THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 17, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9:02 a.m. [ET] to study the impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation and communications sectors and the consequential impacts on their interdependencies.
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning. I am Leo Housakos, a senator from Quebec and the chair of this committee. I would like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Senator Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Richards: Senator David Richards from New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Clement: Bernadette Clement, Ontario.
[English]
Senator Quinn: Jim Quinn, New Brunswick.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne, Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we are meeting to continue our study of the impact of climate change on critical infrastructure in the transportation sector, and to begin our in-depth study of the issues facing the Chignecto Isthmus. Today, we are pleased to welcome before the committee Ronald Rudin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the Department of History at Concordia University.
Welcome and thank you for joining us, Mr. Rudin. We will begin with your opening remarks, and then move on to questions from members of the committee. Mr. Rudin, you have the floor.
Ronald Rudin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Concordia University, as an individual: Thank you. Good morning to you all. I speak to you today from Montreal where I live on unceded Indigenous lands.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer my views on two related matters. First, I will briefly discuss the role of the federal government in protecting drained marshlands, particularly in the Isthmus of Chignecto in the period after World War II. Second, I will point to some pitfalls to avoid regardless of which level of government is involved in building infrastructure to provide such protection. These comments come out of the research that I carried out in the 2010s that resulted in the publication of my book Against the Tides and the production of our documentary film Unnatural Landscapes. Both of these projects focused on the Maritime Marshland Rehabilitation Administration, always referred to as the MMRA for obvious reasons.
The federal agency was created in 1948 to deal with the deterioration of dikes that had been constructed — in some cases, by Acadian settlers centuries earlier — to protect over 30,000 hectares of what had once been marshland at the head of the Bay of Fundy in present-day Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This marshland was created by the tides of the Bay of Fundy — as many of you know, it’s the largest in the world — that twice daily move upstream on the rivers that flow into it. Back in the day, before the arrival of European settlers, these tides washed up over the lands that bordered those rivers.
The resulting marshes were central to the lives of the first inhabitants of these lands, the Mi’kmaq First Nation, but the settlers who followed — both Acadians and English speakers — chose to drain the marshes, building dikes that held back the tides into which they constructed sluices, known as aboiteaux, that allowed water on the inland side to drain out so that farming might take place.
For centuries, this drained marshland was highly productive, so much so that the drained Tantramar marsh, near New Brunswick’s border with Nova Scotia, was known in the early 1900s as the largest hayfield in the world. By the 1930s — for a variety of reasons that I can discuss during the question-and-answer session — farmers found themselves incapable of keeping up the dikes. By the 1940s, there were regular reports about land that had — to use the expression of the time — gone out to sea, as the dikes could no longer hold back the tides. Photographs from the period showing flooded lands are reminiscent of photos that we see today resulting from climate change.
In response to this crisis, only the federal government had the necessary resources to respond to the massive investment required to secure the drained marsh landscape. And this was no small matter, as the lands not only supported farming, but also were the site of crucial infrastructure, most notably the main rail line that connected Nova Scotia to the rest of Canada.
In that context, when the MMRA was created in 1948, the federal government committed itself to rebuilding or replacing all of the damaged dikes and aboiteaux. For their part, the provincial governments in Fredericton and Halifax promised to work with the farmers to keep up the drainage ditches on the inland side of the protective structures so that water could drain out. But even with this involvement, the overwhelming investment came from Ottawa, which ended up replacing or repairing nearly 400 kilometres of dikes and over 400 aboiteaux.
Most of this work was done in the 1950s, but the MMRA continued to operate until 1970, when it turned the responsibility for the dikes back to the provinces. In that context, during the 1960s, the agency embarked on a second set of engineering projects that should provide us with a cautionary tale for our own times.
