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THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY

EVIDENCE

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OTTAWA, Thursday, March 23, 2023

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 Paula Simons (Deputy Chair) in the chair.

[Translation]

The Deputy Chair: I want to welcome the committee members and the witnesses joining us, both in person and virtually, as well as those watching on the web.

[English]

My name is Paula Simons. I’m a senator from Alberta, from Treaty 6 territory, and I am the deputy chair of this committee.

Today, the committee is 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.

Senator Burey: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us so early. My name is Sharon Burey, and I’m a senator from Ontario.

Senator Klyne: Good morning and welcome. My name is Marty Klyne, senator from Saskatchewan and Treaty 4 territory.

[Translation]

Senator Petitclerc: Hello, I’m Chantal Petitclerc, a senator from Quebec.

[English]

Senator Duncan: Good morning. Pat Duncan, senator from the Yukon.

Senator C. Deacon: Colin Deacon, Nova Scotia.

The Deputy Chair: Our witnesses for our first panel this morning are, from the Government of Yukon, by video conference, where it is 6 a.m., Randy Lamb, Agrologist, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, and Brandon Drost, Forester, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

I invite you each to make your presentations. We will begin with Mr. Lamb, followed by Mr. Drost. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks. I will signal by raising one hand when you have one minute left. I will raise both hands as though this is a bank robbery when your time is up. Mr. Lamb, please begin.

Randy Lamb, Agrologist, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Government of Yukon: Good morning. I am Randy Lamb and I’m the agrologist at the Yukon Agriculture Branch.

I would like to start with a quick description of the state of our agriculture sector in the Yukon to give the committee a better idea of our current scale of development. There are approximately 140 titled farm properties in the Yukon, of which about half produce a commercial crop. The rest are smaller, subsistence lifestyle operations that fall below the radar of Statistics Canada. Yukon’s biggest agriculture sector has historically been hay production, and the last decade is notable, as we’ve seen increases in the commercial production of government-inspected red and white meat, graded eggs, vegetables, grains and berries. Many of these products are available in Yukon retail outlets now, including some dairy products most recently. Our ag branch is quite small, only having 12 staff, including recent increases.

As a quick overview of Yukon’s soils, our soils are relatively young and undeveloped throughout most of the territory. The last ice sheets retreated from southern Yukon about 10,000 years ago, and the exceptions to this are the unglaciated areas near Dawson City and northwards, in the north-central area of Yukon known as Beringia. Generally, soils in southern Yukon are dryer, slightly alkaline silty loams with very low organic matter. However, in the central Yukon region near Dawson City, soils are wetter, more acidic and have higher levels of organic matter. Even though the Dawson region is located about 500 or 600 kilometres north of Whitehorse, it has a longer and warmer growing season due to its lower elevation. We’re on the same river.

Overall, our greatest limitations to soil health and productivity in Yukon can be considered to be cold soils, a lack of organic matter — which is 2% to 5% on average — and short growing seasons. Intermittent permafrost can become an issue as you move northwards. We also consider our northern soil health to be dependent upon the living organisms in soil that include limited amounts of microflora and microfauna as compared to southern soils.

Historically, the potential of agriculture in the Yukon has been researched for well over half a century, but soil health has not been looked at specifically. There were early federal agriculture research stations, such as in Haines Junction, but studies focus more on crop productivity and variety trials. There were extensive soil class inventory programs that took place in the 1970s and 1980s to rate the agricultural land capability, but, again, these focused on soil texture and climate restrictions.

Nowadays, the Yukon government’s research and demonstration farm has been running crop trials since the late 1980s. Current projects by Yukon Agriculture are just beginning to consider soil health but they are not the main focus so far as we lack the technical expertise. Partnerships with federal agencies are an important factor in recent projects. We just concluded a three-year marginal crop trial in partnership with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s research centre in Newfoundland. We are also entering the third year of a farm-scale mulching trial near Whitehorse. This one is of particular interest to the topic of soil health: It includes an annual sampling program of soil fungi from the forested stage through to field crop stages. As a note, mycorrhizal species are a key component of soil health in the boreal forest where our agriculture is developed. This project involves soil sampling assistance by Yukon University and microbiological analyses by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Several important points about Yukon Agriculture need to be highlighted. Our goals are focused on food security versus export. On self-sufficiency, we currently produce only 4% to 7% of the food we consume here, and our transportation system is fragile, with documented washouts and landslides cutting off our southern supply routes in 2012 and 2022.

To summarize my points about soil health, we all understand that climate change is taking place significantly faster in the north than in Southern Canada. The impacts are greater. As our growing regions move northward in North America, we need be ready to expand and improve our agricultural capacity. Understanding and improving soil health in the North, and the role of soil microflora and microfauna, is key to doing this. We require help from our federal partners at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to accomplish this.

As a final point, we need to remember that climate change represents more than challenges; it also represents opportunities to grow more food in the North.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Lamb.

Brandon Drost, Forester, Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, Government of Yukon: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. My name is Brandon Drost, a forester for the Government of Yukon, and my focus is on forest inventory and monitoring.

Forest soil health is important to the Yukon. The Yukon makes up about 8% of the boreal forest in Canada. It holds approximately 5.5 billion tons of carbon. Forest soils are the foundation of this forest which supports the local forest industry and provides a variety of ecosystem services for the local population as well as others around the world. These include sustainable biomass heating, clean air and water, flood-risk reduction, wildlife habitat and carbon storage, among others.

Yukon’s climate is predicted to change and already has changed at one of the fastest rates across Canada. Increased temperature and precipitation are key points to bring up. The Yukon government is committed to addressing climate change issues and soil health is a key component of that. There are a variety of issues related to soil health. The first one is we don’t have a good understanding of the current forest soil health conditions across the Yukon. There’s a lack of data and we don’t have a good database of soil records. We need a reliable baseline and monitoring data to ensure evidence-based decisions are made for sustainable forest management.

Questions remain as to how climate change will impact soil resources or how soil health can impact climate change in the Yukon. Some examples are the increasing potential of high-intensity wildfires and the effect that multiple burns have on soil health in the same area.

As mentioned before, precipitation is a big change and water has a big impact on soil health. We need to understand how this will impact many of those various ecosystem services.

I think later on we’re going to hear from some permafrost folks, but permafrost changes may release more carbon and soil stability will decrease. There may be impacts to above-ground forest resources, including those ecosystem services that we rely on.

This will ultimately impact the way of life for many local residents, and that’s another question as to how much of an impact that will have. We’re not sure.

The Yukon government is taking a variety of actions in regard to soil health. Currently, we follow sustainable forest management practices. We have Soil Conservation Standards and Guidelines for minimizing disturbance to forest soils during harvesting of timber.

We are collaborating with the Canadian Forest Service to deliver the National Forest Inventory program. Under this program, soils are analyzed to determine soil carbon and carbon change over time. This data is used to support various projects, such as developing soil carbon accounting models, climate change-related soil studies, soil mapping, remote sensing and supporting other forest research projects that have a soil health component.

These samples are archived for future research in change analysis, but we’re just at the beginning stages of implementing this program.

In summary, we need to gain a better understanding of forest soil health. Healthy soils are the foundation upon which our forests can thrive, and currently we don’t have a good understanding of those conditions across Yukon. We need help supporting baseline data collection and subsequent research to provide evidence to support decision making and determine the actions required to ensure the long-term sustainability and health of our forests.

Thank you, everyone, for your time today.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you both very much. We will now proceed to questions from senators.

Senator Klyne: Welcome to our guests and thank you very much for the concise and informative opening remarks.

My first question is for Mr. Lamb. Agricultural production in the North is obviously different from agricultural production south of the sixtieth and fifty-fifth parallels for many reasons, including different climate, soil, value chains and transportation infrastructure, to name a few.

I would like to focus on a couple of your comments. Could you elaborate on the specific programming or resources the federal government could provide in regard to soil management and food security?

Mr. Lamb: That’s a good question. In particular, our relationship with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, or AAFC, allows us access to technical services, such as the mycorrhizal analysis, which we do not have the capacity to do here.

