:
We'll get started. Obviously, once the bells go, we'll continue for a bit, if we have unanimous consent around the table. We have votes at 4:15, so we'll go for a bit and then give ourselves about 20 minutes to get over there. We'll come right back as fast as we can so we can carry on.
I want to welcome our guests.
We have with us, from the Department of Health, Christine Norman, who is the director of the healthy environments and consumer safety branch, and James Van Loon, director general of the healthy environments and consumer safety branch; from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lori MacDonald, assistant deputy minister of the emergency management and programs branch; and, from the Department of the Environment, Eric Gagné, director general of the science and technology branch, and Ken Macdonald, executive director, national program and business development, Meteorological Service of Canada.
Where is Ken?
:
Oh, he's the one on the teleconference? Philip is on the teleconference, and he's the director of building regulations.
Thank you very much, Philip, for joining us.
From the Office of Infrastructure of Canada, we have Laura Di Paolo, director general, program integration; Robert Judge, director, sectoral policy; and Bogdan Makuc, director, program integration.
We have a lot of people here to share their information with us. Each group will have 10 minutes.
Would you like to start?
:
Sure. Again, I am James Van Loon, director general of the consumer product safety directorate at Health Canada.
[Translation]
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would also like to take this opportunity to again thank Ms. Gelfand and her team for their report last year. This report focused on the management of chemicals of concern in consumer products and cosmetics.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to outline some of the progress we have made over the last year in response to those recommendations.
First of all, I will just remind the committee that Health Canada co-administers the Chemicals Management Plan, or CMP, with Environment and Climate Change Canada. Through the CMP, Health Canada systematically reviews chemicals used in Canada to identify and manage chemicals of concern. The CMP is Canada's comprehensive and integrated strategy for identifying and taking action on potentially harmful substances.
When the CMP identifies substances of concern, the department uses the most appropriate legislative or regulatory program to address any risks facing Canadians from these substances. For example, in the cases of BPA in baby bottles and the flame retardant TCEP in foam products for children, both of which are prohibited, the department took actions pursuant to the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act—my act.
Health Canada developed a comprehensive management response and action plan to address the recommendations made in the report. We have accomplished many of the actions outlined in that plan.
[English]
One of those things is that supporting consumers in making wise choices is an important part of our work.
We acted swiftly to address the recommendations to increase communications to Canadians about chemicals of concern in consumer products and cosmetics.
Health Canada has introduced new and updated social media web content on potential risks of products that you might buy via e-commerce and the hazards that can be associated with counterfeit products, such as batteries.
We have revised our information on how we regulate under the cosmetic regulations under the Food and Drugs Act, and how Health Canada treats marketing terms such as “hypoallergenic” or “fragrance-free” that are used by industry—all of which were recommendations.
The commissioner also recommended that other improvements be made regarding the resolution of cases concerning restricted or prohibited substances and the accuracy of the notifications about cosmetics.
In response, we've implemented a process to automate the identification of cosmetic notifications for ingredients that are on our cosmetics ingredient hot list, which is a list of substances that are prohibited or regulated in cosmetics. Today, substances that are prohibited get an automated screening on the very day the notification is received. We'll have all the hot list substances covered by that in the not-too-distant future.
We've also initiated a review of our processing and follow-up of all those cosmetic notifications to make sure that we have service standards and are monitoring our performance.
Finally, we've updated our cosmetic notification form to include information on the date of first sale in Canada of a cosmetic, which was another recommendation the commissioner made.
Our regulations regarding cosmetics also require companies to disclose all cosmetic ingredients on the label. This makes it easier for consumers to make informed decisions. The one exception to this, as the report pointed out, is that sub-ingredients of fragrances or perfumes do not have to be individually listed. To require this would put Canada out of alignment with every major regulator in the world.
Following a recommendation by the commissioner, though, this year we're carrying out a new kind of compliance and enforcement project in which we're going to look for substances that would be on our hot list and could potentially be hiding under terms such as “fragrance” or “perfume”.
The commissioner recommended that Health Canada also verify the extent of industry compliance with our incident reporting requirements for consumer products, so that's kind of moving off cosmetics and into the consumer products realm. We've initiated a new compliance and enforcement project to assess compliance of industry on that, basically by showing up at a company's place of business, looking at the kinds of complaints they've been getting from consumers, and making our own determinations about whether those should or should not have resulted in incident reports.
