[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, April 25, 1996
.0905 
[English]
The Chairman: We have a quorum. Bonjour. Good morning.
[Translation]
We are looking at votes 1, 5 and 10 of the Main Estimates.
I am very glad to welcome today several representatives of the Department of the Environment, namely the Deputy Minister, Mr. Cappe, who is accompanied by Ms. Nancy Cutler, National Director General, National Weather Service, and Mr. McBean, Assistant Deputy Minister, Atmospheric Environment Service.
[English]
Mr. Cappe, we are very glad to have you here today. Since we have an incomplete list of the witnesses in the room, would you mind perhaps completing the introductions and then making your statement?
You are welcome. We are glad to see you. We will launch immediately afterwards into a round of questions.
[Translation]
Mr. Mel Cappe (Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment): I came here today to supplement the answers we gave last Tuesday.
I wanted to attend the first session of your committee, and I had also planned to appear at the very end, to answer all remaining questions. Regrettably, I was not available last Tuesday, but I had intended to address the committee on May 9th. After discussing it with the President, we decided that I would appear today to answer your questions.
[English]
I'm here under false pretenses really, but if I can be of any help I would be pleased.
The Department of the Environment is, as the environment is, a very complex organism. As an organism it has many elements. I would like to be able to provide you with a bit of that integrated view. As well, my other colleagues here from the Atmospheric Environment Service, Dr. McBean and Ms Cutler, are prepared to deal with the atmospheric issues much more capably than I could. So I'm here merely to help.
.0910
Perhaps Dr. McBean could provide some overview of the Atmospheric Environment Service.
The Chairman: How about introducing the other people?
Mr. Cappe: We have in particular Luc Desroches, the director general of finance, who was before the committee on Tuesday, and a number of other officials who can provide assistance. Perhaps Gordon could introduce the others.
Dr. Gordon McBean (Assistant Deputy Minister, Atmospheric Environment Service, Department of the Environment): I can introduce Mr. Denis Bourque and Mr. Rick Jones, who are from the Atmospheric Environment Service in Ottawa-Hull. We also have François Quesnel and Andrée Pelchat from finance. The others I don't know.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to be here to speak about the programs of the Atmospheric Environment Service and the atmospheric environment components of Environment Canada for which I have functional responsibility. We have already introduced Ms Nancy Cutler, who is the director general of the National Weather Services Directorate, which is headquartered in Toronto. That is actually where our national headquarters is. We also have the Canadian Meteorological Centre located in Dorval, and we have research groups, observing sites and offices across the country.
[Translation]
Before we go into the specifics of some of our programs, let me first talk a bit about our atmosphere. As you know, the atmosphere is essential to life on this planet.
It provides us the oxygen we breathe and shields us from most ultraviolet radiation. Carbon dioxide and other components of the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that warms our planet and makes it liveable.
The atmosphere also nourishes our ecosystems. Winds move the sea ice around and create ocean waves and currents.
[English]
We derive many benefits from our atmosphere. However, we also must be aware of the havoc the atmosphere can cause. Just this past Saturday tornadoes swept through parts of Ontario causing injury to four people and millions of dollars of damage. Environment Canada issued severe thunderstorm watches, including the risk of tornadoes, four hours before the tornadoes first occurred. In May of 1985 tornadoes in the same area killed 12 people and left 500 homeless. The Calgary hailstorm of 1991, causing $343 million in damage, was Canada's largest natural disaster in terms of insured losses.
We cannot prevent the occurrence of tornadoes or hailstorms, but through a good forecasting and early warning system and public education programs, we can reduce the loss of life and property damage. Natural hazards do not have to become natural disasters.
The primary role of the Canadian Weather Service since its establishment in 1871 has been to provide warnings of hazardous storms. At that time all we could do was provide information on current winds and weather for the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, with very little look into the future. Over the following 100 years the service expanded to provide the public and rural agriculturalists with weather information across the country. With the advent of commercial aviation, a new major client emerged and was a principal focus of our activities as the Meteorological Branch of Transport Canada. With the creation of Environment Canada in 1971, the weather service was transformed into the Atmospheric Environment Service, with a much broader mandate.
We have continued to place great emphasis on weather forecasts and warnings for Canadians. Through improvements in our observing system and atmospheric models and through highly dedicated and excellent staff, we now issue forecasts of temperatures, winds and precipitation patterns for the next five days. Today the skill of our three-day weather forecast is as good as our day-one forecast was ten years ago. We have shown some of this information in part III of the estimates.
Seasonal climate forecasts for the next ninety days, although with less skill and detail, are now provided based on advanced climate models that include the ocean, the land surface and ice as well as the atmosphere. Similar models have been used by our research groups to investigate how climate may change as a result of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations over the next century. Thus, our prediction program covers the span from severe weather warnings over the next few hours to weather forecasts over the next few days to climatic outlooks over the next few months right out to scenarios of climatic and atmospheric change over the next century.
.0915
These predictions allow Canadians to make informed choices about their own activities in the short term and to understand the implications for themselves and others in the longer term. I'll return to this role of atmospheric and environmental predictions later.
Each day federal government employees process thousands of taxation forms - to quote my deputy minister - screen thousands of visitors at borders and provide services that allow our country to function more safely and efficiently. Generally, unless a mistake is made, these activities attract neither media nor political attention. Each day Environment Canada issues about 1,300 public weather forecasts for over 200 regions of our country and about 1,000 aviation forecasts for 175 airports.
We also provide weather forecasts for our military operations within Canada and overseas. Our service operations continue 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This constitutes a major financial commitment on behalf of the federal government.
Canadians do notice and show their public support. They talk about the weather. They modify their daily activities based on it. On an average day, about 150,000 telephone calls are received in our offices, and weather information is provided. Weather is one of the mainstays of radio broadcasts and is featured on all television newscasts and in our daily newspapers. That weather information comes from Environment Canada.