In addition, I want to point out that there has been great merit and appreciation from the five-year funding programs through AAFC, particularly the current five-year funding program starting in April, the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership. Over the last 10 years, that type of funding is responsible for development of these additional retail products that are on the shelves in Yukon and increases in our local production.

The new program starting in April has a focus on best management practices that include soil development, regenerative agriculture and smaller programs that can help change and upgrade current agriculture practices to include things such as legumes in the rotations, increasing organic matter and increasing plants for pollinators.

There’s quite a shift there, and we think in the next five years it will benefit Yukon through improving soil health and changing the way people farm here. Since we are smaller scale than down South, we have more ability to make changes and increase our capacity there.

Certainly, the technical expertise is of great value, and those partnerships are key.

Senator Klyne: It’s my understanding that territorial governments work closely with First Nations on agricultural and environmental matters. When you work with First Nations communities, is the topic of soil health discussed? Have those communities expressed any concerns with the state of soil health in the Yukon?

Mr. Lamb: We have four or five First Nations in Yukon who are undertaking agricultural or community garden-style projects. Some of these are operating farms, such as in Dawson with the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. Central Yukon has the Na-Cho Nyak Dun First Nation who have purchased a historical farm in the area.

To get to your question, the First Nation activities of the seven or eight that I saw last summer are all asking or hoping for a focus on regenerative agriculture and organic agriculture, even though they’re not certified. They all have the common interest of farming or gardening naturally, getting away from synthetic pesticides and using organic practices instead. That’s fully embraced, and we’re providing soil testing to them, encouraging them and providing smaller amounts of funding for projects through our five-year funding programs to help these activities.

Senator Klyne: Thank you.

Senator C. Deacon: Thank you both, Mr. Lamb and Mr. Drost, for being with us today. What comes to mind, with the limited amount of agricultural land in the Yukon, is preservation of what you have and expansion of it. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to travel to the home of my dear friend beside me, Senator Duncan, so I look forward to coming to her home territory and being provided with a lot more insight.

I wonder about urban expansion. Certainly in the South, it seems we like to plant houses, highways and shopping malls rather than crops on our best farmland. I am wondering about preservation of what you have and growing what you have.

Mr. Drost, linking to a problem that we studied last year, the Sumas Prairie flooding and how the wildfires of the previous summer created circumstances that caused a lot of soil erosion and soil shifting in the mud slides and then compaction, because of flooding that ensued, of good-quality agricultural soil. My question is on the interrelationship between the forest and agricultural lands in mountainous territories.

Mr. Lamb, could you speak to where things are in terms of protecting the soil and the area that you have for agricultural purposes? Mr. Drost, could you speak to the interchange between the forests and the agricultural lands in the valleys?

Mr. Lamb: The quick answer to how we preserve agricultural land in Yukon is that once people have title to it, we cannot force them to farm. However, if they wish to take on any other accessory activities, we have it worked out that they are required to get a discretionary use permit, which requires them first to demonstrate they are maintaining agriculture as a primary activity. There are several tests on this from retail sales or percentage of the area in production. That’s our carrot on the stick. If you want to develop a guest cabin, you have to demonstrate that you have primary agricultural productivity first before you get permits for anything else. That’s our fallback plan.

Senator C. Deacon: Is that the law?

Mr. Lamb: That is policy.

Senator C. Deacon: Mr. Drost, please go ahead.

Mr. Drost: I’ll do my best to answer that question, and correct me if I am misunderstanding it. You are correct that there is an interchange between forestry and agricultural land, especially in the valleys. Currently, Yukon is dealing with water, landslide and erosion issues likely due to changes in climate, which impact soil health.

I think it is an issue that we don’t have a great understanding of. I don’t know if I have a better answer than that for you.

Senator C. Deacon: Are you at least at this point in time tracking the impacts? Are you gathering data and starting to quantify the problem? What we’ve learned is it’s an increasing issue in undulating terrains.

Mr. Drost: From our perspective, no, we aren’t. There may be folks over in a different branch, the geology branch, who I know are doing work on that. That’s a question I can get back to you on.

Senator C. Deacon: Thank you.

Senator Petitclerc: I will ask my question to Mr. Lamb, but I would like an answer from both witnesses, if that’s possible.

I am moving away from soil health, but not really. Something you said, Mr. Lamb, made me want more information.

You talked about climate change and the bigger impact of climate change in the North. You mentioned that, while we are committed to fighting climate change, for the time being, because of this disproportionate impact, it does come with some opportunity. I think that’s what I heard. I’m interested to hear what kind of opportunities this could have in the context of food autonomy, which you also spoke about specifically.

Mr. Lamb: I’m glad you picked up on that comment.

Over the last 50 years, the growing season in Whitehorse — in southern Yukon — has increased by one week, and in the last 50 years, it’s increased by two weeks in central Yukon. That creates a much greater opportunity to grow additional crops and to have better crop harvests.

I see that the increase in agricultural productivity is catching up to that and taking that additional opportunity to produce more food. More people are taking up the activity of food production, not only in backyards, but in community gardens and farm production.

Senator Petitclerc: I wonder if our other witness has a comment on that.

Mr. Drost: No. Randy summed it up pretty well.

Senator Petitclerc: To follow up, is the government helping in that matter, or is it something that’s happening in the community spontaneously where you see the change in organizations or individuals who start doing it? Are we being intentional enough in taking that opportunity?

Mr. Lamb: We are certainly more willing to provide funding for farmers to try these additional crops.

What we have seen recently — there are two points to emphasize, and Senator Duncan is certainly aware of one of these — is now there are farmers who are reliably maturing wheat and barley crops and producing a commercial flour mill with retail products.

As well, we have a farmer in the same region by Lake Laberge who is producing canola. It is like driving into Manitoba when you enter his field. There are yellow fields of canola, which he presses the oil out of to put into his animal feed mixes, versus importing it up the highway. Those are two good examples, and both of those have received funding through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, which we manage for the federal government.

Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.

The Deputy Chair: I am sorry, senators. When you said, “Lake Laberge,” all I can think about is The Cremation of Sam McGee.

Senator Duncan: Thank you to my fellow Yukoners for getting up early to present to the committee, and for your information.

As I understand it, the agriculture records from the Yukon were transferred. The federal government’s agriculture records are in Beaverlodge; they’re not in the Yukon. In terms of the data, I know we can access that data, but those records are not actually in the Yukon. Mr. Lamb, do you know if there are any soil health or soil records in those agriculture records?

Mr. Lamb: Not that I’m aware of. I would be surprised if there was, because the concept of soil health is something that has become more topical in the last 5 or 10 years. Certainly, the past activities were what varieties perform and what production we can get. That was the era of synthetic fertilizers as we moved away from our previous organic practices, which were regenerative. The pendulum is swinging back now.

Also, we have become aware of those records down there in the last 5 or 10 years. We’ve been talking to Yukon University about how we can access those and where we should put copies of those. Certainly getting them digitized would be of value.

Senator Duncan: To follow up on that, the three territories are in different stages of the process of devolution — that is, control over land, water and resources — to the territorial governments. The Yukon has completed our devolution deal with Ottawa.

If you had one recommendation with regard to soil health for this committee in regard to the information and the study of soil health, what would it be in terms of the Yukon? What advice would you have for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut with regard to their devolution process and embarking upon soil health studies?

Mr. Lamb: That’s a broad question. Certainly, our management and development of agricultural lands has become significantly easier with devolution and managing these lands.

I know from our counterparts in the Northwest Territories that it is very difficult to grant title to agricultural land. Unless you get title to it, it’s hard to get the financial backing or support from banks to support investments: infrastructure, barn structures, building a home. If you only have a lease, you’re less likely to invest money in it or get support from others to invest money in it.

With devolution comes greater opportunity to allow these things to develop as they normally would. But there are lease options. Yes, it certainly has helped and it should help to simplify things.

