MEETING STATUS: PUBLIC

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY SESSION: 1/62

Motion No: 49 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND Year: 2004

VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OF HOUSE COMMITTEE PROCEEDINGS

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - COMMITTEE: SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Thursday, October 28, 2004

SUBJECT(S) BEFORE THE COMMITTEE:

Presentations in Response to Call for Public Input on Climate Change.

NOTE:This Transcription has NOT been edited nor subsequently comparedwith the original tape. It is intended to provide an indication of Committee discussion only and is NOT certified by the Legislative Assemblyto be a true copy of the discussion.

COMMITTEEMEMBERS PRESENT: Wayne Collins, Chair Wes MacAleer

Wilfred Arsenault Hon. Chester GillanHelen MacDonald Richard BrownJim Bagnall Carolyn Bertram

MEMBERS PRESENT: Dr. David McKenna

GUESTS: Part I - John TeRaaPart II - PEI Environmental CoalitionPart III - Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club of CanadaPart IV - Bill DrostPart V - Southeast Environmental Association &

PEI Climate Change HubPart VI - Malpeque Federal Riding NDP AssociationPart VII - Public Transit CoalitionPart VIII - Bedeque Bay Environmental Management AssocPart IX - Town of Cornwall

STAFF: Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk)

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Special Committee on Climate ChangeThursday, October 28, 2004

10:00 a.m.

Tape No. 1

Part I - John TeRaa

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Ten o’clock, and I’mgoing to convene the third meeting of the SpecialCommittee on Climate Change. I want to welcomeall members of the committee here and I want tocertainly welcome our first presenter, Mr. JohnTeRaa. Before we get to him though, I do want tosend--put on the record my personal congratulationsto the Clerk of Committees for a tremendous job ofputting together on the Legislature website, a greatdeal of information on this topic of climate change.A lot of documents are up there for people’sbackground reading and links to all kinds of otherinformation on the issue of climate change. And Idon’t believe in the history of committee work havewe seen as much information on one topic uploadedto this website. So it really is a good resource thereand would recommend it to all members of the mediaand general public to keep that in mind if they wantto learn more about this issue.

Before we go a little bit further, I want to refer back toa presenter of our last meeting, Erin Swansburg, theClimate Change Co-ordinator for the province. Andwe have been told that this lady is available as aresource to this committee to help us when the timecomes for the writing of a report andrecommendations and if we feel we would like tohave her services, I know I would entertain a motionto that effect at this point. Mr. Brown?

Richard Brown (L): I’ll move it.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): You’ll move thatmotion?

Richard Brown (L): Yes Sir.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Alright, and all thosein favour, say aye. Contrary nay. Very well. We’llmake the formal request to Ms. Swansburg to be ourresource person. Now today, there will be tenpresentations is what we planned to do - four thismorning as you can see and the remainder thisafternoon. We will be breaking at 12:00 o’clock or inthat neighbourhood depending on how thepresentations go this morning. I am going to try to

ask our presenters if they could keep theirpresentations to under 30 minutes. That wouldmean total presentation and hopefully, with thecooperation of committee members being disciplinedin their questioning, we can hopefully todayaccommodate all of our presenters.

So without further ado and I would ask our firstpresenter to begin his presentation and askcommittee members to please be patient. If youhave any questions for Mr. TaRaa, would you pleasehold them until the conclusion of his presentation, atwhich time I will be taking a list of questioners andMr. TaRaa, the floor is yours, Sir.

John TaRaa: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.I think most of you know me. I have been active inthe energy field on Prince Edward Island for the last25 years, renewable energy basically, alternateenergy. I thought I’d appear before the committeeand as some of you have said already, I’ll probablybe controversial so it shouldn’t shock you if I makea few controversial statements.

First of all, why do we have strategy on climatechange? Really we had a strategy 25 years ago onenergy. Alex Campbell was premier. We hadenergy days in this very Legislature. Based on thoseenergy days and the follow-up of Premier AngusMacLean, action was taken on alternate energy. TheEnergy Corporation was created and things startedto happen. So I guess, why are we starting all overagain with climate change? Because really climatechange is a symptom of an underlying problem, andI think the underlying problem basically is theinappropriate use and the inappropriate production ofenergy.

So if I can use an analogy, can say that climatechange being a persistent headache. You know,what is this committee going to do? Look at themerits of bufferin, aspirin, excedrin on how to treatthe headache or are we going to deal with theunderlying problem which is the use of energy. Dealwith the underlying problem of a headache and theheadache will go away. Deal with the problem of

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inappropriate production in the use of energy andmanmade climate issues will be mitigated. Theywon’t go away. They will be mitigated. The climateis going to change.

Now in a context for Prince Edward Island, I wouldhope that this committee is going to step back andtake a look at sustainable energy developments anduse in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry,tourism, the use of energy in cities and the ruralcommunities. I think in particular this committeeshould refocus itself on the implementation of theenergy policies that were developed 25 years agoand basically, as a result the global climate will thankyou for it. In other words, your climate changeissues will be mitigated.

Now what I want to do is touch on a couple of pointsin areas that I’ve been active in, in the last fewdecades, basically district heating, co-generation,power generation, agriculture and energy, forestryand energy. Now really to do justice with these, I’mgoing to need three days, but I’m going to try to keepit to 15 minutes. First of all, I’d like to reiterate theneed for political leadership and political commitmentto make things happen. And I just want to refer backto the early 80's when Premier Angus MacLean waspremier of this province. Angus MacLean, he wastalking about rural renaissance in those days. Butreally when you sat down with him, he was keenlyinterested in sustainable energy development anduse on PEI. The utilization of wood, production ofethanol from cull potatoes for farm fuel, developmentof wind energy. In fact, Premier MacLean, he wasChairman of the Energy Corporation when it wasinitiated. And the reason why a lot of things startedto happen in the 80's because the politicalcommitment was there. That’s why I mention thisagain. We need the political leadership, politicalcommitment to make things happen. So I wouldhope that this committee is going to take a seriouslook, not on political lines but cooperatively, as Mr.Brown says.

Now, I think the mike, is the mike picking me up?Okay. I like to think on my feet and just have somenumbers in front of me. So I’m just going to floodyou with some numbers. So basically, what I’d liketo do is just talk about district heating a bit. TheCharlottetown district heating system, I’m not surehow much the committee members know about thisplant, these numbers are a couple of years old, butthe total plant production 211 thousand megawatthours. Now megawatt hours is just a number for

you, I guess, but the oil equivalent of that is 21million litres. So it’s a substantial amount of energythat comes through that plant. And in fact, accordingto my estimates, about 30 to 40 per cent of thethermal energy requirement in Charlottetown areabuildings comes from this plant.

So it’s very significant, this plant, what it does. That30 to 40 per cent, it’s an estimate on my part and I’dsuggest you make a note and ask your resourceperson to actually confirm that. You know, whatdoes this plant contribute to the Charlottetownthermal energy requirements? That plant displaces$5.2 million worth of fuel oil at 30 cents. Now theprice of oil these days is over 50 now, I think. It’sprobably heading for 60. So that’s going to double.Between part time and full time positions, about 34positions, so there’s a fair bit of employment createdfor generating this energy on Prince Edward Island.So a lot of these things to deal with alternate energyis not throw money at it. It makes it common senseto do things and this plant is an example of it.

Now part of that energy comes from householdwaste, 77,000 megawatt hours actually, and thatrepresents about 32 thousand tons of householdgarbage. Now when these numbers were generatedas before waste watch, so that it’s unsorted garbage.But a ton of garbage contains about 2.5 megawatthours of energy. Now at 40 cents per litre, a ton ofgarbage contains about $100 worth of energy.

The reason I’m mentioning this, like the province haschosen to go to waste watch. Recycling is fine butthe province also has decided to invest $20 million ina compost facility. That facility processes about 30thousand tons of garbage. It has an energy value of$3 million but then for the purpose of this committeeand you have to deal with this, the compost facilitygenerates methane, a serious contributor togreenhouse gases. I think something should bedone with that methane gas. Now I’m not going to gofurther on it but I think when you deal with climatechange, if you want to deal with it, you got to dealwith that issue. Twenty million dollars invested in acompost facility and it generates methane and itcould have displaced $3 millions annually in fuel.

Wood waste, 97 thousand megawatt hours.Basically, that waste is coming from the Georgetownsawmill. It is the bark and the sawdust generatedand the last few years basically, Georgetown hasbeen mining the old bark pile which was anenvironmental liability and I understand it made a

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significant dent into that pile where it’s almost to thepoint where there’s no longer any energy recoverypossible from what’s left.

Now I mentioned I was going to talk a bit aboutforestry and energy. This plant, as I’ll show later,really could be and it should be extended harvestingpractices currently in the forests. I think of thetremendous amount of wood that’s being left in theforest which is wasted. And I suspect with theharvesting levels that have been going on in the lastten years, there probably was enough waste woodwhich could have fueled the 25 megawatt powerplant year round which is a tremendous amount ofenergy which could have been utilized which has notbeen utilized.

Now I’m not saying we should build a power planttoday because I suspect the rate of harvesting thathas gone on, it’s not sustainable. But I think thiscommittee should take a look at the link betweenforestry and energy to see if part of the waste comingfrom the forest should be utilized to create renewableenergy. Because like even in the Charlottetownsystem as it is today, about 20 per cent of the energystill comes from oil. Now that’s peaking energy youcannot displace all of it.

Co-generation, the plant, the Energy from Wasteplant in Charlottetown has a 1.2 megawattsgenerator in there producing electricity. These arethe extra production numbers all of the energy overthe last number of years. Most of the energy is usedin a house. These are the energy numbers of theexport through the Maritime Electric grid. And just togive you some reference, the energy produced fromthe Maritime Electric plant is about ten fold of that 1.2megawatt turbine. I just want to show you that evenwith the 1.2 megawatt little turbine, it produces a lotof electricity and it is clean electricity. The wasteheat from behind the turbine is heatingCharlottetown. This is co-generation, maximizing theuse of energy.

Now back in 95, when we actually did the upgradeon the plant, we were looking at installing a 5-megawatt turbine. Basically, all that would havemeant is you know, put a little more energy into thesteam, produce it at a higher pressure, run througha turbine and still utilize the waste heat for districtheating.

So really those numbers could have been ten-fold.The problem was at the time, the sale and selling

price of energy to Maritime Electric was 3.5 centsand to make that viable, we needed 5 cents at thetime so it wasn’t done.

I guess what I’m saying and I’m not saying it, but Iguess what really what we need is some policies onthe Island to make things like that happen. Andagain, the climate will thank us for it. So let’s face it,the Charlottetown plant, at the moment, for everyfour units of energy going into that plant, only oneunit of electricity is coming out. The rest goes intothe harbour and up the stack, very inefficient.Whereas this energy is basically 100 per cent heatrecovered, just allowing for the thorough deficiences,you know, you lose 15 per cent on the combustionsystem. But the electricity is 100 per cent electricityfrom the energy going in. That is co-generation.

Now I really struggled with what I was going topresent to this committee. I put a few things onpaper. I call them policy issues and I guess issuesthat I would like this committee to take a look at.Really, the government and the city, you being aformer councillor, should get back involved inexpanding the district heating system. Do not expectthe private sector to do it. It won’t happen. As it isnow, well there are enough issues between thecompany, PEI Energy system and the city, puttingpipes in the ground. Really you don’t want thatheadache to go in through more remote areas. What I think should happen, where the districtheating system is now, their whole neighbourhood,whole blocks of older housing stock, for instance,that should be hooked up to the system. Thecompany won’t do it. The company will make theinvestment in the plants and the distribution systemis there that the main line can handle 40 megawatt,is handling about 30 megawatt now so the capabilityis there to expand. But really the province and themunicipality should promote going intoneighbourhoods, especially the older housing stockto expand the system. But once that is done, theplant can be expanded and it should be expanded ina co-generation mode to increase the utilization ofrenewables. When I talk renewables, it is woodwaste, agricultural residues. They probably could goa ten megawatt co-gen plant in Charlottetown on aneconomic basis. I’m just throwing out a number. I’mnot going into any details, but the potential is there.It’s the utilized wood waste and the utilizedagricultural waste.

Now I’ve talked energy and agriculture. PEI isheavily committed at the moment to growing

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potatoes. Now being a Dutchman, potatoes shouldbe grown actually once every five years, no moreoften. It was policy in the Netherlands back in the50's already, simply for disease controls anddiversification of crops so we need crop rotation. Ithink some of the other crops, and I know theMinister of Energy is talking about this, growing oilcrops and stuff like that for energy production. AndI think the climate committee, this committee shouldinvolve itself in that because it’s an out benefit to thefarmer if you can displace oil and benefit the climate.

So that’s why I’m saying that really this committeeshould step back and take a global picture of PEI,not just put the blinders on and get your aspirin bottleout and deal with climate change.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. TaRaa, if I maybriefly interrupt you, we have about ten more minutesin your presentation if that’s. . .

John TaRaa: And I said 15. Okay, now, this willgive you a headache. Amend the Electric Power Actto give capacity for co-generated green power.Maritime Electric, at the moment, is committed toconstruct a gas turbine, about 43 megawatt at theCharlottetown plant. This is going to cost the ratepayers $130 thousand per megawatt, just to have itsit there. Why do you have to go all through themarket offer it at $130 a megawatt to co-generate.You know, like in Charlottetown, a ten megawattplant, 1.3 million for just having it sit there. You wantto take a serious look at it and the plant is actuallygoing to do something and produce something. It’snot an investment, a commitment for the ratepayersfor something to have sit there and not do anything. Now I’m not blaming Maritime Electric. Their job isto keep the lights on in the province and that’s whatthey’re doing. And the way the Electric Power Act isstructured right now, that’s what they’re going by andthat’s what they’re doing. I’m not telling you how toamend it. I’m just saying, take a look at it. It’s not afive-minute issue. It gets complicated.

Regulations to ban inappropriate use of electricity forspace heating. I was kind of shocked to find out thatthe new residence at UPEI going up is going to beheated by heat pumps. Heat pumps are driven byelectricity. Where that building is going, within 30feet of that building, there’s a district heat line goingthere. They’re not tapping into it for heating thatbuilding. They’re using heat pumps. It’s probablyunder the current rate structure more economical forthe university to do that. I don’t know. I have not

asked the question. It should not be allowed.

Again, that’s where it comes from the MaritimeElectric power act. Our rates are going up by acouple of per cent across the board. And yet someof the capacity is going to go to heating a residenceon the UPEI campus for space heat. The rate theyare subsidizing the space heating for that building.Now go ahead, that’s not a climate change issue,indirectly it is. Because really that building should beheated from waste heat behind a co-generator. Justthink of it. Next year in January, when it’s cold out,that building is going to require heat, (Indistinct) torun it flat out. Using four units of energy, you get oneunit of electricity. They’ll tell you, heat pumps, ohcycle efficiency four. So for one unit of electricity in,you get four units of heat out. We just broke even. Again, the province should look at introducing districtheating in Summerside. We looked at it back in 85.It was marginal. There’s a new hospital. There’s aGST Centre, all kinds of construction going on.There are all kinds of possibilities which indirectly arerelated to climate change. Again, I say, if thiscommittee looked beyond the aspirin bottle, look atsome of the underlying issues that impact theclimate. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Thank you verymuch, Mr. TaRaa. We have about five minutes forquestions as we try to stay on our schedule thismorning. I will be taking a questioner’s list here ifanyone has any questions they’d like to pose to Mr.TaRaa. Mr. Brown.

Richard Brown (L): John, thanks very much. Asalways, you give an excellent presentation. You doknow the energy file quite well. I commend you forthat. The Energy from Waste plant, so are we sayingthat there is excess capacity there in January, andFebruary and March? Like my understanding is thatthe plant doesn’t have any excess capacity at thosetimes of year.

John TaRaa: No, the plant is basically running flatout although there is historically, a shortage ofgarbage in January and February, yes. Thegarbage volume is down.

Richard Brown (L): So what we’re saying is thatso the co-gen couldn’t work in January, February, orMarch, it would be used for heating mostly. Or couldthe co-gen work. . .

John TaRaa: When I talk about co-gen, I am

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talking about a new plant.

Richard Brown (L): At the Energy from WastePlant.

John TaRaa: Added capacity, yes.

Richard Brown (L): And how would they fuel that? Through wood, in January, February and March?

John TaRaa: Wood based, year round orwhenever needed, six or seven months of the year.In summer, you don’t need it. Wood waste,agricultural waste.

Richard Brown (L): So under like co-gen, if theMaritime or the Electric Power Act was amended toallow net metering, do you think that the PEI Energy,that plant out there would put a co-gen plant in,under just net metering?

John TaRaa: No, they still need the capacity credit.Like even right now, that 1.2 megawatt generator,Maritime Electric does not give any credit for thegenerator sitting there and counter it in its capacityblock.

Richard Brown (L): Okay.

John TaRaa: They are just ignoring it. So eventhat 1.2 megawatt generator as it sits there today,that should be getting about $150 thousand a yearfor just having it sit there. Because really that’s whatMaritime Electric is going to get for that gas turbine.

Richard Brown (L): But the gas turbine, MaritimeElectric has set at IRAC, we’re in a North Americanenergy market and our suppliers of energy outside ofPrince Edward Island demands that we price ourpower on what you have, what power capacity youhave. We have no influence over that. Like it’s greatto say that plant is going to sit there and be used fornothing. But it’s used to bring down our power ratesbecause other power plants say, well you have thatcapacity so we give you a different rate. I don’t knowhow that structure works but it’s quite a structure.

John TaRaa: Yeah okay, I guess I wasn’t quiteclear. Maritime Electric does need that capacity.That’s not the argument. But really , or rather toinvest this in a gas turbine, you know, 43 megawattssitting there. You know, line up with ten megawatts(Indistinct) plant, the two potato processors, the threeof them, they got about 20 megawatt electric load.

That should be co-generated, steam. . .

Richard Brown (L): So why wouldn’t thegovernment make that case at IRAC? Or why didn’tyou make that case at IRAC when the hearings werethere? It seems logical but. . .

John TaRaa: Part of the problem is that when youget into this co-gen, it’s not something you can doover night. Maritime Electric would have theargument we need it next fall.

Richard Brown (L): Alright.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. Arsenault,followed by Mr. Gillan.

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Thank you, Mr. Chair.John, you did an excellent presentation. It’s veryinformative. Thank you very much. You mentionedthe Georgetown mill. You’re getting waste from themill. Are you getting the waste from the other millson Prince Edward Island as well?

John TaRaa: No.

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Shouldn’t that be exploredor encouraged?

John TaRaa: Yeah, part of the problem is back in95 when the Americans took over, they went singlesource for the wood supply. So all the fuel has tocome through Georgetown. So that’s the problem, asingle source. It’s something I didn’t like but ithappened. But now with that old pile being gone andthere’s going to be a shortage of fuel, there isprobably comes from, residue coming in from othermills. But it may have to be wheeled throughGeorgetown, I don’t know. I must say, I’m no longerinvolved in the plant. I have not been since 98.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. Gillan.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): John, you’resuggesting or making mention of the fact that from apure net energy gain, that if the garbage, the wastewas consumed at the Energy from Waste Plant thatit would be better than composting it. However,capturing the methane would certainly beadvantageous to us. Would that then, from anengineer’s point of view, balance it out if we cancapture that methane from again, not thinking aboutthe benefits of compost but from strictly net energygain.

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John TaRaa: No, you’d get, I’m not sure whatfraction of the energy you would get from themethane. It is small.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Okay, andthat’s good enough, just ballpark it.

John TaRaa: It’s not the same as direct (Indistinct).

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Okay.

John TaRaa: And I’m not sure what it’s going tocost to capture the methane. It’s a whole bunch ofcontainers sitting there to collect, I’m not sure.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. McKenna.

Dr. David McKenna (PC): Thanks John, that wasa great presentation. I just have a question onthe–since Waste Watch came into being a couple ofyears ago, are we getting enough waste going to theplant now, since that program started? Or are wegetting less? Can you comment on that?

John TaRaa: My understanding last winter inJanuary, February, there were times–there are threeincinerators there. Like they had to shut down two.They had only enough waste to keep one going.And unfortunately, that’s the time of high energydemands so that’s why that oil component keepsgoing up.

Dr. David McKenna (PC): So could they haveused some of that compostable material as well tokeep it going? They could have done that. Theycould have . . .

John TaRaa: I’ve mentioned it before, really, I’mnot familiar with Waste Watch really. But the wasteright now, it’s dry, I think. I think it should be storedactually in the summertime and then bring it into theplant in the wintertime when it’s needed. I still thinkthere’s waste going to the landfill. I’m staying clearof it.

Richard Brown (L): You’re staying clean, right? John TaRaa: But I really think, I think some of thatwaste in the summertime during tourist season, youknow, when it’s just flooded, I think it’s being landfillthat should be stored somewhere and it should bebrought into the plant in the wintertime. Well, there’sa cost associated with it. Somebody has to pick it

up. But really from an overall perspective, that’swhat should be done.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. TaRaa, I want tothank you very much for your very informative andprovocative presentation this morning. You’ve givenus a lot to think about, Sir. Thank you.

John TaRaa: Thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): I want to thank Mr.TaRaa as well for being very much on time there.We’re trying to keep to a very reasonable scheduletoday with a total of at least one-half hour perpresentation. Our next presenters, I’d like towelcome to the table now, are representatives of thePEI Environmental Coalition and joining us today areMr. Raymond Loo, Mr. Rob Sharkey, Mr. WesleyJohnston and Mr. Pat O’Neill. I don’t know who’sgoing to be the principal presenter here butgentlemen, you can introduce yourselves.

Part II - PEI Environmental Coalition: RaymondLoo, Rob Sharkey, Wesley Johnston, Pat O’Neill

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): We’re just going toset up some microphones so that will just take amoment. Again, I would remind our committeemembers to hold their questions till the conclusion ofthe presentation, at which time we will go throughour question list.

Wesley Johnston: Thank you for having us. Myname is Wesley Johnston, (Indistinct) of PrinceEdward Island.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Wesley Johnston, isit?

Wesley Johnston: Yes. And I’m going to bepresenting first. We also have Raymond Loo andRob Sharkey. So my presentation is on reducingPEI’s dependency on fossil fuels, to strengthen ourenvironmental and economic sustainability. The firstarea I’m going to look in is the effects of fossil fueluse.

