THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 2, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9:02 a.m. [ET]; and, in camera, to examine and report on issues relating to agriculture and forestry generally.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, before we begin, I’d like to remind senators and witnesses to please keep your microphones muted at all times, unless you’re recognized by name by the chair. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the chair of the clerk, and we will work to resolve the issue. If you experience other technical challenges, please contact the ISD Service Desk with the technical assistance number that’s been provided.
The use of online platforms does not guarantee speech privacy or that eavesdropping won’t be conducted. As such, while conducting committee meetings, all participants should be aware of such limitations and restrict possible disclosure of sensitive, private and privileged Senate information. Senators should participate in a private area and be mindful of their surroundings, so they don’t inadvertently share any personal information or information that could be used to identify their location.
With that, good morning, everyone. I’d like to begin by welcoming members of the committee, our witnesses, as well as those watching this meeting on the web. My name is Robert Black, a senator from Ontario, and I’m the chair of this committee.
I’d like to introduce the members of the Agriculture and Forestry Committee, starting with our deputy chair, Senator Simons from Alberta; Senator Cotter from Saskatchewan; Senator Deacon from Nova Scotia; Senator Klyne from Saskatchewan; Senator Marwah from Ontario; Senator Oh from Mississauga, Ontario is expected; Senator Petitclerc from Grandville; and Senator Wetston from Ontario.
Today, the committee continues its study on the British Columbia flood and recovery efforts. With that, I would like to introduce the witnesses on our first panel. I welcome, from the City of Sumas, Washington, U.S.A., Mayor Bruce Bosch; from the University of Victoria, Francis Zwiers, director of Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium; and Brett Gilley, associate professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Thank you for joining us.
We will hear opening remarks. You will each have five minutes, and I will put my hand up when you have one minute left just to give you a warning. Mayor Bosch, the floor is yours.
Bruce Bosch, Mayor, City of Sumas, Washington, U.S.A.: Good morning. I’m Mayor Bosch. I live in Sumas, Washington. I began my tenure as mayor on January 1, or at the end of last year, right after the flood.
The November 15 flood was devastating for this community. Approximately 75 to 80% of the homes received quite a bit of damage. We’re still sitting at about 40% of those homes uninhabitable, waiting for repairs and clean-out.
The City of Sumas received, from the Nooksack River, approximately three to six feet, depending on the topography of the homes in the area. They say it was possibly a 100- to 500-year flood. The data for that is still coming in, based on Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, studies and the county studies.
The water, as it came in, knocked over rail cars and took out tracks. All our businesses got hit. Our industrial zone got four or five feet of water. We lost communications. We lost power. The local people had to be rescued because we were told to stay at home or stay in place during the flood, so the local farmers with their tractors and people with boats had to come in and pull people from their homes and rescue animals, et cetera.
We’re still in the recovery process, rebuilding our city. City Hall is finally under way, as far as getting reconstructed. A lot of clean-up effort is ongoing. We’re turning the corner, but we still have a way to go.
I’m not really sure I can provide much more information, unless you are looking for something specific.
The Chair: Thank you, Mayor Bosch.
Francis Zwiers, Director, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria: Good morning, everyone. I’m from the University of Victoria. I’d like to acknowledge and respect the Lekwungen people, on whose traditional territory the University of Victoria stands, and the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ people, whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
I’m trained as a statistician. I worked my career as a climatologist both within the federal government and at the University of Victoria. I’ll start by giving a very quick background on climate change and its implications for changes in extreme precipitation.
The global mean surface air temperature during the most recent two decades, the first two decades of the 21st century, was about 1 degree Celsius higher than during the pre-industrial period, 1850 to 1900. Canada has warmed at about twice the global rate, and more than double this rate of warming that has been experienced in the North. Almost all of this warming has been due to greenhouse gas concentration increases that result from fossil fuel use. The science supporting that is essentially incontrovertible at this point.
The impact on extreme precipitation, from theory and climate models, suggests that the intensity of extreme rainfall will increase 6 to 7% for each degree of warming. Observed trends in extreme precipitation at long-running meteorological stations across the globe confirm that that is happening. Local trends are very noisy, however, and it means that if you look at your favourite rain gauge in your corner of the country, you’re apt not to be able to see a trend in that data. Nevertheless, the evidence indicates that greenhouse gas increases have increased the risk of extreme precipitation events, including in North America. We have to look at data across large areas in order to be able to see that. Projections indicate that these risks will only continue to increase in the future.
The November 2021 flooding event was caused by an intense atmospheric river, a phenomenon in Canada that is often called a Pineapple Express. It’s a flow of water vapour across the Pacific that originates in the subtropics. The particular atmospheric river that occurred was aligned with the Fraser Valley in a way that allowed moisture to penetrate relatively deeply into southwestern British Columbia, so it was unusual in that respect. In terms of the magnitude of the atmospheric river, it’s estimated to have been roughly a 1-in-12-year event and therefore not that unusual.
The uplift of moist air by mountains surrounding the Fraser Valley resulted in large amounts of precipitation over a two-day period. That is why we see amounts exceeding 300 millimetres in some locations on southwest Vancouver Island and in the mountains around the valley. The average amount across the affected areas is estimated to have been in the order of a 50- or 100-year event, depending on the data source that is used. As the mayor mentioned, these are really uncertain numbers.
Heavy precipitation and the warm atmospheric conditions during the event produced high, damaging stream flows in multiple river basins, including the Nooksack, Chilliwack, Coquihalla, Coldwater, Similkameen and Tulameen. Recorded flows in some of those basins exceeded 1-in-100-year levels, but again, as indicated, this is an extremely uncertain estimation. The gauges themselves are damaged in the course of an extreme event of this type, and the shape of the river bottom changes. Therefore, it’s very hard to estimate initially what the extreme flows are as a consequence of just measuring river height and river velocity.
Regarding the causes of the November 2021 B.C. and Sumas, Washington, flooding event, atmospheric river-induced precipitation was the dominant factor. Snow melt that accompanied the atmospheric river contributed between one sixth and one third of the water that entered the river basins that we studied in our group. River basin precondition may have affected the likelihood and intensity of flooding. The area had experienced very wet antecedent conditions during the preceding six weeks; the river basins were already saturated with water. It’s been speculated that stream flow response to precipitation and snow melt may also have been affected by changes in land-surface properties caused by wildfires or the June 2021 heat dome, but at this stage, this remains speculation.
Analysis of an extensive amount of climate model and hydrologic model output suggests that human-induced climate change had increased the probability of the atmospheric river event and precipitation that occurred by roughly 50% and that for stream-flow events exceeding the 1-in-100-year level in the river basins that were studied — their probabilities were at least doubled. So human influence on the climate system is estimated to have had an impact on those events.