Settling land claims as part of devolution is another great way to help settle things and to also work with the First Nations on similar types of projects, because they also share the interests of food sovereignty and food security.

Senator Duncan: My point in raising that, Mr. Lamb, was to emphasize the difference between the three territories.

Finally, could you elaborate, perhaps in writing, on the difference the compost program in the City of Whitehorse, which is the major centre, has made to the soil health?

Mr. Lamb: Compost is a very important addition or soil amendment to help increase the organic matter. I said in my introduction that, on average, most Yukon soils, when they’re developed, have 2% to 5% — and 5% is generous — for the amount of organic matter. In the prairies, you’re into the double digits.

Having organic matter as a nutrient source in soils is critical. Having a local compost source is also a great asset, especially for smaller operations. Larger agricultural operations would require crops that are turned back into the soil to help develop the organic matter in soil on a larger scale.

It’s a different approach, but the City of Whitehorse program is great. It benefits gardeners, community gardens and market-garden type operations.

Senator Duncan: Thank you.

Senator Burey: Good morning. Thank you for getting up this early.

I wanted to home in on your comments on priority for your agricultural sector, namely, food security versus exportation of food. Thank you for that. That’s near and dear to my heart.

Mr. Lamb, I’m asking you specifically — our other witnesses can comment, please — about the roughly 140 titled farms in the Yukon. You said there were some smaller subsistence farmers. However, you don’t have much data on those farms. Am I correct with that statement?

Mr. Lamb: That’s right. Statistics Canada changed their definition of what a farm is, and it has to have commercial sales. So we still count the farms, and we still provide services to the other farms. They still have cattle, pigs, chickens and hayfields, but they’re doing this on a subsistence lifestyle basis versus selling it on a commercial market. The majority of Yukon farms are hay-producing areas. That is the number-one commodity up here, historically and currently, but that is changing as we move toward human food production.

Senator Burey: Thank you for that. I’m happy to hear that you’re including them, being inclusive and offering services to the smaller farms and that you are keeping that data.

Moving on from that, you also mentioned that you are funding some of these new technologies to these farms. What percentage of those funding requests are granted?

Mr. Lamb: Good question. Over the last five years, because we report annually on our funded projects, there are 100 projects a year funded, on average. Some farms have three, four or five each, so not everybody has one or applies for one. In terms of the success rate, as an educated guess, maybe 80% or even as high as 90% of the applications succeed in getting some funding.

Senator Burey: Finally, what specific recommendations do you have? You alluded to some of them, but please go into more detail in terms of what you need from the federal government and/or AAFC to support you in the great work that you’re doing.

Mr. Lamb: I think increasing the partnerships with our AAFC research centres and having more projects, such as the last three-year marginal crop trial we had, would be great assets in bringing researchers to the North or working with us closely to run projects on their behalf, and to do the data analysis too. Out of the 12 people here at the ag branch, only 3 of us work in extension and are serving 140-plus farms and the First Nations. It certainly has limitations.

Senator Burey: Do you have any comments, Mr. Drost?

Mr. Drost: I will second what Mr. Lamb said regarding the forest landscape.

The big thing is that it’s a large area and there is a smaller population density for that area, so it’s hard for us to have a good understanding over that large area of what is going on. So my recommendations would be to help support us create those baselines so we can understand what changes are happening in our landscape.

The Deputy Chair: I will use the chair’s prerogative to ask a few questions before the second round.

Mr. Lamb, I want to understand why, geologically and historically, there is so little organic matter in the soil. It’s not as though it’s been farmed out.

Mr. Lamb: Correct. Basically, after the last ice sheet 10,000 years ago, we started with a clean slate. What is being built upon is the mineral soils — the ground rocks. On top of that, we eventually had forests return to the Yukon, but again, with the cold soil, biological processes are much slower to develop soil. A similar location down south might have double the amount of organic matter just because they are warmer soils, and increased biological processes in the soil would develop the soil faster.

We have many limiting factors up here, but the soil structure is what we’re focusing on for agriculture, and then adding the organic matter through the farmers.

The Deputy Chair: Mr. Drost, is the same true of the forest floor, or is the forest floor more naturally rich and organic?

Mr. Drost: No, it’s the same, with very low organics and mineral soil across most of the landscape. The exception is the Dawson area, which has a little bit more increased organics, as Mr. Lamb alluded to.

The Deputy Chair: Mr. Lamb, you’ve mentioned some — I don’t want to say charming, because it sounds condescending — small agrarian operations that are the kind of thing you might find in a larger city at a farmers market. At the risk of calling it “boutique food production,” when you’re dealing with supply-chain issues and security issues, are any of those things affordable to an ordinary working family, or are they really things for bougie foodies? I’m a foodie myself.

Mr. Lamb: That’s part of the farmers market. I will also say “bougie,” but we do have a few producers who understand the economy of scale, and their vegetable production is backed up by a modern-technology storage facility. So that one person will be selling potatoes and carrots at a competitive price to southern products, and our carrots store sufficiently to be available until March each year. With potatoes, you can still buy last year’s potatoes until about the end of May, so that really helps with the supply chain and the affordability.

Regarding that operation, for example, if he said, “I’m going to experiment with parsnips this year. I put in six rows.” His rows are 1,100 feet long, so that’s 7,000 feet of parsnips. It is similar to some of the operations you would see in Chilliwack or the Fraser Valley. That’s really helped put commercial vegetables on the retail shelves at an affordable price.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you for that.

Senator Klyne: I want to go back to the federal programs that you would like to access. What opportunities or challenges would those programs address specifically, and what is the status? Have you made applications? Do they know you’re looking for things? Do they have a response yet? Where are we at with that?

Mr. Lamb: For agriculture and our five-year funding program, I believe the bilateral agreements have been agreed to and the papers are queued up for signatures, which should be happening this week or next week in preparation for April 1, 2023, so that money is there. Those types of funding programs are key to allow farmers to diversify their crops or operations, such as the farmer I mentioned who took on canola growing and needed a seed press to extract the oil from the canola. The flour mill I mentioned is also an example of a farmer who realized he could successfully grow wheat in addition to barley, and then took the extra step with government funding to partially subsidize the purchase of a small flour mill.

These funding programs have been key to the last 10 years of growth in agriculture in addition to hay production. There’s still a lot of hayfields up here.

Senator Klyne: Thank you.

You had mentioned earlier the idea of getting financing and so on. I want to tie that into the food security issue. There is the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, or CanNor. Are they able to provide you any funding for innovation such that you could look at innovation for higher production on the same amount of land? Also, is Farm Credit Canada ever present up there?

Mr. Lamb: Yes, they are. Farm Credit Canada does work with some of our farmers, and they’re a little more likely to support our farmers than, say, your standard bank, which wants the collateral and the business plan. So we have funders. There are quite a few federal funding programs. CanNor funds a lot of projects. I don’t know the exact number, but maybe half a dozen or 10 projects per year are funded through CanNor, and there is a host of other programs. When we advertise our own agricultural funding programs, we have a publication that is over a dozen pages long that lists all the other agriculture-related federal funding programs. We do have one AAFC staff person here in Whitehorse — she’s down the hall — and she adds a lot of federal knowledge to “north of 60” here.

Senator Klyne: Are any of those programs aimed at innovation for higher production on the same amount of land?

Mr. Lamb: Not specifically, other than maybe adapting technology, which could help that in a small way.

Senator C. Deacon: I have a quick question for Mr. Drost. In Nova Scotia, our forestry lands have root structures that just go along the surface. Sadly, with the winds we get from the Atlantic, there is a lot of windfall. How deep are the root structures of the forest lands in Yukon, as a point of interest?

Mr. Drost: They are generally very shallow. We have similar challenges, especially with partially disturbed forest. You’ll have a lot of windthrow. So it’s definitely a concern up here.

Senator C. Deacon: So your sequestration of carbon in the forests is really just in the tree structure itself, not in the root structure. Thank you very much.

