THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, September 29, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, colleagues. I would like to begin by saying welcome to the committee, and to those online as well.
My name is Robert Black, senator from Ontario, and I am the chair of this committee. This morning, the committee is holding its third public meeting on its study to examine and report on the status of soil health in Canada. Before we hear from the witnesses, I would like to start by asking the senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting with the deputy chair.
Senator Simons: I am Senator Paula Simons. I represent Alberta, and I come from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Petitclerc: I am Senator Chantal Petitclerc, from Quebec.
Senator Marwah: Good morning. Senator Sabi Marwah, from Ontario.
Senator Klyne: Good morning. Senator Marty Klyne, from Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.
Senator Duncan: Good morning. Senator Pat Duncan, from the Yukon and the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council.
Senator Cotter: Good morning. Senator Brent Cotter, from Saskatchewan.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. It is good to see you here this morning.
We have two panels today. Our witnesses on panel one are joining us via videoconference. Today, we welcome Joann K. Whalen, James McGill Professor of Soil Science, McGill University, and Marie-Élise Samson, Agronomist and Assistant Professor in Soil Science at Laval University.
I invite you to make your presentations. You each have five minutes, and we’ll start with Dr. Whalen. At one minute, I will put up my hand, and at 10 seconds left, I’ll put up both hands. I’ll do the same thing for our questions as well, colleagues, just to keep us moving.
With that, I invite Dr. Whalen to give her remarks.
Joann Whalen, James McGill Professor of Soil Science, McGill University, as an individual: Thank you very much, Senator Black.
Dear members of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, my name is Joann Whalen, and I am a full professor of soil science from McGill University. In this capacity, I teach undergraduate and graduate students about soil fertility and fertilizer use, organic fertilizers, ecological soil management and environmental soil chemistry. I also hold an endowed research chair as a James McGill professor of soil science.
As a researcher, I describe myself as a soil ecologist because I am interested in soil functioning from a holistic perspective, considering the multiple dynamic interactions among the physical, chemical and biological components that are responsible for creating a favourable environment for agricultural crops. My research interests align well with my professional designation of agronome, member 6554, registered with the Ordre des Agronomes du Québec since 2005. In my professional capacity as an agronome, I serve agricultural practitioners by translating scientific knowledge from soil and crop researchers into practical applications for farmers in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada.
My research group includes undergraduates and graduates enrolled at McGill, interns, students from other universities who come to train at McGill, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists and research professionals. We do research on soil fertility, primarily in agricultural systems, which requires the application of fertilizing materials. Both organic and inorganic sources are studied: lime, biological materials, biological organisms such as inoculants and microbial consortia and other soil/crop additives. We study the response of the soil, soil organisms, such as micro-organisms, nematodes and earthworms, and plants following the application of pure and complex substances to soil.
This research comes at a time when many farmers in Quebec are looking for ways to improve their soil health and considering that organic residuals may be a good option. Indeed, more organic residuals are now available for use in agriculture. This is due to the fact that the province of Quebec has been anticipating that organic waste legislation would require cities and industries to improve practices. Since 1972, Quebec has gone through three waste management policies, two action plans on climate change and several measures to achieve, initially, the ultimate goal of zero landfilling or incineration of organic waste by 2020. This timeline has been extended to December 31, 2022 and has resulted in the development of industrial-scale anaerobic digestion and composting facilities to serve virtually all Quebec municipalities.
In theory, organic waste management is a circular economy approach. Food and fibre that are harvested from agricultural fields are sent to consumers, who live in cities and towns. The leftover residuals are then collected through municipal composting and other collection programs, processed to recover energy, such as in an anaerobic digester, or composted to reduce the smell and mass and make them easier to handle. The residual is then returned to the farm field as a fertilizer or soil amendment, which should add nutrients to the crop and replenish the soil organic matter.
This also aligns with the Sustainable Agriculture Plan for Quebec, which aims to help farms control nitrogen fertilizer inputs and boost the organic matter level to at least 4% by 2030. Given the importance of nitrogen fertilizer management for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the role of organic matter for carbon sequestration, the proposed actions in Quebec’s Sustainable Agriculture Plan are well aligned with the Government of Canada’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
In the past 25 years, my research group and I have examined many types of fertilizing materials: synthetic fertilizers, animal manure, composts, digestates and other byproducts from municipalities and industrial processes. It is our experience that municipal and industrial byproducts contain trace metals, organic contaminants, pathogens and emerging substances — nanomaterials, micro-plastics — that need to be handled carefully to prevent harm to human health and the environment.
We have experience in determining the risk of contaminant exposure to soil organisms. For example, looking at dose response measured in earthworm and plant ecotoxicology studies and assessing risk to people through human health risk assessment models.
While I am pleased to see this concerted effort to recycle organic waste from various sectors in Quebec, I am concerned by assumptions that organic wastes should always be returned to agricultural land. I believe we need to be vigilant about maintaining the standards and rules governing the land-spreading of fertilizing materials that may contain substances that could pose a public health or environmental risk.
I would like to share two further points of interest with the Committee.
First, a reminder that soil health for agricultural improvement is a topic of significant international interest. I am most familiar with the situation in the United States, since I am currently the first international scientist from outside of the United States to be elected as the president of the American Society of Agronomy.
The American Society of Agronomy is a progressive international scientific society that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global agronomy. The society provides information to its members and the general public about agronomy in relation to soil, crop production, environmental quality, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, recycling and wise land use. They are taking a very active role in creating educational materials for a program called Decode 6, which aims to demystify soil carbon sequestration and inform crop advisors and farmers of opportunities to get involved in carbon markets, from the ground up.
Perhaps there are some lessons about soil health that we can learn or adapt from the U.S. experience.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your comments, and we look forward to questions and answers. Ms. Samson, please.
Marie-Élise Samson, Agronomist and Assistant Professor in Soil Science, Laval University, as an individual:
Thank you so much, Senator Black. Dear senators, I want to begin by expressing my contentment with the announcement of the Senate study on soil health in Canada. In addition to being the source of 95% of the food we eat, soils also play an essential role in regulating the water cycle and climate, among other things. Yet, their condition is globally declining.
During the past decades, several countries have understood and acknowledged the importance of soil health. In 2001, France established the Soil Quality Measurement Network, a network based on the sampling of over 2,000 plots across the territory and updated every 10 to 15 years. More recently, The European Joint Programme Cofund on Agricultural Soil Management was established in 2020, to develop knowledge, tools and an integrated research community to foster climate-smart and sustainable agricultural soil management.
Soils are on the agenda, and countries that develop management strategies for this natural and non-renewable resource do so in an informed and strategic way. Maintaining or improving soil health will enable countries to meet their ambitious climate targets and ensure the sustainability and resilience of their agri-food and forestry systems over the long term. This issue will become increasingly important in the face of population growth and climate change impacts.
But make no mistake, studying soils takes time and resources. All soils are different, and there are no one-size-fits-all strategies to improve soil health, especially in Canada. Canada is a vast and variable country regarding climate, soil types, vegetation but also agricultural production.
In 1995, it was estimated that agricultural soils in eastern Canada had lost from 15 to 30% of their organic carbon content since they were first cultivated. According to preliminary results of a recent study conducted by the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Agro-environmental Research and Development Institute, agricultural soils have been losing significant amounts of carbon over the past decades, thereby acting as a source of greenhouse gases for the atmosphere. This trend is mainly explained by the decrease in the number of dairy farms, leading to a conversion of perennial to annual crops with high commercial values, such as corn and soybeans.
