THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, February 27, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met with videoconference this day at 9:01 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; and, in camera, to consider a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Leo Housakos (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: I am Leo Housakos, senator from Quebec and chair of this committee. I would like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
[Translation]
Senator Clement: I am Bernadette Clement from Ontario.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I am Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues.
For our first panel, I’m pleased to have with us Professor Robin Davidson-Arnott, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph; and by video conference, Jacob Stolle, Professor and Scientific Head, Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory, Institut national de la recherche scientifique.
Welcome and thank you for joining us. We’ll be having opening remarks from our witnesses. Afterward, I will turn it over to my colleagues for a Q and A. We will be starting with Professor Jacob Stolle. You have the floor, sir.
Jacob Stolle, Professor and Scientific Head, Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory, Institut national de la recherche scientifique: Thank you very much for having me.
First, I would like to acknowledge that I am coming to you from the traditional unceded territory of the Huron-Wendat people.
I am a professor of coastal and fluvial hydrodynamics at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Quebec City. A lot of my research focuses on the design of infrastructure in coastal regions. I’ve done work with the design of vertical evacuation infrastructure for tsunami events as well as, more recently, the beneficial use of natural ecosystems for protection against coastal hazards like flooding and erosion.
In my five minutes today, I want to highlight how we estimate uncertainty in climate change and some of the lack of data that we have in Canada regarding climate change impact.
It’s not particularly surprising to have an academic banging on the table for informed data. However, it is important to note that in discussions I’ve had with stakeholders across academia, industry, governments and a recently started a community of practice in Quebec they all highlighted this point regarding lack of data and, in particular, local impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure and transport infrastructure and also the maintenance of the instrumentation that we do have in place. This is often done by small groups of academics that don’t necessarily have continuous funding.
Having data and having high-resolution, spatial and temporal data related to climate change is important because we use a lot of these mathematical models for estimating local impacts of climate change, for example, things like a storm surge, reduced sea ice cover and rising sea levels. While we can talk about that on a global scale in Canada, Canada has a vast coastline — it’s the largest in the world — and is very diverse, bordering on three oceans, including the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River and the St. Lawrence Estuary. This makes it difficult to do the local-scale impacts that are important to understand the cascading effects of the impacts of climate change in local communities.
That’s the point I wanted to highlight, namely, we have a lack of data. Often, we’re uncertain of how we can move that data into local areas and highlight the key challenges local communities are facing across Quebec and the rest of Canada. Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Professor Davidson-Arnott, you have the floor, sir.
Robin Davidson-Arnott, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, as an individual: Thank you for inviting me here. I thought I would say a couple of words about myself and then move on to say a bit more about my experience in the Great Lakes, as well as what I think are important elements of climate change impacts within the Great Lakes region as they apply to transportation.
I grew up in Trinidad and Tobago and I came to Canada as a student, as many others do — and many more now, I guess — to do an undergraduate degree in physical geography at the University of Toronto and stayed on to do a PhD working in what is now Kouchibouguac National Park in New Brunswick. Most of that work was done under water as well as on the water and on the land. Doing scuba was useful because few people were doing it when I started, so much of what I did was not necessarily wonderful, but new. I went to the University of Guelph in 1976. I retired from there as professor in 2009 and have kept going ever since. Old professors never die, it seems.
My research in the Great Lakes has focused primarily on two aspects: Coastal processes responsible for erosion transfer and deposition on the beaches, under water and on coastal sand dunes, which is probably more relevant to structures; and, underwater erosion of clay-till bluffs.
In 1985, during a period of high lake levels, there were a number of severe storms in the Great Lakes that caused literally hundreds of millions of dollars damage on both sides of the border on all the lakes. One result of this was that the International Joint Commission, or IJC, convened a Great Lakes water level reference study, from 1987 to 1989, and I was appointed to be a member of the Canadian delegation to the technical working group. Again from 2008 to 2011, I played a similar role for the upper Great Lakes technical studies. This gave me some insight into the way in which the international joint commission operated. Of course, because it’s a binational thing, I worked extensively with people from the U.S. side as well.
In response to that, in 1992-93 and 1993-95, I was appointed to a working group that produced the Ontario Shoreline Management Policy. Over those three years, we produced technical guidelines which the conservation authorities and the ministry used to apply the shoreline management policy, in particular on setbacks and how the personnel went about doing their job.
Since then, I’ve continued to work with conservation authorities, with the ministry, with Ontario Parks and with various governments and non-governmental organizations, including cottage owners who are among the loudest people clamouring for help.
From what I’ve read about climate change in Canada, one of the great things we will expect and is already happening is an increase in temperatures. Winter temperatures, in particular, will go up. There’s a fair amount of uncertainty about much of the other stuff, particularly related to precipitation and storms — that is, whether the storms will be more intense and frequent and whether rainfall and snowfall will go up or down. Twenty or thirty years ago, the thought was there would be less precipitation and more evaporation and Great Lakes water levels will go down.
Things have changed since then, and now there’s a more general feeling that they will stay more or less the way they are. A more recent study suggests they may go up a bit. If they go up a bit, that probably helps shipping in the Great Lakes.
The most important thing about increasing winter temperatures is the percentage of ice cover and the proportion of time ice occupies the Great Lakes will go down and is already going down. I think this is good news for shipping probably.
Responsibility for managing the Great Lakes water levels is controlled by the International Joint Commission, or IJC, and there are only two structures in the Great Lakes that do this, one in Sault Ste. Marie that controls the outflow from Lake Superior, and the other in Kingston that controls the outflow from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. Those are the only two places where there’s some control on the lakes.
One of the crucial things is that the responsibility for operating this is in the hands of the IJC and is controlled by protocol and agreements between the two countries. There’s very limited ability for the Senate, for example, to make any changes to how they operate.
We talk a lot about climate change, and there are some very important things — the reduction of ice cover is probably the most important. But most of the other processes are still ongoing, so we have large waves and storms, storm surges and fluctuations in lake levels at the seasonal and the decadal scale. It will be influenced by things like El Nino years. As you know, that brings about no skating on the Rideau Canal, but it affects the Great Lakes as well. All those things are happening, and we need to remember that.
One final thing is that we don’t have sea-level rise in the Great Lakes, but we do have isostatic uplift and also sinking so that, for example, in Lake Superior, the North Shore in Canada is rising and the South Shore is falling. It’s the same, for example, in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. The south end of Lake Michigan around Chicago is subsiding at about 30 centimetres a century, which is roughly the same as the impact of sea-level rise in the ocean.
Those things will continue irrespective of any climate change. In managing infrastructure for transport, for example, you need to consider where you live. If you live in Thunder Bay, your harbours are coming out of the water, and if you live in Chicago, they’re being submerged. Those are important things that will continue. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, professor. Professors, I will launch the Q and A portion with a question that has to do with governance, as Professor Davidson-Arnott brought up.
