and response planning, impacts of marine activities on shoreline sensitive habitats and ocean disposal pollution prevention and water quality.
Disposal at sea permits are granted on a case-by-case basis under the provisions of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999. Material that can be safely disposed of includes dredged material, fisheries waste, ships, inert matter, uncontaminated organic matter and bulky substances.
Environment Canada is playing a role in the Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment initiative through the development of work plans related to key issues on regional waste management, cumulative effects and monitoring and climate change.
Environment Canada prepares and delivers public and marine forecasts and warnings for the Western Arctic under our Arctic Marine Weather Program. Our department also provides support to science and operations activities.
Most recently, we have supported sea mapping projects under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Polar Continental Shelf Project and have provided expertise for science and policy development under the International Polar Year.
The Canadian Ice Service is a national program that operates out of Ottawa and provides information about ice in Canada's navigable waters. We ensure the safety of Canadians, their property and their environment by warning them about hazardous ice conditions in Canada's territorial waters. The Canadian Ice Service is an operational partnership between the Meteorological Service of Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard.
Supporting Environment Canada's mandate requires aligned, high quality and readily accessible science, information and technology. In the Western Arctic, we do this by monitoring the atmosphere, water quality and contaminants. We protect and conserve the environment of the Western Arctic by carrying out wildlife research and developing climate models that refine our understanding of the Arctic sea ice and the Beaufort Sea region.
Environment Canada is undertaking a review to deliver a clear position on our role coast-to-coast on ocean management by taking an integrated and holistic approach to delivering programs affecting coasts and oceans and using innovative strategies and partnerships to influence stakeholder decisions.
In closing, I would like to underscore that Environment Canada continues to support programs and services of the Departments of Fisheries and Oceans, Indian and Northern Affairs and the Canadian Coast Guard and others. Environment Canada will primarily be involved in two of the four pillars of the Northern Strategy; namely, protecting our environmental heritage and promoting social and economic development. Science and technology form an important foundation for the strategy and are essential in support of informed policy and decision making.
Last, climate change will have an impact on the Western Arctic. Environment Canada is engaged in a broad range of climate change related research and prediction to support the implementation of the Northern Strategy and the development of a policy framework for managing Canada's fisheries and oceans.
We welcome the opportunity to respond to your questions.
Senator Hubley: Thank you for your presentation.
We are certainly going to be formulating our questions, but there was one question that popped out of the presentation this morning, and it was this, and I will just read part of it for you. I am going to have you comment on what your work and your responsibility would be on both of these things.
The witness from INAC talked about the responsibility for cleaning up contaminated sites on Crown lands, that is funded under the 2011 Federal Contaminated Sites Program, and so on, and Canada's economic action plan. He also mentioned, however, that ``the lack of diamond mining effluent regulations under the act is problematic.''
I am wondering if you have any more information on that, and if you might describe the problems that that may be presenting for the environment.
Mr. Cripps: I will start answering that, and then I will turn to Cheryl to respond to the majority of that.
With the federal contaminated sites program, Environment Canada has the responsibility to lead that program on behalf of government. We also have our own contaminated sites that we deal with, so we work with a number of other government departments in managing how we deal with contaminated sites across Canada.
I will turn to Cheryl to respond on the diamond mine.
Senator Hubley: Can I just ask to you clarify? You had mentioned that you had some contaminated sites. We are talking about mines that have closed down. Is that generally the contamination that we are dealing with here?
Mr. Cripps: There is a broad range of types of contaminated sites. In the North, you have the DEW Line sites, there are sites where there has been some mining activity. There are sites that are owned by specific departments that have contaminated material on them and are dealt with under the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan.
Cheryl Baraniecki, Manager, Environmental Assessments, Environment Canada: The sites specifically that are contaminated with respect to mining, those presently are under the custodianship of INAC, so Environment Canada does have ownership of some contaminated sites, but generally, those are weather stations and some of the DEW Line sites, et cetera.
When we are talking about mining, that would fall under a different department as far as responsibility for clean-up. Our role as a department within the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan is to provide advice and expertise. Therefore, we actually have within our group experts on contaminated site assessment that we would provide to the various custodial departments in their efforts to remediate those sites under this action plan, so that is our role.
Then we have that broad federal role that Mr. Cripps was speaking to for management of that program in the coordination with the Treasury Board.
I will address your question, senator, on the diamond mining issue, from our perspective departmentally. We do have the Fisheries Act, which is the primary piece of legislation that applies. Under the provisions of the Fisheries Act that Environment Canada has responsibility for, there is a prohibition against the deposition of any deleterious substance that would harm fish or fish habitat. So that is very, very strong legislation that we do enforce within our department.
The regulations that were being referred to earlier with respect to metal mining are regulations that fall under the Fisheries Act and there is no regulation for diamond mining, so that is correct. However, there are regulations within the northern regulatory regime, and from our perspective, we feel that they are the strongest in the world, so there is quite an extensive suite of regulatory oversight that is applied to these diamond mining operations.
Within our department, we actually have a number of experts that work very closely with water boards, management boards, the proponents in dealing with these mining applications and dealing with the mining issues that are there. So we do have that close relationship.