The burning of fossil fuels has a negative effect onour environment and our climate. Greenhousegases result as fossil fuels such as crude oil, naturalgas and coal are used to produce energy. Thesegases build up in the earth’s atmosphere and trap inheat. Fossil fuels are the largest contributor ofgreenhouse gases in our atmosphere. This causes

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many disruptions in our climate and in nature’secosystems through global warming. Our planet isnow experiencing these effects as glaciers aremelting, violent weather patterns are emerging,natural habitats are disappearing and droughts areincreasing. Currently, on PEI, global warming iscausing our water level to rise.

Fossil fuels are also a main contributor to the healthproblems of Islanders. A problem which is caused orthe pollution which is caused by the burning of fossilfuels causes cancer, respiratory and cardiovascularproblems. According to the federal government, airpollution causes the death of 5,000 Canadians eachyear. As global warming increases, there will also bean increase in new diseases which are associated towarmer climates. A recent study published on afederal government website found that by improvingair quality through the introduction of cleanervehicles and fuels would have an economic value of$24 billion over the next 24 years. Currently inCanada, 31 per cent of hospital visits are as a resultof cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular problems.These problems are being created, in large part, bythe greenhouse gases which are polluting ourenvironments.

The rise of oil prices, there is only so much oil on thisplanet. Right now, there is a great debate amongscientists about how much oil is left. However, theydo agree on one thing, it will run out. When the oilindustry hits its peak, oil prices are expected to risedramatically. The peak is referred to as the momentwhen half of all available oil in the world has beenproduced for commercial use. Industry analysts arevery interested when this peak will occur. When thistakes place, it will mean that oil prices will escalateas nations and corporations fight for the remainingfinite resources.

There are presently two schools of thought in thescientific community in regards to when the oilindustry will peak. The first group of scientistspredict that oil will peak between the years 2010 and2020. The second school of thought is moreoptimistic and believes that oil production will peaksometime between 2030 and 2040. The cause ofthis discrepancy is based on the estimation scientistshave made about the discovery of new oil. As resultof these scientific calculations, it is very probable thatoil is going to peak sometime within the next 36years.

There are many factors which are contributing to the

upward pressure on oil prices. Number one, oil is afinite resource. As oil supplies continues to diminish,oil prices will continue to rise. Number two, thedemand for oil is continuing to increase. As a worldpopulation grows and as the economies of Chinaand India continue to develop, more energy isneeded to fuel this growth. Number three, the MiddleEast presently controls 30 per cent of the market. AsNon-OPEC oil reserves dry up at a faster rate thanMiddle East reserves, OPEC countries will have aneven greater ability to manipulate the market. Thiscreates a volatile environment for oil prices and oureconomy.

The drilling costs of oil are increasing. The easilyaccessible oil fields are already being exploited. Inthe future, oil production costs will increase asdrilling will take place in more remote andchallenging fields. In the case of heavy oil, tar sandsand coal, more expensive production methods areneeded to turn these resources into energy.

All scientific studies have determined that oilreserves are diminishing and that oil prices willincrease along with other fuel sources. Natural gasis very much in the same condition as oil, aspredictions are calling for a peak around 2020 whilealmost 40 per cent of the reserves are located in theMiddle East.

The question which is impossible to accuratelyanswer is when will oil production have its peak andat what rate will these oil prices increases?Currently, the Island uses fossil fuels to heat ourhomes, drive our cars and supply our homes andbusinesses with electricity. The continuous rise in oilprices is going to have an affect on our economy andour lifestyle. The scientific evidence concludes thatthis issue will have to be dealt with. There are otheralternatives which PEI needs to consider for securingand controlling our energy future.

These are some of the recommendations that I haveimplemented or suggest that conditions in this reportare designed to reduce the negative effects onclimate change while creating an environment andeconomy which is also sustainable.

Number one - Find an Aternative to the MaritimeElectric Turbine Proposal. This proposal is not in thebest interests of Islanders. This turbine uses fossilfuels to generate energy which will result ingreenhouse gases entering into our atmosphere.This causes pollution and will result in future

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environmental and social costs.

The capital cost of the project is $35 million;however, the oil used to generate the electricity is avariable cost. As oil prices continue to rise, Islandconsumers will be required to pay the highercharges. With so much uncertainty in the oilindustry, it is hard to predict how much MaritimeElectric will have to increase rates in the future tocover costs.

In the meantime, the provincial government shouldpursue other short term alternatives to cover theexpected shortfall. This will prevent Islanders frombecoming dependent on fossil fuels and allowflexibility in future energy opportunities.

Number two - Create an Energy Awareness andConservation Program. Conservation and energyefficiency is an alternative which helps to curb theconsumption of oil, sorry the consumption of energy,in households and businesses. This will reduce thedemand for energy while lowering the costs toconsumers. Islanders will also become moreconscious of their energy consumption behaviours.Maritime Electric should have a very active role inthis program. Other utilities in Canada haveconservation programs which offer incentives andrebates to households and businesses to participatein conservation and efficiency measures. Thisprogram would be in partnership with the provincialgovernment.

The third recommendation - Construct 40 Megawattsof Wind Energy. Wind energy is increasinglyeconomical as oil prices continue to climb and the oilindustry remains volatile. To develop 40 megawattsof wind energy will cost roughly $60 million.However, the energy source is free, renewable andclean. Green credits may also become an economicbenefit as Kyoto policy mechanisms areimplemented.

The federal government is also quadrupling itsfunding for the wind power production incentive.There maybe opportunities to acquire federal fundingto support this program. This project will giveIslanders more security and control in future energymatters.

Fourth recommendation - Continue to Push theFederal Government for Funding to Start a“Hydrogen Village”. Wind energy is intermitted atthis time, meaning it cannot be held in reserve. In

order for wind energy to be stored, it must first beprocessed into hydrogen. As hydrogen, it can bestored and used as needed.

This will create new research and developmentopportunities for hydrogen applications. It will alsoprovide an education opportunity for Island youth toget involved in hydrogen research. New economicopportunities may also result from this initiative. Ahydrogen village will enable PEI to remain on theedge of the technological frontier. This will helpdevelop hydrogen expertise in creating futurehydrogen infrastructure and environmental solutions.

Recommendation number five - Development ofAlternative Energy Support Programs. Continuedevelopment of financial programs and incentives topromote the construction of wind energy projectsaround the Island. Develop programs throughresearch and promote alternative energy solutionssuch as bio-diesel, ethanol, solar, compressed air, etcetra. These programs will not only create greaterenergy diversity, it will also create new jobs and newexpertise in development projects.

Conclusion - soon the federal government willrequire PEI to hit certain greenhouse gas targets. Byimplementing these conditions and other, orrecommendations which are presented today, PEIwill be better prepared to adjust to these changes.We have an opportunity on this Island to seriouslyalter the future of our province and to create anenvironmental and economical sustainability. Theserecommendations will create a cleaner environmentto live, work and play while developing strength,security and competitiveness in our economy. Thankyou.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Thank you verymuch, Mr. Johnston. Mr. Loo.

Raymond Loo: Yes, thank you. My name isRaymond Loo and I’m an organic farmer and I’mhere with the Environmental Coalition. I want to talka little bit this morning about organic matter andincreasing organic matter in making healthier soiland what the ramifications of that would be for globalwarming and global climate change. So as anorganic farmer, all of organic farming is based onhealthy soil. You know, we don’t certify crops, weactually certify–we make sure the soil is healthy, andone of the major parts in having healthy soil isactually having high organic matter in the soil andhaving an organic matter meaning soil life. And

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basically, having high organic matter in the soilprovides food and for the microbial activity in the soiland it provides–which releases nitrogen to feed ourplant.

So one of the ways of doing that is having longercrop rotations and that’s one of the things that theprovincial government has been moving toward in athree-year rotation, implementing three-year rotationprograms but the problem is it depends more on justhaving a rotation. It depends a lot on what crops aredoing and what kind of tillage you’re doing, tillagemethods and timing of tillage and so on. So what I’mproposing is that we should increase, try andincrease our organic matter by one per cent on theIsland. And I’ve talked to people at the Soil Lab herein Charlottetown, people at the Soil ConservationCouncil in New Brunswick and they came back witha figure that there’s two million pounds of topsoil onan acre of land. If we increased the organic matterby one per cent, that’s 20,000 pounds, .4 of that iscarbon which means 8,000 pounds per acre ofcarbon we would be taking out of the atmosphere byincreasing our organic matter by one per cent.

If we put it another way, it means 29,000 pounds ofCO 2 would be taken because of taking the carbonout. And if we did a math on this on the Island andif we just figure out a tight rotation acreage of200,000, we would say that the land that is probablylow, and this is very conservative, but the land that isunder three per cent organic matter and if we justthink 200,000 acres and multiply that by 8,000pounds per acre and we’re looking at 1 billion, 600million pounds of carbon we would be tying up in thesoil.

So it’s a big number. It gets interesting when westart talking numbers like that. It’s really doable. It’snot as if this is hard to do. Dairy farms, many dairyfarms are over four per cent in their organic matterright now. Most organic farms are over four per centright now or in that area. Not only is it going to, notcost hardship for the farmers, in the long run it willlead to a much more healthy farming communitybecause right now, most of the nitrogen sources thatwe have are ammonium nitrate coming. That’s whatpeople are using for the nitrogen that they’re puttingon the land to grow their potatoes and grow theirgrain and so on.

A lot of farmers are kind of married to that, you know.If you stop using ammonium nitrate, the field lookslight green because there’s no microbial activity left

in the soil to actually produce the nitrogen. Theproblem with this ammonium nitrate is–well there’smany problems–but one of the problems is it’s verydetrimental to soil microbial activity. Ammonium isvery, very nasty stuff when you dump it on the soil.So you’re actually killing off the soil life and thenyou’re adding the nitrogen. So it’s very good for thefertilizer companies but it’s very bad for the soil.

And the other thing is, most of the ammonium nitratecoming–a lot of it is coming from Russia, so it take avery large amount of energy to produce it–it’s comingfrom the petrochemical industry. Then it has to betrucked and boated here and then it has to be spreadon the fields. It’s contributing at every step of theway, it’s contributing to global warming by using upa lot of energy. When we can–by having a healthymicrobial population in our soil, it releases thenitrogen when the nitrogen is needed. And as anorganic farmer, we can see it very drastically. Whenwe switched from conventional farming to organicfarming, our plants were–the fields were light green–Ihave an aerial photograph I like to show people thatshows our farm was covered with daisies. It wasreally quite a shock to the system. Now you don’tfind daisies and our farm is dark green againbecause the microbial activity is providing me withthe nitrogen.

So having a healthy microbial activity in the soil, itstarts releasing the nitrogen when the plants need it.Instead of putting the–so the microbial activity startsworking when the soil warms up and that’s actuallywhen the plants are growing. And then inconventional agriculture right now, what’s happeningis people put their ammonium nitrate or a portion oftheir ammonium nitrate on the fields when they’replanting their crops when the ground is cold. Butthey have to because of the timing, that’s whenthey’re planting. So if we have heavy rain, and if wehave for whatever reason or too dry, and then thenitrate doesn’t actually get into the soil, it leachesinto our water system.

So one of the biggest benefits of actually increasingorganic matter in the soil and increasing themicrobial activity in the soil is going to be that we’regoing to slow down the leaching of nitrogen into ourwater source and as anybody who has beenfollowing the water table on PEI knows, nitrate is oneof the biggest issues that’s facing us coming downthe pipe, coming out of our taps. So it’s one ofthe–there’s a lot of benefits to doing this.

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Another benefit is going to be the reduction anderosion by water and wind. One of the reasons thatwe’re having so much erosion problems is becausethe soil structure has really been broken down for along time. The soil is running very erodible, and byincreasing organic matter, I don’t just mean roots andleaves because a lot of people think of just roots andleaves but it’s actually the fungi in the soil and it’s thewhole microbial activity that’s in the soil will lead to ahealthier soil which will lead to a reduced risk of fishkills and bad–you know, we don’t need that badpublicity here on PEI.

One of the things I think we need to do, we need toshow the world that we’re doing everything we can tohave a healthy Island here for tourism opportunitiesand just for making this the special place that it is.So having a more healthy soil and water system willbe noticed, I think, and will help us immensely inselling our products. I think we have to startdifferentiating our products and get out of thecommodity game if we’re going to be successful herein PEI. One of the ways we can do that is tie it into,you know, saying we’re doing these–putting thesemeasures in place which are helping global warming.They’re helping the whole agriculture.

I think we need to build on our recycling programs,our waste management, shift to wind and solarpower certainly and become leaders in the world inthat and I think we can. We should, I always get thisdig in, we should make PEI GMO free because that’sanother issue I think that would help us build thiswhole picture of what PEI should be. And I think it allstarts, but I do think it all starts with the soil. And asan organic farmer, as far as this goes, tying up thecarbon.

Just to get into a quick–some of the ways we canfacilitate this happening, I think, would be if we couldstart a rewards program, somehow for consumers, Ithink, farmers would be willing to change farmingpractices fairly quickly if they think they can makesome money out of it. And one of the ways I thinkwe should be doing it–the government here shouldbe rewarding people who are buying products fromPEI farms and meet a certain standard of production,that enhance organic matter in the soil.

So what I’m proposing is something similar to an AirMiles card or something like that, that Sobeys andthe Superstore would have to carry and you wouldget points, as a consumer, for buying organic orother products that meet a certain standard and the

government can design the standard around buildinghealthy soil and healthy environment. So we wouldmake an environmental card and as a consumer, yougo into Sobeys and you buy your product, Sobeysswipe your card and at the end of the year you havea credit for buying so many pounds of–so manydollars worth of product and the government givessome kind of a credit back to them people, either ina tax credit or as a cheque back. And suddenly,people will start demanding to have more Islandproducts on the shelf in Sobeys and the Superstore.And we have to do it. We can’t push her out. Wecan’t push, we can’t regulate this all to happen. Wehave to have consumers that are pulling along andfarmers will produce it.

I feel that most organic farmers and dairy farmers, foran example, would already meet these standards ifwe’re talking about strictly organic matter becausemost of them, are over four per cent now. So I thinkwe should be considering soil life and soil health inmost of the farm incentives as well. I think that theDepartment of Agriculture should be, shouldn’t bejust talking about rotation. Just rotation is notenough because it depends on what crops are beingrotated. We have to look at this much closer andsay, farmers should be doing soil samples andhigher organic matter gets higher incentives. I thinkthe slope regulations and all them are great but if wecould increase our soil health, we wouldn’t havenearly as much problem with erosion. We wouldn’thave near as much problems with a lot of the otherproblems that are associated with agriculture.

So I think the big thing, I think people, in my view, isjust to try and get realize that just by increasingorganic matter by one per cent on 200,000 acreswould tie up a billion and a half pounds of carbon. Ifyou figure that in CO 2, that would be about fivebillion pounds of CO 2 taken out of the atmosphere.So it’s actually a very huge number and that’s just onthe worse acres on PEI. It is very easy to do. Itdoesn’t cost any money. It would actually savemoney in the long run in the agriculture. So that’smy. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Pardon myinterruption here, but I’m looking at about ten moreminutes in your presentation. Mr. Sharkey.

Rob Sharkey: Thank you, my name is RobertSharkey. I’ll be speaking on how forests have apositive impact on climate change. As we haveheard from other presenters, good environmental

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policies most often make economic sense as well.The reason we do not think about environmentalpolicies as cost-saving devices is that we usuallyshelter the costs of doing business poorly. Anexample of this is the factory that spews out toxicgas and doesn’t have to pay for the additional healthcosts incurred by the surrounding public. Buteventually, these costs do have to be paid, and theoverall costs can be orders of magnitude higher thanif the proper (Indistinct) had been originally put inplace to begin with.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying we can’t makean impact on global issues. We do have a role toplay in protecting and enhancing the environment. Inthe area of climate change, there are many thingsrelated to forests and trees that we could do onPrince Edward Island that would set a good exampleto others. In addition, these actions would help inour overall environment and improve our reputationas a destination for eco-tourism. Here are some ofthe steps we could take.

Number one - create new woodlands. Forests arecalled the skin of the earth and can help to re-stabilize the earth’s atmosphere. Trees absorbcarbon dioxide, the primary gas causing globalclimate change. Trees retain the carbon from theCO 2 molecule and release oxygen into theatmosphere. The carbon makes up half the dryweight of the tree. Forests are the world’s secondlargest carbon reservoir, oceans being the largest.Unlike oceans, however, we can grow new forests.Planting new trees remains one of the cheapest,most effective means of drying excess CO 2 from theatmosphere. One acre of forest land will sequesterbetween 150 and 200 tons of carbon dioxide in thefirst 40 years. These make effective carbon sincs.

Planting trees does make sense, especially onmarginal land, whether it be too steep for a croppingsystem or too wet in the spring or fall for crops. Butwe shouldn’t fall into the trap by creating fast growinghybrid poplars plantations or planting just one or twospecies. We should look at creating longer, livedforests with all the benefits that these entail. Whilethe young woodlands are effective carbon sincswhere carbon is just quickly grabbed up, comparedto older forests, they are poor carbon reservoirsbecause older forests store carbon in a relativelystable form over a long period of time.

In light of the above, we should also protect andencourage older forests through direct purchases,

landowner agreements or tax breaks. Living forestsabsorb carbon dioxide and through photosynthesisconvert it to biomass. Forest soils also store largeamounts of carbon in their organic layer.Deforestation alters this carbon cycle by eliminatingtrees and disturbing forest soils, releasing the carbonstorage in both to the atmosphere. The increasinglyrare older forests that are left in this provincedeserve our protection for these and many otherreasons.

Number three - to promote more ecologically andeconomically sound forest practices in the upcomingprovincial forest policy. The International Union forthe Conservation of Nature has made the followingrecommendations regarding climate change inforests and they make sense for a wide variety ofreasons, not just for the relation to carbon, and Iquote, “Managed timber production of forests forcarbon and other environmental values. Forests thathave been managed primarily for timber productionshould also be managed for climate mitigation andother environmental values. Expanding forest areaby promoting regeneration of native trees, allowingtrees to grow larger, for employing harvestingmethods that reduce damage and waste andestablishing conservation set asides withinproduction forests can all increase the average longterm quantity of stored carbon.

These management options also tend to havebeneficial effects on biodiversity and on other keyeco-systems services such as maintainingwatersheds. Restoring forests also tends to improvehabitat quality especially for wide ranging forest birdsand mammals. Allowing trees to grow larger beforeharvesting generally increases a forest’s structuraldiversity and provides habitat for a broader range offorest species. Healthy forests that retain theirnatural complexity and diversity in age and habitatstructure generally have a greater stability andresilience to withstand disturbances associated withclimate change.

These are all things that we could easily incorporateinto a new forest policy and again that one would putus in the forefront of both climate change policy andforest restoration here on the Island. Though underKyoto, there are no direct carbon debits from clearcutting forests for a variety of political reasons, PEIcould be proactive and actually issue carbon creditsto forest owners. We would have to look at more than just the wood onthe sites since carbon stored is organic matter and

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for our soils is also very stable in the long term. Soas in agriculture, you could create a system wherecarbon levels were measured on site and a planwould be put in place to raise these levels. If alandowner chose to participate, there could be taxbreaks or silviculture support in the form of additionalplantings or other services. It would not benecessary to spend huge amounts of new money tomake this worthwhile. The carbon storage could putus at the head of the pack when the Canadianindustries start looking for places to purchase carboncredits. It may wind up not costing the governmentanything at all.

Number five - we could look at having significantgreen spaces with trees in each subdivision. As youknow, trees help cool the planet, developers andhomeowners could plant trees to offset the personalcarbon dioxide emissions and reduce CO 2 in ouratmosphere. There should be no more subsidies forburning brush when the government createsplantations. This releases carbon and a whole rangeof pollutants into the atmosphere, not just from theburning wood but also from the service litter that getsburned and the diesel that is used to start the fire.These fires can get out of control and burn past thetarget area creating even more of a problem. Whenyou add in the cost of the loss of nutrients, this is onearea that deserves immediate attention, especiallysince the returns to the forest can be so negative andit will save public funds that could be much betterused elsewhere.

Start a lawn reduction campaign. We all know thatlawns are poor stores of carbon and thatlawnmowers put huge amounts of carbon and otherpollutants in the air. It would seem that if we couldplant some part of these lawns in native trees andshrubs, we’d be storing more carbon, releasing fewerpollutants and creating an attractive wildlife habitatsthrough both urban and rural areas. This should notbe seen as anything like a ban on lawns but we do,do we really need of mowed grass that we see hereon the Island.

An educational campaign would go a long waytowards this reduction of lawn space. There aremany books available on the subject and one thatmay be worth looking at is Lorraine Johnson’s HowTo Get Your Lawn Off Grass. Our work on this issueis at many schools and with an increasing number ofprivate landowners, has been very well received bythe larger campaign with some more resourcesbacking it would have a much greater impact.

The Forestry Branch has also made a beginning inthis area with its greening spaces campaign. So itmight be just a matter of pulling together a bunch ofexisting government and non government programsand policies and going from here.

Finally, we must encourage conservation programswith government leading by example. That couldmean everything from using recycled paper andcopying on both sides to turning off the lights at nightwhen there is no one in the office. It might meanoffering some award to people who use little or noelectricity or creating retrofit programs so that peoplecould afford to purchase newer, cleaner burningwood stoves. All of these actions, while seemingly small, wouldhelp us become more aware of the issuessurrounding climate change and bring otherenvironmental economic benefits as well. Thank youvery much.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Gentlemen, thankyou very much, the Environmental Coalition. I will betaking a questioner’s list here right now. We’ll beginwith Mr. MacAleer.

Wes MacAleer (PC): I have a question for Mr. Loo.I have been to his farm. I’ve seen his product. I wasimpressed by the quality of the material or theagricultural produce that he presented, and I wasimpressed by the statistics. But I’d like to get anunderstanding, how extensive is organic farming onPEI now? Where do we sit in that respect? Howmany acres do we have being produced? Let’s startwith that.

Raymond Loo: Not nearly enough. In my view,we need to expand it more. It is expanding. We’vegot probably 2,000 acres tied up that’s owned byorganic farmers. Some of that is not being–peopleare basically just cutting the grass over and overagain because they want, they don’t want to be usingchemicals on their farm but they’re not actually usingit, so it’s not really as productive as it should be.

We’ve started a land registry, the Organic ProducersCo-op hoping that we can–cause we have quite afew people that have land that’s certified organic butthey’re not really producing much off of it. And wehave other people that are interested in looking atorganic farming, so we’re trying to marry the twotogether so we can get better use of the land. Butright now, we’re only looking at about 30 farmers.