This is work that was done by a very large team of scientists contributing to a rapid attribution study of the event. The study was initiated immediately after the event. Preliminary results were published in January 2022, and the final peer-reviewed paper has just been published in a journal called Weather and Climate Extremes.
Thank you very much for allowing me to testify.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Brett Gilley, Associate Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia: I am from the University of British Columbia, and my specialty is in geomorphology, the shape of the land.
Regarding some of these events that occurred, as alluded to by Dr. Zwiers, the effects of climate change are wide-reaching, and all the phenomena that we’re looking at here — floods, landslides, washouts, heat domes — are all going to be interrelated. As he suggested, the fires and the heat dome may have made the landslides and floods more severe as part of this.
The changes as a result of changing rainfall and weather conditions actually make our statistical prediction methods much more difficult. When we start to talk about a 100- and 1,000-year storm, we’re usually relying on a similar context over a long period of time, and as we’re still in a point right now where we’re not really sure where we’re at and where we’re ending up, it makes it very hard to do these predictions. It doesn’t mean as much when we say “100-year event” if we’re looking at the last 100 years instead of realizing what we’re in now as a result of changing.
One of the other difficult problems here is that these events were already a problem for many of these locations. Sumas Prairie is, for example, an old lake bed. It’s not a great place to put a bunch of businesses, homes and towns. It makes things much more difficult. As we increase these events, the protections we have in place, such as the diking and other things — we may need larger and more expensive protection methods.
One of the most difficult things that we have to look at is this: Are we willing to stay in these places and keep paying to rebuild, or are we going to do the very socially and politically difficult task of doing the unpopular thing and buying people out and moving them? That is also very difficult. A good example of a city that has done this recently is Grand Forks. They looked at their floodplain area and decided it was unsustainable. They have recently purchased out several houses in that area. Again, that’s an unpopular and expensive decision but one that, in the long term, might be the most worthwhile.
For much of the province of B.C., we have the difficulty that we really only have a few choices of where to build. We’re on steep slopes, landslide deposits, glacial deposits and flood plains. Those can be very difficult and constraining. Again, it is about looking closely at what we have. If we’re not moving people out, maybe limiting the types of activities that can occur in those locations would be advisable.
As we deal with these events and as we go forward, the infrastructure is what allows us to live in this area. Certainly at that time, losing most of the roads into the Vancouver area was a very difficult problem, but the sorts of infrastructure such as the pumping station on Sumas Prairie are also things we need to look at and think about either upgrading or protecting more, as we can.
I’ll end my comments there to give more time for questions to the committee.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We will proceed now with questions from senators. As has been our previous practice, I’d like to remind each senator that you have five minutes for your question or questions, and that includes the answer as well, so I’ll ask senators and witnesses to be brief and succinct so we can get our questions in. If you wish to ask a question, please signal the clerk, those who are here, and use the “raise-hand” function in Zoom for those who are joining us online. Please note that I will raise my hand at one minute and attempt to cut you off so we can move on. We will go to a second round if necessary. With that, I’ll ask our deputy chair for her questions.
Senator Simons: Thank you to all of our witnesses, especially for getting up at what is very early in the morning in British Columbia and Washington state.
I want to start by asking about the Nooksack River, because we have the privilege of having Mayor Bosch with us from Washington state. We have been told by previous witnesses that this is a problematic river flow and that there are problems with the age of the dikes and the usefulness of the diking. Perhaps this is a question for both Mayor Bosch and Professor Gilley. What, if anything, could be done by Canada and the United States, British Columbia and Washington state, working together, to make management of the river flows a little more predictable and to allow us to prepare for the kinds of massive weather events that we know are going to be coming as we move into an era of rapid climate change?
Mr. Bosch: I’m not a hydrologist, a river master or whatever. What I have learned over the years is that because the Nooksack River comes from a glacier, it is full of debris. It flows down the river, and the river bottom comes up and down. At the spot where the water overflows and comes to Sumas, there’s what is called a slug that is in there. They call it a slug. It’s a large buildup of silt and gravel that has accumulated, and it’s slowly moving down the river. They predict it should hit Lynden probably within the next decade.
There will probably be a variety of solutions on how to manage the Nooksack River. In the particular spot where the Nooksack overflows and heads to Sumas, there is no dike. I don’t know if it was designed that way on purpose over the years, but if you check elevations, on the other side of the river, it is actually lower. They have a dike on the other side.
There is a transboundary committee being formed, which the City of Sumas will be on, to work with Canada to solve this, or at least come up with solutions to manage the water. The biggest thing is to know how much you’re going to get versus the unknown of four feet coming at you. That, of course, will require gauges that are accurate and can’t be damaged by more water than they’re anticipating.
I don’t know if that helps answer some of your questions.
Senator Simons: It does. I appreciate that you’re not a hydrologist, but we were looking for someone from Washington State who could explain to us what was happening on their side of the river. I’m grateful you stepped up to do that for us.
Mr. Bosch: Right now, to give you an example, at the section of the river where it overflows, the river bottom is actually higher than the bank. If you stand on the other side of the river where it has accumulated, it’s higher than the bank of the river.
The Chair: Mr. Gilley, I think you wanted to respond as well.
Mr. Gilley: I’m also not an engineer that would be involved in the sorts of mitigation methods that you’re looking at. However, I will say that one of the issues we have is that the size of the drainage basin contributes greatly to the ways that the flooding happened. In smaller basins like this — smaller compared to the Fraser River, for example — you can have a quicker response. If you have an extremely concentrated rainfall, you can have a quick, high flood rather than a slow-building flood in this sort of area.
I will also comment that this is the same area that we might potentially get effects from the Mount Baker volcano were there to be any sort of effects that way as well, so any mitigation methods that we do would be good.
Senator Simons: Could you explain the volcano part? No one told us about volcanoes.
Mr. Gilley: Mount Baker is just on the other side of the border down there. In the event of a potential eruption, which apparently seems unlikely, we could see lahars coming down through this region as well, which is a volcanic mudslide.
Senator Simons: Excellent. More apocalypses for us to consider.
Mr. Gilley: All the disasters are nicely linked.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our witnesses, who are here very early this morning. We really appreciate it.
[English]
I have two questions for Mr. Gilley and Mr. Zwiers. My question has to do with climate change events that are most likely going to become more frequent, unfortunately. I’m wondering about two things. From your university point of view, do you feel that we are investing enough funding and resources in research in terms of mitigation of those events, modelling, projections and so on? My second question is, do you feel that we are doing a good job in connecting the university with the communities, organizations and farmers to make sure that what you bring to the table is actually being applied and helping, or could we do better? Those are my questions. I don’t know who wants to answer first.
