:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity to speak to you today.
On behalf of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, I am pleased to contribute a municipal perspective on urban conservation practices as you consider a national conservation plan.
We have been the national voice of municipal governments since 1901. We represent nearly 2,000 municipal governments which, in turn, represent more than 90% of Canada's population. Local governments share stewardship of the environment with other orders of government. Municipalities designate local parks, protect the urban tree canopy, local lakes and rivers, and ensure that Canadians can continue to rely on the environmental, social, and economic benefits of these spaces.
Urban forests are hugely beneficial to communities. They keep neighbourhoods cool, improve air quality, provide wildlife habitat, remove CO2 from the atmosphere, retain stormwater runoff, and prevent erosion. Urban forests also add esthetic, recreational, and economic value to communities, all of which enhance the quality of life. In 2011, Oakville valued these benefits at $2.1 million annually, and Peel Region at $22.7 million annually.
Canada's urban forests face significant threats from invasive pest species such as the emerald ash borer and the mountain pine beetle, as well as climate change, which supports the expansion of invasive species, or in some communities leads to conditions such as drought which kills trees. Municipalities bear the high costs of managing these challenges, although the problem is national. The emerald ash borer illustrates the conservation challenges and costs faced by municipalities.
First identified in Canada in 2002 in the city of Windsor, the emerald ash borer has spread into many parts of southern Ontario and Quebec and is expected to soon hit Manitoba. The emerald ash borer will cost Canadians over $2 billion in treatment and replanting activities. The city of Kitchener estimates the cost of $10.4 million to eradicate the emerald ash borer, $7.5 million of which would need to be spent within the next five years. Toronto's emerald ash borer management plan was estimated to be $1.14 million in 2011. Toronto is spending $7 million per year in preventive treatment of trees.
Climate change is creating in Canada a warmer and, in some areas, a drier climate, which adds to the challenge of managing urban forests. The mountain pine beetle has decimated millions of acres of B.C. forests and has now spread to Alberta and Saskatchewan, partly because of successive dry summers and mild winters. Communities such as Prince George, B.C. have seen parks completely decimated, negatively impacting property values and creating high management costs. Between 2005 and 2011, the city spent over $9.52 million operating its mountain pine beetle and community wildfire protection programs.
Other urban canopies face different climate problems. In the city of Edmonton over the last decade, an average of 43,000 trees have died annually due to drought conditions, compared to previous annual loss rates of 600 to 900 trees. Despite spending millions of dollars, Edmonton has been unable to keep pace with tree losses. Edmonton's urban forest management plan is helping the municipality manage their canopy, but significant adaptation costs remain.
The federal government plays an important role in addressing this problem, from both statutory and economic perspectives.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is mandated to prevent the importation, exportation, and spread of plant pests under the Plant Protection Act. Under this act the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can place restrictions or prohibitions on items that may enable the transport of forest pests, and designate quarantine zones, or areas or zones free of specific tree species.
Although municipalities have incurred high costs to comply with these federal orders, no compensation has been provided to municipalities. These federal orders are designed to slow infestation across the region and provincial borders rather than limit infestation to the affected municipality. This means that any compliance costs incurred by infected municipalities are borne for the benefit of the country as a whole.
In terms of financial support, the now defunct Environment Canada invasive alien species partnership program enabled municipalities to apply for funds to control and eradicate forest pests. Between 2005 and 2012, $5.7 million of the invasive alien species partnership program was allocated to the control of pests, and $85 million of that budget was allocated to 170 projects focused on preventing, detecting, and managing invasive alien species. The maximum request for funding under the program was $50,000, too small to have much of an effect compared with the millions spent annually by communities. The funding for the invasive alien species partnership program was terminated as of March 31, 2012.
Short on effective funding, the program also had structural inefficiency. For example, in the context of B.C.'s mountain pine beetle infestation, uncertainties about the definition of invasive species made communities struggling with this pest ineligible for the funds. This, in turn, led to an insufficient response and continued propagation into Alberta and Saskatchewan. Although Prince George and others were able to access other federal programs, such as the two-year community adjustment fund, it also ended in 2011, while the problem persists.
This brings me to solutions.
Municipalities are doing their part to implement a range of strategies to protect the health of urban forests. However, threats to urban forests are often beyond the control of local and even provincial and territorial governments. There is an important role for the federal government to play, and we have some recommendations.
Our first recommendation is to make partnerships between all orders of government official policy with respect to urban forest management, including climate change and forest pests, across municipal, provincial, and territorial borders. Partnerships between all orders of government on strategies to contain forest pests, adapt to climate change, and other forestry initiatives will lead to the best outcomes for Canadians.