Compaction is also a significant issue for soils under annual crops. In regions with a high density of annual crops, compaction is currently a hindrance to productivity, soil resilience and water and air quality. That’s without mentioning the condition of black soils in southwestern Quebec, which is used to grow half of the province’s vegetable production. These soils are subjected to significant matter losses due to organic matter mineralization and wind erosion. If no action is taken to preserve and regenerate these soils, they could be gone entirely within 50 years.
The good news is that some changes in land management and agricultural management practices could reverse these trends, improve the health and resilience of our agricultural lands, and contribute to the fight against climate change through carbon sequestration in soils.
How much carbon could we sequester in Quebec agricultural soils? Could soils contribute to meeting our ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets? Well, the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture recently asked my colleagues and me this question. We had to answer that it is currently impossible to estimate with reasonable accuracy since it depends on the current status of soils, and the most recent available data on soil health dates to the 1990s. This long-awaited study on soil health should therefore be of great help for researchers but also for policy-makers and will probably help make a significant difference in the way we manage our land.
We live in a period of significant changes and several challenges are awaiting humanity. Changes in the way we treat our soils will be needed to ensure food sovereignty and climate change adaptation. Investing in the health of our soils should be considered a priority for economic, social and environmental reasons, and this all starts with knowing where we start from.
As a closing word, I would like to borrow the words of Dr. Swaminathan, agronomist and first recipient of the World Food Prize, who once said, “If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else will have a chance to go right.” And I would like to thank the Senate for giving soils the attention they deserve. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate both of you and your words. We will proceed to questions. As I noted, each senator will have five minutes. I will give you a one-minute warning for speakers and questions. When we get close to the end, you will get two hands. We’ll start with the deputy chair, Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: I come from Edmonton, which has had hugely ambitious plans for a composter facility. Everybody in Edmonton dutifully sorts their garbage. I am always proud that we have the best compost in my compost bin. I sort of curate it: “This is a very good organic banana peel, and this is a fine avocado pit.” So I was distressed to read, a month ago, that in fact the quality of the compost that the City of Edmonton’s new $42-million composter is producing is such that it’s not acceptable for agricultural purposes. We’re basically making compost that goes into the landfill.
I’m sure this is not a unique situation. What do we need to do to make sure that all the Canadians who, with very goodwill, are composting their organic garbage, are not just doing this to feel good but are actually producing compost that has some kind of economic and scientific value? Professor Whalen?
Ms. Whalen: Thank you, Senator Black, and thank you, Senator Simons, for this great question. What do we need to do? We have set up regulations in Canada. They are managed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in collaboration with the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. Those bodies also have an interaction with lots of local organizations.
We set up the standards to be very rigorous because we are wanting to produce the best-quality food that we can. We want the food to be very safe. We want the food to be of the highest nutritional value but also the safest in terms of delivering no contamination into our food supply. We need to educate the public about what happens when, oops, some plastic slips into the compost bin. Often the feeling is, “Oh, that will never cause a problem. It won’t get noticed.” The public needs to know what happens when, oops, something else gets mixed in. The feeling often is, “Oh, it won’t cause a problem. There’s too much mass. They’ll never notice it.”
Unfortunately, during the composting process, the large masses become smaller, because that’s what composting does; it decomposes the material. All of the organic waste and the water disappear, but the contaminants, like micro-plastics, like metals, like some very unfavourable organics, remain behind, and they stay there in the compost.
What do we have to do? We don’t want to change the standards. We want to keep the compost of the best quality so that the food that we produce is very safe and does not provide materials that we shouldn’t be consuming, which might cause risk. But at the same time, we want to keep encouraging composting. We may also want to look for other uses of some of that compost. When it doesn’t quite meet the regulations to go back onto agricultural land, let’s take it and put it in — I don’t know — a mine reclamation site. It would be wonderful. Yes, there is an extra cost associated with trucking it, but it would help to stabilize mine tailings, or it could help to clean up a zone of a place where there had been some previous industrial use. It could be very well suited for those areas.
We need to be creative. We need more education and we can valorize. We can find the value of those composted banana peels and avocado shells you have been saving and carefully putting in your compost bin. Thank you so much for the question.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
Ms. Samson: I think Professor Whalen’s answer was rather complete. I agree with her. We should keep these standards because they affect the food we create. But there are many other ways to use these products elsewhere. There are other ways we could think to recycle these organic materials. I think that’s the way to go.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses.
Canada is rich in forest resources. According to The State of Canada’s Forests: Annual Report, Canada’s 362 million hectares of forest accounted for 90% of the world’s forest and 40% of countries’ total land area.
What is the significance of forests for soil health in Canada, including in relation to conservation and carbon sequestration? How are scientists working with the Government of Canada, on the federal, provincial and territorial levels, on forest soil health issues?
Ms. Whalen: Thank you so much, Senator Oh. This is a wonderful question. We have a tremendous resource in Canada. Our boreal forest is expansive and immense. We have mixed deciduous forest and coniferous forest all through the interior of British Columbia and the coast. We have tremendous forest resources.
Forests themselves, the trees and branches, are a source of carbon sequestration. But you’re right, senator, that also in the soils below those trees, there is a deep layer of organic materials that has value for supporting a carbon sequestration function.
What are we doing to try to support the forests and their ability to grow and to store carbon for us, which is, of course, as we know, very well aligned with the net-zero ambitions of the Government of Canada? I believe that every territory and every province has a forest action plan. I work more in agriculture, but researchers that I know of are doing research and excellent work documenting the forest carbon pools and sinks and measuring the gain through direct measurements, experimental work and models. We feel quite excited about the possibility of including our forests in our national inventory to help support our carbon sequestration goals and our net-zero emission goals.
I would like to turn it over to my colleague, Ms. Samson.
Ms. Samson: Thank you very much. I am an agronomist as well, and my research interests are in agronomy. That being said, we all know that the most important lever we have in Canada for carbon sequestration in soils doesn’t rely only on how we manage agriculture soils. The most important lever we have is in the way we manage the land. How do we treat our forests and our wetlands? We have a huge amount of wetlands that are extremely rich in carbon, so it’s the way we manage the land, as well as converting perennial crops to row crops, et cetera. So that’s a kind of thing that would have the most important effect on soil carbon stocks across the country.
I don’t work with the forest, but it should be a priority, especially since we know that with climate change soil temperature will increase, and soil will probably start acting as carbon sources, so it will start losing more carbon with climate change. These are issues we should look into as well.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests. Over the last few sessions, we have had many excellent witnesses here. We have heard about recommended soil management practices to increase yield and manage soil degradation. We have also heard a lot about crop yield, efficient management input and production costs, which make perfect sense as ways that many farmers measure success and lead to maximized potential profits in the medium term.
But there are challenges ahead in the medium to long term. What needs to be said or done to help farmers understand why it’s important to adopt soil management practices that are also complementary to maintaining profits, and what happens if we don’t? We need to instill a bit of leverage here, which I would call “pain,” to what happens if we don’t do this and meet these challenges. It’s a crisis that is looming on the horizon.