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Wes MacAleer (PC): Thirty farmers and 2,000acres.

Raymond Loo: About 2,000 acres, I think, yeah.So we’re considerably behind the rest of the country.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Yeah, how much of that is inproduction?

Raymond Loo: I’m not absolutely sure, probably1,500, somewhere in that area. I mean, I’ve got 250acres. Fred Dollar has got 300 acres. There’s acouple of other farmers with two or 300 acre farms.So I mean, we’ve got–but there’s quite a few smallfarms too.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Just one more question.Where is the largest portion of the product beingproduced here in Canada being marketed? Is itroadside stands? Is it the Farmers Market? Is it theSuperstore?

Raymond Loo: Well the largest volumes are goinginto Superstore, A&P in Ontario through FoodTrust,through grains being sold to (Indistinct) Mills andfarther. The largest, most of the larger farms areselling their product as a food and leaving the Island.But it’s coming back to an extent. Like I producepotatoes that go to Superstore. They go to Monctonand come back here to the shelves but they go allover the Maritimes as well. We sell potatoes toOntario, but there are many farmers that are sellingat the Farmers Market. The farm gate is growingvery fast too, so our sales at the Farmers Markethave been actually going up about 25 per cent ayear. We have been tracking it for the last fouryears. So it’s really growing.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Miss MacDonald.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Yes, my question alsogoes to Raymond Loo. I, too, am very interested inthe organic side of farming. But I’m wondering, howdo you control blight?

Raymond Loo: A great question. With about asmuch or somewhat less success probably thanconventional farmers although conventional farmershave a problem. Blight is the biggest problem inpotato production. I don’t have blight with othercrops but potatoes are difficult. This year, I wasunlucky enough to have a neighbour, a next doorneighbour in my case, phone me–well it’s acorporation–but phoned me at the first of July and

said that they had cases of confirmed blight in theirfield. They were giving me heads-up and I had, Ikept our potatoes alive until the first of August. I hadto top them off with a topper then because we didhave some blight coming in. I’m allowed to usecopper sulfate, copper hydroxide, the same as theold fashioned bluestone. It has no systemic value. As an organic farmer, I’m not allowed to use anythingthat’s systemic, nothing that goes into the plant. Sowe’re allowed to use some compost tees which havesome microbial activity that actually kills some of thefungus that, you know, fungus spores. There’s a lotof work being done on it but it’s no question, blight isthe biggest problem. Weeds we can handle. Insectswe can pretty well handle but blight is a big problem.But it’s only in potatoes. So the organic is muchbigger than that. We have certified organic beef.There’s other vegetables. Grains we can do aseasy, as well. Most people are not spraying,although more people and more people are sprayingtheir wheat with a fungicide but we can get bywithout–so there are other crops we can do verywell. Potatoes, my yield this year is down, noquestion about it.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Do you have to use muchcopper sulfate?

Raymond Loo: Well I’m only allowed to, seethere’s one of the issues. Copper–we’re onlyallowed to use so many sprays and so many pounds.We’re only allowed to put so much–we have to trackit. It’s interesting doing the Nutrient ManagementPlan which has been implemented by thegovernment. We’ve been doing that as organicfarmers tracking everything we’ve been doing foryears. We had to, anybody that’s certified organicand I have to say, it’s certified organic. There’ssome people that just stick up a sign up sayingorganic and they’re not following anything.

Certification is very, very important. But to sit downand do the Nutrient Management Plan, it wasinteresting because basically it’s tracking everythingthat we’ve been doing all along. So I’m using a fiveor six-year rotation for my potatoes and I’m onlyallowed to use –I don’t have the number right in frontof me but probably six pounds of copper per acre peryear or something so I have to be very careful whenI apply it and how I apply it and so on. But it istracked very closely because of course–and if it gotin the streams, it would be toxic to fish as well.

Helen MacDonald (PC): I would think so.

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Raymond Loo: So we have to be very careful.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): A quick question toMr. Johnston. Under the heading of energyawareness and conservation program, would the PEIEnvironmental Coalition support, I think it’s calleddemand side energy distribution where the moreenergy you use, the higher price you pay after acertain level?

Wesley Johnston: We haven’t really looked into thatarea but it would be something that we would lookinto and it does have its benefits, just initially lookingat it anyway, so I believe we would support that.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Ms. Bertram.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I just wanted to make notethat it seems going through your presentations whereit’s important the positive sides of things for theconsumer, you know, when you spoke about the ideaof–like the Air Miles idea in terms of the rewardsystem for the consumer and I think in terms offorestry too, the homeowner that’s planting the trees.Do you believe that reward the positive side of thingsto Islanders is the most important way to approachthis?

Raymond Loo: I think it is because I’ve seenlegislation, the problem with legislation and you needlegislation, there has to be laws and rules, noquestion–but the problem with legislation is peopleget their backs up and don’t want to. But ifsomebody is looking at me selling my potatoes rightnow for 50 cents a pound and they’re getting sixcents a pound and if I’m to get successful, thenthey’re going to switch. That’s why I mean, some ofthe big potato growers are now growing a few acresof organic, some of the really big potato growers arelooking at it very heard. But it’s really a matter ofhaving the marketplace demanding the product andone of the ways to actually–but one of the problemswith organic agriculture is, if we don’t figure in thewhole value or the whole cost of production, if wejust walked to Sobeys and we see a bag of potatoesin there for 4.99 and they’re sitting beside anotherbag of potatoes that’s 2.99, and you don’t think of thewater system as not getting polluted. You don’t thinkof the erosion.

You know, if you don’t think of all the other costs thatare going into producing the potatoes, organic looks

expensive. So what I’m saying is the governmentshould try and put in, put something in place thatmakes the organic potatoes or the organic products,whatever they are, cheaper for consumers to buy.Again, I do think that they are the cheapest food onthe shelf if you thought of all the costs of productionand place. But we have to bring that forward to theconsumers and we have to get the consumersasking for stuff and they are. I mean, the consumersare buying right now.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I heard a presentation fromFoodTrust and it’s marvellous what’s taking place. ..

Raymond Loo: The FoodTrust is a great method.

Carolyn Bertram (L): . . . In the Ontario market.

Raymond Loo: Yeah and they are buyingpotatoes from us and I really value their. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Gentlemen, I thankyou very much for your presentation today. Weappreciate hearing from the Environmental Coalition.Our time is now about 11 minutes after 11 o’clockand as I mentioned, we’re going to try to breakaround 12:00 or so. We’ll see how it goes. Yes, Mr.Bagnall.

Jim Bagnall (PC): (Indistinct)

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): A quick questionbefore you go. Do we have any copies of the otherpresentations that were made by Mr. Loo and Mr.Sharkey?

Unidentified Presenter: I don’t, I probably can getthose to you. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): I appreciate that. Part III - Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club ofCanada: Tony Reddin, Jason Kun

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Our next presentersare from the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club ofCanada. I wonder if those people could comeforward. Mr. Reddin, good to see you again, Sir.Will there be anyone else presenting with you todayon behalf of the. . .?

Tony Reddin: I’m going to have Jason Kun comeup because there’s part of my presentation and I

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want him to . . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Certainly, alright, sowe’re going to begin with you, Jason ? What’s hislast name?

Jason Kun: Kun. K-u-n.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Kun, Thank you, Sir,for coming here. Mr. Reddin, the floor is yours, Sir.

Tony Reddin: Okay, you don’t want to wait for theothers to come back?

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Well, who’s, okay,we got a few missing. We’ll wait until they get back,I’m sorry. Alright.

Tony Reddin: I will start by saying that I regret thatI don’t have a written submission. I’ll do my best toget that to you later.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): And again Tony, Imight say, we’re trying to have about a half hour totalpresentation per group today if that’s okay.

Tony Reddin: See what the clock does to me. Idon’t know if I can talk as fast as Raymond Loo therebut. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): All voting and allnon-voting members are in attendance. Go rightahead, Mr. Reddin.

Tony Reddin: Okay, my name is Tony Reddin andI’m representing the Atlantic Canada Chapter of theSierra Coalition of Canada and I’m a volunteermember of the Executive Committee for the AtlanticChapter. So as in most of this work that I do, it’svolunteer and unfortunately, sometimes timeconstraints keep me from putting the time into it thatI’d like.

At the same time, this issue of climate change andthe climate change crisis is one that I feel soimportant that I’ve put, I’ve taken the time that I couldand lost the sleep that I should of perhaps had inorder to come today and present this to you, and Ialso want to introduce Jason.

Jason Kun: Hello, my name is Jason. I’m theregional coordinator for the Youth EnvironmentalNetwork and within one month, the Youth

Environmental Network will be cooperating with One-Tonne Challenge Environment Canada to deliveryouth projects throughout Atlantic Canada, deliveringgrants to youth environmental organizations, toconduct campaigns on education. We want to seethis moving more towards is away from the educationcampaign and more into community based marketinginitiatives where people are actually involved in aspecific campaign and there are measurable resultsto the reduction of greenhouses gases. Where thereis in the past, it’s been more based on education andthe measurable results have been more based onhow many pamphlets or how many people havesigned up. So I see the youth in Atlantic Canadaplaying a big role in getting a community moreinvolved in an interactive way.

Tony Reddin: I want to start for myself, I’m justexplaining a bit about the Sierra Club of Canadawhich as you maybe aware, has a long history ofpublic advocacy on work to protect and preserve theenvironment and to restore our health enhancingworld that is so important, both human health andnatural health.

We have campaigns, of course, this is a nationalorganization. It’s international. It started in theUnited States but there’s campaigns under theheadings of toxics in the environment, clean air,preserving ecological health and energy and anotherbig focus is sprawl under the topic of energy. That isurban sprawl. And all of those, if you think about it,relate very clearly to climate change. Of course, Ithink you’ve seen already the various departmentsunder government, the various topics that have comeup already, there’s an element in each of these thatclimate change is related to.

When you think about toxics, of course, the fossilfuel industry is notorious for problems that way.Clean air, we’re talking about pollution again, ofcourse, and ecological health, oil exploration isdrastic. It’s a disaster in a lot of cases for the healthof the ecology. Energy of course, and sprawl and wesee that even here in PEI, we might not realize it butit’s becoming, I think, a major problem in PEI thathousing developments just uncontrolled, it appears,and not much consideration putting into preserving,even common park space and that sort of thing.That’s one would think, would be minimal.

So again I appreciate your patience with thispresentation but I’ll work away here. I think themajor point I want to make is that this climate change

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is not just a topic, it’s a crisis and we need majorchange in our society. If you really look at what’sneeded, the reduction of fossil fuel and the fact thatwe’re so dependent on fossil fuel means that weneed to put everything we can into this. And we cansay well PEI is a small place. It’s a global issue butbecause PEI has such a high profile, I think, and wehave somewhat of a good image as a leader in thosequalities that people look at, natural environment,that sort of thing. We really do have the potential, Ithink, to be a very visible example for the rest of thecountry and for the world for that matter. And I thinkthat given that, and the fact that I think that a lot ofIslanders are passionate and I hope all of you are,about our place in the world that we can reallygenerate that sort of a leadership role.

Unfortunately, right now, we’re not doing it. Wehaven’t, I don’t think, lost that potential but when welook at transportation, we’re way behind a lot ofplaces. We look at our heating, it’s well we havesome advantages there but there’s really nothingseriously being done in terms of new housing beingmade sure that it’s the most energy efficient and thatit’s geared to getting off fossil fuels. Our electricityagain, there’s some leadership there with the windturbines but at the same time, we have an utilitythat’s, we might as well say, backward, as far asenergy conservation goes. It’s working against it inthe last few years. And I think it was mentioned,Wayne, you mentioned demands, I mean just thefact that you actually pay less when you consumemore electricity, that’s ridiculous really, if you don’tmind me using that term.

Agriculture again, although we have a wonderfulplace for agriculture, the way our system runs rightnow, we are using much more fossil fuels than wouldbe sensible. A potato based agriculture is probablyabout the worst choice for fossil fuels and the factthat it’s export oriented is also, it just has to change.We can’t say that we’re doing something aboutclimate change when our agriculture is based onexport and our food consumption is very much basedon import. So every time you buy something that’scoming from off PEI, you’re increasing the use offossil fuels.

So at the same time as we see that radical change isneeded, we also have to think of the small stepsbeing important. There’s no question, we’re doingthem and I think the government is providing someleadership there. At the same time, it’s really acultural thing. We have this culture of consumption.

We have this idea that we need this, we need that.We even, just simply look at that word of need andconsider even in our own lives and in our institutionsand in our government, what do we consider asneeds? Well, that’s changed a lot over the years. Itseems to increase every year and it goes, again it’sgoing against what we need to do to–in this case, I’dsay we really do need to do to address this climatechange crisis.

I think it was mentioned earlier, consumerresponsibility, and of course, that’s not just for theindividual. It’s governments and institutions andindustry that need to consider the impact of everypurchase and that’s a way that each of usindividually and also in our work have such a majorrole. When we spend a dollar, we can control whereit’s spent. We can decide if that dollar is helping topromote fossil fuels or if it’s helping to promoteconservation.

As I said, if you buy food that’s grown locally asopposed to half way around the world, that’s a majorchoice right there. That’s reducing the amount offossil fuels needed. Right now, we can see that ourmanufactured goods, more and more, seem to becoming from China. Again, good for them, they’reproducing the goods. But when we make the choiceto buy those things, that’s a mistake, I think.

The next point I want to make is that the Sierra Clubof Canada has one wing and it is called the SierraYouth Coalition and it engages youth in active workand that’s partly why Jason is here to include, toemphasize that point that with this situation ofclimate change crisis, we need to involve youth. It’stheir future, of course and they have the ideas andmost of all, they have the passion to present it, toreally encourage and motivate people to change.And I’ve seen that, we’ve had young people comethrough PEI.

Four years ago, we had what was called the ClimateChange Caravan. They biked all the way acrossCanada. They were presenting bicycles and othernon fossil fuel alternatives for transportation. Theymade presentations to youth and then the summerbefore last, we had what was called, the OteshaProject. A similar thing and they did terrificpresentations to school groups. I think if you talkedto any of the schools that had them, they’d still, I’msure they’d still remember how impressed they were.And what impresses people is their passion that theyreally believe in it and they have the energy and the

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motivation to really be, take their ideals and treatthem seriously.

So that’s one side of it and Jason is one of theleaders to help youth be organized in presenting that.I think government has to encourage youth in everyway they can, give them opportunities and funding ofcourse, is a big part of it. The other side of it is, theother side of it is that children have to see a goodexample and it’s not that hard to do. I mean we havemost of them in schools. All we have to do is haveschools be consistent, have good policies in schools,have energy conservation, have every day–everyday, every minute, there’s times to talk about eitherthe choice between consuming or conserving. Sothat’s got to be foremost, I think, in the educationsystem.

Of course, when children see leadership and theysee a good example being set, then they’re going tofollow it. If they don’t see it, then they becomecynical and unfortunately, that’s a big part of oursociety right now. And of course, we can look atexamples of that, other examples, transportation.More and more it seems that children arediscouraged from using their own energy, their feetor their bicycle or whatever to get to school. Thereare some campaigns to change that. It’s walk toschool day and car-free campaigns. Again thesemaybe encouraged. Government really has to doeverything it can to push those things along.

The next point I’d like to make is with the SierraClub, our Atlantic Chapter, we’ve helped to launchwhat’s called the Atlantic Canada Energy Coalitionand that’s from the Atlantic provinces, various non-governmental groups who want to promotealternatives to fossil fuels. And in the first case, tofocus on opposing the refurbishment of the PointLepreau generating plant in New Brunswick. There’sbeen two or three items in the news lately that seemto be discouraging that development, at least whichhopefully will come through. But that Point Lepreauplant we see as a major problem. Nuclear power isnot at all a solution to climate change problems. It’sgot its own disastrous problems for the future and ofcourse, nuclear waste being the main one. But eventhe safety of the nuclear plants is still very much aproblem.

So given that Point Lepreau isn’t refurbished, if theydecided to do it, it would be well over a billion dollarsand a lot of that would be federal money that PEI isentitled to our own share of it. So we do have a

stake in that. We should, I think, speak up andoppose that. Given that it’s not, the money doesn’tgo to that, then we need to present the alternativesfor that money to go to, of course. And that would benaturally wind turbines but that’s what talked aboutmost popularly. But the first choice has always gotto be conservation programs. If we lessen thedemand for energy, not just electricity but otherenergy, that’s where the money is spent the best.That’s where it goes the furtherest and that’s the bestlong term solution.

The other ideas that we can certainly pursue on PEIjust as much as they can in New Brunswick are co-generation, generating electricity and then using thewaste heat for heat, and of course, other solarenergy options, small scale hydro is not so much anoption for us but there are possibilities with tidalpower, water current power and that sort of thing thatwe really need to keep on top of.

So the other part of this campaign for the Atlanticenergy, Atlantic Canada Energy Coalition is aquestion of funding and we’re pursuing that. Ofcourse, it will be a much more effective campaign topromote the alternatives if there’s funding in place.But it brings up the whole problem of funding for non-governmental organizations. There’s such animportant role for them to play in promoting thepublic interest and I think that has gone down in thelast 20 years, I suppose, as government cutbackshave taken, hit the hardest on those communityorganizations. That’s something that has to bereversed.

It’s so important to have the public interestrepresented. And even a hearing like this, it’s greatto see that there’s several groups presenting to yourcommittee. It’s great to have the committee but atthe same time, if we had intervention, intervenerfunding for groups that would give you a lot betterand more complete information from those groupsthat represent the public interest and that’s what youreally need to hear.

So the role that your committee plays and I reallychallenge you to take it very seriously is not just tolook at climate change but first of all, there’s all theinformation that you can take on. My God, it’soverwhelmingly sometimes but it’s also a wonderfulsituation where there’s more new information comingout all the time. If a person puts their heart into it,they can really get a good understanding and play areal good role as an example.

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I guess the important role I would see for you is toact as leaders setting a good example andencouraging governments to set that good exampleand also as individuals even, setting a good examplethat really would show people that this is somethingthat government takes seriously. I mention the information and I have passed on somealready to the committee, through your clerk, and I’llcontinue to do that and I hope it’s useful. There areseveral good books written recently. One is calledStormy Weather, 101 Solutions to the ClimateChange Crisis, I believe is the title. Another one thatwas mentioned last weekend on Quirks and Quarks,the radio show, I happened to catch it, was by ajournalist from, I think, Boston called Boiling Point.Who’s to blame for the climate change crisis or somesuch term. Anyway, that made it very clear thatindustry, you know, there are some big players herewho definitely are to blame. And make no mistake,when we talk about changing this whole system ofour society, we’re going against big industry andthey’re not going to take it lying down. So again it takes a passion. It takes really strongcommitment to follow through with it all. The otherthing that that book, the author is Ross Gelbspan.He also gives on his website, solutions that he seesto the global climate change crisis and so that’s wellworth reading. I’ll also mention very briefly,yesterday I was told I haven’t had a chance to lookfor it myself but the Globe and Mail had a feature onhydro Quebec and their electricity developmentswhich I think are definitely going much more stronglytoward renewable energy.

I just want to point out a couple of examples whereI think some immediate change could be corrected.I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say change, some real changecould take place. If we look at our Island WasteManagement system and the fact that–I mean it’swonderful to have compost collection. I shouldn’tsay, okay, it’s a wonderful thing to take compost outof the waste system. That’s a major part of it thatwe’re leading in that way very well. But to becollecting that with big trucks and shipping it to acentral point is a big mistake, and there’s no need ofit.

Home composting is something many people havealready been doing so that’s something, I think, reallyhas to be looked at immediately and get that systemchanged. That’s made there, we’ve increased by amajor amount, I would say, the amount of fossil fuelswe’re using by having that system in place. Ofcourse, I mean, well anyway, look at that system and

look at ways to make it much more sensible in termsof fossil fuel use.

Agriculture and food, Raymond did a very goodpresentation, I think, and it’s worth looking at thatreally closely on the advantages of high organicmatter in the soil. I’m not sure if he mentioned, butthat also makes a lot less fuel consumption with thetractors. My friend, Stephen MacKinnon has a dairyfarm and he has found an amazing difference in theamount of fuel he needs to use to plow and to workthe ground when the organic matter is higher. Theground is softer. It doesn’t take as much to cutthrough it. So you can use a smaller tractor andthat’s much easier on fuel and other ways too. Theother. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Pardon myinterruption, Mr. Reddin, but we’re about ten minutesfrom meeting in our total presentation time. Tony Reddin: Okay, yeah I think that’s working outnot too bad. Five minutes should wrap it up. I thinkthe other thing that needs to be addressed withagriculture though is as I said, potatoes are not agood choice to be focusing on all and to have as ourmajor crop. We really need to diversify. Potatoesare a great crop for PEI. They grow really well hereand they are wonderful food. But to have suchemphasis on them, it’s not only not great forsustainable farming but it’s also a major, a muchhigher fossil fuel user when you look at the machine,I was on a potato digger this week and when youlook at the fuel that it takes for that machine to bepulled by the size of tractor it takes, it’s prettyconsiderable.

And the other side of that, of course, is our system.When we export our food and I said this before butI’ll repeat it again, that when we export, we’re usingfossil fuels to do that. When we import, we’re usingfossil fuels again. That’s a major part of where PEIis lagging on what they call the ecological footprint.It’s surprising but in terms of our food use, we havea much higher fossil fuel use than other places do,where it wouldn’t be that hard to provide all our ownfood, but we buy a lot of imports.

So we need to, of course, buy local foods. Andagain, I should say that’s another place forleadership is the government and the institutions arebuying and supporting local producers as much asthey can. And even in the terms of perhaps a littleless variety than what is given and I’m talking about

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schools, government functions, anything like that, itreally shows that that commitment is there.

So the other ideas I would present and challenge youfor solutions for PEI, first of all, to set high goals. Isee in the climate change plan draft, there are goalsset there and they are good. But they can certainlybe set much higher. Start right away, fix immediatelythose inconsistencies like the waste managementproblems, the agriculture policy, the forestry policyand housing. I think that’s one major one that bothin terms of what’s the standards are for housing interms of energy efficiency and the development,housing development where it’s tearing up a lot ofwoodland and not preserving sensible ecology in thatland. And then to show leadership, really radicalleadership, I think it really takes that sort of thing andencouragement to others.

So thank you very much and as I say, I’ll try to getthat to you as soon as I can in a written form. I’ll takequestions.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Yes, any questions?I’m taking a list as we go along. Mr. Gillan.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Thank you, Mr.Chair. Mr. Kun, you indicated that you would bemaking a move as youth leader from simply handingout pamphlets, I shouldn’t say simply butdisseminating information to more of a marketing.Could you very quickly elaborate on that?