The second recommendation is that the government should take a leadership role in urban forestry through a broadened research mandate. Neither the federal nor the provincial governments currently include urban forestry in their mandates, except for a limited role with respect to exotic invasive pests. Other jurisdictions, such as the United States Forest Service and the European Urban Forestry Research and Information Centre, include urban forestry as a program and research area. With climate change and other stresses expected to play a greater role, this work will be important in enabling communities across the country to adapt to future risks.
Our third recommendation is that the government provide financial support to combat urban forest threats of a national scope.
The cost of managing the impacts of invasive pests and climate change on urban forests is in the billions of dollars. The government should establish funding assistance to municipalities for the control and management of species, such as the emerald ash borer, and any future significant diseases and insects. The government should also create and fund programs designed to support the ongoing sustainable management of urban forests.
Thank you very much.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, members of the committee. I am very happy to be here with you today.
The Conseil régional de l'environnement (CRE) covers the territory of Laval. There are 16 regional environmental councils in Quebec, serving the entire region, with the exception of the far north. The regional councils are created by environmental organizations and by the public. They are grassroots organizations.
For the past 16 years, the Conseil régional de l'environnement de Laval has been working on the protection, conservation and development of natural environments, land use planning, public transport, waste management and so on. We have a small team of four professionals. We have an urban planner, a geographer, an ecologist and myself, working in environment and ecology.
Since the 1950s, our land use planning has had a major impact on our ecosystems and natural environments. We are actually exceeding the capacity of our ecosystems, meaning water, air and soil. That means that we are currently eating up capital. We are spending more than we are making in interest, and we no longer benefit from ecological services.
The loss of natural environments in urban areas and urban fringes, especially in southern Canada, is affecting climate change. We are seeing a loss of natural environments and biodiversity, a loss of flood plains, a loss of farmland and poor management of rainwater. We have been looking at what is happening in our region, in Richelieu, as well as around Red River. We have been looking at everything that is happening in the other provinces. We are seeing erosion because of excessive logging. We are seeing the poor quality of our waterways because we are now building along them. We are channeling the waterways and draining asphalt and all sorts of chemicals from cars into our waterways. This has been largely documented. We are also seeing the erosion of shorelines and sewage discharges, meaning everything that flows into our water.
There are also heat islands. I am actually leading a research project, one of the most extensive research projects ever conducted in North America. It covers the Montreal area. The university consortium includes the University of Montreal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Institut de recherche de biologie végétale. In the metropolitan area, from 1985 to 2005, we lost between 6 to 7 hectares of farmland and natural environments per year. That means that we are losing 12 to 14 hectares of natural environments and farmland every year because of urban sprawl.
We can see urban sprawl, the poor quality of our landscapes, the one person per car pattern—which produces substantial CO2 emissions—air pollution, smog, the use of wood-burning stoves in some urban fringes and even in urban centres because of condominiums. There are a lot of households, and the energy demand is high. We are constantly using too much and requiring more energy.
So the CRE feels that one of the issues that deserves special attention is the management of lands so as to be mindful of the capacity of our ecosystems. On the north shore of Laval, where there are more than 500,000 people, we have had water supply problems since 2001. Following an order in council, we are required to blast the rocks between the Lac des Deux Montagnes and the Rivière-des-Mille-Îles to provide 400,000 or 500,000 residents with water.
If we had not done that, we would have jeopardized people's lives last summer. In terms of heat islands, there was a loss of biodiversity in 2010. Yes, it is important. We are talking about invasive plants, which is also important. However, climate change and heat islands are part of the reality. In 2010, in a seven-week period, 106 people died in Montreal during the heat wave. Those figures have been documented. If we do not think about that and about what a life is worth, we have some serious questions to ask ourselves, and we must reconsider our values. We are not just talking about economic values, we are talking about the life of the planet. I urge you to seriously look at everything that is being said and everything that is happening. The clock is ticking. It is one minute to midnight, not five minutes to midnight. We are running out of time.
It is now important to pay attention to the densification of lands to reduce the pressure on natural environments and farmland, as well as land use planning based on public and active transportation. We also have to identify and define the natural environments that need protection, conservation and development. In all the development plans in cities across Canada, when we determine the industrial areas, business areas and residential areas, we forget to specify which natural environments we are going to protect, preserve and, above all, make available to Canadians.
We are also talking about creating buffer zones. Depending on where you are in Canada, some regions have industrial areas, and people live close to some of those areas. Buffer zones should be created to limit the impact on health.
It is also a question of looking at legislation, guidelines and government regulations from a sustainable development point of view. The legislation is falling by the wayside and it is not being applied. We are afraid to apply the legislation and we are often wondering where we are heading and why the legislation is not enforced. The excuse is always that the environment harms the economy. But that is not true. The environment has to be a part of the economy. We have to pay attention to it more than ever.
Natural environments are important, be they wetlands that filter the water like kidneys or trees that catch the atmospheric dust and CO2. They work for us around the clock, 365 days a year without asking for anything in return. That has always been the case and we are entitled to that, the same way we are entitled to high quality water.