[Translation]
The commissioner also recommended that Health Canada should improve the verification of product recalls and the documentation of overall recall effectiveness. In response, Health Canada has updated its recall policy, standard operating procedures, and the documents that are given to our inspectors, i.e. all related materials. The updated recall guide for industry is undergoing final approvals and will soon be posted online.
In conclusion, we have worked hard over the past year to improve our communications to Canadians and to streamline processes so that we can react more quickly to address unsafe products. We have also added new types of inspections to look for potential products containing harmful chemistry.
I thank you for your time and would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
[Translation]
Good afternoon, Madam Chair.
[English]
I am pleased to be here to speak on behalf of Public Safety Canada, with my colleagues from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Infrastructure Canada, Health Canada, and the National Research Council of Canada, to follow up on the spring 2016 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
Madam Chair, we recently held a federal-provincial-territorial meeting of ministers responsible for emergency management. At this meeting, we formalized a third edition of the emergency management framework for Canada and received a consensus on the outline for an emergency management strategy in order to fulfill the mandate commitment of our .
We are pleased to provide a progress report on the issues and commitments made in the 2016 report. The Auditor General's report included a number of important recommendations on how the federal government can be better positioned to support Canada's long-term mitigation efforts related to the effects of severe weather.
Now I'll highlight how Public Safety has advanced efforts on three key recommendations.
Overland flooding costs the Canadian economy more than any other hazard we face and is the single largest draw on the disaster financial assistance arrangements. In light of this, the Auditor General recommended that Public Safety work with key stakeholders to develop guidelines and standards for flood plain maps and encourage their consistent application in all provinces and territories.
A federal flood plain mapping framework was published on March 17, 2017, to provide technical information on flood plain mapping, outline roles and responsibilities, and provide an overview of past and present flood plain mapping activities in Canada. Public Safety Canada is working with Natural Resources Canada, provinces, territories, and flood plain mapping experts to develop additional documents to support flood plain mapping across Canada.
For example, federal hydrologic and hydraulic procedures are being developed to support practitioners in examining flood magnitudes and water surface elevations in specific environmental circumstances. It will also include information on how to incorporate climate change and coastal flooding considerations into these analyses.
Public Safety has also been working with the Insurance Bureau of Canada to help facilitate an overland flood insurance market for Canadians. Minister signalled his commitment to this issue by announcing a multi-stakeholder round table on flood insurance, to be held later this year.
[Translation]
The Auditor General's 2016 Report also recommended that Public Safety work with the federal partners to better understand the information needed to support their disaster risk reduction efforts, including severe weather.
Public Safety Canada has developed a flood- focused risk profile to strengthen our understanding of flood risks in Canada by examining historical events and annual flood risk climate change impacts and potential mitigation measures.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
:
Thank you for having us here to speak before you.
I am joined today by Robert Judge, director of sectoral policy at Infrastructure Canada, and Bogdan Makuc, director of program integration.
We're here today to speak to you about Infrastructure Canada's progress in addressing the recommendations made in chapter one on federal support for environmentally sustainable infrastructure.
[Translation]
This chapter of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development's 2016 Spring Report examined federal municipal infrastructure programs that are intended, among other objectives, to improve the environmental performance and sustainability of Canadian communities.
[English]
At the time the report was issued, Infrastructure Canada agreed with all of the recommendations made by the commissioner. I would like to briefly review the progress we've made in response to the recommendations.
With respect to performance measurement for the gas tax fund, in January of this year the department held a gas tax fund national workshop that brought together all partners responsible for implementing the gas tax fund. Part of the conversation included discussions around options to improve the GTF reporting. We agreed to work with our signatories to consult further on how to improve the indicators collected for the selected outcomes.
[Translation]
For the longer term, the department will also align the approach to performance measurement and reporting for the Gas Tax Fund with the new suite of outcomes-based programs of the Investing in Canada Plan launched in 2016 and further expanded in budget 2017.
