Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue No. 50 - Evidence - October 25, 2018
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 25, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:01 a.m. to study emerging issues related to its mandate.
Senator Rosa Galvez (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. My name is Rosa Galvez; I am an independent senator from Quebec, and I am the chair of this committee. I will now ask the senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting on my right with the deputy chair.
[English]
Senator MacDonald: Michael MacDonald, Nova Scotia.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum, Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
Senator Mockler: Percy Mockler from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman, Montreal, Quebec.
Senator Neufeld: Richard Neufeld, British Columbia.
[Translation]
The Chair: I would also like to introduce, on my right, Sam Banks, our parliamentary analyst, and Maxime Fortin, the clerk of the committee.
[English]
Colleagues, our meeting today will focus on the fall reports of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
For our first panel, we will receive the commissioner and members of her staff. They will present the four reports released earlier this fall.
For our second panel, we will hear the answers of four federal departments to the commissioner’s reports.
I am pleased to welcome Julie Gelfand, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development; Heather Miller, Principal; James McKenzie, Principal; and Elsa DaCosta, Director.
Thank you very much for joining us. Ms. Gelfand, I invite you to proceed with your statement.
[Translation]
Julie Gelfand, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Madam Chair, I am very pleased to be here today to discuss our fall 2018 reports, which were presented to Parliament on October 2. Joining me today are Heather Miller, Principal, who worked on the report on the strategic environmental assessments, James McKenzie, who worked on the report on toxic substances, and Elsa DaCosta, who led the chapter on marine mammals. These are the experts I have with me today.
Our first audit dealt with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which describes the federal government’s responsibility to protect Canadians from the risks of toxic substances, such as mercury, lead and PCBs. This audit is the fifth one we have done on toxic substances since 1999, and we continue to find concerning gaps.
[English]
The government has identified 138 toxic substances, such as mercury, lead and PCBs, which need to be controlled either through regulations, pollution prevention plans, codes of practice or some other mechanism.
We found that Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada had not assessed whether their action plans were achieving their overall objectives. This means that the government does not know how well it is meeting its goal of protecting Canadians from the risks of toxic substances.
The government has developed 39 regulations to control these risks. Environment and Climate Change Canada conducted some 10,000 inspections over three years, but many regulations covering substances such as flame retardants received few or no inspections.
[Translation]
About one-fifth of inspections focused on a single substance used by drycleaners, without any evidence to show that it presented a higher risk to human health or the environment.
As far as public information is concerned, both Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada play a role in informing Canadians about risks from toxic substances. We found that most of the information available on their websites was often hard to find and very technical. Content was not presented in a way that made it easy for the average person to find out about the risks of toxic substances. These weaknesses make it difficult for Canadians to get the information they need to make informed decisions.
[English]
Turning now to our second audit, which looked at what the government has done to protect marine mammals from the threats posed by vessels and commercial fishing. In Canada, there are over 40 species of marine mammals, such as whales, dolphins and seals, and 14 of these populations are on the endangered species list.
We found that Fisheries and Oceans Canada, in collaboration with Parks Canada, Transport Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, was very slow to take action to reduce threats to marine mammals. The departments have several tools at their disposal to protect these animals. For example, they can establish protected areas. They can set speed limits for vessels. They can close or restrict fisheries, and they can set distances for whale-watching boats.
We found that most of these tools were not used until the situation became severe. Some 12 endangered North Atlantic right whales, representing 3 per cent of the world’s remaining population, were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 2017. It was then that the departments took actions to protect a few whale species by, for example, closing certain fisheries and introducing speed limits for ships in some areas.
[Translation]
We also found that Fisheries and Oceans Canada lacked the resources and guidance to effectively respond to distressed marine mammals. There are about 900 instances of distressed marine mammals each year, and very few people are trained to help.
The measures recently put in place have been reactive, limited and late. The clock could well be running out for certain species, such as the West Coast southern resident killer whales, which has been listed as an endangered species for 15 years and whose population is now down to 74 individuals. There needs to be continued action from the departments to manage threats for all marine mammals.
[English]
I would like to draw your attention now to the results of our third audit. It examined whether federal organizations were taking the required steps to ensure that environmental considerations were included in the information provided to government decision makers.
This is an area we have been auditing for the last five years. In 2012, our office started a multi-year plan to audit all 26 government organizations that are required to assess the positive or negative environmental impacts of their proposed policies, plans and programs. In fact, James McKenzie started that plan, and Heather Miller helped us complete it.
In 2015, we found that the organizations we audited assessed less than half of their proposals, and results were even worse in 2016 and 2017.
[Translation]
This year, given past poor results, we decided to re-examine all 26 organizations to once again assess their progress. We were happy to find that they had carried out strategic environmental assessments for more than 90 per cent of the policy, plan and program proposals they submitted to cabinet. This is marked progress over previous years.
Let me close with environmental petitions. These petitions are an important mechanism that Parliament put in place to give Canadians a way of getting answers from federal ministers to their questions about environment and sustainable development. Last year, we received 10 petitions from individuals and organizations. Topics included the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and nuclear waste disposal and management. Case studies on past environmental petitions are also included and they address nuclear operator liabilities, marine protected areas, shipwreck oil spill cleanup and the 2030 Agenda.
[English]
We also surveyed petitioners about their experience. The vast majority of respondents were not satisfied with the answers they received from the departments. However, they stated that they were likely to use the petition process again.
To recap, the government still has work to do on toxic substances and marine mammals, but there is a bit of a bright light when it comes to integrating environmental considerations into government decision making.
Madam Chair, that concludes my opening remarks. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.
[Translation]
The Chair: Thank you for your remarks. Your office plays a very important role in auditing matters and we are very happy to have you here when you publish those reports. We will now move to the question and answer portion of the meeting.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you all for coming here this morning. I am interested in the issue of the whales. In your report, you mentioned that we have been very late in taking any measures.
Last summer, there was a lot of media coverage of the issue and the same has been happening for a year or two. However, why did we not have the same challenge 20 or 30 years ago? There were just as many boats and just as many whales in the past. Why is this question coming up now?
Ms. Gelfand: That is a very good question. Clearly, Canadians consider marine mammals, especially whales and dolphins, as iconic species. They have always been talked about, but now, some species are really on the way to extinction. Twelve marine mammals died in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So 3 per cent of the population of those mammals is dead. On the west coast, 74 individuals from a subpopulation of killer whales remain. People are concerned. This was not the result of an audit. Why? We often hear about it on the news. As Canadians, the issue is close to our hearts. When a dead whale is found, everyone goes to the beach. When dolphins are found trapped by ice, as occurred recently, Canadians go to the beach to offer their help.
Senator Massicotte: Have there always been as many whale deaths? Is there more media coverage now?
Ms. Gelfand: I cannot answer that, because we did not do an audit.
Senator Massicotte: If there are fewer of them and if they are under greater threat, there should be fewer accidents. I am trying to understand.
Ms. Gelfand: We know that 14 marine mammal populations are on the list of species at risk.
Senator Massicotte: What was the situation 20 years ago?
Ms. Gelfand: They were still on the list, even before there was a species at risk act. Some whale species have been on the species at risk list for a long time. At one point, whales were everywhere. They were hunted, they were used. In Greenland, in Japan and in Canada, they continued to be used. Some stocks are considerably depleted and some species have been on the list for decades. A committee by the name of COSEWIC looks after the state of species at risk. The committee has been working for decades on the matter and was doing so even before the species at risk act was passed.
Senator Massicotte: You conducted a study on the impacts on the species at risk. Last summer, we got the impression that the government had taken extraordinary measures that had never been seen beforehand. Fishermen were complaining loudly because they said that the measures were significantly affecting them. Is that correct?
Ms. Gelfand: Are you asking me whether fishermen are affected by those measures?
Senator Massicotte: Yes.
Ms. Gelfand: Closing fisheries and reducing the speed of vessels does have an impact on the economy at local level. So we have to find a balance between the life of the whales, the local fishing economy and the shipping economy.
I mentioned in my introduction that we have to find and maintain a balance. The whales issue has sometimes been considered a priority but it has been years since it was declared a priority.
Senator Massicotte: You talk about the consequences for the whales, including the increasing number of deaths, and the economic and social impact, but are we at a point of balance, in your opinion?
Ms. Gelfand: I am an auditor. That decision is yours as lawmakers. The department took action very late, when the situation was already critical. There was no recovery plan for species at risk. Action plans were established very late. The department decided to act only when the situation had become a major concern.
