THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 15, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9:01 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Senator Paula Simons (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
The Deputy Chair: Good morning, honourable senators.
Welcome to the committee members and witnesses, both those here in the room and those attending online, as well as everyone watching the meeting on the internet.
My name is Paula Simons, senator from Alberta, Treaty 6 territory, and I am the deputy chair of this committee. Today, this committee is meeting on its study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. I would like senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator Oh: Senator Victor Oh, Ontario.
Senator Cotter: Brent Cotter, senator from Saskatchewan and Treaty 6 territory.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, senator from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator McNair: John McNair, senator from New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Bellemare: Diane Bellemare from Alma, Quebec. It’s my pleasure to sit in for Senator Black today.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Before we begin, should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the chair or the clerk, and we will work to resolve the issue. That’s especially for you, Dr. Price, since you’re online. Let me welcome for our first panel on soil contamination, Daniel Alessi, Professor and Encana Chair in Water Resources, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta; and Gordon Price, Professor, Department of Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, who joins us by video conference.
As I invite you to make your presentations, I will explain the protocols we use in this committee. You will each have exactly five minutes for your presentations. I will signal that your time is running out by raising one hand when you have one minute left, and I will raise both hands when your time is up.
The floor is now yours, Dr. Alessi, for five minutes.
Daniel Alessi, Professor and Encana Chair in Water Resources, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, as an individual: Thank you for the kind invitation to come and speak to all of you. It’s humbling.
Soil contamination is a significant environmental concern in Canada, with a range of sources contributing to the degradation of soil quality across the country. Industrial activities, agricultural practices, improper waste disposal, leaking landfills and historical contamination are some of the primary factors leading to soil contamination in Canada. Overfarming, forestry or cut lines for oil and gas development can also cause soil degradation and erosion, leading to the loss of a resource that is viewed by most scientists as non-renewable.
Industrial activities, including mining, oil and gas operations, manufacturing and chemical production, have left a lasting impact on Canadian soils. These activities often involve the use of hazardous substances and improper waste management, leading to the release of pollutants into soils. Contaminants, like heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons and industrial chemicals, can persist in the soil for decades, posing risks to both human health and ecosystems.
In addition, we face new threats from emerging contaminants, including pharmaceuticals and the so-called “forever chemicals” — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — that were historically used in many consumer goods, including food packaging, clothing and cooking pans. By some accounts, more than 99% of Canadians have measurable concentrations of PFAS compounds in their blood, and these compounds are thought to be detrimental to human health at parts-per-quadrillion concentrations — vanishingly small. These emerging substances degrade slowly in soil and water, and, in many cases, their long-term impacts to ecosystems and human health are not well understood. Addressing these challenges requires continued research on the identity, toxicity, mobility and fate of these compounds in soils and water, and understanding bioaccumulation in organisms.
Agricultural practices, including the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and intensive farming methods, also contribute to soil contamination and degradation. Excessive use of these chemicals can lead to their accumulation in soil, impacting its quality and fertility. Runoff from agricultural lands can carry these contaminants into nearby water bodies, further exacerbating the environmental impacts.
Agricultural soils and water quality are intimately tied together. While decadal data — reported by, for example, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada — reports increases in general soil quality since the 1980s, there has been a concomitant decline in water quality, driven largely by the use of herbicides, pesticides and phosphorous fertilizer. Continued support of the work of agencies — like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and, more broadly, other Canadian researchers — is critical to ensuring that soil and water quality in agricultural regions are improved and maintained. This includes advancing research on applications of chemicals to agricultural lands, particularly the amounts of them, as well as strategies — including carbon negative soil amendments such as biochar — shown to improve soil health and fertility.
We also face a climate that is changing more rapidly in Canada than in many other places in the world. Changes in both temperature and the distribution and intensity of precipitation may have profound impacts on soil stability, chemistry and health.
At the same time, forest fires are predicted to increase and permafrost landscape will continue to thaw, leading to more soil erosion and impacts to freshwater resources, as soil particles and particulate charcoal increasingly enter neighbouring rivers and streams. This not only has impacts on ecosystem health, but also on the use of Canada’s freshwater resources for recreation and drinking water.
Studies in regions that are climatically similar to Canada, such as Northern Europe, show that the mobilization of existing heavy metals and organic contaminants in soils, such as hydrocarbons, may increase dramatically due to modest increases in temperature, as well as changes in precipitation or groundwater levels. In order to adequately protect our soil and water, additional studies on the impacts of climate change to these resources are urgently needed.
Finally, I would like to mention that there are many opportunities in the face of these challenges. For example, legacy sources of soil contamination, such as produced water from oil and gas wells, or fly ash piles from coal combustion to generate electricity, contain critical minerals. Researchers in government, industry and academia are developing methods to extract these elements, turning what was a liability to soil and water health into a resource.
It is crucial to continue monitoring and addressing soil contamination in Canada to protect human health, preserve ecosystems and conserve our agricultural sector. Our role as scientists is to provide the data required to inform the development of effective regulations and laws to ensure the sustainable use of Canada’s vast soil resources.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Alessi. The floor is now yours, Dr. Price.
Gordon Price, Professor, Department of Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable members of the Senate. I would like to acknowledge that Dalhousie University is situated on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kma’ki people. We are all treaty people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to share with you my perspective on soil health and contamination. I also wish to acknowledge this committee’s dedication to highlighting the significance of soil health for Canadians.
Today, I will address two emerging areas of concern regarding soil health in Canada, which needs to be integrated into a broader discussion on social responsibility and stewardship. My research focuses on studying the management of organic wastes and their environmental impacts when they are introduced into soils.
Increasingly, many organic residues entering into soils originate from outside of agriculture, carrying with them the footprint of Canadians’ daily activities, and these can have a direct effect on the health of soils — good and bad — and ultimately on human health.
Two significant sources of materials with potential benefit to soil health originate from the management of urban organic wastes, specifically food wastes and biosolids.
The Canadian economy wastes an enormous amount of food and organics. Food loss and waste are a tremendous burden to our economy, costing over $40 billion annually, and it’s linked to soil health in a number of ways. Food waste occurs across the entire value chain, from primary production through transportation and storage to retail and consumers. In fact, a large proportion of these materials will end up in a landfill. The result is an estimated 58% of all food produced in Canada — between 14 and 35.5 million tonnes — is landfilled and contributes to current greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions of 30 million tonnes of CO2 equivalence, primarily as methane. Currently, only one quarter of municipal food wastes and organics in Canada is diverted into composting or anaerobic digestion as a resource recovery pathway. Compost quality for use in soils is provincially regulated with respect to biological stability, heavy metals and pathogen contents.
On the other side, 86% of Canadians are served by municipal waste water systems, resulting in the generation of approximately 1 to 2 million dry tonnes of treated sewage solids, also known as biosolids. Removal and treatment of sewage solids represent up to 50% of the operational costs in a waste water treatment plant. Half of these treated solids, or biosolids, are land-applied as amendments providing nutrients for agricultural production.
Biosolids are regulated for safe use within each province, guided by criteria established through the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, or CCME, as well as criteria determined of importance within each jurisdiction — that includes heavy metals, pathogen contents, nutrient content and, in some jurisdictions, legacy or contaminants of emerging concern.
In both instances, food wastes and biosolids represent the mosaic of what Canadian society consumes and disposes, and that includes an array of household and industrial chemicals, health and hygiene products, and a myriad of plastics. Waste management facilities, provincial regulatory bodies and agricultural practitioners are placed in the precarious position of managing these materials using technologies or policy tools that are not fully adequate.
The challenge for soil health derives from the fact that agriculture is seen as a viable and cheap pathway to managing or disposing of organic byproducts generated from agricultural production, industry and municipalities. While this provides an avenue to recycle valuable nutrients and carbon into soils, it places an unfair burden of responsibility on compost site managers and agricultural practitioners to manage waste under the mantle of environmental stewards.
A way to illustrate this societal dilemma is through the lens of two potential contaminants — microplastics in food waste composts and anaerobic digestates, or microplastics and contaminants of emerging concern that may be present in biosolids. Dr. Alessi alluded to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are chemicals embedded in many consumer products that do not degrade or bioaccumulate, and may be associated with a wide range of human health effects, such as decreased fertility, higher cancer risk and hormone disregulation.