[English]
Infrastructure Canada also committed to improve data on infrastructure. Over the past year, we've worked with Statistics Canada to develop the Canada core public infrastructure survey, which is launching this summer. The survey will provide a national picture of the current state and performance of infrastructure across Canada and will be the first national survey regarding core public infrastructure: Canada's roads and bridges, and water, waste-water, and public transit infrastructure.
[Translation]
We are working with other federal departments, provinces and territories to determine how best to integrate climate change mitigation and resilience considerations in our infrastructure investments.
These requirements will be incorporated into the upcoming integrated bilateral agreements with provinces and territories.
[English]
We are also working closely with our partners at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, who will be delivering a $50-million municipal asset management program and a $75-million “municipalities for climate innovation” program. These are both five-year programs and, respectively, will support municipalities in their adoption of good practices in asset management and in adapting to the impacts of climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
[Translation]
As we have demonstrated with our new initiatives—the FCM-delivered programs, and the Core Public Infrastructure Survey—Infrastructure Canada recognizes and supports the importance of innovation, particularly in the context of ensuring the environmental and financial sustainability of infrastructure.
[English]
As identified in budget 2017, phase two of the federal government's infrastructure plan signalled that the federal government will work with partners over the next year to examine new innovative financing mechanisms to increase the long-term affordability and sustainability of infrastructure in Canada.
Two of these new innovative financing mechanisms include the Canada infrastructure bank and the smart cities challenge. Legislation to establish the bank has been tabled in Parliament, and the introduced the smart cities challenge at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference at the beginning of June.
The department is looking forward to having more information on both of these initiatives in the coming weeks and months.
[Translation]
In the meantime, the department will continue to examine its own programming for opportunities that will maximize innovative mechanisms for program delivery and project funding. It will also aim to better support the use of state-of-the-art infrastructure technology to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of existing assets.
[English]
Infrastructure is the backbone of our communities, big or small, and our department is committed to implementing the Government of Canada's long-term plan to support the resilient and sustainable infrastructure that is at their core.
[Translation]
Thank you for inviting us to speak with you today.
[English]
My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to any questions.
:
Thank you for your question.
The situation in both Ontario and Quebec, and certainly in B.C. and New Brunswick, has been very tragic in terms of the flooding we've seen. Approximately 245 communities or districts have been affected.
One of the things that came out very clearly in the beginning is that there's a gap between what people believe they want to do in a crisis situation and what they actually do. An example would be that people want to be involved in terms of being prepared and being able to mitigate against disasters, but in fact do very little about it when it is actually happening to them.
One of the things we identified very quickly is that we really need to ramp up our awareness on getting ready for emergencies and what to do in emergencies. Earlier this year, we had advanced a “Flood Ready” campaign to try to educate people with respect to what to do in disaster situations and how to prepare for that, but in fact we've seen that we need to do a lot more in that area, so education is first and foremost.
The second thing is really advancing that conversation around a residential flood insurance market in terms of how most people, when they call after a flooding situation, are unaware that they don't actually have coverage. That traumatizes them further, so that they're much more in a place of “what does this really mean to me?” and the losses they experience in terms of their home.
Finally, we work with other government departments—Environment and Climate Change Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Infrastructure Canada—with respect to what things we need to put in place purely from a mitigative perspective. We need to advance much further in terms of mitigation in our country, regardless of which province the flooding happens in.
:
Thank you for your question.
The municipal asset management program that will be delivered by the FCM is really geared toward supporting the smaller rural communities, because we have realized that there is a gap in their abilities and their capacity, really, for infrastructure asset management planning. Over the past year, the FCM has done a lot of consultations and engagement to review what the needs and gaps are.
We do see a difference across the country as well. We see provinces—such as Ontario—that have legislated requirements for asset management planning in the province. That has made a significant advancement for us in management in the province. British Columbia is also quite strong on the asset management side, but we see quite a range in the other provinces in terms of their abilities, both in that kind of urban/rural area where you see a difference in capacity and across the country.
The FCM will be engaging further with provincial and territorial associations to provide on-the-ground support, actual training, and awareness to increase the capacity of these smaller communities. The program also includes some support for actual staffing around asset management to get in-house support for these smaller communities.
:
Right, back to the building codes....
We can talk about hail insurance. The hail insurance guys do a seeding program to reduce the amount of hail. That's something they do at their cost. It's a good program. It's been out there for a long time, so it's not new.