Indeed, there’s a joint international body put together and named by Canadians and Americans to manage the Great Lakes. We are constantly — at least, I am, for one, as a senator — having conversations with the Americans and the Canadians who are responsible for our end of the bargain who are constantly saying it’s not working effectively. There is always this tug of war of which country is investing enough and in which areas.
I’d like both of your perspectives on whether the current governance is efficient and effective. Is there enough cooperation right now between the various levels of government when it comes to managing the St. Lawrence River with all the challenges and opportunities that come with the ever-changing climate? If both of you want to weigh in on those questions. Is this the ideal governance we have in place, and is it working?
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: My experience on the IJC was that it works very well. Sometimes it doesn’t, but the scientists and the social scientists involved all collaborated very well. I did have one unfortunate experience in the first one, but that’s now history. Generally, I thought that the actual operations worked well.
What happens is the ability to resist pressures from a number of different groups. We had a lot of stuff from transportation who want the water levels to be high, at least during the shipping season, and there are hydro, recreation, boat uses, cottages and people living on top of bluffs.
In the second one, in 2008 to 2011, the most vociferous voices we heard were not from industry but from cottage and house owners in Michigan and down toward Chicago. Then the second-most vociferous were cottage owners in northern Georgian Bay because they were accusing the governments of dredging the St. Marys River, the exit from Lake Huron, and lowering the water levels so that their cottages were now 300 metres from the water. Those were distractions from the prime focus, which is how to manage the outflow from Lake Superior. Those are things that are a fact of life.
In terms of the government agencies, my impression was they were working well. It may have changed since then, but I don’t know.
Mr. Stolle: I don’t have a lot to add Professor Davidson-Arnott. Generally, it seems to work quite well. In terms of work among other levels of government within Quebec, at least in the St. Lawrence River part, we see a lot of collaboration between municipalities, provincial and federal governments that seem to work. There are always going to be points of friction related to ship traffic and things like that. It does tend to be not necessarily bowing to the pressure of one particular group but working between scientists and stakeholders just to make sure that the focus and the objective are kept in mind. For me, I haven’t seen a ton of friction either.
Senator Simons: Thank you to both of our witnesses. You’ve done an excellent job of outlining an important problem, which is a lack of data and a lack of agreed-upon data points for people making public policy.
I’m the only Westerner here today. I don’t know anything about the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Great Lakes, so this has been absolutely fascinating to me. I had no idea, Professor Davidson-Arnott, that man exerted any control over water levels in the Great Lakes. This is a revelation. How much control do we have? Can you explain to me why in one lake at the Chicago end the water is going in a completely different way than it is on the northern shore of that lake?
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: This goes back to deglaciation. The ice retreated out of the Great Lakes Basin toward the northeast, so when ice that is 3 or 4 kilometres thick is on the land, it depresses the earth, and it begins to come up again. But it does so quite slowly, and it does so because the ice was still present toward the northeast up around the east end of Lake Superior and into the Hudson Bay area. That has had less time to come back up afterward.
What’s critical in the lake is where you are relative to the outlet of the lake. The outlet of Lake Michigan-Huron is around Sarnia, so if you’re down at the bottom end of Lake Michigan, you are south of that outlet. What’s happening is it’s tilting because the northeast is rising faster than the southeast is, and the outlet is in the middle.
In Chicago, you’re at the end that stopped rising quite as quickly. In Parry Sound, you’re at the end that’s rising more quickly. That’s all that’s happening. It’s relative to that outlet that’s critical. There’s a little bit of it left in Lake Ontario, so the outlet at Kingston is rising slowly compared to, say, down around Niagara, so the flooding of the little water bodies there.
Probably they do some rowing in Manitoba.
Senator Simons: Alberta.
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: Alberta, sorry. The little estuaries, which are so useful for rowing regattas in and around St. Catharines, are drowned because it’s rising very slowly. It’s only a few centimetres per century compared to the south end. That’s something that’s going to go on.
The approach to that is not dissimilar to what’s happening in the ocean. For example, if you live in the Mississippi Delta, you are sinking because of the weight of sediment on it. You have two things that are drowning you in Louisiana. One is rising sea levels globally, and the other is your land mass is sinking.
In Chicago, you have to keep in mind that water levels are going to keep rising no matter what.
Senator Simons: That’s a perfect segue, then, for Professor Stolle. What is the impact of rising sea levels on water flows into the St. Lawrence?
Mr. Stolle: The impacts of rising sea levels in terms of inflows into the St. Lawrence, one of the big things we see here in Quebec City is concerns regarding Lévis and their water input for their municipal water supply and the potential impact, because of that increase in the water level, coming from the salty water. They’re actually getting a potential impact through the contamination of their drinking water supply with salty water. That’s a big concern in this area.
Obviously, on the St. Lawrence side, we do have a similar effect to what Professor Davidson-Arnott was talking about. We have isostatic adjustment that’s particularly on the south shore. We’re seeing, again, the sinking of the south shore of the St. Lawrence, where we’re getting increases in sea level rise.
The biggest concern for us in the St. Lawrence River region is to reduce the ice cover because that’s contributing to quite a bit of erosion on our side. Our winter storms, which are our biggest storms, are able to access the coastlines and cause significant erosion. The latest study that came out, the average erosion rate in the Gaspésie region is around two metres per year.
Senator Simons: The lack of ice might seemingly make it better for shipping.
Mr. Stolle: For shipping, yes.
Senator Simons: But the long-term consequence of that is you get the erosion of the banks.
Mr. Stolle: Exactly, because shore-fast ice, which is ice that’s connected to the shoreline, is important in dissipating the wave energy before it can reach the shoreline. With that not there, it can cause significant impacts.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: First, Mr. Davidson-Arnott, you provided us with a study, and it indicates that fluctuating lake levels resulting from climate change could affect the ability of ships to safely navigate.
[English]
You have all kinds of graphics in your study talking about the variation in the water levels since 1860 in the Great Lakes. I’d like you to explain to us.
You’ve touched on it, but why are the changes now worse than they have been? There’s always been some variation in those levels of the water.
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: My view is they aren’t any different. When I look at the water levels for the last 100 years and more, the fluctuations in water levels are essentially the same. In 2013 in Lake Michigan-Huron, we achieved a record low level by two centimetres or something.
One of the problems is when you have things that fluctuate on a decadal scale, two centimetres is trivial. Certainly since 1950, we have seen no real variation that would be unexpected in the extreme fluctuations or in their duration.
There was a fair amount of concern over the fact that in Lake Michigan-Huron again, having had very low lake levels or average or below average for 13 years, in 2013, levels started to rise very rapidly, and they went up to, again, record highs. But those record highs actually were only a centimetre or two. If we are at 1,000 years, we might be able to say, yes, something is happening.
Overall, I don’t think there’s any change. One of the things I would like to emphasize is that, for the moment, there’s nobody who says those levels of fluctuations are going to change dramatically. They may. I’m not an expert on the water balance of the Great Lakes, but for the moment, we don’t expect to see any change in the average lake levels. So average over 20, 30 or 40 years. We can work with that as a starting point.