Before I give the floor to Ms. Bellemare, let me point out that municipal taxes must be reviewed. Right now, in Quebec, the current government is talking about doing so, but to help people and municipalities across Canada, we must review the municipal taxes of all the territories and provinces. This is urgent because, in 15 or 20 years, 80% of Canadians will be living in major urban centres. It is important to make sure that those people will not suffocate and die at a younger age.
Thank you. I will now give the floor to Ms. Bellemare.
:
Good afternoon. I would like to thank the committee for inviting us today.
I am a biologist by training. I started working with the Conseil régional de l'environnement in the summer. My mandate requires me to study the wetlands of Laval. I have discovered that there is a very rich biodiversity in southern Quebec and southern Canada. Actually, most of Canada's biodiversity is in the south, but so is a lot of the urban sprawl. Let me just say that we are doing a lot to protect the north and we are exerting a lot of pressure, but we should pay attention to the situation in southern Canada.
We talked about urban conservation initiatives that can be taken into consideration. There are greenbelt initiatives. I am not sure if you are familiar with that concept. There is a greenbelt in Toronto and Vancouver, and we are in the process of creating one in Montreal. As part of the studies that are under way right now, we are trying to assess the ecosystem goods and services of a potential greenbelt in Montreal. We are talking about more than $4 billion a year in services provided by the environment.
All this to say that ecology can be of service to us. We are part of this ecosystem. I feel that Canada has what it takes to lead the way on the world stage, given that we still have many of our native natural environments, which are still viable. Unfortunately, I get the impression that there are not a lot of regulations in place to protect this heritage. In my view, this is a natural heritage that we can pass on to future generations.
Finally, I would like to say that we often talk about forests, meaning land areas, when we talk about conservation. But we should also talk about aquatic environments and farmlands. They are all part of the same system. We have to work toward biodiversity, which also includes the diversity of available habitats.
:
Good afternoon. My name is Ken Dion. I am a senior project manager with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
I wanted to thank you, Mr. Chair and members, for this opportunity to address the committee regarding urban conservation in Canada. Today I am addressing the committee in the capacity as project manager for the Lakeview waterfront connection environmental assessment project on behalf of the Credit Valley Conservation Authority.
As you may be aware, Credit Valley Conservation and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority are two of 36 conservation authorities in Ontario. Conservation authorities are community-based watershed management agencies delivering services and programs to protect, manage, and conserve water and land resources in Ontario.
We operate through partnerships with government, landowners, and other stakeholders. In Ontario, more than 90% of the population lives within the jurisdiction of a conservation authority, including virtually all the urban areas. CVC and TRCA have a long history of collaborating on cross-watershed issues.
Today we were hoping to have Mr. Mike Puddister, director of restoration and stewardship from CVC join us, but he was not able to attend so I am opening up today's chat.
Jim Tovey is a councillor from the City of Mississauga and Region of Peel. He also sits on the boards of both CVC and TRCA. He will be following me and will be talking about Mississauga's Inspiration Lakeview vision, which the Lakeview waterfront connection project is tied to.
We have a convoluted management structure for the Lakeview waterfront connection environmental assessment. Ultimately this is being led by the Region of Peel. Their main interest is infrastructure, and they have a lot of projects to be undertaken over the next 10 years involving pipes and roads that have to be upgraded. That's going to generate a lot of fill over the next many years.
Costs for these capital works are increasing significantly with regard to the handling and disposal of this material. It's anticipated that about $38 million to $50 million is simply budgeted approximately for disposing of this material over this timeframe. They were looking for a better way to use and reuse this material that's generated through their other capital works locally to have strong public benefits locally.
The majority of the work that's going to be undertaken for this project is within CVC's jurisdiction. However, TRCA has a lot of experience working on these waterfront projects and we were asked to provide project management services. We also have an extensive team of ecologists between both conservation authorities, and a strong consultant team.
As will be seen on the screen, the project is located on the borders of Toronto and Mississauga, Region of Peel jurisdiction. TRCA's jurisdiction is with the City of Toronto, of course, and CVC's is with the City of Mississauga. The main project area is located within this area, in blue.
There are a number of issues with regard to the project. The project site that we're talking about is along Lake Ontario's shoreline and it's associated with the Region of Peel's G.E. Booth waste water treatment plant. It's tying into the east side of Ontario Power Generation's former Lakeview coal-powered power plant site and TRCA's jurisdiction with Marie Curtis Park and the Arsenal Lands.
I have identified Hanlan feeder main, which happens to be one of the main capital projects that the Region of Peel is proposing to undertake over the next several years, which is going to generate a significant amount of clean fill. It's this proximity to the project site, as well as the conditions that are along this existing shoreline, which helped us spearhead this project moving forward.