We operate 150 weather radio transmitters, broadcasting on special bands. About 95% of Canadians live within reach of those weather radio stations. Our forecasts are clearly important for the safety of Canadians and protection of property, but they're also important for the efficiency of many economic and social activities. The laying of concrete for a new building, the planting of seeds in a farmer's field, the clearing of snow on our highways, and our child's afternoon party are all weather-sensitive activities. Forecasts make it easier to plan and carry them out.
A weather warning and forecasting system must be fully integrated. The weakest link can cause a failure. We maintain an observing system from coast to coast to coast, including buoys at sea and stations in the northernmost Arctic islands, with people and with instruments, both at the surface and carried aloft by balloons. We rely heavily on satellite images, which we receive courtesy of the United States government.
Weather is a global phenomenon. Our observing network is fully linked with others around the world. Twice every day at the Canadian Meteorological Centre we receive and use about 9,000 weather reports from other countries, and about 500 from Canada, in preparing our Canadian forecasts. Our minister the other day spoke about partnerships. We're partners with every weather service around the globe through the World Meteorological Organization, which works to coordinate and set standards for this massive global enterprise.
[Translation]
The Canadian Meteorological Centre uses state-of-the-art atmospheric models and an advanced supercomputer to prepare the atmospheric and climate predictions. This information is fed to 17 Environmental Services Offices, located in major centres across the country, which are responsible for local forecasts.
[English]
The atmosphere plays a dominant role in the short-term variations of our natural environment. Sea ice moves due to the winds. Floods result from heavy rains. Forest fires are most often the result of lightning strikes after dry spells. In partnership with the Canadian Coast Guard, we provide the ice forecasts for Canadians waters. I would invite you, any time you wish, to visit our ice centre, which is actually here in Ottawa.
We work with provincial authorities in preparing warnings of floods and forest fires. Right now about 250 people are being forced to live away from their homes due to the Red River flooding its banks. Monitoring of river and stream flows, in cooperation with the provinces, is one of the roles of the atmospheric environment program. In partnership with hydroelectric companies, we are working to optimize the use of one of our most valuable resources - water. The water cycle through the atmosphere to rain to stream flow and in some places to floating ice makes a naturally integrated system, which we have adopted administratively.
Program review has resulted in significant changes in the way we do our business. There are consequences of significant reductions in budget. However, I think our foresight to invest in science and to develop state-of-the-art technology has prepared us for this transition.
.0920
We have developed special computerized forecast tools to improve the skill and efficiency of our forecasters. One, called the forecast production assistant, has been so successful that we are now licensing it for use by other agencies around the world. Another example has been our contributions to the development of RADARSAT, Canada's satellite, which has allowed us to serve more effectively the interests of those involved in coastal and marine-based activities, including the Canadian Coast Guard.
We also had to make policy decisions on what services we would provide as free public services, such as storm warnings and general weather forecasts. These are being delivered to all Canadians through the media and generally through automatic telephone devices. On the other hand, when a special forecast is requested by a client who therefore is receiving special benefits, we feel it is appropriate to charge for that service.
Our decision to emphasize partnerships with the media as a delivery mechanism directly from our forecast centres and to provide special services only on a user-pay principle meant that we could close many of our small local weather offices that had provided those services. Special contracts and 1-900 telephone services are now provided for those who want these special services. This has been a major change in the way we deliver service to Canadians.
I would like now to leave the discussion of weather and ice forecasting programs and return to the discussion of the atmosphere as a component of our natural environment.
The Chairman: Mr. McBean, all of this is very important and makes for interesting listening, but keep in mind that we are here to discuss the budget. We could read this any time we were interested in the services. Perhaps I'm saying this for future presentations by the department. A presentation at budget time would be most interesting if it were focused on the budget, the cuts, and the impact of the cuts on the respective service you represent.
I hate to interrupt you, and by all means complete your presentation, but keep in mind that we are in budget time, not in a general description of activities that could be carried out at any given time throughout the year. Please continue.
Dr. McBean: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will abbreviate my comments in view of your advice.
I would just note that many environmental issues - and I'm now going to paraphrase what I have here in the remaining pages - are due to the atmospheric transport of pollutants. It's through a knowledge of the atmosphere and observations and models thereof that we can attribute as to where these pollutants have originated.
I think that as we are aware, as you noted, of the financial implications, it has been very important for us to maintain linkages with international organizations such as the World Meteorological Organization, the International Council of Scientific Unions and others, which will collectively allow us to address these kinds of issues.
We have tried to make the best use we can of our science to minimize the impacts of the reductions by using technologies and science very effectively. I think we want to note a few of the research areas we have been particularly involved in.
On the ozone depletion issue, we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol this year. Environment Canada, through the Atmospheric Environment Service, issues the daily ultraviolet radiation warnings to Canadians to encourage them to modify their behaviour. We have also been very much involved in the studies and background of climatic variation, and we are working with our partners in universities and other governments, as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to better understand climatic change.
The other emerging issues we are dealing with now are atmospheric pollutants in cities, again looking at how we may predict those hazards and work to mitigate them with the provinces and other areas.
.0925
I think the impacts of the activities of the Atmospheric Environment Service are very important. They have been impacted by budgetary reductions, but I think we have tried to work as best we could to minimize the impact of those reductions on the general delivery of weather services to Canadians and the general development of science that we do in support of development of public policy.
I would like in closing to note that the members of my department and my service in particular are very proud of their heritage. This year is the 125th anniversary of the founding of the National Weather Service. Mr. Fewchuk was able to recognize this in a statement made in the House on March 22, the day prior to World Meteorological Day.
