Main Supply Estimates - Environment
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for appearing and for bringing along so many of your wonderful staff. Nice to see everybody out tonight. I appreciate your support of the minister and how hard you work, even if I do hold your feet to the fire, she said sweetly.
We are dealing with the total budget. I’m sorry. Mr. Minister, this is a baseline debate for me, so you will find that in a lot of cases I’m asking for quite specific information, which, of course, probably won’t be off the top of your head. I would be amazed if you had it off the top of your head. So the instructions we were given by the chairperson about tabling through the clerk of this committee or through the Clerk of the House: then it can be shared with all members of the committee.
Mr. Renner: That’s fine. I’ll certainly provide answers where it’s appropriate. I do have some quite detailed notes here, and I will attempt to deal with them if I can.
Ms Blakeman: Perfect. Okay.
We’re looking at a budget of $347.6 million. Total voted expense is $251.7 million, so assuming that I get the usual 80 minutes, I’m probably trying to debate about $3.146 million a minute. So if I seem to talk fast, you can understand why.
The issues I’d like to cover tonight include stakeholder consultation; the land-use framework; cumulative effects management, which you talked about; issues around planning, wetlands, climate change, monitoring, compliance and enforcement, land securities, and water.
Let me start with goal 1 on page 119 of the Environment business plan: “The cumulative effects of development on land, air, water, and climate are managed to achieve Government of Alberta desired environmental outcomes.” Now, what I noticed from this goal 1 is that there’s no mention of the Cumulative Environmental Management Association, fondly known as CEMA, in the strategies that are related to achieve goal 1. In August of ’08 Pembina, the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, and the Fort McMurray Environmental Association all pulled out of CEMA, and four out of the five First Nation members had already withdrawn between ’06 and ’08. So we have an organization where decisions are made by consensus, but any of the members who would have been likely to have disagreed have pulled out, and the consensus now is between industry and government.
There has been an allocation of over $4 million over the past two years, so the first question is: will there be enhanced participation from the department in CEMA, and if so, when? A supplementary to that is: what are the department’s expectations on the $1.3 million that is in CEMA’s 2009 budget but is not covered by industry? Those are the first two questions.
Mr. Renner: Well, I think the issue around CEMA is an important one in that it is in keeping with the direction that we intend to head with respect to cumulative effects management. But CEMA is an organization that is restricted solely to oil sands. When we talk about cumulative effects management and putting a cumulative effects regime in place, it’s much broader than just the oil sands. So when you say it’s interesting that it’s not mentioned in this document, this document refers to province-wide, and we see cumulative effects being implemented across the province. We’re starting with pilot projects. One of the first is here in the Industrial Heartland. We see the lower Athabasca as the next area, but we don’t intend to stop there. We’ll continue to go, and we’ll certainly be working with CEMA to provide us with some valuable input.
The role that CEMA plays is also one of providing us with some good baseline information, providing us with a general knowledge of the kind of activities that are going on in the oil sands so that we can incorporate that into policy development. But let’s be very clear that it is Alberta Environment that will be responsible for developing the policy and putting that into place.
We’ve worked with CEMA to develop our wetlands policy, which we’ll be dealing with shortly. We’ve worked with CEMA on issues related to water use and how we’re going to be able to implement cumulative effects management on the Athabasca River. We’ve seen evidence of how that’s going to work. So it’s a valuable organization. But I think the role of CEMA has changed and will continue to change from where it was a while ago, when this was sort of an isolated situation that was concentrating almost exclusively on the north and on the lower Athabasca to the point where we’re now looking at cumulative effects as being a significant part of our priority province-wide.
The other question that you had was with respect to the budget?
Ms Blakeman: Yeah. Money.
Mr. Renner: There is an expectation that CEMA will continue to have input, financial and otherwise, from industry, and I don’t know that there would be any change in that regard. There’s no reason to believe that there will be a commitment of any less from industry’s perspective. The funding that we have involved in CEMA would fall into that category that I talked about in my opening remarks, where we want to ensure that we maintain the ability to keep people in place, to keep the lights on, to keep the integrity of the system in place. But there may be some reductions that would involve, perhaps, some longer term research and projects and the like that could maybe be extended from, you know, one year to three years or three years to five years or something so that we can maximize the limited amount of dollars that are available.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I do understand that the cumulative effects is meant to be province-wide, but you have to admit that CEMA was the existing organization that was dealing with this, and its absence is notable, I think, in that it’s not even mentioned as part of this.
The $1.3 million that I was referring to is, in fact, the shortfall. It’s what the industry is not covering out of their total budget, which is why I was wondering what the expectation of the government was toward that amount of money. It sounds like some of it will be coming but not, perhaps, as much as before.
Continuing on with CEMA, but it relates to the wider strategy around cumulative effects, the department has a legal responsibility to consult with the aboriginal community on environmental matters. I’m wondering: what is the department’s current liability given the lack of aboriginal consultation at CEMA?
Mr. Renner: We’ve been very diligent in working with the First Nations, particularly in the lower Athabasca. We are attempting to establish a number of programs that would deal with consultation and working closely with Aboriginal Relations, who are also our partners in dealing with aboriginal consultation. For example, we’re expecting to have an agreement in place very shortly. I talked with the minister of aboriginal affairs just today, actually, an update on where we are with respect to activities in that treaty area. We’re hoping that we will have an agreement in place that will allow us to move forward from a perspective of consultation, that everyone agrees with what is the appropriate consultation.