Jason Kun: One of the groups that has applied forthe Youth Environmental Network and One-TonneChallenge is a group here from the PEI ClimateChange Youth Committee. One of the programs thatthey had proposed was to go into the schools toinitiate a transportation challenge to see whichclassroom could kind of reduce their greenhousegases the most over a three-month period. One ofthose initial months being the period of describingways through the one-time challenge on how toreduce your household greenhouse gases or throughtransportation. That way it becomes a morecommunity-based initiative which I see really usefulespecially here in Atlantic Canada because of thestrong sense of community and this is, I think, reallythe future of where the environmental move is goingto come.

Education has been going on for the last ten yearsbut as we do see, you can put on as manycommercials on TV or as many ads as you want on

in the newspaper but I think the statistics show that90 per cent of the people that receive thismainstream education will want that change. Sowhereas community initiatives are, have a muchmore higher participated rate. So I think this is agreat way for the youth to get involved and I justdon’t see the youth as being a separate, I guess, co-hort or different body but cooperating with the rest ofthe provincial and federal government as they’rereceiving funding from Environment Canada.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Thank you.

Tony Reddin: Mr. Chairman, I might mentionagain, if you don’t mind that Jason, I just called thismorning and he was willing to come along and that’swhy it was mostly, the presentation came from me.But I think it’s so important to include youth in thisand men and women to have their ideas and I’m sohappy he did.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): We appreciate that.Are there any other questions from committeemembers? I have one short question. I’d like toknow, Mr. Reddin, when it comes to climate change,what’s needed to convince the general public do youthink, that it is imperative to act now to reduceemissions, that there is as many believe, we’vereached a crisis point when it comes to coping orunderstanding climate change?

I mean, you go back to an issue like acid rain fromthe United States and we thought and feel as we’reall contributors to that. But the heavy industry, thepublic mobilized around that, quickly co lest on thatissue. Is there something that needs to take placebefore climate change goes to or near the top of thelist of people’s priorities?

Tony Reddin: Well it’s just my opinion. First of all,I’d say with acid rain, that solution hasn’t been takenplace yet for that. It’s just gone away as an issue.It’s still a problem, a serious problem. There’s somescrubbers have been put in that have sent it a littlefurther away and that short of thing, but it’s kind ofbeen washed over. Anyway, with the climatechange, I think it’s on many levels but I think thereally important level is having leadership andexamples set by our government and our communityleaders.

When people see that this is such an important issuethat people are taking it seriously and they’rechanging their lifestyle to address it, you whether it’s

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using a car less, car pooling, those sort of concreteexamples really make a difference in showing anexample, and whatever might be, and also, justspeaking publicly about it and encouraging morechange, I think that’s the critical thing is thatleadership.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Ms. Bertram.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I just wanted to thank both ofyou for your presentation. It is great to have theyouth represented here today and Jason, you saidyou’re the Atlantic Youth Environmental organization,the president of it?

Jason Kun: The Youth Environmental Network isa national networking youth environmentalorganizations all across Canada share ideas oncampaigns and I am the Atlantic Canada RegionalCoordinator. So I’ll be overseeing projects inNewfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia andPrince Edward Island. However, my main office isbased here in Prince Edward Island for the nextthree months.

Carolyn Bertram (L): So are you in communicationwith Junior High/High Schools on PEI already?

Jason Kun: Yes, I am, only within Colonel GrayHigh School. A lot of the high schools do not haveorganizations set up within their present schools. Soone of the objectives of my term here with the YouthEnvironmental Network will be going into highschools and helping them to set up theirorganizations there.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Thank you.

Tony Reddin: Mr. Chair, if I could mention one lastitem. Next week on Wednesday, UPEI, they’relaunching an energy awareness campaign oncampus there. They’re going to show what they’redoing there about it and it’s great again to seeleadership from the university. There will be boothsset up there and information from variousorganizations on their energy awareness campaign.So I think it would be worth it for any of you, yourmembers to get there. I think Wednesday fromabout 10 o’clock till 3:00 or 4:00 o’clock is whenthey’ll be set up in the Student Centre there at UPEI.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): We thank you verymuch for that information, Mr. Reddin and perhapsalso before you leave, if you could pass on to the

clerk, you’ve made reference to some variouswebsites where there’s some solutions and factualthings that people can do on an individual basis tocope with climate change. And maybe that’ssomething else we could add to what is a veryimpressive growing list on our Legislature websitethat people can garner more information here if youuse some of those links. Thank you again verymuch, both of you. Appreciate your coming in.

Tony Reddin: Thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Well, we’re close toschedule, committee members so far. We have onemore presentation prior to the midday break and Ibelieve that when we get that started, our finalpresentation of the morning, we should be wrappingup at around the 12:15 mark. So that’s not too badoverall. So we have only one member missing ortwo members missing from the table.

Part IV - Bill Drost

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. Drost, welcomeSir. Glad to see you here today. Bill Drost: Glad to be here today.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Alright, and I thinkeveryone knows you and everyone else here at thistable. So again I would remind you, we’re trying toaim for a total of a 30-minute presentation and thatincludes questions as well if possible so if we couldtry to stick to that it would be really appreciated. Soover to you, Mr. Drost. The floor is yours.

Bill Drost: Thank you, merci. Good morning,bonjour. First of all, I’d like to thank the Members ofthe Legislative Assembly for undertaking thisinitiative and I’m here today as a private citizen andapart from my regular day job. However, some dayI hope to be an entrepreneur, a wind powerdeveloper, someone who works in the renewableenergy sector and I hope that the work ofgovernment can help me somehow get there throughits positive policy actions and so on and building onsome of the good work that’s been done so far.

Climate change is a very broad issue and you haveheard and I’m certainly sure you will hear more ideasand how we should deal with this challenge. Ideaslike biofuels, demand reduction, carbonsequestration, energy conservation, photo voltaicand a whole lot more. I certainly have opinions on

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those issues but certainly don’t have the time ontoday’s agenda to get into them. I want to talkspecifically and only about government’s approach towind power and how we can build on the goodsuccess that we’ve had so far.

I’ve prepared a report and I hope it’s free of typos. Ifinished it about 2:00 a.m. this morning so Iapologize if I’m not that sharp nor the report mighthave an error or two in it. I’m going to read from thereport and you can follow along or not, whatever yourpreference might be.

The introduction - Wind power holds great promisefor Prince Edward Island. Many of our traditionalresource based industries have seen limits of theirgrowth. Our available land base for agriculture hasbeen reached and sometimes exceeds and theindustry is being threatened by urbanization, erosionand unfair trade practices. The sea contains only alimited supply of lobster. Tourism continues to riseand decline according to the many variables beyondour control like currency valuations and weather.Our current energy supply is delivered by underwatercables, seagoing tankers or tractor trailers. We havenot yet been successful in tapping the indigenousfuels in commercially viable quantities. Althoughthis is the glass is half empty perspective on oureconomic prospects, there is another vision unfoldingbefore Islanders. New and exciting opportunities areemerging in the biotechnology and informationtechnology fields. Aerospace is now an establishedindustry sector, and the construction industry isbooming. Wind power and the opportunity it bringsis part of that vision.

This report was prepared without invitation orcompensation by any party including theGovernment of Prince Edward Island. The readermay note that some of the contents are critical ofgovernment policies. Unfortunately, the reportfocuses on areas where there is room forimprovement and does not highlight the many areasof public policy that are leading edge and that willhelp transform Prime Edward Island from a totallyenergy importation to a jurisdiction that will enjoy netenergy exportation. It contains 22 recommendationsto help government build on its good work thus far.It is meant to assist decision makers in governmentand elsewhere to create and implement policies thatwill advance the adoption of wind power on ourIsland. It is certainly not a comprehensive collectionof ideas, but hopefully, it will become the basis offruitful and constructive discussion.

Section One - Land Use Regulation - In June of thisyear, government amended the Subdivision andDevelopment Regulations under The Planning Act tocontrol the establishment of wind turbine generatorsin the province. These amendments will retard winddevelopment projects in the province.

It is proposed to set back wind turbine generatorsfrom roadways, both public and private, andneighbouring property lines a distance equal to thetotal height of the turbine including the blades.Given the geometry of the land parcels and theproliferation of roadways in Prince Edward Island, itwill be difficult, if not near impossible, to erect anysubstantive wind power parks. Furthermore, theRegulations will require a setback from existinghabitable buildings equal to three times the height ofthe wind turbine. New buildings must be at leastbuilt at least one times the height away from theexisting wind turbines. There is a provision for theexemption on the property line setback should theowner gain consent from the neighbouring propertyowners.

The application fee for a wind turbine developmentwill be $1,000 per wind tower. The building permitapplication fee to build a thermal generating plant, ahog farm or an asphalt plant is a small fraction of thiscost. Although $1,000 per turbine is not a greatamount in relation to large machines, it’s a significantamount for small developments. In all cases, itsends a clear message that government does notwish to encourage wind power development. Thisfee is punitive in nature and only serves todiscourage wind power development and contrary togovernment’s stated policies.

There is no public safety issue that supports theserules whatsoever. In fact, pre-existing developmentregulations are mostly adequate for the control ofwind turbine installations as they are used to controlthe development of other projects that have far morenegative social, environmental and economic impact.Wind turbine towers are highly engineered structuressupporting expensive mechanical and electricalequipment. Around the world and elsewhere inCanada, wind turbine structures have been placed inschool playgrounds, public parks and high densitypopulation areas. Even our Department ofAgriculture or of Environment, and I commend them,distribute information to school children abouterecting a wind turbine in your schoolyard. Is yourschoolyard, you know, suitable for that? Althoughour Regulations certainly take an alternate approach.

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Here in Prince Edward Island, the PEI EnergyCorporation machinery is only a few feet from avisitor information centre parking lot. The notion thattowers should be placed such that they will fall onones own property is a new precedent and does notapply to buildings, communication towers, grainelevators and any other structure. Generally,structures are placed within 15 feet of property lines.With regards to roadways, light posts, buildings andoverpasses are all placed where their failure couldhave a severe negative impact on the traveling publicshould they fail. The Regulator would suggest thatan opportunity is given to the developer to negotiatewith the neighbours to gain their consent to place aturbine closer to the property line. It is unlikely thata neighbouring property owner would be willing andfreely agree to such an arrangement. TheRegulation will prohibit future establishments ofhabitable structures near the turbine therebyencumbering the neighbour. No other developmentrestriction exists like this on Prince Edward Island.It is legal to erect a multi-storey building 15 feet froma property line and no requirement to build itaccording to the National Building Code, but virtuallyimpossible to place a wind turbine in many areas ofthe province.

Only a few wind turbines are currently installed inPrince Edward Island and many would not complywith the new Regulations. As examples, theresidential wind turbine on the Brackley Point Roadwould not be allowed under a number of the currentcriteria. A number of turbines installed at North Capewould not meet the standard. In fact, after the firstV47 machines were installed by the PEI EnergyCorporation at this location, government later movedthe road and visitor parking lot closer to the installedmachinery.

This barrier is not limited to larger wind park modelmachinery. For example, a small to mid-sizemachine for a farm or other business could be 180feet in total height, to give you 65 kilowatts of power,relatively small. Based upon the current setbackcriteria, this machine would have to be 540 feet awayfrom all habitable buildings including those on thesame property, and 180 feet from each property lineand roadway. And should a parcel be uniformlysquare, have no buildings within 540 feet in alldirections and allow placement of the turbine in theexact centre, three acres would be required for onesmall wind turbine.

In reality, farms and businesses that use electricity

often use their homestead and neighbouringproperties. Applying this same basic math to theinstallation of a single Vestas V90 machine, a parcelwith no habitable buildings at least 825 feet in theshortest measurement and at least 15.6 acres ofland would be required. Again, if you placed it in thedead centre of a square of land. Even small to mid-size machines would have to be placed in remotelocations making wind power production unfeasible.The other extreme is a very small residential turbine,say 40 inches in diameter and under a kilowatt insize, this could not be installed on the roof of ahouse according to the current Regulations.

It’s important to acknowledge that wind powermachinery continues to get larger to take advantageof the economies of scale in manufacturing, erectionand power production. The wind speeds becomemore stable and contain more energy at higherelevations. In fact, the power produced from windincreases by the cube of the increase in the windspeed. For example, a 12 per cent increase in windspeed will result in a 40 per cent increase in poweroutput. The industry trend to produce tallermachines results in better electrical and economicperformance. This trend will continue into theforeseeable future.

Additionally, much of the farm land in Prince EdwardIsland has been divided and subdivided into narrowstrips boarding on roadways and watercourses. Tallmachines, narrow parcels of land and unreasonablyrestrictive regulations cannot co-exist. Landownership patterns have been established overcenturies and viable size of wind energy equipmentis beyond the control of developers. The only twovariables are the advancement of wind power andthe change in the new Regulations. Either theunnecessary regulations must be relaxed or windpower will not succeed in this province.

Sound output is the most important or perhaps theonly factor that needs to be considered in theestablishment of setback rules. Ironically, the currentregulatory position could result in higher thanrecommended sound levels since the Regulationsare based solely on the height of the turbine, ratherthan actual sound output. A number of variablesdetermines sound levels, not just the height of thetower. In fact, taller towers are further from theground and in some circumstances, have a smalleracoustic footprint than shorter towers.

The World Health Organization has set guidelines for

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sound levels in a number of applications includingbuildings with human occupancy. They haverecommended that sound levels not exceed 45dBaat the outside of habitable buildings. Regulatorswould, and have, argue they can easily measuredistances; however, they are not acoustic specialists.Although developers are sympathetic to theirdilemma, this is not justification to establish aregulatory regime that does not protect the publicinterest and unduly restricts development. Larger,more expensive turbines have well known soundcharacteristics have been installed in a number ofhigh density population areas around the world.Manufacturers can easily predict sound output withcomputer software and consider this activity as aroutine part of site assessment. Smaller machineslikely pose a greater regulatory challenge and needa rule-of-thumb guide for developers and regulators.

Recommendation 1.1 - The proposed amendmentsto the Regulations should be scrapped. That shouldread, the amendments to the Regulations should bescrapped. The existing land use regulationsamended accord ing to the fo l lowingrecommendations will be mostly adequate for thecontrol of wind parks and individual turbineinstallations.

Recommendation 1.2 - Turbines and groups ofturbines should be divided into three classes tostreamline the regulatory process.

Recommendation 1.3 - Class 1 or small turbines, acottage or residential size turbines under 10 feet indiameter and those typically used for pumping wateron farms should be exempt from all regulations, andthere should be no permits required and no fees forClass 1 machines.

Medium size machines, Class 2 - Recommendation1.4 - would include single wind turbine generatorinstallations under 100 kilowatts and multipleinstallations totaling less than 300 kilowatts that arelarger than Class 1 machines. Simple guidelinesshould be established for setbacks from habitablebuildings. Habitable buildings on the property of theowner and developer should be exempt from theRegulations. Class 2 machines should pay a fee nogreater than current building permit fees for eachmachine.

1.5 - Class 3 machines, the large machines, the onesbigger than Classes 1 and 2 - should the installationbe located closer than 500 meters from an existing

habitable building or a property that’s beenpreviously subdivided for habitable buildingconstruction, the developer should be required tosubmit a sound model study that demonstrates thedevelopment will meet WHO recommendation plusa safety factor of 2 dBa or 43 dBa or less. Class 3machines should pay out a fee no greater than acurrent building permit for each machine.

Setbacks from property lines should be limited to 15feet including the blade span unless theneighbouring property/owner agrees.

Initially, Recommendation 1.7 - the currentexemption from land subdivision requirements bemaintained in future amended regulations for sitingmultiple turbines.

Just a note of explanation, if you were under theprevious Regulation, if you were to go into a field andhave three turbines, you’d want to put them in onefield, you’d have to apply for a subdivision permit todivide the field to put three turbines in it under thisparticular, under the new Regulations there was apositive thing that they removed that and that shouldbe maintained.

Section 2, the Electric Power Act - The currentlegislation governing the production and distributionof electrical power in Prince Edward Island is theElectric Power Act. The term, utility–the definition ofthe term, utility, in the act is problematic forindependent power producers. At this time, at thetime of the drafting of this legislation, there was nopublic discussion on the opportunity for non utilitybased power production other than government’sinitiatives through the PEI Energy Corporation.

The act states that a “public utility” is defined as “. .. any person. . . that owns, operates, manages orcontrols. . . any plant or equipment for theproduction, transmission, distribution, or furnishing ofelectric energy either directly or indirectly to thepublic. . .” Although there have been varying legalopinions on this point, most would agree that anywind power producer connected to the grid or sellingpower to the public through any other means isconsidered by this legislation, a utility. The oneexception is the PEI Energy Corporation through anexemption provided by the Energy Corporation Act.This represents a significant barrier to futureindependent power producers and serves no usefulpurpose.

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Under current regulations, Maritime Electric andSummerside Electric remain as monopolies in theirrespective geographic locations. The retail price ofpower is regulated by the Island Regulatory andAppeals Commission. In most cases, futureindependent power producers will either use powerfor their own operations and/or sell the surplus intothe grid. It is not likely they will retail electrical powerdirectly to the public. The act allows cabinet toexempt entities from the legislation on a case-by-case basis. Using cabinet as an approvalmechanism on individual projects is not an effectivemeans of running a government. It does not helpcreate a positive investment climate where projectsare subject to individual scrutiny by cabinet ratherthan clear, fair and well communicated policies.

Some might argue that the regulation of independentpower producers by IRAC is in the public interest. Itis not. Firstly, the regulatory process is costly andwould create an undue burden on small companiesand individuals trying to establish renewable energysources in the province. The cost of regulation resultin higher electrical costs ultimately paid by theconsumer or a more likely scenario, where theinvestment in wind power is never made because ofthe heavy regulation.

Secondly, no public interest would be served throughthis regulation. If this were the case, governmentshould direct IRAC to require other powerwholesalers selling to Maritime Electric andSummerside Electric to be subject to the act. This isimpossible from a practical and legal perspectivesince those power producers are beyond the bordersof Prince Edward Island and therefore its laws. Aconsistent and pragmatic approach would be toamend the legislation to require only the monopolyentities that retail electrical power to be subject to theElectric Power Act, while pricing for the powerproduced through wind energy sources should beestablished on an industry wide basis by IRAC.

Recommendation 2. 1 - Members of the LegislativeAssembly should amend the Electric Power Act toremove the term, indirectly, from the definition ofutility, thereby requiring only monopoly entities tocomply with the legislation.

Section 3, the Environmental Approval Process - Ingeneral terms, wind power projects have a netpositive environmental impact. It is one of the fewhuman undertakings that result in a net benefit to ourenvironment. Although this is the case,

government’s regulatory approach is more stringentthan its approach to developments that have anegative environmental impact. A new streamlinedapproach to wind power initiatives is required thatreflects government’s policy of adopting renewableenergy development. This is not to suggest that realenvironmental issues are ignored and are notproperly managed, but a business friendly regulatoryapproach is needed while dealing with the realenvironmental issues.

Proponents of larger wind parks will likely apply forthe federal Wind Power Production Incentive orWPPI, and will be required to file an EnvironmentalImpact Assessment with the federal governmentwhich normally is co-administered with the provincialenvironmental officials and that such proponents donot endure two similar processes independently.This practice should continue.

For developers and operators of small to mediumsize installations and larger turbines not subscribingto WPPI, it is unclear what the regulatory approachmight bring in the future. Government needs toclearly layout its regulatory processes and criteria forall sizes, types and locations of wind powerdevelopment. A common sense and practicalapproach is needed. Many of the environmentalissues are common to wind power and common toour geography. A few installations may have uniquerequirements. An approach is required that protectsthe environment but allows for an expedient andcost-effective process.

Issues that are generally common to wind powerdevelopments should be pre-approved on aprovince-wide basis. For example, developments onexisting wind power generation sites, existingindustrial sites, urban areas and agricultural zonesshould be free of many of the current regulatoryrequirements unless there is a compelling andobvious environmental issue. Developments that arein wildlife areas or other sensitive environmentalareas should be subject to more scrutiny byregulators while the balance are deemed as low riskand are approved without extensive study. Otherjurisdictions have similar streamlined processes.

Under current regulations, the process does notreflect the different size of turbines will have ondiffering environmental impact. Smaller turbineinstallation, both in size and number, should besubject to less study during EIA than largerinstallations.

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In the past, the Department of Environment hasfocused more effort on projects that are in the publiceye than projects with little public feedback. Naturedoes not respond to NIMBYism (not in my backyard)and neither should a fair and independent regulator.Public opinion should certainly play a role indetermining public policy in relation to governments’approach to wind power regulation, but should notinfluence the regulatory response to individualprojects. Science and environmental impact shouldbe the determining criteria. Other mechanisms areavailable to deal with the impact of a project on acommunity such as the detrimental impact provisionsof The Planning Act.

Recommendation 3.1 - Government adopt a riskbased, common sense approach and abandon theone-size-fits-all approach to regulation. Projectsshould be first subject to an expedited screeningprocess to determine if there is a probability ofnegative environmental impact to allow regulators tofocus on projects with real environmental issues andto encourage developers to seek out low impact sitesfor development.

And 3.2 - government should apply the same criteriato all projects through EIA process and the criteriashould be based on sound scientific and realenvironmental issues.

Section 4 - Private Sector Wind Development Issues- The only commercial wind power on the Island isowned and operated by the provincial governmentthrough the PEI Energy Corporation. The crowncorporation, its employees and the various Ministersresponsible for the company’s activities in recentyears have good reasons to be proud of itsaccomplishments and the vision in establishing awind farm facility. While government has continuedto focus and build upon its success in the windenergy sector, the benefits have yet to materialize inthe private sector. Many of the causes of this lack ofgrowth are industry wide and beyond the reach ofPrince Edward Island, reach of the Prince EdwardIsland government. Most prominent in this categoryis the low adoption rate of wind power in NorthAmerica and especially Canada. At a local level, theprivate sector has yet to establish even onecommercial wind turbine. Given the great potentialfor wind resources on the Island and government’scommitment to the energy source, this is surprising.

The 2003 Provincial Energy Strategy left little roomfor any private sector development, management or

ownership in the renewable energy supply to theprovince. A later publication, the Energy Frameworkand Renewable Energy Strategy published earlierthis year opened the door slightly to private sectordevelopment but still focused mainly upon the publicsector as the underpinning for future development.Quoting from the strategy, “There was generalagreement at the public consultation sessions thatthe Prince Edward Island Energy Corporation shouldcontinue its position as the leading agency todevelop wind energy in PEI. However, support wasregistered for allowing private interests, includingcommunity-based initiatives and individualhomeowners, the opportunity to invest in windpower.”