I thank you for your attention and I invite you to read the rest of my comments when you have an opportunity. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.
The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. McBean, and we will.
Ms Cutler.
Ms Nancy Cutler (Director General, National Weather Services Directorate, Department of the Environment): I have no additional comments.
The Chairman: Then we are ready to start the first round.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin, would you care to go first?
Mr. Asselin (Charlevoix): First, the role of Environment Canada is to enhance the health and well-being of all Canadians. That is your mission.
The government has cut budgets, and you will have to scale down some of your activities. In which cases does this pose a threat to the safety and well-being of Canadians?
Mr. Cappe: When we launched the budget and programs review, we looked at procedures that might mitigate the impact of the cuts. We started with plans like the plan for modernizing and automating service delivery.
As Dr. McBean was saying, there was a plan to computerize the atmosphere observation program, and we fast-tracked its implementation. We had some luck, which enabled us to fast-track this plan. But we also reviewed the other elements of our program.
[English]
An example of this is in the areas of toxic substances, where we were using processes that were perhaps not as efficient as we could have. We were working very closely with Health Canada and we've tried to ameliorate that partnership with Health Canada.
The area where there was no budget cut in Environment Canada was enforcement of regulation and enforcement of legislation.
[Translation]
To protect the public, we made every effort to preserve our meteorological warnings and enforcement tools. We have attempted to provide good service to the public.
Mr. Asselin: You took a 30 percent budget cut, that is some 230 million dollars, and that means a staff reduction of 1,400 employees.
We know that some Environment Canada offices, mainly in Quebec, were centralized, like the one in Sept-Îles. In the riding next to mine, Environment Canada had an office that has now been moved to Rimouski.
Was it the minister, the deputy minister, the public servants or the minister of Finances himself who recommended such major staff and budget cuts?
.0930
Mr. Cappe: In the English version of Part III, at page 73, you will see that we operate 17 centres across Canada, compared with 72 a year ago. We have tried to rationalize. Therefore, 56 offices will close throughout the country.
We submitted our criteria to the minister at the time, and she did not modify our suggestions, recommendations or decisions in any way.
[English]
Perhaps Dr. McBean could provide an elaboration of that.
Dr. McBean: I think it's important to recognize that we had made these decisions based on part of the logic that I described in my presentation. We had essentially a three-level system. We had the Centre météorologique canadien à Montréal. We had at that time a number - a dozen or so - of weather offices where we had professional staff preparing forecasts, and we had 56 offices with technical staff whose job was to observe the weather, to provide specialized local weather forecasts, and to generally interact with the media.
As I noted, we felt, in terms of budget reduction and decisions of government, that we should provide only generalized forecasts and that special services should be paid for. In addition, we are able to a large extent to automate the observing function. We made it logical to in fact reduce and close the small weather offices that had those functions.
The third tier of our system was entirely eliminated or will be in the course of program review. We have actually increased the number of forecast centres. We opened one in Rimouski. It wasn't as though we had centralized other things there; it was a change of function. We also are opening one in Quebec City. So we will essentially have three major weather forecast offices staffed by professionals in each of our regions across the country, plus an additional one for the arctic region and for the large prairie sector.
Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Since your department is involved with weather forecasting, did you foresee the shower of cuts and the storm that was to batter you? There must certainly be measures that were in your action plan and must now be set aside, because you cannot afford to follow that plan.
Which of the major upgrading programs needed to maintain quality service and safety will be impossible to implement because of the budget cuts?
[English]
Dr. McBean: Yes. First of all, we have accelerated a plan that was originally designed in 1987 and was intended to be a 20-year plan. We basically accelerated the implementation of that. That does mean that in the transition period there are increased difficulties, but I think we are handling those fairly well. We have delayed, but not cancelled in any way, the implementation of some special technology, such as Doppler radars, as part of that program. We have, though, implemented modifications to our existing radar network to account for that.
.0935
Clearly, when you take a 30% reduction in budget there are implications on programs, but I think we have worked hard to make the safety and security of Canadians' health our number one priority.
The Chairman: What Mr. Asselin brings out in his questions, and by way of the map you have on page 73, is that between Gander and Whitehorse in the northern regions, there is a big ``no'' to Nunavut, if you don't mind that kind of expression. There is a huge empty space in the Arctic area, and to someone who is not well versed in metereological science, it looks like a dangerous vacuum. Maybe it isn't.
Dr. McBean: We do have the Arctic weather centre, which, although located in Edmonton, has forecasters who are entirely devoted to forecasting for the Arctic region. And although it does not show up on this map, we do intend to keep a small presence in two or three of the communities in the Northwest Territories or Nunavut regions. They will not be forecast offices, but we will have a human presence.
The Chairman: And where is that?
Dr. McBean: I believe they will be at Yellowknife and Iqaluit. What don't show up on this map are all of our observing sites. We maintain upper air and surface weather observing stations at Alert, Resolute and many other stations in the Canadian north. So there is a distinct federal presence in terms of our observing network, which we have not included in this map.
The Chairman: With personnel or without?
Dr. McBean: These all have people. Any place where we have a balloon system, we must have people.
Mr. Cappe: If I may, Mr. Chairman, these are the forecast centres, so these are the places where the metereologists are doing the particular forecasts. As Dr. McBean has noted, there are a number of other research laboratories in the north, and manned sites that do the upper aerological stations.
We also have the automated weather observation system, which is being used in the north as well. It doesn't reflect all of the presence of the federal government in gathering information. This is just the forecast production side.
The Chairman: In next year's estimates you may want to have a map that reflects this fact of life.
Mr. Adams, followed by Mr. Knutson.
Mr. Adams (Peterborough): I appreciate your presentation and the written notes.
