:
Good afternoon and thank you very much for the opportunity to speak today.
I'm Professor Jay Famiglietti. From 2018 to 2022, I led the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, before returning to the United States and Arizona State University. My research team uses satellites to track how freshwater availability is changing around the world. Our team pioneered methods to use the NASA gravity recovery and climate experiment, or GRACE mission, to estimate groundwater storage changes from space. My comments today are based on over 25 years of experience with these data.
Our research has shown that, globally, freshwater availability has changed dramatically over the last 22 years. It is literally shrinking in the face of climate change and a growing population. In fact, the fresh water that runs off the continents from ice, permafrost and glacial melt, because of the over-exploitation of groundwater, now contributes more each year to sea level rise than the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Because roughly 80% of the world’s water that is withdrawn from rivers, lakes, reservoirs and groundwater aquifers is used to produce food, this means that not only is the world’s water security at risk, but so too is its food security.
In graphics submitted in the written draft of this statement, there is a satellite-based map of trends in freshwater availability. The map is a major outcome of our research and NASA's GRACE mission. Some of its key features are broad, global patterns of high- and low-latitude areas getting wetter and mid-latitude areas getting drier. The map is dotted with hot spots for water insecurity—too little or too much water. These are places where, over the past two decades, glaciers are melting and flooding has been increasing, or places experiencing more prolonged drought so groundwater is being rapidly depleted.
A second graphic highlights the world’s major aquifer systems and shows that over half are past sustainability tipping points due to over-exploitation. Groundwater provides nearly half of the irrigation water that fuels food production—even more in times of drought. However, a profound lack of groundwater management around the world has allowed massive over-pumping to continue unabated. This map shows just the major aquifers. A very recent study shows that thousands of smaller aquifers are also being depleted. Both my work and the recent study show that, in some places, such as California’s Central Valley, the rates of depletion are accelerating.
Canada is not immune to these changes in freshwater storage. With its rapidly rising temperatures, its glaciers are quickly disappearing and its permafrost is melting. Over the last two decades, flood and drought frequency has been on the rise. Moreover, Canada is no stranger to groundwater depletion. It is now even happening in my old home province of Saskatchewan.
A third graphic shows that most of Canada’s river basins have been losing water for the last two decades. Averaging all the wetting and drying regions across Canada yields a net negative. Canada, like many nations in this warming world, has been losing water for the last 20 years.
If there is good news today, it's that Canada has everything it needs to prepare for a more variable water future, including threats to its groundwater, and implications for increasing fire severity and food production. I was proud to have led a group of dedicated researchers at the University of Saskatchewan, who continue to work with Canada’s government agencies, scores of stakeholders, and indigenous communities, in order to help chart a path toward a water- and food-secure nation. Conversations around integrated river basin planning and the need for national-scale flood, groundwater and water availability forecasting continue. These dialogues should be encouraged and supported.
There remains a need, however, for inclusive and just groundwater governance and management. Changing surface water availability means that groundwater, which already supplies about one-third of Canada’s drinking water, will become increasingly called upon to fill emerging gaps in surface water availability. Protection of Canada’s groundwater supply is paramount as a buffer against drought, for climate adaptation and resilience, and for sustainable food production.
Canada currently has an opportunity to include groundwater issues in the modernization of the Canada Water Act and the activities of the Canada water agency. I urge you to plan for a future in which Canada continues to thaw and dry and in which changing surface water availability will place increasing demands on its precious groundwater resources.
Thank you.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I do so as a professor in the earth sciences department at UQAM, but also as president of the Quebec Groundwater Network, whose mission is to share knowledge on the science of groundwater.
Today, I'd like to make three observations about groundwater and suggest three courses of action.
First of all, groundwater is still a relatively unknown resource in Quebec and Canada, and elsewhere in the world. In recent years, however, significant progress has been made in this field. We are more knowledgeable about our resources, particularly in Quebec. I want to point out the investment that the Government of Quebec has made in groundwater mapping since 2009. It has done an exceptional job.
In Canada, groundwater is used for drinking water supply, industry, agriculture and ecosystems. We do not often talk about this, but it is very important. We know that the volumes are significant, but that they are renewed in sometimes very contrasting ways from one region to another, and they are not evenly distributed over the territory.
We also know that groundwater is subject to numerous pressures, such as increased pumping, urban sprawl, agricultural intensification and climate change. These pressures can lead to drops in groundwater levels, the drying up of watercourses and wetlands in summer, and a decline in groundwater quality. We are only just beginning to quantify these impacts and their effects on human uses of groundwater and on ecosystems.