Getting back to the references to composts and carbon sequestration, among all the things we could be doing, are there other innovations on the horizon? I think of Soileos, which is a climate-positive micronutrient fertilizer created from the up-cycling of peas, lentils and oat hulls, which are by-products from food processing. It increases crop yields and improves the health of soil, returns carbon to the soil and reduces a need for nitrogen fertilizer applications in future years.
So what do we need to say or do to get the laggards to adopt these efficient management practices and prevent soil degradation? Are there innovations on the horizon here?
I also appreciated the comment about the different regions, the vast territories of Canada and that it is not just a soil is a soil is a soil. They are different. I know Saskatchewan has very different soils from other provinces. Is there a collection of data which says that for these specific regions, these are the best management practices?
Ms. Samson: Thank you so much for the question. It is a great question because, as you just said, soils are very different in the West and East, and we have different agricultural production as well. That’s a challenge even for convincing producers to adopt beneficial management practices. You almost have to tailor your management practices to each field you work with. In the West, for instance, the abandonment of summer fallow and the adoption of no-till helped improve soil health, and it contributed to carbon sequestration in soil, et cetera. In Quebec, because we have much colder and wetter conditions, no-till doesn’t necessarily increase soil organic carbon stocks.
So we have to look for other management strategies to improve yield and soil organic carbon stocks. This doesn’t mean that we should plow our soils in Quebec, but we should be innovative and find the good strategies for each field. Part of the challenge for the producers and agronomists is to find the good strategies.
And all in all, just to say a word about innovation, of course, there will be innovation. The industries there want to get involved and make money. For all these innovations, we have to make a lifecycle and lysis to see if the production of this product also emits greenhouse gases, and then you see if, in the end, you can say that you’ve sequestered carbon.
But what we should keep in mind is that the best way to increase carbon content in soils is to cover the soil with plants, both in time and space, as much as possible, because plants sequester carbon. Yes, I think that’s the brightest strategy. We’re talking about cover crops, for instance; that’s a great strategy. Buffer zones, agroforestry, et cetera, are very interesting strategies, more so than new innovations that require manufacturing of organic products.
The Chair: Thank you. Chair’s prerogative, I am going to ask for the input of Professor Whalen as well.
Ms. Whalen: Thank you so much. I want to go back to Senator Klyne’s fantastic question on pain. Where is the pain going to come in?
What we are looking at these days are ways to offer producers a solution. We’re saying, “You are doing many good things. However, we would like to pay you to do even more good things.” We’re trying to find ways, especially in the United States; they have already made commitments to deliberately pay producers who store more carbon in the soils and who emit less nitrogen gases from their fertilizer use. One of the ways to incentivize this process is not to make it painful, but make it pleasurable. Put some money into the game.
The second thing I would like to say is to alert everybody that I’m speaking to you from the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco in North Africa. I’m here on a one-year sabbatical leave from McGill University. I am here as an honourary affiliate professor with the African Genome Center. Because of the huge problems that we see in Africa, most obviously poverty and food insecurity, we are taking innovative approaches to make the fragile and stressed soils more balanced and resilient.
The yield gap that we see in Africa is growing bigger and bigger because their soil health is deteriorating in these overpopulated countries. Farmers are dealing with salinization from improper irrigation, desertification from overgrazing and deforestation and, generally, soil pollution from poor sanitation practices.
We’re trying to work with folks over here to bring them some innovative solutions. We’re using agricultural microbials. These microbials are natural products that improve the growth of crops in Africa. They have, through the use of bio-stimulants, inoculants and other biological substances that can safely be added to soil, found incredible improvements in yield without the use of synthetic fertilizers. This technology that’s being adopted here in Africa also has great potential. It reminds me of the Soileos product that Senator Klyne had mentioned.
We need to keep doing everything right, as my colleague Ms. Samson mentioned, but there still is an opportunity for innovation, for biotechnological approaches. I believe that that is what is going to rebuild the soils in Africa.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: My question is for both witnesses. You both talked about your involvement and your knowledge internationally. I’m trying to get a sense of where Canada is internationally, not only in terms of the current health of our soils, but also in terms of what we’re doing to improve the situation. Are we average, are we ahead, or do we have some catching up to do? You mentioned earlier that the last major study we did was in the 1990s. Are we leaders in this area? Can you give us an idea of where we are?
[English]
Ms. Whalen: Thank you very much, Senator Petitclerc. This is a really good question: Where is Canada? How is Canada viewed in this space?
What I can tell you is that, with a number of initiatives, we are taking a leadership role. I, myself, am chairing an international meeting on soil organic matter that will be held in Canada within two years in a location to be determined. The last time I was in Korea, they asked me if I would please host this meeting, because they know of the reputation of the Canadian soil scientists and of the interest and leadership that Canada has shown, particularly in soil organic matter management.
I would also tell you that with regard to trying to control nitrogen fertilizer levels on farms to avoid contamination of the environment, with regard to our position on other types of fertilizer management, Canada takes a lead in a what they call a “nutrient stewardship approach.” We have an enhanced nutrient stewardship approach that we are leaders in.
Working here in the African Genome Center, there are a number of Canadian colleagues implicated with me. I can’t speak for myself, but the generosity of my colleagues in trying to do work to help out people and populations who are in desperate need of solutions shows me again that Canada is able to take a leadership role in innovations related to rebuilding soil health. I feel very positive about this.
The last thing that makes me feel extremely proud to be a Canadian soil scientist is that we recently were awarded the right to host the World Congress of Soil Science in Toronto in 2030. This is the second time that we will host it, and that is almost unheard of. Normally, you just get one chance to do it. Canada is a small country but very well respected in this space. Thank you.
Ms. Samson: Thank you so much, Professor Whalen. That’s a great answer. We can be proud of what we’re doing in Canada. I feel that, more and more, we’re hearing about soils and how important soils are and also about the potential of soil-based climate solutions. It’s great.
The only downside we have here compared to a few other countries is the lack of data. It’s particularly important in Canada, because it’s so vast and so variable. Having data would really help us determine what are the best strategies under specific bio-climatic conditions. Having more data on the soil over time could really help us improve our strategies and make the solutions even more relevant and regionally relevant, yes.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Cotter: Thanks to both of you, Professor Whalen and Professor Samson, for a really insightful discussion for us. Three, hopefully, quick questions and quick answers. The first is for you, Professor Whalen. You discussed organics. In a healthy context for organics, how much can they contribute to the revitalization of soils, particularly for agricultural purposes?
My question for Professor Samson is this: You said there is no answer to the amount of carbon sequestration that can be achieved going forward. Can you put a word on it — would it be “substantial,” “modest,” “remarkable” — without even naming the number?
My third question is for both of you. We have heard from other witnesses that in these areas of regenerating soil in Canada, there are early responders and middle responders. However, there are a significant number of, usually larger, agricultural producers who have actually been slow or non-responders. I’m worried about the degree to which your enthusiasm for where we lead in soil science may not be translating into practices in the field. Thanks.
The Chair: We’ll give Professor Samson the first response.
Ms. Samson: Thank you so much, Senator Black. Yes, there are indeed estimations based on modelling for Canada on how much carbon could be sequestered in the soil. But as I’ve said, it’s always based on the current state of the soil and its potential to sequester more carbon. I have to say that based on the data we have from 1995, we estimated that, at least in Quebec, there was a potential for carbon sequestration. They lost carbon, so they could gain it back. It could be quite interesting. We’re almost to the point where returning the carbon that was lost in 1995 to the soils could almost counterbalance all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, for instance.