Mr. Lamb, just looking at a lot of your agriculture inputs having to come up the highway from the South, and hearing about your response to — I believe — Senator Duncan’s question about locally produced compost, what incentive programs are having an effect on really trying to incentivize regenerative farming practices in the Yukon? That could have as big an impact there as just about anywhere, due to, I would expect, the higher cost of inputs relative to other farm locations.

Mr. Lamb: Our outgoing five-year funding program did provide subsidies for composting facilities, and we had a few farmers take us up on that, but the incoming funding program has an expanded range of best management practice programs that focus on, for example, moving from annual crop production to perennial crop production, or planting perennial crops, including legumes, which would improve nitrogen in the soils and organic matter. There is more of a focus on the incoming program to look at regenerative agricultural practices.

The other one would be RALP, Resilient Agricultural Landscape Program, which is more focused on regenerative agriculture-type practices. It has some enhanced funding that we’re going to be offering in the near future.

Senator C. Deacon: Would I be accurate in coming away with the impression that your input costs in general are higher on your farms than in the South? Is there a considerable difference that you’ve noted?

Mr. Lamb: Yes, especially in the last two years. Beyond that, getting fertilizer or seed a thousand kilometres up the highway does have big transportation costs, and transportation costs have also increased in the last couple of years.

Senator C. Deacon: So it is a high-value opportunity for the Yukon, in particular, then.

Mr. Lamb: Yes, producing products here and inputs here would provide a cost-value improvement.

Senator C. Deacon: Just to add on, any food produced in the Yukon you’ve identified is at a competitive price to that which is brought into the region, so as much as it would be for any area in our country, regenerative agriculture practices have a greater value in the Yukon.

Mr. Lamb: Yes.

Senator Duncan: I want to thank you again for your appearance so early in the morning and for sharing this information about the Yukon.

If you could make one recommendation for this committee, following up on Senator Burey’s question, specifically with regard to soil health, data collection and data information, what would you want to see included in our report?

Mr. Lamb: To build on what Mr. Drost was saying, it would be having a better understanding of what we have now and having the assistance to establish the current baseline. You cannot understand the improvements unless you know where you’re coming from, so being able to document those improvements is really going to help to be prepared for the changes that are coming and for the northern movement of agriculture. Step one is getting the help to establish and understand the baselines, and then how to go forward from there.

Senator Duncan: Would you agree that your recommendation is needed for all three territories, given that the three territories are different?

Mr. Lamb: I would say so. All three territories are slightly different. There’s certainly fewer soils as you move eastward, but with time, the work we do now will really benefit future generations, more so in the western part of the territories and certain parts of the N.W.T., where there’s greater agricultural potential.

Senator Duncan: Thank you again for your appearance today.

Senator Burey: Thank you again for your early-morning wake-up.

We’ve heard from many other witnesses who have appeared before this committee about the importance of soil health, food security and food sovereignty. Would you like to add any comments to those? Can you elaborate on the connection between soil health, food sovereignty and food security in the North?

Mr. Lamb: Yes. I mentioned earlier that we are getting increased interest from our First Nations, who focus on food sovereignty, but that benefits everybody in a food-security perspective of increasing from the 4% to 7% of our local food production to higher levels, especially in the regional communities, where things are so much more expensive and more fragile from being cut off from southern supply routes.

But having the First Nation partnerships and parallel development of farms and community gardens are really great. In the past, they viewed agriculture as land being taken away, but they now view agriculture as an opportunity. We’re helping them, where possible, so all the communities up here can improve their food security.

Senator Burey: Thank you.

Mr. Drost: Can I just add to that?

Senator Burey: Certainly.

Mr. Drost: A big factor up here is that there’s a lot of subsistence harvesting as well on the landscape. Having healthy soils leads to having a healthy ecosystem and providing those ecosystem services to the local population, which really does rely on that, whether that’s for, like I mentioned before, sustainable biomass heating or food from the land, whether it’s berries or other animals and wildlife.

Senator Burey: Thank you for that. I will follow up on that.

I’m always interested in the knowledge translation aspect of everything that we do. Maybe for my interest, I think Mr. Lamb spoke about how future generations can benefit from this knowledge. Are there any programs that include teenagers, vocational training or involvement with the schools so that we can get young people involved?

Mr. Lamb: Yes. There are some long-running programs. One is called Kids on the Farm; there are subsidies to bring your classes out to a farm to understand where your food comes from. There’s another program called From the Ground Up: Instead of having school kids sell almonds and chocolates, they sell boxes of vegetables from local producers. The best advertising for local agriculture is children reminding their parents to buy local carrots, potatoes and eggs.

We also have an internship funding program where people can get a young intern on their farm to learn agriculture and learn the skills and hopefully stay in the industry.

Senator Burey: This is exciting news for me. I felt energized with you speaking. Is there a database of this information? It looks like some of these things should be shared?

Mr. Lamb: The numbers of projects each year in those areas are listed on our Yukon government website; specifics, though, would have to be dug into a little bit deeper, other than the project category and the amount of money funded.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you all very much. That was fascinating testimony. Now I want to eat Yukon Gold potatoes and Yukon carrots. Mr. Lamb and Mr. Drost, thank you very much for your participation. Your assistance with this study is very much appreciated. You are welcome to stay on this call.

For our second panel, we welcome Kumari Karunaratne, who is President of the Canadian Permafrost Association, and Michelle Blade, a permafrost scientist from Nunavut. We also welcome, from the Territorial Agrifood Association, Janet Dean, who is the executive director.

We’ll begin with Dr. Karunaratne, followed by Ms. Blade and Ms. Dean. You’ll each have five minutes for your opening remarks. I’ll signal by raising one hand, when you have one minute left, and two hands means stop. Thank you very much. We look forward to your presentations.

Kumari Karunaratne, President, Canadian Permafrost Association: Thank you and good morning, senators. I’m speaking to you from Yellowknife, which is located in Chief Drygeese territory in the traditional land of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. Yellowknife also lies in the extensive permafrost zone, and I’m happy to say that my house isn’t on permafrost, but my neighbour two doors down is not so lucky.

Canada is a permafrost country, with a third of our land underlain by ground that remains frozen throughout the year. Permafrost is a complex and multidisciplinary subject that tends to be included when the novelty suits, and dropped when it complicates the task. So I’m delighted that northern soils are included in your study of soil health in Canada, and hopeful that your insight will help address a critical issue facing Canada’s permafrost stakeholders.

There are two permafrost problems facing Canada that I’m going to talk about today. The first concerns data, knowledge and expertise. And the other problem concerns people and organizations.

The first problem is that permafrost thaw is impacting northern environments, infrastructure and people and it’s expected to increase carbon emissions. Currently, we do not have the sufficient permafrost knowledge at the appropriate scale to be able to adapt to climate change. Some examples of this are that roads are costing exponentially more to build and to maintain, forest succession models are unreliable because they are lacking the critical permafrost information and global climate models, which are inherently conservative, do not include permafrost emissions because of the uncertainty in the knowledge.

In September, Dr. Chris Burn gave an alarming report to this committee on the impacts of permafrost thaw. I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you. Without better permafrost knowledge, the North can’t plan for a more sustainable and resilient future. I could spend the next week going over all the permafrost conditions across the country and some of the projects that are happening now, but it would take a long time. I’m just going to move on and we can follow up with questions.

There is some good news. Canada has a long legacy of excellence in permafrost research, and there are an increasing number of active permafrost science and engineering projects undertaken by Canadian research organizations and international researchers also have projects in Canada, and these international projects are only expected to increase. Several federal government departments conduct, collaborate and fund permafrost research projects, and in the last five years, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories geological surveys have developed permafrost science teams. The Northwest Territories has even developed a permafrost science strategic plan.

This brings me to the second permafrost problem facing Canada. Despite the urgency of the issue, despite the number of past and present permafrost projects and despite the involvement of numerous federal departments and the investment of significant federal funding, Canada lacks national permafrost leadership. There’s no one organization that oversees and coordinates permafrost issues and activities for the country. The result is that research, data, funding and expertise are not being used efficiently and opportunities are being missed.