Of course there are other issues we have to be very aware of. We have water quality intakes for the water sources for the City of Mississauga and the Region of Peel, and a significant local community and residential community in the area as well.
This project is also being tied in with the City of Mississauga's Inspiration Lakeview vision. This is a community-led visioning process that occurred throughout 2010. It basically is looking to revitalize brownfields in a largely industrial area, working with OPG to come up with one of the most sustainable communities within the city. Jim will be talking more on that.
As a toehold for this process, the community, through that visioning process, identified a strong desire to see a naturalized waterfront park created as part of this overall Inspiration Lakeview. Our EA moving forward for this project is the first step of many that will be coming forward in the city of Mississauga.
This next image is a great one of the site that we're talking about. We're looking southwest from the air. It's a large industrial site. It's the treatment plant. We have the formal coal pile area for the OPG, Ontario Power Generation, power lots, the power plant area, as well as large piers that go out into the lake. We have a nice green space that ties in with Etobicoke Creek, in TRCA's jurisdiction, with the parks at Marie Curtis Park and the Arsenal Lands, which has a long military history, within this area.
Of course the main feature of this site is water. Lake Ontario is right next door and is a main focus of why this project is moving forward. We also have multiple streams within this area that we hope to incorporate into the design for this waterfront park: Applewood Creek, as well as Serson Creek, which was actually split years ago, so that low flows go through a culvert underneath the plant and discharge into the lake, whereas storm flows go through a channel further to the west between the two industrial sites. Part of the plans we're looking at are to consolidate these flows together and to incorporate them into future coastal wetlands.
There are also a lot of heavy impacts that led us to deciding on the location of this site. Historically this site was heavily mined for aggregate materials in the 1800s using a process called stonehooking. Port Credit was ground zero on Lake Ontario as the main focus for this activity. The shoreline has been heavily infilled to accommodate industry, and all the shorelines have been heavily armoured as well. There are very poor processes. The public is not able to get to the waterfront or along it, and in this area the coastal wetlands have all since been filled in.
As I mentioned, the Region of Peel is producing over 1.2 million cubic metres of fill as part of their day-to-day operations for expanding their infrastructure, as is the City of Mississauga as part of their bus rapid transit system.
Currently, this is all clean material, and it's being treated as waste. They're shipping it long distances to landfill sites at huge and ever-increasing costs, which creates a major drain on local municipal tax dollars. The main focus of this is to determine whether there is a way we can create this material as a resource that can provide a source of funding for us to move forward and bring back a lot to the community.
This project is generated through the collaboration of numerous municipalities and regional governments and conservation authorities to create a new natural park along the shoreline that will establish an ecological habitat and public access to this part of the waterfront.
Some of our objectives are to create new wetlands, coastal wetlands, coastal meadows, and forests, and to allow opportunities for the public to get to the water, to celebrate the water, to move along the water, and to connect to various waterfront parks between the cities of Toronto and Mississauga.
A major objective, of course, is the fiscal innovative funding approach that we're looking at using. The idea behind this is that if the Region of Peel was looking for $50 million to haul and treat this as waste and we can provide a local source, the difference in costs to get the material to the source becomes our funding that we can use for all the planning, land acquisition, and habitat creation to create a new local waterfront park that will greatly improve the environment within this area. There are also huge community spinoffs to not throwing this capital investment away to long-haul disposal.
Of course, we also have to work within the existing infrastructure framework. There are the waste water treatment facilities, and we also want to coordinate with Inspiration Lakeview work, which Jim will talk about shortly, the Lake Ontario integrated shoreline strategy, which CVC is leading, and other provincial and federal objectives for the environment.
We're leading this project right now through an EA process. That's an individual EA through the provincial process. That's a two-phased approach. We spend the first part of the process identifying how we're going to do the EA, which is through the EA terms of reference. We started in January. We submitted our EA TOR, terms of reference, for approval in July. We're waiting any day now for the approvals of that. Once we receive approvals, we'll move forward with the EA itself, which we hope to complete by the end of June 2013. We'll have approvals that will get us to the end of 2013. We're hoping to have construction of this great project some time in the summer of July 2014.
Thank you very much.
:
Point of order, Madam Clerk has to set things up for my presentation.
The Chair: We will pause and wait.
Mr. Jim Tovey: Thank you very much. I do apologize for that.
I'd like to thank you very much for allowing me to appear today. I'm actually an accidental politician. The image you're looking at right now is my community. That's what my community looked like for 43 years. At the time it was built, it was one of the largest coal-generating stations in North America and it was right smack dab in the middle of my community.
I started to investigate what the emissions were. This was when the coal-generating station was operating with scrubbers at 15% capacity. There is a grade school 300 metres from here that was the third lowest rated grade school in the entire region of Peel for over 20 years. They closed this generating station in 2005 and then they decided they were going to give us a 1,000 megawatt gas plant right on our waterfront.