I feel uncomfortable saying that because these are very large estimations. I want to give you the sense that it could be a great solution, but it doesn’t mean we have to stop our transition toward greener energies. It’s just to help the transition and reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere while we move away from the use of fossil energies.
On the second question — can someone remind me?
Senator Cotter: About slow responders in the world of agriculture.
Ms. Samson: Yes, that’s huge too. I think Professor Whalen said earlier that money could help. Of course money could help. Our farmers work very hard, and they’re trying their best. However, they get a lot of information from everywhere. They don’t always end up making a proper salary for the work they’re doing, so asking them to do more and to try something new and take risks — Trying cover crops is risky. Maybe it won’t work, and then you’ll lose more money and everything.
So there is something to do there to better help farmers. Give them money or access to experts or knowledge, et cetera, to help the transition. Because once they’ve tried it, we hear they like it. They see the difference, and they’re happy. But there is a step to take, and I think we need to do more to help them take this step.
The Chair: Thank you. Professor Whalen, a couple of minutes at most.
Ms. Whalen: Yes, of course. Let me just answer the very first question from Senator Cotter. I can tell you a number right now. If you want to maintain the soil organic matter level in a soil that is continuously cropped, that soil needs to receive an input of about 30 tons of organic matter per hectare every about three to four years. That will really help a lot to maintain that level. That’s a recommendation — a rule of thumb — that we use in Quebec.
About the response of people to these various programs. Why would people respond slowly or quickly? Some people like to adapt. I would like to suggest we go toward a model that is a bit more like the U.S. system. In the U.S. system, there is an overarching act, which is the Farm Bill, in which there is a pot of money that is uniformly distributed to people in need across the United States to do very specific actions. They first started to use it for the Conservation Reserve Program, which was to take the very degraded soils out of agricultural production. But the moneys come through the federal government as an umbrella and then are distributed to be used in the areas where they’re needed. We could do something similar in Canada, but perhaps on a different note — perhaps targeting greenhouse gas reductions or carbon sequestration. Because right now, honestly, it is a hodgepodge. There are rules in Quebec, and there are rules in Ontario. Some provinces have a carbon credit system. Others don’t. If the federal government could take some leadership and provide an overarching umbrella to direct everybody, this would really be a big step forward. It would incentivize farmers to adopt those practices that they know they want to do, and they would get payment for doing it.
Senator Marwah: Thank you to the witnesses for your comments. Professor Whalen, congratulations on being elected president of the American Society of Agronomy.
Given that role and the broad perspective that it offers you, are there any practices or policy measures that you see in the U.S. or in any other jurisdictions that you would recommend Canada adopt or that you think Canada is not giving proper attention? You have alluded to a few things in your comments, but I wouldn’t mind you being more specific. Professor Samson, if you could comment along the same lines, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Ms. Whalen: Senator Marwah, I appreciate your question very much. Also, thanks for the congratulations. The American Society of Agronomy is a great organization. It has 8,000 members in the United States and elsewhere, and they also do training for 14,000 professional agronomists in the certified crop adviser program.
One of the very highly effective things they do is provide a very advanced educational platform. I think that would really help us a lot. In Canada, we do have professional societies of agronomy, soil science, weed science and other disciplines, but we’re not working together all the time. We are a bit separate. If we had a more concerted way to regroup ourselves — maybe it would be through the Agricultural Institute of Canada in some new form, because it used to be that way. Through this concerted effort, they are able to put a lot of resources into things like Decode 6, which is their educational platform for informing all the crop advisers — the boots-on-the-ground folks who talk and interact directly with the farmers — about how they can use programs, how they can take land out of production and get compensation for it, how they can protect the water quality, et cetera.
If we had a more integrated approach to make sure soil science was more connected with other disciplines, it would very much help us in Canada.
I would like to turn it over to my colleague, Ms. Samson, for her comments.
Ms. Samson: Yes, and thank you so much, Professor Whalen. I would like to add to that, at least from my own experience. It might be the case in Quebec and not elsewhere in Canada. The way our agronomists are formed and where they work isn’t always in the best interest of soil health, for example. Agronomists will study plant science, and they will know how much fertilizer should be applied on each field, and they will give fertilizer recommendations. But it’s not the majority of agronomists who are able to take a shovel, go there and work with the producer for integrated strategies to improve soil health, et cetera. I think there is a certain lack of knowledge transfer, at least from my perspective, from my experience. Yes, producers need that to move forward. They need to be accompanied.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: Professor Whalen, I was inspired, knowing that you’re in Morocco right now, to consider the area we think of as the northern Sahara. It’s a desert region that was once heavily forested and was once the bread basket of the Roman Empire. Tunisia was the one of the number-one grain producers 2,000 years ago. Now look at that landscape. We think it’s the modern age when we destroyed ecosystems, but, in fact, human beings were quite capable of destroying ecosystems 2,000 years ago, too.
As you sit in Morocco, from that vantage point, and as you think about the impacts of climate change on Canada — especially when I think about dry land areas like the Palliser’s Triangle region of Alberta and Saskatchewan — what lessons do we need to learn now that the Romans were unable to learn 2,000 years ago? I guess don’t plow salt into the ground, which is what the Romans did in Carthage, but apart from that?
Ms. Whalen: Senator Simons, I very much like your perspective on things, and I appreciate this very interesting question. What lessons can we learn indeed? One of the big ones is the effect of improper water management. It still even shocks me today when I go to desert and arid regions, and I see sprinkler irrigation. I cover my eyes and I say, “Why? Why are they doing this?” What is it that we can do? It’s education. It’s always education.
We have to take our position. We have a lot of knowledge. I know many scientists who have worked almost without borders or without frontiers. They have gone to many places in the world and seen things and then tried to make a small difference in whatever way they can.
Canadian soil scientists are very generous. We’ve seen them, over and over again, go places and make an effort to halt erosion in Costa Rica, to implement soil fertility training programs in Haiti. We’ve seen people go to China and do fantastic things with advising on the replanting of areas that are prone to erosion or to loss of soil on slopes and so on. But they use appropriate techniques because it’s not one size fits all, as my colleague Professor Samson mentioned.
What can we do specifically in Canada? We can identify those problem areas, and we can bring the knowledge and resources there. We would like to see it not only as a top-down approach. We would like to see communities identify that, “Hey, we think there is a problem here,” or, “We’re not really happy with this.” If the Government of Canada and the Senate of Canada could help us to get a community-led initiative, the soil scientists would be there to do their very best to help out in those areas where a little extra care is needed. Thank you so much.
Ms. Samson: I totally agree with the last few sentences of Professor Whalen. Of course, we’re seeing that the producers, the farmers, have to be involved from the start, because otherwise, we can come up with all the solutions we want, but they are the ones who will take the decisions at the end of the day. Developing science based on their needs and on solutions that they are ready to put forward is a good part of the solution.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Samson.
Senator Oh: My question is a follow-up for Professor Whalen. You did mention something about working with China. I do notice that China has been working strongly and diligently on soil health revitalization, including desert land. You did say that scientists have no borders. Are we working with a lot of countries from different parts of the world?