The MMRA calculated — wrongly, I would say — that drained marshland could be protected more economically if tidal dams were built across a number of the major rivers that flowed into the Bay of Fundy. If this were done, dikes and aboiteaux upstream would no longer be necessary, and so there would be savings in the long run. Fuelled by this logic, five tidal dams were constructed, all of which provided new environmental challenges and problems that the MMRA engineers chose to ignore. They knew about them but ignored them anyway.
The single most problematic dam was constructed across the Petitcodiac River in Moncton. Even before construction was finished in 1968, sediment that was washed up by the tides was deposited on the seaward side of what was called the Petitcodiac causeway. The sediment quickly ruined the river, effectively narrowing it and making it shallower. The dam killed fish stocks that were unable to navigate this obstacle. If this weren’t enough, the causeway created a large and problematic headpond upstream.
The MMRA’s hubris that resulted in the causeway led to a decades-long struggle to return the Petitcodiac River to something approaching its natural state — although we’re not talking here about a return of the salt marsh. The process only ended in 2021 — only two years ago — when the gate structure for the dam was replaced by a bridge so that the tides can flow as they had once done.
The MMRA story speaks to what the federal government could do today in terms of responding to the challenges of climate change, but it also should caution us from solving one problem, while only creating new ones.
Those are my remarks. Thank you for your attention.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Rudin. I want to mention to our audience that Senator Cardozo has joined our committee; he’s a senator for Ontario.
Senator Quinn: Thank you, Professor Rudin, for the great overview of the history of the area. My questions are now focused on the isthmus area, of course, and the importance of it in regard to trade and transportation in Canada. I have two or three questions, if I may, and I will follow the lead of the chair in terms of when he will stop me.
If we had a failure of the dike structure, and that took away the road and rail transportation, how would that affect our transportation system in Eastern Canada, but also right across the country? What would be your observation should that event occur?
Mr. Rudin: I guess I have to preface all of my responses with, “I’m a historian,” which is always an easy way out.
We know, in part, from previous experience. The photographs — which I didn’t show you this morning — from the 1940s show the massive flooding that took place in that area when the dikes failed.
We also know that in some of the recent storms, if the moon had been in the right configuration, the tides would have been even larger, and we could have had a major disaster in the area. It doesn’t take much deep knowledge to know that the Trans‑Canada Highway and the main railway line that connect Nova Scotia to the rest of Canada go across that isthmus, as well as other infrastructure.
It’s fair to say that it would be a major disaster if there were a complete failure of the existing protective structures, perhaps combined with the highest tides possible. We know the tides vary according to the time of the month. Some people say that Nova Scotia could become an island.
Senator Quinn: Thank you for that. There is another thing on which I would like to get your views. In 1948, the government did a project to address, if you will, the weakness of the structures. Part of the rationale goes back to — as you mentioned in your presentation — the farmlands. The farmlands remain there today, and food security is an issue for us, as Canadians, and globally. I assume that the dikes are also key to protecting that farmland today, as well as the transportation corridors. Would that be a safe assumption?
Mr. Rudin: Absolutely, yes. The farmers, whom I came to know very well in doing my research, depend on that whole system functioning properly.
Senator Quinn: I have been involved in a lot of discussions focused on the importance of the structures to this transportation system — not only for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but also for Newfoundland and, to another extent, Prince Edward Island. Trade goes into Newfoundland by ocean. There are two services: Marine Atlantic and Oceanex, which ships down to Halifax to have cargo topped up, and that shipment goes to Newfoundland. There would be a serious hit to transportation of goods into Newfoundland if this system failed. Would that be correct?
Mr. Rudin: That is a reasonable assumption.
Senator Quinn: This is my last question before I put my name down for the second round. Would you agree that the dikes are of general interest to Canada — of general advantage to Canada — in terms of our Confederation?
Mr. Rudin: Effectively, that was the point that was made in 1948 when the MMRA was created. It is hard for me to see exactly what has changed in the last — what would it be — 75 years.
Senator Quinn: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Welcome to the meeting.