Senator Massicotte: According to some articles in the press, the United States has been putting pressure on Canada to comply with our agreements with them and has urged us to take those measures, but not as a result of their concerns for the whales. Is that the case?
Ms. Gelfand: The Americans have legislation to protect marine mammals. Canada has no legislation. The United States has clearly indicated that Canada must be at the same level as the United States in terms of protecting marine mammals in order for our fishing industry to have access to its markets.
Senator Massicotte: Is this a Canadian act or an agreement?
Ms. Gelfand: The Americans have an act that protects whales
Senator Massicotte: Exactly.
Ms. Gelfand: The Americans have told Canada that we have until 2022 to apply their standards for marine mammal protection, if not —
Senator Massicotte: With what excuse can they impose that on us? Is it in the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement?
Ms. Gelfand: You would have to ask the department. I am not familiar with all the details.
Elsa DaCosta, Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: In the United States, the Marine Mammal Protection Act imposes conditions on the bycatch and harassment of marine mammals in their fisheries. They are going to impose those same conditions on all the products they import from other countries. That is how they can impose those conditions on our fisheries, and Canada has until 2022 to fulfill those conditions.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you.
Ms. Gelfand: Because of that issue, we weighed our words in our report.
[English]
The Chair: On this subject, I would like to ask a question.
What is the Canadian reference to define a healthy population? I am aware that in the U.S. after Exxon Valdez in Alaska they had the numbers before of les épaulards. They could compare them. They had the healthy number and then they saw that it declined. Every year since they have been following it, so they know up to what point the population recuperated. After 50 years, this population didn’t recuperate.
Do we have something similar in Canada? Yes or no and why?
Ms. Gelfand: I don’t know. Do you know if we have something?
Ms. DaCosta: We have a threshold.
Ms. Gelfand: You have to ask the department.
Ms. DaCosta: The scientists at the Department of Fisheries would probably be able to answer that question.
Ms. Gelfand: Or the scientists who worked on the action plan, the rehabilitation plan or the re-establishment plan for the species at risk. Hopefully they’re here.
The Chair: We’ll keep that question for later.
Senator Seidman: I would like to ask you about the fall 2018 report on toxic substances.
In your presentation to us today, item 5 refers to public information and the fact that, as you say, Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada play a role in informing Canadians at risk from toxic substances. Yet, you found that most of the information available on their websites was hard to find and very technical.
If I look at the larger report here, under “Informing the Public,” it says there are serious communication problems. It is concluded in this report that Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada still had significant work to do in select areas to effectively control the risks of toxic substances. They also need to develop their website and ability to educate the Canadian public.
First, what exactly is going on here? It’s fairly serious, in my opinion, if we can’t properly inform Canadians about their exposures to toxic substances. What would be the impact on the environment and Canadian health?
Ms. Gelfand: We did look at the issue of communication with the public. First of all, Health Canada provides guides on the health risks of toxic substances. I don’t want to give the impression that nothing is happening.
There are guides on health risks. There are radio campaigns and social media. They do workshops. They do some guides for specific audiences such as parents, for example. There is a guide on the effects of toxic substances in your home. They’ve also done information summaries for three chemicals that were produced. If I can understand them, then I figure most people can understand them.
Those are three out of 138. We found that most of the information on toxic substances lacked clarity. It was often produced for industry or for NGOs, so it was highly technical. They were not very easy to find. We actually physically tried to find them ourselves.
There were also gaps in the information. A lot of the information that we found and could understand talked about impacts to human health, but there was hardly any information on impacts to the environment.
We made recommendations that they improve their communications. They have accepted those recommendations. We should see, hopefully, an improvement. You can ask them about what they’re planning to do in that area.
Senator Seidman: They have put a plan into place.
Ms. Gelfand: You would have to ask them. They accepted our recommendations. I don’t have the official language in front of me on what they said.
Mr. McKenzie, do you want to say what they said in their recommendations? Are they producing a plan?
James McKenzie, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Yes. My understanding is that the department, to add to what the commissioner mentioned, had also done public opinion research to help them understand the public’s view with respect to how easy it was to access information on toxic substances and their views on how easy it was to understand.
They have been using the results of that survey. Interestingly, their survey results and research indicated that the federal government, and Health Canada in particular, was viewed as an important source of information, particularly because there’s so much contradictory information out there.
From what I understand, they are using that information and developing a social media/marketing strategy to help them address some of their findings in the public opinion research and to improve how they are communicating out to the public so that the information is easier for the public to use.
Senator Seidman: Your office would do a follow-up, I presume.
Ms. Gelfand: The way this works is that actually and technically parliamentarians are the people who follow up with the departments by asking for an action plan. Technically, how it works is that parliament tells government what to do.
As my niece told me, “You’re a tattletaler.” I guess so. We go in and audit and tell you. Then, technically, you’re supposed to go back and make sure that it happens. We do follow-ups, so it might be the subject of a future follow-up, yes.
The Chair: Regarding toxic substances, we know there are thousands of products and substances. Has this very little number of 138 increased over time?
Ms. Gelfand: I can talk about that. The department is reviewing 4,300 different substances right now. I believe they have until 2020 to complete them. They had completed the assessments of 3,331 at the time of our audit. Why I remember that number, I have no idea, but I do.
We did not go into that zone to see how well they were doing in that, because that seemed to be under control. They were progressing and they were assessing those substances. The list is likely to grow.
I believe it has grown even from the time of our audit to now. As they’re assessing them, they’re adding more substances to what we call the CEPA toxic list. That list has grown and will likely continue to grow.
Mr. McKenzie said to me that this was a never-ending process. The biochemical engineers and chemists are always coming up with new substances that need to be assessed as to whether or not they are toxic.
The Chair: Out of this list, do we have the ecotoxicological or toxicological data for these 138 toxic substances so we know what is and what is not carcinogenic and can set up priorities? Are you aware whether these studies being done in parallel?
Ms. Gelfand: My understanding is that is what helps the assessors within Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada to assess whether or not the substance is toxic, but I will ask Mr. McKenzie if he has further information.
Mr. McKenzie: In the risk assessment process undertaken to determine if a substance is toxic or not, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada will assess the potential impacts on the environment and on human health.
That type of information would be collected through the risk assessment process, and then is used to determine whether or not the substance should be added to schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Senator Richards: On the ground or on the sea, it works a bit differently. When they closed off the lobster fishery last year, they closed it off on both the Northumberland Strait side and the Gulf of St. Lawrence side. The flow of the right whale is generally on the St. Lawrence side, and the fishermen on the Northumberland Strait side had to pay the price for a right whale depletion that didn’t happen in their area. The right whale was called the right whale because it was a whale that floated after they harpooned it.
That’s a constant misstep by the Department of Fisheries and other people, trying to rectify something that the generation now really didn’t create. I know these things are done with the best of intentions, but sometimes they are the ones who suffer because of it.
Do you have any information on how these decisions are made or how they come about? For instance, we have one million striped bass on the Miramichi, and our salmon are being depleted. The striped bass are being protected, and the salmon are not being protected. We will lose our salmon fisheries on the Miramichi. We will lose generations of people who come from all over the world to fish the Miramichi for salmon. They will be gone because the striped bass are protected. Yet, we have millions of them in our waters.
When are these decisions made? When do they decide to do this stuff?
Ms. Gelfand: Those are all great questions to ask of the department. Once a law or a regulation is in place, we go in to see whether or not it is being properly implemented. We don’t make those decisions. Those are decisions that the department makes, and they are the best people to ask.
It is clear that there are impacts. When we slow down shipping speeds, it slows down the economy. The ships need to get from A to B in a certain time, and all of a sudden we are imposing a slowdown. Whenever we close a fishery, it has impacts on the people who are involved.
That’s the whole issue of balance and integration between all of the factors, but the actual decisions are made by the department.
Senator Richards: I am aware that these decisions are difficult, and I am aware they cause problems. My concern is that the right decisions have to be made for the right people. The species can’t be protected and coddled when there are millions of them in our waters.
All I am saying is that the decisions have to be more succinct.
Senator McCallum: I wanted to speak about the enforceability issues that seem to be prevalent throughout all the departments. The departments have not fully applied existing policies and tools to be proactive. I don’t think we are at the proactive stage any longer, in that we are now reacting.