Secondly, groundwater is generally closely connected to rivers, lakes and wetlands. These interactions are generally crucial, not least in sustaining natural environments by creating habitats for many species, but they are rarely taken into account. While it is important to protect the banks of a river or the immediate surroundings of a well, for example, this is often not enough to ensure the sustainability of the resource or habitat, as groundwater often comes from very far away. The areas where groundwater infiltrates—upstream of watersheds, in wetlands, in forest massifs—must also be protected to enable the renewal of the resource, the maintenance of groundwater levels, and the natural attenuation of pollutants.
We still understand relatively little about all these connections and the resulting feedback. There is no doubt, however, that integrated management on the scale of watersheds, for example, increases the resilience of all water resources.
Thirdly, groundwater flows very slowly and can remain underground for periods ranging from a few years to several thousand years. Groundwater pumped today may have infiltrated the soil a very long time ago, and the pressures imposed on these resources now may be felt by several generations. Groundwater has the particularity of being indirectly exposed to anthropogenic pressures and climatic hazards that occur at the surface. For this reason, impacts are often delayed in time. They may occur downstream of pressures and are sometimes difficult to measure in the short term. They may also take decades to subside.
Networks for monitoring groundwater levels and quality are still too sparse and too recent to afford a long-term vision of the resource. Despite all this, development and operating authorizations continue to be based on short-term planning, sometimes for only a few years, which limits our ability to ensure the sustainability of the resource.
These three observations lead us to reflect on the priority areas for groundwater protection.
First, we are not knowledgeable enough about groundwater. It is important to continue developing knowledge to describe the resource, to map it, to quantify current uses and to monitor groundwater quantity and quality.
Second, groundwater management must be integrated with surface water management. It must take account of all interactions and consider time scales ranging from a few years to several decades, or even several centuries.
Third, it is vital to mobilize groundwater knowledge as widely as possible. Groundwater is under our feet, so we don't see it, and it is not part of the general culture to know where it is and how it works. The objective is for all users to have access to new data and understand the issues surrounding the state of the resource and emerging problems.
In conclusion, Quebec and Canada have plenty of groundwater, but the resource is unevenly distributed over the territory and is under pressure in many places. A global vision and concrete actions are needed to maintain available volumes, preserve the quality of the resource and maintain ecosystems for generations to come.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, committee members. Thank you for inviting me.
I'm Aliénor Rougeot and I'm with Environmental Defence Canada.
I'll be discussing how oil sands mining contributes to groundwater contamination and how this relates to broader concerns about toxic tailings ponds in the oil sands.
Today actually marks the first anniversary of the large spill from Imperial Oil's Kearl mine, which revealed, as you'll remember, a separate toxic leak that had been secretly going on for over nine months. There was a lot of outrage when that spill happened, including from this committee. Not a lot has happened since. No charges have been laid under provincial or federal environmental protection laws. The tailings are still growing in volume and, as I will explain today, the tailings are still seeping toxic waste on an ongoing basis. In many ways, the Imperial Oil spill and leak were only the tip of the iceberg. The tar sands tailings ponds now contain 1.4 trillion litres of toxic waste and cover an area 2.6 times the size of the city of Vancouver.
In 2020, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, which is an international watchdog created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, investigated the issue of leaking tar sands tailings. Their experts surveyed all publicly available peer-reviewed studies and concluded that oil sands process water, i.e., tailings, is seeping into the groundwater around tailings ponds. Industry data from major players like Suncor and Syncrude confirms these findings, showing consistent evidence of tailings seepage into groundwater, particularly close to surface water sources and tributaries to the Athabasca River.
This is highly toxic waste we are talking about. It's waste that contains naphthenic acids and heavy metals, which are respectively linked to a disruption of the reproductive system in animals, and cancer and damage to the function of the brain, lungs, kidneys, liver, blood composition and other important organs in both animals and humans. The full extent of the dangers presented by the content of the tailings on human health remains understudied, which I will point out is one of the major grievances of the communities that are impacted, most of which are indigenous communities.
Seepage from the tailings is not an accident. It's in the design. The outer walls of the oil sands tailings ponds are permeable. There are systems that are designed to collect the seepage. Yet, evidence shows that there is a noticeable movement of fluids that avoids these collection systems. As you know—it's common sense—groundwater doesn't stay in the ground. In the case of the Athabasca region, groundwater has a significant impact on the Athabasca River's quality.