I don’t think we have seen so far anything that suggests that we’re going to see any major increase in the extremes. Partly that comes about because the size of the basins that supply water to the lakes isn’t changing, and the outlets for each lake aren’t changing dramatically, at least in terms of the cross-section of the area. What we see happening there is there are small adjustments when there are high lake levels and maybe a little bit of scour and vice versa.
I would say that for the moment, I don’t see any change in the way the water levels fluctuate in the lakes.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: That is rare good news, I suppose, in this story of climate change.
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: It is, yes. From the point of view of the lake, too, the lakes don’t care whether the water levels fluctuate or not or whether they fluctuate more or less. There are some things that are important for the biology of the lakes.
One of the most vociferous groups on both of the IJC studies that I worked on were the biologists who, of course, were interested in the wetlands as fish habitat and, nowadays, sequestering organic material. Those are important for humans, but they’re not important for the lake. The lake, that’s the way it is.
I don’t think that we can see any major change in those fluctuations.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you. Would you agree, Mr. Stolle, with this optimistic view of our lakes?
Mr. Stolle: Yes, nothing is really happening. I know I’m repeating a lot of what he said, but he also teaches my course, so I’m happy to be on the same committee panel as him.
Realistically, a lot of this is slow changes. As I said in my opening remarks, we lack the data for hundreds and thousands of years to understand if this is really a change and if it’s going to be significant.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Could tell us a little about some of the natural solutions to help the coastal line regenerate? That might not be the correct word.
Mr. Stolle: Yes. A lot of these are not necessarily new. It’s stuff we’ve been doing for a very long time. Professor Davidson-Arnott mentioned wetlands are big for things such as sequestering carbon and organic material but also allowing the natural processes to take place.
One of the reasons we sound the alarm bells a lot in climate change is we really haven’t given space to the lakes or the oceans for those levels to change. The idea of these natural solutions are just providing space to those areas to respond to changing stressors. It’s not large changes. It’s just in a lot of cases we built so close to the coastline that those small changes are significant. So that’s kind of the idea of natural, nature-based solutions is really to give space to nature to respond.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. I have to admit that even though I live in Toronto, I probably don’t know much more than Senator Simons about the Great Lakes, but I certainly know some of these cottagers. I’m not one of them, but I know exactly what you’re talking about when you talk about complaining cottagers.
In any case, let me start with Professor Stolle. You spoke about the lack of data. I would like to probe that a little bit more. If you could tell me something about the reasons why you lack the data. Is it technological issues, lack of technology, developed technology to measure what you’re looking for? Is it a lack of resources? Is it bureaucratic entanglements? Can you just tell us more about the data issues and also what are the critical data that you’re looking for and that you’re lacking? Thank you.
Mr. Stolle: Thanks. Just in terms of lack of data, I’m going to preface with this that my bias as a coastal engineer is that we like wave data. That tends to be one quite difficult thing to measure. A lot of the mathematical models that we use on the St. Lawrence and the Pacific Coast as well are based on a couple of wave buoys that are offshore. Then we kind of have to use those models to move them toward the shore. Each time we do that, we add the error in our estimations.
In terms of the reason for the lack of data, I think part of it is this very decentralized approach. There is quite a bit of data in Canada. It just tends to be done by a couple of professors on the West Coast, a couple of professors on the East Coast, a couple of professors in Quebec. We are not necessarily following up. More recently, open-source data has been very important for the academic community, but it’s very much on the motivation of individual professors.
There are the tide stations by the Canadian Hydrographic Service for water levels, things like that. But often they aren’t kept at the same location for a long period of time except where really key, particularly in ports is where we have our longest time series. We’re really kind of lacking the spatial data. If you think of transport infrastructure in Quebec, we have Route 132 and Route 138 which pass, essentially, beside the St. Lawrence across the whole province. So we really need this high spatial resolution data.
It’s those two aspects. It’s a little that we started a little late, and now it’s quite decentralized. We’re not getting all that data in one place. It’s getting lost as professors retire, as practices end and things like that.
Senator Dasko: You think it needs more centralization, it needs somebody to take charge of collecting and analyzing it?
Mr. Stolle: Generally, in the coastal zone there could be a little bit of centralization because there are so many small committees and groups doing work that are maybe slightly different regionally. A lot of the objectives are all the same, so a little more sharing. Our largest group that brings us all together is the Coastal Zone Canada Association. It’s a completely volunteer organization I’m pretty sure, so there is no one maintaining that group together. It becomes quite difficult.
Senator Dasko: Is there an issue with other types of data that would be relevant for studying the seaway or is it just focused on the wave data that you were just talking about?
Mr. Stolle: No, water levels are definitely important and very local, they vary quite a bit. Having just one tide gauge is not going to be sufficient to cover a large area. Then more on the environmental side, we have all kinds of temperature data and [Technical difficulty] oxygen all those things that we are quite important, meteorological data. What we call met ocean data is really what we’re missing, which is meteorological, so weather, and then the ocean, which is kind of the physical processes like waves, tides, currents, things like that.
Senator Dasko: My next question is to Professor Davidson-Arnott. I want to pick up on the theme that came from Senator Miville-Dechêne. It sounds like from what you said that — you mentioned that there seem to be net benefits from melting, keeping the —
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: Speaking from the transporter — from tripping, yes.
Senator Dasko: Interpreting from what you said, the levels are pretty much the same over the years. So what are the main issues with climate change when it comes to the seaway that we’re talking about? Are there not a lot of serious issues or are there some? If there are some issues, what are the main ones with climate change then?
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: I’ll pick up on one of Professor Stolle, that is, of course, that erosion of bluffs make up about 40% of the shoreline of the lower Great Lakes; the Scarborough Bluffs being one of them. The lack of winter ice does mean that they are subject to more wave action, but more importantly there is a much longer ice-free period in the lake itself, which means that underwater erosion continues much more. We probably get something on the order of 20% to 25% increase in the rate at which those bluffs recede over time and the potential for them to do so. A lot of them now are being protected by armour stone, but that’s very expensive and not good for the environment.
The features of the lakes will continue to evolve as they have been doing. I worked on the Long Point, which is a 40-kilometre-long spit in Lake Erie. It continues to prograde further out into Lake Erie and so on.
My feeling is that the biggest impacts of climate change are the effects of temperature on the structure of the water column in the lakes, on the vegetation in the lakes, we get a lot of algae blooms and so on. On the populations, animal, fish and so on populations, in the lake themselves. So the biologists are the ones who have the greatest concerns about that.
For me, it doesn’t matter. If waves erode a bit more, that’s a bit more sand going onto the sandy beaches, which I like, and the cottagers will be happy with that. Don’t get me wrong. I love cottages. I mean, I don’t actually own one myself. Of course, much of the time, the difficulty is convincing people what the processes are and how far back you need to be.