My impression is that the departments are now contributing to climate change. They are endangering people’s lives. That seems to go against your mandate.
How are these departments made to be responsible for what is happening? Do you understand my question?
Ms. Gelfand: Yes, it’s a very broad question.
When I think back on all of the audits we have done, generally we have found issues with enforcement in almost every audit where we have looked at enforcement. There are not enough enforcement officers. They have too many regulations they have to enforce. They are not trained well enough. They can’t access data in time, so they don’t know exactly whom to regulate. New laws are coming in all the time, but not necessarily any more resources.
The whole issue of enforcement could be the topic of an audit where we could look generally at enforcement. In almost every audit where we have looked at enforcement, we have found problems surrounding enforcement.
In terms of how the departments are made to be responsible, it is my understanding that the deputy minister is the person who is held accountable for the actions of their entire department. The deputy minister reports to and serves at the pleasure of the Clerk of the Privy Council and probably of the Prime Minister.
Ultimately, the accountable person for the work of any department is the deputy minister, and the responsibility for the entire government is really with the Clerk of the Privy Council.
On the questions that you have about what the departments are doing, I have to say I don’t believe that public servants wake up every day thinking what they can do to make it hard on whales or to put toxins everywhere in the environment.
I believe they wake up thinking how they serve the Canadian public in the best way. They do that within the laws and the regulations and within the political environment in which they work.
Although they don’t always make the best decisions, I believe most public servants that I have encountered are there for the right reasons and working as hard as they can in the best interests of Canadians. I also believe their job is extremely difficult. I have personally seen how difficult it can be to make a small decision.
When I worked in the public service back in the early 1980s, I watched as one of my colleagues had to deal with a question which required the government to make a tiny decision: Should we allow the 1984 Olympics to occur in the national park on Lake Louise? The number of groups lobbying this young policy officer was astounding. I simply watched as all these people kept phoning her and lobbying her to say yes or no.
How we ever make big decisions in government is frankly beyond me, just from watching how a very small decision is made.
I believe they work in difficult conditions lobbied by all sides, but I personally believe that most of them are there for the right reasons and do the best they can.
Senator McCallum: I agree with you, but would you say that this is just going to get worse and worse if we don’t do anything?
Ms. Gelfand: Generally, on the environmental front, if you look at the environmental issues you mentioned that endanger people’s lives and contribute to climate change, the issue of climate change is pretty clear according to the scientists.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their latest report. It seems like the scientists are mostly in agreement that we need to do a lot more and that we will pay the costs if we don’t.
We did audits on that. Is Canada ready to adapt to climate change? We did a collaborative audit with all auditors general across the country to see whether or not Canada and provinces were ready to adapt to a changing climate. Overall, we found we are not ready. There are certainly risks, for sure.
Senator Patterson: Your audit about the compliance rates of departments improving noted that you did not examine the quality of the analysis included in each assessment.
I guess I am curious as to why not. Will this change in future? To be candid about it, I wonder whether your review of the application of the cabinet directive amounted to just a pro forma box-checking exercise.
Ms. Gelfand: You are correct that we did not look at the quality. When doing this audit, we were a small team dealing with 26 different departments. Our effort was Herculean. David, over there, ran the entire audit. Because of the strict methodology of audit, it was a huge effort to look at 26 departments in one year.
It is clear that the tool is being utilized more when issues are presented to parliament. At least we know now that departments are considering these issues and bringing them forward, whereas before we had a 40 per cent compliance rate. That means that 60 per cent of the documents that went to parliament had no assessment. Nobody had even thought to look at the environmental the positive or negative implications of the proposal that was going in front of cabinet.
We now know that 90 per cent of them have that information. We have not yet looked at the quality of them, but at least we know the tool is being utilized.
This tool was instigated in 1990. It is now 2018, and it is only this year that we can give you a compliance rate of 90 per cent. Granted, we have not reviewed the quality. We were looking to find out if the tool was utilized, and after that we can look at the quality.
We found in the past that in 60 per cent of the cases the tool wasn’t even being utilized, so there would have been nothing to look at. We did not expect to see 90 per cent compliance. Actually, we were pretty happy with that.
You are absolutely correct that we did not look at the quality of it. That would be the next step.
Senator Patterson: That will be or would be?
Ms. Gelfand: Would be.
Senator Patterson: Not will be.
Ms. Gelfand: I could. If I find out that everyone is very interested in that and if parliament wants to know, that could be the subject of a future audit, yes.
Senator Patterson: Or even some spot checks.
Ms. Gelfand: Absolutely.
Senator Patterson: When I saw the comment in your report about a fifth of inspections focusing on a single substance used by drycleaners without any evidence to show that it presented a higher risk to human health or the environment, I thought about the crisis we had in the North a couple of years ago.
We learned that Environment and Climate Change Canada was actively working to ban an additive in windshield washer fluid that stopped it from freezing in the cold. We managed to head that off a few years ago.
My question is about the drycleaning fluid. Do you know anything about whether this substance, which was so focused on, posed a risk to human health?
Ms. Gelfand: If it is on the list in schedule 1 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, yes, it does pose a risk. All 138 pose a risk. What we were saying was that we did not see any evidence that it posed a higher risk than the other substances. Yet, 20 per cent of the inspections went toward that one substance.
Senator Patterson: Can you conclude why that happened?
Ms. Gelfand: The department told us they were doing that to measure their compliance rates to see whether or not compliance rates would go up, if they did more inspections. They had started that exercise almost seven years ago, and it was actually in response to one of our recommendations. We thought that even years was a long time, so that is why we made that observation.
Mr. McKenzie, do you want to add anything?
Mr. McKenzie: Yes. We were encouraged by the department’s response to our recommendation in which they indicated that they would essentially develop a risk management framework. In the process of developing that framework, they would assess the various regulations they have in place to determine the relative risk of non-compliance. Then they would use that to help them prioritize their enforcement actions.
In terms of adding to the commissioner’s response, we were encouraged. You may want to confirm with the department, but I think they were looking at 2020 as a deadline for them to have a robust process in place to better ensure that their actions were focused on the areas of highest risk.
Senator Patterson: Do you recall the name of the particular substance in the fluid?
Ms. Gelfand: Tetrachloroethylene. I am not a chemist, so I am really happy when I can remember.
The Chair: The more chlorine in the compound, the more toxic it is.
[Translation]
Senator Mockler: I would like to talk about your roles and responsibilities a little. I want to congratulate you, because you are certainly going in the right direction. I have taken note of your presentation. I want to talk about the salmon in Eastern Canada, which is threatened by predators like the striped bass and even seals. Looking at your responsibilities to the Canadian public and within the office of the Auditor General of Canada, do you believe that your mandate would allow you to examine a situation like that, because, as Senator Richards so rightly said, it is a culture —
[English]
It is a livelihood that is being threatened and will disappear. I believe, Ms. Gelfand, that you have a role to play with sustainable development. Would you comment on that, or even give us a recommendation as to what you would foresee going forward?
Senator McCallum touched on very important points. The Miramichi and the Restigouche rivers are the most pristine rivers in the world, and the quality of the Atlantic salmon makes it the king of fish. It seems that government is just looking at it. There is no attempt to put a program in place to help the people sustain their quality of life and their livelihood. That includes First Nations, Acadians, francophones and anglophones.
It seems that we have to talk to the department. You have said many times that we will have to ask those departments. It is more than that. You have a role to play.
[Translation]
Ms. Gelfand: Absolutely. Unfortunately, my fishery experts are not with me, but I can tell you what has already been done in the area. I assure you that we could do an audit. I think that there is a policy on wild salmon, a federal government policy. I could do an audit on how that policy is being applied. That would be the way in which we could respond to your concerns about the salmon. Another way to do an audit, I feel, would be to make it one of the Cohen commission’s recommendations. The department has told us publicly that it has implemented 100 per cent of the Cohen commission’s recommendations on salmon populations. That is kind of how our projects work.
We have already done an audit on fisheries in general. There are about 170 fish stocks, and we looked at whether the government was properly managing the whole area of fisheries in general. We recently produced an overview chapter. We could send it to you, the overview chapter, I mean. After that chapter, we have started studying specific aspects. We are doing an audit on invasive aquatic species.
As I heard you say that the salmon is important, we could give greater priority to an audit on the salmon. I believe we have decided what our 2020 audits will deal with, but we have not yet decided on the ones for 2021.