On a smaller scale, for example, Minister Zwozdesky and I were in Fort Chip earlier this year, met with community leaders there. Among a number of things that we agreed to was that we would develop community-based monitoring systems to deal with a number of environmental monitorings, obviously water being a critical one to that community and to the interests of that community. I’m told that we’re getting very close to having a final model in place that will be up and running very shortly. That would be part of the ongoing commitment that would be included in this budget: to have necessary funding in place to do that community-based monitoring in the Fort Chipewyan area.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’m going to move on to the land-use framework and cumulative effects. The Lower Athabasca Regional Advisory Council has been announced before the aboriginal members are in place. That’s according to a government press release from December 2008. That may have changed. I’m wondering what kind of a message the government believes is being sent when these really important advisory councils that are connected to the new Land Stewardship Act are actually in place and announced without aboriginal members on them.
Mr. Renner: You realize that the issues of land-use framework and the advisory councils fall under SRD, not Alberta Environment. That being said, we work together.
Ms Blakeman: Sure. But Environment and Energy and SRD all have a piece of this.
Mr. Renner: We all work together. In fact, we met as recently as about two weeks ago with the grand chiefs from treaties 6, 7, and 8. One of the things that we discussed – and there was a commitment from both sides – is that we are going to work very hard to have First Nations involvement on these advisory committees.
The issue is twofold. First of all, First Nations, rightfully so, do not see themselves as stakeholders. They don’t see themselves as simply being part of an advisory committee. They believe very strongly, and we’re committed to work with them, in government to government consultation. At the same time, we emphasized how important it was to have representation on these advisory committees so that aboriginal issues can be incorporated into the plan.
But at the end of the day there really needs to be a parallel track. There need to be two sets of work going on, so to speak. The advisory committee will be making recommendations to government. Hopefully, they will be having as much input as possible from representation on that advisory committee from First Nations. There’s also a commitment from the Minister of SRD to meet on a one-to-one basis with the leadership in the First Nations as well. While LARC is very much in play and will be providing recommendations to cabinet for the regional plan, that plan is one that is done in concert with First Nations on a parallel track.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. How many environmental experts will be mandatory for these councils, and how will these experts be chosen?
Mr. Renner: We don’t anticipate having the councils responsible for their own environmental experts. The base scientific information that they need to assist them in making their decisions will come from Alberta Environment. So it’s up to the government to have those overarching kinds of input. What the regional advisory councils will do is take that information. We’ll provide them with information with respect to in-stream flow needs, for example, on the Athabasca River. There’s no need to do everything twice. We’ll let them know what the in-stream flow needs are, what is the best information that we have for industrial needs related to that, and then it’s up to them to come back to us with a recommendation on how they see that flowing into the regional plan and how we’re going to incorporate the cumulative effects of industrial development into that regional plan.
It will fall upon Alberta Environment or SRD, depending upon land use or any other functions, to provide the technical expertise. It will be up to the advisory council to determine what is the direction, what is the general direction that they see the overall plan leading. Let’s not forget that at the end of the day what we have are advisory councils that provide their best advice to cabinet, but it is cabinet that makes the final decision on what those eventual plans are going to be. Then once those plans are put in place, they’re binding on all parties. They would be binding on government, they would be binding on municipalities, and they would be binding on industry.
Ms Blakeman: What I’m hearing is that there will be no expectation or no designated spaces on these councils that will be recognized as experts in the environment.
Mr. Renner: No. They’re supposed to be community-based councils. The technical advice that they will receive will be either from government or there may be occasions – we’ve got a significant amount of money allocated within this budget to support the implementation of these plans. There may actually need to be some consultants that are hired to provide technical advice depending upon the nature of the work that is under way and what kind of technical information is required. So we will either beef up internally within Environment, or we may provide funding to have the consulting done by LARC itself.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’m looking at page 180 of the estimates, line 2.0.2. This is the amount for air and land policy under environmental assurance, and that amount of budgeted money has decreased by almost 25 per cent. I’m assuming that some of the funding for the land-use plans is coming out of that amount of money. The minister has said that he is contributing funds toward the development of the land-use plans. Can he give me some detail about what he is paying for and how much and which of these votes it’s coming from?
Mr. Renner: It’s difficult to get very, very specific on exactly what dollars are allocated where. If I can, I want to just explain how we dealt with the belt-tightening that was required as a result of the $12 million that I talked about in my opening comments.
We went through our entire department, and we were conscious of the fact that our number one priority is to continue to maintain the personnel that we have. We determined what it’s going to cost to maintain our staff complement, what it’s going to cost to incorporate the contracts that have implications from an incremental wage perspective. That’s a baseline. Then we went through, and we basically scooped up all of the program dollars from virtually every department and put that into a pool and then determined: where are our priorities? What are the areas that we absolutely need to do, like some commitments that we have on some baseline monitoring, like some instrumentation that we do that has to do with flood forecasting? There are literally dozens of programs throughout government that are from our perspective nondiscretionary. These are commitments that we need to have, so we funded all of those various programs.
Then we went through to our priorities. I talked about our priorities: cumulative effects, our water for life, and our climate change. We allocated a sum of dollars – it was about $6 million in each case – to allow us to build on these priorities. It’s going to take some additional dollars in a number of these areas for us to be able to move forward over the next year, so we allocated that. Then the balance of the dollars that are in place allows us to make the determinations on where we go with respect to grants and consulting fees.
For example, with a WPAC, a watershed advisory council, I’ve already advised them that their grants will be reduced this year, but they will only be reduced to the point that they’re able to maintain their basic staff commitments, their basic level. They may not have the necessary funding or the same funding as they had last year to engage some consultants with respect to some – and it’s important work. Let’s not discount the important work as they put together their watershed plan, but we might have to extend that out for a year or two as opposed to getting it all done this year.