One example of this is the Permafrost Pathways project, which is a U.S. six-year project. It’s one year in, and it’s $41 million, based at Woodwell Climate Research Center. They’re interested in collaborating with Canada because their original plans to work with Russia are no longer viable and they’re looking for people to coordinate this research. The Canadian Permafrost Association, which is run by volunteers, is trying to help coordinate this collaboration in the absence of national leadership. Several funded research programs are producing highly qualified permafrost scientists and engineers, but employment opportunities after they graduate are unclear, so we need some leadership on making sure that these young people are finding jobs that are much needed in the North and in the private sector, as well as the federal government.

There are also permafrost conferences that represent opportunities for Canada to showcase its research needs and opportunities.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Karunaratne.

Michelle Blade, Permafrost Scientist, Nunavut, Canadian Permafrost Association: Ullakuut, good morning. My name is Michelle Blade. I’m a permafrost scientist with the Government of Nunavut and a member of the Canadian Permafrost Association. I am pursuing my PhD on the integration of Inuit knowledge with permafrost science for better understanding climate change impacts on Nunavut land and soils. I make my home in Iqaluit, Nunavut — Iqaluit meaning “place of fish,” and nuna meaning “land.”

Agriculture and forestry are southern terms describing a southern relationship with the land. These terms and their southern application do not necessarily apply in Nunavut. In Nunavut, we harvest a relationship with the land defined in the Nunavut Agreement forming the territory of Nunavut. Harvesting in Nunavut is equally if not more so dependent on soil health considering Nunavut has the highest rate of food insecurity of any province or territory in Canada.

Purchasing food at a grocery store from other jurisdictions is unaffordable for nearly half of Nunavummiut. One quarter of Nunavummiut are severely food insecure, missing meals for up to days. And yet Nunavut is food abundant. Inuit over generations have developed unique tools and technologies for a sovereign food system by harvesting caribou, Arctic char, berries, birds and marine mammals. For many Inuit, winter represents an important time of year to harvest, along with the summer, with no need for in-territory agriculture or animal husbandry.

So how is Nunavut’s soil health being impacted and from where do these impacts originate? Long-range atmospheric transport of contaminants from around the globe is leading to bioaccumulation and magnification in harvested foods. These contaminants include heavy metals, plastics and persistent organic pollutants. In collaboration with hunters, harvested food is tested. Most contaminants found in marine mammals are not found in caribou. However, health advisories do limit consumption of caribou livers and kidneys due to the presence of mercury, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental problems, especially in fetuses and young children.

A research priority of the Northern Contaminants Program is to better understand the biogeochemical mercury cycle in Arctic soils.

Harvesting is also being impacted by climate change. All of Nunavut is underlain by permafrost. Each summer, the top portion of the soil profile thaws and refreezes the following winter. This seasonal thaw depth is expected to increase by three to five metres throughout much of Nunavut within the next 50 years.

Nunavummiut are already reporting berry picking and animal migration patterns changing; land access to harvest beyond Nunavut’s 25 fly-in and fly-out communities becoming more difficult; lakes swam in for multiple generations getting shallower and, in other areas, more lakes appearing; and human health concerns from possible release of micro-organisms, viruses and gases from thawing soils.

Data scarcity severely limit the accuracy of thawing soil predictions. Long-term permafrost monitoring stations are installed in less than half of Nunavut communities. Data has not been made available from these stations since 2015, nor has the number of monitoring stations been expanded to include additional Nunavut communities since the program began in 2007. That is just over 10 data collection sites to assess frozen soils in a territory one fifth of the landmass of Canada.

Nunavut would benefit from Nunavummiut observations being collected and analyzed to understand how and to what degree permafrost change impacts are affecting Nunavut soil health and food sovereignty.

Nunavut would also benefit from a territorial permafrost assessment program to analyze and predict how quickly soil health will change, and what impacts are more likely to occur near one Nunavut community compared to another. This is currently not happening.

Frozen land and soil assessments tend to fall between government jurisdictions. Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada has a Nunavut water quality monitoring program. This program does not assess permafrost, even though permafrost directly controls how water flows on and through Nunavut land and soils.

The Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office, since its formation over 20 years ago, has never had a soil nor a permafrost scientist on staff assessing changing territorial ground conditions. The only permafrost position at the Government of Nunavut is coming to an end next week, on March 31, due to a lack of funding. This means there is no dedicated permafrost position coordinating and championing this work at any government organization in Nunavut.

The Territory of Nunavut is owned and managed by a complex structure of government and Inuit organizations. Both the national Inuit association, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, or ITK, and the regional Inuit association, Qikiqtani Inuit Association, or QIA, have released publicly available reports addressing Nunavut food sovereignty and self-determined solutions for ways forward. These solutions focus on the needs of Inuit who still have a close connection to the land.

I request that the Senate standing committee consider how the impacts of climate change on Nunavut’s frozen land and soils is being assessed, along with the direct implications on Inuit food sovereignty.

I thank the Senate standing committee for listening to and considering a Nunavummiut perspective on soil health today.

Qujannamiik.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Blade.

Janet Dean, Executive Director, Territorial Agrifood Association: Thank you. I represent and advocate for the participants in the agriculture sector in the Northwest Territories. We are definitely an agricultural frontier.

I have four main messages today. The first is that the N.W.T. does, indeed, have an active, land-based agriculture sector that requires active soil management. Producers in the more fertile regions of the N.W.T. are at significant ongoing risk due to floodplain changes. N.W.T. farmers need help developing effective management strategies that sequester carbon and fertility back into the soil once agriculture begins. Soil solutions must include our unique northern conditions.

There are a variety of soil types on the regional scale in the Northwest Territories. Generally, the best soil for agriculture is located in southern areas of the Taiga Plains and ecoregions in the southern and northwest of the Northwest Territories. Although, in almost every community, the soil does require some type of amendment, in almost all cases there is a need to add nutrients, which is most commonly done through the addition of manures. The cost of amending soil is considerable.

Remote communities are particularly impacted by limited access to good quality soil for food production. This is especially the case in the Tlicho communities in the Canadian Shield geologic region where soil is particularly thin and low in essential nutrients. These communities also have the greatest food insecurity, where 55% of residents are food insecure.

Paradise Valley is the most fertile and accessible private land in the N.W.T. and has great agricultural potential. It is the location of most N.W.T. farming and is an asset that needs to be protected. Last year, a devastating flood damaged most farm operations in the region, and rebuilding efforts continue to be stalled due to the ongoing risk to any new replacement infrastructure. There is also no restriction on conversion of farmland in this area when farmers leave.

The Government of N.W.T. has prioritized local food production. We are at the end of a very long supply chain. The N.W.T. stores a lot of soil carbon and the conversion of boreal forest to agricultural land for greater food production has the potential to result in large carbon losses to the atmosphere, impacting climate change.

Soil carbon and soil fertility for agriculture are inversely related in southern N.W.T. soils. This means that areas with lots of soil carbon are potentially less suited for crop production than areas with less soil carbon. This has implications for land management decisions where we could target areas with high fertility and low soil carbon for agricultural land use. This could limit the magnitude of carbon losses due to agriculture. However, there is little private land available in these areas and there are no agricultural reserves in the N.W.T. — 95% of farming happens within municipal boundaries.

There is a need for more research to be done on agricultural management practices in the N.W.T. How soil is managed has a huge impact on agricultural soil health and soil carbon due to the unique characteristics of northern agriculture in comparison with southern agriculture.

There needs to be a focus on partnering with N.W.T. farmers and Indigenous communities to develop agricultural management practices targeted specifically to the North and sequestering carbon.

A recent University of Guelph research project evaluated how effective commonly used N.W.T. agricultural soil management practices were at improving soil fertility and improving soil carbon stocks. As expected, they found that no-till sites and sites that utilized compost improved soil fertility. No-till sites also improved soil carbon stocks. This research also compared sites that were currently being used for agriculture to sites that were once cultivated but are now abandoned or no longer run.