If you put a compass on the site we're looking at, it's right at the epicentre of the golden horseshoe. It's the southeast corner of Mississauga, which means it's right beside the city of Toronto. It's 10 minutes by car to Yonge Street and it's 10 minutes to Pearson International Airport.
The site you're looking at outlined in red is approximately 285 acres. With the lakefill project, an additional 85 acres will be created.
I thought it was completely wrong that they should give us a coal-generating station for 43 years and then turn around and give us a 1,000 megawatt gas plant on seven kilometres of beautiful waterfront. I determined that this wasn't going to happen, so I put together a group. We partnered with the University of Toronto and we spent three years modelling with the community and we asked them if this was a blank slate, what they would like to see. We educated them on best practices. We did a complete cost analysis of the entire project. We became the first citizens group in North America to ever create its own master plan and have it accepted by all levels of government.
We defeated the power plant and we got both the City of Mississauga and the Government of Ontario to adopt what we called the legacy project. Our goal is to create the world's most environmentally sustainable community, and I know we can do it.
Then I spent two years chairing Mayor McCallion's task force on waterfront development and environmental sustainability. I got to work with some really terrific people. We got the power plant defeated in 2008. I did two years with madam mayor and the committee, and then everybody sat me down and said, “Okay, if we're going to get this job done, we have to get you elected”. I ran against a five-term incumbent and won by 128 votes. It was fun. It was like a horse race. I'm sure the politicians here can appreciate a good horse race. That was great.
Then we immediately wound up negotiating with the Province of Ontario and got a memorandum of understanding for a proper development of the site by 2014. We then started yet another round of what we now call Inspiration Lakeview. We went through a number of processes where we engaged the public. We allowed the community to design this new sustainable community. That's after we signed the memorandum of understanding with Charles Sousa, madam mayor, our city manager, and some people from OPG.
The site also has a terrific history. The very first airport in Canada was on this site. In 1915 J. A. D. McCurdy, the first man to fly an airplane, was the flight instructor there in 1915, 1916, and 1917. Eight of the top fifteen aces from World War I were trained there. They came over from England. There was this incredible history that was almost lost.
Here are more images of Inspiration Lakeview. We broke it down into eight principles. I'm going to go through them very quickly. We wanted to link the city and the water. In other words, we wanted to bring not only the city to the water, but the water to the city.
We had people from Hammarby, Sweden here. I don't know if any of you are familiar with Hammarby. It's currently the world's most environmentally sustainable community. We've actually just received a $175,000 grant from the federal government to bring some of the designers from Hammarby back over to help us with the next master plan, which we'll be starting in a week and a half.
We wanted to open the site and make it publicly accessible because it hadn't been accessible since 1896 when the Garrison Common used the entire site for firing ranges and artillery ranges.
We wanted to create a green, sustainable community. In Hammarby, Sweden, instead of using stormwater pipes, they use stormwater channels. They're quite beautiful, and they also help to filter the water. There's an economic benefit, too, because they're cheaper in the long run to maintain than a major stormwater system is.
We wanted to create a vibrant community that was at human scale. People like human scale. We also wanted to connect. The City of Mississauga is spending an awful lot of money on higher-order transit right now. Mayor McCallion was once considered to be the queen of sprawl, but no longer. She now gets transit, so that's really great.
We'll also create destinations down at the waterfront. The other thing we're going to do is commemorate history. We had the largest coal-generating station in North America, but now it's part of our heritage. It's a great heritage, and some of the best engineers in the world worked on this project.
We also want to make sure that it's financially viable. This is where a project like the one Ken has been referring to comes into play. These are all our sustainability things.
We've now done two different plans, and we'll be starting a master plan in a week and a half. It'll be finished in 18 months. Then we're going to start building. We're not asking for any money. We're going to do this ourselves. We've been doing it all along with private investment and with City of Mississauga money.
In the master planning, the 85 acres fit in quite beautifully. There are seven and a half kilometres, and the only place we didn't have public access is around the sewage plant. We have two creeks that are very badly degraded, and our wetlands project is going to help us with that. We're going to bring the water up into the site so it will create a lot of really interesting environmental opportunities.
We've already established our green corridors. Then, too, there's culture. Mississauga does not have a cultural centre and we want to bring in arts, heritage, science, and culture. We want to converge them all on this one site. If we can take a site with 120 years of military use and industrial abuse and turn it around to create a model for how to do things, then this can be done anywhere in the world. We can use this site, and we already have partnerships with three universities, to train a new generation of Canadians, and we can export that knowledge to the world.
Thank you.
:
I was in construction project management for years and years.