Mr. Zwiers: I can start, if I may.
I lead an organization called the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, which is a boundary organization that provides climate services to stakeholders in the British Columbia region primarily, but we also work with stakeholders across Canada. We collaborate with the Canadian Centre for Climate Services of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Part of your question could be directed to the CCCS. They would be able to inform you what their strategy is for providing services to Canadians.
Providing information about future climate change and how that affects extreme stream flows and the likelihood of those happening is the kind of work that we do. We’ve been working with the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, for example, to provide their engineers with projections of future extreme stream flows. We obtain that information by using climate models and hydrologic models. We run the hydrologic models, and Environment and Climate Change Canada runs the climate models. We happen to have access to a large ensemble of climate change simulations, so we’re able to obtain from that a lot of statistical information about how future climate change might affect extreme stream flows in the region. So it’s a rather unique resource, in fact.
Are we investing enough money in this kind of work? I would say no. We are in desperate need across the country for additional capacity to do this kind of translation work between the academic and the federal government research community and the user community. It takes a special kind of training for these people, and we’re not doing a lot of it at the moment. They’re in great demand. The climate service industry and community that is operating at the moment is competing with each other for that talent, so that’s difficult.
I also don’t think we’re investing enough in environmental research. We would like to be running climate models and hydrologic models that operate at much greater fidelity and at much higher resolution than we’re able to do at the moment. That requires expertise and computing supports, so we’re constrained by computing.
Another area in this country where we’re not making sufficient investment, in my view, is the simple fundamental monitoring of the state of the climate system as it’s going on at the moment, so making sure that our meteorological observing and hydrometeorological systems are well supported and robust and that we’re not losing stations because network operators like Environment and Climate Change Canada are losing funding.
The Chair: Mr. Gilley, we would like to hear from you as well, so we’ll extend the five minutes a bit.
Mr. Gilley: Thank you.
Again, we always could use more resources for this.
From our perspective, one of the concerns we have, especially if difficult decisions are going to be made, is that the reasons and the rationale for it are communicated properly to the people who live in the area. For years, in some of my classes, we often say if there’s a Pineapple Express coming — the term Dr. Zwiers used — we often tell our students to watch the news for the next week because there’s likely to be landslides and floods. In each of those situations, a reporter will go out and speak to the locals, and the locals will say, “I’ve lived here for years, and I’ve never seen this coming.” Even the communication of geologic time scales and that sort of outreach would make it a lot easier for people to understand the risks they are living with and the reasons why decisions have to be made and money has to be put in.
My understanding from colleagues is that the diking system in the Vancouver area is something that people want to look at, especially in light of higher stream flows. We have not had a major flood off the Fraser River for some time, but there’s definitely a potential.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you so much to our witnesses.
Mayor Bosch, it’s very kind of you to be with us today, and we are grateful for you taking the time to give us a sense of what your community in Washington State dealt with during this terrible event in your part of the world. Some witnesses have said to us that increasing the height and strength of the river dike along the Nooksack was really important to preventing damage in Canada, but what effect would that have on your community? It certainly sounds like there are a lot of issues around dredging the river and the slug you mentioned, and perhaps diversion or maybe moving people off flood plains to a certain degree in some of the more vulnerable areas. It sounds like a complex set of issues needs to be dealt with to protect your community and perhaps communities downriver from you. Could you give us more insight into the complexities on your side of the river that you have taken on after this first event happened? I commend you for your leadership in that regard. Thank you.
Mr. Bosch: I’m not really sure how to answer the question except that the impact was great. The diking system is antiquated. The solution is not going to be one solution but multiple. Maybe setbacks of dikes. I don’t like to use the word dredging, but silt management is important. We don’t like to use the word dams, but maybe reservoirs. During the summer, the flows are very low, which is harmful to the fish, and one of the reasons that we don’t manage the silt is to protect the fish. I do believe a combination is being talked about on silt management, water reservoirs and dike setbacks. That sort of thing would probably help a great deal to manage flow. I don’t think that anybody would have gotten away from the flooding in the last flood, as it was a tremendous amount of water, but if we could at least lower the impacts, that would help a great deal. I hope that answers your question.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you very much, Mayor Bosch.
Professor Gilley, do you have any thoughts that would add to the complexity of the back and forth on either side of the border and how to serve all communities as good neighbours?
Mr. Gilley: Clearly this is going to need a lot of working together. This is an extremely expensive thing to be working on as well, and it certainly does affect a larger number of people on our side of the border when you start to look at the way these things go, especially when you look at the agriculture.
I will say that when we use these mitigation methods, they are not without consequences. When you build dikes, they protect against higher flows but they have the added effect that if floods do happen, they can be worse because water can be trapped behind the dikes. It is not a perfect solution, but if the dikes are high enough, then it is good. With the statistical game we play, even with higher dikes, it’s not if, it’s still when floods happen.
Senator Marwah: My thanks to the witnesses. My compliments to you, Dr. Zwiers. Your presentation was very interesting. It’s something that even I could understand a little bit. At least it was user-friendly so that one could understand it.
I have a question for all the witnesses, and mine is a macroeconomic question. There are two parts to it. One is, what happened in the past with the flooding, and what can we expect in the future? The question is, what would be the cost of what happened during the B.C. flooding? Would it be 500 million or 800 million? Would it be a billion? I have never heard an actual number. We have just heard the number of farms that were destroyed and the number of livestock that was lost, but nothing quantifiable in terms of what the total economic cost was. In that context, there have been government support programs. There is the $228 million that I believe is for the Canada-British Columbia Flood Recovery Program for Food Security. How far does that go in mitigating the economic cost?
So that was the past. Going forward, Dr. Zwiers, you mentioned that this is just the beginning and that the way climate change is going, this is going to continue to have an impact for a long time to come. Is it possible to translate that into economic terms? What would be the annual impact or the impact very few years? I’m not talking globally, just in the B.C. region, because that is what we are referring to.
The Chair: Senator Marwah, are you looking for answers from all three?
Senator Marwah: Whoever has an answer can provide it. I’m just looking for input.
Mr. Zwiers: I am not an economist. I am not able to give you a damage estimate.
We do have in hand the ability, I think, to estimate future expected costs. That’s a measure of risk, which is both a combination of the probability of exposure to the hazard and then the damage that results as a consequence of exposure. From the climate science side, I think there are things we can say about the probability of future exposure. We would have to work with impact scientists in order to be able to determine what the consequences are. The product of the two would give you an estimate of future risk per year, per decade, as we go into the future, and that would depend upon exactly which emissions pathway we are on in the future, which becomes uncertain on time scales longer than about three decades. The climate response to whatever pathway we are on would be very similar over the next three decades, but then as we make mitigation decisions and change greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere substantially in the future, we will begin to see differences between the different pathways that are possible and have been considered.