You talked about flooding. The largest flooding that I would remember was in 1965 in Waterton park. We had 11 inches of rain on rocks, and a north wind so that the water didn't get out of the lake. It flooded the community to the highest level it had ever been flooded. It was a combination of events. In 2013, the 11 inches of rain that happened west of Calgary was—again—on rocks. If it had been 50 kilometres out on our prairie land areas, there would have been a huge difference.
As for the idea of surveys, how does that help you plan for that?
:
That's not very encouraging.
I remain very confused by all the funds for green infrastructure.
We have the gas tax, and the commissioner asked questions about the environmental side of the gas tax.
Then we have the fund directly through the FCM, where they allocate it.
Is that different from the $20 billion over 10 years—in other words, $2 billion a year for green infrastructure—or is it the same?
It would be my understanding that since that is Environment Canada's main document on climate, these would begin to be reported together. Could I just leave that comment with you? I've had many discussions with the 's office and it remains very puzzling to me.
There are all of these funds and there doesn't appear to be any money being released. I'm hearing from at least my province that they're ready for the dollars. We have problems with flood mitigation. We want to do energy efficiency. Maybe at some point we could have somebody here in the fall to actually explain where all these funds are and which department is responsible. I know that the tends to be the one they put out as a spokesperson, and sometimes Mr. , but it remains quite confusing to the public out there in terms of who is actually in control of these funds.
I have a few more minutes, and I have a specific question.
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you, folks, for being here today. I appreciate the information you're providing us.
I want to talk to Ms. Di Paolo in regard to the gas tax fund and, to a lesser extent maybe, to Mr. Gagné, about the green municipal fund, at least as that pertains to environmental projects.
This government talks an awful lot about the importance of municipalities determining what the priorities are for those small on-the-ground communities. We've talked about that a lot. As a councillor, I recall that provinces and the federal government would come in and determine which projects were going to go forward, which might have looked like the shiniest penny in that community, so I love the fact that we've put the municipalities, through FCM, at the forefront of what is important and what projects should go ahead. We're making sure that they're at the table.
The commissioner has stated that she felt that the gas tax was inadequately managed—I believe those are the words she used in the report—and that there were some issues with FCM environmental projects. I'm interested in finding out specifically how you're working with municipalities and with the FCM to ensure that their priorities actually get built. You mentioned a national workshop. I'm curious as to the makeup of that workshop. Who's at the table?
Is that just one thing that you're going to do? Is that part of the your central focus on how you continue to work with municipalities through the FCM?
I'm not sure, Eric, if there's an actual question in there for you or not.
I have a few moments, Mr. Van Loon. What actions has Health Canada taken? You spoke a little about social media, but to communicate to consumers about cosmetics regulation.... I mean, we all work hard on social media, but we reach 8%, 9%, or 10% of the population with social media. What else is tested? What else is planned? What are you envisioning?
Also, is there a plan for random testing of products to find these things, or are you looking at things that are complaint driven?
:
Yes. We've updated our web page to make it clearer what we do. The recommendations of the commissioner were along the lines that we should tell people what we don't do. As a regulator, I'd want to temper that a bit so as to not be equipping people with all the stuff that we're not going to do.
We do risk-based, targeted sampling. You're asking what we are doing in terms of random sampling in the marketplace. This is valid, not just for cosmetics but also for consumer products. We can't randomly sample in the marketplace. If you take a large, big-box retailer that has 100,000 or 150,000 SKUs, we're not randomly sampling from that.
We point our compliance and enforcement resources in places where we believe there's a high probability of non-compliance and also a high probability of that non-compliance being something dangerous. Typically, all of our rules are on things we think are dangerous.
Where we're really trying to innovate these days, though, is on not spending our time walking into a store or warehouse or whatever and grabbing 20 or 50 or 100 whatever it is—products—and sending them off to the lab for an exam, out of the hundreds of thousands of things that might be there. We are really spending our compliance and enforcement resources on talking to companies about the systems they have in place, how they mitigate risk for consumers up and down the supply chain, how they identify emerging risks, and how they let us know about those. Then, where we see a strong system, we'll set it aside or reduce the amount of sampling that we would do, while for others we'll increase the amount, as they are a higher-risk entity.