Having toxic waste make its way into groundwater and surface water is a concern, of course, for fish, but also for the entire ecosystem that relies on these water bodies, especially for the indigenous nations that sustain themselves off this territory.
It is especially concerning that local communities are exposed to these heavy metals and toxic substances from tailings ponds through multiple pathways: through the water they drink, through the game and food that they harvest off the territory, and through the air. As a reminder, two weeks ago, a study found that air pollutants from the oil sands could be 20 to 64 times higher than previously reported.
All this information shouldn't be a surprise to many of you. Actually, in 2010, members of the then opposition sitting on the ENVI committee published a scathing report about the government's track record on tailings. It reads, “the story of the oil sands' relationship to water is very much a tale of denial by interested parties...and of long-standing abdication of federal leadership in an area...that is rightfully Ottawa's”.
That was 14 years ago. The federal government still has the power to address this today. Under Canada's Fisheries Act, no one is allowed to deposit a substance harmful to fish anywhere where fish may come in contact with it. Yet, no company to this day has been charged for leaking tailings. The previously mentioned Commission for Environmental Cooperation found that Canada was failing to enforce its own Fisheries Act. That, again, was several years ago.
I urge this committee to break free from the pattern of past governments and do more than shine a temporary spotlight on this issue. I hope that you will consider sustained, meaningful actions. I hope that in our conversations we can explore together what these actions may be.
Thank you for your attention.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the committee and fellow witnesses.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association, otherwise known as AIDA.
My name is Alex Ostrop. I'm a farmer in southern Alberta and chair of the association. I am joined by Richard Phillips, vice-chair.
When it comes to water and water management, irrigation is woven into the fabric of Alberta. Representing 11 irrigation districts that irrigate over 600,000 hectares of agricultural land, AIDA members utilize approximately 8,000 kilometres of conveyance infrastructure and 52 water storage reservoirs, which provide water across the southern region of Alberta. This supports businesses, wildlife and wetland habitat, as well as recreational opportunities throughout the region that would otherwise not exist due to the dry climate in southern Alberta.
Over 50 municipalities receive water for their community needs through irrigation conveyance infrastructure. Our industry generates approximately $5.4 billion annually towards Alberta's GDP, creates nearly 50,000 jobs and significantly contributes to Canada's agricultural production and food security.
Investments like McCain's historic $600-million expansion near Lethbridge would not be possible without irrigation and its ability to provide reliable water to producers.
Given the increasing rise and severity of extreme climatic events in Canada, which particularly impact flood and drought patterns, irrigation and its related water management activities are an increasingly vital tool for ensuring agricultural and community resiliency through monitoring, predicting, conserving and overall distribution of this important resource.
Reservoirs are used as a key climate change adaptation and mitigation measure to protect and control water supply of high variability. Every day, we see the importance of collaboration, coordination and proactive planning among all partners when it comes to water management in southern Alberta, as well as the innovative practices that the agricultural sector is continuously at the forefront of.
We also see the risks of inaction and the hardships that producers, businesses and communities face if sustainable water management and infrastructure are not prioritized. We see multiple opportunities for irrigation to be scoped into government policy, planning and programming.
Our primary recommendations are the following.
One, government should recognize irrigation for its environmental and climate change adaptation benefits and implement policy that encourages rather than inhibits its development and maintenance.
Two, the Canada water agency must work with non-apparent industries, as well as work within the unique regional considerations of water management and water issues of the provinces. A regional office in Lethbridge can support meaningful inclusion and direct consultation with partners on mutual issues and interests.
Three, Canada must bolster its regulatory competitiveness by funding research for new agricultural management products. It can also strengthen the consideration of existing approvals and data within comparative and trusted jurisdictions when evaluating applications. This includes treatment options to address aquatic invasive species and aquatic weeds. It is important that Canada's water stakeholders and stewards have access to the most effective and up-to-date tools and products to address issues specific to their region in order to avoid detrimental impacts to water systems and to the countless people who rely on them.
Four, continue to invest in irrigation infrastructure. Supporting rehabilitation, modernization and expansion projects is crucial to ensuring that water is protected and delivered to municipalities, communities, agricultural producers and more. Every dollar invested into Alberta's irrigation districts has provided a 350% return in revenue.