Senator Marwah: Could you point us to any economic studies that have been done, Dr. Zwiers, where we may get more insights into what the cost might be and whether the recovery programs that have been put in place have mitigated them and to what extent? Are you aware of any studies? I have been trying to find them, and I have not been able to find any with a macroeconomic view.
Mr. Zwiers: I was involved in a study conducted by the Ontario Financial Accountability Office, and the question posed to them was what is the expected future cost of climate change on infrastructure in the province of Ontario. They have recently published a study. If you send me an email, I can direct you to the person who led that and provide you with information as to how to find that.
Senator Marwah: Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Zwiers, if you share that with the clerk, she will share that with the committee, if you are willing to do that.
Mr. Zwiers: Yes, I will do that.
Senator Klyne: I have two questions that I will try to get out quickly to Mr. Zwiers and Mr. Gilley. Mr. Zwiers, David Sauchyn from the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative says hello.
My question is regarding a federal response. A couple of decades ago, we could have looked to the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration to respond to these kinds of things. They were called upon by many jurisdictions, even outside of this country, to do that. Should we be accelerating the development of this new Canada water agency? I know you have probably been consulted on that. Do you think something like that should be established to respond to these things and also to act on proactive measures?
Mr. Zwiers: This is a little outside my expertise. I certainly have some understanding of the Canadian water agency. I’m involved in the Global Water Futures Program at the University of Saskatchewan. Hydrological science is a science in Canada that is quite balkanized in the sense that expertise is organized according to drainage basins. Different drainage basins function differently.
Senator Klyne: In the interests of time, specific to your opinions on the Canada water agency playing a role here.
Mr. Zwiers: I think it will play a very important role in helping to organize the hydrologic sciences and our ability to use the science systematically across the country.
Senator Klyne: That would also help with your research and scenario modelling, I assume. In your opinion then, they should accelerate developing this Canada water agency and get on with that program?
Mr. Zwiers: I would say so, yes.
Senator Klyne: Mr. Gilley, you listed some alternatives to what could be done in the future. But let’s face it, that is a former lake bed that is destined to flood again in similar circumstances, and we expect to see these circumstances. What is your view of the federal response? If we are not going to pay to move people, how do we build back forward to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
Mr. Gilley: It’s difficult to say that we could stop this from happening again. It is definitely a wicked problem. We are in a situation where we don’t have a lot of good farmland in British Columbia. We have this one area under higher risk and likely to flood. If we are going to stay in this area, we need to really consider the type of land use we are having and whether or not certain types of activity should be going there, and also what infrastructure we have protecting it. I know the pumping station was of great concern in the moment. It would be nice to see that that was updated if we are going to stick around.
Senator Klyne: Thank you.
The Chair: Senator Wetston and Senator Cotter, we have a limited amount of time, so if you could select a question.
Senator Wetston: I recognize the panel is not made up of lawyers that participate in thinking about our Constitution, so I’m going to take a leap and ask this question.
I have given a lot of thought to the notion of cooperative federalism. There is a great deal of decentralization in Canada, in the federation, that requires good faith efforts among the province, municipal and federal government. Without that, we cannot accomplish and manage complex issues in society. I want to ask about your perspectives. When you discuss climate change, inevitably there is a notion that it may be impossible to achieve the net-zero goals and that these events are going to occur again. I believe we must be able to manage the politics, the federal-provincial relations, as I noted Minister Wilkinson is attempting to do and not getting buy-in from all provinces. Do you have any thoughts about that matter from a political perspective? I’m sure you deal with it in your academic work.
Mr. Gilley: Whether or not we are able to get to net zero, these events would be things we’ve been dealing with. We have a history of flooding there, so the deeds are with us one way or another. What we will be looking at is the severity and the frequency of them. I don’t have thoughts on the constitutional question, though.
Mr. Zwiers: I would share that. I also don’t have thoughts on the constitutional question.
The climate issue is a global issue. This event that occurred will likely recur at some point in the future. We can control the impacts by undertaking adaptation actions, and that will require federal, provincial, municipal and international cooperation. To some extent, we can also manage the size of the risk by ensuring that we undertake adequate mitigation action and work towards net zero as actively as we can across the globe, not just in Canada.
Senator Cotter: Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us so early in your time zones.
Mayor Bosch, do you have a sense of the quantifiable losses your community suffered in the flood? As well, when it comes to strategies, I have read that one of the problems — and I think it is enforced by the other witnesses — is that in these moments, there is just too much water, and where do we send the water. One of the suggestions in the media being mooted is we just flow it to Canada and solve the problem that way. Could you comment on both of those aspects of the issue?
Mr. Bosch: Economically, Sumas didn’t receive the damage that the prairie did or Abbotsford did. It’s $10 million, et cetera. I don’t have exact numbers. The numbers are mixed based on the county and other cities, so I don’t know our exact numbers.
In regard to the flow to Canada, that was something that came up back in January because of the way the county had worded getting homes in Sumas out of the flood path. The way it was worded by an individual made it seem like we were creating a route to Canada, which wasn’t the case. It was just a misnomer on words. They were talking about getting homes lifted or out of the path. Does that answer your question?
Senator Cotter: It does. Thank you very much.
How well did the federal or state support come your way? Was it adequate for the damage your community was suffering?
Mr. Bosch: FEMA is taking pretty good care of us. It is always a slower process than you would like, but it comes in. Sumas has received some grants for redevelopment of businesses and some of the homes. They are taking care of us pretty well.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much.
The Chair: I apologize, but there won’t be a second round. Mayor Bosch, Mr. Zwiers and Mr. Gilley, I would like to thank you very much for your participation this morning. I know it is early. Your assistance with this study is very much appreciated.
For our second panel, we will hear from the Stó:lo Tribal Council, Chief Tyrone McNeil, Chief of the Stó:lo Nation and Chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat; and from the First Nations Emergency Services Society, Brenden Mercer, Decision Support Manager.
Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. We will hear opening remarks from Chief McNeil, followed by Mr. Mercer. Chief McNeil, since you will be speaking to us today in your capacity as Tribal Chief of the Stó:lo Nation as well as Chair of the Emergency Planning Secretariat, you will have additional time for your presentation. Mr. Mercer, you have five minutes for your opening remarks. Once again, I will raise my hand with one minute left.