Ms. Whalen: Thank you, Senator Oh. I can only speak from my own experience, but I have been to China numerous times. I have seen some of those desert lands that are now being revegetated. I’ve been on the Loess Plateau, and I’ve seen how they rebuilt it from an area that was being completely eroded. Everything was going into the waterways; very deep ravines and crevasses were being built, but it’s being turned back into a productive, vital land.
Of course, such efforts take a huge amount of cooperation. When we go to China, we go mostly as advisers. We don’t want to try to tell the Chinese farmer what to do. We want the Chinese farmer to tell us what they think, and we will help them find the solution.
Yes, we’ve gone to China. I’ve been to Indonesia, Africa, South America, many different places. I have students who have come from Afghanistan. They told me about the soil issues they face there. With the training and bringing international visitors to Canada for training and visiting in their countries as well, we are trying to build an international network of soil scientists who can work together in a very friendly and collaborative way. It’s not only at McGill. I’m sure other initiatives are under way at Université Laval.
Ms. Samson: Yes, of course, it’s part of our plan for the next year to really build a structure around the internationalization of the research. Yes, it’s a big focus at Université Laval right now, too.
Senator Oh: Next time you go to China, let me know; I’ll come along. I would like to see the land change into green land. Thank you so much.
Ms. Whalen: Thank you so much. Grain for Green.
The Chair: Dr. Whalen, Dr. Samson, thank you for your assistance with this study today. Your comments, your insight, have been very much appreciated. We are limited with our five minutes so everyone gets to participate, so I appreciate each of you sharing the time you were given. Again, thank you, Dr. Whalen, for joining us from Morocco; we appreciate it.
Colleagues, we will begin our second hour of witness testimony. For our second panel, we will hear from Christopher Burn, Chancellor’s Professor of Geography, Carleton University. Thank you for joining us in person today. As well, we will hear from Sean Smukler, Associate Professor, Applied Biology and Soil Science, University of British Columbia. It’s likely a very early morning for you, Dr. Smukler. Thanks for joining us. We will hear opening remarks from Dr. Burn, followed by Dr. Smukler.
Mr. Burn: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, honourable senators, for the opportunity to address the condition of soils in Northern Canada.
Climate change frames the context for almost any discussion concerning the environment in our North, and the state of the soil is no exception. Many northern soils are founded in permafrost. Indeed, the Cryosols, a specifically Canadian order, are classified by the presence of permafrost in the top two metres of the ground.
About one half of Canada is in the permafrost region, and permafrost underlies about one third of our landscape. The difference is due to the areas where permafrost and unfrozen ground coexist regionally in what we call the discontinuous permafrost zone.
There is relatively little commercial agriculture in the North and almost no commercial forestry, but the prospects for agriculture have increased as a direct result of climate change and settlement of land claims. In the case of climate change, the frost-free season is lengthening at some stations. For example, at Mayo, in central Yukon, the season typically lasted 71 days in 1951-80, and 91 days in 1981-2010. There are signs that rainfall is increasing, but only late in the season.
Temperatures are not increasing as rapidly in summer as in winter, which means that viable germination may occur earlier in spring because the soil does not become as cold in winter as previously. However, without application of fertilizer, northern cultivated soils support only forage crops. Clearing of soils with permafrost commonly leads to thawing of the ground and subsidence as the ground ice melts. In some cases, the differential subsidence in new fields has made them unfit for commercial operations. Effects from thawing of ice in the ground are one of the risks northern farmers assume.
In the case of land claims, the final agreements mean that disposition of lands may proceed, and they facilitate development of commercial activity by First Nations, including agriculture.
Nevertheless, agricultural land is a tiny fraction of the North. The most pressing soil condition concerns the large amount of carbon that is currently frozen and stored in our Cryosols. In Canada, we currently have about 400 billion tonnes of carbon in the uppermost three metres of the ground in the permafrost regions. That is about 40% of the global total. Much of it is in the peatlands of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the Mackenzie Valley and the Old Crow Flats, but it has accumulated in other soils too. In comparison, global industrial emissions are 9 billion tonnes of carbon per year, and Canadian anthropogenic emissions are 200 million tonnes of carbon per year. As a result of climate warming, permafrost thawing leads to microbial breakdown of the organic matter and release of the carbon as CO2 and methane. We only need to lose a tiny fraction of our permafrost soil carbon to swamp any benefits we gain from reductions we make in our annual anthropogenic emissions, which only represent 0.05% of the soil carbon stock. We estimate now that emissions from warming permafrost terrain exceed the increase in biomass production and associated increase in storage of carbon that is due to more favourable growing conditions.
Worldwide, we estimate that the balance has tipped in favour of soil emissions of between 300 and 600 million tonnes of carbon per year. You will notice that this already exceeds the rate of Canadian anthropogenic emissions. It is a development of the last five to six years. We have a serious problem.
I regret to say that Canadian attention to this problem is not what it should be. There is no coordinated national initiative to determine the extent of carbon storage in permafrost, the rate of emissions, the rate of carbon being released from permafrost into thawing ground, the conditions that accelerate such emission or actions that could be taken to mitigate release of carbon from the permafrost soils.
In April last year, 19 of Canada’s leading permafrost scientists and engineers wrote to the Prime Minister to formally present our concerns on this issue. We have given up waiting for a response. I would urge you to consider this matter in some depth during your deliberations, because it transcends provincial and territorial boundaries and because it is essential that we develop an understanding of the time scales involved in the problem if we are to adequately manage our response to climate change.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Sean Smukler, Associate Professor, Applied Biology and Soil Science, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you. Good morning. It’s early for me and the coffee is still kicking in, but it’s a great honour to have this opportunity to talk with you this morning, and I applaud you for taking the time to examine what is one of the most important issues we need to urgently address to ensure a viable future for our planet and our children and generations to come, and this is healthy soils.
I am speaking to you from the unceded and traditional territory of the Musqueam people. My name is Sean Smukler. I’m an agricultural ecologist and an associate professor in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. I’m also the director of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and the chair of Agriculture and Environment at UBC. The latter position is partially funded by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Food to provide actionable research to the farmers in this province. My lab has been focused on developing cost-effective approaches to evaluating soil health and identifying practices that will improve the health of the soil, particularly those that increase our ability to mitigate the climate crisis and build resilience of our forestry and agricultural systems. Soil health is a critical, global issue, but in the next few minutes I would like to brief you on the status particularly here in British Columbia.
B.C. is an important case study. We are the proverbial canary in the coal mine and hopefully a wake up call for the nation. Over the last year, our province has been racked by forest fires, a deadly heat dome, drought, flooding and, most recently, the coldest and latest spring seen in decades.
These events have clearly highlighted our lack of resilience. Our research and that of my colleagues suggests that building soil health is key to building resilience and helping to achieve emission reduction targets.
For a more detailed view of the B.C. context, I would refer you to a paper that my colleagues and I recently published, led by Dr. Cornelis, 2022, Soil priorities in British Columbia.
In B.C. we have some of the greatest diversity of soil types across all of the provinces and territories. Forestry is certainly a dominant land use across the province. Our agricultural systems, though small, are incredibly productive and diverse, and, importantly, face incredible pressures from urbanization.
Clearly, soil health is important in our province. It’s critical for the resilience of our landscape and our healthy soils. We have managed to begin to assess the value of soil health, but for something so important for our society’s well-being, we have shockingly little understanding of the status or the direction of soil health. Really, to manage our lands and to improve soil health, we need a better understanding of the complex below-ground ecosystem and how it responds to our activities.