The reader should be reminded that consultation withthe public was organized, conducted and reported bythe same company that recommended it to be theleading agency. The public meetings were oftenpoorly attended and sometimes dominated byspecial interest groups or individuals. Consequently,this process should not be regarded as an accuratemeasure of the public pulse on wind power and howit should be delivered.

It is often suggested that the private sector canmanage better than government. This is not alwaysthe case but this approach would allow governmentto focus on regulatory issues and create aneconomic environment that help the private sectorsucceed. Most Islanders would agree that theprivate sector should be on an even playing field withits public sector counterparts in an environment thatpromotes innovation, investment and wealth creationin the private sector is needed for long term successof our economy. Essential elements to support andencourage private sector growth are missing in ourpolicies, program and regulatory activities. Islandersneed not make a choice between public and privatewind development. There should be opportunity forboth to succeed.

Under the departmental structure, employees of thePEI Energy Corporation are expected to both plan,develop and manage government owned wind farmswhile drafting policy to promote, control and regulateprivate sector activities. These functions cansometimes be in conflict with each other, or at leastcause the private sector some concern overcompetitiveness and confidentiality. Governmentneeds to consider the separation of its policy andoperational activities in the near term. TheCorporation and its Board of Directors should focus

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on the operation of the wind farm while policy andprogram related activities are moved into thedepartment or elsewhere in government.

Changes should be made to the board to reduce thepublic sector influence while increasing the input byprivate sector business leaders. In the longer term,consideration should be given to the sale of theexisting wind power assets or privatization of theEnergy Corporation’s wind farm. There are anumber of successful examples in Prince EdwardIsland where government vision and initiative wastransformed into private sector success. TheCharlottetown district heating system was previouslyowned by the PEI Energy Corporation and now is aprivate sector success story.

Private sector input has been missing from policydevelopment. This approach would be inconceivablein other resource sectors such as fishing, agricultureand tourism. The reason, in part, is the absence ofa consolidated and unified industry voice such asthose in the more mature sectors of the economy. Itshould be the role of government to help create aneconomic climate for success by assisting a fledglingindustry through the creation of a representativeindustry voice.

Economic opportunity l ultimately determine thesuccess or failure of the private sector in the windpower industry. In addition to the price of electricity,this success or failure will be influenced by both thepunitive and support programs and policies putforward by government. Under the current regime,Prince Edward Island and Canada lag the world ineffective policies and supports that help this industrygrow and be successful.

According to the Global Wind Energy Market Reportof 2002, published by the European Wind EnergyAssociation, Canada ranks thirteenth in the world inthe adoption of wind power. Despite having thelargest land base and the highest energy usage percapita in the world, Canada has less than two percent of the wind power production of Germany. TheWind Power Production Incentive from the federalgovernment is one cent per kilowatt hour and issignificantly less than incentives offered by theUnited States. Other provincial governments havebeen proactive with tax and use of crown landincentives to help jump start the wind industry.There is no support or incentive programs offered bythe provincial government here while there has been,it has hinted at future punitive measures for private

sector wind power development.

The Energy Framework and the Renewable EnergyStrategy published in 2004 was a solid step in theright direction. However, the vision for renewableenergy is only one step in a long journey. Achievingthe vision laid out in this document requires policiesand programs and a clear definition of public andprivate roles and responsibilities. The Framework isshort on detail and needs to be supplemented withan action plan in the form of programs, incentivesand supports. One issue of the Framework standsout as being counter-productive and deservesattention.

Government proposes to examine its optionsconcerning the imposing a special tax or royalty onthe wind. It even goes as far as to suggest wind isPEI’s oil. Quoting from the strategy, “Justification ofwind royalties is based upon the fact that PrinceEdward Island is devoid of known resources ofconventional energy sources. . . the province mayexperience certain inconveniences, such as loss ofvistas or lost opportunities to pursue otherenterprises on wind development lands.”

The document goes on to suggest that the provincemay expropriate green credits from wind powerproducers. These policy alternatives are beingconsidered mainly in relation to companies andindividuals that may export electrical power from thewind. There’s absolutely no economic, social orlegal justification for this regressive and heavy-handed approach. These are direct measures todiscourage the establishment of wind power ratherthan to support its success.

Firstly, wind is not oil. The environmental andeconomic comparisons do not exist whatsoever. Ifgovernment were to maintain this comparison, itshould start by studying the substantial economicinvestment made in tar sands and offshore oilexploration and development by government. Todate, neither the federal or the provincialgovernments have offered this level of support to thewind industry and not likely to do so in the future.Furthermore, to suggest that since other provinceshave oil that yields a royalty to government,therefore, this is a justification to tax the wind in ajurisdiction that doesn’t have oil, is void of any reallogic or thought.

Secondly, it is suggested that a royalty will somehowcompensate for the loss of vistas or the economic

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value of the land. Again, there is no logic for this.Landowners are compensated directly by the turbineowner through private sector transactions regulatedonly by the free market. All parties are willingparticipants. Ironically, government has notproposed any special taxes or royalties on electricalproduction activities in the province even thoughthese activities create greenhouse gases, affecturban dwellers and negatively impact on society inmany ways.

Concerning vistas, in every case where independentand credible measurement has been conductedbefore and after wind turbine developments, landvalues increased faster than neighbouring lands.The economics on tourism is absolutely conclusive.Tourism is a primary beneficiary near wind powerdevelopment sites.

Thirdly, the idea of expropriation of green creditslacks logic and may lack the necessary legalfoundation. The principle of green credits and theireconomic value was established as a result of theKyoto Protocol to encourage businesses andindividuals to take early action on climate change.The province proposes to remove these incentivesresulting in investors not developing wind power inPrince Edward Island.

Lastly, these measures may be targeted towardsdevelopers who install wind power for export. Theirony continues. Governments traditionally provideeconomic incentives to companies that can developexport markets for their goods and services. In thiscase, it is the opposite. Yet, there is no mention of asimilar taxation on electricity made from dirty fuels.

No one could reasonably argue against paying fairtaxes and the wind industry should be no different.However, it’s important to realize that this industry isin the infancy stage and needs nurturing andsupport. Some provinces offer ten year tax holidayson certain aspects of wind power development. Thisis not the case here in Prince Edward Island. Shoulda developer undertake a wind power project today,the following is a brief outline of the tax relatedburdens.

Sales taxes are applicable on the structure and thestructural components of the machinery. Propertytaxes will be reassessed on the land base to accountfor the increase in the value added by the structuralcomponents. The blades and the nacelle areconsidered production machinery and therefore, tax

exempt. I’ll try to keep you on time here, Mr. Chair.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Thank you.

Bill Drost: Should the owner make a profit,corporate and personal income taxes are payable.Under a typical arrangement, the landowner willreceive a payment from the developer for the use ofthe lands and will pay the tax on income. With theseactivities, considerable spin-off taxes are generatedthrough employment, sales of materials andsupplies. Anyone who may suggest there is littlepublic benefit from private development of windpower and further taxes are needed has failed tounderstand the realities of this business.

Instead of considering a punitive tax and regulatorymeasures, government should focus its attention onenhancing the economic climate for this fledglingindustry. The Prince Edward Island Aquacultureindustry did not exist on any substantive level twodecades ago. Government leadership and supportof the private sector help build a world class industry.The same approach is needed for wind power. Anumber of economic and social measures could beapplied to encourage the growth of wind power andrelated business activities. Some of these initiativesare likely underway within government and shouldcontinue. Others have not been seriouslyconsidered.

It seems that nearly every Islander thinks the windblows the hardest in their community or in their back40. In reality, there’s only a limited number of sitesthat have a quality wind regime, reasonable accessto transmission lines and a sufficient land base toestablish commercial grade turbines. Over the pastmonths, the province has established a number ofmonitoring sites and will hopefully use this data toproduce a wind map of the province. The datashould be published on the government website andbe free to use for any interested developer. Qualitywind is essential for a commercially viable windpower project.

Tax breaks can have a major impact on the return oninvestment for wind developers. Government needsto develop a better understanding of the cumulativeimpact of taxation throughout the life cycle of windpower investments.

Technical support for wind power development islacking in Canada. Only a limited number ofindividuals possess the technical and business

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knowledge to competently assist in planning,operation and development of wind power projects.This capacity needs to be increased.

Financial assistance for new wind developmentshould be a priority. Banks do not look favourablyupon the risks in most new emerging industries,including wind power. However, funding sources doexist both in Prince Edward Island and beyond andgovernment should play a role in brokering financialrelationships.

Canadians invest their savings in green RSP’s andthis can be a source of capital financing for windpower sites. Other projects may require pre-planninglevel support to engage professionals to assist inbusiness planning, site assessment and otheractivities prior to the capital funding phase.Government should develop new or adapt existingprograms to assist entrepreneurs from projectconception to completion.

Recommendations - 4.1 - Government shouldabandon its policy of leading wind powerdevelopment over the next decade and focus on howit can support the private sector and wealth creationin the renewable energy sector.

4.2 - In the short term, government should separateits energy policy responsibilities from its operationalrole in wind power and seek more private sectorinvolvement in the Board of Directors of the PEIEnergy Corporation.

4.3 - Within five years, government should sell itsexisting wind power assets to the private sectorand/or community based interests and turn its fullattention to regulation and creating a positiveeconomic climate for renewable energydevelopment.

4.4 - Government should issue a call for proposals toengage a consultant to bring together private,community and academic interests to form the PrinceEdward Island Renewable Energies Association anduse this mechanism to help support industry growand act as a voice for non-governmental interests.

4.5 - Government should identify and designatepublic lands that could be used for wind powerdevelopment and open a competitive and fair biddingprocess for the development rights on those lands,and the lease for those lands should be free of rentfor the first ten years as a minimum.

4.6 - The development of comprehensive action planbuilding on the positive content in the EnergyFramework and the Renewable Energy Strategyshould be led by government with meaningful inputby all stakeholders.

4.7 - Government should abandon its plan to applyroyalties and to expropriate green credits from anywind development plan and to clearly communicateits intentions to the industry.

4.8 - Government should institute a ten-year taxholiday on sales and property tax components ofwind power development. But personal andcorporate income taxes should remain and allow thepublic to benefit from wind power when it becomesprofitable.

4.9 - Government should produce a quality wind mapof the Island and make it available to all stakeholdersat no cost through the internet. It should identify keyfeatures such as crown lands, transmission lines,wind resources and monitoring stations.

4.10 - Government should work with Holland Collegeand UPEI to produce graduates that are skilled inenvironmental assessment, wind site assessment,wind engineering, project financing, small-medium-large wind systems, power transmission, turbineerection and maintenance.

4.11 - Government should establish fundingprograms to assist entrepreneurs and land owners toengage wind energy professionals to assist in thepre-capital investment planning stages of projects.

4.12 - Government should contract the services of areputable investment firm to establish a renewableenergy investment portfolio comprised of both on andoff Island sources of capital for private andcommunity-based investments in wind power andrelated businesses.

I just have a couple of quick closing comments withthat. Again I want to underscore there’s been a lot ofgood work that’s been done. This report does focuson the things that I think that can be done better andit doesn’t spend enough time on the things that havebeen great that the government has done so far. Iwould ask the committee to take this as constructivecriticism and consider these as a recommendationand that myself and several other players in the windindustry and future players, people who want to befuture players, are certainly here and available to

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work with government for our feedback.

So I thank you for your time and attention.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Thank you, Mr.Drost. I know it’s been a long morning but if anyonehas any questions, we’d certainly like to open it upfor an opportunity for you to make clarifications ifanyone requires or any questions regarding thepresentation. Mr. Brown.

Richard Brown (L): Bill, you did a good job thereand I want to thank you for the report. By the looksof it, you did quite a bit of work on it. I know you’veworked in this field quite a bit. Net metering, so yousupport net metering?

Bill Drost: Yes.

Richard Brown (L): And that should come in asquick as possible.

Bill Drost: I’d like to say I didn’t cover all theissues. There are many, net metering is certainlyone and I’d even go one step further than whatgovernment is proposing. The government’sapproach is likely to be if you have a wind, if youhave a meter you can sell back 150 per cent ofwhatever you may draw. That prohibits anybody withany–if you’re a homeowner, for example, or a smallbusiness owner, you have maybe just one potatowarehouse, you want to put up a wind turbine that isbigger than 150 per cent of your load or you don’thave any load. Then net metering doesn’t apply toyou. So I believe in net metering and it should evengo further than what it is.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. MacAleer.

Wes MacAleer (PC): I want to thank you, Bill. Asusual you do a first class job. Just a small question.The criticism of these turbines is that they’re emittingan excessive noise and your comment was that yourClass 3 fans would produce four decibels. Is thatright?

Bill Drost: The World Health Organization hasrecommended that the sound threshold at theoutside of your bedroom or your business orwhatever it might be, anything that has humanoccupancy, any structure, should be no greater than45 decibels. So that determines how far you shouldset back from a structure.

Wes MacAleer (PC): That’s inhabited?

Bill Drost: That’s inhabited, yes.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Just one second,we’ll go back to you, Mr. Brown. Mr. Arsenault isnext and then Mr. Brown.

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Okay, mine will be quick.First of all, Bill, you’ve got a document here thatprobably could generate a week long discussion andthe report in itself certainly should generate a fairamount of wind in a Legislature. But as far as yourrecommendations are concerned, do you think youhave enough encouragement to encourage theaverage homeowner to be interested in generatinghis or her own power source from wind, from aresidential point of view?

Bill Drost: Well first of all, there’s some barriersthat I’ve outlined and I won’t repeat them and I’mconfident that we will correct those barriers in shortorder. So I don’t want to dwell on them too much butwhen it comes down to–what is the homeowner’smotivation? If it is to save money, absolutely not.Small scale wind power is not economically feasibletoday and until the price of electricity doubles and thecost of the technology drops by a third, it won’t be.That’s the reality.

Large scale wind turbines are basically nearing abreak even point today and the people that arepursuing them are saying, I’m betting on the price ofpower is going to increase faster than the rate thatthe economy is going to grow and it has in the lastthree or four years. Our price of electricity in NorthAmerica has gone up by 6.8 per cent on average.The economy has grown at 2 to 3 per cent. So if thattrend continues, larger scale wind power has got tomove from a break even perspective to a profitableperspective in a long term investment strategy.

If the homeowner’s desire is to be green or to be likeme, like a novel person wanting to try somethingnew, then small scale wind power is certainlysomething that they want to consider. The otheralternative is if the homeowner is off the gridsomeplace and in a remote occasion and maybethey have to run a kilometre of wire and they have topay a substantial $100 thousand to do that, nowmaybe they should consider putting in an investmentin wind power instead of paying the utility to bringthat pole line down the road a kilometre. But undernormal circumstances, no.

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Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. Brown.

Richard Brown (L): Thank you. I’ll try and bequick here. The setbacks and everything for all theland based turbines, what about other countries areallowing them offshore. Have we got any offNorthumberland Strait and things like that?

Bill Drost: There are a number of issues andthey’re all economic with offshore turbines. First ofall, the installation costs of an offshore turbine is atleast 50 per cent higher and when you consider thatwhen you are investing in wind power, you areinvesting 100 per cent of your money ininfrastructure, zero per cent of your money in fuel.So your cost, your total project cost goes up by 50per cent. If you’re to increase the 50 per cent of thecost of an oil fired plant, that’s only a third of the costof the kilowatt coming out of the plug, right? Butwhen you do it with wind power, a 50 per centincrease is a direct 50 per cent increase because it’son the infrastructure side. That’s in general terms. However, when you have iced waters, it becomesanother complicating issue. Additionally, whenyou’re in Prince Edward Island and you have anaquaculture and a fishery issue with so many issuesthere and as a developer, you consider the troublesthat you have erecting a wind turbine in a potato fieldor an industrial site or in an urban area with minimalenvironmental impact, no developer is going to thinkabout doing it offshore, particularly in Canada wherewe have such a land base and it’s just noteconomically feasible today.

Richard Brown (L): I was just thinking the yard forthe fixed link is still there. And those the pair basesthat they used there are perfect bases for a windmill.

Bill Drost: But it all comes down to economics inreality. And when you have a project that’sspeculative right now, then to consider that you’regoing to take a very expensive approach to thatinstallation, it’s not going to work.

Richard Brown (L): So who did the ones inDenmark and Helsinki?

Bill Drost: Well first of all, the ones offCopenhagen, their electrical rates are nearly doublewhat ours are. And secondly, their waters don’t iceand they don’t have the land base that we do.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. McKenna.

Dr. David McKenna (PC): With all the setbacksthat are in the Regulations right now, are youindicating that there’s really very few sites that wehave left to be able to put up wind turbines now?Where the wind energy might be (Indistinct)

Bill Drost: I would suggest that it’s very difficult tofind sites today that you can use commercial gradewind power machinery because of the height of themachinery and because of our setbacks are tied tothe height, not tied to the real environmental or socialissues of wind turbines but tied strictly to the height.That that is not a very good way of determiningsetback requirements. The issue it becomes, andagain we’re sympathetic to regulators is that theyknow how to run a measuring tape and it’s prettyblack and white. Thou shalt have your turbines sofar away from that guy’s house. From a practicalpoint, that doesn’t work so well and from anenvironmental point of view, it doesn’t necessarilywork so well as well.

So what I’m encouraging, government is to consideralternate approaches and first of all, divide the sitingof turbines into three different classes and then focuson the bigger ones differently than you do with thesmaller turbines. But I went through an exercisewhere I randomly picked a property map out ofPrince Edward Island and I said I’m going to put aVestas V80 on it, that’s the next one below the V90which is the workhorse of the industry today oncommercial sized wind farms. And I said I took mymarker and I shaded in all the property lines and Isaid, okay if I only owned this one parcel, what wouldbe the probability of me being able to put up thatland?

Now in reality, if you’re a large landowner and youown multiple parcels that are connected together,you have a greater probability of success thansomebody who owns only one parcel. PrinceEdward Island, I’m told has the largest, the mostmiles of road per capita in the country and so youtake the provincial roads, you take the narrow stripsof farmland that started out as big pieces of farmlandand they got divided as sons and daughters inheriteda piece of land and of course, they got road accessand they got water access on both ends. So guesswhat? They got narrow strips of land that are ownedby multiple owners now and that becomes verydifficult to develop and unnecessary to have thatregulation to develop.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Ms. MacDonald.

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Helen MacDonald (PC): Yes, Bill, I also enjoyedyour presentation very much. We talked about ourland as in our potato fields or whatever. We’vetalked about offshore but we haven’t mentioned theIslands off our Island and I’m thinking of Holman’sIsland and places like that. How would that work?

Bill Drost: It could work and it could be certainlyan opportunity. There are some issues there too. Iwas involved in looking at some islands in MalpequeBay, for example, and the issue became is thewaters weren’t deep enough in order to get themachinery in, the ships that are required to carry theturbines to do the erection. Of course, you need bigcranes and you need big ships and so on, and whenyou’re dealing with relatively shallow waters.Holman’s Island, you talk about, you do I believecertainly in Summerside harbour have better accessto deeper waters, so that maybe is not an issue.Certainly a submarine cable would be required andthere would be a cost associated with it. But that’s avery interesting perspective and generally any placein Prince Edward Island that you get close to thewater, particularly in the Summerside and MalpequeBay area is a good wind resource.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Great, thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Any otherquestions? I have one final question, Mr. Drostbefore you go? Going back to the hearings ondeveloping a renewable strategy, renewable energystrategy for Prince Edward Island, I moderated thosehearings and I was interested in your remarks in yourpresentation. Some meetings were indeed poorlyattended. Others were well attended. But it was anopen invitation to anyone on Prince Edward Island tocome forward and discuss their vision for renewableenergy on Prince Edward Island, not just windturbine generation. But I’m wondering where wasthe private sector then? What is the potential todayof private sector wind energy development on PrinceEdward Island? Are they lining up at the door forthese regulatory changes?

Bill Drost: This is a chicken and egg scenario.There is no private sector. This is not environmentfor private sector so it’s hard for them to speak.Wind power, as an industry itself, is emerging inCanada. We have under 400 megawatts of powertotal in Canada. You know, it’s like one-eighth ofwhat the United States has. So we don’t have thiscapacity and I’m proposing that government shouldhelp spur things on a little bit by creating an

environment and creating opportunity for the privatesector.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Is it not true thatthere is one private sector developer, potentialdeveloper, I’m referring to the Irving’s here, that havein their possession a wind regime map of PrinceEdward Island that would make anything that thegovernment is about to try to put together look likekindergarten?

Bill Drost: The Irving’s do have a wind map thatthey’ve presented publicly. It’s public information.The map itself isn’t public information but they’vepresented at their public meetings. I wouldn’tcharacterize it as being better data necessarily thanwhat the province is developing. Theirs was basedon scientific analysis by True Wind Solutions out ofAlbany, New York that have a great deal of expertisein this area.

However, their on-the-ground monitoring stationswere localized to the Charlottetown Airport, to theAtlantic Wind Test site, and three of their own windturbine sites in the New Annan/Kensington/Malpeque areas. And as you go away from thosetowers and there was also one at East Point, a toweras well--so as you go away from those areas, thequality of the data that they’ve produced becomeslower quality and it’s only a prospecting map and it’snot conclusive. You have to, after you produce aprospecting map, it’s just like doing seismic work foroil, you got to go and look for the oil afterwards. In aprospecting map, you have to go look for the windand do some detail measurements where you thinkit might be.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): But they certainlyhad enough of a wind in that regime to propose theidea of, I think, it was 40 wind turbines in theMalpeque area?

Bill Drost: In the Malpeque. . .

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): They hadconfidence enough in that.

Bill Drost: Exactly, but again their wind mappingwas–the detailed wind mapping that was highlyaccurate was localized to the Malpeque/Kensingtonareas.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Mr. Drost, if there’sno further questions, I want to thank you very much

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for a most interesting presentation.

Bill Drost: I thank you very much for yourattention.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): We appreciate it.We’re going to take a short break from thiscommittee for about the next half hour. How’s that?We’ll be back around a little after 1:00 o’clock.Alright. Motion for adjournment? No, for recessing.

I do want to mention that Minister Gillan has beencalled away briefly. He will be gone for maybe a halfhour or so. We’re hoping that he will be rejoining uslater this afternoon but his absence is completelyunavoidable.