Similarly, microplastics are as close to a forever contaminant as we can get, and once they are in a soil environment, it is nearly impossible to get them out. Annual leakage of plastics globally exceeds 22 million tonnes into the environment — terrestrial and aquatic — and while plastic pollution of the oceans has become a highly visible public issue, terrestrial contamination by microplastics may range from 4 to 23 times higher than marine environments.
Canadians derive significant economic and environmental benefits from the diversion of food wastes transformed into composts or recovering biosolids for use in agricultural environments. Recovering these resources must continue in order to address climate change mitigation and build healthy soils, as well as build a resilient Canadian agricultural sector.
So what can we do? This committee and the individuals contributing their expertise toward this report must be advocates for more awareness and regulation on what should be allowed to enter these waste streams, and also encourage industry to play a strong role in this advocacy. Canadians need to be educated on the downstream impacts of their actions affecting soil health. Provincial and federal regulators need to communicate with waste managers and agricultural practitioners to identify ways that prevent these potential contaminants from entering into soils. Social responsibility and stewardship must occur across the whole food value chain, from primary production to consumers. Canadians have an important role to play in building healthy soils. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you both very much. We now turn to questions.
Senator Oh: Welcome, witnesses, to today’s panel.
How can the federal government support farmers in adopting soil conservation practices based on the studies you have both found?
Mr. Alessi: That’s a good question. I think it begins with support for education of farmers on several issues. The first is the application of herbicides and pesticides and proper management of fertilizer use. Historically, in the country, there has been overuse of fertilizers that has led to things like eutrophication of water bodies near agricultural lands, so there should be education on proper tillage practices, as well as programs that support assessing the soil health in agricultural fields. Some of this exists through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
I would say the other source, from an academic standpoint, has been funding — for example, through the Tri-Council Policy Statement and particularly through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, or NSERC — to support collaboration among universities, researchers and government researchers who work in soils and agriculture, and to collaborate with farmers outside of the laboratory scale and at the plot scale in the field in order to study these emerging and existing contaminants and provide solutions to ensure the soils are sustainable over the long term.
Mr. Price: From my perspective, the federal government has a role in supporting soil conservation efforts, as Dr. Alessi has indicated, through conservation education and a wide range of supports and resources for the agricultural sector in this domain.
I would add that one of the areas of further interest is the broader monitoring of soil quality across the country. Currently, our monitoring capacity is very limited. We have lost all soil surveys, and we now have the tools across a lot of different labs in universities to do broad-scale monitoring — what we would call large data, or big data — of our landscapes. And that information — that data — can speak back to the resources and the practices that are currently under way in agriculture.
Senator Oh: So far, do you think the government has done enough on this kind of engagement with the institutions?
Mr. Alessi: I listened to some of the previous testimony in this room by people who are doing this work. I think the work being done is superb, but the quantity probably isn’t adequate.
Dr. Price brings up a great point around monitoring. I would add that not only the soil quality, but also the water resources monitoring system in Canada — which, again, are intimately and directly linked to soils — is inadequate to provide the information we need to monitor soil and water health for the next 50 to 100 years.
Senator Oh: Dr. Price, do you have any comments?
Mr. Price: I would agree; I think one of the challenges in any institutional approach is the fact that we typically live in silos, and science is no different. Soil scientists study soils, but may not be focused on understanding the impact on water quality, for instance. However, people who study water quality may not be going back to what the practices are in the soil.
In terms of monitoring, broader environmental monitoring needs to occur in an integrated way, where scientists are sharing information across their disciplines. What I’m seeing today is the push, through bodies like NSERC and other funding agencies, for larger-scale collaborative research efforts to occur in order to transcend these particular silos. I think that is effective, but it needs to be supported in an ongoing way — not on a 5-year basis, but on a 15-year, 20-year or 30-year basis. We need long-scale data sets, and currently our funding envelopes are very short; it’s three years or five years maximum.
Senator Oh: Thank you for your comments.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. My question will be for you, Mr. Alessi, but, of course, I would love to hear Dr. Price’s input, if he has any.
You talked about the need for education and awareness, but when it comes to the use of pesticides, herbicides, chemicals and fertilizers, will education be enough? Or do you think that Canada should have stronger regulations and maybe laws on what can be used, how much and when?
Second, can you give us a sense on these issues of regulation, as well as controlling what is used and how much? How do we sit in comparison to other countries? Are we doing well? Are there best practices somewhere else?
Mr. Alessi: The first question, if I understand correctly, is around pesticide and herbicide education about applications versus regulation. I guess I’ll combine my answers. I would say the regulation around the application of chemicals, in general, in industries in Canada is among the best in the world. One thing I would say around contamination in soils is that, here in Canada, we generally go by the CCME guidelines. In the U.S. — our neighbour — there are stronger EPA regulations that are more enforceable. I don’t think it’s so much around what the CCME guidelines say versus other jurisdictions; it’s that the CCME guidelines don’t have the teeth that regulations in other jurisdictions, like the United States, do.
I don’t mean to flounder on the answer, but I think there is that issue of regulation. I still strongly believe that education around the application at the ground level — to inform farmers about, for example, the appropriate amount of application, alternative chemicals, or the alternative which is not using chemicals and perhaps using other sorts of natural amendments — is a worthy thing to explore and expand.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Did you want to add to that, Dr. Price?
Mr. Price: Certainly.
I would add the concept of soil health and educating farmers, practitioners — it’s practitioners directly — or people who are connected to that food value chain. That’s really my message here: We put a lot of responsibility on farmers to be environmental stewards, and that’s not a mantle they necessarily started with. They are businesspeople and generational families that are practising the production of food. We put a lot of responsibility on their shoulders.
But, as consumers and advocates, we need to have a role in supporting them. And, as I think Dr. Alessi has indicated, we have strong regulations on the use of chemicals in the soil, but we do need education around the idea that soil health encompasses a myriad of other opportunities, such as the use of beneficial organic amendments, organic practices and other practices that may alleviate the need for the use of some of these chemicals. We’re not going to escape the need for pesticides or herbicides at the production levels that we need to be maintaining or increasing, but we can provide other opportunities to evaluate not having to use them or using alternatives.
I think we have a good support system. Dr. Alessi has indicated that CCME are guidelines and not regulations, so each jurisdiction provincially manages that. That’s a bit of a challenging piece when it comes to regulation.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Dr. Alessi, is it your experience that when we talk about education and awareness, once the farmers — Dr. Price was saying that sometimes they don’t know — have been made aware, and they have this education, it’s easy in the sense that they will adopt best practices, if they have this education? Is that your experience, or is there resistance?
Mr. Alessi: I worked with a few farmers on some projects in the province of Alberta, and the proof is in the pudding. I don’t think they’re necessarily going to change their whole process, because a lot of them operate on a year-to-year basis.
I will reiterate something I said in my opening comments: We need more studies between those that happen in university laboratories, or government laboratories, at a small scale and full field trials. That goes back to the use of university farms, for example, where you can conduct pilot studies in nature and see how particular types of amendments work. Dr. Price mentioned organic amendments. Another would be biochar, which is basically charcoal. Those need testing to build confidence. Once they are proven out, then farmers are more receptive to trying them.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much.
Senator Cotter: I have a question for Dr. Alessi, and then a question primarily for Dr. Price, I think.
You talked about the relationship between soil and water. I’m presuming that one of the aspects of your work is to study watersheds as a whole. There is an interesting intersection between the federal jurisdiction and provincial jurisdiction in some of these questions. We’re speaking from the federal perspective here. Can you talk about how that intersects in the work you do?
Mr. Alessi: Sure. I’ll speak to it from the water side of things.
When we look at watershed health, for example, which obviously includes the soil in that region, we’re primarily dealing with municipalities. It might be at the provincial level, but we’re dealing with the major municipalities that lie in that watershed. For example, I’m working on the North Saskatchewan River watershed right now regarding both the soil health and the water supply in the face of climate change. The agencies we typically deal with are not the federal agencies; perhaps, they are at the provincial level. There is the Alberta Energy Regulator, the Alberta Geological Survey, the City of Edmonton and major users of water and the utility EPCOR. We’re dealing with people at that level.