As managers and stewards of fresh water in southern Alberta, this precious resource is at the heart of all decisions that AIDA's members make. We believe that the success of the agricultural sector and the prairie provinces are an integral part of Canada's future. The irrigation industry is vital to advancing sustainable freshwater solutions.
Canada is in the position to develop the infrastructure, research and programs necessary to protect and future-proof its freshwater resources. It must do so before water scarcity impacts the country's agricultural industries, businesses, food security, biodiversity, municipalities, communities and, ultimately, all Canadians.
Thank you for your time. We look forward to answering the questions you may have.
I would like to start by moving the motion that I put on notice on Friday to immediately invite to this committee to determine if there was a breach of our parliamentary privilege. Before my Liberal colleagues bemoan the fact that Conservatives raise issues they don't like, let me state that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Minister of Environment either misled this committee or is hiding the names of senators whom he personally lobbied to gut Bill .
Regardless of your partisan stripe, it is incumbent on us as MPs to safeguard our privileges, which have been fought for and must be defended as part of our Westminster tradition. It is essential that we have proper functioning of this institution and that we be given timely access to and accurate information from ministers when requested by a committee.
As an aside, Bill is a critical piece of legislation that any member of Parliament who has farmers in their riding, such as the rural MP for Milton, should be supportive of, just as members from across party lines were, because it is an important piece of legislation not just for farmers but for all Canadians, to help alleviate the continually rising price of food.
The legislation would exempt grain farmers from paying the carbon tax on propane and natural gas to dry their grain, and livestock farmers from the same carbon tax to heat or cool their livestock barns. It would amount to $1 billion by 2030. That would mean immediate savings for Canadian producers and for buying food, as well as a meaningful impact for our farmers, who would be able to reinvest that money back into their operation to provide environmental outcomes for Canadians.
This legislation is supported by all national agriculture groups, and it made its way through Parliament, through the House of Commons, in a rather judicious manner for a private member's bill, with the support of members from the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, some Liberals and even the Green Party. They recognized that it is a good piece of legislation to fix a flaw in the fact that farmers simply cannot transition to a different fuel source when it comes to those specific activities. It is simply punishing farmers for something they have no choice but to do, and it is encouraging higher prices at the grocery store for Canadians.
Following the rather swift passage through the House of Commons, when it got to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, there was clearly some political gamesmanship that began being played. There were a number of amendments intended to gut the bill there and to delay the bill. Thankfully, they were voted down by the larger chamber of sober second thought, the Senate, later on. However, over time, for unknown reasons, that vote count chipped away as senators procedurally brought forward the exact amendments over and over again to try to disrupt and destroy this legislation, which would save farmers $1 billion.
Those incremental vote losses ultimately led to changes, and they sent it back to the House of Commons. That has led to no-man's land, meaning that this legislation, without government support, may never get passed, because there is simply no precedent for it.
It has been an extreme frustration to Canadian farmers. It became political when this government decided that certain Canadians deserved a break on the carbon tax on their home heating oil at the same time as farmers were being denied what was a clear, good policy to prevent $1 billion leaving their pockets.
Specifically to the motion I'm moving now, when appeared before this committee on December 14, he was asked by my Conservative colleague Dan Mazier if he had spoken to any senators about Bill . In response, the minister said, “I had conversations with five or six senators, yes.”
The reason we knew to ask this was that he had publicly declared previously that he had spoken to senators about this. In a CTV article from November 14, 2023, he was quoted as saying that he had had discussions with “half a dozen” senators in the past couple of weeks to express the federal government's opposition to the legislation.
A CBC article from November 28 of that year said, “The minister said he had spoken with about six senators to explain the government's position, but did not tell them how to vote.”
On three separate occasions, he has said “five or six senators”, including when he spoke before this very committee in this very room. It took 49 days from that appearance of the minister, who had promised to get back to my colleague with the names of the senators he had called up about Bill , to our receiving them.
It took 49 days. It seems like an awfully long time to remember somewhere between, apparently, three and six names.
The thing is, you'd expect him to have come forward with those five or six names of the people he'd said previously in the media and to our committee he had spoken with. However, for some reason, there were only three names on that list. It seems awfully odd that he guessed up and then came back and realized, “Oh, I only talked to half of those senators.” Something seems amiss. From this, we can only conclude that he either provided false testimony when he appeared as a witness before this committee, or he provided false information when providing the names of the senators who lobbied to gut Bill .