One of the things in Ontario is the shoreline management plan takes into account not only long-term changes but also the need to account for these fluctuations in lake level so that the setbacks on sandy beaches allow for what is called dynamic beach, approximately a 30-metre setback that your house should be behind. We know that in low lake levels, your beach gets wider and everybody is happy. Then the water levels come up and then it starts to eat away at your beach. It may retreat inland 75 or 100 metres. So your cottage needs to be behind that. We need to allow the natural processes to have a dynamic fluctuation which is why it’s called a dynamic beach allowance just to allow for that.
Other than that, I don’t have huge — my problem is just to convince people that they should be able to work with that. I always tell them that I worked in the Bay of Fundy where people live with water-level fluctuations up to 12 or 14 metres twice a day. Surely we can adjust to a fluctuation in lake level that is often no more than two metres and often much less.
Senator Dasko: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: To begin with, if I understand correctly, you think the Great Lakes are healthy, meaning the lakes aren’t going to disappear. Locally, however, the lakes are experiencing biological and environmental effects from climate change, and that is clear to the people who live nearby.
My first question is about shipping. Now that there is less ice cover on the Great Lakes, shipping will experience an economic boom.
Will a longer shipping season in the Great Lakes and the shipment of that cargo further impact the people who live along the shore, or capes and cliffs?
[English]
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: I’m not an expert on shipping transport but because of my work I know a little bit about it. Yes, I think we can say that reduced ice cover means that there is potential for the shipping season to increase.
There are parts of the lakes and the U.S. lakes where shipping occurs all year round with the help of icebreakers. It will be less costly to do that because we will require less activity by icebreakers.
The number of years when there is virtually no ice will increase. This year, I took the train from Toronto to Ottawa. I saw no ice anywhere, not even in the harbours. It will continue this way; it has to. That’s something that is certain in terms of climate change.
From the point of view of shipping transportation, there are two issues. One is that the middle of the lakes is not a problem. It’s those areas between the Sault and coming down to Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. In those areas, because they are away from large wave action, ice builds up in them much more frequently, so they will be the last areas to become ice-free all year round.
The same is true of harbours. In Toronto, the ferries that go from the mainland to Toronto Island have to go through ice in the winter even though the main lake is completely ice-free. Those things will take longer to come about, but they will, and it will make things easier.
The reduction in ice cover may mean that some of the infrastructure for the harbours will be subjected to more wave action and erosion, so it will cost more to maintain them. I don’t deal with the coastal engineering of ports, but some of that may be offset by the fact of ice on the structures as well. To be honest, I think those will be small, so the major thing is that shipping can look forward and adjust the length of the shipping season to the reality of less ice cover.
[Translation]
Senator Aucoin: Thank you.
I live in Cape Breton, and I’m very familiar with the St. Lawrence Seaway and the effect of the Great Lakes. Back home, fishers are worried about offshore oil and gas activities in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. However, a few hundred oil tankers transit past our coastline every year, and it would take just one coming from Montreal or farther away to cause an environmental disaster, to say nothing of the containers that come close to the shoreline.
I’m not sure which of you will be able to answer my next question. We haven’t talked about seismic impacts. Geologically speaking, I don’t know whether the Great Lakes are on tectonic plates, because it’s not something that has come up. Do you know whether seismic impacts could cause changes to the Great Lakes in future years? Has that ever happened?
[English]
Mr. Davidson-Arnott: I don’t know enough. Further down the St. Lawrence there may be some earthquake activity. Generally speaking, for the Great Lakes, serious earthquake activity is unlikely; there is no historical record of that. It’s possible it could be something that might generate a small tsunami, but it would be very small. There are things called a meteotsunami, which are not produced by seismic but by particular dynamic meteorological conditions that produce this in terms of rapid wind changes. But again, these are small effects and not relevant to shipping or anything like that. I don’t think it’s likely to be part of the planning for shipping.
Mr. Stolle: Just to complete that, further down the St. Lawrence River near Baie-Saint-Paul there is a fault line where you can have some activity, but it’s not a particularly active fault line. You’re not going to get major tsunami events.
The largest concern on the East Coast of Canada is related to landslide tsunamis, which occurred most notably in the Burin Peninsula in 1929, I believe, which was a small earthquake that generated a landslide on the Laurentian Slope. But in the actual Gulf of Saint Lawrence, there is not a huge concern for tsunami.
Senator Simons: Mr. Davidson-Arnott, your comment about the lakes not caring reminds me of a conversation I had with someone once who said, “Climate change is killing the planet.” I said, “Oh, no. The planet will be fine. We may be gone, but the planet will continue without us.” But I guess the question isn’t so much that the lakes don’t care, it’s that in our transportation committee we care about the impact on transportation.
Professor Stolle, I wanted to ask about the impact of erosion, which is obviously going to be a longer-term problem than an intermittent storm surge or unusually high waves at some point. If the lack of ice means an accelerated process of erosion along the banks of the St. Lawrence, what is the timeline at which that erosion starts to create real problems for transport in and through that river way?
Mr. Stolle: Timelines are hard to evaluate because it depends locally. But in a lot of areas in Quebec, it’s already a big discussion in terms of what we are going to do with Route 132 and Route 138, because, in certain areas, it passes close to the coastline. It gets flooded and we often have to repair the infrastructure around it. For us, it will be an economic balance versus a scientific question.
Senator Simons: When you say Route132 and Route 138, to what does that refer?
Mr. Stolle: They are highways that pass just close to both the South Shore and the North Shore of the St. Lawrence.
Senator Simons: Okay. I’ve been thinking about the water. We also care about highways. What is the impact on the highways, then?
Mr. Stolle: These pass close to the shore lines and, in a lot of cases, right next to the St. Lawrence. In a lot of areas, it’s a big concern because it’s often the main transportation route. Sometimes it’s the only transportation route to get to certain places.
Senator Simons: This is unclear. Erosion is undermining the integrity of those highways?
Mr. Stolle: Or flooding them.
Senator Simons: Or flooding them. Is there active discussion about rerouting those highways?
Mr. Stolle: Yes. I believe Le ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité du Québec, or MTQ, now requires at least an analysis of how expensive it will be to reroute versus moving it. Is it better to reroute than putting in new infrastructure? I think that question will get much closer. Right now, it’s still more expensive to move the highway, but I think that will change soon.
Senator Simons: Are there rail lines that might also be affected by this?
Mr. Stolle: Yes, definitely in certain regions of the South Shore. Less probably under your domain, but the tourist train at Charlevoix also is under risk.
Senator Simons: The green hydrogen train?
Mr. Stolle: Yes.
Senator Simons: I want to ride on that train, but I would like it not to fall into the water. That would be good. Thank you. That’s helpful because we have been focusing on the water. To understand the impact on the other transportation supply chain issues is critical to our study. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Professor Davidson-Arnott and Professor Stolle, thank you for being with us today and answering our questions.