That's the kind of stuff we're trying to work on. It's a bit different—consumer products and cosmetics—but that's the overall strategy: how do we find the risky places where we should be investing our resources?
:
I'd like to thank everybody for coming out this afternoon.
I had a bunch of questions written down here, but then started off with flooding, and that kind of drew my attention to a few things—past experiences and the like.
Lori, you talked about your flood ready program that was initiated this year as a result of the audit that was done. I'm very interested. You stated that you've met with the provinces and municipalities and you're looking at the overall picture and waiting for results back. Through the questioning from Mr. , it's clear we really don't have a time frame.
What I'm curious about is this. When you met with the provinces and municipalities, were discussions on—I'm just going to throw out a random number—the probably one thousand areas in Canada that are built up in flood plains. They've already been built and were allowed by municipalities due to the ignorance of the times, due to not knowing what the consequences might be. Also, no one knew about global warming.
Now, we have probably hundreds of thousands of homes in Canada, in many major centres, from sea to sea to sea, that people may not be able to get insurance for, because they already know they're in a flood plain. Is there any long-term plan for looking at those areas? Are finances being put aside to try to mitigate the risks that are there, with a big flood wall or whatever? I'm wondering if that was discussed?
:
—in terms of what we do about that.
There are three main areas that we're having these conversations about in terms of the challenges. You have houses built on flood plains that become a high risk from an insurance perspective. We need to have some preconditions in place to support the conversation on a flood insurance market. Flood plain mapping is one of them.
If I can use the analogy, when you build a house, you need to have a good foundation. Well, a good foundation of urban planning and building in appropriate areas is to have the appropriate flood plain mapping done. That's one reason why we have so much focus and attention on that area: so we can set up the right conditions to introduce that residential flood insurance.
At the same time, one of the thorny issues is around what you do in terms of having an equal opportunity to get that insurance when you're the person sitting in the high-risk area, on the one hand, and the person next to you down the road is not in that high-risk area. How do you balance that out from a financial perspective? That's one of the issues that the insurance markets themselves are grappling with.
:
Thank you. I'm glad to hear that you are looking at that.
I have a quick question for the Department of Health on a part of your overall policy. I was looking it up on the computer the other day in getting prepared for this, and I had one question I wanted to ask you. In terms of your actions, you induce, encourage, and compel companies in the observance of your legislation.
I know that you had an audit here within the year and some things were mentioned, but I wonder if you can tell me roughly how many actions have been taken over the last year by your organization to resolve issues out there. Did you do any prosecutions? How are you finding the industry? Is it compliant or not?
:
Thanks. That's a good one.
We publish a sort of quarterly dashboard that shows what kinds of incoming incident reports we're getting on various things. We get something in the order of a couple of thousand incident reports, which would include the industry-mandatory incident reports as well as consumer reports, at roughly a 60:40 ratio.
Each one of those things gets follow-up from us. We have a triage system established. Within a couple of days, we have taken a look at the report we got and have established, at the most gross level, how serious of a risk this looks like. Ones that look trivial or.... There are many that we don't need to follow up on. Those go into a database and feed our ongoing analytics in the future, but a substantial number of those would go through into risk assessments.
:
Absolutely. Thank you very much for the question.
To go back to the point I made earlier, everyone who's involved in any kind of decision-making with respect to urban planning, with respect to disaster mitigation, or with respect to emergency management has to start with the foundation of someplace, and the foundation for us is flood plain mapping. They can make informed decisions with respect to not only what's happening now in their communities but also where they're going in the future in terms of planning, and then what that means from a preparation perspective in terms of disaster mitigation.
As I said earlier, we know that the vast majority of communities across the country are actually built on flood plains, so it puts a significant economic cost on a community in terms of not having that information—
I'm sorry, but I'm pressed for time. The reason I'm asking that is that right now in terms of Lake Ontario, for example—I know you're very familiar with the Kingston area—there is some flooding in the Kingston area on some roads in particular—such as Abingdon Road—that are quite low. A lot of that is because the lake is dammed up, and it hasn't been released. I think they just started to release that in the middle of June.