In this period of downsizing there's a lot of concern that science is vulnerable, because with a great deal of science there are no immediate results. I think you're lucky, because in some areas of your activity it's fairly obvious that the science has direct application, and you've just discussed some examples of that. What sorts of strategies are you using with respect to downsizing for the longer-term science - to deal with the dismantling of the Freshwater Institute, for example? With respect to strategies, to what extent are you dealing with other organizations - universities or whatever - to replace some of the lost science capacity that you are experiencing?
Mr. Cappe: Perhaps I'll begin and then, as I'm not a scientist, I'll ask Dr. McBean to comment.
Perhaps I should have mentioned this in response to Mr. Asselin's question, but at one point we looked at the department and its activities as science, policy and service. When we started the process of program review, that was the way we categorized our activities, as opposed to business lines as we presented in Parliament now.
I think the business lines are better because it tells you more about outputs. But at the time, because we had the automation plan there, we thought we could relatively maintain the levels of service and take significant reductions in it. We had an imbalance in the way we applied the budget cuts across science, policy and service. In relative terms, we reduced the expenditures on the data-gathering that went into the service side more than anything else in the department. In relative terms, that allowed us to protect the science. That's a bit of a general approach.
.0940
You mentioned the Freshwater Institute. We have had ongoing discussions with our colleagues in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to get a sense of how best to preserve the freshwater scientific capacity in Canada. Those discussions continue. In the interim, because we were doing our budget cuts and reductions on the basis of programs, when we looked at the freshwater science programs in Environment Canada, we were able to deal with particular kinds of research programs.
The Canadian Centre for Inland Waters... The National Water Research Institute was looking at rebalancing its research program. In that process some of the scientists who were at risk of being let go at the Freshwater Institute were able to be hired by the National Water Research Institute. So a bit of a watchful eye has been put on that. This was done on a programmatic basis, not on a scientist-by-scientist basis. The extent to which our research initiatives were going to be maintained and were aligned with the capacities that were being let go - we were trying to maintain that.
Perhaps I could turn to Dr. McBean on the others.
Dr. McBean: We have tried, as the deputy minister noted, to impact our scientific programs less than some of our other programs. We have particularly been conscious of the importance of maintaining our working partners in this, particularly the university community.
For more than a decade the atmospheric environment program has worked hard to foster the development of atmospheric science programs in a variety of Canadian universities from Halifax to the west coast. We now maintain a climate research network that is funding activities involving partnerships at universities from coast to coast. It is like a centres of excellence approach, where we put over $2 million of our budget. We did not reduce that in any significant way as a result of program review. University groups are challenged to bring forward ideas in a collaborative way involving industry, other levels of government and federal scientists.
We now have a large number of professors in universities jointly supported and working in teams on issues of climate. We are participating in a variety of institutional arrangements with the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, U of T, York and others. I think we have tried very hard to protect our science in this difficult time.
Mr. Cappe: Mr. Chairman, the document that was put out at the time of Science and Technology for the New Century had a supplementary document for Environment Canada. Using the headings that were established government-wide, we've been able to explain where our science dollars are going in terms of those objectives.
Mr. Adams: May I have one short question?
The Chairman: Yes.
Mr. Adams: In your presentation you specifically mentioned the international commitments. As we know from this committee, we've made a number of international agreements with respect to atmospheric quality and so on. The National Hydrology Research Institute, for example, which you don't think of as being atmospheric, has to be involved because it's in the north in the international arena. What are your strategies for coping with downsizing with respect to these international science commitments?
Dr. McBean: We are maintaining our commitment to participating in international science because it's a way of being involved at the forefront, at the leadership edge, as you know.
For example, under the global energy and water cycles experiment, which is part of the international world climate research program, Canada chose to make its contribution by studying the Mackenzie basin area. So we have a major study involving the hydrologists in Saskatoon - AES has about 10 or 12 scientists in Saskatoon at the National Hydrology Research Institute - and our people in Toronto. Again, through this climate research network, one of the major initiatives is the study of land processes and climate in the Mackenzie basin as a polar basin and north-flowing river that we think is an important contribution we can make.
.0945
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Knutson, followed by the chair, unless someone else wants to jump in.
Mr. Knutson (Elgin - Norfolk): I'm a new member on the committee, and as such you'll have to excuse me if my questions don't seem as sophisticated or as advanced as those of my colleagues. But I want to thank you for the presentation.
Mr. Adams: I'd be careful with that one.
Voices: Oh, oh.
Mr. Knutson: No, no.
I want to thank you for the presentation. As an introduction, I thought the written narrative was good.
Just so I understand quickly, overall Environment Canada has been cut by 30%. Has the weather service been cut by 30%?
Dr. McBean: We don't exactly budget the weather service separately, but the reductions in the atmospheric environment program, which includes the weather service and the science activities related to it... It is essentially reduced by the same percentage amount, although we are the biggest component of the department. So in dollar-wise and people terms, the impacts are larger, but percentage-wise it's essentially the same as in the major components of the department.
Mr. Knutson: I hope you don't take my next comment as impertinent, but the company line always has to be, whenever we go through these major cutbacks, we find a way to work smarter, work harder, work more efficiently, use new technologies, so that the results are the same, or perhaps improved. I understand that's always the message. I'm sure if I engaged you in a conversation about closing the weather stations you would give me the message on new technology, and I don't doubt there's a lot of truth to that. But of the things that were cut, what was the most valuable thing we lost? Or I can ask the question in another way: if all of a sudden you had your budget increased by 10%, of the things that had been cut, what would you uncut?
Mr. Cappe: Mr. Chair, just before Mr. McBean answers the particular question, I would like to say that I was very careful in answering Mr. Asselin that I would not say that we were able to preserve the level of service or the quality of our science.
I was quoted in The Ottawa Citizen as saying I will never say that we are doing more with that less, not when there's a 30% cut.