Senator Mockler: You are touching on a very important subject. We are talking about the economy of an entire region. It is not just New Brunswick, it is also Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. Senator Richards has introduced the matter in the Senate of Canada. I would like you to aware of that, Madam Chair.
I would like to know what role you could play immediately. We are watching a culture and an economy totally disappear, and we will never be able to get it back if we do not control those predators.
Ms. Gelfand: Did you ask me what role I can play in the media?
Senator Mockler: No, immediately.
Ms. Gelfand: An audit takes from 12 to 18 months to complete. Our 2020 audits are already under way, but when a Senate or House of Commons committee sends us a letter indicating that it would be a good idea for the commissioner to conduct an audit, it goes on top of the ideas pile in our planning system. Do you see what I am saying?
[English]
Basically, I am saying to write us a letter.
The Chair: I took note that you have mentioned four possibilities.
Ms. Gelfand: One is in play. We are doing aquatic invasive species right now. We have already done integrated fish management on our fisheries. We have done one on salmon aquaculture, so you may be interested in that audit.
Those are three that are in play. The next one we were thinking of was the Cohen commission. However, we could do the Cohen commission and the wild salmon policy together.
The Chair: You also mentioned that you could do an audit on enforcement.
Ms. Gelfand: I could do lots, but I need more resources to do more audits.
The Chair: Exactly. I think we will discuss what are the priorities. We may write you a letter setting out the priorities and you can compare them with your own priorities.
Ms. Gelfand: I would welcome that.
Senator MacDonald: I want to go back to items 6 and 7 where you talked about 40 species of marine mammals: whales, dolphins and seals. There are 14 populations on the endangered species list.
We certainly know that right whales are on it. We know that grey seals and harp seals certainly are not on it. What other mammal species are on it, and did you look at any of those?
Ms. Gelfand: Yes. I don’t have my list in front of me, so I will pass that over to Elsa DaCosta.
Ms. DaCosta: The ones that we looked at were the endangered and threatened ones.
The following are considered endangered: the beluga whale since 2017; the blue whale in the Atlantic and Pacific; the harp seal in Lacs des Loups Marins, a very localized area in Quebec; the southern resident killer whale; the northern bottlenose whale; the right whale; right whale of the north Pacific; and the sei whale.
Those that are threatened are: the beluga whale of Cumberland Sound; the fin whale in the Pacific; the northern resident killer whale; the offshore killer whale; and the transient killer whale.
Senator MacDonald: All the marine mammals are merely whales or cetaceans.
Ms. DaCosta: Yes, they are considered endangered. Most of them are whales or cetaceans.
Senator MacDonald: Did you recommend any actions in your assessment when it came to these whales?
Ms. DaCosta: Yes, absolutely. For all of these whales they need to have recovery plans and action plans. All the actions are highlighted in the documents developed by the department. Our main recommendation is for the department to implement some of the actions highlighted in the recovery plans and action plans.
Senator MacDonald: What about species that are not mammals? I am thinking of bluefin tuna and porbeagle sharks. The Atlantic whitefish is extremely endangered. You can only get them in the Tusket River in Nova Scotia.
I am wondering if any of this was assessed.
Ms. Gelfand: Fisheries and Oceans Canada would be responsible for looking at other endangered species that are not marine mammals. You would have to ask the department about those specifically.
COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, is the group that makes recommendations to the minister as to whether or not a species is endangered. Once they are put on the species at risk list, then a whole series of actions kick in. They have to develop a recovery plan, as Elsa DaCosta said, and then an action plan.
If these are endangered or threatened species, there should be a recovery strategy and an action plan. Overall, we have found that many of those recovery and action plans are late. However, I believe most of the recovery plans may have been completed at this point.
Senator Woo: I am interested in the risk assessment approach that you take to your choice of audits, which also reflects on the risk assessment framework the department takes in its choice of species to focus on.
Many of the questions have produced a long list of species that one could pay attention to. The way we make choices is based on a framework in our mind about the relative importance of the species as well as the likelihood of success.
You may be familiar with the new model of priority threat management that has emerged. It has come out of UBC and other scholars. It is somewhat controversial, because it basically says that maybe some species cannot be saved and that we shouldn’t waste our time, so to speak.
One thing has come across loud and clear in your presentation. Implicitly, what you are saying about the department is that resources are extremely scarce and that they cannot possibly work in all areas. Also, you cannot possibly audit all the areas of work that they do.
I am trying to get a better handle on how we make decisions around here. It is not just because somebody says a species is important or because a lobby group is particularly noisy. What kinds of scientific tools are being employed, including the idea of priority threat management, which is a mathematical model that tries to produce a hierarchy of species more likely to be saved, given a certain quantum of inputs.
Ms. Gelfand: If you are asking how we make decisions about our audits, I can tell you it is a very intense and thorough process. Ideas come from all over the place: staff, experts across the country and parliamentarians. Those are all assessed according to a whole series of criteria, and those criteria are weighted.
Is this important to Canada? Is it high risk? Is it important to parliamentarians? A whole series of them are weighted. It’s mathematical, and then a list comes out of that. Eventually, at some point, from the smaller list I make a call as commissioner. It is my responsibility, but I have a good selection of high-risk, highly important topics. That’s how we do it.
In the case of how species are saved, I hate to say that you have to ask the department how they are doing it because that’s their job. If they have an act, if they have a policy or if they have a regulation, it’s my job to tell you how well they are doing in implementing that regulation, policy or act. It can be a bad policy, and I can tell you how well they are doing at implementing the bad policy. That’s my job as auditor.
It’s their job to develop the policy. It’s their job to determine whether or not they want to use this new framework you mentioned around species. That’s their call. They make the decision if they are to use that framework. Then I go in to see how well they are doing implementing that framework. That’s the role.
Senator Woo: I understand that. Would it not be a useful contribution for you to give them advice on how they should prioritize by using tools that help them truly order the rank importance of different species?
I am not saying this is the best tool out there, but it is a tool out there that helps us to understand not to waste our time on one species. It will cost you gazillions of dollars and you will not succeed.
Isn’t it also the role of the auditor to help them think about ways to better audit their priorities?
Ms. Gelfand: I would say yes. Once we’ve selected a certain topic, one of the things that happens to auditors that work in teams in our offices is that they become experts in public policy implementation. They go in and they see how everybody does it. They can bring best practices from one department to another, and that happens in those interactions with the staff.
Yes, we can provide assistance, but we can only audit against what they have indicated they will do.
Senator Woo: My final comment is that it’s not clear to me parliamentarians are necessarily the best sources of information for the department to choose which species to work on. We all have our favourite species in our neck of the woods, but surely we need a more robust scientific approach to try to understand the range of species out there, the chances of survival and how best we deploy resources.
The Chair: We will have the discussion about environment after.
Before we continue with the list, I want to go back to toxic substances. The federal government is responsible for many federal contaminated sites. You asked the inspectors if they analyzed and, just in terms of the number of inspections, if they made inspections.
Did you look, for example, at remediation and how advanced we are with remediation? It is not just that it exists and people are inspecting it, but what is being done with respect to remediation?
Ms. Gelfand: We haven’t done that in this audit. We have done contaminated sites in previous audits before I became commissioner. I am looking at James McKenzie. He may remember. We have done them in the past but not recently.
The Chair: Do you think it is something we should be doing?
Ms. Gelfand: As the senator indicated, there’s a big list.
Senator Cordy: I just realized, looking around the table, there are a lot of Atlantic Canadians on this committee. Going back to the comments of Senator Richards and Senator Mockler comments about salmon, I live on a lake. I am in Dartmouth, the city of lakes, and everybody dreads the thought of striped bass getting into our lakes because then everything else disappears.
I would like to ask about the distribution and number of enforcement officers available to support Environment Canada. How do they work?
When you look at the number of departments that Environment Canada is involved in, whether it’s an audit or just overall, a lot of areas of expertise are involved in going into each department. How does that work?
Do the enforcement officers have areas of specialization, or do they just look at the audit that is being done? Are there enforcement officers within each department? How does that work?
Ms. Gelfand: The department is here, so hopefully they will be able to answer. My understanding is that there is a chief enforcement officer at Environment Canada. That branch would be responsible for enforcing all of Environment Canada’s regulations, but also Fisheries and Oceans regulations in some cases.
There are regulations. I hope I am not getting this wrong, but there are also enforcement officers within Fisheries and Oceans. They’re not necessarily all the same people.