Tyrone McNeil, Tribal Chief, Stólo Nation and Chair, Emergency Planning Secretariat, Stólo Tribal Council: Good morning. Thank you, everyone, for making time for me to share some of our thoughts and ideas in the Stó:lo Nation, or Xyólhmet, we call it. The Stó:lo Tribal Council has seven member communities and about 3,000 members in total.
The Emergency Planning Secretariat brings together the mainland Coast Salish communities from Yale to Semiahmoo to Squamish, which is 31 communities, or 15% of the population of all First Nations in B.C. We have been working together for the last few years in developing our own disaster resilience strategy following the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction’s call for a regional action plan. The development of that action plan in our language is called keeluk skaka. Keeluk is “get ready,” and skaka is “together,” so bringing our 31 communities together in a common strategy initially aimed at flood, but we have built that out for wildfires and other events over time. The purpose of our coming together is to respond to climate change, much like you discussed in the previous panel, in terms of how we adapt and become more resilient to the ever‑changing climate.
To put it in layman’s words, we are trying to figure out why what is normally a once-in-200-years event is now likely to happen once every 20 or 30 years, or how a once-in-500-years event could potentially happen once every 100 years. The regularity of those severe events is elevated considerably.
As with many of you, we have learned some new terms over the last few years. Whoever heard of a heat dome, at least here in Western Canada? Now it’s common terminology. The proper term for the rain event of November is a pluvial event, a severe rain-driven event caused by climate change. We are living in a new environment.
There are 33 local governments living within our local title lands in the Fraser Valley, Lower Mainland and up towards Squamish and Whistler. The intent is to create alignment and to have all of our governments working together in a common regional strategy. Right now, senators, there is no regional strategy for this region of the Lower Fraser, which is the biggest river in B.C. We are aware that the province has worked on a province-wide strategy, but we are trying to do what we can here.
It is relevant that the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry is having these conversations, because agriculture and food security are critical. In my home community, I manage about 2,000 acres of agricultural land, much of it leased out. During the rain event, a number of farmers were caught in mud. They couldn’t get their crops off the field because of the rain. It simply didn’t dry out long enough. We have a deep appreciation for getting water off of farmers’ fields as quickly and effectively as we can, and working with farmers to build drainage and ditches not only to meet their needs but, more importantly, to meet our needs around how we create salmon habitat and riparian areas and rebuild a lot of that habitat.
Built into our strategy is learning from our neighbours in Washington State, as you have done this morning. They have a program called Floodplains by Design, where they introduce the idea of water storage. When the freshet comes down the rivers, rather than being channelled into dikes that tend to overflow, they have opened it up and moved the dikes back from the main stems of the river. They have opened up the old waterways so that, when the freshet comes down, it releases into the landscape as opposed to being funnelled between dikes that are stacked too close.
In the Fraser Valley, we are proposing that approach. We know that about 1,550 kilometres of historic waterways are trapped in the main stem of the river by dikes, highways and railways. If you tally up the total volume of the 1,550 kilometres, it equals about 40 kilometres in area of waterways that historically absorbed the freshet in a soft, comfortable way. It’s slightly larger than Sumas Lake, which you spoke about earlier, which is about 35 square kilometres. If you open up a number of these waterways, all of a sudden you would have 40 or 50 kilometres that the freshet could release into, in a way that doesn’t harm or damage infrastructure or areas that are important not only to us but to local governments.
We are coordinating as best we can. We are building our capacity. You are probably aware that the relation between emergency management and B.C. First Nations is via a bilateral agreement between B.C. and Canada. We are trying to move into a tripartite agreement, but that is a way’s away. The current bilateral agreement calls for B.C. to support, empower and build the capacity of First Nations. They have not done that. We have had to do that ourselves. So we are trying to do that in a coordinated way and responding to climate change by being resilient and by bringing forward new ideas.
You hear a lot of folks of different stripes talking about build back better without really understanding what that is. In April, I hosted a meeting with Minister Farnworth, who is responsible for emergency management in B.C., and Minister Blair federally, and we introduced our idea of what building back better together is, taking the principles of Sendai but doing it in the context of regional relations among our 31 mainland Coast Salish communities. On July 14, we are bringing together those communities — the 33 local governments, regional districts, provincial and federal government ministries — to have a conversation on what building back better needs to be.
We need to change the paradigm. We can’t continue pulling $5 to $9 billion out of the federal government’s pocket to respond to the November rain event. We need to be more resilient. It might cost a bit more now, but it saves exponentially in the long run.
I’ll leave it there for now.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Brenden Mercer, Decision Support Manager, First Nations Emergency Services Society: Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak at the committee. I’m calling in from the beautiful Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territories surrounding Kamloops, B.C.
I hope to give you a quick background on some of the challenges and barriers we face in working with nations in terms of climate change, fires and floods over the last year. I’ll talk about some of the indirect and direct costs associated with that and then some of the tools we’re working on in trying to look forward.
In case you’re not aware, there are 204 unique First Nations communities in B.C. FNESS provides a range of emergency services, everything from emergency preparedness, all types of community wildfire protection planning, emergency planning, and helps out in the emergency recovery phases, response, as well as mitigation and prevention activities for every community. As you can imagine, with 204 communities spread out remotely, each has their own unique risk profile.
Specifically when it comes to wildfire, one thing we’ve seen historically, looking back at some of the old images and literature, is that there used to be a lot fewer trees per hectare but a lot bigger trees per hectare, especially in the Interior. When you have fewer trees per hectare but bigger individual trees, you have more fire-resistant stems that can sequester and store more carbon. Through forest management practices, we’ve gotten away from that. Things like fire suppression and the Brush Fire Act, which prevented Indigenous people from burning over the years, prevented traditional burning on the landscape on a scale that we need to actually make a difference. As a result, a lot of literature nowadays shows there’s been a big ingrowth of forests. We have stands that are well over a thousand stems per hectare of Douglas fir and pine, dense stands that cause intense wildfires.
Over 80 or 90 years, this has happened all across the province of British Columbia and many other places across Canada through the boreal forests. We have these thick forested stands. As a result, this last summer, just in the southern half of the province, we had the five-day wildfires with about 386,000 hectares. In total, there’s almost another million hectares burnt in B.C. Much of that is at high rank. Rank 6 is a really extreme severe wildfire that can damage root systems and destroy soil aggregates. In many cases, it makes soils hydrophobic, meaning water can’t absorb into ecosystems as it would have done historically. As a result, you’ll get way more water running over the land and eroding the soils and everything that comes along with it, creating these situations where we have a lot more water running down. It shows that these big wildfires are directly connected to some of these big floods we’re having.