Some of the flood activity is as a result of natural occurrences—that's an oxymoron, because if we believe in climate change, they're really man-made occurrences—but some of this is also for strategic reasons, such as preventing the release of water from Lake Ontario in order to protect downstream municipalities or communities, and in the process, you're flooding some of the upstream ones.
Who makes those decisions about opening that up? Is that emergency preparedness? How do you balance out the decision to protect one city and say it's okay to flood another city in the process?
:
I was concerned about just using models. We just had it in agriculture in terms of doing a model on the neonic issue without using in-field testing. The models actually don't represent what happens on the ground. Sometime we have to be cautious about using just computer models.
Ms. Di Paolo, I was wondering about the gas tax fund. For Ontario, you're absolutely right: this is how it's supposed to work. AMO runs that. They do it for about one-half of a per cent for administration. That's how it really should work. I think those are the types of models that as governments we need to be promoting. When those monies funnel through, they actually go to the municipalities, and the administrative cost is very low.
But you've mentioned that it's not meeting the objectives of the plan, that it's not meeting the environmental objectives, I guess. Who determines that? There's a difference if they're not meeting some of the conditions in a large urban area versus meeting the conditions in a rural area. A lot of that in my area gets used to do bridges and to do roads. The great thing about it is its flexibility, because if you don't use it one year, you reserve it, and it's indexed. I'm wondering how it doesn't meet the objectives of the plan in terms of the environment.
:
I want to go back and comment on this whole issue of flood insurance. One of the comments was that the lack of action on climate change is having an impact on flooding.
I would not think that the people now are any smarter than the people were a little while ago, but here's what I am wondering about, which happens in large urban areas, which I'm close to, as well as in rural areas. You have the influence of professionals who have buildings built in flood plains. They do. I went by a 25-acre parcel that was all treed. They stripped the trees out, brought in five feet of dirt, and now there are houses on it. I don't understand that, when I have trouble building a drive shed because somebody else believes that it may be on a flood plain.
I think one of the concerns is that the influence of professionals on councils has a large impact on where the housing is going to be, and the result is that the homeowner gets stuck with the insurance because somebody else nodded their head. Then, when it goes wrong, the professionals tend to go out the back door, and the homeowners and the municipalities get hung with it.
That's just a comment. I really do get concerned about this insurance issue, because somebody allowed them to do that, and it's the homeowner who gets caught with it. Are there discussions about how they may rectify that?
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, on infrastructure, what scrutiny is given to projects when municipalities offer their request?
I have a specific reason for asking that. It was controversial in my case, where $30 million of gas tax money was given to renovate city hall. It came under—I have to look it up, because it was back in 2009—“community energy systems”. The infrastructure deficit of the city now approaches $200 million a year. There are roads and bridges and all kinds of things that need to be fixed.
Does the application get a rubber stamp when it comes to the department for approval? How does that work?
:
Thank you for the question.
We have a very large technical working group. We purposely have in there representatives from municipalities, provinces, territories, academia, industry, and private sector experts in technically advancing the discussion on flood plain mapping, because we want the framework to be as comprehensive as possible in terms of having comprehensive flood plain maps.
There are four or five different types of mapping that have been identified and also what's required for them to actually complete those mappings, depending on what they have already and what the need is in their particular area. We have it peer-reviewed by the water resource people so that we can in fact demonstrate a level of integrity to the flood plain mapping guidelines that we've put in place.
:
We actually have a very good relationship with a number of the insurance industries right now. We have dialogue with them on likely a weekly basis right now. It's a whole-of-society issue. It's not just an insurance industry issue or a government issue. It's an issue even right down to the individual level, where we're taking that conversation.
The insurance industry wants to introduce a residential flood insurance market. There are some difficult decisions that have to be made. One of them would be sharing information, because that becomes a tension point as to whether you want to have the information shared about your home, which might be in a high risk area, and the impact that will have on property values and so on. That has an impact on the municipality and on the person who owns a home, but it also has an impact on what their rate of insurance would be, as an example.
When I spoke earlier about trying to address some of that, what are the preconditions we need to have in place to actually implement residential flood insurance? That's the kind of conversation we're having right now in trying to bring a number of players to the table in order to be able to make an informed recommendation on that.
I'll continue with this. It seems to be a favourite topic.