Recently, our department has contracted out a study, an analysis of all the best available technologies and practices to apply to diamond mining, and we are reviewing that right now. So at present, there is no plan for regulation. We feel that there is quite an extensive suite of regulation already in place and we do work quite closely with proponents and with other stakeholders addressing the mining issues.
Senator Raine: Is there any reason why the diamond mines would not come under the same legislation as the metal mines? There must be a reason why you cannot just put them all in the same legislation.
Ms. Baraniecki: The metal mining effluent regulations set out a whole extensive monitoring program process for those mines specifically. There is also a pulp and paper parallel, so we would be looking at developing an entire new set of regulations. It would not just be adding in a new sector, for instance, to an existing suite of regulations. That would have to be looked at if that was deemed an appropriate means to manage those wastes.
It could be done. It would just be a whole separate legislative process to develop that suite of regulations. Right now, there is quite a lot of regulatory oversight and a lot of that work is being captured through best practices and the legislation that is already in place with the territorial land and water boards, so it would be potentially duplicative.
Senator Raine: So we are not in the process of creating some mines that will need to be cleaned up later?
Ms. Baraniecki: Right, and that is really the premise that we have when we review projects under the Environmental Assessment Program. We provide that advice up front so our whole primary function in the group is pollution prevention, as we try to position that within all of our work.
Senator Cochrane: I am still dealing with the mines. We know that years ago, there were mines that were developed and the offing of the mines were left exposed, and of course with that, we have the wind and the rain and everything happening, and it is blowing all over the place and there are talks about different health problems.
Do we have any of these today? Is there regulation in place now to prevent those mines from not cleaning up the residue or the offing? Do you want to talk about that?
Ms. Baraniecki: As far as the specific health effects, I would have to defer that to our colleagues with Health Canada. So you are talking about abandoned mines.
Senator Cochrane: Yes, there have been mines abandoned years ago that are left and companies have just walked away with no responsibility for cleaning up.
Ms. Baraniecki: Primarily, the abandoned mines would now fall under the custodianship of the Government of Canada through the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan, so that there is a plan in place. I think it was $3.5 billion originally put into this program to address these sites that are quite historic.
Senator Cochrane: That is good, but what about for the future? Is there a plan in place now for anyone wanting to open up a mine? Is there a restriction there that if they leave the mine, that it has to be cleaned up perfectly? Is there anything there now within the regulation?
Ms. Baraniecki: Certainly within the environmental assessment process, those are things that are in place. So as a proponent comes forward to develop a new mine, for instance, they have to articulate how they plan to address issues while they are in operation as well as through closure phases, so those are in the process. I suppose there would be corporate insurance.
Unfortunately when companies go under some things can get left out, and that is why we have had some of these situations in the past. Certainly that is all built in to that environmental assessment process now, so companies do have to plan through and articulate how they intend to remediate or clean up or contain any of the results of their operation.
Senator Cochrane: If they do not? There is a fine of some sort, but I still worry about things like that, especially since in the past, there have been so many accidents like that. I am hoping that we are improving on that.
Ms. Baraniecki: I think we are improving. We have learned a lot from the past and as we move forward with our current operations and looking at future legislation, these are unfortunately the hard lessons we have learned that we are building into our processes, for sure.
Senator Raine: You talked a little bit about climate change and said Environment Canada is engaged in a broad range of climate change related research and prediction. Can you give us an example of what type of research is involved?
Mr. Cripps: The biggest area where Environment Canada is involved is trying to understand climate change through modeling. Canada is recognized world-wide as one of the leaders on climate change modeling. We have a significant recognition internationally in our activities on that front. The other aspect of climate change that we are working on from a science and technology perspective is on the impacts and adaptations. That is to say, one focus is understanding the present climate and trying to forecast the changes in the climate in the future, and then the other is, given climate change, how do you change some of your best practices or your infrastructure practices, for instance, in order to adapt to climate change.
To give an example, one of the impacts of climate change is the thawing of permafrost. There is a lot of infrastructure in the North that is built on permafrost, so trying to understand the impacts of climate change and then providing that scientific expertise in order to adapt appropriately in the community so that you are building your infrastructure appropriately.
Senator Raine: In the modeling, that is computer modeling, that is done at the universities and institutes in the South, that is not done up here?
Mr. Cripps: It is not done up here in the North. We have a centre in Montreal that does a lot, it is housed within Environment Canada. We also do work with universities and with other governments, other nations on climate change modeling. That is where we do a lot of the big work. You can understand, with the size of the super computers that drive our numerical modeling, it makes sense to have those housed in secure facilities where you have access to universities and access to the human resources required to do the appropriate research.
Senator Raine: I just was wondering if you are doing any interviewing of some of the elders in terms of their traditional knowledge on climate changes over the years.
Mr. Cripps: Yes. Traditional knowledge is an increasingly important aspect of many of the things that the governments do, particularly in the North. Relying on the oral history that is so developed with the First Nations in the North and being able to integrate that traditional ecological knowledge with western science is important. There are a number of projects where that is moving forward.
One of those projects is in the Mackenzie River Basin where we are working with INAC and INAC is working with the First Nations on trying to incorporate some of that traditional knowledge into the understanding of the Mackenzie River basin.