[Translation]
Honourable senators, for our second panel this morning, we are pleased to welcome Gino Moretti, Mayor of the Municipality of Saint-Anicet and Chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, as well as Eamonn Horan-Lunney, Senior Director of Policy, Canada, also from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.
[English]
Welcome and thank you for joining us. We will begin with Mayor Moretti’s opening remarks of five minutes before we turn it over to Q and A. You have the floor.
Gino Moretti, Chair and Mayor, Municipality of Saint-Anicet, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative: Thank you very much for allowing us to be here. To give you some background, I’m passionate to be alive. After 36 years in the military, getting injured a couple of times and having post-traumatic stress disorder — I was diagnosed six years ago — I have to calm myself down. I apologize in advance but if I speed up, I will slow down. Please be patient with me. Thank you.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I represent the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a group of 250 mayors, local leaders across the freshwater basin, Canada and the United States. The Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence region provides 20% of the world’s freshwater to over 40 million people in both countries, a natural resource we must protect.
I want to thank the past governments, both Conservative and Liberal, for the Canada Community-Building Fund stability which our American counterparts wish they had in their own system.
Canadian municipalities are dedicated to collaborating with the government on national issues such as the current affordable housing crisis. Today, however, I present a critical challenge that demands collective action and strategic investment to sustain Canada’s freshwater marine commerce in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Basin, which spans over two countries, the United States and Canada; which includes eight states and two provinces; and which, most of all includes over 1,500 local governments.
As a marine-time strategy, the Blue Economy Strategy, involving Canada’s freshwater marine commerce, is crucial. It’s driven by a commitment to ensure the supply chain. Historically, Canada has focused more on saltwater than on freshwater policies. For the first time in a generation, Ontario and Quebec have a maritime strategy. Following Quebec’s lead, Ontario actively supports a policy to facilitate the movement of people and goods across the freshwater system. Simon Kinsley, with the Government of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, pursued the Blue Economy Strategy. Emphasizing the importance of our freshwater resources, we aim to strengthen our freshwater maritime infrastructure and foster economic growth through this unique opportunity.
Regarding the legacy of transportation infrastructure challenges, the transfer of transportation infrastructure ownership from the Canadian government to local government and The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation in the 1980s and 1990s was beneficial to local initiatives but challenging for system-wide change. Many legacy transportation accesses along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes now rest with local government; otherwise, organizations needed more authority to sustain development.
Urgent attention and collaborative solutions are required to address fiscal imbalances and to ensure resilience of our transportation infrastructure. This is crucial if we want to move more people and goods on a low-carbon transportation system that has been the foundation of regional economic prosperity since before colonization.
With regard to climate adaptation and infrastructure resilience, the challenges to the physical environment intensify by climate change and directly threaten infrastructure, much of which in a life cycle, the reduction of ice coverage in the basin presents environmental challenges, with winter storms causing substantial damage and erosion, and weather events damaging retaining walls. Uncertainty of weather and high repair bills surpass the capacity of local governments, which receive only 8 cents to every tax dollar to safeguard the movement of goods and people across the freshwater Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region. We must address the escalating costs of climate-related change to our infrastructure.
The creation of the Canada Water Agency, with the Government of Canada’s renewed commitment to freshwater and the National Adaptation Strategy, encourage exploring economic impacts and opportunities of investing climate resilience infrastructure.
Cooperating with our American colleagues in the freshwater basin, we have an opportunity for the federal governments of both countries to work together on policy programming. Changes to encourage the movement of goods and people across international freshwater regions, Montreal and other St. Lawrence River ports, are critical to linking the freshwater region to world supply chains.
In conclusion, this year, Canadian and American mayors from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative region joined in developing an economic transformation plan for water commerce. For enhanced movement across the freshwater system, local governments can lay the foundation for an environmentally sustainable economy for the next generation by developing and leveraging the combined efforts of federal and provincial governments in aligned policy programs and funding mechanisms. Current programming and policies need adjustments to allow Canadian local governments to experiment with innovative solutions for efficient and sustainable growth. We must also navigate the challenge of legacy infrastructure. In the burgeoning maritime sector, let us work cooperatively in securing our nation’s prosperity for a resilient future.
With local government confidence and all government industry and other stakeholders working together, we can find a way to create more jobs, world-leading intellectual property, as we heard earlier from the professors, and economic activity in an environment that is sustainable and can generate revenue needed for the investment. How can we do this together for the next generation? Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Welcome gentlemen. Mr. Moretti, I have a question for you. Thank you for giving us an overview and sharing the concerns of your initiative with us. However, you are the mayor of Saint-Anicet, so I’d like you to talk about the situation in Saint-Anicet. What do you need in terms of resources? Is the water level rising? We were told that rising water levels aren’t an issue in the Great Lakes. Tell us about the problems you are facing, the resources you have and the resources you’d like to have.
Mr. Moretti: First of all, the municipality is located at the beginning of Lake St. Francis, which is where the St. Lawrence River starts. We get outflow from Lake Ontario. Lake St. Francis is controlled by two dams, the Ogdensburg dam, in Cornwall, and the Beauharnois dam, near Valleyfield. Unfortunately, when there’s no ice, we see a lot of erosion and sediment, because of climate change.
Currently, certain parts of Saint-Anicet have 43 square kilometres of water. The erosion is very visible. We have sediment that is building up, which will cause flooding in those areas. The water level will rise six inches, as we saw last summer, with the ice storm. However, erosion or under-erosion is eating away at all the infrastructure. The first three municipalities along the St. Lawrence River are all rural municipalities with fewer than 2,800 residents. We don’t have the resources we need. We don’t have the funding we need.
In 1979, the Municipality of Saint-Anicet got a pier from the federal government so it could be developed. We’ve been waiting six years for repairs to be done to the pier. It was damaged by erosion and climate change, which are impacting water current and sediment. That is the situation in Saint-Anicet, senator.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: You don’t get any money from the federal government?
Mr. Moretti: No, municipalities along the St. Lawrence River get no money from the federal or provincial government. There is no money at all. Nothing. The responsibility is on municipalities to find innovative ways to bring down the water level. Unfortunately, property owners — like myself — are responsible for protecting their property. I lost 300 feet of land because of erosion.
We try to take into account the recommendations we get from biologists and engineers, but there is no ice. The ice would protect the water’s edge. Keep in mind that when the government set about developing the St. Lawrence River, it was an innovative undertaking, but I don’t think the government factored in changes in the current, climate change and the width, which are causing problems right now. Sediment is building up, so the water is rising. We were lucky in the summer, because my small municipality had only three floods. We have a staff of just 21 people. We have more volunteers who help us out, to ensure that those who live on their own are able to protect their homes.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a follow-up question. I heard that both the Ontario and Quebec governments had non-marine water strategies. Will the strategies make a difference? We tried to invite the officials responsible for the strategies, but we didn’t get a yes. I realize that you don’t have any money, but does anyone anywhere care about what’s happening to you? Is anything being done?
Mr. Moretti: Yes, something is being done. I will let my colleague talk about that.