In 1994 the government of the day had said that we needed to start to densify our communities and we needed to start getting more use out of the infrastructure that we had, and we needed to stop degrading the environment. I took that very seriously. I was walking my dog and standing just north of a power plant and the moon came up and its reflection hit the water. I turned around and looked over my right shoulder and I could see Cawthra Road and Lake Shore. I looked over my left shoulder and I could see Lake Shore and Dixie Road. They're a mile and a quarter apart. This was such a massive site, but it was just a complete industrial wasteland. I thought that if we could get rid of the coal plant and we could do something else with this site, we could create a better future for our children and our grandchildren.
I think that's really the focus and the goal of this committee.
Take the example of the wetlands project. The Region of Peel was willing to spend $75 million to take all of that dirt and drive it out of the GTA and dump it in a hole. We have a crisis in the GTA in that there is nowhere to put fill.
This young lady's point is really great, that we have to concentrate on the south. Across the waterfront of the GTA, we've eliminated 93% of our wetlands and we've armoured 85% of our shores. As soon as you eliminate wetlands, you stop helping nature clean the water for you. When you talk about having the environment in an urban forum, what we need to do is reinstitute more things like this.
With a project like this we're going to reinstitute wetlands for $41 million as opposed to the $75 million that the region was willing to spend to dump the fill. Not only are we going to reinstitute wetlands, put in fish spawning beds, and fix two totally degraded creeks, we're going to create a much better experience for the people who live in that community because now they will be able to connect to nature.
We can start to understand what it's really all about and what we all need to do, as leaders, in the future. Fiscally, it's the right thing to do, so to me, that's what we need to be focused on.
:
It's really interesting. I've been studying planning for at least a dozen years now and I love reading planning studies. It sounds a little odd, but I do love reading planning studies.
There is a fellow named Jan Gehl, in Copenhagen. He's a professor. He's famous all over the world. He designed downtown Copenhagen. He just finished Times Square. He did downtown Sydney. The man is a genius.
They do all kinds of studies. There is a challenge you will find with people who live in an urban environment, as more and more of us tend to do. If you live in a concrete jungle such as they've created across Toronto's waterfront, it's a sterile, boring atmosphere. There are studies to prove that.
Jan Gehl did two studies, which I'm going to refer to very quickly.
One study was on how much stimulus the cerebral cortex required to not be bored. Well, every three seconds we need stimulus on our cerebral cortex or we're bored. When you walk through a place that has massive condominiums and 300-foot concrete facades, you're not going to be engaged in that. That is detrimental to your health and it's certainly detrimental to your sense of place.
There was another study done. I thought this study was absolutely incredible. You will notice in a lot of our images that none of them were more than six storeys. Jan Gehl's group did a study and they found that a mother could actually make eye-to-eye contact with her child from a six-storey balcony, yet she couldn't do that from seven storeys. Therefore, he doesn't design anything over six storeys for that reason.
These are all really interesting things, but it tells you a lot about the place. It tells you a lot about the urban forum.
:
Can I talk about the urban forest?
I am going to speak in English, if you don't mind. I can get by in French, but that's about it.
[English]
Just to let you know, I am a city councillor and I am on the board of directors of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. I think I forgot to say that when I began.
What I'd like to talk about is environmental issues within municipalities. I'll focus on the urban forest. It is extremely important for the kinds of benefits that trees have within an urban environment. They're green spaces. They're forests. They provide economic, environmental, social and health benefits to cities. Trees within a city are hugely important.
I will use the example of my city, the population of which is less than 100,000, about 95,000. We have a tree canopy that has fallen to below 20%. Our tree canopy now is probably about 15%. This is devastating for us as a city, as I said, because of the environment, the cooling and all the other benefits that trees bring. The emerald ash borer began to hit us about two or three years ago. We're now at the point that we're beginning to lose trees. In our city, where we have a canopy of about 15%, we're going to lose about 90,000 trees, 10,000 of which are on municipal property. The other 80,000 are in private hands.
To give you an example of what this means to our city, the loss of 90,000 ash trees would diminish our canopy by from 1.5% to 2%. We would then be at 13%, or maybe 12%.
The cost of this to our city is huge. This year we're just starting into the phase in of which trees are being hit and damaged. We have a 15-year strategic plan whereby we're going to try to work through this.
I'll go through this really quickly, but in 2013 we'll spend $60,000 just for treatment, $140,000 to take the trees down, and then an additional.... We'll spend about $265,000 next year just to deal with taking the trees down and planting some more.
Now, given the number of trees we have and how large this effort of replanting is going to be—when we replant, we would like to work towards that 40% canopy, which would be a 1:3 ratio—it's going to cost us $1.5 million in tree planting to deal with this impact.
An urban forest is very important to all cities and all communities across this country. I think it's important that we deal with it.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chairman, I thought you framed some of the questions we might be dealing with very well in your opening remarks.
Let me turn to the panel. Welcome.