The important part of all of this is that we want to be sure that we don’t lose the capacity that we need so that we’ve got people in place to continue to do the basic work, continue to keep these organizations viable, and to be there when we start to see the economic turnaround and all of a sudden we find that we’re now ramping up and we need to have these folks in place in a much more strategic way.
Ms Blakeman: Well, thank you. I appreciate that sort of general overview of your process. But a budget is a plan, so you guys know how you arrived at these figures and how you’ve allocated money for projects. I’m looking for some detail.
When we look at the these land-use plans – and the cumulative effects study is supposed to inform these regional plans – we’ve got the South Saskatchewan region. The timeline to complete the regional plan is March of 2010, which is the same time that the cumulative effects study for the Bow River is also slated for completion. The baseline information you need to develop something is actually going to be scheduled to be completed at the same time. We’ve got three other water basins in the South Saskatchewan that haven’t even had a state-of-the-basin report, and that would also be needed for a cumulative effects study. Can the minister go into a bit more detail about the timelines of how the minister is supposed to provide that baseline data for a cumulative effects study that’s able to inform those regional plans? One is supposed to come before the other, and according to what I’m reading, they’re slated to come at the same time. How is that possible?
Mr. Renner: I think the vision for the land-use framework is that it is a living document; it’s not a static document. It will have basic parameters that are outlined. The community will decide where their priorities lie. As more information becomes available, that information can be incorporated into the plan itself. I don’t know that we will ever be in a situation where we have got all of the basic scientific knowledge that we would like to have to go into these plans. If we wait until all of that knowledge is in place, the plans will never get done. The plans have to be flexible enough that they can adjust if new knowledge comes into place and they need to make adjustments.
Let me use an example. You talked about a river. If there is a determination made that we have to deal with quantity and quality in the South Saskatchewan River basin, it will be the land-use plan that will be responsible for determining: what are the relative uses of that water? How much of that water and how should it be managed from the point of view of maintaining a healthy ecosystem? How much of that water needs to be in place to ensure that it recognizes First Nations demands and needs, for example? How much of that water needs to be in place to recognize the needs of municipalities and human development of one kind or another?
All of those will be determined within the plan, but the actual details on how that plan is implemented will change on an annual basis as the amount of water that’s available ebbs and flows in a natural way, seasonally. It will change dependent upon our ability to invest in additional storage facilities, storage capacity, for example. If we are able to identify a need for additional on-stream or off-stream storage, that will have some impact on the actual implementation or delivery of water, but it won’t have an impact on how we priorize and how we determine that we ensure that that water is shared among all of the various users and all of the various needs that are outlined in that plan.
Ms Blakeman: This is a bit like trying to nail Jell-O. Clearly, for the government this is an important strategy to move forward on land use. I’m being told that it’s equally important to have cumulative effects moving along with that, yet when I point out the knowledge base that you require to set benchmarks to understand where you’re coming from, to be able to look back and judge your performance, or to measure whether we’ve been effective here, I’m trying to nail Jell-O again. So let me get specific. How many regions have defined thresholds? How many parameters are there for each region?
Mr. Renner: We’re not anywhere near that point yet. That is the detail that will develop as we get using these plans. Let me use an analogy. Perhaps if, instead of talking about land use, we were talking about a highway network and saying that we need to have a general plan on where we’re going to build roads in Alberta to accommodate growth, we’d have a general plan that would say: Okay; we need roads that are in these general areas. And we will have a plan that says that as traffic volumes increase, we’ll do one of two things: we’ll either figure out how to accommodate more vehicles, or we’ll figure out how to keep some of those vehicles off the road. So as part of that plan we’ll say that we want to put certain emphasis on public transit and keeping cars off the road and we want to put another emphasis on efficient highway systems.
But as technologies change, as cars perhaps get more efficient or get better at negotiating through the highway system, there needs to be some flexibility. At some point in time we might determine that all of this baseline information that we had was based on 2009 technology, and it’s now 2015 or 2020. That technology is now irrelevant, and we have to move in another direction. All I’m saying is that you don’t have to have all of the detailed analysis in place to begin to think about planning for a land base and planning from a cumulative effects perspective.
The main difference between cumulative effects management and the way that we do it today is that it is more focused on outcome than what we have right now. The way we regulate right now is on a project by project basis, and it’s very much focused on input. So when someone comes along and wants to apply for some kind of an allocation or a licence, it’s very focused on how much you take and how many emissions you are allowed to have, whether it be air or release into the river and all of those kinds of things. The difference under cumulative effects is that while we still focus on what the individuals are doing, we’re more concerned with looking into the future and forecasting what is the outcome that we’re trying to achieve, and what we need to do today in putting those various approvals together to ensure that we’re not going to exceed those kinds of limits when we get 15 or 20 years out.
None of the cumulative effects projects or the projects that would be approved under cumulative effects would be of the nature that we’re going to be making decisions in the next year or two on whether they should proceed or not. We have room to increase our development, to increase our economic activity in the province, but we’re recognizing that we will be reaching some limits at some point in time. We have to have the flexibility so that we can not only deal with approvals for new development, but we can also deal with the renewals of existing approvals so that we’re confident that the existing development and the new development will allow us to achieve those outcomes that we’ve set as our long-term objectives. That’s where we’re going to be looking to the regional plans to establish those outcomes.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I think you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this one because I’m hearing that there’s not a knowledge base; there’s not a real drive to create that. There’s a lot of talk about the future. I don’t know how I’m going to measure that based on the fact that you’re going to go into these plans without any kind of base knowledge on this.