The Chair: I wanted to follow up with Senator Cochrane's question. Can you talk to us about Nanisivik and the situation there? There was a mine there, it is no longer there. Are there still contaminants? Is it in the process of being cleared up?
Ms. Baraniecki: I do not have any specific details on Nanisivik. Our group within the Environmental Assessment Program as well as in the Contaminated Sites Program would provide expertise to the custodial department. I believe there is a refurbishment of that facility under National Defence, so as far as any specific details on the status of Nanisivik, I would have to get back to you on that. Certainly we have been engaged operationally in providing our expertise on areas related to our mandate, water quality, air quality, contaminants on those facilities.
The Chair: We understood it was going to National Defence, too. I do not think, to my knowledge, it has gone yet. It has not gone to National Defence but it is one of the two sites competing for the Arctic Research Centre. I ask it in that context as to whether Nanisivik is clean or not.
Ms. Baraniecki: That I would have to get back to you, would have to verify with the current custodian, looking at their data, what their status is, but we can certainly look into that. We may not have the answers within our department.
Senator Hubley: I would like you to share with us the work that you may be doing with communities. I come from Prince Edward Island, where we put in Waste Watch probably 20 years ago. We had to recycle, reuse, that type of activity. Do you work with communities? Do you set up programs or change the way they may have originally been doing things so they are now doing them in a more environmentally safe way? Do you do that type of work?
Mr. Cripps: I can answer to start with.
We do have some programs that are directed towards communities, and one of them is the EcoAction Community Funding Program. It is a program where communities can come forward with projects and can get funding. It is a grants and contribution program that does allow some activities along what you have said, so there is a certain amount of that.
Ms. Baraniecki: I have nothing to add specifically with community engagement. On the waste issue, there are broader waste initiatives that are under way with respect to municipal waste water effluent, but I am not sure that is what you are interested in.
Senator Hubley: Yes, surely. There is such a sensitivity now to the fact that pollution is a real thing and it does sometimes endanger fishing industries, it may be polluting lakes, it could be doing a number of things.
I am just wondering what you see as your role being within those communities or within the community setting to educate them about the best ways and means for them.
Ms. Baraniecki: Within our program, we are working on the municipal waste water effluent regulations that are coming, they are under development. There is a five-year window for us to obtain some knowledge about specific issues and technology related to waste water effluent in the North, so there is quite an extensive monitoring and research program that is going on. I think it is in about 75 different communities throughout N.W.T.
We are primarily looking at lagoon technology in these small communities. With winter, they do not work all year round like they do in southern climates, so we are trying to learn a little bit about these lagoons and how they work and what is optimal and what is not optimal for treating municipal waste water.
In some of those projects, we actually have engaged community members to learn how to do the sampling for us so the community members have become involved with us. The hope is that we would eventually through some training have people in place to help manage these wastes at the municipal level.
Within our program, we do offer to work with and look towards community members for engagement, their knowledge, their advice, and also to help us implement these programs.
Senator Hubley: Have you experienced any contamination with drinking water?
Ms. Baraniecki: Not that I am familiar with.
Senator Hubley: Could you please describe the role you are playing in the Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment Project? Could you expand on that for us?
Ms. Baraniecki: The Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment is a new opportunity we are excited about. We are interested in looking at how to consider the environmental assessment process on a regional scale, given that there is a potential for many developments with overlapping issues and overlapping stakeholders.
It is now at the planning stage. Environment Canada is participating in three key work plan areas: waste management, climate change and monitoring. We are at the level where we are trying to figure out what it is we can contribute and what those work plans need to do to set up those phases within the environmental assessment process on that regional scale. Just looking at environmental assessments operationally, we could participate in 30, 40 projects over and over again, giving the same advice to proponents or trying to deal with consultations in individual communities on a project-by-project scale. We do see that there is a significant opportunity to gain efficiencies through the environmental assessment process by looking at things on a regional scale and focusing our energy on the project- specific items, the things that are unique to whatever operation that a proponent might be trying to put forward.
That is the approach we are taking. We are still involved in all of our individual project work, but we are looking right now at this opportunity with this place based initiative in the Beaufort. We want to get involved early, at the planning stage, to see how our mandate and interests and issues can be addressed through that process working together with the other proponent stakeholders and the governments that are involved. It is something we are quite excited about.
Senator Raine: I would like to go back to the issue of communities. I know there are a lot of very small communities scattered throughout the North. Do most of them have a sewage treatment collection system and a centralized plant or are they on septic systems or how does that work? The same question with regard to water systems.
Ms. Baraniecki: I am not familiar with their water treatment systems at all, but a lot of the municipal waste water systems are very small. They are not big large-scale plants as you would see in major centres. A lot of them are lagoons and in-place systems, so there is a varying degree of systems depending on the community that you are looking at.
We are not looking at the most current sort of technology that is being applied in these locations for sure. Part of this five-year window is to look at what is in place, how it is working and to give the regulatory agenda time to figure out what is going to be needed to most efficiently and effectively manage those wastes in those communities. We do not have that baseline knowledge quite yet in order to say that this is the type of standard that we need to have or these are the regulations or these are the processes.
Senator Raine: You need to find some best practices and things like that.