These are questions that you should really be asking the department. I am not the expert on this. They are here, and hopefully they can answer that.
Senator McCallum: When we look at sustainable development, this is an issue that involves a balance between humans and animals and between the economy and animals.
Has there been any work done on the role of the endangered mammals in the web of life and how they sustain life as it exists now? There is a complicated balance that Canadians will need to be informed about and there are decisions that need to be made. Humans have the loudest voices.
With harvesting, when is enough, enough and food is not being wasted? This is sustainable harvesting versus a business. When I look at my life as an Indigenous person, we were nomadic. We just took what we needed and lived on it.
In the 1960s, trains came in on the winter road, harvested massive amounts of fish and took them out. It seems to be continuing to happen. Do you have any comments on that?
Ms. Gelfand: What I can say is that there is a fairly broad definition of sustainable development in the act that created the position. I can show that to you. It includes the needs of future generations, but it also includes things like equity, health and protection of ecosystems. It is quite broad.
I would also argue that the new Sustainable Development Goals that Canada signed on to, in the United Nations 2030 agenda, addresses these things. You’re hitting on the critical question of integration and balance between our needs today, our needs in the future, the ecosystem’s needs and the species’ needs. These are what we should be trying to balance.
These are difficult questions. As we indicated earlier, when you favour one species you may effect a population of people. How do we make that decision? Are we making the right decision at the right time? These are difficult questions in sustainable development.
Senator Richards: I was going to make a comment. The problems with salmon and sea bass are totally man made. They decided to put their efforts into saving the sea bass and their spawning grounds on the northwest Miramichi. They created devastation for the Atlantic salmon. It’s totally man made.
That is a problem of sustainability, and it is a problem that comes from the highest offices in Ottawa. I just thought I would mention that.
The Chair: Thank you for your testimony and for a very interesting and important conversation.
We now welcome, from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Michael Enns, Executive Director, Environmental Enforcement, Gwen Goodier, Executive Director, Chemicals Management Division, and Roger Roberge, Acting Director General, Sustainability Directorate; from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Sylvie Lapointe, Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Harbour Management; from Health Canada, David Morin, Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch; and from Transport Canada, Michelle Sanders, Director, Clean Water Policy.
Thank you very much for joining us.
[Translation]
David Morin, Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Health Canada: I would like to start by thanking you for inviting me here today to speak to the Commissioner’s report on toxic substances and the enforcement of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. I would also like to thank the Commissioner for her report. Health Canada agrees with the recommendations she has laid out and is taking action to address them.
[English]
This audit looked at federal actions under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, known as CEPA, to control and communicate risks posed by toxic substances.
Chemicals are part of our everyday life and are essential to our economy, our communities and our homes. While chemicals provide us with many benefits, they may also have harmful effects if not properly managed. I am also proud to say that Canada has a world-leading approach to chemicals management and many other countries turn to us as a best practice.
The goal of Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan, or the CMP, is to reduce the risks posed by chemicals to Canadians and their environment. Specifically, we work with our colleagues in Environment and Climate Change Canada to identify substances that may be harmful to human health, the environment or both. We implement measures to manage these risks.
The nature of these measures vary depending on the specific risks identified and include developing new regulations, requiring pollution prevention plans and providing information to Canadians in cases where they can take action themselves to reduce risk.
Since the CMP was implemented in 2006, we have worked with Environment and Climate Change Canada to assess over 3,500 substances already in use in Canada to determine whether or not they pose a risk to Canadians and/or the environment. Our goal is to assess 4,300 substance that we identified as priorities for assessment by 2020. Currently, we have assessed about 80 per cent of these substances.
Over 450 of the substances assessed under the CMP were found toxic to either human health, the environment or both. As a result, together with working with our colleagues at Environment and Climate Change Canada, we have put over 90 measures in place to address the risks posed by these substances.
[Translation]
We have also taken action on new substances under the chemicals management plan. Industry is required to notify us of their intention to introduce a new substance into Canada. This gives us the opportunity to proactively assess the substance, to determine whether it poses a risk to human health or the environment. Since 2006, we have assessed almost 6,000 new substances and put in place almost 300 measures to address the risks we found.
[English]
The commissioner’s recommendations related to improving the performance measurement of Health Canada, as well as improving our communications to Canadians.
Regarding performance measurement, we currently use a number of methods to assess the effectiveness of our actions to control toxic substances. One such method is biomonitoring, which measures chemicals in Canadians.
For example, based on biomonitoring results, the concentrations of PCBs are generally on the decline in Canada. There has been up to a 50 per cent decrease in blood lead levels in Canadians over the past 20 years. In addition, the level of lead in the blood of Canadians has declined by over 70 per cent since the late 1970s due to federal measures like restricting lead in gasoline and paint.
However, I also agree with the commissioner that we need to be more systematic in our approach to performance measurement. We are in the process of finishing three comprehensive performance evaluations on bisphenol A, mercury and lead to assess the effectiveness of our actions to control these toxic substances. We are also working with our colleagues at Environment and Climate Change Canada to develop a more long-term systematic approach to do so.
[Translation]
In terms of our communication to the public, we agree with the commissioner that Canadians are interested in knowing more about toxic substances and how they can help protect themselves and their families. We recently conducted public opinion research to help us better understand what type of information Canadians are looking for, and to identify areas for improvement.
Based on the results of this research, we have developed a targeted communications strategy that we will be launching in the coming months. It includes new plain language advice to Canadians to help protect them from harmful chemicals and pollutants in and around the home.
[English]
In conclusion, we appreciate the commissioner’s review and her recommendations. These insights will help inform the continuous improvement of chemicals management in Canada. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Gwen Goodier, Executive Director, Chemicals Management Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada: My name is Gwen Goodier and I am Executive Director of the Chemicals Management Division. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today, to talk about the toxic substances audit.
[English]
Toxic substances are identified and managed under the Government of Canada Chemicals Management Plan, a program that’s jointly managed by Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada.
We are proud of what we have accomplished to date under the CMP. Since 2006, as David Morin mentioned, we have assessed over 3,500 substances. That is about 80 per cent of the 4,300 identified as priorities. We are on track to completing this work by 2020.
We have found over 450 chemicals to be harmful to human health, the environment or both. We have published risk management approaches or action plans for all 450 of these toxic substances. We’ve put in place about 90 risk management instruments to manage the risks posed by these substances.
We also take action to ensure that new substances entering the market are safe for Canadians. Since the beginning of the program, we have received close to 6,000 notifications for new substances. These notifications have been assessed and resulted in additional risk management actions where needed.
While we believe that the Chemicals Management Plan is fundamentally a strong program, we agree that improvements should be made in the three areas identified in the audit: performance measurement, enforcement and communications.
In the area of performance measurement, our department will work with Health Canada to develop a long-term approach to systematically assessing the effectiveness of our actions to control toxic substances. In the interim, and to inform that approach, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada will complete the assessments currently under way to determine whether objectives to protect human health and the environment have been achieved for four substances: mercury, BPA, lead and PBDEs, which is a flame retardant.
The audit report also focused on how we enforce regulations that manage toxic substances and how we communicate to Canadians about the risks posed by these substances.
David Morin has already spoken about our plans in the area of communications. I am going to turn to my colleague now, Michael Enns from our enforcement branch, to speak about enforcement.
[Translation]
Michael Enns, Executive Director, Environmental Enforcement, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Thank you for inviting me today. I am Michael Enns, and I am the Executive Director of the Environmental Enforcement Branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada.
[English]
I would like to use my allotted time to provide a few overarching comments on behalf of the ECCC enforcement branch. We have approximately 200 officers designated to enforce CEPA and its almost 60 regulations across the country. These same officers are also responsible to enforce the pollution prevention provisions of the Fisheries Act.
Our organization takes great pride in the work of these officers. They conduct thousands of inspections and hundreds of investigations every year. More than ever, their work is leading to meaningful penalties to deter those who would choose to violate ECCC acts and regulations.
Over the past five years, for example, fine amounts for CEPA offences have increased from a few hundred thousand dollars per year in 2012 to over $3 million in 2016-17. Our total fines from prosecutions last year, including fines for Fisheries Act offences, were more than $10 million. The majority of these fines are directed to the Environmental Damages Fund, which finances projects that improve environmental quality.
Where we have made strides in our investigative capacity and brought forward meaningful cases for prosecution, we are also improving our capacity to identify where non-compliance presents the greatest risk to the environment and human health. To this end, in 2017, our directorate launched a comprehensive risk assessment process with the objective of completing comparative analysis of all CEPA regulations by spring 2020.