Mr. Renner: Let me just point out…
Ms Blakeman: No. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to move on with other questions because I have so much to ask, and more than half our time is gone now.
Just to close off on cumulative effects, a couple of last questions. Who has the power to set the environmental thresholds that are going to be there? Will these thresholds be enforceable through legislation? Are you considering penalties if there’s noncompliance? If you could just very briefly give me a response on that.
Mr. Renner: That’s very simple. It is the Minister of Environment, the government, that has the authority to establish the thresholds. The whole plan is implemented through order in council, through cabinet, so it would be a recommendation from the Minister of Environment that would establish those thresholds. We would have the authority under legislation. Actually, we have the authority under existing legislation to deal with those thresholds. That’s how we have announced that the cumulative effects regime is already in place for the Industrial Heartland.
Yes, there are penalties. The penalties are related to the actual operating authority. We will continue to have responsibility for project-by-project monitoring and the necessary compliance to deal with the authority that we grant them for emissions, and there will be penalties in the future, just as there are penalties today, if someone exceeds whatever allocation they have been given on their operating authority.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Five years from now, when we’re having the same budget debate and I say to you, “You’re claiming success,” how would you know? There are no performance measurements in place, and you’re not starting from a set base of knowledge. How are you going to be able to measure whether this has been successful, whether you have been able to keep some sort of control over cumulative effects?
Mr. Renner: Well, for example, I talked about the Industrial Heartland. We’ve already announced that we have a cap that’s in place for SOx and NOx. We will know very precisely where we are in relation to that cap on SOx and NOx. You will be able to ask me five years from now: “Where are you? Your cap is at 25,000. We’ve had industrial growth in that region. Where are you with respect to that cap, and how are you ensuring that these new developments that we keep hearing about are going to continue to stay within that cap?” That’s how we will measure. It’s very specific. We’ll do the same thing with water, and we’ll do the same thing with land and contaminants and sulphur management and the like. We’re in the process right now of developing a sulphur management plan for that region, for example.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Well, speaking of water, then, last fall the minister said that you were in the process of consultations regarding allocation of water licences and for transfer of actual water licences, and you expected to have that complete sometime in the new year. This is early May, five months in. Are the consultations complete, and exactly who was consulted?
Mr. Renner: No, they are not complete. They’re under way. The Water Council has been engaged in the process and will be providing us with recommendations. We’ve also got an advisory council that I appointed, headed up by David Percy from the University of Alberta, and he’s brought a number of experts from around the province and in some cases outside of the province to provide us not only with recommendations but to provide us with some feedback on different ideas that are generated through the various processes. We have the Alberta water institute doing jurisdictional analysis. They’re looking at the governance that’s been used in various other jurisdictions throughout the world and providing us with some background information. Our intention is to bring all of the various sources of information together, put together a plan that we will then take out this fall and have a much broader consultation on.
I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to just walk out and say, “Hey, we’re thinking of changing the way we regulate water. Why don’t you just tell us what’s good, what’s bad?” and have everybody running around wildly saying, “Well, the government might do this” and “The government might do that” and “It’s a terrible thing” or, to the contrary, “The government may be doing some wonderful things.” I felt it made more sense to put that straw dog out there and say: “Okay. This is what we’re thinking of doing. We’re not thinking of doing this. We’re not thinking of doing this. This is it. Give us your feedback. Let us know what you think. Let us know what the pros and cons are on this.” I think that creates a much more productive environment and constructive opportunity for people to have some true input.
This is an emotional issue. Mark Twain once said – and I couldn’t agree more – that whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting over. That’s what this is all about, and I’m trying to maintain the fighting to a minimum. I think the way we do that is by putting forward a concept in the fall that will clearly enunciate the areas that we think are viable and just as clearly enunciate the areas that we think are not viable and get a lot of concerns off the table right from the very start.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Thank you. That’s useful information because I think the problem with the FITFIR system is that it’s essentially a water market, and the industry can sell their unused water rights to other groups such as municipalities, which has already led to some problems in the past. I’ll put my concerns on the table. I think that industries that already have a vested interest in their water rights, that are currently governing the water market and hold more sway, will convince the government to relax the current regulations. I’m hoping that the minister will be approaching this with a point of view that the individual’s drinking needs come before industry’s do. The question coming out of all of that is: when can Albertans expect a new surface water rights transfer system?
Mr. Renner: Well, I would hope that we would have things finalized and begin the actual implementation about a year from now. Whether or not we’re able to bring it together that quickly I don’t know. We will have the basic policy in place and conduct that discussion with Albertans by this fall. I guess it would depend upon how well or not that policy is received that will determine how quickly it can be advanced and implemented.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. On page 180 vote 3.0.3, water for life, is $16 million. It’s increased by less than $200,000.
Mr. Renner: What was that number again?
Ms Blakeman: It’s vote 3.0.3, water for life, under Environmental Stewardship on page 180. It’s essentially your voted expense by element. A couple of questions on that. The renewal of water for life is listing 17 outcomes. I’m wondering if you can give us a breakdown of how the $16 million relates to the 17 outcomes. I don’t expect you to have it off the top of your head.
Mr. Renner: I can’t relate that.
Ms Blakeman: But you could provide it.
Mr. Renner: Well, I don’t know if I can. Clearly, there are things that we need to do under water for life. I can certainly tell you how we see the funds going. Of that $16 million, about $9 million is going to manpower of one kind or another, roughly 9 and a half million dollars is going to supplies and services – that reflects a onetime funding decrease for groundwater mapping that we’ve had in place for some time that would be reflected in here – and then about $2 million is in grants. So that adds up to the total of $16 million.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. On page 414 on water matters – sorry. Just let me double-check. I didn’t cross check a reference here, so I’m not sure which book it’s in. On page 414 of the budget documents vote 3.0.6, municipal water/waste-water program and water for life, is $188,300,000. I understand from the government press release that $100,000 of this is going to be used to support water for life. Which programs are receiving funding from that $100,000, and how does it break down?