The issue is really that we have a limited amount of data. We have data from select sites and systems. Data is not catalogued effectively. It’s largely inaccessible. The data has been collected using a wide range of metrics and methods. This heterogeneity in the metrics hinders our ability to compare data and limits our ability to make broader conclusions and recommendations, which is incredibly important in a province like ours where we have such a diversity of climate conditions.
Recently, my lab published one of a few analyses of the trajectory of soil health. Using sampling and a modelling approach, we showed that from 1984 to 2018, in one of the most intensive agricultural landscapes in the province, there was an alarming decrease in soil organic matter across 61% of the landscape.
I want to leave you with a few key recommendations. We need to change the paradigm of how we see land management. We need to do a better job of quantifying and linking soil health for productivity of our farm and forest, and we need to start developing common metrics to measure and report soil health. We critically need to develop a baseline for the status of our soils. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much to our witnesses. We will proceed to questions from senators. Again, five minutes. I will note at one minute so you can wrap up.
Senator Simons: Professor Burn, I have to say, I was going to start by asking you a question about whether we could we grow wild blueberries or haskap berries or have some kind of agriculture like that in the North, but your testimony stopped me cold in my tracks. The picture you paint is really apocalyptic. What happens if the permafrost continues to melt at this rate? Is there anything that can be done to arrest the pace of permafrost dissipation?
Would you be kind enough to furnish to our committee, so we can have it sent to the clerk, a copy of the letter that you and your colleagues wrote to the Prime Minister on this subject?
Mr. Burn: Thank you, Senator Simons. We certainly will give you a copy of the letter in English and in French.
This is an existential problem, and I would say that 20 years ago, it was one of the unknown unknowns. About 10 years ago, it became one of the known unknowns. Now, we’re in the situation where we know that it’s something we shall anticipate.
The issue from a scientific perspective is whether this will become a very serious problem in the next 10 years, 25 years or 70 years. We have a very poor understanding of the time frame over which this process will begin to affect our ability to mitigate carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. So in a sense, I can’t answer your question because I can’t tell you whether it’s a problem we will see the effects of in the next 10 years or the next 5 years.
However, we will see these effects, because unless and until we can prevent the global rise of temperature — in northwest Canada, the rate of increase in temperature is about four times the global average. In Inuvik in 1970, the mean annual temperature was -9.5. Now it’s about -6.5. In Whitehorse, the value has gone up by about two degrees in that same period. So, the rate of climate warming in the North is greater than it is in the south of Canada. In Ottawa, in comparison, it’s about one degree over that period of time.
We have gone past the stage of arguing about whether there is climate change. You can’t speak to anybody in the North and not anticipate that climate change will come up in conversation.
Can we do anything about it? If we don’t know the time scale over which this process will operate and become extremely serious, we cannot deal with the question of whether we need to deal with it right now or whether we can take some time to develop strategies. To me, that is the most serious issue in terms of management of this. The fundamental problem is that it’s a global-scale problem. We have 40% of the soil carbon in permafrost. The Russians have something like 50%, and the Alaskans have something like 10%. It involves international cooperation, which I appreciate at the moment is a very difficult task. Nevertheless, it’s a serious issue.
I’m sorry to paint an apocalyptic position, but I fear that for our grandchildren, it will become very serious.
Senator Simons: Why is it that permafrost is such a great carbon sink? I’m from Alberta. I understood that the melting of permafrost would be a problem for things like winter roads and landing strips for northern flight. I had no idea that permafrost was so essential to carbon sequestration. What is it about permafrost that creates that calibre of quality?
Mr. Burn: The issue is that for many years, the North has been an environment in which when organic material ceases growing at the end of the year, some of it remains near the surface. However, over periods of thousands of years, because of what we call crop frost churning — which is associated with freezing and thawing of the soils — there is a circulation within the soil that takes much of this carbon down from the surface into the permafrost. In the southern portions of the environment, we often see fence posts being jacked up or stones appearing in the fields.
So over periods of about 10,000 years since the ice age, this soil has accumulated in the ground. That is the stock that is now being released because instead of the ground remaining frozen, it’s now becoming unfrozen. Therefore, that stock that made its way into the ground over thousands of years is now subject to degradation by microbial activity.
The Chair: Can you bring up the rest of your question at the second round? Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: My question will also be for you, Mr. Burn. If we have time, I would like to get the answer from both witnesses.
My question is about solutions but also recommendations. This is a big study that we are undergoing, and at the end of the study, we want to come up with recommendations for the federal government. My feeling is that, as we heard today, we have the science, the data — maybe not all the data — and the expertise. We know, as you said. It seems like what we know is not being turned into action and solutions at the level we need. What should we recommend? What is the role of the federal government? Is it education? Is it awareness? One witness was talking about, maybe, payment. Should it be more prescriptive — obligation, legislation?
I want to get a sense of what the solutions from the federal government should be.
Mr. Burn: Thank you. At the moment, Environment and Climate Change Canada is involved in part of this issue through modelling. The Geological Survey of Canada and Natural Resources Canada are involved in part of this issue through finding out what is in the ground in parts of the North. At the moment, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is involved in some of this, and the most significant Canadian contribution to this question came from a soil scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Charles Tarnocai, who is now retired for many years.
The problem in the federal government is that this question is dispersed. It’s not focused in any one particular department, and I don’t know whether any one particular department has decided to take the lead on this. In other words, I’ll speak frankly, if I may, Mr. Chair. I would say that the difficulty here is that this is such a serious problem, that if the general public begins to understand this, then they will question why they need to do anything about carbon emissions because we’re cooked anyway. That, I think, is the political problem. The political problem is if we discuss it too much, then they will say, “Well, permafrost is going to create more of a problem. It will outweigh anything that we do in terms of reduction of emissions.”
That’s why 20 years ago, it was a known unknown. We didn’t think about this at all. It then became a known unknown, but if you recall in the early years, from 2010 to 2015, Canada’s climate change policy was very carefully directed. Any question about the emission issue was not something that was high on the national agenda in the same way as it is now.
The problem is the permafrost doesn’t respond to government edict. The permafrost behaves in its own way. So the problem that we have is creating the larger environment where we know how to manage this problem. The work on this is dispersed in different departments within the government; there is no one agency taking the lead on this. At the moment, the permafrost research, which used to be focused in the federal government, is now quite honourably being adopted by the territorial geological surveys in Whitehorse and in Yellowknife in particular. The ability to deal with this is now dispersed, and that is a significant problem that I’m sure you can help to address.
Mr. Smukler: We do need to mobilize action immediately. Senator, your question is excellent. I think we do know quite a bit. We can identify practices that we can promote widely. We have to communicate the importance of these practices, not only to the managers of our landscapes, but also to the general public so they understand why these practices are critical and can support them and help to put financing behind them. We need to be able to develop incentive supports for the land managers to take on these practices.
As my co-witness said, if we’re cooked in terms of mitigating the climate, there has to be a focus on helping our land managers be more resilient. There needs to be a recognition that soil health is critical to help moderate the impacts of the climate crisis, but more importantly, to help build a more resilient system going forward.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. I had the honour to join the Special Senate Committee on the Arctic about three or four years ago. We flew through the whole Arctic criss-cross. When we flew up to the Arctic Circle, they gave us a certificate to say where we are. It was September, and I saw that we have shrubs and all this growing in a beautiful fall colour, so this shows that vegetation is able to grow in the Arctic. They told me that there is no farming. We can turn desert into green land. Why can’t we do any farming up there?