I am interested in more natural solutions. In our reading, we came across an expert, Sabine Dietz, who said that we have to look at natural solutions first before considering structural solutions to the isthmus problem. In particular, she referred to the importance of wetlands and said that wetlands that had been drained for agricultural purposes could be restored. That would limit rising waters in a natural way without altering or rebuilding all kinds of dykes. What do you think?
Mr. Rudin: I completely agree with that position. In my work, we interviewed Professor Danika van Proosdij of Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, who is a champion of that approach.
Based on my experience with the Maritime Marshland Rehabilitation Administration, or MMRA, the problem was that we were completely dependent on technologies. We did not consider that wetlands could be used. We had problems on the Petitcodiac River, for example, because large structures were built instead of using more natural solutions. The research has been done to allow us to use wetlands. I agree with that approach.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you know if that approach is now being considered by the various orders of government? In order to restore wetlands, I assume that a lot of land would have to be confiscated or bought back. Is that feasible?
Mr. Rudin: Once again, I am a historian. I am not a details expert. To my knowledge, tests were conducted in the region. I am not sure that large chunks of land would necessarily have to be expropriated. I think it is possible to find more natural solutions, with the good will of all those involved.
[English]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I know you’re a historian, but because you’ve studied this at length, do you know if there is any opening now — within the two governments — to try to tackle the problem with solutions that are more natural?
Mr. Rudin: Again, I am somewhat distant from those kinds of discussions, but my conversation with my colleagues is that this knowledge, and this research, has largely been ignored.
Certainly, it’s my understanding that in Nova Scotia, when various options were placed before the public, the more natural solutions were pushed to the side. This is why I think that the research that I did on the MMRA is pertinent because it is precisely the kind of point of view that the MMRA engineers had: It was necessary to build higher and stronger without considering other possibilities which got us into the mess that we were in on the Petitcodiac River.
If we use that as a cautionary tale, it suggests that we should take more seriously the research that exists and the experts who are out there. They are not historians, but they are people who actually work in the field.
My impression is that this is not being taken as seriously as it might be. People think that if you don’t build some tall, strong structure, you are leaving us vulnerable, and ignoring the possibilities that exist by using more natural solutions.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: Professor Rudin, I appreciate the fact that you are neither an engineer nor a meteorologist. Of course, the focus of our study is the impact of climate change on transportation infrastructure. It’s not a question of jurisdiction and who should pay, but whether climate change is putting our infrastructure at risk.
With that in mind as a framing, and with your background as a historian — top of my mind — I want to ask you this: Would the decisions that were originally made to site the Trans-Canada Highway and the rail lines across this vulnerable piece of territory even have been possible without the original dike work? If it hadn’t been built there, what were the other options to connect Nova Scotia to the rest of mainland Canada?
Mr. Rudin: To take the first part of that question, it would have been difficult for the people who were building the Trans-Canada Highway or the railroad lines to imagine that landscape without the dikes. One of the things I learned in my research is that people take for granted the changes that we make in nature once they’ve lasted for a certain amount of time.
By the 19th century, when they would have been building the rail lines first and then the Trans-Canada Highway that follows the same path, they would have assumed that the dikes were permanent parts of the landscape. It was as if they had always been there. I’m sure that no one imagined a landscape without the dikes — which, of course, was the original natural landscape that would have been marshland, and would have seen water twice daily lapping up over that land. I’m absolutely certain that they never thought there was anything else other than this landscape where dikes were there, and I think they presumed that the dikes would last forever.
That being said, I’m absolutely certain that they never considered any alternative. In fact, in a number of cases, the dams that were built under the aegis of the MMRA were built to provide bridges for the Trans-Canada Highway. In that particular case, the efforts of the MMRA to reinforce the diked landscape, in a sense, became part of the land base even before the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway. All of this is to say that this is all inextricably linked: There is no way that the infrastructure could have been built without the dikes, and the dikes and subsequently the tidal dams — for all of their deficiencies — became a part of that infrastructure. I hope that answers your question.