Ms. Baraniecki: That is correct. We do have folks in Ottawa and folks here in the region doing studies and taking samples and doing that kind of work. We are trying to piece that together. That will then be fed into the regulatory developers who will look at the best pieces of technology to apply to these communities.
Senator Raine: When it comes to solid waste disposal, there is a well established principle, if you like, in terms of back-country hiking and camping: take out what you took in. It seems to me that that is not happening in the remote communities. More and more plastics and packaging waste and those kinds of things come in and I do not think they have a way of dealing with it. Is somebody looking at coming up with a solution for that? I would just hate to see plastic bags floating across the barren lands. That is what is in the future if we do not watch out.
Ms. Baraniecki: The solid waste strategies are managed at a municipal level. Where we have parallels, of course, is with major developments or big camps that are being set up for proponents that are going to be potentially involved in major exploration or resource extraction activities. They have the same issues. They have a big camp, they have solid waste, they have municipal waste. While we are not involved at the community level and at a municipal level, we are looking at issues through the environmental assessment process specifically at those waste issues that are being handled. There may be some best practices and things that could be integrated within the community level.
We are looking at it, but not at that level. We are more focused on the industrial developments and ensuring that plastic bags and garbage and all those things that would be associated with those facilities do not end up in the environment.
Senator Raine: I am new to this committee, I am new to this analysis. It seems to me that when you say municipal level, most people think of a municipality like Yellowknife, but when you are talking about really small communities scattered throughout the North, they do not have any resources. So to say it is up to them is a little bit like just washing your hands of it, knowing full well that it is not going to get done.
As a Canadian, I would like to think that Environment Canada has an interest in finding a solution to these problems.
Bruce MacDonald, Manager, Northern Conservation, Environment Canada: I would add for the Northwest Territories, MACA — the Municipal and Community Affairs Department of the Government of Northwest Territories —is responsible for municipal waste and things like that, like garbage bags and those sorts of things.
Do they have it in control? I do not know, but it is perhaps a question that we could take away and pose for you. I do not know if they are testifying or speaking with you folks here today or not. Perhaps that would be helpful.
Senator Raine: We are off the topic of fisheries and oceans, but unfortunately a lot of times the waste winds up in the ocean and from my understanding, it is not that easy once it is in the ocean up in the Arctic for the environment itself to deal with it.
Mr. Cripps: I think one point that is maybe worth clarifying with the committee, the environment is a unique beast in that its responsibility lies with different orders of government for different aspects.
So you have heard that on the municipal waste water, the federal government would come in and have certain guidelines related to municipal waste water effluent, but from a community's perspective, it is the municipality that deals with it. It is a shared responsibility amongst the three orders of government, and arguably the four orders of government when you are dealing with First Nation communities.
The Chair: I think it was not just plastic. In some of the communities, we saw derelict equipment left around and parts of containers and things like that. It is not just plastic bags. There are other things left in the communities that do not seem to get taken away so that the community becomes more and more cluttered. I guess as you say, it is a question of whose responsibility that is. Perhaps it is not a responsibility of Environment Canada, but it is something we noticed and we did not like what we saw.
Senator Raine: It was interesting because one of the community leaders that we spoke to said that is his biggest pet peeve, his biggest regret is that nothing is being done.
The Chair: But Environment Canada really has no authority or clout in that regard, is that right?
Mr. Cripps: We can provide a regulatory framework for certain things, and we can encourage through some of our grants and contributions programs things like reduce-reuse-recycle, in conjunction with some other departments that have that. With the shared responsibility that exists for the environment, you do have responsibilities at different orders of government.
Senator Raine: In British Columbia some years ago, they put in a program where they took a crushing machine around to the rural communities to gather up derelict vehicles and crush them and take them away for scrap metal, and that was an effort on the part of the province for the good of the whole province.
It seems to me that if we have barges taking supplies into these small communities, I do not know if those barges come back empty or not, but there could be some kind of a program that everybody together could work on to make sure that they do not come back empty, they bring back what is left over.
Senator Cochrane: Would you just give us a wee little briefing on what you have seen in regards to the changing of the climate as it pertains to the Western Arctic?
Mr. Cripps: You have already heard me talk a little bit about the melting of the permafrost. There are so many other aspects of climate change, but I could start to address some of the species elements.
The North is impacted more by climate change than areas that are bmore tropical. As you start to see more warming, you will see the northern progression of certain species. As your tree line starts to creep north, you start to see certain species of fish in areas that you would not have seen them before. I have heard from First Nation communities observations of birds showing up earlier than they would normally show up or a species of bird that is not normally indigenous to that area being seen further and further north.
Those are some of the things that you see, and you get that evidence through both western science and the tradition ecological knowledge.
Senator Cochrane: I understand that you are engaged with various orther departments with your research. How often do you get together and share the information?
Mr. Cripps: One of the things that I might provide as an example, though I am not an expert in it, is the International Polar Year, which was this past year. That was an opportunity for Environment Canada, other government departments and other countries to come together to do concerted research on the Arctic. I think that is probably one of the best examples of it.
Where Environment Canada would get involved is in trying to understand species, habitat, the complicated weather environment and changes in ice cover in the North. That is where we would have our scientists contributing to that broader Arctic knowledge.