In the case of the Lytton Creek wildfire alone, from east to west, it stretched about 54 kilometres and about 32 kilometres north to south. You can imagine how many watersheds are impacted throughout that span. To put it into perspective, many First Nations say — and Mary Louie, a Syilx elder, put it perfectly — water is Mother Earth’s blood because it provides all the necessary spiritual nourishment for families and children. Many First Nations believe water is critical. That’s why we have to do a lot more to protect these ecosystems on a bigger scale so we don’t have these big Rank 6 wildfires destroying everything as they go. In many cases, First Nations saw Highway 8 completely washed out. Other communities, like Nicomen, had erosion on their banks of over 120 feet, 30 metres, in one night. I believe Nooaitch faced over 100 metres of erosion on one property overnight because of this insane amount of water coming down throughout the environment.
To put it a little bit more in perspective, there’s an Abbott Chapman report released in British Columbia, which summarized the costs of wildfire from 2003 to 2017. Collectively, in B.C., we spent about $3 billion on wildfire suppression. In that same time span, we spent $73 million on wildfire mitigation to treat about 11,000 hectares. In all of that time span, that 15 years of treatment, that 11,000 hectares equal 0.01% of the 2017 wildfires alone. We’re not burning nearly enough or being nearly proactive enough in landscape-level fuel mitigation to reduce the risk and sustain healthy ecosystems as a result.
Lastly, Headwaters Economics has done some fantastic reporting over the years, essentially showing that wildfire recovery costs are actually 20 to 30 times more expensive than suppression costs. In that same time span, in B.C., we are looking at almost $62 billion in recovery costs. That’s damage to traditional foods, waterways, spillways, communities and putting people in hotels for extended periods of time.
As another example, we did a bunch of rapid damage assessments following the fire season. There was over $12 or $13 million in just infrastructure damages alone. These things are counted in the larger recovery costs. That $61 billion is borne by taxpayers, primarily by First Nations and minority and impoverished communities because they rely on the land base in a disproportional way to other people. We need to collectively come up with strategies to change that dynamic because we can’t be spending $61 billion on recovery.
This last year, in B.C. alone, we spent $565 million on fire suppression. Using the same factors, that recovery cost could be anywhere from about $11 billion to about $17 billion, just in this last fire season in B.C. Again, that is borne by the taxpayers, by First Nations and impoverished and minority communities that bear the brunt of these costs.
Thank you for listening to my opening statement.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mercer.
Moving on to questions, we’ll give each senator, question and answer, four minutes. We will go to a second round if we have time and if necessary.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much to Chief McNeil and to Mr. Mercer. I thought it was fascinating the way your two presentations, one about flood and one about fire, both come to the same thing — that kind of proactive mitigation management and using more natural methods to try to fend off these things before they become a crisis.
I have a completely different question. We are the Senate Agriculture and Forestry Committee, and we’re looking specifically at the impacts of this flood disaster on the agricultural sector in British Columbia. I was wondering, of the First Nations you represent and work with, how many of those First Nations are themselves actively involved in agriculture and forestry? How were their agricultural and forestry interests affected by the flood, if at all?
Mr. McNeil: I’d say over half of our 300 communities are in agriculture in one way or another, whether directly or they might have some land they are leasing out to local farmers.
There’s been some damage within our communities, but for the most part, when the November 15 rain event happened, all the crops were already off the field. Some folks might have had carrots or beets, the later harvesting crops, in the ground. In Sayward, one of our lessees lost about 80 acres of carrots. They just couldn’t get it out of the ground.
Considering the potential for impact, I’d say we got off fairly lightly, but then it’s hard to determine the total cost because the ground has been so wet. What will it do to the viability of crops over multiple years, multiple harvests, for example? We’re going to have to monitor that and keep an eye on it.
In terms of forestry, we’re still trying to determine the damage to the roads themselves. The roads weren’t built to handle this kind of pluvial event, so a lot of culverts and bridges are washed out. The funding to repair those bridges or roads has been extremely slow.
That’s a long-winded answer, senator, to say we don’t know. We haven’t had the opportunity to do that budgeting directly ourselves. We don’t have the capacity or the resources to budget that out.
Senator Simons: Thank you. I think you’re the first person who has mentioned the impact of the flooding on logging roads. That’s an important thing for us to consider, too.
Mr. McNeil: If I could add very quickly, senator, on the complexity of logging roads, all it takes is one undersized culvert and a rain event and now, all of a sudden, you have a slide virtually from the top of the mountain down to the creek at the bottom. Again, it expedites the flow down from forests to the creeks and waterways.
Mr. Mercer: To add quickly to Tyrone’s point, in working with the Nooaitch First Nation, one of the main ways into their community was a logging road. A bridge was set up, a temporary access bridge, which has different building requirements from an engineering perspective. You don’t have to build it to the same 100-to-250-year standard. It survived the flood, thankfully, but this is just an example. Many First Nations are on remote-access logging roads. Those bridges aren’t built to the same standards. In some cases, they are built to temporary standards. In Nooaitch’s case, that bridge was over 70 years ago, so that bridge passed the temporary status by several years.
Looking specifically at the flooding, Coldwater First Nation, for instance, had a large area flooded. When you get all those biosolids washing down from the city of Merritt, that stuff seeps into the soil and can cause long-term damage and high concentrations of heavy minerals in soils. That can damage crops for years to come, not to mention washing away farmland, which reduces the total number of animals you could have on any given hectare to support your family.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you so much to our witnesses. You have brought together the interconnectedness between forestry and agriculture in your area so profoundly and helpfully, and I want to thank you so much for being with us today.
Get ready together. Build back better together. It’s clearly pay now or pay a whole lot more later. Your example, Mr. Mercer, of $3 billion spent in fighting fires and $75 million in trying to mitigate fires illustrates that so well. How can we help you in your efforts to deliver the “get ready together” or “build back better together” efforts in a way that gets you better access and gets more cooperation between municipal, federal and provincial parties in this very urgent issue? How do we start to manage things quite differently? How do we help you? Please, Chief McNeil, if you could start, followed by Mr. Mercer.
Mr. McNeil: Thank you, senator.
The best way you could support us is to create some alignment between federal policy and federal funding, provincial policy and provincial funding, and our needs here. Right now, there is a misalignment. If you look at the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada, it is sound. They just released an interim action report about three weeks ago. If you read the report, senator, it looks and sounds really good. If you come into the Fraser Valley with us, you’ll see that it’s not being applied here. The report looks good, but in practice, it’s not happening. There’s a separation in terms of the intent and will, particularly the political will, of government and those it is supporting in the public service and the bureaucracy to allow it to actually happen here on the ground. So the alignment of policy — [Technical difficulties]
The Chair: Mr. Mercer, could you step in? We’ll attempt to get Chief McNeil back.