In either event, the misled this committee, and I believe we must invite him to appear immediately before the committee for one hour to sort out the discrepancy of the information that he provided and decide if it must be reported back to the House. Without the minister's appearance to answer questions, it is impossible for the committee to determine whether he showed contempt before this committee. On the face of it, it clearly appears that he did, which should trouble every member here, regardless of their political stripe.
Successive Speakers have clearly set out three conditions that must be demonstrated in order to arrive at a finding of contempt through misleading statements or information. First, the statement needs to be misleading. Second, the member making the statement has to know that it was incorrect when made. Third, and finally, it needs to be proven that the member intended to mislead the House by making the statement.
On the first point, it was clearly a misleading statement or a misleading written response. It was one of those two. There's no denying that. On the second point, if the intentionally misled the committee, he would have known that his statement was incorrect when he made it on December 14. At no time did he try to reconcile his written response with the testimony he provided to this committee. On the third point, we do not know if he intended to mislead the committee, so we must investigate. Only , not his legion across the way, can provide any clarity on this issue.
We know he has faced considerable pressure to gut Bill . He even put his own reputation on the line by stating, “As long as I’m the environment minister, there will be no more exemptions to carbon pricing”. This was, of course, in the aftermath of a decision to lift the carbon tax on home heating oil for 3% of Canadians.
He had the motive to do everything in his power to stop our Conservative-led bill, which was supported across partisan lines in the duly elected House of Commons, to exempt farmers from the carbon tax. There is no question, to me, that has misled this committee. The question is whether he intended to do so.
While I know certain members across the way enjoy running, I implore them not to run away from this matter, because if they do, it will speak volumes to how deep the rot has gotten in this government.
It is time for an investigation, Mr. Chair. I encourage all of my colleagues of all political stripes to support the motion to bring the to clarify whether or not he misled this committee.
First, I'd like to apologize to our witnesses. This has become a trend, unfortunately. This happens at almost every meeting. Experts travel here or appear on their own time via Zoom to help us study how we can better protect fresh water in Canada, and the Conservatives obstruct it, using this committee as their personal soapbox.
You guys have phones. You guys have the ability to make a video. Do it on your own time. This is pathetic. It's a pathetic waste of the time of people who are generous enough to come to this committee for these meetings.
We'll have time for another study after the freshwater study is concluded. It will be a democratic process. This committee will determine what to study next.
On the issue of this scandal that Mr. Leslie is trying to drum up, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a conversation with a senator. The Conservatives on the other side have conversations with senators every Wednesday at their caucus meeting, because the only senators who are partisan are Conservative ones.
I'd like to very briefly speak to one such Conservative senator, who is Conservative leader Don Plett. Having a conversation over a coffee with a senator about how they intend to vote on a bill is totally normal. That's politics. We've all done that, and it's normal. You guys do it every single Wednesday. We don't have senators in our caucus meetings, but the Conservatives do, so they have an opportunity to liaise with them to discuss and talk about legislation that's coming to the Senate every single week.
When the met with senators, I guarantee there was no bullying or harassment, but when Don Plett met with senators he disagreed with—
Mr. Famiglietti, you said earlier in your opening address that food security was important. This is an issue that is particularly important to me. Many farmers in my riding tell me that even water, despite what was believed, is not an inexhaustible resource. We therefore have to prioritize it, protect it and avoid wasting it. That is why this study is so important.
Our water resources, such as groundwater, which you talked about, are used by farmers and a number of other users. For example, several witnesses have told us about the consequences of using water for oil and gas exploration in Canada.
At some point, we are going to have to decide our priorities when it comes to water use. On the one hand, it is used by oil and gas companies, and we have to get them to manage water much more efficiently and sustainably. On the other hand, water is used by our farmers, who are responsible for putting food on our tables and ensuring our food security.
I was looking at the figures. Approximately 75% of the shares of oil and gas companies in Canada are held by individuals who live outside Canada. As well, 4.7 million barrels of oil were exported to the United States in 2022.
Given this, how can we decide our priorities for using water between farmers and oil companies? Is this a problem?
:
Thank you for the question. I really appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts on this with you.
When I think of water security, I think of having enough water to do all the things that we want to do. That could be a city. It could be a province. It could be the whole country. Those are things that you just talked about: water for people, water for the environment, water to produce food, water for economic growth and water to produce energy. These are priorities that must be decided nationally and must be decided by province and, again, town by town and city by city.