Senator Cochrane: What do you do with this knowledge when it is all accumulated?
Mr. Cripps: Science is really the basis of our department. You use the science and it is critically important to have that science so that you can use that to form the basis for policy development. Without that science, policy is made in a bit of a void.
For the North, having that grounded science helps us then move forward and help the government with the implementation of policy.
Senator Cochrane: So you have already made some recent policies in regards to this climate change?
Mr. Cripps: Right now, I know that the government is preparing for its international discussions at COP15 around the climate change issue, but I am not familiar with the specifics.
Senator Hubley: Are any of your lakes or rivers polluted now?
Mr. Cripps: In Canada?
Senator Hubley: No, in the North. In Canada, I know the answer to that question.
Mr. Cripps: I am not aware of any specific situations in the North like we have in the south with the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and Lake Winnipeg, where there are some challenges. Right now, the North does have a more pristine environment, so I am not aware of any contaminated lakes in the North.
Senator Hubley: The issue that I have in the back of my mind is the number of First Nations communities, perhaps not this far North, who have drinking water sources that are just not acceptable. I think most provinces have experienced boil-water orders at one time or another because of issues of contamination of the environment. I am just wondering, do you face any of the similar problems here in the North as yet?
Mr. Cripps: That is something that I would not be familiar with at all.
Senator Cook: I am going to refer you back to your second paragraph because I do not know very much about Environment Canada and its mandate, and I am going to try to relate this to the concerns that I have of the environment where I have just come from, where permafrost is certainly an impediment to get rid of waste in a proper and efficient manner.
When our plane landed the other day in a community, I saw the most humongous garbage dump that I ever saw in my life. It was right on a piece of water. The North is tundra and water. You cannot drop something here that will not affect the water there, or vice versa. We flew over it on a clear day, and I was amazed.
As Senator Hubley says, if your mandate is to protect the environment and to conserve our natural heritage, surely we have a responsibility as a department to clean up the reserves of rural Canada, where our First Nations people live.
I am going to fast forward to the High Arctic where it will be far more difficult to look after the environment once the Northwest Passage is open, when all this traffic is coming through. Once the tourist season starts up there, it is going to have an impact on those people who live very simply off the land.
Is this a part of your mandate, to provide oversight, to look at changes coming as a result of climate change?
Thirty thousand people live up there. I have no idea how they get their drinking water, and I have no idea how they manage their waste. I have no idea how they manage the fish plants and the effluent that comes from it. That is going to be advanced more with the opening of navigation through the Northwest Passage.
I am just wondering, do you have any jurisdiction or responsibility for that?
Mr. Cripps: For certain aspects of it, we would. Ms. Baraniecki has already talked about some of the waste water effluents as being an example, where there was waste water treatment.
There are aspects for emissions that we would have responsibility for, so your marine traffic would be an example. We would have some work to do with Transport Canada, presumably, on emissions from marine vessels using the Northwest Passage.
It depends on the issue. The answer is yes, we would have a role to play. A big portion of it is in the regulatory aspects of it.
Ms. Baraniecki: In addition to the Fisheries Act, we also have the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is another kind of cornerstone piece of legislation. Within that, there are a number of regulations and provisions for managing toxic substances from development or as a result of emergencies, or the ocean disposal program. There is a whole suite of things. The export-import of hazardous waste regulations fall under there as well.
Our mandate is rooted in that legislation and then within that, there are numerous pieces. We do not have broad sweeping powers in the North or anywhere, but it is shared. It is very much shared between the territories or the provinces or wherever we are in Canada. It is a shared responsibility.
Senator Cochrane: It would help me to understand more fully if you would answer this question: has the Fisheries Act been used in any way, shape or form to try to make the First Nations communities of this country safe with drinking water and with sewage?
It is not the fault of the people living there. There is a long history there. I am just wondering who is responsible for cleaning it up or making sure those people live in a safe environment. The same thing with different conditions is going to impact on the High Arctic. Because 30,000 people live up there, and we talk a lot about Environment Canada.
Let me tell you a personal story. I had a piece of land, I sold it a couple of weeks ago. It was a pristine meadow with two highways on either side of it. Before the deal could close, I had to get an environment assessment. I did. It cost $1,500, and I was pleased to do it. I could see Environment Canada making sure that the land is safe.
Surely, somebody somewhere has the responsibility for people's actions who, through no fault of their own, because of the harsh environment they live in, cannot do anything about this modern stuff that is coming. Can you imagine the number of the bags of potato chips? You know, just because of changing lifestyles and changing patterns.
The same is true with the diamond mines and other mines. Is there any consideration being given to requiring that when you come and get your permit and you are going to make a lot of money mining diamonds, you have to pay a holdback for clean-up in case you do go under or in case you go off in the dead of night and do not do anything? Have you considered it?
Ms. Baraniecki: There have been examples where, I think in British Columbia, I am not familiar with the specific projects, but they were looking at, something like an insurance mechanism for those projects to ensure that the clean- up would happen in what might have been a mining project near some communities. Those types of approaches are being evaluated and tested out right now.