Last week I met with three councillors from the FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, to discuss some of these issues. Very briefly, they shared with me infrastructure concerns, the concerns of the absence of a national transit strategy—I think we're the only OECD country that does not have a national transit strategy--with the environmental fallout that this obtains. There were water treatment concerns and less so urban conservation concerns.
Maybe I would put my question to you, Marguerite, because you are the vice-chair of the FCM.
How does the federal government prioritize among these concerns? To go back to the chairman's question, what is the role of federal leadership here? Let me make it more specific to assist the reply. You chaired the FCM's brownfields committee. You also served on the brownfields task force of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which developed a national brownfield strategy in 2003. Regrettably the national round table, formerly chaired by our Governor General, has been terminated, as has the invasive alien species partnership program, to which you referred.
Do we have alternative or replacement instruments or frameworks in place for these two instruments or initiatives that I found were fairly important in this regard? Reference has been made to the green municipal fund. That has played a very important role.
How do we secure funding for the urban conservation strategy? What kind of policies should there be? For example, should there be a doubling of the gas transfer tax for that purpose?
Those are just some of the issues I thought you might address. If any other members of the panel wish to answer, that's fine.
:
I didn't write down all the comments that you made, so you'll have to help me a little bit.
I'll start with the long-term infrastructure plan. That has been the latest piece. This last week, as you indicated, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities had its board meeting here in Ottawa and that's when we speak to members of Parliament about our various issues.
The gas tax was one of the big things we had spoken about long and hard in the last federal budget, because the build Canada plan and a couple of other programs are ending very shortly, and the gas tax, of course. With that, the federal government had promised there would be discussion with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities when the federal budget came through, particularly in relation to the long-term infrastructure plan. I'm sure you are all aware that our bridges are falling down and the roads aren't all being done and the green infrastructure comes into play there as well, many of the things that we deal with as municipal governments.
Those are issues that we certainly have been working on. We have been working with the federal government. We have been trying to work together. The federal government said that it would work with us. Again, we all know that infrastructure is the wealth of this country and it is getting old and it isn't being kept up enough. We simply don't have the resources as municipal governments to do it all ourselves. We really don't. We need partnerships. We need partnerships with provincial governments, the federal government, and municipal governments in everything we do.
For the infrastructure, as you said, we're looking to have the gas tax indexed. That's one thing. There's the building Canada fund. We want to work with you so that we can work collaboratively for the entire country, with the municipal governments, the federal government, and provincial governments as well. It's very important that all three orders of government work together on all the things that are done on the infrastructure. We need to keep our country going and to create the wealth that we have. We simply can't do it ourselves. The federal government needs the other orders of government as well, so we all need to work together.
I don't know if that answers your question.
:
I'll give a quick answer.
I agree with you. I think all three levels do need to work together.
I spent 30 years in the private sector. I was absolutely stunned with how little money our city has, even though we're one of the few cities in Canada that has no debt. We issued our first-ever debt this year. I started in the basement at city hall. I went to shipping and receiving. I worked my way right through every department. I asked to see their books and asked them what they did. They are lean and mean and deliver services in a very cost-effective way. Then I wondered what the problem was.
To me the problem is that municipalities own 65% of the infrastructure and we get 9¢ on the dollar. That is absolutely the number one problem. I wonder if anybody in this room can tell me how that math works. How can you maintain, build, and replace 65% of the infrastructure in the country when you've only got 9¢ on the dollar? It absolutely makes no sense.
I agree with you. I think all three levels need to sit down. We really need to understand that what makes Canada successful, and what will make Canada successful in the future, is how vibrant our cities are and how great our infrastructure is.
A friend of mine is doing some jobs in China right now. He's building precincts in China. This is funny. They built 40 kilometres of LRT in two years. How in the heck did they do that? They had no environmental assessment. He was the lead architect. He asked the Chinese fellows about environmental assessments, and they asked him what he meant. He told them they are done to find out whether it's going to be positive or negative, and his Chinese counterpart looked at him and said that it's going to be positive because it's public transit.
There are a lot of ways we can find efficiencies at all three levels and help each other, I'm quite sure.
:
The federal government should inject funds in the municipalities or RCMs in Canada that are development models of local services. That would be the first thing to do. We should stop developing cities the way we are. Services are far away. People have to drive to get where they need to go. Our cities are built around the automobile. That is useful in some way, but we can make local service models.
We spoke about six storeys. I think buildings should never be higher than four storeys because they are less expensive to air-condition, and we would be respecting the tree canopy and the height of trees that offer different and mild climatic cover. Also, in the northern countries, trees cut the wind in winter. It also decreases energy use.
I am looking at cities like Montreal, which I know very well, or Toronto. I'm looking at Ottawa, which I think is quite a beautiful city. When we open the streets to rebuild infrastructures, why do we always make very wide streets and boulevards? Why not bring it back down to a more human scale?