[English]
Eamonn Horan-Lunney, Senior Director Policy, Canada, Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative: Just to confirm, are you asking about the Province of Ontario and the Province of Quebec having a maritime strategy?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Yes.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: That’s an economic strategy for the first time in a generation. They’re looking at how to create a shipbuilding sector. How do you get enough people to work in that sector? How do you create new corridors for moving goods and people around? I think your earlier question was about erosion and the water levels.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Yes.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: This past year, the federal government has done more on freshwater than they have in almost a generation. The creation of the Canada Water Agency has created pressure among many departments looking at freshwater for the first time, which they haven’t done before. This is something that the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative was very active with back in 2017, 2018 and 2019, when we drafted a number of reports working with people in Ontario and Quebec. Those recommendations are now becoming pilot programs for the Canada Water Agency. This past year, for the first time that people are aware of, Natural Resources Canada, or NRCan, which has always looked at shoreline erosion on the saltwater coasts, has allowed freshwater coasts to apply for pilot projects.
Right now, we’re at a wonderful moment when things are just starting. We are very optimistic this whole-of-government approach, whether it be the National Adaptation Strategy, which looks at the economic impacts of climate change; whether it be the Freshwater Action Plan, which looks at many key freshwater bodies across Canada; whether it be this new flood mapping they are starting to do — these are all starting right now. It’s too early for me to say whether they are, what we are saying is that it’s very encouraging that the federal government is getting involved in freshwater policy in many different departments with these little pilot projects that we’re hoping we can leverage at the local government level to show the need, because a municipality like this will never have the tax base to pay for the erosion that is happening in our community.
Those erosions effect everything. It affects your housing. I know that there are communities on Lake Erie that have had homes along the waterfront since before photography. Those homes have always been there, but now, due to climate change, they are under threat. They can no longer have septic tanks there. If you can’t flush your toilet, you can’t have a home. What are they going to do with the 100 homes there? This is happening all along the shorelines of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence.
As we deal with legacy infrastructure that was built, whether during the time of the Seaway — which is usually very hard infrastructure — or things that were built before we fully understood the variation for water levels and different lakes or different shore lines — whether it be a retaining wall for a community in Niagara Region or homes that have been there since the 1800s along the St. Lawrence, we have businesses and homes that are now at risk. The local tax base will never be enough to deal with it. How do we come up with strategies to deal with that shoreline while, at the same time as we’re investing, we create the next economic opportunities?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Mr. Moretti: Concordia University has a program starting in March under the leadership of Professor Lee. I am the president of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, and I served as the co-president of La Table de concertation régionale Haut-Saint-Laurent – Grand Montréal.
Also, in the community zone —
[Translation]
— which is a priority version —
[English]
— on the St. Lawrence. The problem we have is a lack of understanding of what is happening not only on the surface of the water, but below the water where it is eroding most of the shoreline, taking the bluff into the middle of the seaway, which will have an impact for the economy.
Professor Lee of Concordia University, with the help of Queen’s University and Trent University, as well as one in upstate New York, working together cooperatively with city initiative, with NOAA and also the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers trying to find a solution in that respect.
[Translation]
Senator Simons: Thank you, mayor. Your comments are very informative, because I’m currently doing a bit of digging into municipal versus federal powers.
[English]
Because we’re doing this study as case studies, we have heard from the mayors in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, who are left with the costs of dealing with the erosion of the Chignecto Isthmus. We heard from municipal leaders in the metro Vancouver area, who have been downloaded responsibility for maintaining dikes.
I sometimes feel that municipalities get bamboozled and are told congratulations, we are giving you autonomy and power, you can be in control of this, but then they’re left holding the baby with no money to pay for the infrastructure.
With the understanding that no municipality wants to give up its autonomy — obviously, at the beginning of your testimony, you talked about how important it was that people got their individual power back, but now you’re left with a small tax base that cannot possibly build the infrastructure needed to prevent erosion. Mr. Horan-Lunney talked about the beginning of new policies. What do you need in concrete terms to make sure that your communities don’t erode under your feet?
Mr. Moretti: We all need facts. Local governments are closer to the population and too often academic in their own perspective — find the research, we need to consult local municipalities.
I spent quite a few years in New Brunswick. Canada has done great for the East and West Coast on erosion. Freshwater, unfortunately has been neglected. My belief is that Canada needs to participate with NOAA as a partnership, and also with the U.S. Corps of Engineers. These two organizations, with Canada, have some of the smartest people, academically, to find a solution.
For small municipalities, to have a person do the study but share the study across the small municipality — the best learned practices evolve. Sometimes, we have to remove some bureaucracy steps. I don’t have the final funding. I only have a budget of $5 million, and I have 43 kilometres of shoreline. One thing we often forget — we mentioned early about an oil spill. If there is an oil spill in the saltwater, the salt will dissolve the oil quite fast. Unfortunately, in freshwater, when the merchant ship goes by, if you have an oil spill, there is nothing. The Canadian Coast Guard doesn’t have the infrastructure to contain that and neither does the American Coast Guard, so we’re left — for my municipality — with 21 volunteer firefighters to contain that oil spill in the St. Lawrence Seaway until help from the federal government comes. There is no time right now on the emergency plan, on the resources for small municipalities, or the share of technical resources.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: We have the benefit of being a binational organization. We get to see how the Canadian government and Ontario and Quebec deal with their municipalities. We get to see how eight U.S. states deal with their infrastructure issues. There are pros and cons to either system. The Americans get an incredible amount of money periodically. It’s very periodically. We get stable, predictable long-term funding, but it’s not enough. There are pros and cons to either system.
Right now, the fiscal framework in each municipality is zoned depending on its province — somewhere between 60% to 80% of all infrastructure — but they only get eight cents on the tax dollar. There is a wonderful survey by Statistics Canada going on right now that is looking at all of the infrastructure across Canada. We are trying to find out if shoreline infrastructure, whether it be hard infrastructure like retaining walls and bridges, and unknown, like the soft infrastructure parts are included. If we have to go around and protect all of the shorelines in the Great Lakes — and Ontario has more coastline than any other province — and along the St. Lawrence, what will be the cost of doing that to ensure that all of these things are not eroding into the lakes?
Our fiscal framework is not solid enough right now so that municipalities can have the resources they need. All the economic activity that is being created by the new shipping and new supply chains — municipalities are not going to see that. The ships are going by your community. You might not ever see the economic activity in your community, but you’re taking the risk from the erosion and from the shipping. Until we find a way to get the economic framework to better recognize the municipal risks and assets, it’s going to be challenging to really solve this problem.
Senator Simons: Can you talk about the roads and rail lines that go through your community and if they are facing impacts from this?
Mr. Moretti: Definitely. As the professor mentioned, Route 132 starts in Dundee, which is about 10 kilometres from my municipality. Route 132 is also a thing in case the Iroquois Dam breaks or the [Technical difficulty] it will control the water. We have no train where we’re at right now but we do have one road coming in our valley, which is Route 132. Increased erosion will have an impact.