It's not the kind of thing that I can weigh in on. What I can do is show you—and we can follow up after this meeting with even more detail—what's happening across Canada and share that information with you, as decision-makers.
My experience in looking at the disappearance of groundwater around the world is one that really points to a need for joint surface and groundwater management and for using groundwater far more efficiently. I think that within Canada we will see increasing demand for groundwater because of climate change, because of the increasing variability and, as one of the other witnesses said, because of the very likely need to probably have to expand irrigation infrastructure to maintain sustainable food production.
There's no one solution. I'll just close by saying that I always think in terms of a portfolio of agricultural efficiency, water use efficiency, industry efficiency and accounting of water use by industry—all industries, not just agriculture and not just oil production.
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That is a good question and it is certainly a major concern.
I would add that these contaminants are not within my direct range of experience, but I know a bit about the problem they pose.
Yes, integrated water management is always wise. In this case, the solution would be to have no PFAS entering the resources in the first place.
I use the term eternal contaminants since these contaminants undergo very little transformation, very slowly. Once they are in the hydrosystem, in the water cycle, they stay there. This is particularly the case in groundwater, where the residence time is very long. This is a problem, and it is one of the public's biggest concerns when contaminant levels are high.
I would say that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I might like to just propose a slightly different approach. We have only recently discovered and analyzed these concentrations. In fact, whenever we look for a contaminant in groundwater, we find it. Studies have been done where pesticides, bacteriological problems and pharmaceutical products have been found in groundwater when they were not expected. Groundwater circulates very slowly, but it is not immune to contamination.
I think the solution is prevention: taking action upstream. Now, unfortunately, we will probably have to live with these contamination problems for several decades yet.
:
Thank you for the question.
I think we have touched on some of these issues in the course of our discussions this afternoon. It's imperative that the nation understand how we do these allocations among all the things we need water for. Again, that's for humans, for the environment, for energy production, for food production and for economic growth, so guidance there, I think, is very important.
I think there's a real role in ensuring that each province has adequate flood protection. There's a role there in ensuring that each province has adequate water quality protection and adequate groundwater protection. There were further issues that came up earlier with respect to transboundary issues, so there's a clear role for a water agency there.
I want to draw a parallel to what's happening in the United States. Take California, for example. California is running out of groundwater, and the reason is that it grows food for the entire nation. Within the United States, California water security is viewed as a California problem, even though it grows food for the entire nation.
When we look at our food-producing regions in Canada, we need to make sure that if we want to keep those food-producing regions there, they have adequate water supply, and that may require a national level—I don't know if we call it oversight, or policy, or planning.
Those are just some examples.
Good evening, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today and join the conversation regarding fresh water and sustainability.
I am a hydrogeologist, and I have spent the past 27 years as a professor—currently at the University of Guelph in water resources engineering, and previously at the University of Waterloo in earth sciences—engaged in teaching and field-based research on groundwater flow systems and the behaviour of contaminants. I work with contaminated site owners and municipalities to design and build groundwater monitoring networks to inform remediation and source water protection strategies in real-world settings.
Groundwater constitutes 99% of the earth’s liquid fresh water, serves as an important link among atmosphere, soils, and surface water, and is key to freshwater resilience under climate change. Groundwater can buffer climate extremes and is therefore the most reliable source of fresh water for drinking water, sanitation and agriculture. Freshwater and ecosystem sustainability is ultimately linked to both groundwater quantity and quality issues.
It is commonly referenced that only 30% of Canadians rely directly on groundwater for water supply, including rural, remote and indigenous populations. However, two-thirds of surface water is sustained by groundwater discharge. Thus, when we account for the contribution of groundwater to surface water, groundwater is then responsible for 75% of the domestic water supply in the Canadian context, so when we're thinking about fresh water, we should be talking about groundwater.
Despite the critical importance of groundwater for the environment and society, it is undervalued, misunderstood, mismanaged and often ignored at the policy level. The new Canada water agency is mandated to “improve freshwater management in Canada”. However, its home page mentions the word “river” six times and the word “lake” nine times. There is not one mention of groundwater.
As a hydrogeologist working on contamination, I have spent my career studying human impacts on groundwater. Whether it is the intentional disposal of waste or a result of accidental leaks or spills, groundwater is a common receptor of contaminants. Since groundwater is invisible and moves much more slowly than surface water, it can take decades to discover groundwater contamination, disassociating cause from effect.