In terms of engagement, in the projects I’ve worked with in the Canadian Prairies, there is not a lot of engagement at the federal level; it’s mostly local to regional.
Senator Cotter: I hope you keep doing good work, because that water makes its way to Saskatchewan.
Mr. Alessi: It does.
Senator Cotter: Dr. Price, as I listened to you, you made me feel guilty about going to the bathroom. I can get over that, as there are not many other alternatives there. It strikes me that your work and your colleagues’ work are really important. I got the message that more research resources will enable you to do more of it, and do it better. But if more people knew about this — for example, in the areas you talked about concerning social responsibility — it strikes me that millions of us would try, even in modest ways, to change our practices if we knew some of the consequences you have described, some of which seem dire to me. I have said at this committee once or twice before — and they’re sick of hearing it — my background is not agriculture, but when I came to this committee and this study, I came to doubt and stayed to pray. I feel like we are learning an enormous amount here, but Canadians as a whole are not.
Is there a strategy in that connection of social responsibility work that you see or do, or that can be done, to raise that level of understanding?
Mr. Price: Absolutely. Again, I could have come here to talk about how we, as scientists, need more funding support for our research — and that’s very important — but the other side of it is this question: Whom are we supporting? We are supporting consumers. We are supporting the policy-makers. For instance, I sat on a technical committee for the Province of British Columbia, trying to assess their regulations around the use of organic amendments, particularly biosolids. The message is that everyone is at the end point of having to deal with materials that they have no control over. What goes into a sewage system and what goes into a source-separation organics bins is controlled by the person who makes the decision of how or what they place into that receptacle. That’s the piece we’re missing. Consumers need to take personal responsibility.
I teach a course right now with undergraduate university students who are in the privileged position of being more highly educated than most Canadians. I can walk around our source-separated bins and see that plastics are being put into an organics bin. So we’re not doing a good job of educating the students whom we see every single day, let alone all the other Canadians that are out there.
Somehow, we need to be effective in educating and messaging to the Canadian public that what they do has an intricate link to the quality of the food they eat and the quality of the water they drink. I don’t have an answer as to how we do that.
I have a project now, funded through NSERC, that’s looking at food loss and waste across Canada and trying to quantify that, mainly in the context of greenhouse gas emissions but also in the context of the amount of plastics that are going into compost, which we spend an inordinate amount of money in infrastructure and taxpayer dollars managing. Half of the material that goes into a compost facility goes to a landfill, because it’s contaminated with plastics. We need a better mechanism to educate people in terms of their actions.
Senator Cotter: Thanks. I appreciate that.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for being here.
I’m a pediatrician, so I have my ears tuned to what you are saying. I wanted to get to the whole issue of silos. We have heard this over and over from so many experts who have come to this table. There’s a lot of research out there, but we are in silos.
Who should be tracking it, and how do you think we — speaking federally — could have an impact? Should it be a national soil strategy czar or something like that? How do you think we could break down these silos and get the communication, education, awareness and research best practices, et cetera?
I would appreciate responses from both of you.
Mr. Alessi: Thank you.
The first thing I would say is that research is siloed, and the information about soil contamination is siloed. First of all, if we look at it historically — and getting back to what Dr. Price said — some of the best studies in the world have long-term, established sites to study the impacts of soil contamination, for example. We had a site in Ontario that’s world-famous that uncovered the reasons behind eutrophication of water bodies. Support for those types of research sites — that not only involve scientists and engineers of many types, but also people in social sciences, medicine and health — is, I think, invaluable to making integrated discoveries that really have an impact and aren’t siloed into soil science, earth science or toxicology.
Second, yes, having people in social sciences and communications associated with those sorts of sites is invaluable because those are the types of people who know how to do outreach and reach the communities that need this information.
Senator Burey: Dr. Price, do you have anything to add?
Mr. Price: I agree, and I would add that one of the issues with silos is that it’s just about communication and not knowing whether the other side — whatever the other side is — is even interested in hearing what you have to say. Whether it’s a soil czar or whether it’s further mandates within the bodies that fund scientists — for instance, NSERC; the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR; or the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, or SSHRC — they are promoting greater cross-disciplinary engagement in terms of collaborations. Right now, there are NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR calls that require the engagement of people from other disciplines. One of my projects currently required social scientists to be part of that project so that we could understand how the behaviours of consumers impacted the amount of food loss and waste and the subsequent impacts on the composting of organics.
I don’t know that we necessarily need to have more administrative oversight. What we need to do is create the spaces that engage people with each other so they can communicate — and feel like they can communicate — their messages clearly, and then find ways to integrate that into the education pieces that are critically important.
Senator Burey: Just digging a little deeper on the monitoring of soil quality — because you talked about that, Dr. Price — who should be responsible for our lack of data? Who should be doing this work? Should it be government? Should it be industry? Just let me hear your ideas.
Mr. Price: It needs to be all of us. Again, I will speak to a project that we have submitted to NSERC about soil, which is just building a large national soil database. What we proposed brings in provincial government bodies and federal bodies, like Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada. It brings in industry. It brings in data that is generated by industry but is housed within the federal government. The sole purpose is to create a single hub for soil data across Canada.
I’m not asking you to go to NSERC to tell them to fund us. If you can do that, I would definitely appreciate it. However, it is that kind of initiative. We have disaggregated information across this nation, and yet we are often repeating the work that others have already done because we don’t know that data exists. We need initiatives that bring all the different levels of government, institutions and industry together to talk about sharing rather than protecting their data. That’s a big issue.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Price.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you very much to both of you.
I have a follow-up question to what Senator Cotter was saying about education. Professor Price, you talked about teaching university students where to put the garbage and things like that. Do either of you have programs on teaching children? I used to be a Brownie teacher, and what I taught them, they would tell the whole world. They would tell their parents what not to do, and they would tell everybody. It really stuck with them. When I see them now, they are much older. They say that what was taught to them in Brownies — I don’t even know if people know what Brownies are anymore — they still remember. Do you have any programs or have you done any work on it?
I’ll ask Professor Price, and then I will ask you, Professor Alessi.
Mr. Price: Thank you, Senator Jaffer. I don’t specifically have a program, at least not at the elementary school level, which I think is where it’s important to start. I know elementary school programs across different provinces include soils as part of their curriculum.
I do annually participate in what’s called an Envirothon competition in training high school students who are interested in the environment, and educating them on soils in particular and the theme of their competition. We have Canada science fairs that I have regularly been engaged with. However, these are small groups of individual students who are highly interested in these areas. We definitely need broader education at the elementary school level in terms of how their actions impact students.
I’m afraid to say I don’t, but I think it’s very important.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you. Do you have any programs, Professor Alessi?
Mr. Alessi: My answer, senator, will be similar to Dr. Price’s. We do not have anything sustained and enduring.
It’s opportunistic in that individual professors in their own time, as part of their service, will go out to high schools and grade schools and do education on soil, water and earth sciences — which, I would say, is another topic that’s severely lacking in grade schools and high schools.
At the university, we do have several thousand students come in every summer — now that the pandemic is over — and they are working on focused areas. It might be medicine or it might be communications. One of the groups, in fact, is soil and water. Again, that’s a targeted thing that would only, perhaps, engage tens of students, but it’s a start and something we probably need to build on.
Senator Jaffer: May I respectfully ask both of you this — we also have to do work on it, not just you. I find that when I go into a grade school now, the first question I get asked is on climate change. They are very much aware of that, so I recommend that perhaps both you and we need to look at not just starting at the university or secondary school level, but at the elementary school level as well, please.
Thank you to both of you.
The Deputy Chair: All right, now it’s my turn to ask a question. We’ll set the timer for me too.
Dr. Alessi, you talked a little bit about remediation with biochar and about heavy metal extraction. Since this has been a somewhat depressing panel thus far, I wonder if you could talk to us about the techniques we already have to try to remediate soil, and where we need more research and focus in that area.
Mr. Alessi: For conventional contaminants — and I would include things like petroleum hydrocarbons and a lot of other organic contaminants and metals — there are very well-established remedial technologies. Therefore, it’s more about the willingness to spend the money than the need for new technologies. Dr. Price and I both talked about emerging contaminants, so I would put pharmaceuticals. Dr. Price rightly said microplastics and plastics in general, as well as the PFAS compounds — we need research on those.