Senator Simons: That is a terrific answer. Then, the question becomes the following: The climate is changing. Sea levels are rising. Winter storms are blowing harder. As I say, you are not a meteorologist, so I presume that you have not been tracking the impact of those changing climatic conditions on this infrastructure, but you have mentioned past historical incidents in which the infrastructure was inundated.
If I may ask you, based on your life’s work as a historian, how vulnerable do you think this critical piece of infrastructure is as the climate changes, and as that change accelerates?
Mr. Rudin: If I had brought photos and were sharing my screen, you would see them, or if you look at my book, we have photos of what it looked like in the 1940s. When that infrastructure failed — and when there are lands in places like Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, or the Tantramar marsh in New Brunswick that we take for granted today as being agricultural lands crossed by roads — it was all underwater.
The infrastructure that failed in the 1940s was because of a variety of economic circumstances that led to the farmers being unable to keep up the dikes, but the point is that we have seen this before — and we saw it without something as dramatic as climate change. You do not have to be a historian to know that sea levels are rising, and that we have to somehow rejig the system in order to accommodate challenges it didn’t have before. From my perspective, in the 1940s, when they rebuilt the dikes and aboiteaux using heavy machinery to replace manual labour, they were facing something quite minor, in a sense, compared to what we’re facing now.
It is clear that we have a problem that isn’t going to go away. To return to my answer to the previous senator’s question, we need to use all of the tools in our arsenal in order to deal with this — not simply the building of higher and stronger walls, but also considering the use of marsh along the shore to help blunt the impact of climate change, as well as the higher and stronger tides that are coming.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much.
Senator Richards: Senator Simons asked my question. Coming from the Miramichi, and knowing people in Sackville and Amherst all my life, this has always been a rather serious concern for most of the people I know. I do not think that many of us turn much of a blind eye to it. I would like to ask Professor Rudin — and thank you for being here — how much more consequential the weather is against the marshes today than it was in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I always remember how turbulent it could be down there, and how worrisome the dikes were when I was a boy aged 20 to 24. How much more is it now than it was when I was a kid?
Mr. Rudin: It has always been a challenge. The dikes were built precisely because those waters were potentially dangerous.
To go back to the 1940s, when large swaths of that land were inundated because the dikes had failed, we know that since then it has been exceptional circumstances that have resulted in flooding. At the same time, we also know that what we tend to call once-in-100-year storms now come fairly regularly, so they cannot possibly be once in 100 years. We also know that the big one is out there — to use earthquake terminology.
It is clear that storms are more frequent. We know that sea levels have already risen. This isn’t really a matter of debate. When you put together rising sea levels with storms that are increasingly stronger, we have reason to believe — and individuals who are involved in the protection of these lands also believe — that the future puts us at even greater risk, and so if we wait to see what might happen, that is probably not a great idea.
Senator Richards: I agree with that.
What methods could be taken that would be more fruitful than the methods that have been taken already?
Mr. Rudin: Thank you for the opportunity to, once again, try to make the case for my colleagues who have been doing research into the use of salt marsh along the banks in various places in order to reinforce the dikes.
If we invest in these more natural solutions, we know that salt marsh along the shore can, and always did, absorb a significant amount of the initial shock — if we can put it that way — when tides come in that are stronger and higher. If that shock can be absorbed in more natural ways, then the infrastructure that we need to build doesn’t have to be as dramatic, and does not have to have its own consequences — because every human intervention has a consequence.
The easy way out is always going to be to simply build structures that are higher and stronger. The MMRA experience — which is why I think it is pertinent — is that when they went from simply rebuilding the dikes to building tidal dams, things went disastrously wrong in many cases. We have a cautionary tale here, plus we have research that is available to us — certainly not my research, but it’s research by scientists in the field — that we know we can do a hybrid approach. We can reinforce the dike structures that are already there, but, at the same time, we can help that infrastructure by also using more natural solutions. I sure hope that your committee is talking to those kinds of people.