We continue to discover new contamination due to human activities occurring decades ago. Recent examples include high nutrient loading from groundwater discharge causing continual algal blooms in Lake Erie and Lake Simcoe, and the discoveries of PFAS and microplastics nearly everywhere.
Since groundwater contamination is slow to remediate, adverse water quality impacts are persistent and cumulative. With the future livelihoods of Canadians at stake, what actions are needed to improve our relationship with groundwater and freshwater resources as a whole?
Among other things, we must act now to increase publicly funded groundwater monitoring systems to holistically understand our shallow and deeper groundwater sheds. Current monitoring systems in Canada are inadequate in representing the dynamic character and complexity of the hydrologic system, especially the groundwater component. The standard practice in groundwater characterization and monitoring is old-fashioned relative to the available technology. Advanced monitoring and modelling tools—many made in Canada—are commercially available, yet they remain underused.
Groundwater expertise in Canada is waning due to retirements and a lack of younger generations entering the profession to take over these leadership roles. Geoscience and water resource engineering programs at Canadian universities are underpopulated. We need increased investment in training new Canadian expertise and research. This gap in expertise is happening at a time when climate change, increasing demand for food and energy production, and natural resource extraction are creating a global water crisis. Groundwater is at the very heart of this crisis.
Our demands for fresh water are now reaching the limits of the natural system. A commitment to changing our habits and improving water monitoring systems, especially groundwater, is needed to understand these limits and operate within them.
Thank you.
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
[English]
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
All of my professional experience has been in British Columbia, where I live, so it's from that perspective that I speak to you.
It wasn't until 2016 that B.C. began licensing groundwater use—decades after other Canadian jurisdictions. Historical investment in groundwater science and monitoring has thus been minimal and insufficient to provide the scientific understanding needed to support the depth of decision-making required today. B.C. is in catch-up mode.
Going forward, British Columbia faces enormous pressures in land and natural resource development, population growth and the water needed to support that. At the same time, B.C. needs to reconcile with indigenous nations in unceded territory. B.C. will also suffer from year-to-year province-wide drought and limits to surface and groundwater supplies. We'll need to address the significant lack of public confidence in how water is managed. All of the above will negatively impact sustainable development in British Columbia and in Canada.
Licensing of groundwater use provides a legal framework, as well as an opportunity to achieve environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, food security and reconciliation with indigenous nations. However, a significant and sustained investment, including investment from the Government of Canada, is needed to achieve this.
The following are recommendations for your consideration.
Increase federal investment and collaboration to support water science, monitoring and planning for B.C., local governments and indigenous nations; to support water infrastructure funding for small, rural farmers and business owners to enable them to withstand chronic water shortages and keep business going—for example, by increasing water storage during drier times of the year; and to support water education initiatives in collaboration with other levels of government to help strengthen meaningful public participation in planning and decision-making processes.
Improve the working relationship between Canada and British Columbia in groundwater so that it recognizes the unique nature of B.C.'s hydrogeology, water supply limits, legislation and operating conditions. Strong and fearless leadership from Canada, as well as from B.C., is required in this endeavour.
Related to the last point, federal responsibility for water science and water infrastructure is scattered in different agencies and appears uncoordinated with provincial efforts. Reviewing ways to consolidate it where it makes sense and improve current methods of seeking meaningful provincial input and collaboration would help.
I am convinced, based on my public service experience in B.C., that when governments treat groundwater not just as a crisis issue but more as a valuable resource—i.e., as a sustained priority—trust, reconciliation and sustainable development will follow.
If you want to discuss this further, please don't hesitate to contact me or ask me questions.
[Translation]
Thank you.
:
Good afternoon, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
As mentioned, my name is Jillian Brown, and I represent the Saskatchewan Irrigation Projects Association. As an organization, we sincerely appreciate the committee's recognition of the need to consider Saskatchewan irrigation in this discussion.
In my comments today, I'd like to highlight our industry's recognition of the importance of surface water sustainability and share with you a few features of irrigation that are not always considered. I'll comment on conditions of drought in Saskatchewan over this past year, substantial opportunities being lost for Canada with continued delays in development of the Lake Diefenbaker irrigation expansion project and, most importantly, the role of irrigators in solution building. I'll also highlight the critical role that the federal partnership with Saskatchewan plays in this context.