We believe this work will address the recommendations outlined in the current audit as well as in previous audits on the same subject. This is part of a continued effort to better target the highest risk non-compliance with ECCC laws to achieve the highest levels of environmental protection.
[Translation]
We appreciate the attention that the commissioner is paying to this important work.
[English]
We would be pleased to answer your questions.
Sylvie Lapointe, Assistant Deputy Minister, Fisheries and Harbour Management, Fisheries and Oceans Canada: I would like to take this opportunity to address the chapter on marine mammals in the fall 2018 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
We welcome the commissioner’s report and its recommendations on a need to implement recovery measures in the Species at Risk Act to reduce the threats posed by marine vessel traffic and commercial fishing, a need to consider marine mammal protection in the planning of marine protected areas, and a need to develop a national approach to responding to marine mammals in distress.
The department accepts the recommendations set out in the report and will take appropriate actions to ensure each of the recommendations is addressed. However, the audit did not formally assess many of our government’s most recent and significant measures to protect marine mammals. Our department will continue to work toward mitigating threats to marine mammals and responding to those in distress.
[Translation]
While recent actions demonstrate that progress has been made, more work is needed and the audit recommendations will inform our future actions to further protect Canada’s marine mammals.
Marine mammals are important to Canada not only culturally, but also to the health of our aquatic ecosystems. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is dedicated to protecting these species.
[English]
As the report noted, over the past two years the Government of Canada has made substantial investments to protect endangered and at-risk marine mammals and support their recovery. Since 2016, the government has invested $1.5 billion in Canada’s Oceans Protection Plan and $167.4 million in the newly launched Whales Initiative.
With these investments, the government has taken and will continue to take significant actions to help protect marine mammals from threats related to commercial fishing and marine traffic on all three coasts. This is especially true with regard to southern resident killer whale and North Atlantic right whales.
Several measures have already been put in place to protect the southern resident killer whales, such as the reduction of chinook fisheries to increase prey availability, a new mandatory minimum approach distance of 200 metres, adding more fisheries officers to verify compliance, and partnering with the Vancouver Port Authority on a voluntary vessel slowdown in the Haro Strait.
[Translation]
We are also pleased that other new measures, including speed restrictions for vessels and fisheries management measures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, have been successful in reducing the risks for the endangered North Atlantic right whale population.
[English]
In fact, thanks to the tremendous collaboration from the fishing and transport industries in implementing the measures in 2018, there have been no North Atlantic right whale deaths in Canadian waters this year.
Looking forward, we will work with all involved as we review the 2018 measures and improve them for 2019, based on this input and important new science advice we are expecting late this year.
In fact, earlier this week, Minister Wilkinson and DFO staff met with representatives from the Atlantic Canada fishing industry and Indigenous groups to discuss the impacts of the 2018 fisheries management measures and to seek input that will help inform management decisions for 2019.
I would also like to highlight that the government has made important investments in our Marine Mammal Response Program, providing $1 million per year to the world-leading third party responder groups that are the backbone of this program.
With this investment, the government is making sure that the capacity is in place to respond to marine mammal incidents, including whale entanglements, should they occur.
[Translation]
We continue to work with these groups to respond to the findings of the audit. Earlier this week, we held another national meeting to review the protocols in place for 2018 and make improvements where appropriate. Many of the new measures now in place directly address recommendations found in the report. The Government of Canada will continue to protect this country’s wildlife and biodiversity, including Canada’s endangered species. Implementation of many recovery actions for at-risk species are already well under way and this work will continue.
[English]
To this end, Minister Wilkinson recently put out a call to Canadians, seeking their views on the proposed amendments to the recovery strategy for killer whales. We are proposing to protect two new areas of critical habitat on the Pacific Coast to help these whales.
The Government of Canada is committed to protecting and conserving Canada’s oceans, including its marine mammals. In 2015, the government promised to protect 5 per cent of Canada’s oceans by 2017, and this has been achieved. We now recognize 7.9 per cent of our marine and coastal areas as protected, up from around 1 per cent three years ago, and the government will continue toward conserving 10 per cent of our marine environment by 2020.
The audit recommended DFO consider marine mammal protection when designing MPAs. If marine mammals or their habitats are identified in the conservation objectives for a proposed MPA, they will be considered when determining the restrictions to be applied in the area. Going forward, our department will continue to work with our many partners and consider the protection of marine mammals when establishing marine protected areas.
We will continue to work closely with our provincial and territorial partners, Indigenous peoples and a multitude of stakeholders from coast to coast, including Transport Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, to review, assess and recommend the implementation of measures to address the threats to marine mammals.
We are committed to fully implementing the responses to the recommendations. We feel this will go a long way toward ensuring that marine mammals are protected from threats posed by marine vessels and commercial fishing activities. Thank you.
Roger Roberge, Acting Director General, Sustainability Directorate, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Thank you for the invitation to discuss the commissioner’s fall 2018 Report on Departmental Progress in Implementing Sustainable Development Strategies.
Before discussing the significant progress outlined by audit results themselves, I would like to take a moment to provide a brief overview of the Cabinet Directive on the Environmental Assessment of Policy, Plan and Program Proposals. I will then explain how the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy relates to this audit on strategic environmental assessments, or SEAs, and discuss some of the actions that Environment and Climate Change Canada is taking to support decision making for sustainable development.
In brief, the cabinet directive came into being in 1990 and requires that federal organizations conduct a SEA of a policy, plan or program proposal when two conditions are met. Proposals are submitted to an individual minister or cabinet minister for approval, and implementation of the proposal may result in important environmental effects, either positive or negative.
In 2010, the cabinet directive was amended to include the requirement to link SEAs to the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy, or the FSDS, by considering the effects of proposals on achieving the goals and targets of the FSDS. It also required the 26 departments and agencies contributing to the FSDS to include results of their SEAs in their departmental sustainable development strategies or DSDSs.
Because decisions that affect sustainable development happen across government, these departmental strategies include measures to ensure decision makers are able to take into account environmental considerations along economic and social factors, including, among other things, the scope and nature of potential environmental effects, the need for mitigation to reduce or eliminate adverse effects or whether there are opportunities to enhance positive effects, and the need for follow-up.
To support the development of comprehensive SEAs, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency assists all federal organizations by promoting SEAs and providing guidance and training. In addition to its own obligations under the cabinet directive, ECCC is responsible for providing departments and agencies, upon request, with expert policy, technical and scientific advice on sustainable development and the potential environmental effects of initiatives.
The Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development plays an important role by monitoring the extent to which departments have contributed to meeting FSDS targets and objectives and have implemented the plan set out in their own sustainable development strategies.
Over the past five years, the commissioner’s SEA audits have looked at how individual departments and agencies have applied the cabinet directive. This particular report provides an overview of how all 26 organizations covered by the Federal Sustainable Development Act have applied the directive and whether they have met their commitments to strengthen SEA practices. The commissioner’s report shows that 26 audited federal organizations applied the cabinet directive to 93 per cent of the proposals submitted for cabinet approval in 2017. This finding represents a significant increase from previous audits, which had a compliance rate ranging between 23 per cent and 44 per cent.
Furthermore, 17 of the 26 audited departments had a 100 per cent compliance rate, including Environment and Climate Change Canada. Seven other organizations had high compliance rates, and two organizations had no submissions in 2017.
At Environment and Climate Change Canada we are committed to conducting a detailed SEA for every policy plan and program proposal going to cabinet or to Treasury Board for approval, including proposals led by other departments or agencies that are signed by the minister of environment and climate change. This goes beyond the requirements of the cabinet directive which allows some proposals, such as those not expected to have important environmental effects, to undergo preliminary scans rather than full SEAs.
We recognize that SEAs must be high quality to support decision makers. As a result, Environment and Climate Change Canada has a dedicated unit to provide advice and review SEAs for the department. This unit also provides online and classroom training to ensure employees are able to carry out thorough assessments.
The unit also works to ensure that public statements are made available online in a timely manner to inform the public on how the environment has been considered in decision making. These include a description of how Environment and Climate Change Canada proposals could affect the achievement of FSDS goals and targets.
In conclusion, these and other actions taken in individual departments and agencies are reflected in the commissioner’s findings and underscore that SEAs are an important tool for advancing sustainable development and implementing FSDS.