There is a lack of understanding not only about how they move around and what their fate is in the environment, but also about — in some cases — their identity or their toxicity and appropriate ways to remediate them.
I think that’s where the main issues lie on the remedial side. I can speak to biochar too. This is one of my expertise, so I could talk quite awhile on it.
Biochar is essentially taking waste biomass of any type — be it sewage sludge from a municipal water treatment plant or agricultural waste which is produced at massive scales — and simply heating it in the absence of oxygen. It’s basically making charcoal. That process does not release a lot of CO2. Most of the carbon that would have ended up as CO2 is locked into the charcoal. There are several great things about that.
First, we can bury that carbon in soils and it will not turn into CO2 for hundreds to, perhaps, a couple thousand years. It really pushes that carbon. Instead of putting it out there to mulch it, and allow it to decay and turn into greenhouse gases, it sits in the soil and will eventually turn into carbon dioxide and perhaps methane. By doing this, we are kicking the can down the road 500 years, and presumably by then we will have solved the greenhouse gas emissions problem.
It also does great things for soils over the long term. It does take awhile to kick in, but if you look at South America, for example, in the Amazonian cultures, there is still terra preta that’s functioning thousands of years later in soils that were previously essentially infertile. There’s great dual benefit to that material.
The Deputy Chair: It only draws out the bad things — the contaminants?
Mr. Alessi: It can. It can absorb contaminants. You have to be careful about what you make the biochar out of because if the feedstock contains contaminants, that can be an issue. That’s a long conversation, but it tends to concentrate nutrients that are then released more slowly over time, which is good for the soil. It tends to be a surface to which soil micro-organisms like to attach, increasing the diversity of the soil microbial community. There are a ton of good knock-on effects: Crops grow better and there’s a ton of carbon in the soil.
As an example for you, in Australia, there is a government-funded site that’s been going for over 20 years on biochar amendment. There wasn’t a lot for a while — it took about 5 or 10 years — but they are now seeing greater crop yields of 30% to 50% at that test site. It’s very exciting work.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. I have a minute and 20 seconds to ask Dr. Price a question.
My husband keeps putting plastic bags into the compost bin, and I wish to throttle him. That’s not an issue you can solve for me on the day after Valentine’s Day, however.
You talked about microplastics. Can you give us some examples of where those microplastics are coming from? Not the kind of microplastics my husband keeps putting in the bin, I hope.
Mr. Price: That’s where they come from.
The Deputy Chair: From plastic bags? Are there some in our bath bombs or in our facial scrubs?
Mr. Price: Yes. Clothing and other products may break out little plastics, but the bulk of microplastics originates from the larger plastics that we dispose of in our landfills, in the compost and in our organics bins. They break down as a function of that physical contact. For example, in a compost system, those materials are being turned mechanically over the course of 12 months. Over time, those plastic bags are getting chewed up into smaller and smaller pieces. As they get used in a soil environment, they are then going through other mechanical processes and chemical processes that break them down. It starts with whatever consumer plastic we dispose, which has the potential to become not just a microplastic but also a nanoplastic. We are just making them smaller and smaller.
The issue is that, similar to biochar, they become hot spots for things to be held on to. Those could be contaminants, or they may contain contaminants that then leach out over time. Once they are in a soil environment, particularly at the micro level and nano level, they are literally impossible to clear out. We have no filtering capacity to do that. That would be a huge disturbance. It has to start with policy.
Canada has banned shopping bags in supermarkets. That’s a great start, but it also starts with individual decisions in terms of your husband deciding to put a plastic bag in an organics bin. Maybe you should continue to encourage him not to do that.
The Deputy Chair: I’m going to play back this tape for him. Thank you so much.
Senator McBean: Thank you. First-time caller.
I started off with a simple question, and then some of the other senators’ questions and your answers took that away and made it more complex.
As I listened, I was struck by the fact that you said soil is not renewable. Dr. Price, I heard you say that waste products in soil are coming primarily from outside agriculture.
When my colleague Senator Oh asked the question about what you would do, I felt like the burden, as it often does, goes down to the farmer. And then, Senator Petitclerc, you said they are taking it up, but they really want to know how it works.
I want to loop back to Senator Oh’s question. How can the government help? It seems like we’re talking a lot about the causes, where we’re putting plastics into the garbage and the effect of that. We also want to monitor the soil quality which degrades the water quality, but it seems like the horse has left the barn at that moment. Where is the best place that the government — and something like this — could come in and make an impact? Will it be education to take away the silos?
As an aside, it’s Embers now, Senator Jaffer. My daughter was in Embers last night, so Brownies are still alive and strong.
To return to my point, for studies on traumatic brain injuries, they now bring in the surgeons, the psychologists, the physiotherapists and the people throughout the chain to have a discussion. Everyone comes into the room thinking they are in the wrong place, and then they realize that they are all interconnected. To re-ask Senator Oh’s question, what can the government do that doesn’t just fall squarely on the farmers’ shoulders so that we will not just monitor the problem but also stem it? Where can the best use of a discussion like this end up?
Mr. Price: The government is not a single entity. Government is made up of all the different departments, ministries and individuals who are interested across all the different sectors — economics, environment and health.
Every part of government has a role to play, so ban plastics. Ban plastics in supermarkets, in bags and in packaging. One role that government can play is reducing the number of plastics that are in circulation.
We can also provide the resources for best practices in agriculture. If we clean the products that will make their way into agriculture, then the materials that farmers are using — food waste — will not be a contaminant source but a resource. It involves educating farmers.
Farmers are some of the biggest innovators. Sometimes they are the most conservative people, but they can also be one of the biggest innovators and risk takers that we have. If they understand, as Dr. Alessi alluded to before, that there is little risk and great benefit to them, then most likely they will adopt the practice.
Government has a role in funding research for monitoring, for understanding impacts, for regulating things that we now know are potential sources of contamination, and then for providing the tools to agricultural practitioners so they feel that they can use that safely and know what the best practice is in order to use them.
Mr. Alessi: First, I think monitoring still has quite a bit of value. We still need data and we’re still facing quite a bit of climate change in the next 50 years that will impact soil distribution and health for the next few decades.
Dr. Price has answered similar to what I would have said. There are two sides of the coin that you point out, senator. One is that there are personal choices, whether that be at the consumer level or the farmer level, but that’s starting at the ground level.
The other side of the coin is systemic changes from the top. This can be via regulation which perhaps, in some cases, is perceived negatively, but, on a positive note, it can be by incentivizing green actions and green industries.
We certainly see that. I mentioned a quick example that we have a major issue — and it’s a worldwide issue — of fly ash piles, and mine tailings are extensive in Canada. We have a lot of oil and gas industry — over 800,000 wells in Alberta alone, many of which are abandoned and orphaned and produce saline water. All of these impact soils.
A lot of these waste piles, especially in light of the drive toward lithium mine batteries and green energy, contain valuable resources. While you have a liability at the surface, you can actually generate money from what was a waste material that’s turned into an ore. That can drive employment but also the reclamation of that site.
Senator McBean: Yes, I get the sense that you’re preaching to the choir here. I want to make sure we’re giving value to the time that you’ve brought to this conversation.
How can we help? If the regulations, as you said to Senator Petitclerc, are some of the leading ones, then it’s incentives. How do we push this conversation?
The Deputy Chair: You come from a world where time is important, so I’m telling you your time is now up.
[Translation]
Senator Bellemare: I’ll speak in French, but you can respond in English. My questions are along the same lines. What can we do?
I’m replacing a committee member today. I’m also a member of the Standing Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy, and the workforce, training and skills development are of great interest to me. We often forget that, if we want to break down silos, maybe we need to develop the skills to deal with the climate crisis and tackle that in elementary school, high school and university. Within the workforce, we need to develop good corporate citizenship skills.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on that, because I find that we often forget that aspect. If you break down the silos and get the message through to children, they’ll go back home and tell their parents, “Hey, you can’t do that!” What’s your opinion on developing skills and recognizing those skills?
[English]
Mr. Alessi: Thank you for that question, senator. I remember that the first recycling of bottles and cans happened when I was a child. I remember going to my parents and saying exactly that: “We need to have bins for the cans.” We did have plastic after that. It was something, as you say correctly, where children, oddly enough, educated their parents and grandparents, and now it is quite normal.