To go back, though, to one of your earlier comments, the Fisheries Act is a very powerful piece of legislation and it is one that we actually use quite frequently. Within Environment Canada, there is a whole arm of enforcement officers that will go out and do inspections and enforce the Fisheries Act.
Having said that, the Fisheries Act is an act to protect fish and fish habitat. Of course, people use the same water that the fish are in, so enforcing the Fisheries Act often has an added benefit for the human health aspect. The actual human elements and the jurisdiction of that would fall both to Health Canada as well as to the Indian and Northern Affairs group with some of those specific communities.
Senator Cook: Let me close by simply saying that civilization from the South is in the North. You talked about the Fisheries Act being responsible for rivers. Their main source of food and the money that they make is the Arctic char in their river. So if somebody somewhere does not keep a weather eye on the land and what is happening to it and what is being deposited on it, it will be all for naught.
Senator Raine: You were talking about doing some research under Environment Canada. Are we monitoring for persistent organic pollution, POPs, that come from a long way from here, but wind up getting into the Arctic Ocean? The Stockholm Convention, which we were part, of mandated cleaning up POPs from the waterways. Is that happening? Are we monitoring the Arctic waterways for those compounds?
Mr. Cripps: You are asking a question of regional people. Most of that kind of work is done in Ottawa, and I do know that we have work that is being done on the persistent organic pollutants, but the extent and which specific programs are involved, I do not know.
Senator Raine: Because we can look and see pristine water, but we do not see those compounds. They are invisible but they are there.
Mr. Cripps: I understand, as you said, that the circulation in the atmosphere is such, in the way the waves and the jet stream operate, that you get a lot of deposition of material that is not from Canadian soil. That is the aspect of the persistent organic pollutants that I am aware of. So it is deposited as a result of the weather systems that we have in Canada.
Senator Raine: And from the ocean currents, because I think they wind up in the Arctic Ocean because they come up from southeast Asia.
Mr. Cripps: Yes, there are some currents, you are right, that do push up the coast.
Senator Raine: So you do not know of any nationally organized programs to monitor for that?
Mr. Cripps: It is something that I can look into and get back to the committee.
Senator Raine: That would be great, thank you.
Senator Hubley: Who issues the disposal-at-sea permits?
Ms. Baraniecki: Environment Canada issues those permits under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. With that process, a proponent would apply to dispose of something at sea. The information is collected and reviewed by Environment Canada and the permit is actually issued from Environment Canada.
Senator Hubley: In Ottawa?
Ms. Baraniecki: The actual permit is signed off by the regional director in each of the different regions It is part of a national program. In the region, our regional staff are focused on reviewing the permit applications and participating in any of the subsequent monitoring during the disposal activity. The overarching science piece to that program and the policy is driven out of Ottawa. It is an actual national approach, but the specific permitting activity is regionally based.
Senator Hubley: Could you give me an example of a permit, please?
Ms. Baraniecki: Certainly. The most common permit that we see in Canada is of course dredging and disposal of sediment material, particularly on both the east and west coast. I will give you a northern example because we do not do that many ocean disposal permits. In fact, we do on average probably maybe one a year. It has been a recurring permit up in Sachs Harbour, where there is the on-ice disposal of musk-ox offal from a commercial hunt.
The operators have say 5,600 carcasses, and they bulldoze them out onto the ice and their permit is for that disposal. The premise is that as the ice melts in the harbour, the offal goes into the sea at a location with significant and high enough energy that that organic matter does not settle and create an anoxic environment below in the bay. It does sort of disperse that waste offal that way.
Generally, these are permits where appropriate land disposal options are not available. In Vancouver, they have landfill issues because they are so tight for space and disposal of sediment from a dredging activity makes a lot of sense. In the North, we would not necessarily have meat rendering type facilities readily available, so this is an appropriate mechanism to dispose of that offal.
That is the current permit that we see pretty much every year. We are also anticipating a permit application for the small craft harbour development at Pangnirtung. Right now, the dredge site has been sampled and characterized because we want to make sure what will be dredged is clean and the potential disposal sites are being characterized and sampled right now as well. We have not actually received a permit application but it is something we are anticipating in the next year.
Senator Hubley: Would there ever be a possibility that say dredging material from outside the region would be disposed of in the North?
Ms. Baraniecki: I do not think so. You try to disposal material fairly locally. It would be pretty expensive to ship material that far to be disposed of, so generally they are fairly localized solutions for disposal.
Senator Hubley: That certainly would be the case in the North. As the South moves North, and I think as Senator Cook intimated, it is getting increasingly difficult for that sort of thing to happen environmentally in the South. I would not want to think that it would be moved to another jurisdiction and disposed of. I am just wondering if there is anything to prohibit that.
Ms. Baraniecki: There would not be anything specific to prohibit it.
Senator Hubley: But it would have to have a permit.
Ms. Baraniecki: It would have to have a permit. The proponent actually has to file a notice of intent in the local paper or find a local means of notification. If anybody were to propose something like that, the local community would certainly have an opportunity. If there were issues, if Environment Canada heard about a lot of issues from the proponent or from the community on this, we would certainly consider that. If they were not able to be resolved, we would potentially not grant a permit for those activities.