Part V - Southeast Environmental Association &PEI Climate Change Hub: David Boyce

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): We are going tocontinue this afternoon. Our next presenter was tohave been Ms. Sharon Labchuk of the Earth Actiongroup. However, she’s not available at the momentand so we’re going to go to our next presenter andwhen Ms. Labchuck does show up, we’ll just slot herin as the next presenter. So without further ado,committee, I want to present to you Mr. David Boyceand he is here representing the SoutheastEnvironmental Association and the PEI ClimateChange Hub. Good afternoon, Mr. Boyce.

David Boyce: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Wayne Collins (PC) (Chair): Sir, one of the thingswe’re trying to do is to hopefully have ourpresentations a total of 30 minutes is what we’reaiming for and that will be presentation and anopportunity for some question and answer sessionas well. So it’s all yours, Sir.

David Boyce: Okay, I’ve got a few slides but someof them I’ll be able to flip through quickly. Thank youfor the opportunity to present. My employer is theSoutheast Environmental Association. I’ll bedescribing our relationship with the PEI ClimateChange Hub as I go through my presentation today.But to basically just go over a bit about what I wantto talk about, being from the SoutheastEnvironmental Association, our focus is of course thesoutheast corner of the province. So a few of thethings that I will speak to have to deal with that areaof the province. But hopefully, trying to balance thattalk with some of the things that I see for the rest of

the province as well. And at the end of the talk, I’llwrap that up with some elements of the PEI ClimateChange Hub.

This is a little graphic, we changed around theprovincial logo a little bit just to suit our needs buthopefully, they’ll develop into something. Now I don’tproclaim to be an expert on climate change. I don’tknow who among us may be. But my experienceover the last few years in doing this job, we’veconducted energy efficiency, water conservation andcoastal erosion projects since 96. We’ve beenoperating the PEI Climate Change Hub since 2002.I personally have been part of the EnvironmentalFarm Plan Committee since 1996. The only NGOmember of the Atlantic Coastal Zone InformationSteering Committee and for those who aren’t familiarwith it, in your draft, Climate Change Strategy, youhave a reference to that organization as someonethat should be partner with.

The organization is made up of a lot ofrepresentatives and it is a good information sharingnetwork. It helps to avoid duplication and get a lot ofthings done. And also up until recently, I’ve been theonly PEI representative on the Canadian ClimateImpacts and Adaptation Research Network which, asit suggests, is research focused on climate changeissues. I say until recently, that’s when ErinSwansburg was hired and she’s also now aparticipating member on that group.

Some of the things that I did want to cover toreemphasize but won’t be dwelling on in mypresentation is certainly the issue of public transit.But one of the things especially you, Mr. Chairman,who also deals with the Social DevelopmentCommittee, needs to look at things like the co-benefits of public transportation, certainly from thestandpoint of mobilizing our workforce. You know,people who live in one community and theemployment opportunities are in another communitybut have a lack of transportation. It addresses many,many issues of economic development in ourcommunity beyond the simple cost of savinggreenhouse gases.

Renewable energy - we of course, supportrenewable energy projects, getting away from ourdependence on oil and other oil based products.The cooperation of many parties is certainlynecessary as mentioned in your strategy. That’sideal in every case. Certainly, between all of thesectors in our society, all levels of government,

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municipal, provincial, federal, NGOs, academics, andof course, our average everyday citizens.

One of the topics I won’t be covering is agriculture,although it’s incredibly important to this province.But I personally feel that a lot of it is being addressedin the Enhanced Environmental Farm Plan productthat is out and each farmer gets a chance to assesstheir own environmental risk and what’s going on, ontheir property. Specific sections have been broughtout in the new workbook that’s just coming out nowto address a lot of the actions that were buried inother sections related to soil and crop and nutrientmanagement and bring that more to the forefront ina climate change context. So I feel that is beingaddressed.

That doesn’t show up very well up there. Is thereany way to correct the colours on that a bit? Mostlywhat I wanted to address in this particular slide is theissue of coastal sensitivity and getting a look at mostof Canada, you see it’s all in green which meansthere’s a low sensitivity. But when you look at areaslike the Arctic up around the Beaufort Sea and theAtlantic region, you start to see a lot more yellow andred. Our coastlines are a lot more vulnerable.

So zooming in on the area, you can easily see thatPEI, in particular, is mostly in red and what isn’t is inyellow. Now this is a broad stroke approach. It’s amap put together by the federal government throughthe Geological Survey of Canada and the map isn’tincredibly detailed. In the work that they’ve done inthe Charlottetown and North Shore study, they’vetaken this map down further on a very local level andlooked at areas that were sensitive and areas thatwere less sensitive. But the strict point here is thatour shoreline is incredibly vulnerable and it’s one ofthe points that I want to play upon here that coastalzones are always changing.

This is another map from the Geological Survey ofCanada that takes a look at about 9,000 years ago,7,000 B.C. and it basically demonstrates that PEIright on through to the Magdalen’s was allconnected. You can’t see it very well on thisparticular picture. But the whole area right onthrough to the Northumberland Strait right outthrough the southern gulf, the St. Lawrence out tothe Magdalen areas was all land mass, low grassyarea, all connected. So over time, sea levels havenot only been changing, but there’s been a net effectgoing on as well from the time of the retreat of theglaciers, we’ve experienced crustal rebound and now

crustal subsidence which means the land is settlingback down. So you contrast that with sea level rise,we get a doubling effect happening and most peoplearen’t aware of that. Different parts of the countryare still in rebound. Other parts in subsidence. Wehappen to be on the lower end of the stick goingdownward again.

So here’s some of the mapping that was done aspart of a North Shore Study and this happens to bePigot’s Point up near Savage Harbour and whatthey’ve done is plot the changes in the coastline overtime and coastlines are dynamic. They will changeover time. That’s inevitable. But the thing we haveto take a look at is what processes are we involvedin that’s effecting that.

What they’ve done is taken an 1935 map, implottedall the coastline changes up to 1990 and there’ssome interesting points within that when you start totake a look at various time sequences and from 1968to 81 you see a retreat of nine metres which worksout to 1.4 metres per year, per annum. And thenbetween ‘81 and ‘90 you get 29 metres, which is 3.2metres per annum. That’s 10 feet a year of shorelinethat’s retreating backwards.

Now pointing out a couple of items, you take a lookat where the yellow arrow is at that particularstructure right here and this is a look at its coastlinethat now exists and then you’ve actually gothistorically a cottage right here that’s dissected bythat red line and just to take you through a timesequence of slides on that you’ll see this picture from‘74 and again I’ve highlighted those two particularpoints. You not only see a cottage that exists herebut structures that are even out farther.

And then . . . these don’t show up very well on thisparticular LCD . . . but you still have a coastline thereand both structures in place in ‘81 because thecoastline has now retreated very close to thisparticular cottage. Then in 2000 you’re now missingboth of those upper cottages and, as we showedyou before, the shoreline’s right at that lowercottage. And this is from November 2000 in whichwe had a second storm surge. We had a stormsurge in January which caused a lot of flooding inCharlottetown. We had one at the tail end ofOctober that same year. These were deemed to beone in 50 year and one in 100 year storms which wehad two of them in one year. And of course you’vegot other things like the old well from one of thoseearlier cottages that’s now well out into the beach.

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So the lesson that we can take from this that there’ssome processes that are happening naturally andbeing sped up naturally because of climate changebut the overriding issue is that our beaches, we lookat them from a tourism standpoint, and certainly froma tourism standpoint they are incredibly valuable.But along with that, sediment is necessary to builtbeaches and enable them to maintain a positionagainst rising sea levels and changing environmentalconditions. They’re our protection against what liesout beyond it. And they will shift a bit from time totime but essentially they are a dynamic process thathas some degree of stability to it.

Now in January of 2004 we had another smallerstorm surge that didn’t cause a whole lot of floodingbut this happens to be an area near Poverty Beachjust outside of Murray River and what you can’t seejust beyond here that the waves are covering is anold wharf structure and you’re getting waves that arecoming right over the shore line and this area, we’vestudied it a fair bit, and as such . . . I’ll get into mypoint in just a moment . . . just to think aboutbeaches for a moment . . . most beaches you findare in a crescent area. If you think of the shore linekind of like this. You’ve got two points of landusually with a block, the nice little U-shaped area inbetween is the nice sandy beach typically. Now ifyou do something to the sand on that beach, as inremove it, the sand to replace the beach comes fromjust offshore, the near shore area right here. Nowwhen that moves in to replace it something has toreplace that and where does it come from? Thosetwo points of land out at the tip. So it starts erodingthose harder and faster. What you have isessentially a sediment budget. Once you takesomething out of the equation it’s got to replace itfrom elsewhere. So sediment is only a renewableresource if there’s a continued or accelerated erosionof the bedrock and glacial deposits. So we canspeed up the erosion of our coastline by simplyremoving sediment.

And in this particular case of Poverty Beach you cansee a 1964 photo where it’s a long sand spit and thepoint I showed you is Irving’s Cape out here.Overlaid with that is 1985, where you can see abreakup of the sand spit. And by the way, thePoverty Beach area was declared a provincialnatural area in ‘95 I believe. So this whole area isprotected by the Natural Areas Protection Act, notedfor its sand dune structure. And then you can see in2000 it’s still broken up. Then in 2001 you’re gettinganother breach occurring here. Now there’s a lot of

processes going on and we had a study take placeon this because during some of this time frame youhad a building of a wharf structure here which willcause sediment to build up in behind it and build thisshoreline out and not replenish this area. And then,of course, in 2003 this whole section here is nowgone. So you’re getting a complete breakup of thatwhole coastal feature and it’s lost, it’s gone.

Now, when you looked at that earlier January picture,the waves washing over, there’s one thing that wasnoticeably missing. January on PEI, there should besome shore fast ice. That’s our protection in thewinter time against heavy winter storms and thebattering effect that that would have because a lot ofthis loss is occurring because of that lack of wintersea ice. There wasn’t a speck of sea ice at that pointin time and actually in that last winter we only got alittle bit of ice into February. It lasted about fourweeks and then it was gone again. So rememberthe winter and fall storms that you’d normally getweren’t buffered in the same way they normally are.

But at the same point in time up along that shorewe’ve also been removing sand. Now, you don’t getit removed right down on the beach front itself. It’susually a little more in back of the dune system. Butthis is a permitted process under provincialregulation. You can go get a permit from theprovincial Department of Environment to extractsand. Now traditionally it’s been used for aggregatein construction. Now if you asked any engineerthey’ll tell you that’s it’s incredibly poor sand becauseif you have a cement or mortar mix that has aspecification to it this won’t meet it because youneed something with a sharper edge. So that sandthat we use for a lot of construction purposes actuallygets trucked in from off Island. However, since 1975 in this particular are there’sbeen 131,650 cubic metres of sediment and as youcan see that translates into a beach 50 metres wide,five metres thick and 525 metres long. So that’s a lotof sediment gone just from the simple removing ofsand. And if you’re removing any more than I think,was it 10 cubic metres, you need a permit for it andthis is on the government’s website right now. Nowhowever along Poverty Beach, as a result of thisstudy, a number of those operations are no longerbeing issued permits. But it still goes on. This isdown along the south shore in Gascoigne Cove andareas like that where sand is still being harvested offbeaches. So in other words what mother nature hasput there as a buffering effect against coastal erosion

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and all these issues we face, we’re removing it.We’re being very counterproductive. So that longwinded-drawn out is my first point, is that we need toalter/eliminate these processes and these permittingarea’s policies that allow maladaptive practices. It’svery counter intuitive that we’re going to take awaythe shoreline, it’s already eroding, and we’re goingto haul it out faster. It doesn’t seem right. And thissand, we can get better sand for the constructionpurposes from elsewhere. Besides, we’re ruining afew nice beaches, grabbing the nice buildup of sandfrom them.

This, you probably saw a bit in Erin Swansburg’spresentation, this is a flooding map of theCharlottetown area as part of that study that wasdone about three or four years ago after the 2000flooding events that we had. Primarily it was theJanuary one that drove the need for this study. Youcan see the areas based upon various scenarios ofintrusion and sea level rise and storm surge and howmuch of the city would get flooded. And as such youcan start to equate that into infrastructure loss. Butthe problem is that particular study coveredCharlottetown and a small section of the north shore.The thing that we need is to do more digital elevationmodels of our coastline. How many othercommunities are vulnerable? We saw that map asbeing so red. Most of our communities lie on thecoastline. I know in our own community of Montagueyou’ve got a lot of infrastructure down at thewaterfront that’s potential to have flooding. If you goto other areas like Panmure Island, it’s got a lowlying causeway that connects all those residentsback to the mainland. Would it take much of a stormsurge or any flooding even to completely isolatethem?

There’s one example in the Annapolis Valley inaround Digby where they did the digital evaluationmodel and found out the area where the firedepartment was, most of their emergencyresponders, in a flooding even such as this wouldwind up on an island. They were cut off. So just insimple EMO planning taught them they had to movehalf their gear to other locations. We don’t have thisinformation. We have very little of it. So we need toknow what other parts of our communities, whetherit be water infrastructure, sewage infrastructure,roads, housing, all these things, what will be affectedin the foreseeable future anyway?

So on a broader context - climate change research.Beyond the Charlottetown-North Shore Study, there

really hasn’t been a whole lot done on PEI. We’vebeen doing a fair bit on renewable energy, which isreally good. But what’s our impacts and adaptationsthat we need to take as result of what changes wefeel will occur or should occur as a result of themodelling that has been done in sea level rise andother changes in temperature and precipitation.Most of the research that’s been done has beendone by institutions outside of PEI and that’s not toknock UPEI or any of the other education institutionsthat we have. It’s just that’s where the expertisecomes from. From people doing oceanography workat Dalhousie and various other schools. And assuch, unless there’s a driving need like the floodingin Charlottetown to make this work happen, most ofit usually gets done in other areas and typicallycloser to where the education institution is. So oneof the things we need to do is sort of drive a researchagenda a little bit better.

And in speaking with folks from EnvironmentCanada, that the number of personnel they havededicated over from their weather offices to issueslike climate change, you’ve got four of five in NewBrunswick and Newfoundland and about eight inNova Scotia and the amount of person yearsdedicated to PEI right now is half. Half a person. Soone guy in New Brunswick, out of the four or fivethey have there, is dedicated to look at issues onPEI. That’s from the federal side. And there’s awhole host of issues that we could or should belooking at. So simply point number three is topromote and support more climate change researchto take place on PEI because of our differentgeography and our different needs that we have.

Dams - these are a couple pictures of Knox’s Dam inMontague and what we call the Maritime ElectricDam, probably it’s more commonly known as theValleyfield Pond because it used to be owned byMaritime Electric and no longer. Both had powergenerating stations at them. That was initially howall of PEI got its power whether it was directly intomills or indirectly through power generation. Andactually one of the first under sea power cables ranfrom Lower Montague to Georgetown. But that’shistorical. I mean 1991 data shows us that PEI wasthe only one surveyed that had no hydroelectricpower. Every other province and territory at leasthad some. So in the span of a couple of generationsit all went.

In terms of the Green Power Vision Strategy whichwas put out by, I can’t think of the name of the group

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in Ontario, this just recently came out, but looking attrying to get more of Canada to produce greenpower, the third most popular item that’s on that listis small hydro. And we’re not talking about thingslike, you know, the Churchill Falls project which willnever take place on PEI because we don’t have thedegree of water flow. But we’re talking about smallhydro, which both of these old dams would be asmall hydro project. And you even have communitygroups that are interested. The group in MurrayRiver, for example, this is the Old Mill site, thebuilding in the centre, that they’re looking to convertwhat was an old mill into an electrical generationproject. And I think in the paper this summer we sawanother interest from, I think the Scales Pond group,to do likewise.

But the thing is with your provincial energy strategyeverything else is mentioned from hydrogen,biomass, wind. Not a mention of low head hydro.It’s completely discounted. And I’m not sure that’sbecause the scale of it doesn’t seem to be highenough . But it talks about community wind farmsand other sort of linked smaller scale projects but thisis totally left off the map. It’s where we came from.Why can’t we go back there? A lot of people will sayenvironmental effects. But the thing is all thesedams are there. Okay, so fish passage has alreadybeen addressed in many of these cases. Thethermal impact, which means that if you dam up abody of water you’re going to heat it up so what’s itstemperature impact on the stream and the fishpopulation. Well, that’s already there and it’s alreadyoccurring. So that’s already accounted for. It’s notlike you’re creating new dams. You’re simply justharnessing the energy coming out of these dams.So my suggestion is to add that back into the mix. Itmay not be a large amount of energy but I think inthis particular game we’re looking at a fact thateverything is going to be something. And where theytalk about wind power there’s going to be days whenthe wind does not blow. I don’t know of any days onPEI where the water stops flowing.

Again coming back to, Mr. Chairman and your socialdevelopment hat on your other committee, affordablehousing. The province has looked at affordablehousing I know for a section of our population andcertainly looking at the federal government forsupport and funding of that. But if you take a look atthis housing that gets paid for through various socialincome support and other programs we should alsobe making sure that those things that we’reconstructing are already energy efficient, are already

up to a standard so that once you get past the initialcapital cost, the cost of maintaining and heatingthese properties are not yet another impact that wehave to account for.

And just looking at a quote from a couple of yearsago in Ontario that they’re looking at half the cost toheat and maintain these homes by building them upto a higher energy standard. And that’s the ongoingcost that we would all have to face as sort of a socialcost. So certainly we want to take a look at that if wehave social and affordable housing projects that theyare energy smart to being with. There is a standard.And that you might even want to take a look at coststhat are being paid through social services alreadybecause I know there are an awful lot of oil bills thatget paid through the social welfare role. Andwhether or not we’re paying it towards inefficienthouses, would the money go better towards, say anenergy audit to start with and reduce the costs overtime. Something to be examined for sure.

Now the issue of social marketing - social marketinghas an entirely different connotation to regularmarketing. And the fact is what we’re trying to do isalter a behaviour, not a preference. And what Imean by that is when you go to a car dealershipthey’re not trying to get you to drive a car. They’resimply trying to sell you a different type of car. Youare already predisposed to want to have a car. Nowto flip that around a little bit, I have a cloth bag overthere which a lot of people probably have one, thatare generally intended for shopping. You know, toreplace going to get a plastic bag or something likethat. Just a show of hands, how many people havecloth bags? How many people use them forshopping? Okay, it’s not that you’re not goodenvironmental stewards but what social marketingteaches us is that there are other issues at play. Andby simply marketing to say, hey, you should have acloth bag or here, have a cloth bag isn’t the answerbecause you haven’t set forth to identify the otherissues at play which are barriers and benefits. Youknow, with the issue of cloth bags, are you puttingthem in the car to take them to the store or are theystill sitting on the counter at home? And when youget them in the car are you remembering to takethem in the store?

You know there are simple little things and stuff likeprompts and reminders are a good way to do that.So when you pull into a gas station and you see alittle sign that says “Have you checked your tirepressure?”, you know that’s a prompt. And by the

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issue of checking tire pressure has its all other setsof barriers. Do you have a tire gauge? Do youknow how to use it? What is your proper tirepressure? You know, simply telling people that youhave improperly inflated tires and it’s costing youmoney and gas is one thing but you haven’taddressed the whole other host of issues. So don’tconfuse simple education and information with socialmarketing techniques. And what we’re trying to dohere is change people’s behaviour. We’re gettingthem to ride share. We’re getting them to not idletheir cars. There’s a whole host of things that youwant to do to change people’s behaviour and bysimply telling them don’t do that or you’ll save moneyby doing something isn’t going to get you therebecause there are thousands of studies and there’sactually a website. The author is a professor fromUNB, and I could leave a copy of this book with thecommittee if you want, has all these case studies onhis website about all these people running energyefficiency programs throughout the States,throughout Canada and various parts of the world,and how they’ve actually gone and given peopleproducts and find out later that five to 10 percent ofthem have used them even when they’re given theproducts for energy efficiency. So you can spend anawful lot of money and it won’t get you anywhere ifyou don’t know where you’re looking.

Getting over to the PEI Climate Change Hub, just togive you an idea of where it comes from, the Hubitself is not a legal entity. It’s not its own little group.It’s simply a combination of the SoutheastEnvironment Association with PEI Eco-net. Theoffice is just down the street here, 126 Richmond.Since government only likes to contract with onebody we happen to the fiscal agent, PEI Eco-netplays host to it just down the street here. We havean advisory committee which helps direct our work.Don back here has been a part of it, Erin Swansburg,of course, and a whole host of federal, provincial andvarious community players have been part of it aswell. Our target audiences, and I know Ms. Bertramyou had addressed the whole topic of youth at thelast meeting with Erin, that is one of our areas,municipalities, youth and NGOs. One thing to noteas well we have a “Living for the Earth” workshop foryouth that’s taking place later in November. And assuch we not only help to try and educate, we ran aworkshop with Dr. Doug MacKenzie, more on socialmarketing, trying to help build capacity realizing thatas a Hub we’re not going to do all the climate changeawareness in every community. We have to buildthe capacity of others to help work in their local

communities as well. We also work to be a clearinghouse of climate change information for PEIspecifically.

Now as was mentioned in the provincial strategyfrom three years ago, that in terms of educationalawareness the province wanted to take a centralizedapproach, which we think is actually a smart idea.Because if you’ve got people in New Brunswickpreaching one message, people in Quebecpreaching another message and PEI preachinganother message, there’s already enough confusionaround the topic of climate change so that if we havesort of a centralized message and I don’t really wantto say it’s a federal message but it’s more of acommon consistent message across all thegroups–and there is a Hub in every province rightnow with the exception of Ontario–that they’re allreceiving the same information.

One of the things that we find a challenge is to makesure that provincial plans utilize the Hub moreeffectively to avoid and eliminate duplication. Now insitting down and talking with Don Jardine and ErinSwansburg, what plans there are in her daily life asthe Climate Change Co-ordinator, there are anumber of things that we as a Hub have been doingor had intended to do. And it’s good that we’regetting together to talk about these things but makesure that there isn’t that duplication of effort, so thatwe each can get on to do these things and gofurther.