Dr. Price talked about this before, and I think I commented on it, but you said at the elementary school level. I think the elementary school — or, perhaps, grade school — and high school levels are where this needs to happen.
I’m certainly not an expert in this. I have visited grade schools and high schools and given presentations on environmental science, but I wonder if talking to people who work in elementary school and middle school education would be a good idea. Professors can come and speak, but it sounds as if it’s almost a curricular change.
I’m a geology professor, and one of the systemic issues we have — as scientists — is we see people coming to the university who have never taken a single geology course, and that covers, in some ways, environmental science. They have chemistry, biology, mathematics and physics, and all of the other fundamental sciences.
There needs to be a great revisiting of what’s taught at the elementary school, middle school and high school levels. That is probably the solution here.
Mr. Price: Thank you, senator. I would agree; there are a lot of opportunities for universities that are in communities, such as the University of Guelph. It’s a relatively small city in Ontario. It’s a larger university, and there are opportunities for elementary school children to come to the university and speak to different people in order to see how research occurs.
At our campus in Nova Scotia, we often have a Community Day. Elementary school and high school students will take the day off and come with their families, and then we can show them all the different work that we do both in agriculture as well as in environmental sciences.
But a curricular change is systemic. That’s the piece that will become foundational for the individual students. It’s not just about educating the students. It’s also about educating the teachers who are teaching those students and providing them with the resources and the knowledge. Otherwise, what they may be teaching may not be entirely the appropriate message.
Senator Bellemare: Would you agree that we should also improve the skills of manpower by having a very short apprenticeship within the firm about those issues, too?
Mr. Alessi: That would be a great idea, particularly if it were well structured. Sometimes these things become disorganized or not impactful, but if it’s concise and impactful — that would have to be thought about — I would be in complete support of that.
Senator Petitclerc: I’m curious in knowing from both of you — first Dr. Alessi, and then Dr. Price — about research. You have the funding. I know we don’t have enough funding. I’m interested in who chooses and how it’s chosen what will be researched.
Are you satisfied with the liberty that you have in terms of what needs to be researched and what needs to be done now? Or is there some external criteria? Could you say anything on that?
Mr. Alessi: The research environment here in Canada is generally quite good, I would say. We could, of course, complain about funding, but it’s quite good.
The researcher does choose what they work on, and that’s a matter of applying to grants that interest them. I would say that maybe I’m a bit of an opportunist. If there is a call that I think is within my domain and that I could be effective in, I might apply for a grant that isn’t what I used to be doing, but is something that I think my group can carry out. After that, there is quite a bit of intellectual freedom to choose the students you want, choose the project directions you want and go in directions that are valuable.
Of course, at the federal level, that’s driven a lot by what funding is available. If we see a big call, like we do now, for critical metals — the federal government has quite a bit of money, and it’s even at the provincial level, for critical metals — now a lot of us are moving into that area because that’s where the funding is.
I would say there’s a great impact on where the funding opportunities are at the federal level — where it’s decided above our level — but, at the university level, we certainly have a lot of freedom to pursue what we want. At least that’s been my experience.
Senator Petitclerc: And independence, I assume.
Mr. Alessi: Very much so, yes.
Senator Petitclerc: That was my question. If the funding comes sometimes federally, for example, and maybe sometimes privately, I just want to make sure that you have independence when you say, “Maybe this is politically what this group or this government wants, but this is what is needed now for Canada.”
Mr. Price: I agree with Dr. Alessi. We have the independence to make decisions on what we want to study. We don’t have control over whether funding is available for that particular area at any given time. We have to be opportunistic. When a call comes out that touches on areas that we think are important to study, then we will try to do that.
The bigger issue that we’re facing is that these are not problems that we can — again, speaking to silos — solve individually, which is what researchers typically do. We create our own little territory as an individual researcher — our own lab. What we need are those funding calls that cross over disciplines and force us to communicate with other colleagues who are doing work or have similar areas of interest.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Alessi and Dr. Price. This has been a terrific panel. Your assistance with our study is very much appreciated.
For our second panel, we welcome Dr. Subhasis Ghoshal, Professor, Civil Engineering, and Director, Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design, McGill University; and Dr. Francis Zvomuya, Professor, Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Manitoba. Thank you both, gentlemen, for coming to Ottawa to be witnesses today. I invite you to make your presentations. We will begin with Dr. Ghoshal.
Subhasis Ghoshal, Professor, Civil Engineering, and Director, Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design, McGill University, as an individual: Thank you very much, Madam Chair and senators, for undertaking this important work on examining and reporting on the status of soil health in Canada. I am grateful for this opportunity to share my knowledge and thoughts on soil contamination and remediation with you.
My research and teaching as a university professor are primarily in the areas of soil and water contamination and remediation. I also have a particular focus in my research on the use of safe and biocompatible nanomaterials for crop fertilization and protection, with the goal of reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture.
Soil is a non-renewable resource, generated slowly over a millennium or so to generate a centimetre of good-quality soil. It provides important ecosystem services, such as providing clean water, food and safe storage of very large carbon pools. In fact, soil health is related to achieving approximately half of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. However, soil contamination can reduce the ecosystem services it provides and hinder achievement of several of those goals.
Soil contamination is widespread in Canada, as is typical of industrialized countries. However, certain climate and geological aspects uniquely influence the distribution of contaminants at sites and their remediation: the long, freezing winter; the vastness of the land which contributes to many remote contaminated sites; and certain geological/geographical features, such as permafrost and oil sands deposits in Alberta and Saskatchewan. These create unique conditions here in Canada.
The nature and distribution of contaminants at sites in Canada reflect the activities in various sectors, such as resource extraction, manufacturing, energy generation, agriculture or military activities. Transportation, waste and waste water disposal also contribute to contamination of soils. However, accidental spills, improperly maintained chemical storage facilities or improper handling of chemicals are the major causes contributing to ongoing soil contamination.
A large number of contaminated sites — generated by past industrial practices and spills — remain contaminated today due to a lack of resources for remediation or legal issues that prevent activity on the site. Canada has robust laws and policy frameworks for the prevention of pollution and the safe use of chemicals. However, contamination of sites has occurred in the past and continues to occur. Although it is well known that contaminated sites occur throughout the expanse of this country, there is no single repository that lists those contaminated sites. This contributes to a lack of awareness in the public of the extent of soil contamination.
The level of knowledge and skill in Canada for characterizing soil contamination, assessing their impacts on the environment, and on remediation of contaminated sites is among the best in the world across academic, government and industry institutions. However, this in itself is not enough to ensure the prevention of contamination and rapid remediation of contaminated sites. Traditional remediation technologies tend to be preferred over emerging ones for remediation of most sites in Canada. More resources, opportunities and incentives for applying knowledge on emerging remediation and prevention technologies are needed. Government, industry, academia, technology incubators and innovators need to work hand in hand to promote new technologies and enable entrepreneurial training for more rapid cleanup of contaminated sites.
While the focus on a more rapid pace of remediation of sites is needed, even greater focus is needed for ensuring that chemicals that have to be released to the soil and other environmental compartments are safe and degradable, and that their releases are compatible with the earth’s capacity to assimilate chemicals and waste. Prevention of future site contamination that is persistent and practically untreatable is the best pathway to cleaner soils for the future.
Some current practices that can be improved are the applications of fertilizers and pesticides. In general, about only 10% to 20% of pesticides and fertilizers applied on agricultural fields actually make it to the plant, and the rest of it remains in the soil or dissipates in the environment are degraded.
The use of plastics in agriculture has been increasing, and there are practices observed where plastic mulch film applied on farmland just get plowed in at the end of the season rather than removed. These plastic mulch films help agriculture, but the remaining plastics don’t really contribute to environmental sustainability.
We need to implement more sustainable processes, think about life cycle impacts, work on circular economies that use waste as a resource —
The Deputy Chair: Dr. Ghoshal, I’m so sorry, but your five minutes are up. We will have many questions for you, though.
Mr. Ghoshal: Sure. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Dr. Zvomuya, please go ahead.
Francis Zvomuya, Professor, Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Manitoba, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair and senators, for the invitation to appear before you to talk about this important aspect of soil health, which I’m delighted is finally getting the respect that it has deserved for such a long time.