I should say that the permits are not ongoing forever permits. They are time bounded for a maximum of one year, so they are very specific to that activity. The proponents have to pay a fee. There is a flat fee for the application as well as a fee for every thousand cubic metres of dredged material, so this is something that is very planned out.
Once the permit is reviewed, it is published again in the Canada Gazette and there is an additional 30-day waiting period at that point before any activity could occur, so there is another mechanism for the public, stakeholders or the community to actually say there is a problem here.
In fact, there have been permits that were denied or not granted, so it is something that we take quite seriously. It is not a free-for-all. It is certainly very restrictive on what can be disposed and it is in accordance with the London Convention, the London Protocol, so we are honouring international agreements with that program.
The Chair: The problem that I see, and it is not your problem and you cannot solve it, is the fact that NORDREG is not mandatory. In terms of disposal of waste materials by ships, for example, any ship can come through the Arctic waters now and it does not have to report. We do not know what ships they are.
Moreover, we have heard that RADARSAT is limited in its capacity to identify ships under a certain length, certain size. So I just make that observation.
We are hoping that NORDREG will be made mandatory. We are told it will. I do not know what the hold-up is, but it has not been done yet. It is a concern if you have to issue permits to dispose of waste materials and yet ships coming through the Arctic waters can dispose of them because we do not know if they are there or not. That is not your problem, it is just an observation.
Ms. Baraniecki: It does keep us up at night too.
The Chair: I would thank you very much for appearing and answering our questions. You have been very helpful.
Senators, we have put time aside for a town hall meeting if anyone wishes to appear before us to make a presentation. We have not at the present time had any person indicating that they want to appear, but if there is anybody in the room now who would like to speak to us, we would be glad to hear from you. We do want to hear from people. We want to hear from everybody we can while we are here, and this is an opportunity for the public at large and individuals to say what they think.
I am just going to wait for a while to see what happens. We had advertised from three o'clock to four o'clock, but there is no indication yet that anybody is coming. My suggestion is that we suspend our meeting and see what happens.
(The committee suspended.)
(The committee reconvened.)
The Chair: Mr. Todd Slack, why not tell us about yourself and make some comments and then we probably will ask you some questions. We will go back to the meeting.
Todd Slack, as an individual: Thank you, and I hope that I can pull a coherent thought together here.
I would like to thank you guys for coming up here. It is always good when people come to hear the northern part of the story, and I know after looking at the quick biographies, a lot of you folks are northerners yourself.
My name is Todd Slack. I work for one of the First Nations here in Yellowknife but I am not here appearing on behalf of the First Nations. I am just appearing to tell you about my interaction with fisheries-related projects and the biggest challenge that we face. This is probably something that you have heard five, six, fifteen times today, and it is a money issue.
In my office there are two officers responsible for implementing a lot of the programs. This summer we had three programs ongoing with DFO mandates. Our office for the first time ever received actual office funding to provide for one of those positions. This was the first time, and we received $16,000. Naturally, this is not a lot of money. It covers about one quarter of a salary. To give you an idea, these three programs took up a whole person's time for pretty much all the summer, so we are talking four months.
Then when it comes to the money, there are two issues. One is the time line as to funding, and I appreciate that you guys are big picture and I am talking about a small picture, but I think that in between, there is something there.
Let us say we apply for a project and this year, we did a Shortjaw Cisco traditional knowledge project, which you may or may not have heard of today. I am not sure if DFO presented on it. This project was really successful and it went off really well in the end but I think this was more because of luck than anything else, luck and the skill of the people involved. Because the funding was not awarded for this project until very late in the season. Here in the territory, we are talking about three, maybe three and a half months of real implementation time for on-the-water kind of projects.
I am not sure the exact time lines but it was very late into the year in which we did this. This was an elders' project, and we did not get to implement this until the last week of August, by which time we are into the sort of bad weather you are seeing. It is windy, it is rainy, and we were very fortunate with the weather as well. The good weather allowed a lot of elders to participate, because it was an on-the-water project.
One is the timing. I appreciate that there are difficulties with the March year end, but in order to do the jobs that DFO wants us to do and we want to do and we asked to do, we need to get the money sooner. I can appreciate that is probably a big deal for every agency, but certainly in the North, it is a killer. I have to say that DFO this year is way better than INAC, so a pat on the back for their much more timely awarding of funds on that.
Then the second aspect is when it comes to the First Nation in the North, and we are certainly seeing here in the territory, there is intense competition for these positions. On a personal level, I love working for the First Nation, but in terms of the provision of technical and experienced personnel, we have to compete with them.
While the First Nation is never going to be able to compete on salary or on benefits or those sort of things, there is much more reward for the work that you do, and you can see the difference that you make.
For us, when year in, year out, you do not know if you are going to have funding for these positions, it makes it very difficult to provide for the long-term retention of staff. This year, for instance, there are a lot of question marks. Assuming we have the same kind of luck as we did last year, everything is going to work out. If it does not, next year we are going to be looking at staff cuts, and the experienced personnel that we do have are going to be looking for other jobs.