Mr. Knutson: Right.
Mr. Cappe: So quite frankly we're not being very defensive about that, and when you take a reduction like that, there has to be a significant effect on the measured outputs of a department like environment.
The only other point I would add is that if you look at the level of budget for the Department of the Environment in 1988, and what it will be in 1998, the difference is only about $10 million to$20 million.
Mr. Knutson: And that takes no account of inflation?
Mr. Cappe: No, it does not, but there hasn't been all that much inflation since 1992.
The only point I was trying to make was that in that period there was a very large increase in the budget of the Department of the Environment, and that was the so-called Green Plan at the time. Those moneys were temporary and were planned to dissipate.
So the 30% cut from what we were in 1994-95 is indeed 30%, but it's not 30% compared to what we were at the beginning of the process. That was just a precision on my part.
Mr. Knutson: Fair enough.
Given that you're not defensive about the impact of the cuts then, and you're prepared to share with us the full brutality of the cuts, what did you lose that was most valuable?
Dr. McBean: Let me say, first of all, that probably the worst day of my life to date was the day I sat down in my office in Toronto and signed 300 lay-off letters. That was clearly a brutal day for me, and I knew probably half of them from my previous involvement. Although I'm relatively new in this job, I knew a lot of these people personally.
I think we lost in the sense that the closing of the 56 weather offices across the country has disconnected us from the communities of Canadians where people, individuals and staff, had brought a very informed view of what was happening there, as well as providing back to those people an informed view of weather and environmental things in general.
We felt that although that was a very tough decision, that was an appropriate decision in view of the budget cuts, and the decisions that we could use the media, which in fact in most cases...
.0950
In my presentation I mentioned that we have about 50 million, or now close to 60 million, telephone calls a year to our offices. In the past most of those have been, and they will continue to be, and now almost entirely will be handled by automatic telephone devices.
Mr. Knutson: To the same effect?
Dr. McBean: The same information is being put on them. What we will lose is the local colour in a sense, the local information of the... Well, one example is the Peterborough weather office, where we had very valued employees. That was a way in which we were moving anyway. We were accelerating that as a result of program review.
As a second part of the question you asked, if you gave me another bunch of money, what would I do with it, I think, first and foremost, I would put it into not necessarily putting things back that we took out, but I would make sure that our observing network, the basis on which we observe the climate, the weather and the environment in general of our country, would be enhanced. And that might not be putting in the same things we've taken out, but I think our capability to observe the climate and the weather is a critical part. I wouldn't reopen -
Mr. Knutson: Do you feel that's under threat now?
Dr. McBean: No, I'm just saying that it is... We have always been a country that is very large, as you know, the second biggest country in the world. In an economy the size of ours we have never been able to observe it as well as other countries, like the United States, which has more people by a factor of ten in the same geographic area.
Mr. Knutson: Thank you.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan (York - Simcoe): Like Mr. Adams, I'm very concerned about the science and preserving that science capacity, because that is certainly a role the national government has to play, a very strong and important role.
Another area I'm concerned about is environmental technology. Because I'm fairly new to this myself, can you tell me what kind of technology is key to your operations in terms of predicting weather, observation, and that sort of thing? Is it hardware, software? How do you do it, and what's important?
Dr. McBean: I'd say it's very much a combination of hardware and software. I could invite you, as another invitation, to come and visit our weather radar near King City. It's that white dome you see as you pass on Highway 400 just to the east of the highway. In there we have one of the world's most sophisticated Doppler radars. It's the kind of thing we would like to have, and in the best of budgetary times we would have it everywhere. It was built as a research tool, and that's why it's there as opposed to... It wasn't a choice of protecting someone more than others.
Anyway, there we have the facility where we develop, for example, the forecast production assistant, a very sophisticated software package that allows a forecaster to superimpose weather maps, satellite imagery, and to do human intervention into the outputs of numerical models. When they are satisfied that they have their best human input into a to-that-point, model-generated product, they push a button and it generates the weather forecasts and the marine forecasts in both French and English. It can do aviation forecasts.
As I noted in my presentation, this product is being licensed for some hundreds of thousands of dollars to two companies, and several meteorological services are negotiating with us to license it.
We've also built, for example, the Brewer spectrophotometer, which we license through another company to sell internationally. This measures ozone as accurately as, or more accurately than, almost any instrument in the world.
So we have built a combination of software approaches directly in the forecasting role. These were built not for sale; those are by-products. We build things in our research labs, in our operational development group and in our local weather offices, facilities that allow us to do our job better, including the science part of it, and as occasional by-products they help us to generate revenues.
.0955
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: I think those are really good success stories that you have to talk about.
You've been answering some of my other questions. I was interested to know who was responsible for developing some of these technologies, some of the hardware, the software, and where the budget is situated. What kind of budget do you have for the development, the support technology, as well as the software you have to use?
Dr. McBean: Well, the budget is in a variety of places. As I said, we don't develop technology for technology's sake. We develop technology on the science side through our research programs, where a leading scientist, with his or her own scientific staff, will develop an instrument. Where it's possible we will go to a private sector company to build components, or we'll buy off-the-shelf items.
In fact we have recently been working through our ice centre here in Ottawa. We've put together some very sophisticated software packages to use RADARSAT. Essentially our staff have been able to pick and choose among products that are already available commercially. They basically just package it together to make a very sophisticated system, which again is getting international recognition.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: How quickly does the technology in this field change? I guess when you ask that kind of a question, in light of budget cuts, you also have to ask whether we are going to continue to be able to keep up.
Dr. McBean: Technology evolves relatively quickly, as in any field of the state-of-the-art types of technologies.