Saskatchewan irrigators and our stakeholders are focused on working proactively and collaboratively on solutions that meet the needs of managing water and food sustainability. Water-scheduling research, adoption and exploration of water-efficient technologies such as subsurface and drip irrigation, as well as high-efficiency nozzle and pivot advancements, and participation in engagement sessions with other water users are all examples of ongoing actions in Saskatchewan today by irrigators.
In addition to yield gains driving business, jobs and community sustainability, irrigation has environmental outcomes that are not always front of mind for those who are not producers. As highlighted by the academic community in journals such as Global Change Biology, Canadian Journal of Soil Science, and Agronomy for Sustainable Development, irrigation has been shown to provide producers with greater options to manage their crop rotations, meaning improved soil health and improved soil water use efficiency. In addition, irrigation is a practice that has been shown to increase soil carbon sequestration by 11% to 35% on average in semi-arid regions of Canada. No other agricultural technology provides the same land use efficiency increases as irrigation.
Despite these features, Saskatchewan still lacks sufficient infrastructure capacity to increase irrigation, and the results have meant considerable hardship to communities and costs to government.
In 2023 in Saskatchewan, there were more than 50 rural municipalities declaring agricultural state of emergency due to drought, which contributed to the nearly $2.5 billion in estimated crop insurance payouts for the year, which, as you know, is a significant tax burden to the Canadian taxpayer.
At the same time that this drought and crop loss was occurring, Lake Diefenbaker, the largest reservoir in Saskatchewan, saw more water leave from it in evaporation than from irrigation. Today, Lake Diefenbaker is one of the world's largest underutilized reservoirs, with an original yet unrealized design capacity available to irrigate more than 400,000 additional acres of cropland in the province.
To provide context, even at full buildout, if every acre of the 400,000 potential acres was developed into irrigated land, this would take four feet of water off the top of the reservoir, which has a mean depth of 22 meters.
Seeing the potential of Lake Diefenbaker be reached and Canadians capture these gains requires provincial and federal co-operative leadership and vision that just hasn't been possible since the reservoir was filled in 1967. Progress on Lake Diefenbaker is a real opportunity to take environmentally sustainable action to support national food security.
In conclusion, partnership between the federal and provincial governments to support irrigation development is vital for achieving both agricultural productivity and environmental and climate resiliency, which are both absolutely necessary for Canada. Saskatchewan currently has a vast amount of unutilized potential for solutions in this space that offers monumental opportunity.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I'm happy to take any questions or support further discussion.
:
I am going to have a question for Professor Parker, who talked about PFAS in her opening address.
Before doing that, however, I want to come back to what my colleague Mr. van Koeverden said earlier, that the government wanted to ban certain plastics and PFAS. That is a good thing, but the real problem is that the small municipalities dealing with PFAS-related problems are being left on their own. We know, for example, that military bases use firefighting foams with a high concentration of PFAS. Wherever there are military bases we will probably find these same problems. And yet the government is having trouble acknowledging this problem.
The costs associated with this are substantial. For the city of Saguenay alone, an $11 million agreement was made with the federal government. However, that money is not enough to solve the problem; it will simply give the people affected temporary access to potable water.
Apart from acknowledging the need to ban plastics and PFAS, the government has to be able to acknowledge its responsibility when it is itself involved in events that cause PFAS to be introduced into potable water sources.
With that said, I come back to my question for Professor Parker.
Does she know of any technologies that would let us get rid of PFAS-type contaminants?
Thank you to the witnesses for being here.
There are two elements that I'd like to address. One is the use or the allocation of scarce resources, in this case water. The second is how we reduce the demand for water.
While we've talked a lot about irrigation and increasing irrigation, we know that there are some environmental costs to irrigation as well. Earlier in our committee, there was a professor who was very impassioned about the impacts on the hydrological cycle and the fact that rainfall can be impacted for quite a large area, beyond the area that is being changed through irrigation.
While that is a necessary thing to have, and the gains that have been made in reducing the use of water I think are laudable, in that there have been great reductions, we haven't really looked at changing the way we eat. I'm wondering if you could comment on how an increase in plant-based diets actually reduces the demand for water in agriculture.
Either of you, I suppose, could answer that question. I'm not sure who would know most about that. I've just been looking at some research. It takes an average of 1,800 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef, whereas for tofu it's 300 gallons. If we're looking at feeding the world, world hunger and scarce water resources, I'm wondering whether there's been a conversation about actually trying to move more to plant-based diets.
Does anyone have any comments on that?