Senator Richards: Thank you.
Senator Quinn: Thank you to my colleagues. These are great questions from my colleagues; I wanted to observe that. It really helps to inform the discussion.
I have a twofold question. Through your understanding and knowledge of the history of the area, as well as the different things that have been done over the decades, I’m hearing that this is something that is probably more urgent than people may realize. My understanding is that whoever approaches this, years will take place by the time you go through environmental, engineering, et cetera. Would you agree that there is a level of urgency? That’s what I’m hearing you say, but I haven’t heard you say it explicitly.
Mr. Rudin: Well, I thought that went without saying — yes, absolutely.
Senator Quinn: I want it on the record because this is a microscopic piece of our committee’s work: looking at critical infrastructure in Canada and climate change. Parallel to this, there’s been a lot of discussion between the two provinces that are principally involved: Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I mentioned earlier the other effects that happened with respect to Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, and also other provinces, and tied back to our international trade that flows across it — $35 billion a year; 15,000 vehicles a day; et cetera. It’s a critical pathway, if you will, that is arguably in the general interest of Canada.
Whether it’s a natural approach, an engineer’s approach or, as you suggest, a hybrid approach — and based on all of that, and your knowledge of the history of the role of the government at the time — what should be the role of the federal government today?
Mr. Rudin: There are obviously jurisdictional issues, but the experience in 1948 was that only the federal government had the resources to really deal with the problem. They could have taken the view that it was a problem for the provinces to deal with, but the provinces, by their own admission, didn’t have the resources to start rebuilding the dikes and aboiteaux. The federal government took on the responsibility because it was the only level of government that had sufficient resources.
In that particular context, they paid the total bill for the rebuilding of the dikes and aboiteaux; the provinces worked with the farmers to keep up the drainage ditches on the inland side of the dikes because if you didn’t do that, the water couldn’t get out, and the whole system was pointless.
Without thinking too much about jurisdictional matters — which I guess I can do, but maybe you can’t at your end — it seems to me that the federal government has greater resources than the provinces, and that if we wait for the provinces to find the resources in order to solve this kind of major problem, we may not be able to come up with the best solution. Just as in 1948, the provinces and the federal government could have had lengthy discussions about how they could divide the bill. Ultimately, the decision was made, in part because there was already a precedent: The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration had been created in the 1930s to save land in the Prairies. It wasn’t the first time the federal government had seen that it had a responsibility to support projects that were too large for the provinces to handle on their own. My view would be that the federal government should take a lead role in all of this.
Senator Quinn: Thank you.
The Chair: If there are no other questions, colleagues, I’ll ask Professor Rudin if he would like to share some closing remarks.
Mr. Rudin: I appreciate the opportunity to reflect a bit on the research that I’ve done in the past. On the issue that’s come up several times about the use of more natural solutions, Professor Jeff Ollerhead at Mount Allison University and Professor Danika Van Proosdij at Saint Mary’s University have done extensive research on the use of these more natural solutions. I can promote their work, but it would be great if you were able to hear from them as well. Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thank you for your time.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Professor Rudin, you did mention that you had good maps. Obviously, on the internet, we found maps that are very sketchy. Can you send us your maps? Is it possible?
Mr. Rudin: I said we have photographs.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Photographs, or whatever could help us to visualize this isthmus.
Mr. Rudin: The easiest thing is all these photographs are published in my book Against the Tides. If someone can gain access to that, that would sort of come to the same end. If you want the actual photographs, and if someone contacts me, I can forward them. That’s not a problem. They’re pretty dramatic.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Rudin, for taking our questions this morning and for being with us. On behalf of all my colleagues, thank you for your contribution to this study.
Mr. Rudin: Not a problem. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)