As you move closer to Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Montreal, then you talk about flooding having a major impact on the arteries of Highway 20 and Highway 40. The train line and the [Technical difficulty] will be affected. They have to go across the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the infrastructure does have an impact.
Senator Simons: You had you have a bridge as well.
Mr. Moretti: Yes.
Senator Simons: I came into this meeting today thinking we were going to talk about water transportation, but it’s really been a revelation to me to think that the impact of the erosion is also affecting rail and roadways as well.
Mr. Moretti: I had a chance to participate with the Maritime industry on how they can improve Maritime movement of people and goods across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. Most Canadian companies who do go there are going bankrupt. It’s better to do business outside Canada than it is in the Great Lakes. If you take the Great Lake and the St. Lawrence’s industries, it would be the third-largest partner of investment in North America.
With shipping of goods, if we want to reduce the number of trains and trucks, small ships can go from point A to point B and have less impact on erosion due to waves, and also move the goods. The second point is, if you take a boat tour to Duluth, Minnesota and go to Montreal, you should be able to climb on that boat, stop in Toronto and stop in Waddington, New York. Waddington, New York is having a major financial problem. There is nobody stopping there as they used to with the riverboat, so it hurts their economy.
Saint-Anicet was a commercial point in early 1800 and 1900s. If I can get a shore exhibition ship stopping in, it would help my local economy, and that money I can reinvest it in my shoreline protection.
Senator Simons: Thank you. I want to come to visit your town.
Mr. Moretti: You are more than welcome. Please, all of you, I would love to host you in St. Anicet. We have a saying:
[Translation]
In French, it goes, C’est le paradis de la MRC du Haut-Saint-Laurent et la perle de notre province.
[English]
It is the paradise of the Le Haut-Saint-Laurent Regional County, but a pearl of the province. A pearl can only develop with all key players in force. A pearl, if it is bad water, it will not grow. A pearl will grow if it has clean, sustainable resource for the next generation.
Senator Dasko: Thank you for being here today. I have a couple of questions. Is Toronto a member of your organization?
Mr. Moretti: Toronto and Chicago —
Senator Dasko: I was going to ask about Chicago and Detroit.
Mr. Moretti: Chicago and Toronto were the founding members of this organization. Twenty-one years ago, Mayor Thompson stated that the federal, provincial and state governments have a lot on their plates. We need to take more of an active role of local government. Yes, Detroit is also part; Montreal, Quebec City, Rimouski.
Senator Dasko: Chicago?
Mr. Moretti: Chicago, Milwaukee. We have over 250 municipalities involved. We are expanding at the same time.
Senator Dasko: That’s great. All these big cities are part of the organization.
Mr. Moretti: Exactly.
Senator Dasko: Can you go to them for some resources?
Mr. Moretti: I go and speak with them. We have created eight states and two provinces. Our lead pipe problem in Canada is less than in the United States, so we do share best practices in Canada.
For the Great Lakes, how do we protect our erosion? How do we go from an industrialized corridor to a greenbelt corridor with a blue economy? We share the same practice.
Mayors have no boundaries. We share the best practices. We have a chance to represent the organization, whether it’s in Washington, D.C., or here today to make our voice binational as Mr. Eamonn Horan-Lunney stated. We are truly one force.
Senator Dasko: Wonderful. Mr. Horan-Lunney, I wanted to pick up on your comments about the American cities and their involvement. You talked about different kinds of funding that the Canadians and the Americans receive. Can you describe that in a little more detail? Are there any differences? Do the American cities make an important contribution to the organization and to these issues? Do they deal with these issues differently in terms of mitigation or points of view?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: The Americans had stable funding year over year through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. But the American budget cycles are different than ours. They have to apply for that money every year. It has to be reappropriated. Next week, I think 15 mayors will be going to Washington, D.C., as part of a bigger group of about 300 people from Great Lake stakeholder groups, for five days of lobbying. That’s what they need to do every year to ensure their funding continues. That will include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsible for a lot of the U.S. infrastructure. That includes the U.S. Coast Guard to make sure they get funding for their helicopters to fly and rescue people. Everyone that gets funding along the Great Lakes will be in Washington next week to put pressure on Congress and the senators to get this year’s funding approved again.
That’s what I said earlier, we have stable, predictable, long-term funding, but it’s not enough. With the Inflation Reduction Act, the amount of money available to municipalities on the American side is exponentially more than in Canada. But three years prior they had no funding. With different political systems, it’s very different ecosystems for municipal governments to get funding.
Senator Dasko: Are you able to learn anything from the Americans?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Everything down there is application based, from what I understand. Even if you are approved one year, you have to go back the second, third and the fourth year. Right now, there is a project to try to stop invasive carp from coming to the Great Lakes. That is something that we are working on, or there are the locks up in Sault Ste Maire, “or the Soo,” on the American side. Although they have multiyear programs and projects, they have to go back, year after year, to make sure next year’s allotment of money comes through. I’m not an expert on that. That’s how I understand it. They look at us with our consistency with envy to some degree.
Senator Dasko: Are they getting funding for the mitigation projects like the shoreline initiatives?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Yes, those are application based and they have to apply every year.
Mr. Moretti: We also have a member of NOAA within our team, which allows us easier access to statistics or data for the shoreline erosion. This is why I think Canada needs to take a role sharing with NOAA and the corps of engineers. The corps of engineers is doing all the southern part of the United States, erosion and the impact on transportation, roads, bridges and infrastructure. We need to join this organization also to share that knowledge between boundaries. The vice-chair alternates every two years with Americans.
When we do address it, I am addressing Congress on the same principle. It’s ironic, mayors have no boundaries. We have the same problem in the United States that we have in Canada. There is a difference in Quebec, because the federal government goes right to the provincial government and municipalities don’t always get what they ask for. But that’s the reality. In the United States, when they have a program, there is an engineer with technical background helping the small municipality to move forward.
Senator Dasko: Sometimes I wondered whether the Americans are taking climate change as seriously. You believe they are?
Mr. Moretti: It depends. I’m invited to attend a Republican election campaign in July. I don’t talk about environmental changes. I talk about blue economy, what is the impact on the shoreline? What is the prevention of flooding? The economy is jobs. The economy also has a job in maintaining those retaining walls in small municipalities. The Republicans are a bit more open in that approach there. For the Democrats, it is a bit easier.
In Canada, one of our strengths is bipartisan. When it comes to the problem in Canada, all parties are willing to help together, which is a plus for us.
Senator Dasko: Thank you very much.
Senator Cardozo: Welcome witnesses. It is fascinating to listen to you. I have a few questions to understand the situation a bit more.
We have talked about the erosion along shorelines, especially along the river, there have been wear and tear. When water moves, it erodes the sides of the river. Is what we’re seeing now a lot worse than otherwise? Is this due to climate change or is this just normal wear and tear?