I would say we would have been less able to keep up than we would have perhaps if we had had a bigger budget, but as I say, we are trying to maintain our connections with others internationally. We actually take advantage of Canada's variety of weather by licensing and inviting other countries to bring instruments to a Canadian location to test them in the worst possible weather conditions. Through that we then learn how they're doing it.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: Do you have partnerships?
Dr. McBean: We have very large partnerships through the World Meteorological Organization.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: Yes, I was fascinated by that organization and how it might work, but I will give up my questions now.
The Chairman: Thank you. Next is Madam Payne.
Mrs. Payne (St. John's West): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In fact the questions I had, or perhaps some comments I had, were along the lines Madam Kraft Sloan was talking about, and they have to do with ice surveillance.
One of the things I have noted in my lifetime on the east coast is that ice surveillance reports were frequent. I know there has been a significant budget cut there, but I also know that we now have in place the radar technology. Is that technology now a replacement for some of the surveillance that has been done by planes and other sorts of technology?
Piggybacking on that is my comment that I know that in Newfoundland we are now beginning to build an industry. In my own riding we have one company that's becoming very involved in this. Are we likely to see more spin-off effects in the private sector as a result of that?
Dr. McBean: Let me say first, yes, we do, and we have in Ottawa the ice forecasting centre, which is located here for reasons of logistics, but does the east coast ice and the Arctic ice forecasting.
We do use RADARSAT. We are the largest single client for RADARSAT data. We used to have two airplanes involved in ice reconnaissance. We now only use one. We've been able to make significant economies by the use of the RADARSAT data.
There had been some spin-offs. Nancy Cutler, who's with me, is the director general of the National Weather Service, which actually includes the Canadian ice service. She may wish to add a comment on the spin-off aspect.
Ms Cutler: The spin-off, to date, has come in two particular areas. One has been in the technology development that was just being discussed. In order to access the RADARSAT data in a digital format on a current-time basis, which was necessary for our operations, we had worked with several private sector companies to have the technology built for us. It was built jointly. We shared the intellectual property. We have licensed the private sector firm involved now to take that and sell it commercially. They are having significant success in using that.
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The other kind of spin-off is starting to show with the data sets themselves. We've just been receiving RADARSAT data operationally for a couple of months, but it is providing very detailed imagery that, aside from our needs, which are related to ice areas, has been found useful, or looks like it may have some potential, for oil spill tracking, ship tracking, search and rescue, and for some support to the fisheries area. These are just now being explored. Our staff in the ice centre are frequently meeting with private sector concerns on the east coast to explore how best to work out the partnership.
Mrs. Payne: Thank you very much.
I also would assume that you work with the cold ocean sciences centre in St. John's, which is attached to the university.
Ms Cutler: Yes.
Mrs. Payne: It's probably even more intense than it would have been.
Ms Cutler: We are looking to build that kind of relationship.
Mrs. Payne: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Finlay, please.
Mr. Finlay (Oxford): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to the witnesses for having another appointment, but you have to pick and choose in this business.
My question is not very technical, but important nevertheless. An important part of the atmospheric environment activity obviously centres on the climate change issue and our efforts to decrease the operative greenhouse gases. For many of us, this past winter has been one of the coldest, longest and most severe. I know you've probably had this question before, but it interferes with our perception that global warming might be imminent, and people therefore turn around and say we must be wrong about this. Can you discuss this from a technical standpoint, explaining the apparent contradictions that keep coming up in this matter of patterns and forecasts of global warming?
Dr. McBean: Yes, thank you.
First let me comment generally that global warming is perhaps too simplistic a term; nonetheless, it has caught the public attention in that sense.
In my view and in the view of the International Panel on Climate Change, global warming is occurring. There will be, and there will always be, variations within that. The past winter actually is not that cold with respect to our long-term record. My colleague is just finding the numbers for me here.
The overall winter temperature of the past winter was actually only 0.3 degrees Celsius below normal. So if you look at the longer history, it is actually not much different from an average winter. It's just that we have become used to warmer winters in the recent past. If we look at the longer-term trends, we are still very much warming in Canada as well as globally on average.
The other thing to note is that the variations within Canada are very marked geographically. The Canadian prairies up through the Northwest Territories are areas that have warmed most dramatically, while the east coast area, Labrador unfortunately, has actually slightly cooled over the last 30 years or so.
That is actually what is predicted by the climate models. But it is very consistent with the patterns we expected to see with a global overall general increase in the earth's temperature.
Mr. Finlay: Can you give me any idea why it has become warmer over, you said, western Canada and up into the Arctic? Now, that's basically over land. Then you say in the east... Does it have some relationship perhaps to the ocean and the land?
Dr. McBean: Yes, very much so. You're very astute in your questions.
Clearly, first of all, globally the lands will warm up more than the oceans. We have a particular instance in the North Atlantic Ocean. The way in which our global climate system functions very much involves the ocean. It is essentially the controller on the rate and to some extent the geographical change of the climate.
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We expect the North Atlantic to warm less for a long time. In fact, it may not warm at all in the middle of the North Atlantic. This is due to the fact that the ocean waters are actually sinking. It's rather interesting that a water molecule in the high North Atlantic sinks to the bottom, travels down the Atlantic Ocean at depth, around Antarctica and comes up to the North Pacific. We can carbon date a molecule of water in the middle, say at 2,000 metres depth in the North Pacific, and say 2000 years ago it sunk in the North Atlantic.
The climate responds faster than that, but it is part of this ocean-sinking process that is related to these climactic variations. I can go into this further, but I am a former oceanography professor and this is the sort of field I might get carried away in.
Mr. Finlay: I'll sit and listen. You get carried away.
Dr. McBean: There are very strong reasons why our understanding of how the North Atlantic, which is the major driver of the time variations of the global climate system, functions by sinking of water in the Labrador Sea and the sea around Iceland. With this sinking of water, because it is so cold and so saline that the water is actually sinking, scientists have been able to observe events where there is water sinking from the top right to the bottom of the Labrador Sea.