Mr. Burn: Thank you, senator. There is farming. There is a lot of farming within 50 kilometres of Whitehorse. There is small farming near Dawson City, and one of the big farms near Dawson City is run by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun has purchased a farm halfway between these communities. The farming, though, is small-scale, partly because the market is small, but also because there is not a lot of land that is suitable for farming because the soil is cold.
Because of climate change, some of these things are changing, and there is an expansion of agriculture now. In 2020, the Yukon government issued a second policy for agriculture within the Yukon, and there is encouragement for people to extend their own individual farms and to increase the total area under cultivation and for new people coming in.
The difficulty is that the market is small. The population of the Yukon is now somewhere between 40,000 and 44,000 people, so it’s not a large population. This means that the amount of agriculture is not going to be the agriculture that you see providing food for a population of 34 million people. So the scale is one thing.
The second issue is that the sorts of crops that can grow there are not the same as the crops that can happen in the South. So we have to tune that up. But there is a lot of interest in both soil-based agriculture — that is forage crops, particularly oats and hay — and in non-soil-based agriculture — raising of chickens, pigs, geese and turkeys. These are very much successful in the local market. There is not just a possibility but an active agriculture sector. I don’t want you to think there is nothing like that. It’s just it’s not big in the way that we think of agriculture in the Prairies.
Senator Klyne: Welcome to our experts. I’m trying to remain calm listening to what I’m hearing.
The one thing that keeps coming up is lack of data, and we recognize that there are regional differences, so there will be regional data sets. Obviously, there will be some crossover and horizontal views of these things.
I want to come to the question about what we need to say or do. Where are the barriers? What do we need to say or do or recommend to get to this data? If we are talking about strategies, and I have heard from Mr. Smukler about some of the recommendations, I don’t understand how we do it without the data to hone and improve the strategies.
Something occurred to me while I was listening to Mr. Burn. What is coming up are the regional energy resource tables, and there is a significant amount of participation here between federal, provincial and territorial governments. There is also participation by municipal governments, Indigenous partners, industry and business leaders, academic and sector experts like yourself. However, I don’t hear about the agricultural sector and the importance of soil, particularly concerns about degradation.
It’s also designed to identify and prioritize opportunity for a low-carbon future. The regional tables address the urgency of climate change, but their view is to see some of the economic opportunities here. I think it is incumbent upon them also to want to look at some of the issues. This is a huge issue, but it also is in that realm of climate change opportunities, concerns and solutions.
Do you know anything about these or if they’ve been identified? Is anyone attending these on the agricultural sector and soil concerns issues basis?
Mr. Smukler: Thank you very much for the question. To answer the first part of the senator’s question, we certainly do need data. Well, I mentioned that we have practices that we’ve identified that can help build soil health across our landscapes. We need to better understand how to maximize that soil health and to demonstrate to those who have not adopted those practices that these approaches will improve their soil health in a way that improves their bottom line as well as demonstrating to the public that it will ensure key ecosystem services that they rely on.
The challenge is definitely not insurmountable. We have to coordinate on this. I think leadership from the federal government would be incredibly useful in terms of helping the scientific community agree on a set of metrics that we’re going to measure and be able to do this in a way that is hierarchical in terms of the quality and efforts so that it’s not just scientists that are collecting this data, but land managers themselves can do their own assessment and build their own adaptive management capacity.
Then we need a way to share this data. We need to be able to catalogue it in an efficient and comprehensive way so we can all get access to it and share the outcomes.
Finally, we need to have a coordinated approach on how we evaluate practices going forward. This, again, needs to be strategic. We don’t have much time here, so we have to develop priorities in terms of the practices and the locations and soils that we focus on. This is all completely doable and we just need to have some leadership on this. Thank you.
Mr. Burn: Thank you, Mr. Chair. All I would say is that from Labrador to the Yukon-Alaska border, it’s around about a quarter of the way around the world, so it’s a quarter of the way around the globe. It is a huge area. The North is huge. The population is about 100,000, not heavily populated. As a result, the federal government is really a key player in this region for accumulating the sort of information that we need in order to manage the sorts of problems that I’ve raised. The area shared amongst three territorial jurisdictions and a number of provinces. There is a jurisdictional issue, but the federal government is extremely well placed to act on this. However, it needs to be up on the list of things to do. If it’s spread between a number of different departments, it’s really difficult to get it to happen.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Duncan: My job here is done. I truly appreciate what you’ve said. In your remarks about the need for international cooperation, you mentioned numbers. You said Russia has 50% of the permafrost, Canada has 40%, and you gave a reduced number for Alaska. Are there differences in the melting of the permafrost across the Canadian North, and what was the reason for the difference in Alaska? Is it just because of its size?
Mr. Burn: Alaska is small in comparison with the Canadian North. I think it’s very important for us to realize that America does not own the Canadian North, but they do have some interest in Alaska. However, within Alaska, the extent of science that is devoted to this particular problem is far greater than anything that’s happened in Canada. The Americans understood this was an existential global program, so they put resources into dealing with it in a way that we were unable to do, partly because of the particular context when this issue started to arise, and also because, subsequently, even countries like Portugal became interested. You think, why is Portugal interested in the permafrost? Because they understand the ramifications of this issue.
The international interest and the international effort has outstripped what we are doing scientifically, but it’s not that we don’t have the capacity to do it. We have the capacity to do it, but we need the direction to put the people in that direction. But the issue about 10% is simply because Alaska is so much smaller than us.
Senator Duncan: Are there differences across the globe in the melting of the permafrost?
Mr. Burn: Yes, there are differences and they’re associated with the fact that the climate around the globe is not the same. In different parts of the North, the climate is warming at different rates. For example, in northern Quebec, it’s warming at a slower rate than it’s warming in your territory. Similarly, in northern portions of the Northwest Territories, in northern Yukon, it’s warming more quickly than it is in southern portions. So there is variation in that sense. That is the reason why I think the question of time is so important because the time scale for what will happen near Inuvik is different from the time scale of what will happen in Siberia. That’s the global sort of analysis that we need. We need it particularly within Canada because we have so much variation within our country and where we can be, if you like, a laboratory for how to manage this problem globally.
Senator Duncan: Could you also speak to the level of cooperation between the Northern academic institutions? For example, Yukon University has developed substantial programs. Is there cooperation in this data collection and the study ongoing across Canada’s North and internationally?
Mr. Burn: The data collection and data assembly and storage capacities have increased significantly with respect to permafrost, not so much in the universities, but because the territories have, within their geological surveys, in the last 10 years become very serious about permafrost. Previously, they were interested in finding mineral resources and that was an economic approach that way. Now they’ve realized this is an issue of environmental significance. So the territorial geological surveys have become interested in permafrost, not so much nationally, though, about the carbon question.
Senator Duncan: Part of the reason for the increase in attention is the effect on infrastructure, correct?
Mr. Burn: Absolutely. Now, infrastructure is the short-term, big-ticket item. We know that the Yukon is spending significantly more on its highways. Last year there was a project that was over half a kilometre of highway and it cost $4 million in order to prevent that highway from collapsing due to permafrost thaw. That’s basically $10,000 per metre. You can’t build a highway like that.