It was found that abandoned agricultural soil fertility increased with increasing time since abandonment and soil fertility declined in active farm sites with increasing time since cultivation. This highlights that current agricultural management practices are not effective at building fertile soils in the N.W.T., and innovative means are necessary.

Our farmers want policies that help them do their jobs. The fact that farming itself can sometimes be rough just comes with the territory. Mahsi.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much for those three absolutely fascinating presentations. We will now proceed to questions from the senators. A reminder that each question-and-answer exchange is five minutes. Please do not lean in too closely to the microphones if you are wearing a headset so there is no feedback for the interpreters.

Senator Burey: Good morning. Thank you so much for being here with us today. My heart is saddened when I hear what you are telling us today, truly. I’m a pediatrician by training. I’m from the Windsor-Essex area and my experience of food insecurity with my own patients let me to the Agriculture Committee. Of course, we know that in the North almost half of families are food insecure. This is unacceptable in Canada. We must do better.

I heard from all of you, loud and clear, that we need a national strategy. I would like to hear your comments on that question, first of all.

Ms. Blade: It has been difficult running into numerous jurisdictional boundaries in trying to proceed with this kind of work. It would be helpful to have a national strategy and a national agenda moving forward to direct resources to. It needs to be done in partnership with areas, such as the territories, that have permafrost underneath them. For too long, decisions have been made about the North from the South with mere token Northern stakeholder involvement or no Northern involvement at all. Nunavut in particular would benefit from having the human capacity of representation, which we currently do not have in any government organization. It would be critical in order to have the representation to partake in that national strategy and direct it in a way most suitable for the needs of the Nunavummiut.

Ms. Dean: We agree that national strategies are important. We appreciate even being considered in this round of consultations. The first soil strategy did not include information related to the territories. Although we do believe in a national strategy, we second that it must be relevant and applicable to our unique needs and our unique circumstances here in the North.

Ms. Karunaratne: For us, I echo the other two speakers in saying that we need to have a strategy that empowers the North. For permafrost, we need somebody to provide leadership on a national scale that has stable, long-term funding, not a short-term research program, but a stable, long-term funded organization. It would be somebody who honours the interdisciplinary nature of permafrost projects that extend from engineering roads to critical mineral resources to the ecology involved in carbon. We need somebody who is based in the North with an established mandate that incorporates Indigenous knowledge and understands that the territories are responsible for managing their own lands.

Polar Knowledge Canada is an organization that might be ideal to initiate permafrost leadership for the country. I have spoken with the chair of the board of directors for Polar Knowledge, and this has been identified to the president and CEO as well.

Senator Burey: Thank you.

Senator C. Deacon: Thank you to the witnesses. I’ll start with Ms. Blade but then hopefully Ms. Karunaratne and Ms. Dean can join in.

The issue of permafrost melting is one that I find deeply upsetting. It’s not just about the carbon release into the atmosphere that will be accelerated as a result, but as you pointed out, Ms. Blade, the financial cost of trying to maintain infrastructure, housing and other factors.

It’s the implications of inaction that I worry about. You have certainly added to that worry in an upsetting way, the three of you as witnesses this morning. It’s something we have to deal with.

Interfaces are interesting. I want to just ask about the interface with the rivers and coastal waters associated with permafrost melting. I have to believe there’s an impact, and with so much local food being produced in these waters, that is quite concerning.

What research is being done? I don’t know if you do anything with the Arctic Research Foundation. I know they do a lot of nearshore research. Are there implications in terms of the effects in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut of permafrost melting and how it is starting to change the waterways and their ability to sustain life effectively?

Ms. Blade: Thank you for the question. The implications of inaction are troubling. In Nunavut, 24 out of our 25 communities are located on the coast, and that is where we are seeing the most impacts.

In terms of food sovereignty, permafrost thaw is contributing to increased erosion of rivers and, therefore, increased turbidity, as well as changing the quality of the water for runoff. To give you an exact number and indication of how much that’s changing and impacting fish habitat, there isn’t enough research to do so at this time.

Ms. Karunaratne: I will echo what Ms. Blade has outlined. Northwest of the Northwest Territories, we have an area where we have permafrost that has large amounts of ground ice in it. This ground ice is actually remnants of the last ice sheet that was buried and sort of kept in a freezer, if you will, within the permafrost. Now, because of climate change, we’re seeing huge landslides, ground-ice slumps, that are releasing large amounts of sediment into streams that are affecting traditional territory hunting routes and the safety of land use in that area, as well as the waterways for traditional fish habitat.

Ms. Dean: To add an anecdotal example to that, as I mentioned, we’re a small agricultural sector. We have eight titled farms and last year we had a significant flood that ceased operations in seven of those farms.

Senator C. Deacon: Just to follow up, Ms. Dean, you mentioned manure. Are the manure systems being used on your farms liquid or solid in general terms?

Ms. Dean: Solid in general terms, produced in the territory or shipped in.

Senator C. Deacon: Is runoff from that a concern, or is it being managed properly?

Ms. Dean: It’s not a significant concern.

Senator C. Deacon: Thank you.

Senator Duncan: Thank you very much to all our witnesses. I greatly appreciate your attendance today.

What I hear is a different situation in the three territories, yet a significant cost and threat to all three territories with melting permafrost.

I also heard that there’s a significant gap in coordination and representation nationally on this issue.

Government mandate letters that have been issued by the Prime Minister use the phrase “whole-of-government approach.” I think I heard some suggestion of Polar Knowledge Canada as one option. Do you have a suggestion for how the federal government should best coordinate their initiatives and coordinate this research, given the differences among the three territories and the differences across the country? I’ll direct that question to Ms. Blade and Ms. Karunaratne.

Ms. Blade: National coordination also involves partnership with the established government and Inuit organizations that are at work on these permafrost lands, so I would suggest it would begin with memorandums of understanding.

In my opening statement, I spoke about the long-term permafrost monitoring program that is in just over 10 communities in Nunavut. No publicly available data has been released from it since 2015.

Those stations were installed as part of International Polar Year in 2007 as a collaboration between Natural Resources Canada, the Government of Nunavut and the communities. Moving forward, it would be a first step to have a memorandum of understanding between those organizations to first understand who is collecting that data and how often, who is analyzing it, where it is being released and how often it is being released.

Ms. Karunaratne: About a year ago, a small group of people under the leadership of NSERC PermafrostNet, which is a permafrost funded network based at Carleton University, started a committee called the permafrost strategy committee. There are about six people on that committee to start having this conversation about what is needed for permafrost leadership in Canada. We put some very broad strokes on what is needed and who the stakeholders were, and we started engaging with different permafrost stakeholders, including the Canadian Permafrost Association. There was a North Yukon Permafrost Conference held in Dawson City last August, and we presented the work there.

We have also just written a short paper on this work that will be published in Arctic Science. I can provide that paper to this committee for their reflection.

There are so many different stakeholders here. We just need to facilitate and start having the conversation on how to coordinate.

Senator Duncan: If you could include in your written responses or information that you send to us a suggestion as to how to best coordinate this and who should do it, we would be most grateful to receive it. Thank you.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you. Dr. Karunaratne, if you could send that information to our clerk, Ferda Simpson, that would be outstanding. We would love to have that documentation.

[Translation]

Senator Petitclerc: I want to thank our three witnesses for being here. I have a question for them.

[English]

As I was preparing for this very interesting meeting today, I was reading an article quoting from Chris Burn’s research at Carleton University, whom I assume is well known in the permafrost area. He was quite alarming. This article is from 2021, so it’s not that old. His conclusion, when it came to the melting of the permafrost, was that it was too late to turn things around; there was already too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He said that to “go back to some wonderful land that was there 200 years ago” is impossible. He also said:

. . . there’s a possibility that we can reach some kind of balanced environment which isn’t changing further which we can sort of begin to manage.

It is alarming to read that. Dr. Karunaratne, is that something you agree with and that makes sense to you? I know the article is only two years old, but are we doing everything we can to get on top of that, and actually manage and stabilize things?