I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, where I obtained my Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture, focusing on soil science. Then, I proceeded to the University of Reading in England to study for a Master’s Degree in Soil Science. Then, I went back to my native Zimbabwe for a few years, and then I went to the United States to obtain a PhD in Soil Science at the University of Minnesota.
Soil science has been part of my life for more than 50% of my life. I’ve been working on soil science — something I’m very passionate about. Since completing my PhD, I have been working as a soil scientist, starting as a visiting fellow and then as a temp scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, where I was involved in research on soil health aspects related to the use of compost and manure — not just as sources of nutrients for crops, but also in land reclamation programs in Alberta — and soils that have been disturbed by energy extraction. Since joining the University of Manitoba, I’ve also worked on land remediation.
My teaching program and research focus on conservation, contaminants and remediation.
I’ve also worked with some of the non-traditional emerging contaminants. We have heard previous witnesses talk about pharmaceuticals, as well as antibiotics coming from biosolids or sewage sludge and also from livestock manure. Some of the research we did in Alberta was looking at the antibiotics that are fed to animals. Then, we apply the manure on agricultural land as a good source of nutrients — what happens to those antibiotics in light of the superbugs or the development of antibiotic resistance.
I have also done some work — not forgetting agriculture is a very important part of us.
What is the status of the soils we use for urban agriculture in our backyards? We find in many neighbourhoods that the levels of lead in the soils are elevated. What are the implications? How much of that is actually going into the vegetables that we consume on a daily basis?
Of greater interest to you, as a committee, are the contaminants on agricultural land. I won’t go into the different sources. You heard from other witnesses about some of the sources of those contaminants. Remediation on a wide basis is very challenging, and there is definitely a need for continued research to try to find some of the ways of remediating contaminated field waste that are effective and, at the same time, less expensive.
In my research program, I am looking at phytoremediation, which is the use of plants to try to extract those contaminants. There is still the need for more research, because it is a very slow process. At the same time, while you have plants growing on a piece of land, you are protecting the soil but also keeping the contaminants in place and preventing them from migrating to vulnerable environments.
To wrap up, as a soil scientist, I’m delighted with the work you are doing on soil health. I echo the sentiments of previous witnesses on the need for a more integrated and more harmonized approach to defining contamination — contaminated sites — and to come up with a database. That research is something everybody can use.
Finally, this is my favourite quote — and this has been attributed to the former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, who was also a governor of that state. He reportedly said, “If we run out of water, we pray for rain, but if we run out of soil, we ask for forgiveness.”
Some of the efforts in trying to see if we can effectively remediate contaminated soils are small contributions toward asking for that forgiveness. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. That was very poetic.
I will turn now to questions. Senators will have five minutes each for the question-and-answer session.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
This morning, we asked the panel about the federal government’s support for farmers. Can you tell us a little bit more about some successful examples of initiating projects in Canada or other regions that have effectively improved soil health in agriculture? You both have gone through long stories, so can you tell us a little bit about the projects you’ve seen that have been successfully helped by the government?
Mr. Zvomuya: I commend the federal government as well as the provincial and territorial governments in the efforts they are making to try to assist in correcting the harms or the risks that are presented by contaminants.
Remediation, like I said, is very challenging. That is why we need research. We need a lot of funding for research to try to come up with strategies that can assist in remediating those contaminated sites.
There is very little, apart from the regulations and guidelines that are available and very comprehensive — from a federal point of view — from the CCME guidelines. They are very effective, but, at the same time, in terms of being on the ground, we need the information. We need to generate the information. I’ve seen a lot of efforts — not directly, but through researchers — in making research dollars available for us to look at strategies.
I can give you one example. In Manitoba, there was some research that I’ve done on phytoremediation — the use of plants to take out nutrients. This was to address some of the issues that are faced in Lake Winnipeg because of the eutrophication. The forces contributing to that eutrophication come from the waste, sewage sludge and biosolids that are, at the same time, a good source of nutrients. They are good organic fertilizers, but, at the same time, as mentioned by the other witnesses, they also come with contaminants — not just metal contaminants, but also some of the emerging contaminants like pharmaceuticals and antibiotics.
We did some work that was funded by the federal, provincial and municipal governments. We’re looking at a city south of Winnipeg. We tried strategies working with people from Ducks Unlimited Canada, who are experts in wetlands. What can we do to prevent these contaminants from going on agricultural land? I know we need nutrients, but applying those nutrients along with the contaminants doesn’t serve us well.
We tried phytoremediation. These are municipal lagoons. This is a small city or town where they don’t have a waste water treatment plant, so they use these stabilization points to treat the waste water. So we thought, “Okay, what if we treat that on site so that we prevent these contaminants from going to the agricultural land?” At the primary lagoon, we converted that, with the assistance of Ducks Unlimited Canada, into a treatment plant. That’s a wetland for remediation of contaminants. Since there isn’t a lot of industrial waste going into the lagoon, most of the contaminants are nutrients. If nutrients go away and are not needed, they become contaminants. So can we [Technical difficulties] so it does not cause [Technical difficulties] in Lake Winnipeg
For the secondary lagoon, which wasn’t very wet at the time of decommissioning, we converted that to terrestrial phytoremediation, which means that we grow cattails. We didn’t need to plant them because they grow all over the place. The first summer, there were no plants. The following summer, there were cattails all over the place. It has been very successful. The contaminant levels are down, but also, even if you get flooding, they are sequestered within the biosolids and the root system with little chance to be transferred to the streams and other water bodies.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you very much for being with us today. I’m glad to be getting your input on this issue.
[English]
I want to target one thing you said, Dr. Ghoshal. Forgive me if I don’t quote you properly, but I think I heard you say only 10% to 20% of fertilizers make it to the plant. We’ve heard that percentage from different witnesses as well, and also that there are organic and other alternatives.
I guess my very simple question is this: How do we make a change when we have this information, yet there seems to be a disconnect between the farmers and the academics? Is it the industry that is very efficient at selling it? It seems to me like this would be a challenge that is realistic, but is it happening?
Mr. Ghoshal: I don’t think it’s happening at a fast enough rate. Fundamentally, the issue is that we need to change the paradigm from feeding fertilizers to the soil to feeding fertilizers to the plants. The minute you feed it to the soil with the intention that it will go to the plants, a lot of it is lost.
We spray plants. This is very well known. But most fertilizers cannot really be applied on leaves because if you supply sufficient quantities, it’s just too much for the leaves — it will burn them. So you’ve got to apply really dilute amounts repeatedly, which then becomes cost-effective.
There is probably research coming out slowly over the last decade, where it’s showing that you can actually make tiny particles of these fertilizers and put it into plants. They dissolve slowly in the plant, and they release these fertilizers. You can do the same thing to the pesticides. There is no contact with the soil, so the efficiency of how much is taken up increases dramatically.
I’m on the research end of it, and I’m trying to think about safe materials to use. In the work that we do, we use silica. It’s very abundant in the soil in an agricultural setting, so safe forms of silica would be the ideal material. The research gets put out, but somewhere there is very inefficient communication to farmers about implementing these things. There are some of what is called nanofertilizers available in the field, but their uptake is not uniform.
First of all, I think there need to be studies to certify these as safe, and then there needs to be encouragement from the government, semi-governments and academic institutions assuring the safety and teaching how to use these products. I think this is an area that can make fundamental progress.
Senator Petitclerc: The research is there. We need to help farmers know about it, and we need to make sure that it’s cost-efficient for them?
Mr. Ghoshal: Yes. As well on the research side, I think we need support for doing field trials. This is where regulatory agencies and government departments can really help. There needs to be some de-risking of it: “Okay, just go ahead and try it out, and we’ll see what happens and then correct whatever needs to be corrected,” so that we reach the end point of a desirable outcome.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Senator Jaffer: Thank you very much to both of you. You both have tremendous knowledge on soil.
One of the big challenges — not just in cities, but also in countrysides — is when gas stations close, and there is soil pollution. I have two questions for you: How do leaking underground oil and gas tanks impact the productivity of agricultural soils? I know the answer to that, but my bigger question is this: How should the federal government work with the provincial, territorial and municipal governments to remediate such sites? In the research that you have about mapping and things like that, can you tell beforehand as well? Within your answer, can you integrate that? If you can answer that, Mr. Ghoshal, and then I’ll go to Mr. Zvomuya.