While I appreciate that the funding to the First Nations lands department is generally an INAC responsibility and the things within that INAC mandate do represent the majority of our work, this whole summer was DFO projects. Within the funding structure of how DFO awards its money, there is very little opportunity to provide for office expenditures and salaries and all the things that go into having the properly equipped, properly trained and experienced staff there to deliver those programs.
We are the step in between government and the First Nations; we facilitate these kinds of things. However, if you do not retain that staff year over year, it makes it very difficult to do a good job and you enter into a connected downspin where you cannot deliver on what you want to and it is mostly a function of the available staff, et cetera.
The provision of office funds to have the people there is just a big catch-22. INAC provides about half our budget and they provide more than half of our work, but DFO funding does not provide for a lot of that. If we could get the money earlier and there was more opportunity to apply awarded monies for its office expenditures, it would certainly make things a lot easier for us.
I think we do a very good job in our office of providing a good bang for the buck, and that is important to both me and my colleague.
The Chair: What was your project?
Mr. Slack: This year's? The one in particular I was talking about was a species-at-risk related project with the Shortjaw Cisco. One of the DFO people that would have presented today might have talked about the Googly-eyed Ciscos. Maybe not.
It was working with the elders to develop traditional knowledge related to this species at risk. I think it went off very well and it is early days yet on the reports. The final report has not been written, but I think DFO and Environment Canada are going to be very satisfied with the product that they get back.
Of the funding for that project, less than 10 per cent or less than 5 per cent of that project is going to go to office expenditures. Yet that project was a very intensive product for us to deliver. It involved all three of our staff, both link officers and the admin person. The balance between what gets dedicated to the office expenditures, you know, salaries and that kind of thing, versus the monies and the time that we put into that is just not there. There just needs to be a better sort of balance between that.
In other cases, I think with government and claim organizations, I think they have more opportunity to balance those things out, but that is not a reality within our organization and it really limits our ability to provide.
The Chair: You received core funding from INAC and this is a project from DFO.
Mr. Slack: Yes. It is important to say that I am speaking on a personal level here and it is because I want to do a good job, and the core funding is on the side and that gets applied to office, but then we also do four or five months of direct DFO work that we essentially receive no office funding for.
Senator Raine: If the money came in a more timely manner, would it make the office administration part of the job easier to manage so that the staff in the office could do it over longer period of time?
Mr. Slack: Undoubtedly. However, I would say you could actually do it in a shorter amount of time. Here in the territories, I would say that pretty much every First Nation ends up on what they call the suspended funding list, simply because there are not enough auditors here in the N.W.T. to actually get the year-end audit out the door. Even if you are good and you are doing everything right, the amount of time that these comprehensive audits take is significant and the provision of labour is in short supply.
If we could get the money earlier in the year before suspended funding kicks in, it would make things a lot easier, because we always get off the suspended funding list, but there is a period of four months there with a big question mark as to what you can and cannot spend money on.
Then you are into the fall, getting close to the winter, and so you would beat the imposition of the suspended funding list, but more than that, you would also limit the amount of time that you have to spend on doing important finance stuff at the same time as you are working on the project. If it could all be much quicker and when you are much more intimately familiar with it, it would just be a lot easier for everyone involved. Then you could do your summer projects without having to worry if the money is going to come.
Senator Cochrane: When did you submit your proposal?
Mr. Slack: That particular proposal was in the fall of 2008. It was a long time ago. It took a long time before we found out we were awarded the money, I am going to say end of May, we found out, so we are into the summer here. Then there was some discussion about whether we could do the project because we did not receive as much as we had applied for. We did not actually receive the majority of the funds, something like 60 per cent of the funds, until the end of July. We still do not have some of the money in hand presently, but it is apparently on the way.
The Chair: Thanks very much. You have been helpful and have given us some insight.
Senator Raine: Do you do projects for the DFO every summer?
Mr. Slack: Yes, pretty much every summer and fall. I have only been in this position for two years, so when you say every, that is the caveat that goes with it, so pretty much every year.
Senator Raine: These are ongoing projects that it is anticipated that you or somebody in your position will be doing work for DFO every year?
Mr. Slack: Yes, not necessarily the same projects but that need exists every year.
Senator Raine: I guess I am a little bit concerned when you say that the time line makes it difficult to keep experienced people in the position. What happens then? The work just does not get done
Mr. Slack: Well, that is what happens in the worst case. If I understand the point, you are talking about if the staff person leaves?
At the end of the year, if we cannot make our budget, there are hard questions that will come up. If you cannot find the funding one year, it makes it much more difficult to have somebody come back and if there is no guarantee that I am going to make it through the year, at the end of that sort of fiscal year, I am going to be looking around.
I have a mortgage and my colleague has four kids and there has to be a paycheque there, and if you are not making the budget for the program, you are either taking it out of other First Nations programs when there are many needs within the First Nation, or you are hoping for year-end surpluses from INAC or other agencies, which is not a satisfactory way to operate.
Senator Raine: When you submit these proposals, are they submitted to the local office of DFO?
Mr. Slack: It varies. We deal with the local DFO office, but some of these are national programs. That one species- at-risk program I was talking about was a national program out of Sarnia, I believe, and that complicates the whole funding process, naturally. I would say the majority are local.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Slack.
Does anyone else in the room wish to make a presentation to the committee?
(The committee adjourned.)