Ms. Karunaratne: I did my grad work with Dr. Chris Burn and worked with him for about 10 years, so I absolutely support what he’s saying.

We’re already seeing the changes that are happening as a result of climate change. This isn’t a hypothetical situation; it’s happening now. The changes have already occurred, and they’re going to run their course now that the warming of the ground has started. There’s a bit of a tipping point for various permafrost conditions, and once it’s started, it’s very challenging to stop the thaw.

In terms of actions to take, we have the emission targets that we have to keep track of, but in terms of adaptation, we need to understand what the permafrost conditions are and how they behave in order to make plans for where our roads will go. We fundamentally don’t have an understanding of what the current permafrost conditions are across the Canadian Arctic, so it’s very challenging to make plans. As I mentioned with forestry, it’s hard to plan and understand how our forests are going to change because we don’t know what the permafrost conditions are.

Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. Did you want to add to that, Ms. Blade?

Ms. Blade: Yes, I am familiar with Christopher Burn. He primarily works in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

The surficial geology in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon is more sediment rich than it is in Nunavut. His work over there, as well as most permafrost work in academia and government, is taking place in the Northwest Territories and Yukon and not in Nunavut. It speaks to a discrepancy in funding and research priorities between the western Arctic and the eastern Arctic.

Senator Petitclerc: And would you say there is a specific need for research in Nunavut?

Ms. Blade: Yes, and pan-territorial collaboration.

The Deputy Chair: Before we move on to the second round, Senator Cotter, do you have a question?

Senator Cotter: I do. I apologize for asking this, not having arrived in time to hear each of your presentations.

I share Senator Colin Deacon’s anxiety about changes in the North and the challenges they present. I’m interested in — and you may have spoken to this, in which case I apologize — acknowledging the degree of uncertainty of science on various fronts. Are there opportunities that we’re not capturing or could be capturing with better, wiser and more forward-looking policies for the circumstances of soil in the North in Canada?

Ms. Blade: Both the ITK and the QIA have released reports on food insecurity as well as solutions for the way forward in order to preserve their food sovereignty. In those reports, they go into examples of opportunities. If it would be acceptable to the Senate committee today, I would prefer to defer that question to a representative of one of those Inuit organizations, in the spirit of self-determination.

Ms. Karunaratne: One of the initiatives that the Northwest Territories is undertaking is the archiving of massive amounts of permafrost data that’s been collected historically. For any road or infrastructure project, permafrost data needed to be collected for the design of the road by the engineers, and that data was paid for by the territorial government. Of course, we got the road but not the data. The Northwest Territories geological survey is now going back to the consulting companies and getting data from 40 years ago that is rightfully theirs and making that data available to inform future projects.

We’re looking at making sure that, for all infrastructure projects in the future, there is a requirement that the data be passed over to the government to inform monitoring going forward.

Again, we need a national level of data sharing, especially with the geological surveys, as we have public geoscience data available for the public good, which is a little different than academic institutions.

Ms. Dean: I’m speaking solely from the agricultural perspective, but I echo what Mr. Lamb presented earlier — the extended growing season, the warmer soil temperatures, but also more access to the class 3 land we have for agricultural use here in the Northwest Territories that is simply not accessible at this point.

Senator Cotter: Thanks to you all.

The Deputy Chair: I will sneak in a question of my own, and I want to move away from the permafrost question to the issue of soil contamination raised by Ms. Blade.

You talked about mercury contamination and the mercury cycle. I would have thought at this point our industrial use of mercury would have declined sufficiently that it wouldn’t be as large a problem, so I was very unpleasantly surprised to hear you talking about this.

Where is the mercury coming from, and what can we do to help with soil contamination so people can harvest off the land and not run a health risk?

And Ms. Dean, are there are similar issues with soil contamination for the agricultural sector in the Northwest Territories?

Ms. Blade: It’s my understanding that the mercury in the eastern Arctic is coming from Europe. It is still an issue mainly because of the bioaccumulation and magnification aspects of the North and transport by atmospheric and oceanic currents that it remains a priority of the Northern Contaminants Program to better understand it.

The Deputy Chair: What can be done, if anything, to mitigate it? If you track it and you know where it’s coming from, what can be done to purge it from the soil, if anything?

Ms. Blade: Looking historically at the release of DDT and the banning of that substance shows how changing the source can have great impacts where it is then being distributed further down the line. In collaboration with testing of the foods that are being harvested and putting policies in place for the sources of these contaminants, we can make a difference.

The Deputy Chair: Are there similar problems with soil contamination where your agriculture industry is farming, or is that far enough south and west that it’s not as big an issue?

Ms. Dean: Although our primary agriculture region is in the South Slave Region and not generally affected by contamination in any related way, in the Yellowknife region we still have to respond to arsenic contamination as a result of years of mining with Con Mine and Giant Mine where the roasters released arsenic into the air.

Generally, in areas where market gardens or small commercial agriculture activities take place, they’re outside of any significant contamination, but traditional harvesting has not been reopened. With berry picking, there are restrictions in areas more directly attached to the mine properties, and remediation is currently under way.

The Deputy Chair: Dr. Karunaratne, to say we have the roads and not the data is the theme of this entire study. We don’t seem to have data from any part of the country that tells us what is going on with soils, and that’s one of the great frustrations we felt as a committee. Every person we hear from tells us the same thing: We don’t have the data to understand what is actually happening.

Ms. Karunaratne: It’s especially frustrating when we know the data was collected. We just need to organize it and make it accessible.

The Deputy Chair: Now that I’ve had my existential crisis, we’ll move to the second round of questions.

Senator C. Deacon: I think we’re all grateful for the direct information that you’re providing us, as troubling as it is. I want to build off Senator Cotter’s question to try to get to points of hope and where we can focus our efforts.

I’m told that horizontality is rewarded in Ottawa. I don’t know if the reward is some form of punishment, but I certainly don’t see horizontality in government in this city, and I don’t see it generally across the country. But it is an issue to start to get a handle on the effects of climate change, on soils in the North and soils in a third of our land mass or more. It’s going to take a lot of horizontality, cutting across different departments and getting people to work together.

I would love each of you to dream a little bit. If you could have one or two things come true to help bring attention to how the climate crisis is affecting the North and how we can turn a third of our land mass into an opportunity, rather than a greater risk, what would those one, two or three things be that we could focus our attention on? I’ll start with Ms. Karunaratne, and then come back to Ms. Dean and Ms. Blade in the room.

Ms. Karunaratne: You’re asking me to dream. In that case, I would like to see a small organization be developed, maybe starting with Polar Knowledge facilitating that conversation of what is needed and what it looks like. It would have some capacity for data management and organization and for coordination of projects to be a focal point for international researchers wanting to do research in Canada. This is only going to increase, so we need to make sure that our research needs and priorities are put forward.

We need a small organization of people that will lead that conversation and provide the leadership for the different departments and researchers across the country. But we need that to really honour what is happening in the North and to build the capacities in the territories that are responsible for managing the land and the water.

Senator C. Deacon: Maybe you could each build off previous points, so we can get in as many ideas as possible. Thank you.

Ms. Dean: Speaking from the agricultural perspective as a result of climate change, our dream is that the knowledge comes out of the hands of researchers and academics and into our sector, that it’s married to traditional knowledge and Indigenous ways of knowing and that we’re able to have these groups collaborate to create a better future for all of us. That includes localized food production, regional infrastructure to support that and opportunities for innovative expansion as climate change creates change, but that it is a collaborative, coordinated effort. Our levels of government generally work together well, but I think it’s this knowledge compilation and translation that sometimes gets missed with a lot of data that is developed, resides elsewhere and is not implemented on the ground.

Ms. Blade: I echo the horizontal and multidisciplinary collaboration and would add the expansion of whom is considered an expert. When I’m travelling to the different Nunavut communities and asking the question, “What environmental changes have you seen?” everyone had examples to be provided. A man from Igloolik said, “We’ve been seeing these changes for a long time, we just didn’t know who to tell.” In coming together and co-developing knowledge, we can put together a more complete understanding of what is happening in the North and a strategy on how to proceed.