Mr. Mercer: From my perspective, one of the biggest things is solid investments in mitigation. Historically, and even a few years ago when I first started working at First Nations Emergency Services, Indigenous Services Canada didn’t have anything for on-reserve mitigation funding for First Nations. The process itself is really cumbersome and takes a lot of time. For example, there’s a 40-page timber permit you have to fill out to cut down one single tree on reserve. That kind of stuff really prevents nations from getting the work off the ground. If we can do more planning in the forefront, using a lot data that already exists — in many cases, there’s robust data sets for the province — we can do a lot of this preplanning upfront, thus driving a lot more dollars toward mitigation at the end of the day.
For example, in British Columbia, we typically spend anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000 developing community wildfire protection plans. Each community gets their own plan. All that data sits in data warehouses. If we integrate it properly, we can do all of that planning ahead of time. Using things like LIDAR and other new innovative technologies with drones, we can do some really advanced analyses and risk assessments ahead of time. For example, after this last season, we started doing LIDAR for the nations that were impacted by the floods. Taking pre- and post-LIDAR, you can look at changes in tree heights and in tree deviation, potentially calculate carbon credits, look at changes in stream flow morphology, and see where sediments have landed and where more erosion has occurred — things like that.
If we start looking at things a little more proactively and tying the four pillars of emergency management together, I think we can be a lot more successful with taking all this big data that’s out there and putting it to good use. As a result, a lot more money will go into communities to build that capacity and get people trained to do the prescribed fires — traditional burning — and get them on the land base with good solid incomes to do it in the community.
Part of the problem now is that, historically, First Nations are typically underfunded and have fewer resources, so getting this work off the ground is time-consuming. As we’ve seen in this case this summer, it took Nicomen over 10 years to do 100 hectares of field treatment. There’s 400 hectares of risk around the community.
Senator C. Deacon: Thank you for that, Mr. Mercer. I’m sorry that we’re missing the input from Chief McNeil. Thank you for your comments. They’re very helpful.
The Chair: Yes, thank you for jumping in there.
Senator Petitclerc: My question is for both witnesses, if Chief McNeil manages to come back.
My question is a simple one, but I’m quite interested in knowing the answer. We’ve heard from many stakeholders, so whether it’s preventing, mitigating or in the future, many stakeholders are involved, economically, politically — federally, provincially — and there are universities and academics. In your view, what is the role and place for indigenous knowledge and expertise? Is it happening? Should it be happening? What does that look like?
Mr. Mercer: From my particular perspective, I recently got promoted to Decisions Support Manager of Finance, and it is to integrate that data and information. What it looks like from a First Nations perspective in working with them is giving them these types of tools to add in their own Indigenous science and observations, on top of provincially and federally available data sets, so they can access everything from species at risk, fire risks — every imaginable data layer out there — and then contribute their own information to it in a meaningful way. Following the rules of OCAP — ownership, control, access and possession — those types of ways will give nations access to meaningful information that they can use to help inform all the stakeholders around the communities.
For instance, regarding wildfire prevention, we can put all the treatment units and all the polygons on a map, attach all the key values and all the core information there, and then share that map with multiple agencies and stakeholders so that everybody knows 10 or 15 years ahead of time where all of those mitigations have to happen. They can estimate the average cost of those mitigations years ahead of time. We can just be putting this funding right into nations’ core funding. If you have 200 hectares of risk, you get this allotment of funding to deal with that risk every year.
We’re getting closer to that point by integrating these big data sets. That’s a huge part of the future. Then there’s adding that Indigenous science on top of that. We can use data to tell you where huckleberries might grow, but Indigenous knowledge will tell you where huckleberries do grow.
The Chair: Chief McNeil, I think you heard the question. Welcome back.
Mr. McNeil: Thank you. I did hear the question.
I would add that it’s taking what you might call Indigenous knowledge or traditional knowledge and applying it through the declaration — Article 29, for example, our right to protect our land and environment. We’ll use our knowledge that’s hundreds of generations old to help participate in that, but it needs to be harder and firmer than somebody thinking of knowledge. It’s our Indigenous laws, our ways of being and it’s our sciences. Take that soft knowledge aspect of it and elevate and support it with Article 29. Article 18 also stands out for me, being our right to be involved in decision-making. So take key articles of the declaration, enrich it with our knowledge, and then good things will happen from there, senator. Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you for that.
Senator Klyne: Senator Petitclerc asked an excellent question and got to the answer I was looking for, so I’m going to ask the tribal chief a quick question around the spirit of collaboration and cooperation. I assume that your community has had to collaborate and cooperate with the municipal, provincial and federal groups in terms of accessing some of the resources required but also in solving some of the issues that were immediate at hand. Regarding that, I have two questions. With respect to collaboration and cooperation, what worked well and what could have been done differently? What else could some other senior levels of government have done in working with your communities? Second, with regard to that report that came out, it was referenced that it looks good from one perspective, but then bring it into Fraser Valley and it’s not that well applied. What is the barrier or obstacle there that needs to be overcome?
Mr. McNeil: Thank you, senator.
First of all, one of the things that worked well is our ability to come together and support each other, whether it’s us here in the valley, around the fluvial event or hosting evacuees from Lytton’s fire last year.
If we’re talking about provincial and federal policies, senator, they did not work well, primarily. All of this proposal-based, having to write out forms — we’re writing out those forms and submitting them, but not getting a response. We would have to rewrite and resubmit them, and away we go. That speaks to what could be done better.
The system is very racist, senator. We’ve had all kinds of incidents, from interpersonal racism to policy racism. When I say “policy racism,” senator, one example is this: One community put in a request for water pumps, sandbags and Tiger Dams, and then they got grilled for months as to why they are renting water pumps. The response was, “Well, we had a flood.” Two weeks later, they get another question, “Why are you renting so many water pumps?” The response was, “Because it was a big flood.” It takes months and months to get paid or reimbursed, senator, and that’s really problematic because our communities don’t have the capacity to carry large amounts of funds.
That’s why we’re trying to work together here to support each other, not only on that interpersonal relational support but the policy side. We want to modify the policy. Some of it is your federal policy, senator. It doesn’t align well with the practices on the ground. Take build back better, for example, which is in the interim action report. If you come to the valley, there are very few opportunities to actually build back better. There’s a misalignment because B.C. doesn’t have its own build back better policy. Federally, we can only use 15% of the DFA to go toward build back better, so a large part of the resources are going to build back with the same quality and same height as pre-event. It’s just asking for more trouble next time.