Take for example Saint-Denis Street in Montreal, which is 14 km long. Take away one lane of traffic and put in some greenery. When you go to redo the storm sewers, you will use much less expensive pipes. You will save some money. You will be able to plant trees and better manage rain and precipitation. There will be a percolation of water in the ground, a decrease in greenhouse gases and, as a result, a drop in climate change. The temperature will be milder in the winter and in the summer. The natural environments are there to be integrated.
If the Government of Canada wanted to do something, it should fund projects that truly are green and well adapted to society and to city dwellers in Canada.
:
Actually, 90% of the population of Ontario is living within one of the jurisdictions for the conservation authorities. It's watershed based. We cover a large watershed area.
We have been finding that there's a lot of public interest to see greenbelts within their overall communities. Particularly in the GTA, a lot of people spend big bucks to have their cottage four to six hours away, but a lot of people don't have that luxury. These green areas in the urban centres provide that cottage country locally. That includes wetlands, the forests, the corridors. It includes being able to see Lake Ontario.
It's kind of ironic that people in Toronto go so far to have their little piece of lakefront when they have this massive lake that very few people actually use. With regard to your other questions on water quality improving, out of the eight beaches in Toronto, seven of them meet Blue Flag status. You can jump into the water most times during the year these days, but people don't take that opportunity.
We're building this intrinsically within development plans. In a lot of the work we're doing now, we're bringing back brownfields to become new future revitalized communities, instead of trying to maximize every square foot for development. Then, there's that darn river in the middle of our block. How do we minimize it and tuck it away behind someone's backyard? Let's celebrate it. Let's bring it out as the core piece of the development plans. Let's enhance it to make it function, and that brings value. There have been a lot of studies in Canada and the United States showing that this adds value to the properties provided.
Don't treat it as this thing that minimizes the effect on your bottom dollar. It could actually bring value, if properly planned overall.
Thank you all for being here.
I have two questions, so I'll throw them out there, and you can take turns answering.
As you heard from the chair, one of the questions we should consider is what the best practices for Canada are concerning urban conservation. Mr. Tovey, you gave the example of it being cheaper to have stormwater channels than pipes. That's probably a best practice.
[Translation]
Mr. Garand said that we must, for example, avoid monocultures in order to fight invasive species.
There are practical examples.
[English]
What could be a federal role to ensure the sharing of best practices, making sure that everybody across Canada would understand what those best practices are?
My second question is about the federal role as well. Mr. Sopuck asked a question about looking at natural infrastructure as part of the green municipal fund. I'd like to pick up on that. I find that to be really interesting. We've heard some testimony about infrastructure spending generally, and the fact that urban conservation is not eligible for federal infrastructure funding. Some witnesses have suggested rethinking the way we grant this funding, especially the tripartite funding. Maybe we need more of a carrot by saying that these kinds of projects would be eligible.
Do you think it's time to re-imagine how we grant funding? Again, there is the role of the federal government and the sharing of best practices.
We can start with Mr. Garand.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses today.
I'm not part of this committee regularly and it's been very interesting. As a mayor of both communities that I've lived in, I understand some of the challenges presented by the FCM.
I want to talk a little about water conservation, but before I do that, I want to go back to the funding.
Our government has partnered with provinces and municipalities and has been part of the biggest investment in infrastructure in 50 years in this country. It's not only that we ramped up the gas tax fund, but we also have the community adjustment fund, the building Canada fund, the green municipal fund, and the stimulus funding. When I was mayor, the federal government stopped charging GST on all projects for municipalities, saving literally hundreds of millions of dollars. When you talk about 8% or 9%, we are partnering and we're doing our part to support municipalities.
The one issue I have about water conservation, and I think it has a little to do with planning, is that our community built a $21-million water treatment plant that had ultraviolet light treatment, the chlorine treatment, filtration. We pump all this great safe water to our residents and they use it to sprinkle on their lawns. Now, that's the challenge, the way our infrastructure is structured. The capacity of that water treatment plant had to be built to accommodate people watering their lawns. It's at great cost and is an expensive way to water your lawn.
Another issue concerns things like low-flush toilets. In Australia, the federal government came in with the regulation that everyone had to have a low-flush toilet that had two buttons on it, and you know what the two buttons are for. It literally saved billions of dollars in costs of infrastructure—billions—because of the lower amount of water they used.
There are all kinds of ways, I would think, at the municipal level to actually provide bylaws to make sure there is conservation.
We talked about drainage. In the United States, they actually collect the drainage and some of the grey water in the subdivisions and recycle it and use it to irrigate their landscaping. Those are the kind of things I think of as water conservation, that would help the water table and those trees that you wanted to ensure got good water.
Madam Ceschi-Smith, are there any best practices that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is working on to look at water conservation in a larger context to ensure that we also protect the other components of our ecosystem?