The other challenge that we face, of course, is afinancial one. Now, as a Hub we have access to upto $220,000 over the next two years. Now the catchto that is that it has to be cash matched by non-federal sources of $120,000 and in kind matched byabout $40,000 and one of the things that we’vegrappled with for the current year is that webudgeted about $123,537, half of that coming fromthe feds, and broke that out across various areaswhich include PEI Department of Environment, EDAwas another section that we were looking at, the PEIEnergy Corp., EMO. Even student bursaries. Byhaving students in they can get tuition credits whichcounts again as an in kind towards everything. Ourown selves, Southeast Environmental Association,the Health Caucus which is another NGO, MaritimeElectric, other corporate monies which we’ve done,is written proposals to places like ShellEnvironmental Fund and so on. And then even theAdvisory Committee, their in kind time andcontribution contributing towards it.

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The worse problem is right now, the reality is thatwe’ve had to scale back the budget quite a bit andone of the areas that we’ve looked at is that even inrequesting funding from someone, say like MaritimeElectric, that they’ve been unable to come throughwith a contribution. Now I’m not picking on them butthat’s just one example of how it ripples back throughthe budget. Because we can’t lever non-federalmoney we also lose the hit in federal money. Seewe miss 50 cents of our budget, the feds have totake the other 50 cents back out and we’re short adollar.

The second thing is in terms of EDA. We had takena look at getting more staff to help get out andspread the message a little more far and wide thanjust our offices in Charlottetown and take it to variousparts of the province. We’ve been having troubletrying to get to the western extremes of the provinceand deal with all the various communities who needto have some outreach done. But in getting scaledback from EDA money that too has had a furtherimpact on the budget. I understand why the wholeEDA program has been scaled back because youdon’t want provincial money employing people incompetition with the private sector. But the rippleeffect on an NGO group such as ours that leveragesfederal money means that we can’t access the sameamount of dollars that is available to us to try to dothis work. So it’s a net effect on us and that’s noeasier way to say it than that. If we miss the non-federal dollars we miss out on the federal dollars.

So as I mentioned we have the potential for $220,00in federal funding over two years, $60,000 a year fora total of 120 goes towards the operation of the Hubitself and then in terms of the other $100,000 whichis going to be marketing money for demand sidereduction programming which we’re soon to launchinto. We’re hopefully going to get an announcementfrom the federal government on that in the nextcouple of weeks. So again, in order to get to thatpoint we need to have the matching funds. Soprovincial support for the Hub will allow us achieve ahigher level of federal fund leveraging for climatechange educational outreach and that’s it.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: David, I thank you verymuch for your presentation and I want to open it upnow for questions from the committee members withthe proviso of course that we do have otherpresentations this afternoon and I would ask you tokeep your questions and perhaps answers as well asbrief as possible. Are there any questions from

committee members to Mr. Boyce regarding hispresentation on the work of the SoutheastEnvironmental Association and the PEI ClimateChange Hub? Ms. Bertram.

Carolyn Bertram (L): When you spoke about thedams on PEI, I know in our own district we’re beenfaced with, Breadalbane has a dam and HunterRiver has a dam and they’re having difficulties tryingto get those projects support. How would youapproach it or how should we approach communitiesin terms of, like they are under private ownership,those two dams. They are looking to reinstate those.How would you?

David Boyce: Well, everyone’s going to have to behandled on a case by case basis. When you’redealing with private landowners you’ve got a totallyunique situation where you have one party to dealwith. The one I spoke about in Murray River, that’smore of a publically owned dam. And are you talkingabout reinstating those dams versus them alreadybeing let out?

Carolyn Bertram (L): Well, the one in Breadalbanecertainly and Hunter River the same.

David Boyce: Well, then you run another host ofregulatory issues with DFO and provincialDepartment of Environment to try and look ataffecting fish passage again. Once a dam’s goneout you’re got ten times the work to try and put itback in. I’m not talking about the financialconstruction costs but certainly the regulatory issuesinvolved with it. What I was talking about is onesthat already exist, that are there now.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Knox’s Dam was one thatwas publicly owned.

David Boyce: And it still has the dam structurethere and actually you can still see a lot of theconcrete support areas that used to house a lot ofthe power production.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Again, David, I thankyou very much for your presentation today. Weappreciate it very much.

David Boyce: I have copies of the Power PointPresentation, the social marketing book and I’ve alsogot a VHS tape on Climate Change which was putout by Science North in conjunction with the federalgovernment. Very entertaining. Rick Mercier

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narrates it. It’s hosted by cartoon characters all doneas sheep talking about climate change and how youhumans have affected it.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We’ll definitely have toput it on as “must see” viewing for our deliberations.We’ll have to get a VCR in here.

David Boyce: Thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Thank you. Now wewelcome back to the table, I just want toacknowledge for the record, the return midwaythrough that presentation of member Gillan. Good tohave you back, Sir. And I want to move along nowto our next presenter of the afternoon. Ms. Labchukhasn’t arrived yet has she? No. Okay. So in thatcase I’d like to call to the table Mr. Bingham, KenBingham, representing the Malpeque Federal RidingNDP Association. Is that correct? A few minutes toset up, you go right ahead, take your time, let meknow when you’re ready.

Part VI : Malpeque Federal Riding NDPAssociation - Ken Bingham

Ken Bingham: We’re ready to go.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right, the floor isyours. And I would remind you again we’re trying fora total of 30 minutes of presentation and questionand answer to accommodate all our presenterstoday. So the floor is yours.

Ken Bingham: Okay, Mr. Chair and members ofthe committee, I am pleased to present on behalf ofthe Malpeque NDP Riding Association ourpresentation to your special committee on climatechange. I’d like to preface this with an article thatperhaps your researchers could go into a little moredetail. It was an article from the Guardian Weeklydated August 13th of this year and midway throughthe article they’re talking, they mention Steven Lewiswas one of the city of London’s most thoughtfulanalysts. Of course they mean the financial districtof London, the city. They talked that, puts it this waywhen they’re talking about oil and energy . . . thatthe kind of economic growth rates to which policymakers and the oil consuming countries arecommitted appear to be generating growth in thedemand for oil well above the underlying rate ofgrowth of supply. Higher prices should certainly actas a spur to the development of exploitable oilresources but it is not at all evident where the large

oil fields will be found to replace the supplies fromthe US, the Middle East and the North Sea, which allappear to be past their production peaks. Lewisdraws the obvious conclusions from this analysis.First, that the west should be embarking on aserious, rather than cosmetic attempt at energyconservation. Second, those who hold out theprospect of a glittering medium term future for theglobal economy are perhaps not in full possession ofthe facts. So I’ll leave that with your researchers togather some more of that information.

Our presentation has two elements to it. And Ifollowed a couple of the presentations to you earlierand there is much theory and many suggestions to itbut I think being politicians you’re more pragmatic.First of all you have to have an idea of what the planis going to be and how you’re going to pay for it. Andwe’d like to perhaps address some of that concernthat you’re going to have at some point down theroad. The Malpeque NDP Federal RidingAssociation suggests in this presentation that inorder for the province of Prince Edward Island to beable to make adjustments to the potentialconsequences of climate change it is necessary forthe province to undertake significant measurestowards greater energy self sufficiency that is basedon the renewable, local energy generating potentialsin the province. This involves significant capitalinvestment on the part of the province. To achievethis end our presentation limits its scope to pointingout the two areas necessary, the two necessaryconditions for facilitating the achievement of theobjective. We then present some of our wish list thatmight become a consequence of such a project.

There is no part of our modern industrial economythat is not affected by the use of fossil fuels. And Ilook right in front of me now. I know that there’ll belots of presentations about generating electricity thatare presented to you. But if we just think of theinsulating materials that are around the cords on themicrophone system in the room here we start to geta little more of a widespread understanding of how inlove we are with all of the ways that petroleumaffects and makes our life and our material lives soconvenient. And a rise in prices and supplyuncertainties can affect almost every material aspectof our daily living and doing business. The cost andsecurity of supply of fossil fuels, namely natural gasand petroleum, is becoming an energy crunch. AndI do have some references here but I think almost ona daily basis now in business sections of papers andat times in other parts of the major papers this issue

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is coming up. It seems to be one of the issues of theday and the media and with politicians and withbusiness as you may see.

In the 1940s we’d see that it took the energy of onebarrel of oil to find a 100 barrels of oil. By 2000, onebarrel of oil was finding 10 barrels of oil in the energyinput. Today the energy from one barrel of oil isfinding about 10 barrels and in the 1940's a NorthAmerican farmer applied about one calorie of oilinput to produce over two calories of food output. By2000, for many products that we use or buy, thatpurchases food it’s almost a reverse. Let’s say 10calories of food or of oil input an produce one calorieof food energy. It’s unsustainable.

The sources of oil are increasingly coming fromremote areas of the world for more politicallyunstable countries or from more costly methods ofextract. And when we’re thinking of, say FortMcMurray, which is one of our great hopes for thefuture, the lifting costs on that oil, I guess theestimate is between 10 to $25.00 a barrel and whenyou compare that to, say Middle Eastern crude oilwhere the lifting costs are between $3 and $6.00 abarrel we can see the direction that we’re going.That our petroleum products are going to becomemore expensive, significantly more so. And thesources of the energy, the countries that they’recoming from, we are experiencing more politicalinstability in those regions and also the ways ofaccessing the oil are more unstable.

So these are some of the factors from outside of theprovince that are influencing the cost of energy inPEI and influencing the economic health of Islandfamilies, communities, business and governmentprograms. Because you have to factor that most ofthis type of this imported energy that we pay for atrising costs, the vast majority of the price that wepay leaves the province. So we have a type of a taxor claw away of our economic vitality that is notstaying in circulation in the province by paying thesehigher costs. So I think this is a factor that you’reprobably facing in your meetings and when you seeyour reports in the near future.

Shifting away from fossil fuel dependence towardsgreater energy self sufficiency is becoming a matterof self preservation for the province we conclude.One immediate consequence of not taking action onthe energy crunch is the acceleration in the flight ofmoney from circulation in the province. Money thatwould have paid for local goods and services here

ends up in the hands of out of province entities whichbuy their goods and services and create their jobselsewhere. If our province’s economy is furtherweakened by rising energy prices the province willbe less able to positively deal with any effects fromclimate change through its ability to finance,undertake actions.

We argue that a large investment must be made bythe province towards greater energy self sufficiencywhich we call a GESS. And the first step in GESS,and I think that you’re getting a part of theinformation from various groups today, and I thinkthat there’s probably being projects undertaken bygovernment and committees, is that you have to . .. we feel that there needs to be a thorough analysisof the entire program or problem that we face in theprovince, especially on energy self sufficiency. Andthis would employ the use of the technocraticexpertise to be able to prioritize the action agovernment will take. I think everybody has somevery fine ideas but unless all of these are broughttogether we feel that there are a devil of over athousand details in implementing a concrete strategyfor the province because everybody has theirpriorities. So that is a challenge, you know. But weneed to have that type of analytic study before wereally would take any action with a significantinvestment.

The next step is how you’re going to pay for it andI’ve spent a little time here. The sourcing of theinvestment capital is premised first of all that thefederal government needs to have its place in theplan. And first of all we would, and I guess it’s aresponsibility of all politicians on Prince EdwardIsland, all politicians to be involved in that matter withtheir various sources of influence. The federalgovernment has recently sold the people ofCanada’s share in Petro Canada. And the proceeds,depending on the sourcing in the paper, is anywherefrom between two and a half and $3.1 billion. PEI’sshare of that, if we had a fair share of that, would bebetween $110 and $150 million. I think that we needto be working on a claim on that share, especially formaking sure that that money just doesn’t go into thefederal government’s revenues but it becomes as oureffort regarding Kyoto and our own challenges withour energy security in the province.

A second part of this would involve in attaining whatwe can, as our fair share of the Petro Canada’sshare sale, would be accessing the Canada PensionPlan Investment Board’s equity unit. The minister of

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health and social services would appreciate this, thatas the Canada Pension Plan can invest $90 millionin cigarette companies, in a passive investment, itcould at least consider an investment of equivalent towhat we can get from our Petro Canada share,would be even then still less than two-tenths of oneper cent of their equity component of their portfolio.

I then turn to the provincial government and have themembers consider an equity share to be put intosuch a fund from the Island’s Master Trust, that is thepublic pension plans. I know that a significantportion of the equity portfolio is now at this timecurrently invested in foreign equities, in what we callpassive investments and shares of companies, inforeign mutual funds. And I think if we start to lookwith a representative being what the Quebec pensionfunds have done with the Quebec government, theymade significant equity investments in their owneconomy over the past number of years to positiveresults. And to say suggest, say a half interest towhat one of the government aspects was doing inthis capital formation would pay off. So we’re lookingat perhaps an investment slightly under 10 per centof the current capital value, I think it’s a little over$700 million in the Master Trust. And then, ofcourse, the province has a fairly significant creditrating despite the warnings we’ve had from our bondanalysts. We could at today’s low interest ratesperhaps match what the Master Trust had and thiswould give you a formation of capital for arepresentative total if we looked at that example, alittle math here, let’s say you were able to negotiateabout $125 million out of Petro Can and the CanadaPension Equity, $125 million transfer over, over timethe Island Master Trust, $62.5 million and a bondissue by the province.

Of course not all this is going to happen at once.You have to do the analysis first but you’d have timeto amass whatever capital. And for this I guess we’dbe insuring that over time by these investments wefeel that there’d be a longer period of moneycirculation in the province and we feel that this isimportant in generating economic activity. We wouldsee that this contributes to the sustainability of theIsland economy as we get more, say over our ownenergy self sufficiency. GESS would also lead tohigher levels of long term full time employment inthe province and GESS would also help us to matchmay of our Kyoto commitments.

For example, the wind generating facility in westernPEI is a representative example of what an

investment in GESS would do for us. With eachincrease in the cost of oil the energy generated fromour windmill project increases in value and in itspayback to the Island economy and to our energysecurity. I always think of it like this. You’re not onlysaving a dollar that isn’t leaving the province. You’realso not having to chase a dollar to come back intothe province. So the investments you’re going to beamassing from whatever pool of capital you can puttogether are going to have a payback over time. It’sgoing to be money that’s going to be generatingactivity in the province.

Some of our wish list from GESS, from implementingsuch a program would be , one thing we think thatyou need to accelerate your wind generatingcapacity so that you can undergo negotiations withour neighbours, especially in New Brunswick andthat. I don’t know whether it’s going to be net backprograms. I know that’s a rather complicated issuebut it’s about $1.2 million per megawatt with 200megawatts of generating capacity. You’d be lookingat about a $240 million investment. I don’t know ifyou’d have the full efficiency from that but being as,read in the paper yesterday Quebec is putting abillion dollar investment into wind generatingcapacity in Gaspe Bay. It seems to be the way weneed to be going. Not that we’re going to have theenergy security, you know, complete security fromthat.

We would be able to, in our wish list there would bea province wide public transit system. This has anumber of arguments to it, one being that it meetsour Kyoto commitment. But I tell you, I know anumber of people who are newcomers. I’ve knownone young man from Krotia, I’ve know people fromEthiopia, I know people who are here fromAfghanistan, from Cuba. And they find it ridiculousthat where they came from they had public transitand we don’t. I think that we really need to take aserious look at that especially with the rising energycosts in the provinces.

I think that a CESS program, what I understand fromcertain experts, are the cheapest investment we canmake is in a containment, curtailment andconservation strategy for PEI and I just had actuallythis quote was in the 26th edition of the Globe andMail, Wall Street Journal, that Northeast Utilitieswhich provides electricity in Connecticut, is studyingstrategies developed by Fisor Limited and GeneralElectric Company, which are preparing global plansto reduce emissions in energy costs. So there are

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plans already afoot in the private sector that wemight be able to access and with a CESS program,with these types of strategies with retrofitting,containment and incentives for people when they’re,say buying a new stove or fridge and that we canmake incentives out of that. We can contain ourenergy cost and our demand. I think part of CESSwould help to contain the demand because that’swhere the biggest stress on the government and oureconomy is coming and that’s probably a verydifficult issue politically because it means changingour economic model from one that is a growthoriented model. You know, I don’t think that we canexpect to see three per cent economic growth peryear in our electricity demand and government beable to cope with meeting that demand. And that’sa difficult thing to face and some people are going tohave to face, be told they’re going to have to facethat. So we’re going to have to get, any expansionin economic activity is going to have to come withinefficiencies. I think probably you could get maybeabout 10 to 15 per cent of that easily. After that itgets pretty difficult.

And I think that you’d have to have, after some ofwhat I’ve heard–I think we will hear more of it–thatyou might have to set up some type of an institute,like I call it the GESS Institute, say withaccommodation with UPEI and Holland Collegewhere you would undertake the research anddevelopment and education programs to facilitate asustainable renewable energy generation capabilityin the province and all of the other aspects that you’dhave to have.

And in conclusion, the issues of climate change andcreating greater energy self sufficiency are ascomplex to understanding as is the complexversatility of the products that come from petroleum.And it’s kind of spoiled us because we live in acharmed world from what we can do with petroleum.And to confront potential climate change issues, toattempt strategies leading to a greater energy selfsufficiency is and will be expensive but then this onlyrecognizes the true cost of what we have long takenfor granted as a given–that energy that replaces ourown labour can be had on the cheap.

The law of conservation of energy suggests thatenergy cannot be created nor destroyed, onlytransformed from one potential to another. Energy isa priceless gift to us from nature. It is notinexpensive. This presentation is about keepingmore of our energy homegrown should we continue

to do little or nothing on these issues, especiallyGESS, then there will be less energy to deal with thefuture challenges for us from climate change. And Imean, by less energy I mean economic power todeal with these things.

Our ancestors of 100 years ago thought of a horseand buggy as a relatively convenient mode oftransport. Our parents and we consider theautomobile in the same way. Our youngsters canthink it possible to fly planes and maybe travel inouter space. It’s quite possible that by doing nothingtheir grandchildren will consider a horse and buggyas a convenient mode of transport. Thank you verymuch for your consideration.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Thank you very much,Mr. Bingham. And we do have about nine or 10minutes available in our presentation period for somequestions and answers from our committee membersand I will be taking a list here at the Chair so wouldany committee like to begin? Mr. MacAleer.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Ken, this morning we hearda presentation on wind energy that said that thegovernment would benefit greatly if we had moreprivate investment in wind energy and if we createdinfrastructure. What would be your approach to that?How would you respond to that?

Ken Bingham: The least expensive electricalgeneration and electrical prices in the country areproduced by publicly generated electricity. That’s myanswer to that. And private investment, if it’s goingto stay in the province and it’s going to circulate herebut it isn’t. And our problem is this outpost type ofsituation we have and our economy is drained by ourimportation of energy.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, one of the suggestionswas if we allowed small installations, that individualfarmers, or not farmers, people, could own their ownwind generation systems.

Ken Bingham: As in a net back. I think in someplaces the individuals will have a solar - I understandthis from a solar perspective - that you generateenergy and when you’re producing more than youcan use you net it back. That’s doing the principlethough of keeping that resource within the province.That’s a different type of private than say Enroncoming in here and setting up.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Any further questions

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from committee members? Well, Mr. Bingham, Ithank you very much for your presentation today. Isee Ms. Labchuk has not arrived as yet I don’tbelieve. And so we’re going to move on to our nextpresenter, representatives of the Public TransitCoalition. We’ll give you a couple of minutes to cleardown there.

(5 minute break)

Part VII: Public Transit Coalition - LennieMacPherson, Olive Bryenton

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Our time is just comingup on 2:30 and the next presentation to thecommittee will be from the Public Transit Coalitionand I want to remind our presenters that we’re tryingto have about a total of about 30 minutespresentation and question and answer combined ifthat’s possible, that would be good. And wewelcome Lennie MacPherson and Olive Bryenton tothe table and the floor belongs to you. Go ahead.

Lennie MacPherson: Thanks Wayne. My name isLennie MacPherson and I am a member of thePublic Transit Coalition and my friend Olive is aswell. Our coalition is a completely volunteer coalitionfor the last four years but just recently we got a grantto hire a full time researcher and that’s me. Thatserves a number of purposes. Even though manypeople think there’s enough with the research, justgo ahead and implement public transit, there doesneed to be some kind of organization so thateverybody’s on the same page. So that’s kind of myrole. I’m doing research but I’m also doing publicoutreach and certainly all of our many volunteers areworking hard as well.

We formed officially about four years ago whenseveral groups of kind of the same intent gottogether and decided that something had to be doneand we had to have a formalized public transitsystem, one that actually stays and is sustainableand is practicable. And so for years we functionedas a volunteer group and perhaps with, I don’t know,because of or just parallelling with recent interest andmedia buzz we’ve grown considerably. We have 25member organizations and each of thoseorganizations represents the views of hundreds ofpeople, certainly easily. So it’s quite diverse. You’llnotice in the package the membership list. There’sactive living groups, there’s groups with theenvironment as their main concern. There’s seniorsgroups, groups representing disabled people,

newcomers, students. So it’s a very nice crosssection of our population we feel.

So thanks for allowing us to come and present ourviews and these meetings are obviously veryimportant but also a nice image thing as well. Butwe hope that some concrete action can come out ofthese types of presentations. We base a lot of ourinformation around the Entra Study, a study that wasdone two years ago by a consultant firm. It wascommissioned by the city and we’ve reviewed it quiteexhaustively and it’s very practicable. It’s a verysensible implementation of a system. There’s a fewminor details that we would not quite agree with butthe basic elements of the report are quitereasonable. So we base a lot of our pushing and alot of our lobbying of government on the findings ofthe Entra Report. And of course the report foundthat Charlottetown needed public transit.

We’ve partnered with other groups as well other thanjust our member groups. We’re working with Go ForGreen, which is a national initiative. We’re workingwith the Island chapter. We’re working with theYouth Environmental Network and the Active LivingAlliance and there’s projects that we’ve proposedwith them that should address some of the concernsthat we’re mentioning today. Also because we justgot funding basically we’re looking to improve ourown expertise within our group and not just relyingon what’s coming to us but also being able to formsome of our own theories. So we also received agrant so that a member, a representative which alsohappens to be me, can go to the annual CUTA fallconference and that’s the Canadian Urban TransitAssociation. So we hope to make good contacts andcertainly get heaps of information from that.

So I don’t think it’s too big of a leap, too big of astatement to say that public transit for Charlottetownand hopefully all of PEI eventually, to implementpublic transit is basically the largest and mosteffective and practical and immediate step the Islandcould take to address climate change. It’s obviously,traffic is a large factor in climate change, and justenergy production would probably be the numberone. But of course on the Island we contract out soimmediately locally it’s the obvious most effectivemanoeuver we can take is to implement publictransit. It’s fairly simple, this statement I know, not tooversimplify it, I know it really would be thateffective.