Mr. Renner: That’s the $100 million that I was referring to in my opening comments? You’re talking about capital, right? It’s $100 million in capital under water for life.
Ms Blakeman: It’s not distinguishing it as capital, though, in what I’m looking at, but that’s quite possible.
Mr. Renner: I suspect what you’re looking at is Transportation’s budget.
Ms Blakeman: That’s correct.
Mr. Renner: It’s not my budget.
Ms Blakeman: No, but it’s water for life.
Mr. Renner: It’s dollars that are allocated and delivered through Transportation but done in consultation with Environment, so we will establish what are the highest priorities, what are the areas that are in greatest need. The number one priority, from our perspective, is safe drinking water, so if we’ve got a need to make an investment in a water treatment facility that for whatever reason is in need of attention, that would have a high priority for us.
The next highest priority for us is on the development of regional water systems. There are a number of regional water systems. As you know, we’ve had legislation before the House to deal with some of these regional water systems that cross over interbasin lines, but there are a number of regional water systems throughout the province. Then we would also have some funding in there to deal with regional waste-water systems as well.
A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, but the reality is that these are very expensive projects. Most of them are in the vicinity of $30 million to $40 million and sometimes as much as $60 million or $80 million, so it’s necessary for us to stage these over a longer period of time so that we can maximize as many projects as possible. But at the end of the day I won’t deny that there are a lot of very viable, legitimate projects out there that have been waiting for a number of years for their funding to come through.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. What was the funding last year and then this year – I’m looking for the comparison figure – for the water advisory council and the WPACs?
Mr. Renner: It’s $1.3 million for the Water Council. I’m not sure that we’ve got the WPACs broken down. We’ll have to get that information to you. Sorry. I do have it. Here we are. Mike came through. You want for last year?
Ms Blakeman: Well, I’m looking for the comparison last year to this year.
Mr. Renner: Well, we haven’t made the final determination for this year. In total it was $1.3 million for WPACs last year. As a result of the reductions that I referred to earlier, we are planning on $800,000 for this year, so it’s a reduction of about half a million. We’ll be working individually with the various WPACs to determine exactly on a case-by-case basis what the funds are that will be necessary so that they can maintain that the door is open, that people make their payroll commitments and keep the lights on. We’ve made a point of not just being across the board; you know, everybody gets exactly the same cut. Everybody isn’t necessarily created – some of these are at different stages in their development, so we’ll deal with them on an individual basis. The bottom line is that we’re going to have to reduce by about $500,000. I’ve told them that they could face decreases of up to 50 per cent. Some of them may; most of them will not. That’s about two-thirds of the budget.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’m going to come back to the actions if I get enough time.
I’m going to move on to wetlands, for which I think the only policy is 16 years old. In December the minister had said that a new wetland policy would be brought forward shortly. Well, I’m five foot three. I’m hoping that shortly would be about five foot three, and we’d know right away here. It is six months later. When can we expect to see a wetlands strategy?
Mr. Renner: Well, sooner rather than later suits me just fine, too. We’ve been through an internal process dealing with the wetlands. I’m advised by my deputy that it’s scheduled for discussion with me on May 15. That’s next week. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee that that’s when you’ll see it because that’s the point at which I’ll provide my feedback and my comments. I’ll then take that through our government-wide internal process for policy approval and development. I would hope that that would be done in a relatively short period of time, but these things, I’ve learned from experience, usually take anywhere from six weeks to two months, two and a half months. So that would mean that we probably will be in a position to make an announcement later on this summer.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’ll be back to you on that one.
Mr. Renner: Jim reminds me that there’s a priority that we get that done because the lower Athabasca regional plan has to have that information. So we’re under the gun to actually get that out there because they will need that information to develop their regional plan.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’m wondering about the interim policies that are in place to protect the wetlands that are in unsettled areas from being infilled and whether companies are required to pay into a fund for reclamation efforts.
Mr. Renner: Well, that’s very much the essence of the policy that we’re developing.
Ms Blakeman: I’m looking for something interim. Do you have anything interim?
Mr. Renner: No.
Ms Blakeman: Okay.
Mr. Renner: The interim policy only deals with white areas. That’s why it was so important that we have a policy that can apply in the green areas as well.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Under which vote would I find wetland policy development and protection?
Mr. Renner: That would be under assurance. It’s a policy development at this point. There aren’t program funds, so it would be incorporated in our overall policy development. I don’t know that you would be able to identify a specific line item. It’s part of our policy development process. Like a lot of what we do, it’s not necessarily program delivery, but it’s capacity building. In some cases research and consultants’ time goes into the development of these policies. It’s also under water for life.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Wetlands interest me. We’ve already lost a lot of our sloughs and marshland in Alberta in the settled areas. I know that in settled areas the approved applicants are required to pay into a fund that’s managed by Ducks Unlimited to pay for wetland restoration. That appears in your 2005 fact sheet. In Red Deer we’d already lost 63 per cent of the original wetland by 1990, and they’re telling me that .5 per cent of the remaining wetland is lost every year. So we’re losing it; it’s eroding away from us.
Companies who destroy wetlands in developed areas – and you mentioned the white zone – have to pay a really teeny amount of money for reclamation costs. For example, TransCanada recently paid $3,700 to infill a wetland. So I’m wondering: given the unlikelihood of ever reclaiming these wetlands to their original state, is the $3,700 that TransCanada paid for infilling a wetland sufficient?