Senator Cotter: Thank you to the professors for speaking with us today. I was searching for a kind of optimistic aspect of the apocalypse that Professor Burn and Senator Simons spoke to. The only thing I could think of was that before too long, the solution for Senator Duncan might well be that we’ll be growing pineapples and bananas in Dawson City. It just seems to me disheartening.
I have a couple of questions, one for Professor Burn, which is: Leaving aside the geopolitics these days, is there a significant interest in Russia on this question, and is there an interrelationship between scientists and researchers on this question?
Mr. Burn: We have an organization called the International Permafrost Association which was founded in 1983. Currently I’m the president of that organization. The principal reason that that organization was founded was in order to maintain an international gathering where scientists would come together every four years. The four nations that founded that organization were: China, Russia, the United States and Canada, and Canada hosted the secretariat for that organization in the first 10 years of its life.
We have had a lot to do with Russian scientists. Unfortunately, the present situation makes that very difficult. The next International Conference on Permafrost will be in Whitehorse in 2024. I know that soil scientists are proud to have the second one; that will be the third international meeting in our field that’s taken place in Canada. We don’t know yet if the Russians will be able to come to that conference, and that’s for many reasons: whether they’ll be allowed to come or even able to have money that will work in this country. We don’t know.
There is communication still between the Canadian scientists and the Russian scientists, and there are Russians who are working on this, but they have never been able to work in the way that the Americans have been able to devote resources to this. So there is a connection, but just at the moment, it’s not vibrant. With the Americans, I would say it’s strong.
Senator Cotter: Professor Smukler, while you were speaking, I tried to call up the article on soil priorities in British Columbia, but it is either so good or so valuable that I can’t access it other than the first page without permission. I’m wondering if it would be possible for you and your colleagues to share it with us so we can incorporate it into our consideration.
Mr. Smukler: Yes, for sure. We’re happy to do that.
Senator Cotter: On the website, as you were speaking, I saw that there were essentially three hints of priorities. I couldn’t get much further than discovering that. Could you give us a bit of the Cole’s Notes version of what the key takeaways or highlights of that study are?
Mr. Smukler: Yes.
It was an opinion piece by a group of us that was identifying some of the priorities for British Columbia. These are clearly to develop, as I said before, the metrics that would identify or clearly quantify the soil health benefits of various management practices.
The key outcome of that work is to really enhance our capacity to understand the resilience of our systems in relation to soil health and to be able to clearly demonstrate soil health results in outcomes that are measurable in terms of that resilience, particularly in the situation that British Columbia has been facing over the last few years in terms of droughts, fires and flooding.
Senator Cotter: Thank you.
Senator Marwah: Thank you to both witnesses. I must congratulate you, Professor Burn. I don’t think my attention has ever been focused so sharply by witness testimony.
On the permafrost issue, you mentioned a political problem that the federal government has. Would you elaborate on that a bit more? I would like to understand that, because wouldn’t it behoove us all to have the public more educated about this issue? How come there is no global attention on this? How come there is no media attention on this? Why isn’t there much more public knowledge of this issue?
Mr. Burn: There is global attention. Within Europe, this is the principal issue on which the Europeans justify most of their Arctic research. It’s associated with climate change, and the terrestrial people, the people who work on the land in Europe, they speak to permafrost carbon. So the Europeans have this up front and centre.
It’s difficult for us, because 10 years ago, there was a genuine suspicion of whether climate change was a real phenomenon. This was something that was promulgated by the media, and there was not any very clear rebuttal of that, even though 99% of the scientists knew climate change was happening. Now we’ve had 50 years of actual information, data, evidence and experience, so it’s gone away as to whether it’s an issue.
This is one of the more complicated issues, and it’s complicated partly because — and this goes to Senator Klyne’s concern — we have a very large area of the globe; it’s half of Canada. Yet when we think about the amount that we know about the permafrost organic carbon composition, it’s not very much. The number of locations where there’s been sufficient sampling for us to say that the sample is a reliable value for the region is relatively small, because there hasn’t been much work on this.
What we’re left with is a general idea. Nobody disputes that there is a significant amount of carbon in the permafrost. But if you ask, how much is there in the vicinity of Fort Good Hope? We could guess what it is and estimate what it is, but we can’t go to a resource that says how much we have.
So one of the problems we have is that because we have such a large area, we don’t have a high information density. That means that scientists tend to be reluctant to stick their necks out and say, with great confidence, that it is within such a range. Then the public will say, “You don’t really know because, in this particular area, it might be 2 kilograms per square metre or it might be 0.2 kilograms per square metre.” One is a problem because this is lots of carbon ready to come out of the ground, and the other one seems “well, there’s not so much in there.” So it becomes an issue of “once you know what you’re talking about, then come and talk to us.”
That’s a problem because we have such a large area with only a small density of information. That’s part of the reason I mentioned the Geological Survey of Canada and the territorial geological surveys, because they’re in the ideal position to address this problem and to give us the security we need to speak without having to wave our arms.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We are moving to the second round, after which we will suspend for a short in-camera session.
Senator Simons: Now that Professor Burn made us stare into the existential abyss, I want to ask a question of Professor Smukler.
We are just putting the finishing touches on a big report we did about the B.C. flood. It’s good work, but I’m realizing now that it’s like a preface to this.
What is the impact of a flood like that on soil health? Obviously, there are issues of erosion, as soil washed away, but when you get flooding of that nature, does it put organics back into the soil, or do you run the risk that it’s also putting pollutants into the soil?
Mr. Smukler: Thank you very much for the question.
This is one of those cases where we certainly need more information, but evidence would suggest that flooding that has happened on agricultural landscapes near water bodies has always deposited additional rich nutrients, including organic matter. In this particular situation, it is unclear whether pollutants were also deposited and to what extent that will affect the productivity and the health of the soil going forward.
So it’s important that we have an analysis of that situation.
This is one of those clear examples where, without baseline information — If we don’t know what happened before the flood, it’s very difficult to attribute what happened because of the flood. This is the situation across Canada: We don’t have enough of that baseline information in terms of the metrics that we’re interested in to really make conclusions after those kinds of events.
So going forward, we need to do a better job of cataloguing and then responding to such events to gather the information and analyze it in a way that gives us a better sense of what the impacts are. But the farmers in that region will certainly be reeling from the impacts for some time to come.
The Chair: Under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, which was between 2018 and 2023, the federal government provided support to farmers to adapt to climate change, conserve water and soil resources and grow their businesses sustainably. In British Columbia, Dr. Smukler, have you seen the positive impacts of this five-year funding program? You can be as brief as you want.
Mr. Smukler: Yes, definitely, we’ve seen impacts. In British Columbia, we are leading the way in many aspects in terms of adaptation strategy development. For more than that funding period, we’ve been working on regional approaches to climate adaptation with the farming community and made some, I think, enormous gains in their understanding and development of strategies to address the climate crisis.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Dr. Burn, Dr. Smukler, thank you for your participation today, in person and online. Your assistance as we continue to study this issue is very much appreciated. I want to thank my colleagues publicly for their input and insightful questions. I want, as always, to thank our team that supports us from behind. We couldn’t do it without the team that supports us, the translators and behind here. Publicly, thanks very much.
I would like to move into an in camera portion. With that, I’ll suspend to move in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)