Mr. Ghoshal: Yes, petroleum storage facilities and petrol stations are very big sources of contamination. It’s rather surprising that contamination happens and goes on for a period of time before it’s realized, because a gas station’s business is selling gas. They know exactly how much to buy and how much to sell and what might be going missing, but this has occurred. I think there are stronger laws now to make sure that leakages don’t happen. There are things such as double-walled tanks with sensors —
Senator Jaffer: But from your research, what do you know? In terms of what you were saying about mapping, how can that help?
Mr. Ghoshal: Right.
Senator Jaffer: Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off; otherwise, the chair will cut me off.
Mr. Ghoshal: The technologies for cleaning up such sites are there. These are relatively easy sites to clean because the contamination is closer to the ground surface, but often, we don’t know where an old gas station may have existed, so that database is really important about where they were — that indicates the potential that there may be contamination. I’m not specifically aware. There could very well be databases now that keep track, but gas stations have existed for a long time.
When it comes to agriculture, I guess large farms would have fuel storage facilities.
Senator Jaffer: I’m sorry; I’m out of time. I apologize.
Mr. Ghoshal: No worries.
Mr. Zvomuya: Just to begin from where he left off, in terms of agriculture, I would say the good part is that most gas stations are located away from agricultural land. But if a historical gas station site eventually comes under crop production, I do know that in Manitoba, for sure, there is a database for all sites that are above a previous gas station. I don’t know whether they exist in a database that shows the locations of all the historical sites that were previously gas stations, but the good thing is that, for the most part, remediation of the gas station sites involves excavating the soil. If you are going to convert that back to agricultural land, that means you have to borrow soil from elsewhere. Wherever you are borrowing from, that site also has to be reclaimed so that you return it to soil, so it becomes a challenge.
For the most part, I’m not so sure that there is a huge impact of gas station sites on agricultural land just because of their location.
The Deputy Chair: Senator Oh, I will give Dr. Ghoshal a chance to answer the question you posed at the beginning. Dr. Ghoshal, do you remember what the question was?
Mr. Ghoshal: Yes, I do.
The Deputy Chair: Very good. Go ahead.
Mr. Ghoshal: You were asking about where the government contributes. I think the most major contribution is regulating that safe pesticides and safe fertilizers get used in agriculture through the work and related regulations of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, or PMRA, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA.
Governments at the federal and provincial levels have also done a lot of good work in promoting best practices for applying treated sewage sludge or biosolids on lands, and that really cuts down on the need for synthetic fertilizers. There are also very good programs encouraging good practices for water and soil management and wetlands and so on.
Where we lack guidance is on how to clean up agricultural soils, especially with the emerging contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals and the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, compounds that we talked about. I don’t think we know what to do. Plastics is a major problem, and there needs to be more guidance on better use of plastics. The amount of plastics used in farms has increased tremendously, and some of the practices lead to leaving the plastic in the ground year after year. Therefore, choices of plastics that are degradable, or funding innovation and research toward creating plastics that would be compatible with agricultural practices, are areas where more work is needed.
Senator Oh: Is the degradable plastic that you mentioned still harmful to the land?
Mr. Ghoshal: It has not been studied enough. It could be degradable in the laboratory, but there hasn’t been enough research in the field. Collection of these plastics is very expensive. They put down large plastic sheets as mulch films, and that really helps save water, extend the growing season and cut down on pesticides. It has its benefits. However, when it comes to removal of those plastics, I think relatively few people do it. I think this is one of those things where time is of the essence at the end of the harvest season. Are you going to harvest or pick up plastic? Regulations and guidelines are needed on how to best use plastic. Otherwise, this will contribute to soil degradation.
Senator Burey: Thank you for coming, for your expertise and for all the work you do.
I am a pediatrician by training, so I’m always interested in the health of children and pregnant women, of course. You talked about the pharmaceutical contamination of soils or water systems. Can you comment on how that works for us? How could you measure the impact? Is there research going on that would measure the impact on human health?
Mr. Ghoshal: I could start. Yes, there is certainly research on the impacts on human health. It’s a little bit removed from the soil contamination and remediation work that we do, but we study what happens to chemicals — how they distribute and so on. Clearly, there’s been enough research showing that these chemicals get into the plants and food crops.
I believe there is some regulation in monitoring the quality of the food and whether it is grossly contaminated or not, and if there are risks of that. There are frameworks to address that. However, we are faced with very low levels of chemicals and a multitude of active chemicals like pharmaceuticals and PFAS. Research is really lacking on the impact of these mixtures over a lifetime. There are some ideas of what the impacts of individual chemicals could be and what are safe levels of exposures over lifetimes, but I think we fall apart when we try to comprehend what exposures to multiple agents will mean.
Mr. Zvomuya: I can add to that. I have done some research on the impacts of antimicrobials. We’ve done some collaboration with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge and also in Saskatoon. The concern, especially with livestock manure, is the dosage. When the antibiotics are fed to the animals, sometimes up to 90% of the antibiotic is excreted in urine and manure. The concern is that if you apply manure containing lower levels of antibiotics right to the soil, and you are exposing those low concentrations of potential pathogens to low levels of antibiotics, then that presents an opportunity for those pathogens to develop antibiotic resistance. That’s the main challenge there. When I go to my doctor, they insist that I should complete the course of antibiotics they prescribe.
A lot of research is going on to look at the extent of the development of antibiotic resistance in the soil. We have some research at the University of Manitoba, and we have been collaborating with researchers in the federal government from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
It’s the same thing if you apply sewage sludge or biosolids to agricultural land. Again, you are exposing those bacteria pathogens to low levels of antibiotics, which will enhance their ability to develop a resistance against those antibiotics, so they don’t work when we prescribe them to people who are infected by such pathogens.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Now I will take the chair’s prerogative and ask some questions. Dr. Ghoshal, at the very beginning of your comments, you said something about the fact that cold weather and our weather patterns in Canada lead to the redistribution of soil contaminants in a way that maybe they wouldn’t in other weather conditions. Can you explain a little bit more about that?
Mr. Ghoshal: Yes, certainly. Cold weather would change the physical structure of the soil, for example. In some cases, that can deter pollutant movement in the soil. In other cases, it actually opens up easier pathways through cracks in the soil and so on for pollutants to distribute. The distribution patterns become different. As well, we often rely on micro-organisms to degrade some of the pollutants — naturally occurring micro-organisms that are able to degrade these things.
The winter is a period where a lot of the microbial activity really goes down. There is no water, so microbes don’t function as well. That leads to longer times over which pollutants may be dissipated by those organisms, or it takes much longer to remediate because there are so many months of the year where activity is not possible. These are a couple of examples of how the winter impacts.
The Deputy Chair: Is anyone tracking to see the difference that climate change and the new climate patterns we’re seeing are making to soil pollution? Or is that too far ahead?
Mr. Ghoshal: People are starting to look at that, but it is very location-specific. That’s the way we have to understand it because climate change impacts are not uniform everywhere — it means one thing to one type of soil and another to another type of soil in another part of the country. It’s very much in its infancy, and we are trying to get an understanding of what these new climate conditions are. What happens to soil pollution, I think, is still pretty much in its infancy.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Dr. Zvomuya, at the outset, you said something in your opening comments about lead poisoning, particularly in more urban soils. It’s been a very long time since we took the lead out of gasoline, so where is this lead pollution coming from? Is it still the legacy of the days of leaded gas?
Mr. Zvomuya: Yes, that is the answer. Once it is in the soil, lead doesn’t go anywhere. Plants take very little lead, so it remains in the soil, and it doesn’t leach that much. Once it’s in the topsoil, it’s going to remain very close to the surface for a very long time because it doesn’t break down. It doesn’t biodegrade, which means the microbes in the soil that are responsible for breaking down some organic contaminants don’t break down lead. It persists for a very long time.
Yes, that is from the legacy use of lead from gasoline, but also from paint. In the good old days, a lot of homes were painted with leaded paint, and that’s what we have found in some neighbourhoods in Winnipeg. The closer you sample toward the building, the higher the levels of lead in those old neighbourhoods.