The Chair: Before we go into question period and in case we run out of time, I offer my fellow colleagues who have further questions the opportunity to submit them in writing to our clerk for distribution to the panel. In that way, we can receive their answers at a later point.
Senator Seidman: I would like to direct my questions to Health Canada and to Environment and Climate Change Canada who were recipients of the audit. We have the commissioner’s report on toxic substances sitting in front of us for the fall of 2018. Looking at the report, the commissioner says that the importance of controlling toxic substances has led them to assess this over a very long period of time. She goes back to the 1999, 2002, 2009 and 2011 reports and onward to the 2018 report. There seems to be an ongoing problem with the monitoring enforcement of risks.
For example, in 1999 the commissioner says departments did not have action plans for toxic substances. Monitoring was insufficient to evaluate whether actions had reduced the risk of toxic substances. In 2002, despite progress, the department’s ability to identify and reduce the risk of toxic substances was still limited. In 2009, departments had not evaluated whether objectives to risks of toxic substances had been met. Environment and Climate Change Canada had not actively enforced all regulations. Limited information was provided to the public on enforcement activities. Environment and Climate Change Canada had not released annual reports in a timely manner. In 2011, Environment and Climate Change Canada lacked information on its regulated community. It had gaps in its capacity to enforce regulations under the act and did not always follow up with violators. You get the message here.
Now, in 2018, the commissioner says very clearly that this audit is important because Canadians depend on the federal government to reduce the risk of toxic substances to human health and the environment and to communicate these risks. The report that we receive in 2018 focuses on very similar issues that clearly go back all the way to 1999.
To Mr. Morin, and those of you from the ECCC, all of you said you appreciated the commissioner’s report and that you were doing whatever it takes to respond. Why would we believe you now when, going back to 1999, the same issues were clearly brought up and they are still not being dealt with? I would like you to speak on that.
The Chair: May I suggest that we give that question to Michael Enns? I support your question 100 per cent.
Mr. Enns: I will speak to the question as it pertains to enforcement, and I gather there are some elements to your question that others will speak to.
Your characterization of the audit is quite accurate. I would submit to the senators in this room that significant progress has been made since 2009 and prior to that with the first audit. I will highlight a number of areas where we have improved, but I certainly don’t want to give the impression that we don’t need to do more. I will also speak to what our plans for the future, for your consideration.
The audit mentions a compliance rate project that we did on PERC. I have used its short as someone did a nice job of pronouncing the full form of the word earlier. I’ll leave it to them to do so again later. It’s used in drycleaning substances. We did a very expansive project where we looked at creating a sample size from a random sample of regulatees going in and doing enforcement, and then checking back with the same regulatees to measure the impact of our behaviour. In that instance we reduced non-compliance, but we increased compliance by as much as 12 per cent.
The auditor noted in her report that it was fine but it took a long time. I accept that, except to say that instance was the first compliance rate project that we did. We have used that as a methodology to apply to the future work I will speak to in a second.
Senator Seidman: We don’t have a lot of time. I just want to ask about the specific audit you are using as an example.
The commissioner says that in most cases you don’t base your enforcement priorities on risks to human health and the environment. What evidence base do you use? Why did you choose that particular cleaning product? Was there evidence? Was there an evidence base? The commissioner is saying you are not looking at the evidence.
Mr. Enns: I can speak to that directly, and I appreciate the question.
All laws and regulations put in place by Environment and Climate Change Canada have met a threshold of risk to the environment and human health. As an enforcement person representing the enforcement branch, my job is to address non-compliance where I find it, with the complete suite of laws and regulations my department has chosen to put in place. We have done that and we have done that effectively in a number of different areas.
We acknowledged in the audit that we could do a better job in terms of assessing, relative to other regulations, the risk to both the environment and human health. We have a plan in place to do that, which we expect to complete by 2020.
With respect to PERC, we chose it because of its merit for developing the methodology we’ll use in an assessment of a broader suite of substances. There are drycleaners almost everywhere. We know where they are. We know where we can find them. We know where we can find them again when we need to check our results for scientific integrity. That is why we chose them. It was because of their methodological value. It reaped important rewards, because it has created a model we can now use for the entire suite of regulations for assessing our progress, which we are in the process of doing.
Senator MacDonald: I want to speak about the established marine protected areas. We have gone from 1 per cent to 7.9 per cent, and we are hoping 10 per cent by 2020. This is an increasingly contentious issue in Atlantic Canada.
What criteria are used to determine which coastal areas should be protected? Why are we setting percentage based targets? Why are we not assessing these things on an ad hoc basis in terms of demands and necessity?
Mr. Roberge: That is a very good question. I will turn it over to my DFO colleague.
Ms. Lapointe: The percentages are based on international commitments that have been made to the Convention on Biological Diversity that we have signed on to implementing by 2020. That is where the 5 per cent and the 10 per cent come in.
We have a number tools at our disposal to be able to achieve those targets. One is through marine protected areas, but another area is what we are calling other effective measures, which include things like fisheries closures that are just as important in terms of protecting the ecosystem.
We are working with provinces and territories, Indigenous peoples and industries all across the board to be able to determine, based on the scientific evidence we have, what those closed areas look like and where they are located.
Senator MacDonald: To me, 10 per cent seems to be an arbitrary figure. I am trying to establish a figure. The 10 per cent of ocean along the coastlines of Canada is a lot of area. We have big oceans. There’s a lot of ocean on the East Coast. What about impact on local fisheries, the people who make a living? How are these things assessed?
Again, I ask the question: Why isn’t it done on a case-by-case basis as opposed to going around saying how we can artificially establish 10 per cent because there is a directive from an outside body? I just don’t understand the logic.
Ms. Lapointe: I would suggest that we are basing any closed areas on the scientific information that we have which indicates these are important areas and that should be protected to maintain the health of our ecosystems. That’s what the decisions are based on.
I would also refer you to a recently released report by a ministerial panel on what the standards should be for putting in place such closed areas. That will provide us some additional guidance in our work.
Senator MacDonald: Once we hit 10 per cent, are we going to go for 20 per cent? What are we going to go? What is the long-term plan?
Ms. Lapointe: Our immediate goal is to achieve the 10 per cent. As you alluded to, it is very complicated, it is a lot of work, and it requires a lot of consultation and feedback from Canadians. I won’t speculate as to what we will do going forward. I know there are discussions within various international fora that the 10 per cent should be higher, but no decisions have been made around that.
Senator MacDonald: What has the response been from the fishing community, let’s say on the East Coast of Canada?
Ms. Lapointe: We have had significant feedback from the fishing industry. They have, as you have, expressed a lot of concerns about closing areas that are important to them for their fishing activities. Where we can and based on their feedback, we try to protect the area without imposing unnecessary economic burdens on them. In some cases, they are very much part of the conversation in terms of what areas get protected.
Senator MacDonald: Are they being listened to, or are the international tribunals being listened to? Who is calling the shots here?
Ms. Lapointe: We take seriously the feedback we get from the fishing industry. Where we can, certainly it’s incorporated into the decisions we make.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Enns, I would like to speak to you about environmental enforcement. You said that you have 200 officers. Could tell us where they are located? If they are dealing with the Fisheries Act, I assume they are on both coasts. Who decides what regulations to monitor? There are a lot of regulations. You can’t do them all every year, so who determines the priorities for regulations to monitor?
Mr. Enns: There are two questions. I’ll start with the location of our enforcement officers. As I said in my opening statement, we have approximately 200. They are located in about 25 regional offices across the country. Environment and Climate Change Canada has five regions. We have enforcement officers in each of those five regions for, as I said, a total of 25 offices.
There are indeed offices on both coasts. There is an office in Vancouver and there is another small office in Nanaimo on the island. On the Atlantic coast, we have offices in Dartmouth and Moncton. Those are our main offices in the Atlantic region.
In terms of how we make decisions about priorities, we use a process annually. We call it a callout to the department for national enforcement plan projects. We call out to the scientific folks and other experts within our department about what they feel the latest issues are with respect to the regulations and the areas of science for which they are responsible. Those are considered by a committee that exists centrally in Ottawa but includes representation from all over the country. We set priorities on the basis of what we deem to be the greatest risk, based on the intelligence we have, based on the input from our scientific and other experts within the department, and based on operational expediency. There are certain things where we have shared jurisdiction with the provinces, which is taken into consideration to determine where we can have the biggest impact.