Senator Cotter: Thank you very much both witnesses for the presentations.
Senator Klyne, interestingly enough, asked the question I had in mind. Chief McNeil, I will follow up on that last point about the federal policies — and you described this report as a good one — to address these kinds of crisis situations and the B.C. policies and the kind of philosophy of Indigenous nations. You mentioned the execution and administration of the programs, but are the policies themselves divergent, inconsistent and, for example, unresponsive to the points you made about the ways in which Indigenous knowledge and approaches can be made effective in your communities?
Mr. McNeil: Thank you, senator.
Yes, they are. Much of the federal and provincial policy is still based on the old way of thinking, which I find really problematic, because both Canada and British Columbia are signatories to the Sendai framework. The Sendai speaks to adapting to climate change, being resilient, looking 100 years out, accepting that a 100- or 200-year event will happen every 20 years so plan for it and respond now, don’t wait.
One of the things we’re keying on is the build back better aspect mentioned in the framework, because we simply don’t have the funds, senator, to keep rebuilding to the current state. We have to build things differently. We need to be more resilient and look at opportunities to actually invest in climate adaptation as opposed to protection.
It’s a conflict, I would say, senator, in terms of practice and adopted policy by both federal and provincial governments, which speaks to the bureaucracy of the public service. They need to get out of the old way of thinking, embrace Sendai and work with us to actually implement it on the ground.
Senator Cotter: Thank you. That’s very helpful.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that answer.
Senator C. Deacon: If I could, I would just ask another question as it relates to a very interesting point that you’ve made. You made the point that you’re not getting the resources to build back better. When temporary measures are put in place and you have a culvert that’s undersized for the growing challenge of increased water flows that we’re going to be getting, we know where that’s going to head.
Just specifically on that point of moving from the way things have been managed, which does not manage for the growing problem, how could we help you specifically to make that point, to show how the regulations and the culture that you have to work within as it relates to your provincial and federal partners, but particularly federal partners, does not allow for us to mitigate challenges we know are coming towards us? Just on that specific point, could you both provide us with some additional advice beyond the very tactical and strategic points you have provided on how we can help you make that point?
Mr. McNeil: Thank you, senator.
Look at Canada’s national Emergency Management Strategy and bridge that with the net-zero climate response Canada is supporting politically and create a little bit better alignment, because right now there’s misalignment between a lot of those big principled activities that the federal government is working on. I would say, senator, that much of that is borne by Parliament and its electoral mandates, but we need to get beyond this current sitting of Parliament and actually think 10, 20, 50, 100 years out and get all-party support from cabinet on that. If we could do that, senator, I would say that’s probably 90% of the work out of the way. The other 10% is us negotiating what the actual amounts are, which projects are funded, which ones aren’t, which come later and those sorts of things.
Mr. Mercer: To add on to Tyrone’s point, it would be to look at procurement opportunities for First Nations. Many times in the middle of a response or in the middle of a recovery, our staff will reach out to everyone in B.C. trying to find dehumidifiers or Tiger Dams or whatever the case may be. In many cases, the resources are always gone. Create opportunities for First Nations to procure resources, and find First Nations organizations that can support and build Tiger Dams, build sandbags. Having a network of First Nations opportunities in that realm of procurement could help all disaster risk reduction, mitigation, planning, everything going forward. That would be one key opportunity. That group could then also help to facilitate building back better by finding unique First Nations groups that are working in that space, innovating, doing things with solar panels, better internet and that type of stuff.
Senator C. Deacon: If I could, Mr. Mercer, looking at procurement the other way around, do you know of First Nation businesses that are getting access to procurement opportunities to provide advice, to provide services to the federal government? Clearly, in some areas, you’re capable of being a very good service provider. Are you able to sell your services effectively to help in solving these problems?
Mr. Mercer: In many cases, FNESS has been successful in working with all levels of government, but it has taken decades to get to that point. From my experience, it really takes a First Nations organization to stand out, to get that acknowledgment and acceptance to be invited back to the table in future planning sessions. By having a procurement opportunity, it would allow a group like FNESS to start reaching out and finding these other smaller groups and building up their capacity in a more meaningful way, as opposed to them having to find an opportunity to stand out at the front of the pack just to get invited.
The Chair: Thank you very much to both our witnesses, Chief McNeil and Mr. Mercer. We really do appreciate your participation this morning. Your assistance with this study, as we carry it forward, is very much appreciated.
With that, we’ll move to the next part of our meeting. I’d like to thank the committee members for their active participation and thoughtful questions.
Before we go in camera, I do want to acknowledge that we are losing another member of our committee today to retirement. Tomorrow, Senator Wetston turns 75, and, as such, will be leaving the Senate. Senator Wetston was appointed to the Senate in November of 2016 after a long career of serving Canadians in other professions. While he only joined the Agriculture and Forestry Committee this session, he has made a lasting impression. I, along with our colleagues on the committee and our greater Senate family, Senator Wetston, will miss your expertise on this committee and in the Red Chamber. This morning I had a chance, colleagues, to chat with Senator Wetston as he was headed to his office, and he commented that our committee is one of the committees that he sees as getting work done. I’m very appreciative of your comment, Senator Wetston. Please, if you’d like to say a few words.
Senator Wetston: Thank you very much, chair. I would have attended with you this morning, but unfortunately, I’ve come down with a bit of a virus that has held me back a bit in my last few days in the Senate.
I did speak to the chair this morning, and I wanted him to know that I thought this committee was performing at a very high level, very skilled, very engaged and is really contributing to some of the most important areas of our economy. I had indicated to the chair that I wish I had joined this committee earlier because I see the importance of the issues that you’re addressing and the challenges that we’ve seen in British Columbia that you’re dealing with now, which I think are so important. There are so many areas of agriculture and food security that are so important to the country.
I myself will say to you personally that I will miss this committee. I will miss seeing you all and working with you. It has come too quickly for me. Somehow or another, five years have just flown by. I think you all understand that. I feel that I have gotten to know many of you well, and I appreciate your skills, your commitment and your contributions. It will always remain top of mind for me in understanding the great work that you do, the hard work that you do. Once again, I can only say it’s been an honour for me to be on this committee and to work with you.
Thank you, chair, for giving me a few minutes to express my gratitude.
The Chair: Senator Wetston, congratulations.
Before we go in camera, I want to say thank you to our interpretation and logistics team within the committee room for ensuring that our meetings are run smoothly, along with the hiccups that inevitably happen. We do appreciate your commitment and support.
With that, senators, is it agreed that we suspend for a minute or two to end the public portion of our meeting and proceed in camera?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
(The committee continued in camera.)