Mr. Renner: Well, as you already pointed out, we don’t have…
The Acting Chair: I’ll just interject here. There are just over 9 minutes left in your time.
Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much.
Mr. Renner: Thanks. We already have a policy in place, but that policy doesn’t deal with the green areas, and it doesn’t deal with Crown land. It deals primarily with private. The new policy that we will be bringing forward will deal on a province-wide basis. I can’t get into nor will I get into what that new policy is going to look like. As I said, I haven’t even discussed it with my own colleagues yet. But it’s fair to say that we’re looking at a number of what I think are some far-reaching principles on how we deal with wetlands in the developing areas, the relatively undeveloped areas in the green areas, and also on how we can start to possibly see a re-establishment of wetlands in some of the areas like you’ve referred to where we’ve had dramatic loss. They’re something called a constructed wetland, that we’ve never recognized before.
If you’ve got a huge amount of destruction of wetlands, it may not be possible to restore those wetlands because development has moved on. Look, you know, drive down a highway. There is a lot of land out there. There may be some areas that perhaps weren’t historical wetlands but could be developed as a constructed wetland and that may be used as a vehicle to deal with the ongoing and new development. So there are a number of things that can go into these.
I do want to correct you on one thing. Ducks Unlimited is one of the primary deliverers of wetland construction and restoration, and they do handle the bulk of the dollars that come through the compensation that is required, but they don’t have the sole authority. Any other organization that can prove to us that they’re developing and are capable of developing wetlands would be eligible to receive that funding. It just happens that Ducks Unlimited have developed a tremendous amount of expertise and are very good at what they do. But there are a number of other organizations out there that are looking at options and opportunities for them to develop wetlands, outside of Ducks Unlimited, and we’re more than happy to work with those folks as long as they can show us that they know what they’re doing and they have the capacity to actually see these things through to completion.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. We’re coming up to our last five minutes together, so I am going to move this amendment before I forget, which is essentially reducing vote 1.0.5, removing approximately half of the hosting expenses over $600, and it says that
the estimates for people services under reference 1.0.5 at page 180 of the 2009-2010 main estimates of the Department of Environment be reduced by $66,000 so that the amount to be voted at page 177 for expense and equipment/inventory purchases is $251,681,000
I’m not going to go into debate on it, but I will have it distributed so that it’s on the record because I’m sure our last five minutes will go very quickly.
I wanted to move to climate change strategy 1.4, appearing on page 120 of the ministry’s business plan. It essentially says:
Continue to implement the Climate Change Strategy through policy, program and infrastructure initiatives and assure appropriate governance of the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund to support Alberta’s intended outcome.
The ministry spent, really, a pretty teeny amount of the budget that it had allocated to climate change last year. I know that line 2.0.3 on page 180 shows that although $62 million was allocated to climate change programs last year, the department forecast that it would only spend $10 million. I’m wondering why the department so dramatically underspent its climate change budget and if you could outline what plans were sidelined or cut. Okay. I’ll leave it at that.
Mr. Renner: There are two reasons for that. Part of that is the ecotrust funding. I talked about the $52 million that’s actually a flow-through from the federal government. We didn’t get our application process in place soon enough to be able to deal with all of the various applications that came forward. There was an expectation that we would get it done in the previous fiscal year, but a couple of complications came up, one of which was that a number of the organizations that had put applications forward, because of the economic situation, had to withdraw their applications because they didn’t feel that they were able to move forward to finance their contribution to those projects. So we’re having to reassess our grants, but we should have those grants processed and out fairly quickly in this fiscal year. So that’s part of it. That’s $52 million.
What we’ve essentially done is we’ve taken that $150 million – it was to be $50 million, $50 million, $50 million over three years – and we extended it out another year, so it’s $50 million, $50 million, $50 million in this three-year business plan. The money is still there. It’s not lost. It’ll still be spent.
The other is the way that we’ve got it structured for the emissions management fund, the technology fund, that we have on our CO2 reduction. That is money that is collected from industry and flows back out to industry. We just announced that there was another $82 million this year. That money flows out. It’s a little bit confusing because the emissions management fund is done on a calendar year basis, so it’s January to December, and our fiscal year is April to March. So there are some adjustments that need to be made and some estimates on what is the amount of funds that would accrue during that January, February, March period of time. It doesn’t exactly fit with what we announced as being collected because we’ve not only collected the $82 million up to December, but reflected in here is an estimate of how much we expect is going to be in that last three months of this fiscal year.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. So the entire $156 million from the Canadian…
The Acting Chair: There are two minutes remaining, Ms Blakeman.
Ms Blakeman: …ecotrust grant will be spent. What you’ve done is moved it from ’09-10-11 to ’10-11-12?
Mr. Renner: That’s right.
Ms Blakeman: And it will all be spent on fighting climate change?
Mr. Renner: It’s climate change and air quality, so some of it could go to air quality as well.
Ms Blakeman: Okay.