The Deputy Chair: That probably doesn’t make much of a difference for large-scale rural agriculture, but what about for people who have urban gardens? If I plant carrots in my backyard and I live in an older neighbourhood in the centre of the city, what is the risk that I will be feeding my family carrots full of lead?
Mr. Zvomuya: That’s a very important question and something that we are trying to educate the communities about. When we did our first survey, and these results were released, there was widespread panic. We went into homes where vegetables were rotting and things like that.
You asked a very important question about carrots. That’s one of the vegetables for which you need to exercise a lot of care because lead is not absorbed, to a large extent, by plants. For most root crops like carrots or potatoes, it’s stuck on the outside or the skin of the carrot. It’s always good practice to peel carrots and potatoes before you consume them.
For green vegetables, a lot of it is not coming from the ground through the roots. It’s coming from the dust that’s contaminated with lead. Making sure that you wash those green vegetables thoroughly will also help reduce the risk of lead poisoning.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Is there lead poisoning in some rural areas? We are talking about the cities, but is someone testing to see what the percentage of lead is on farmland?
Mr. Zvomuya: Not that I’m aware of. In rural areas, you would probably find most of the lead close to highways — those old highways — and that came from our emissions from gasoline that contained lead. Other than that, I’m not aware of any reports of lead poisoning. For the crops like grain, fruits and things like that, very little of that will be translocated to the actual part of the plant that we consume.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. That’s some reassurance, anyway.
Senator Petitclerc: My question is about something very concerning to me. It’s about how we treat the soil and the impact on human health, especially on our children — especially on my children, let’s be honest.
You touched on it a little bit. As you said, it’s not your specific area of research whether we have contaminants on the soil. We are talking about pesticides, but we are also talking about antibiotics that, as I understand, will go from the animals to the manure to the soil. I understand the data is not clear on how it rotates back onto our plates, and maybe into pregnant women or nursing mothers.
I understand it’s not specifically what you do, but how close are you working with other academics who have that as their area of expertise? Do we have silos? Do you talk to each other? Do you research together?
Mr. Zvomuya: That’s an excellent question. Yes, we do. Historically, we had a system where if you were a soil chemist, you were also a scientist. Soil chemists are working in their own silo, and a soil ecologist is in their own silo, and so forth. Now we are finding a lot of integration and collaboration across those areas.
I mentioned earlier the work we are doing with antibiotics. I can look at the biodegradation of those, or the breakdown of the antibiotics, and what happens when you apply them, but when we talk about antibiotic resistance, that’s not my area. We need microbiologists who have expertise in that. There is a lot of collaboration that is going on.
To the credit of the federal government, they now have funding opportunities that encourage not just multidisciplinary work but also interdisciplinary work. You are bringing in researchers who traditionally don’t collaborate, and forcing the boundaries to see how we can work together to try to solve these complex problems. The short answer is yes, there is a lot of collaboration.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
Mr. Ghoshal: I would add that beyond the ongoing collaborations, exposures of these things do happen. Health Canada has strong programs looking at the long-term effects of these types of exposures. There are blood collection and analysis programs in the country where populations are surveyed for what chemicals they have in their blood.
I may be wrong, but my sense is that there aren’t enough epidemiological studies that are being looked at regarding what is happening over a lifetime. Maybe that is one place where more effort is needed.
Senator Burey: You have answered all my questions. Thank you very much.
Senator Jaffer: Related to what I asked you earlier, can you tell us about the land management policies that are in place, or should be in place, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government to mitigate the impact of soil pollution throughout Canada?
Mr. Zvomuya: I guess it’s regulation. That’s the most effective tool that governments have.
Senator Jaffer: Do the different governments follow them? There are all kinds of regulations that have no teeth because they are not really followed. Are they followed? Are there consequences? Is there accountability?
Mr. Zvomuya: Yes, for some. I guess it depends on the contaminants. For the emerging contaminants — like the antibiotics that we are talking about — I’m not aware of any legislation that’s related to that.
I heard previous witnesses talk about cadmium contamination. That also means the bottom line to the farmer, because if your wheat, rice or grain contains above a certain threshold of cadmium, then it will be very difficult to sell it. So it’s not just regulation. The farmers are also good custodians of their land, and they also want to make a good profit. If your crop is contaminated, your ability to get good revenue is also diminished.
Senator Jaffer: The challenge is not in what the farmer does. The challenge is what your neighbours do or what your country does, correct? Land is not a silo where you can just shut off everything.
Mr. Zvomuya: Yes.
Mr. Ghoshal: I would say there are regulations, but a regulation is only as good as its enforcement.
Senator Jaffer: That’s what I’m saying.
Mr. Ghoshal: There is land quality monitoring that happens at various sites at the federal and provincial levels, but the information is not often clear as to how intensively that monitoring happens or what the result of that monitoring is. Perhaps some visibility on that would be reassuring for the public.
Senator Jaffer: May I kindly request that both of you, when you reflect on my question, if you ever do, send to the committee what you think we should be recommending to the government, please. We will be working on the report shortly, so it would have to be in the next two or three weeks.
The Deputy Chair: I don’t want to say it’s shocking, but it’s disturbing to hear about how much we already know, in fact, about existing sources of soil pollution, whether that’s lead from gasoline that we burned in the 1970s or the waste water and the tailings from oil and gas production in Alberta.
You mentioned, and I think the previous witnesses mentioned, too, that we have technology to remediate some of the hydrocarbon pollution, but we don’t do it. We haven’t done it, and we don’t have a central database that lists where all the contaminated sites are. The resources go where the political will tells them to go.
What would you like to see to get more people excited about the idea of using the technology we have to do the remediation in order to clean up the messes we have already made?
Mr. Ghoshal: I think this has to be a priority from different levels of government, where they want to see sites decontaminated — more of them and at a more rapid rate.
There are a lot of contaminated sites, and I guess there is not enough money to clean them all, so there is a risk prioritization that is done depending on which sites are causing more exposure to people around them, and those are the ones that get prioritized.
Everything is dynamic, and people may move in and out of regions, or land use patterns may change. I think contaminated sites are sort of a ticking bomb and, if not addressed in a timely manner, will only get worse and get more expensive.
In terms of communicating to the public, just knowing how many contaminated sites there are, and where they are, would be a good starting point for the public to ask questions about what that means for their safety and what they should be doing and not doing. That, probably, is a good point for the start of a discourse that can help us put more priority on this issue.
Mr. Zvomuya: I do agree with Dr. Ghoshal, but I also wanted to add this: You have heard previously about the need for a national strategy that would also include a strategy on the database for contaminated sites. One of the confusing aspects that I have noticed in working with contaminants and remediation is the definition of a contaminant. Before we can come up with a national strategy or a common database, we need to have a common definition of a contaminated site. For example, in Manitoba, where I’m from, regarding the number of contaminated sites, if you go to their website, it has changed from hundreds to just four or five in recent years. It’s not because those contaminants have disappeared. It’s because the definition of a contaminated site has changed.
The Deputy Chair: That’s a way to deal with the problem: move the goalposts.
Mr. Zvomuya: Now they make a distinction between what they define as contaminated sites — which are sites that contain contaminants that are already causing harm or imminent harm — and what is referred to as impacted sites. Those are sites that contain contaminants, but they don’t present an imminent risk to health or the environment.
When you go to the Federal Contaminated Sites Inventory, it’s all-encompassing. It includes both what is referred to as contaminated sites and impacted sites in Manitoba. Harmonizing that definition would be a good starting point, and then build a national database that we can all make use of and benefit from.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. That’s a very helpful answer.
Dr. Ghoshal and Dr. Zvomuya, I would like to thank you very much for your participation today. Your assistance with our study is very much appreciated. Thank you both for travelling to Ottawa to be with us today.
I also want to thank all of our committee members for their active participation and their thoughtful questions.
In following the practice of Senator Black, I need to thank all the staff who support the work of this committee: the interpreters, the debates team transcribing the meeting, the committee room attendant, the multimedia services technician, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, ISD and our wonderful page.
Our next meeting is scheduled — I say the word “scheduled” in italics — for Tuesday, February 27, at 6:30 p.m., where, all things being equal, we will continue to hear from witnesses on our committee’s soil health study. Specifically, we will be looking at land acquisition.
(The committee adjourned.)