Mr. Finlay: Then is the idea that perhaps the collapse of the cod fishery has a good deal to do with changing temperature of the water there borne out a little by what you're saying? Those molecules that sink, that's colder water that's sinking down and perhaps affecting the ecosystem that supports.
Dr. McBean: I think the scientific evidence is that ocean climate variations have had some influence on the North Atlantic cod. Whether it has dominated I would not care to say. I don't think so.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Finlay.
Before launching a second round, we have a few items from the clerk on which he needs the approval of the committee. We have a quorum, so I will very soon go into that part of the business before going into a second round.
I have a few questions from here, namely this for instance. As a deputy minister, you are in touch with other deputy ministers on a frequent basis and you keep an overview on the overall budgetary picture. We have learned that Environment Canada has lost or is losing 1400 people and some $260 million over a period of three years, if I remember correctly. In the atmospheric services alone, reading from the estimates, part III, Environment Canada is losing, compared to 1993-94, 483 people.
In the overall picture, what is the loss of the Department of National Defence in terms of total budget and total personnel?
Mr. Cappe: Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, I don't have the precise numbers.
The question is what level the reduction comes from. If you recall the way the defence budget was always set, it was set over a very long timeframe and had certain growth rates built into it. It was going to grow by 0% real or 0% nominal and there were variations on that theme. If you were to ask this question of my colleague, the Deputy Minister of National Defence, she would indicate that the budget reductions depend on what basis you take the reduction from.
I don't have the precise numbers, but I suspect that they are available in part II of the estimates. I don't have them with me.
The Chairman: What is your recollection?
Mr. Cappe: If you had asked me this two years ago, I would have known the answer. Unfortunately, I don't now.
The Chairman: Did National Defence suffer a loss of 30% of its budget?
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Mr. Cappe: I really wouldn't hazard a guess because there may be an answer that says they did from the levels that were forecast over 15 budget cycles.
The Chairman: We don't want to deal with forecasts; we want to deal with actual. Could you provide your reading of the actual figures to the members of this committee?
Mr. Cappe: Yes, I can provide the actual number taken from the estimates.
The Chairman: And in case the losses in the Department of National Defence in actual terms are minimal, what would be the policy conclusion you would draw, Mr. Cappe?
Mr. Cappe: Mr. Chairman, I wouldn't want to do the job of the committee, but I will offer the factual basis on which the committee can come to its judgment on what the policy conclusion is.
It strikes me that you do have to look at the mission orientation of each of our departments. Again, I pointed out in responding to Mr. Knutson's question that if you look at what our budget had done over the interim period of the last ten years, you get a different sense of what a budget cut means. If you look at the Department of Fisheries, you would find a very different profile.
One has to be careful about what base point one uses, but I can certainly provide the facts on the Department of National Defence budget and the reduction they made.
The Chairman: Are you in essence saying that this is a matter of political judgment and political values?
Mr. Cappe: I would say that budgets are very much a values document and I would say that is a question of political judgment.
The Chairman: Would you also say that in terms of security the issues in the environment have not yet reached the political awareness that they should?
Mr. Cappe: I'd want to be very careful about how I characterized it. I would note the way environment was dealt with, and I think it's important the way you've asked the question.
In the Speech from the Throne it talks about environmental security and indeed it characterizes an agenda for the government on environmental security. That is a choice obviously vis-à-vis the physical security that comes from expenditures through either the RCM Police or national defence, and those are fundamental choices that are reflected in the budget.
The Chairman: Do you expect any policy proposals flowing from the Speech from the Throne on environmental security?
Mr. Cappe: I think the nature of the policy proposals are really quite explicit in the Speech from the Throne. It talked about modernizing CEPA, which is a response to this committee's report, endangered species legislation. It talks about two pieces that are the responsibility of fisheries, the UN straddling stocks agreement and law of the sea convention, and the long-term conservation of the Pacific salmon fishery. It talks about national parks, which as you know is under the heritage department, and then finally it says that the solutions to many environmental problems lie outside our borders and the government should continue to play an environmental leadership role at home and in the international arena.
That is sort of a statement of policy intent. I think we'll see the particulars that will flow from that reflected in what Mr. Marchi does when he is in the Commission on Sustainable Development next week and in other fora, as it plays out.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. McBean, moving to hazardous air pollutants and carbon dioxide and dealing first with carbon dioxide, in your judgment is the voluntary carbon dioxide reduction system or program going to lead to a stabilization of carbon dioxide by the year 2000? I would like a technical answer.
Mr. Cappe: Let me offer a policy response that Mr. McBean can supplement with a technical answer. It is our judgment that we will be roughly 13% short of the objective by the year 2000.
The Chairman: Is that news, or has this been known for a long time?
Mr. Cappe: That has been stated in the federal action plan.
The Chairman: So what is really the purpose of the voluntary program?
Mr. Cappe: The voluntary program is intended to reduce that 13%, and we think it will; we aren't sure how much.
The Chairman: Would it be by 1% or 2% or more?
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Dr. McBean: I think it's too early to say because we have not had all of the input on the voluntary challenges program. As you know, many companies are signing up. We are requesting more information to know how much impact they will have in terms of their actions. As yet it's very hard to address. But as the deputy has said, there is this 13% gap and how much the voluntary challenges will address is not yet known.
The Chairman: When will you know?
Dr. McBean: We have to know better in terms of our reporting to the framework convention on climate change. The third conference of the parties will be held in the fall of 1997. Canada is required to report to that, as are all other developed countries.
The Chairman: So will it be next year?
Dr. McBean: Next year we will be reporting that. We will make an interim... There will be discussions through the coming year on that.