Mr. Renner: There’s also the money that we talked about earlier that was allocated in last year’s budget that didn’t go forward for the energy efficiency program, which is now in place. The same thing there: the funds that were in place have been carried forward, and they will flow through this year and next.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. One of the other things I’ve noticed is that California, for example, is the leader on climate change and climate change legislation. Its legislation is accompanied by a really, really intense implementation plan. A946-page document goes along with it that outlines 18 different groups of emissions and cost-effectiveness and all of that and has definitive timelines and guidelines for laying out regulations and market mechanisms. We have a 32-page one, 12 pages of which are photos. As much as I like visual aids, the goals and strategies in here are much less specific than what we were getting out of the California one. Part of the problem that the Auditor General keeps identifying is that it’s very hard for us to be able to tell and for the government to be able to tell how well it’s doing in achieving these targets because it doesn’t have… [Ms Blakeman’s time expired]
[…]
Ms Blakeman: Thank you. I’m going to direct the minister’s attention to monitoring, reporting, and innovation and the air and land policy, so items 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. I know that CASA is working on a strategic plan for Alberta’s ambient air quality network. I’m wondering if there’s money in the budget to support this exercise and to implement a new framework. You mentioned $718,000 in response to a different question, so you may have answered it already. Is it that $718,000? If it’s not, can you expect the money to be there next year?
Mr. Renner: The $718,000 is not involved with CASA.
Ms Blakeman: Okay.
Mr. Renner: That’s for the airshed monitoring organizations that we have throughout the province. CASA is funded exclusively by Alberta Energy, so it’s not in our budget. Nevertheless, we work very closely with them. Most of the projects that they have are energy-related projects…
I see the quizzed look on your face.
Ms Blakeman: No. It’s just that I’m quizzing you.
Mr. Renner: …so that’s the reason why Energy is funding. But they have been working on a number of projects with us, and some of them will deal with and will see their implementation through cumulative effects of one form or another.
Others are a little bit broader. One of the ones that I’m particularly interested in is the work that they did on monitoring tailpipe emissions and determining whether or not there would be significant impact on our air quality in our urban areas if we could have emphasis on removing a very small percentage of vehicles on our roads that are creating a significant amount of pollution. That’s one of the areas where I would see over the next year or two or three us being able to move forward with them in putting some kind of a policy together on how we’re going to have maximum effectiveness of implementation of new technology.
The federal government has talked about fuel efficiency standards, tailpipe emission standards. In the discussions that we’ve entered into with the Obama administration in the U.S., there are similar kinds of things. All of these things are just wonderful, but if you don’t have a way of ensuring that you’re removing the old technology, the old oil burners, from the road, the impact that you have by increasing the standards for the new vehicles is marginalized.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I’m going to ask a series of questions about air monitoring. How many air monitors are there in Alberta? How many are there per square kilometre? If I could get a breakdown in writing of how many monitors there are. How many are controlled by Alberta Environment, how many by industry, and how many by the airshed organizations? What are the parameters that each measures? You will know that I’ve had a series of questions about that in the past, so that’s why I’m searching for the exact data. I’ll let you answer those, and then I have a series of three more questions, also on air monitoring.
Mr. Renner: There are 12 permanent stations throughout the province, and then we operate, I think, at least one, if not two, mobile air monitoring stations that we can mobilize if we need to deal with specific instances. We are also looking at getting a number of the airsheds involved in more of a mobile monitoring situation. I give an example of Medicine Hat, which I’m most familiar with because I live there. There is one permanent monitoring station that’s located just in the general downwind vicinity of where the industrial development is, and then also in that airshed they have mobile equipment that they can move around southern Alberta to deal with areas outside of the Medicine Hat area, like Brooks and some of the other areas, where there’s getting to be more and more industrial development.
We also monitor not only industrial but agricultural development as well. When you’re dealing with issues related to intensive livestock, for example, there are often complaints that are associated with that, where we want to put some mobile equipment in to do some analysis.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Maybe when your staff get a chance, I was looking for how many are controlled by the Department of Energy.
Mr. Renner: Yeah. We’ll get the details back to you.
Ms Blakeman: Perfect. Thank you. How many of the air quality monitors in Alberta monitor for hydrogen sulphide? How are they distributed regionally? In other words, where are those monitors located?
Mr. Renner: Most of those technologies are in northern Alberta, but we can get that detail to you as well.
Ms Blakeman: Great.
Mr. Renner: Those are focused on the heavy industrial areas.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. How is the information from the industry monitors verified by the province?
Mr. Renner: Well, the same way as we verify anything else. There’s an auditing provision. There is an expectation that they are appropriately qualified people that operate the monitoring.
I announced in the House today that we have just recently gone online with a program that will allow people to view our environmental assessment reports for contaminated land. We’re working on a similar kind of an online reporting for our air quality monitoring as well. That’s not up and running yet. But once we get the work done and are able to have a flow of data that’s reliable, which would be updated on a consistent basis, we would hope that that kind of information would also be available through a website.
Ms Blakeman: Can you tell me how many times the air monitors in the oil sands regions were audited or inspected in 2008? How many times did they fail in 2008?
Mr. Renner: We’ll get that information to you.
Ms Blakeman: Good. Can you tell me how many inspectors are on Alberta Environment’s air quality and monitoring team and whether this number has changed over the last 10 years and whether there are any new inspectors that the minister would be adding to this team in the fiscal year that we have in front of us?
Mr. Renner: We will not be adding new inspectors. The inspectors that we have work in teams. I’ll get you the overall numbers. You have to keep in mind that it’s the nature of the business that people work together. If there is a need for a focus in a particular area of the province, they draw on resources from other areas of the province. When we’re doing a focus on the Industrial Heartland or the oil sands region, we’ll bring people in from throughout the province and gather there to deal with a specific instance. So at any given time there are resources that can be greatly expanded to deal with specific instances.
There are also two different streams of compliance officers. There are individuals that are responsible for doing inspections, and then there is also a different group that is responsible for doing investigations. They sometimes work in tandem. The inspector will identify an issue, and then the investigator will come in and do some detailed analysis. The investigators tend to be a lot more centred throughout the province and then brought in for specific instances, where they need to have that expertise in a concentrated way.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. I know that the media had documents that showed that in 2007 the provincial hourly air quality objective for hydrogen sulphide in the Athabasca oil sands area was exceeded 361 times. The questions around that are: how many times was this objective exceeded in 2008? When were the objectives exceeded? Where did this occur? In other words, which regions were affected? If I could get, just for comparison sake, how many times these objectives were exceeded in each of those regions, say, going back three years and six years.