The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much.

Senator Duncan: Again, thanks to all of our witnesses.

I would like to turn our attention for a moment to Arctic security, the military presence in the North and the soil contaminants that have been left behind. For example, the Americans built the Alaska Highway and the Haines Highway, and years later, I believe it was Agent Orange that was discovered in the soil, or a contaminant.

For the joint Canada-U.S. North Warning System and NATO, most of the staffed sites are in the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut. With the modernization, years ago, I believe there was some cleanup and remediation of sites. Now, that may have just been removal of the fuel barrels, but I’m wondering if, at the same time, you’re aware if there was any study done on the soil at the time that those sites were remediated, or if they’re still under remediation. Perhaps we need to ask for other witnesses, but are you aware of any information that exists about the sites?

Ms. Blade: In Nunavut, there are the DEW Line sites, the Distant Early Warning sites. In 2007 or 2008, I believe it was part of the economic stimulus package, the money was dedicated to remediating those sites. I was part of remediating one of them. It’s my understanding that they were remediated to those site-specific standards for contaminants in the soil, as opposed to drinking water standards down South or something like that. As far as specific soil studies done beyond that, I am unaware.

Senator Duncan: They were remediated to a certain standard of soil, so you would have gathered the data about the soil; is that correct?

Ms. Blade: Correct.

Senator Duncan: Where does that data live?

Ms. Blade: Likely in a report in an office somewhere.

Senator Duncan: There has also been some health research done. For example, I believe that there was health research regarding the use of natural foods and any naturally occurring contaminants in the soil, with the community of Old Crow and the Vuntut Gwitchin in the far North and Yukon. I believe it was led by the University of Alberta. I wonder — again, it’s a horizontal question — if any health research has been made available with regard to the effect of contaminants that may be occurring in the soil on the people of Nunavut.

Ms. Blade: In my opening comments, I spoke about mercury and its link to fetuses and young children. Country food, which is referred to as the food that is harvested from the land, is very much encouraged as being part of the nutrition of northerners, and is therefore being tested on a regular basis in order to ensure its food safety. Can you please repeat your question one more time?

Senator Duncan: I’m wondering if there are naturally occurring or foreign substances in those naturally harvested and sustainable food sources. If their impact on health is being studied and if it’s linked to the soil and if that information is collected and shared somewhere, what could we go look for?

Ms. Blade: So naturally occurring contaminants as opposed to contaminants from other sites?

Senator Duncan: Any, or both. You’ve mentioned mercury and what impact that would have on health, but are there other studies that are ongoing that you’re aware of?

Ms. Blade: Yes, and that’s part of the Northern Contaminants Program.

Senator Duncan: And the soil impact as well would relate to that?

Ms. Blade: It’s more done in relation to harvesting, and less about the soil itself, so it would be an indirect relationship.

Senator Duncan: But if the caribou are eating lichen that is contaminated with arsenic, and it’s showing up in human health, who has that data, and is it being shared, as it relates? Can it be accessed?

Ms. Blade: It’s being submitted to the Northern Contaminants Program, and I believe they have a database that is shareable.

Ms. Dean: In the N.W.T., we have the Health Effects Monitoring Program. This information is collected regularly and is available to the public, as recently as a report released earlier this month on arsenic showing up in fingernail and hair samples of the population and what that means. All of that information is available through the N.W.T. Health Effects Monitoring Program.

The Deputy Chair: If you could provide us with that arsenic report and send it to our clerk, that would be terrifically helpful.

Senator Burey: This is very heartening. Senator Duncan, you’ve taken my question, so I just wanted to agree that soil health is human health, and getting this information to us somehow is vitally important to the work of this committee.

The Deputy Chair: We still have some time for questions.

Senator Duncan: I have a question to follow up. There are much smarter minds in the room than mine, but who makes the connection between soil health and human health, and who in Canada is asking, “Wait a minute, these two are connected?” Or is that the point of our study?

The Deputy Chair: That’s the point of our study.

Senator Duncan: Then how do we get that recommendation in? That’s my question to my fellow committee members and to our guests.

The Deputy Chair: I’ve advocated from the beginning that we need to have a section of the study, when we do our report, that specifically looks at contamination. I think we need to have more witnesses to talk about soil remediation, but I think these witnesses have been remarkably helpful in putting that issue, as well as the issue of permafrost stability, on the table here.

Ms. Karunaratne: If I could add a few points on contamination, yes, there are certainly naturally occurring contaminants that are present in the soil that are being released and affecting and contaminating the soil and the water, so there is that issue. There’s also a long legacy of using permafrost to contain waste at mine sites, at the DEW Line sites and drilling sumps in the MacKenzie Delta; these are changing with the permafrost thaw, and there are issues of lack of contaminant containment that need to be addressed.

Regarding the DEW Line data, I know that there are thermistor, or ground temperature, data, we’re trying to track down and I believe the Department of National Defence has that data, so they probably have the soil chemistry data as well.

Ms. Blade: I echo what Ms. Karunaratne just said. Permafrost is used in Nunavut to contain waste, both community landfills and mine site waste. Projects that are assessed today are using climate change models designed at a regional scale to assess local projects, which is beyond their scope. There also aren’t Nunavut-specific guidelines for how long that permafrost is required to contain that waste for projects that are being built today.

The Deputy Chair: I’m going to ask one last question of Ms. Dean, if I may. You mentioned there was a particular place in the Northwest Territories where you had the bulk of your farms, and that seven out of eight farms were put out of production by a local flood.

Our committee did a big study that we released in the fall about the flooding in the Fraser Valley. I was completely unaware of the flooding that you’re talking about. Was that flooding made worse by climate change, or was it a cyclical thing? What needed to be done to put those farms back in production?

Ms. Dean: Thank you.

We do have a bit of a public relations problem here in the Northwest Territories, because we did have that significant flood last year and we have had significant floods that have devastated communities in years prior.

Was it climate change? It was a confluence of events. Certainly, climate change did have an impact, in addition to the fact that our primary farmlands are located in low-lying areas.

Trying to mobilize remediation activities continues to be a problem. There’s little other private land available for our farmers to move to. In terms of rebuilding on their land, they’re now considered high risk and they can’t get insurance or loans to rebuild, and not all claims have been settled.

Where they access support in federal programs and territorial programs is unclear and changing. It is mostly, frankly, a bureaucratic problem as to why some of this hasn’t been resolved, but there’s a general consensus that climate change did have an impact on the flooding.

The Deputy Chair: Of those seven out of eight farms, how many will be back and capable of full production in this upcoming growing season?

Ms. Dean: In this growing season, the farmers are still saying they’re unsure. I believe two will be back in production, but there could be more if things happen more quickly than they have been happening.

The Deputy Chair: Wow. That is shocking. Thank you for letting us know that.

I want to thank all of our witnesses. This has been an extraordinary morning of testimony. Dr. Karunaratne, Ms. Blade and Ms. Dean, thank you for participating, for enriching our study and opening our eyes to some issues that I don’t think we knew about.

I also want to take a moment to thank Senator Duncan, who pushed very hard for us to look at northern agriculture and northern issues. I’m really grateful you’re on this committee and brought that perspective to us.

Senator Duncan: Thank you.

[Translation]

The Deputy Chair: I’d like to thank the committee members for their active participation and thoughtful questions.

[English]

I also want to take a moment to thank all the staff who support the work of this committee. Thank you to the interpreters, especially those interpreting my French; the Debates and Publications team transcribing this meeting; the committee room attendant; the multimedia services technician, who made all our Zoom calls work perfectly today; the broadcasting centre; the recording centre; ISD; and our pages.

[Translation]

Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 28, at 6:30 p.m., and will be about Bill S-236, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations (Prince Edward Island).

[English]

This is a very important notice for all senators and all staffers: The meeting on Tuesday, if it goes ahead, will not take place in this room; Tuesday’s meeting will be held in room W-110, so do not come here on Tuesday evening. We won’t be here.

(The committee adjourned.)