Mr. Cappe: I would just note that there will be a discussion in the fall among ministers of energy and environment at which they will be coming to an assessment of the voluntary challenge.
The Chairman: On sulphur dioxide, what will be the new strategy or the national strategy on acid rain? What will be the elements of it? Will there be further reductions?
Dr. McBean: Yes, there will be... You're asking about areas that are in the policy area of environmental protection, which is one of my colleagues' areas. But let me just indicate generally that in our discussions we realize that the target of 20 kilograms per square metre is not yet being met in all areas of Canada, although we've made very significant improvements.
We are also concerned about sulphate aerosols for issues beyond the acidic rain problem. Sulphate aerosols become one of the most potentially dangerous inhalable particulates. The human health effects of those kinds of particulates are very much a concern to us. That's why in my program area we are looking into trying to understand, model and be able to predict, given the sources of those, where they will end up and how they will have an impact on human health. There is work under the federal-provincial advisory committee and CEPA, reporting to both CEPA and the federal-provincial committee, to set air quality standards in view of the new information on the health impacts of both inhalable particulates and ground-level ozone.
The Chairman: Are you satisfied that the Americans are on target with the implementation of their sulphur dioxide reduction program as agreed upon in 1991 between the two leaders?
Dr. McBean: I'd have to pass that question to my colleague Mr. Clarke, who keeps track of the Americans on their emissions.
The Chairman: Could you inform this committee in writing of whether or not the Americans are on target?
Dr. McBean: Yes.
The Chairman: We are having a problem with time here, so I have cut my questions in half. I hope the members of this committee will appreciate the immense degree of self-discipline to which the chair is subjecting himself.
The clerk is very anxious to get the concurrence of this committee on three items, I believe. First of all, on the forum, the Subcommittee on Environmental Awareness for Sustainability, what do we seek from the committee?
The Clerk of the Committee: Mr. Chair, we are seeking the approval of the committee to host the forum. The members have the program, and witnesses have been contacted and confirmed subject to the approval of this committee.
The Chairman: We have discussed this several times. Could we have a motion, please?
Mr. Finlay: So moved.
Motion agreed to
The Clerk: The second item, Mr. Chair, is the biotechnology hearings. We circulated a work plan to the members last week. You discussed it in committee several times. Your intention is to start hearings on approximately May 15. We are just seeking approval of the committee so that we can in fact carry on with this work.
The Chairman: So you are seeking approval of the plan as circulated two weeks ago.
The Clerk: Correct.
The Chairman: You will recall the plan circulated two weeks ago. We are going into biotechnology. We don't know when and how we'll come out of that exercise, but somehow we have to review that area for a little while. Could I have a motion for the adoption of that plan?
Mr. Knutson: So moved.
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The Chairman: Thank you.
Motion agreed to
The Clerk: The third item, Mr. Chairman, is a budget for the committee that would allow us to undertake three items: the forum, the biotechnology study, and the main estimates. We are seeking a total of $22,442 essentially for the purposes of hearing witnesses.
The Chairman: Could we have a motion to this effect?
Mr. Finlay: I so move.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: I see a witness expense of $30,000. How do we have a total of $22,000?
The Clerk: It's $32,000 for all of the witnesses, but the committee already has $10,000.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: Okay, fine.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: We look forward to another opportunity - perhaps not with you, Dr. McBean and your people, although your subject matter is of enormous importance.
I intended to ask you - you may want to let me know through other means - whether the melting of the ice caps is leading to the cooling of certain oceans, whether that is leading to certain impacts on fisheries, and whether that phenomenon is a part of the overall climate change pattern. However, we don't have the time to go into that.
I would have liked to have asked whether the frequency of tornadoes is something you have noticed and whether you are interpreting it as relating to climate change or any other weather pattern that did not occur with the same frequency 15 or 20 years ago. Anything you could add to the paper you presented today from the perspective of climate change would be extremely valuable to us.
Are there any last-minute questions before we adjourn? Madam Kraft Sloan and Mr. Asselin.
Mrs. Kraft Sloan: I would like more information on the climate change network that you talked about.
Dr. McBean: Mr. Chairman, the short answer to all of your questions is yes. In answer to Mrs. Kraft Sloan, we will provide you the information very quickly.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: Firstly, let me say that I live in Baie-Comeau. I am not the little guy from Baie-Comeau, but I am interested in the Environment Canada office there, and in the airport, with its weather radar system.
I would like to have, preferably in writing, the Environment Canada plan for the moratorium, which also applies to Baie-Comeau. Have there been recent equipment purchases? In view of the fact that the Baie-comeau airport may be privatized, what will be done with the weather forecasting equipment in Baie-Comeau?
[English]
The Chairman: I would ask for a brief answer because we are pressed for time for the vote.
Dr. McBean: The moratorium is in place because of concerns of users of some of the automatic weather observing stations. We meet regularly with the Department of Transport to discuss this from a safety point of view, and we don't think it is a safety issue. When there is the conversion to NAV CANADA of the air traffic system and the airports, we will continue.
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We are in discussions with them on how we will continue. We expect to continue to provide the weather services and probably automated weather observations at airports. So the equipment will continue. The arrangement will be a business arrangement, though, between Environment Canada and whichever of the private entities, in terms of the airports and the navigation systems.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Asselin.
Mr. Finlay, very briefly.
Mr. Finlay: Very briefly, I wonder whether the witnesses can get a copy of these briefing notes.
The Chairman: Yes, they have them.
Mr. Finlay: If they have, Mr. Chairman, I would appreciate an answer on question 4 on page 11, though not now.
The Chairman: Fine, it will be arranged by the clerk with the officials. You can be assured of that.
Again, we thank you very much indeed. It was a most informative but unfortunately short meeting. We hope to see you again soon.
The meeting is adjourned.