Mr. Moretti: It’s more. Where I reside, in St. Anicet, I met my wife. She is the eighth generation on the land. Her ancestors established in 1812. I mention the erosion. There is constantly erosion, especially due to the shipping going on, and it creates a suction. There is no ice. The ice did protect it. I now have bays which are being filled in. I have other places where the current and the winds are more. Erosion, people are losing 5 or 10 feet within a couple of years. I’ve lost 300 feet of ground due to the winds and erosion since 1970.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: The freshwater in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence region has been a foundation of our region’s economy and society for thousands of years. Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Cleveland, Buffalo and countless other cities were all once First Nations communities where they come together and trade and prosper.
With the settlers, we have the creation of the Lachine Canal, the Welland Canal, the Erie Canal, and all of a sudden this interior freshwater area had access to the global markets. That created the prosperity we had in this region for the last 200 years. Eighty years ago we built the St. Lawrence Seaway to make sure we could, with changing technology, continue this connection.
Right now, the lack of sea ice is creating a huge economic opportunity and a risk. With this lack of sea ice, we have the ability to change how we move people and goods around the Great Lakes year round. Does this mean a new supply chain so that an auto manufacturer that has a battery plant near Montreal or Toronto is able to move batteries to an assembly plant near Chicago year round with the lack of ice? Quite possibly. There are all types of new things we can do that we have not been able to do because of sea ice and the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway seasonality.
At the same time we have this economic opportunity, the environmental and economic risks to all the properties along the shoreline are worse now than we have seen since photography. How do we balance this new economic opportunity with these new economic and environmental risks? These are not things that the local governments will ever have the capacity to do themselves. So how do we work bi-nationally, federally, provincially, states together to make this happen? This is a caution I throw to you as you look at the transportation aspects.
Senator Cardozo: What’s different now in the climate? Have you got more or less ice or water rising?
Mr. Moretti: Less ice.
Senator Cardozo: Do you have more storms?
Mr. Moretti: Less ice, flash flooding due to environmental changes. Even right now, this warm weather has an impact on the farmers along the St. Lawrence Seaway. Some people have lost all their crop. There is no snow cover, which has an impact. The St. Lawrence Seaway area is impacted directly by the wind and the cold weather.
Senator Cardozo: Farms aren’t allowed to take water out of the river to water their farms?
Mr. Moretti: Some 40 million people take water out of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes for drinking. Some of the farms will take water to take care of their crops.
Senator Cardozo: Are there concerns about pollution of the water?
Mr. Moretti: Yes.
Senator Cardozo: In general and when you’re using it for farming?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: With the farming and nutrients? We’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of the City of Toledo’s water plants being at risk because of the toxic algae bloom on Lake Erie, which was so large that if it moved another kilometre it would have shut down all the drinking water in Toledo. Yes, there are concerns about that. We are working on that on a number of other fronts as well.
Mr. Moretti: There’s a municipality in the United States where there’s a nuclear reactor not being used. Right now, this creates a major problem with the uranium inside. If it does leak, it will leak into the Great Lakes and that will create a disaster.
Senator Cardozo: Can I ask you about the other associations that work in the Great Lakes? What’s your role versus their role? How do you work together? The ones that I know, the Great Lakes Commission, the Council of the Great Lakes Region and the Nature Conservancy.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Depending on the issue, we work with different groups. I know the Council of the Great Lakes Region, we are working with them on a number of economic issues that are coming up this year.
Senator Cardozo: How is their mandate different from yours?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Our mandate is quite clear. We represent municipal governments.
Senator Cardozo: You’re on the shorelines.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Within the basin, yes.
Mr. Moretti: That is critical for mayors and municipalities to share the best practices and lessons learned across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. Other organizations, we do have partnerships with them, but when it comes to doing a study of the impact, we will assist and vice versa.
Senator Cardozo: What is the mandate of the Council of the Great Lakes Region?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Theirs is economically focused and it’s a collection of economic interested stakeholders. There are academics and companies. We work with them on some aspects like the circular economy, how to reduce plastics in our environments, things like that.
Senator Cardozo: What about the ports?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: We work with them, but depending on — this goes back to jurisdiction law. The ports are not owned by municipalities, so we might work with them but they’re their own entities.
Mr. Moretti: We do work with the St. Lawrence Economic Development Council. Mr. Mathieu St-Pierre, who is the president, is trying to get the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence to have a shipping line, smaller ships back and forth, as well as tourism, to promote to get people to explore what our forefathers did when they came to the St. Lawrence Seaway to go out West.
Senator Cardozo: What I am leading to, in terms of the issue of the erosion, is, are the other associations part of the discussion?
Mr. Horan-Lunney: It leans more toward the environmental groups. Conservation Ontario is an organization we work very closely with, usually because they have jurisdiction in much of Ontario. On the American side, we work with the U.S. Corps of Engineers. Who is responsible for that is usually whom we partner with to try to bring things forward.
Senator Cardozo: Okay. One last thing is federal money. I was at another committee yesterday and we were talking about National Defence and how disgraceful our spending is on defence. I’ve been at the Senate for about a year and a quarter. There’s rarely a group that comes to the Senate and says, “We’ve got enough federal funding. Stop giving us money.” Every cause is really important, there’s no doubt about it. You’re up against everybody else, it’s National Defence, Ukraine, opioids, cancer. What’s your pitch?
Mr. Moretti: Our pitch, sir, is quite simple: Water is life. Without water, there is no life. Even though we’ve stated this planet will survive, if the water is polluted, there’s no growth in agriculture. If there’s no growth in agriculture, there’s no food and no water. It goes back to a vicious circle. All the other organizations that were stated, we try to meet with them, share best practices, what the objectives are of local governments — because we are a government proxy meeting right with the citizens — understanding some of the issues. I realize all organizations do ask the federal government for funding. We have nowhere else to turn. We don’t have the financial background.
Mr. Horan-Lunney: Also, if you look at the national adaptation strategy, there are documents in there that show for every dollar — right now the federal government is spending $1.5 billion a year on floods after the fact. It’s already spending $1.5 billion after the floods have gone by and done the damage. I’m sorry, I don’t have the numbers off the top of my head. It’s a one-to-seven ratio. Please look this up. If you spend $1 in prevention, you’ll save $7 in spending. So if they’re already spending $1.5 billion, if you make strategic investments, how much are you saving three, five years, 10 years down the road?
Senator Cardozo: Thank you. I see we have a shoreline former mayor here who has joined us. Thank you very much for your answers.
The Chair: Gentlemen, thank you for being with us this morning, answering our questions and enlightening us on our continued study on climate change.
Colleagues, we will suspend so our witnesses can leave the room and then we’re going to go in camera for a few minutes on some business.
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee resumed in public.)
The Chair: Colleagues, do we have a motion to accept the budget as proposed for the fact-finding missions to Hamilton and to Montreal? Is it agreed?
Senator Miville-Dechêne: So moved.
The Chair: Carried. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)