There were major floods in Alberta of late and, more than 30 years ago, in the community I lived in, n the river flats in Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan River. Since that big flood, they've required any new housing to have the furnace above—not in—the basement. There are a lot of simple things that can be done to reduce costs in flood damage.
I noted after the big flood in Calgary and Canmore that there's this conflict that goes on. The mayors say, “Well, people really want to live along the rivers, and we get a high tax base.” But then I have to subsidize when they're flooded out. I think people are starting to take a closer look at this.
I am wondering if, at the federal level.... For example, we give out aid, right? Eventually the province or municipality will come to the federal government and say “disaster assistance”. Isn't it time, given the fact that we know that we have climate change, that unpredictable things can happen...? We know that there have been developments in flood plains, and we know that new developments shouldn't happen in flood plains. Isn't it time for the federal government to be putting conditions on it and saying that you—the province, the municipality—did the flood plain mapping, and you didn't do any measures, so you don't qualify for relief and you're going to have to bear the cost?
Isn't it time? We talk about it, but isn't it time that certain levels of government got serious about this? It's like a pre-existing condition. Insurers won't pay you if you didn't identify the pre-existing condition.
Are you good to come back to us on that? Okay.
I think we could go on. There are a lot of great questions. We focused on floods. There are still a lot of questions that the analysts had suggested and that I think our team may have in terms of Health Canada. Given that we just did CEPA, I think there are some things there that we would have liked to delve into.
I'd like to make a suggestion. We could continue, as we haven't had bells yet. Or what we could say is that maybe we'd like to have a two-year review. In the next year, we would have you come back and touch base again to see how we're doing in terms of some of these things we identified. I think you're telling us that there's some good work being done. Maybe we can touch base in another year. Obviously, you can see that the committee is interested in progress.
Mr. Eglinski, is that something you would support?
:
As we get closer to a year out, we'll look at it and see whether we want to do it in separate meetings.
Does anybody want to move that we would have them come back in a year? Do we need to...? All in favour?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Okay. That sounds good, so we'll do that.
Thank you very much for all your time and for being patient with us as we were a bit late today.
We'll all suspend for a few minutes, and then we'll go into closed.
:
All right. We have a couple of things to do in terms of committee business.
We potentially have a meeting on Wednesday. We don't know what the schedule of the House is. We may or may not need it. I didn't want to cancel it. We thought we were going to have Finance here. They are not able to meet with us on Wednesday, so if they're not coming, I don't think we have a lot to discuss unless we want to get started on our next report, which we could try to do.
We wouldn't have witnesses, but we might be able to have come in front of us. That's an option. I wanted to put it in front of the committee. I never like to waste any time if we have it, but it's completely at the committee's pleasure.
I'll open it to discussion. Would you like to start or what?
We'll start with Jim and then go to Linda.
Go ahead.
:
Yes, that's fine. We've been pretty open here to try to move things along.
We don't know if the committee's going to change, but again, I don't want to hold everything back in case it does. I think we should take every opportunity to move forward if we can. Whatever happens, happens. People can read the blues and get the information that we shared at the meeting, so it's not going to be that difficult to have one meeting that they've missed, if we decide that we're going to have him in. We're going to have discussions anyway, and that's all informative.
I guess what I want to ask the committee is, do you want to start on Wednesday discussing heritage, and shall we ask to see...? He may not be available, but is it valuable to get started with him and have a good handle on what he's looking at with his bill?
:
Okay. All in favour of having a meeting on Wednesday?
An hon. member: Yes.
Some hon members: No.
The Chair: Well, that was easy. That ended that discussion.
There are a couple of things before we go.
You may or may not have noticed, but a little something was put in front of you, which is the response from the government on our “Federal sustainability for future generations” report. It's nice to get that before we go, so have a look at that. The clerk tells me that we don't know exactly where it's going to be posted, but it's likely to be posted somewhere so we can get that.
Something else was just tabled. Protected areas was just tabled as well. That's posted already. It's nice that we have those two things posted. That's pretty good when you think about it, to have both of those up before we rise.
There's one last thing I wanted to ask, and we can go into a closed session. We had our CEPA report tabled, and we did have a dissenting report, and we had a...what did you call it?