Mr. Renner: Again, I don’t have that information on the top of my head. We’re well aware of the situation, industry is well aware of the situation, and there are a number of initiatives that have taken place to address the situation, from putting in new scrubbers to investing in different and new technology. Some of it has to do with new facilities that are coming online. There tend to be some operational issues that need to be dealt with. It’s just fine-tuning and allowing the equipment to function normally. It’s almost like with any new piece of machinery, sometimes you actually have to tune it in and fine-tune it and get it to run to maximum efficiency. Sometimes there are exceedances that are associated with those kinds of instances. There also can be exceedances from time to time that are part of a start-up after a shutdown, a scheduled maintenance or something.
I think you have to put these numbers into the proper context. Yes, these numbers are large, and they’re unacceptably large. We need to bring them down, but there are always going to be exceedances. The issue that we need to deal with is: are they within reasonable parameters? Are they something that is being dealt with in an appropriate manner, or is this an habitual issue, where clearly they’re not abiding by the approvals that they have? In that case, then we have some compliance mechanisms at our doorstep. We can issue orders. We can go as far as going to charges, and that’s what happened when we laid charges in the Firebag situation.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Thanks. I’m just going through my notes, and I have an enormous amount of area to cover in seven and a half minutes, so I’m going to move on.
I did a bit of adding up of figures, and when I looked at the monitoring and evaluation sections – 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.0.4, 2.0.5., and 2.0.6 – what I’m seeing is a trend. Over the past couple of years the environmental assurance program has been restructured. Two years ago, in the ’07-08 estimates, we had $19.4 million allocated for monitoring and evaluation, $6 million allocated for standards, $1.6 million allocated for integrated information solutions, $1.8 million for drinking water, $10.6 million for innovation and policy, and $3.6 million for climate change. Now, if you take out the climate change line item, which has grown considerably as a result of the $52 million from the ecotrust, what you end up with is that in ’07-08 the environmental assurance budget added up to $39.3 million. This year the budget for environmental assurance, not including climate change again, is $20.2 million, which is a fair cut. I’m wondering why we’ve seen such a reduction in the monitoring, reporting, and innovation budget allocation. Why has this provincial contribution to environmental assurance gone down by almost 50 per cent? That’s a lot of difference.
Mr. Renner: Some of it relates to internal reallocation of resources. Some of the people that were formerly included in the budget in monitoring and reporting have now moved over to Al Sanderson’s area and are working more on the strategic side of things, so that would explain where part of it went. We’ve reallocated to our priority areas.
I talked about it in my opening comments. There are a number of internal reallocations that we’ve made, so we have moved a significant portion of the monitoring, reporting, and innovation into the cumulative effects management program. The actual work that is going to be going into that, some of it in scientific analysis and consultants for the lower Athabasca, we’ve talked about a number of times. We put a great deal of emphasis on getting that basic knowledge in place for the lower Athabasca.
Some of it has moved into climate change, and some of it has moved into water for life. So a very significant portion of that reduction that you’ve identified is still within the department; it’s just moved into other areas.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. If you can give me the amounts and where they moved to, in writing, that would be very helpful.
I’m going to move to compliance and enforcement. I’m referencing 4.0.3. If Alberta Environment was going to audit every site that it is responsible for in one year, how many audits or inspections would they be conducting, and how has this number changed over the last 10 years?
Mr. Renner: I don’t think there’s any way to answer that question. We could conduct inspections at every site every day of the year, and it would be thousands. The way we determine how to allocate our resources is based on the degree of risk to public safety and also on the history of the operator. So if we have operators that have shown us that they are capable of conducting themselves in an appropriate manner – we have an EnviroVista program, where they have an exemplary performance record – the amount of on-site inspections would be dramatically lower than for someone who has a history of having enforcement orders and exceedances and the like. Obviously, that’s an area where we would concentrate.
So I don’t think it’s possible to say how many would be the ideal or how many would be necessary. We believe that we are conducting an appropriate amount. I would say that what we deliver is what is necessary. Could we do more? Sure. Would more inspections result in better outcomes? I don’t think so. I doubt that it would.
Ms Blakeman: Can you tell me how many of these you did, say, in ’08, ’07, and ’06, then? Can you give me those numbers?
Mr. Renner: We’ll get those numbers.
The Acting Chair: There are two minutes remaining, Ms Blakeman.
Ms Blakeman: Thank you. I’m talking as fast as I can.
I want to go to land reclamation, the security deposits. This is around the Auditor General’s report. There have been three different occasions where he has recommended that the department address the risks related to financial security for land disturbances throughout the province. In response to the most recent one the department promised to develop a risk-focused asset-to-liability model to calculate security needed in mining and oil and gas sectors. Is this model complete, and has it been implemented?
Mr. Renner: The model is almost complete, so the answer, therefore, is no. It has not been implemented. It is a very complex process. When you talk about a risk-based security system, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a direct, one-to-one relationship with the cost of reclamation. Risk-based means that you associate the risk to the public purse with the disturbance, so in theory if there is no risk to the public, there would be no deposit, and that’s unacceptable to government and to me as the minister. I can’t see a situation where we would not have a deposit. On the other hand, you don’t have to have zero risk and have a dollar-for-dollar deposit because, clearly, most operators are in a position…
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