There are also things like whether or not we have adequate training and adequate supports available. They are also taken into account. Then we set a series of priorities that are then replicated in each region, taking into account the flexibility they require based on their individual circumstances.
Senator Cordy: Mr. Morin, I am really pleased your department is looking at communication based. I used to be a teacher, and we were always warned before parent night to not speak “teacherese” to the parents. It’s important that communication is designed for Canadians and not just for scientists and business.
Looking at an issue like banning a substance can sometimes be very emotional. When you spoke today, you spoke about success rates, such as lead dropping significantly in the blood of Canadians, an 80 per cent decrease in PCBs in the Arctic region and a 50 per cent decrease in blood levels for Canadians.
Do you tell those kinds of stories so that people understand why you are doing what you do?
Mr. Morin: We have biomonitoring programs at Health Canada. We have the Canadian Health Measures Survey where we sample the blood and urine of about 6,000 Canadians. It started in 2007, and we are about to launch our sixth cycle. It’s pretty much a success story, and the results are available.
To your comment, though, we could probably do a better job in terms of communicating out the successes of some of the things we have seen to Canadians in generally plain language wording. In some of the substances we have assessed, we have done some follow-up action to see what exactly we have seen. I talked about mercury, PCB and lead. There is stuff that we do internally to see what has been done, to document that, and to see that it is going along well. I appreciate that we could make a greater effort in terms of communicating out the overall results of those things to Canadian.
One other thing that we’ve also appreciated as part of our public opinion research is the ability to communicate in plain language. We do a good job as a scientist communicating to another scientist or to interested, knowledgeable stakeholders either from an NGO community or from an industry perspective, but there is the opportunity to do a bit more.
We have already done work to reach out to the average Canadian. We appreciate the commissioner’s comments. We have started a plan that included public opinion research. How do Canadians gather their information? What type of information do they want? We are aiming to communicate out in a more friendly way.
Senator McCallum: I can’t imagine the work that is involved in trying to deal with new and upcoming issues and in trying to deal with old ones.
My question is directed toward toxic materials. You said that you are finishing comprehensive performance on bisphenol A and mercury, both of which are materials that are put into the mouths of patients through dental products. Another one is the mercury with hydro and the flooding that happened. Somehow the mercury was leached from the land and now the fish are at risk. I have worked in northern Manitoba where people have to go inland to fish because they can’t eat their fish; it will affect their liver.
With the dental and hydro we have two powerful lobby groups. Could you comment on these two and whether or not progress is being made? Is there process for alleviating the results of these toxic materials?
Mr. Morin: I will address bisphenol A or BPA and mercury separately.
With regard to bisphenol A, we have biomonitoring data available. The data available, though is on Canadians greater than three years old. The action that was taken on bisphenol A under the Canadian Consumer Product Safety Act had to do with infant formula tin liners and baby bottles. We have done some follow-up market surveys where we have sampled and analyzed some baby bottles, tins and plastic that is used.
In the first round, we gathered about 24. We found a few areas of non-compliance. Those were followed up with another round of surveys, and we did not find any non-compliance with regard to those products. That’s an indicator of the success we have had on that front. Hopefully the exposure reduction we see there will translate into essentially reduced levels in Canadian infants of bisphenol A. Unfortunately, we do not have biomonitoring data for Canadians that young. Our programs do not apply to them.
With regard to mercury, as you’ve said, we have done a lot of work in Canada since the 1970s. Levels have decreased substantially in Canadians, and we have biomonitoring data to show that. Most of the mercury in Canada now either comes from products that are imported to the country or in transboundary movement or long-range transport of mercury that comes into the country. You are absolutely right. One of the areas of exposure we see is with regard to fish and fish consumption, as you pointed out, and to the flooding of reservoirs and the formation of methyl mercury associated with that.
We work under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Health Canada is involved as an expert support department. We provide reviews of the human health risk assessments done by proponents of projects and undertakings. We will review to ensure that the approaches taken with regard to evaluating those risks are appropriate and reflective, and that a certain amount of precaution is put in place to ensure the population is safeguarded.
We will also comment on the mitigation measures suggested by proponents to address issues associated with mercury. In the case of fish, for example, we will look at the recommendations for fish consumption advisories. We will see whether or not that is appropriate and makes sense. We will also work on occasion with some of the provinces and territories, as appropriate, to help develop some of the consumption advisories. We will work with the other jurisdictions in those areas.
Senator McCallum: With hydro, then, they will continue and you are just looking at consumption.
Mr. Morin: With regard to hydro, as new reservoirs are flooded we will see the formation of methyl mercury associated with that. Obviously, in those cases, we have to get a sense of what it means in advance. What population is dependent on that reservoir or that area as a source of food? We will review the risk assessments that result from that. We will also look at the proposed mitigation measures to see whether or not they are sufficient.
You are perfectly right. Whenever a new reservoir is flooded, we anticipate there are likely to be issues associated with mercury. That is why Health Canada is actively involved as an expert support department.
Senator McCallum: You didn’t comment on dentistry.
Ms. Goodier: I can comment on the dental amalgam using mercury.
Senator McCallum: I was looking more at the bisphenol A used in resin.
Mr. Morin: With regard to bisphenol A used in resins, it is interesting that in our biomonitoring work we have the ability to see trends in the Canadian population associated from all sources of exposure. Samples are taken if you are part of the population that fits into the Canadian Health Measures Survey, and we do have information on bisphenol A trends in the Canadian population.
You were absolutely right when you reminded me that in my first response I spoke about bisphenol A in infants associated with baby bottles and tin liners. When we do grab a biomonitoring sample for adults, it will cover exposure from all sources of bisphenol A, not just dental amalgams but every other source of bisphenol A that Canadians could be exposed to. Biomonitoring is the gold standard because it tells you what Canadians are exposed to and their levels, not just from one source but from collective sources.
Senator Patterson: I would like to ask the DFO representative about marine protected areas.
A huge MPA is being worked on in the Arctic in what we know as Lancaster Sound. Could you tell me how flexible this instrument is to balance economic opportunities, including related shipping and environmental protection? Does the marine protected area provide a flexible tool which will allow a diverse range of activities?
Ms. Lapointe: Just because we’re speaking about a marine protected area or a closed area doesn’t necessarily mean that it is closed to all economic activity. This is very much based on what we’re trying to protect and the impacts of those activities on habitat or the marine area.
To your question about flexibility, there is that flexibility there to be able to achieve the outcome of protection and maintaining the ecosystem, with some coexistence of economic activities.
Senator Patterson: Will there be an opportunity for the Inuit to participate in the management of the marine protected area that is being planned in quite a large area of what we know as Lancaster Sound?
Ms. Lapointe: Yes, they’re already fully involved in the development of that area. They will be very much a part of managing, protecting and enforcing the area.
Senator Patterson: What is the time frame for this work?
Ms. Lapointe: I would have to get back to you on the specific timelines for that. I don’t have them with me.
The Chair: Could you, please?
Ms. Lapointe: Yes.
Senator Patterson: My next question is for Health Canada. It’s about the 138 toxic substances. Your department received some funds for informing the public about health risks from toxic substances. I think $1.3 million was dedicated to that purpose between 2014-15 to 2017-18.
I am wondering how that funding was used. I would suggest that much of the information on your website seems to be geared toward a technical audience. Layperson summaries have been developed for three of the 138 toxic substances. Are you working to allow ordinary Canadians who don’t understand words like tetrachloroethylene to make more informed decisions about toxic substances?
Mr. Morin: We are absolutely doing more to make Canadians aware of the work we are doing on toxic substances. As you very well pointed out, we have a lot of technical information on our website. For example, we have over 350 information sheets on chemical substances. I appreciate your comment, though, that they are probably geared more to a technical audience.
You pointed to the three plain language summaries that we have. I would also like to point out that we have another 12 plain language summaries that we are currently in the process of finalizing. Hopefully those will be out soon. We have another 12 that are in development.
We heard the comment. We appreciate the comment. Even in advance of hearing that comment from the commissioner, we heard comments from many of our stakeholders saying that not everyone understands what is on our website. That is when we started, I guess about a year and a half ago when our public opinion research was conducted, to get a sense of what Canadians want to hear, how they want to hear about it, and where they gather that information.
We view this as something very important to be able to communicate out to Canadians. It provides them with an opportunity to protect themselves, as necessary, from chemicals as they go about their daily lives.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your testimony. It is very much appreciated.
(The committee adjourned.)