So we’re trying to challenge all government to work

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with, not in an adversarial role, but we’re challengingthem to not just listen to our comments and thank usfor them but actually involve us in the process ofimplementing a system so have us on committeemeetings, maybe two members in committeemeetings, you know, in municipal and provincial. Iguess it’s not so much federal but provincial andmunicipal. So we’re seeking membership orrepresentation on committee groups so we can . . .well I guess user groups are basically what you’reworking with, user groups. We represent obviouslythe people that you’re representing and we have avery large cross section and an immediateconnection to your public.

So why not do public transit. Everybody feels thatthe Island is a car culture which is correct becausewe’ve let ourselves become that way and that’s fair.All provinces are called car cultures to a certainextent but public transit can catch on and theexample I’ll give is Waste Watch. I wouldn’t say,before that was initiated I wouldn’t say a lot ofIslanders were into composting or recycling andwhen it was implemented it was a little sloppy at firstbut there’s going to be growing pains and that’s finebut, you know, we’ve come to this point where it’sjust kind of a way of life now. You know you don’tthink twice and if you do have, I don’t know, maybea banana peel and you come to a garbage can youhave that kind of moral decision to make and okay,I’ll hold it until the compost. And it’s just a way of lifeand that’s only been a very short period since itstarted.

Now Waste Watch hopefully was, I should say,public transit would be implemented a little smootherthan Waste Watch. I mean it’s come to be a greatprogram but it had its growing pains but public transitwe just have so many models to draw from. Othercities with similar population and similar size thathave successfully started up public transit. We justhave so much to draw from on that, that we canexpect, you know, minimal mistakes and not justexpect but, you know, assume that we will haveminimal mistakes in implementing it because we’vejust done so much studying. But the one thing thatis inevitable is that it’s not going to catch on rightaway. Three months is not, you know, it’s not goingto catch on because people aren’t going to sell theircars in three months. People aren’t going to selltheir cars in two years. But eventually over time itwill catch on and that’s where the investment inmoney comes. Because you don’t see an immediatereturn in money and in fact you never see a direct

return in money from a public transit system becauseit is a public service. So it’s something that youinvest in for the betterment of your population, forthe quality of life. But to speak of money, yourreturn comes obviously with health benefits, withmobility of people, of employment. Really it doescome back but just not directly the money. Soeconomically speaking it’s certainly a viable thing todo.

Now to get back to climate change - the facts aresometimes kind of dry, I suppose, stats but if youreally sit back and let them kind of grow in your mindand think on them it becomes a little more commonsense. So I’ll give you a couple of facts that I have.Well, a bus load of passengers can take 40 cars offthe road so I think whether you know too much aboutemissions, GHGs, I think you can assume there willbe a little bit less pollution coming out the back ofvehicles. So one bus can immediately take 40 carsoff the road and we wouldn’t be expecting thoselarge accordion buses that you see in big cities here.We would be expecting smaller, low floor accessiblebuses and so you could take 20 to 30 cars off theroad with each trip of those. So that’s saving, youknow, a couple hundred tons basically of CO2production a year and maybe 10 tons of pollution justby each bus basically.

Now, speaking back to the economic reasons, on anindividual level, the cost it’s been averaged by CAAthat the average cost of owning a vehicle is $7,000a year, that’s with depreciation and all other factors.And that’s not including the operating costs. Sothat’s not including gas and maintenance. So that’spretty immediately a striking figure. But before I letOlive speak as a member I will just mention that anybus system that we implement will immediatelyreduce climate change impact, even if it wasn’t topnotch. Now, I’m not saying that we should settle forsecond best. Even a mediocre bus takingpassengers and just a three bus system of mediocrebuses is going to make a huge impact. But if weactually use, not having a system in place, if we usethat to our advantage, you know, we’re not trying toadjust old buses or replace them. We are startingwith a clean slate.

So in a way it’s an advantage that we can be, youknow, essentially a model. Certainly Charlottetownand agglomerate, Charlottetown with Stratford andCornwall and then eventually the Island, we could bea real example with a bus system that’s using, atleast fuel efficient buses anyway. We’re not going to

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get too space aged. But just good solid new busesor at least relatively new buses. Start with four orfive in the city and they’re scooting out to Stratfordand Cornwall some and then eventually connect toSummerside and Montague and other larger centres.We could really be a model because we actuallyhave become a model for Waste Watch, which eventhough, like I said even though it started kind ofsloppy once people catch on and it becomes a wayof life it’s really something to applaud. So I think wecould do the same thing with public transit and I’ll letOlive speak here and then I’ll wrap it up and we’llcertainly welcome as many questions as you have.

Olive Bryenton: Thank you Lennie. I’m not asversed in this as Lennie is so I’m going to be reading.I had to educate myself a little bit about climatechange as well. So I’m going to give just a little bit ofbackground and then the reasons why I think weshould have public transportation or why it would beone of the ways to reduce greenhouse gasemissions.

Climate change is one of the most serious threats inour environment, our economies and our lives. Theatmosphere is like a blanket or green house.Trapped heat escaping from the earth surface,carbon dioxide is very effective at trapping heat. Andwe burn more wood, coal, gas, oil than ever before.We release more carbon dioxide into this blanket.And at the same time we’re cutting forests andchanging our agricultural lands so that less carbondioxide is returned to the soil. As the earth’satmosphere is becoming warmer we expecttemperatures to rise, storms to increase and rain andsnowfall patterns to change. And we are alreadyexperiencing those weather changes.

Why do we care? Climate change will change ourfuture, our jobs, our local environment, our healthand the way we live. We will experience moresevere weather, changes in the weather pattern,health problems like asthma, allergies, bronchitis willget worse and tropical infections. I guess we allwant it to be a tropical island, well maybe we will bebut we don’t want the malaria and that would go withit. And even our employment opportunities willchange due to the global warming. According toCanada’s perspective on climate change, in 1999 thetransportation sector is the single most largestresource of or source of greenhouse emissions inCanada and I don’t think PEI is any different than therest of Canada. And like other places there’s anincrease in vehicles on our highways.

Passenger transportation is responsible for 18 percent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.And passenger transport also represents 45 per centof the greenhouse gas emissions produced by theaverage Canadian family. Motor vehicles are thesingle largest source of harmful air emissions thatcontribute to human health problems like cancer,premature death, impaired lung function, shortnessof breath, wheezing, asthma and many bronchial andrespiratory illnesses. So common sense would tellus that reducing transportation related greenhousegas emissions is clearly central to any effort bygovernments, individuals and families to protect ourclimate.

Over the years the Canadian government hascommitted to take action to reduce greenhouse gasemissions, and I’m sure you’re all very familiar withthose, their 1999 public education and outreachcomponent down to the 2003 Climate Change Planfor Canada and the One Time Challenge which wasintroduced to explore ways to help Canadians makeenvironmentally friendly transportation choices andpurchasing decisions. And another investmentenvelope was established to work with provinces andterritories on cost effective emission reductioninitiatives such as buildings and transportation.

It’s now October 2004 and our mode oftransportation has not changed on PEI. We’re theonly province in Canada without publictransportation. We do not have a formal transitsystem across the province nor do we have publictransportation in our capital city. And the questionwe all need to raise is why. According to the federalgovernment climate change web site, and I’mquoting Lennie again, is that one bus load ofpassengers takes 40 vehicles off the highway.During rush hour it saves 70,000 litres of fuel andavoids over 175 tons of emission a year. That’s alot.

So what’s PEI doing? And I really didn’t know whatPEI was doing either so I had to look to see whatwas happening there and I saw in the CurbingClimate Change first business plan 2000-2003,under transportation the objectives were, theobjectives to reduce greenhouse gases were moreefficient traffic flow management, more efficient fleetflow management and sharing of transportationrelated weather information. And those would all beaccomplished by, and each one was pendingpossible funding from Transport Canada. And I don’tthink we’ve gone very far since 2000. We certainly

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don’t have any buses on the road. The next steps forPEI was to continue to investigate efficienttransportation technologies.

Then we have Canada saying they’re going to do allthese wonderful things like consumer action toimprove vehicle efficiency, increasing looking forbetter fuel supplies and increase the use of publictransit. And more efficient movement of goods. Nota lot of movement in that area either. Per personCanadians are the second highest emitters ofgreenhouse gases in the world. In 1995 at least 80per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissionscame from burning coal oil and natural gases togenerate electricity and to power our factories,homes and cars. Canadians own more than 17million motor vehicles, enough for one vehicle forevery man, woman and child in Canada. And I thinkPEI could probably match that or be above.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Pardon my interruption,Olive, but we have about 10 minutes left in yourpresentation.

Olive Bryenton: Yes, I’ll be finished. Okay and toimprove our situation we must encouragebehavioural change through increased publicawareness, promote changes in driving behaviour,reduce use of cars in urban areas and deployvoluntary commercial best practices. We need toincrease use of more efficient and integratedtransport systems to reduce congestion, improvetraffic flow, encourage the efficient movement ofgoods and increase the use of public transit. Weneed to promote increased fuel efficiency and use ofless carbon intensive fuels through improved vehicletechnologies, fuel qualities and the support andproduction of alternative fuels.

Having no existing formal transit system on PEI weare at an advantage in terms of buying andimplementing a more energy efficient system. I thinkwe can look around and find out what worked andwhat didn’t work and that should be really beneficialto us. There is a program through the government ofCanada I know the provinces and municipalities cantap into and that would be very helpful in getting asystem going. Many municipalities are alreadytaking action on measures to combat greenhousegas emissions and I think in every small way that wedo something like that we are benefiting our climate.

We should try to increase the use of public transitand any alternate approaches to passenger

transportation. And it should be part of a sustainableurban planning. Regarding modern infrastructureand a new strategy for a safe efficient andenvironmentally responsible transportation systemwe should place a greater emphasis on public transitand existing and future infrastructure building. Andthis can be done in conjunction with municipalitiesand their efforts to establish supportivetransportation.

And we’re not saying that one size fits all. We’resaying that within our communities across thisprovince there are innovative ways of creating publictransportation. We need to have our major centreswith a proper system in place and let the other onesfeed into that system. Vehicles are the largest singlesource of greenhouse gases and I think we really doneed to do something about it. As one of the factssay driving a car is the single most polluting thingthat we do and a typical car emits five tons of carbondioxide in one year. Thank you.

Lennie MacPherson: I’ll just wrap it up quickly. I’llbe one minute. I hope you like your facts because Ihave another couple for you. While it’s kind of clearthat the province hasn’t ever really had a clear visionof our transportation infrastructure and here comemy facts, PEI currently has the most paved highwayper capita than any province, which seems a littleodd for an agricultural province. Also has the mosthighway fatalities per capita per year. So those arepretty immediate facts that we need to address. Soclearly we need more of a vision for transportation.So meetings like this are nice to have but they’reonly effective and worthwhile if you come away withsome kind of concrete goal from the meeting. So Iguess our request or our challenge is that theprovincial government conducts a study or at leastacknowledges the ENTRA study but conducts astudy of its own and implements a plan for the futureof, you know, our future of transportation andcertainly addressing public transit as the mostimmediate concern.

So, you know, it addresses climate change quiteobviously but it’s one of those things where you canaddress many things at one time. They’readdressing climate change, you stimulate theeconomy, you make a safer community and mostimportantly, as far as this meeting goes, you havehuge environmental benefits. So again, we offerourselves to any committee that you are hostingmeetings. We have, you know, resources andcertainly we represent a huge cross section of the

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population and we certainly have the enthusiasm andwe’ll be able put the effort in. So thanks for hostingus and any questions are welcome.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Thank you very much,Lennie. And thank you, Olive, very much and wehave about five minutes of so for questions and Mr.Gillan we’ll start with you.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Thanks folks.Good presentation. I’m not debating any of thefacts. One could, we could have a good discussionon it. However, let me zero in on one area–ridership.What is in the minds of, not only you folks but theriding public–you mentioned the love affair we havewith cars–that would change them to embrace this?We’ve tried this a couple of times in the past and Ilook at the senior ridership numbers now which Idon’t really think are all that good. What is going toprompt us to get into the busing?

Lennie MacPherson: Well, it has to be marketed.It can’t be a secretive thing which the last fewsystems have been. We just had a meeting with thecity today with Deputy Mayor MacFadyen and hehinted that they’re moving forward for public transitand they’re maybe working with Trius again andTrius tried it last time I believe and it didn’t work andthey’re also running Via, the senior’s bus, neither ofwhich really have a clearly posted schedule or a wellfollowed schedule. So I think there has to be a lotmore effort in marketing, definitely and a little bitmore patience, more than three months. Butcertainly it’s marketing and making it visible, havingthe infrastructure, having bus stations so it’s visible,waiting stations, having maps and signage andhaving it an effective, on-time system.

Olive Bryenton: Okay, I would like to respond tothat as well. I think aging population is one thingthat’s going to ensure more ridership. At the momentwe’re forcing seniors to be driving when many timesthey really shouldn’t be driving but they don’t have achoice. Students are another source of ridership.Examples - on the campus they continue to buildbuildings and take away parking spaces. So how arepeople going to get out there? What are they goingto do when they get out there if they have to take acar out? The cost of gasoline, the cost ofmaintaining a vehicle, the insurance. It’s getting tobe beyond many people’s means. And a lot ofpeople have two cars. Our own family we have twocars. If I could leave my car in North River and hopon a bus to come into Charlottetown I’d be only too

happy to do that. But I can’t do that right now.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): I would hopethat as we go forward, and I think we’re going tohave a system, that the statistic that is on the frontpage there won’t be in the future that it’s the onlyprovince in Canada that doesn’t have a public transitsystem because the people won’t get on the buses.I hope not.

Olive Bryenton: And that’s not true because nomatter where you go people in transportation say thesame thing. People are married to their cars. Butthey’re not that married that they couldn’t give themup if they had a good alternative.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Mr. Arsenault?

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Thank you, Mr. Chair.First just a couple of points and I’ll be as brief as Ican. First of all I notice that there’s a tremendousamount of traffic that takes place on Route Two andespecially I guess the high concentration would bebetween the two cities. Now, it’s interesting, a fewyears ago the price of gasoline was a lot cheaperthan it is today but yet the traffic count continues toaugment.

Another comment I want to make is very interestinghow much money government spends on busing butyet there’s so many students that take cars to school.It’s interesting.

Olive Bryenton: Can I just respond to that?

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Sure.

Olive Bryenton: I think we are forcing our studentsin this province to buy those old clunker cars thatcost them the earth to maintain because when theybuy them they’re just getting someone else’sproblem. I think most people have gone throughthat. And because we don’t have an alternativehere. So I think if we did have an alternative we’dsee less students wanting to use cars because it’scosting them so much to get their education theyreally can’t afford a car. And they could also live alittle bit farther away from the core which would maketheir renting much cheaper. Right now they can’t.

Wilfred Arsenault (PC): Thank you. The point thatI want to make is I think there’s a tremendousamount of work that could be done to encourage carpooling. And is there any suggestions on how

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government could be addressing this situation?

Olive Bryenton: I think one of the studies, I thinkDavid did, found that anyone who was going fromCharlottetown outside of town to work car pooled.But when they were coming into Charlottetown theywere coming one person to a vehicle and it was oftenbecause they had children they had to run out andpick up and take somewhere and that sort of thingbecause there was no other way to get their childrenthere. So sometimes that creates a difficultybecause we have to transport children as well. So Ithink that’s one of the concerns and one of theproblems.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Ms. MacDonald andthen Ms. Bertram.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ienjoyed your presentation very much. At one timeprovincial employees had an Enersave bus that usedto come from Summerside to Charlottetown. I neversee that bus any more. Is it in existence? If not, Iwonder why not.

Olive Bryenton: I don’t think it’s . . . Is it stillthere? .

Unidentified Member: One.

Helen MacDonald (PC): There’s one. Fromwhere? Goes from where.

Unidentified Member: Kensington.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Kensington.

Richard Brown (L): And there’s one from Souris.

Lennie MacPherson: I don’t think the Souris oneruns any more does it?

Helen MacDonald (PC): I wonder if it’s not beingused because people were not using it or was thereanother reason for stopping it?

Unidentified Voice: One of the drivers works in ouroffice,(indistinct), he still drives the Enerpool vanevery day.

Helen MacDonald (PC): Does he?

Lennie MacPherson: It’s not that well advertised in

that it’s not advertised.

Olive Bryenton: Yes, in order to use somethingyou have to know it exists.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Ms. Bertram?

Carolyn Bertram (L): I’d just like to pick up thatpoint because the Enersave bus, I took when I wentto university because my next door neighbour took itand it was full and I think it’s still full. I see lots ofheads in it when they drop her off. But I’m looking atyour study or the study that was done and did theylook into not just having buses but also having vans?

Lennie MacPherson: Yes.

Olive Bryenton: The Infra Study, you mean?

Carolyn Bertram (L): Yes.

Olive Bryenton: Yes, they talked about 20 seaterbuses but they also talked about having feedervehicles bringing people into a central area whichwas responding to the outer areas of Charlottetown.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I live on Route 2 and I justfeel that the city needs a bus system and aconsistent scheduling. When I lived in Halifax I tookthe bus, it was bus number seven and it was alwaysthere and it took me to university and it was great.And I think that’s what happened perhaps. It wasn’tso successful the last time when it was started onPEI in Charlottetown. But I think for maybecommuters coming from Summerside toCharlottetown I think perhaps the van system mightwork. You know, just having that one van and that’sall that’s going right now. I think that could beimproved.

Olive Bryenton: Well, I think we have to beinnovative and each community doesn’t need thesame thing. In Charlottetown and in Summerside weneed a proper transportation system where peoplecan get back and forth to work to whatever they needto do. But the smaller communities can use a van.They’ve been very innovative in some other parts ofthe world so I guess we could be too.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Well I remember I was inNicaragua here four years ago. It was a completelyunder developed country and here they are on theroof of the bus, riding on the roof of the bus.

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Olive Bryenton: We couldn’t do that in Canada.

Carolyn Bertram (L): They were hanging out ofevery place. But anyway hopefully people won’thave to do that here.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Mr. Brown?

Richard Brown (L): Thank you, Olive. First of allI don’t think we need another study into transit. Ithink we need it. I was around in the days when wetried it in the City of Charlottetown but at that timewhen we tried various systems in transit, Iremember the time we initiated the UPEI, GraftonStreet or University Avenue bus for the universitystudents. Tough time with it. Back then the biggestproblem at that time was all the little municipalities.We had Parkdale, Sherwood and we couldn’t gettogether as a group to agree on funding arrangementof a transit system. I think with amalgamationhopefully that has gone by the wayside. Iunderstand Cornwall and maybe Stratford’s lookingat joining in on it.

Olive Bryenton: They’re looking at it but, youknow, I think we have to focus here and if it’ssuccessful they can still feed into it.

Richard Brown (L): I agree with you that maybeit’s time for leadership to say, you know, let’s do this.I know in the past we tried it. It was a six month trialperiod. It just never got . . .

Olive Bryenton: Well there was no infrastructure.You have to have infrastructure. You have to knowwhere the bus is going to be, when it’s going to bethere and that’s the best kept secret in Canada.

Richard Brown (L): I notice Stuart Energy hasbeen awarded a project through the federalgovernment and part of that study is to set uphydrogen stations and one of the hydrogen stationsthey want to set up is in Charlottetown. But it’s goingto be conditional on a shuttle bus available. So Ithink one of the things that this committee should dois to work with Stuart and if we’re really intohydrogen is maybe commit to one of these buses,you know, and put it into the pool of the transitsystem.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We’ll certainly put thatdown for our deliberations and discussions, Mr.Brown. I thank you very much and I thank ourpresenters today from the Public Transit Coalition.

We do appreciate your attendance here at ourcommittee meetings. And as we try to stay on timehere and we will be presenting next the folks fromBBEMA I do want to mention to committee membersthat Ms. Labchuk was called out of province todayand had to leave and was unable to be with us. Sowe have received word from her. She does send herregrets today.

One other thought here when somebody was talkingabout car pooling and that and I’ve often wonderedbecause every Wednesday morning I can never finda parking spot down around the government parkinglot and you see people going there, one car, oneperson, one car, one person. And I’m sure if theyever put up a little pay toll booth going in there youwouldn’t see quite as many cars and you’d see a lotmore car pooling from Cornwall and Stratford andeverywhere else. Just a thought. Are we ready withour presentation from BBEMA ? Okay, we’ll give youa couple of minutes and we’ll give people anopportunity to stretch their legs then.

(Short Break)

Part VIII: Bedeque Bay EnvironmentalManagement Association - Brenda Penak, LeslieHartling

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Our committee is backin session now, our presenters are ready andprepared and I’ll allow them the opportunity tointroduce themselves but we do know they are fromBBEMA, the Bedeque Bay EnvironmentalManagement Association and again I preface thispresentation by saying that we try to encompass thepresentation and the question and answer all withinthe 30 minute time period. So the floor now belongsto you.

Brenda Penak: Thank you MLAs, provincial staff,guests and the public. We thank the specialcommittee on climate change for the opportunity toaddress you. Good afternoon, my name is BrendaPenak and I’m the Executive Director for BBEMAand myself and Leslie Hartling, the BBEMA Projectcoordinator will be presenting our organization’sopinions and concerns and direction we think theprovince should take on the issue of climate change.

Firstly I thought I’d give you a little bit of backgroundto put our comments in context. Just a little bit aboutour organization and our history. The Bedeque BayEnvironmental Management Association, formally

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known as BBEMA is a not for profit, incorporatedcharitable organization that’s been in existence since1992. We’re part of this network, our family calledACAP, the Atlantic Coastal Action Program, which Iknow some of you are aware of and this wasoriginally established by Environment Canada underthe old Green Plan. We now have a variety offunding partners including the provincial governmentthat help us on various projects and activities. Ourboard of directors is from a wide variety of sectorsincluding farming, fishing, environment conservationand public at large.

The Bedeque Bay territory, as you can see here, isa watershed based area or a drainage base in theBedeque Bay which includes the Dunk, Wilmot,Bradshaw rivers and the areas that drain those andcoastal areas as far as Union Corner in Miscoucheand includes the city of Summerside because that isthe terminus of our watershed. But we do workoutside of that area and conduct a number ofprojects beyond that geographic area. Our missionis basically to provide opportunities for the citizens ofthe Bedeque Bay Watershed to help conserve andenhance their watershed through planning, educationprojects and partnerships.

On the broader look at things our vision issustainable development so that the environmentcan be conserved, the cultural of our area ispreserved and economic growth is indigenous to thecommunity. So it’s trying to balance the environmentwith other issues such as economics and community.The priority areas for BBEMA at this stage are waterquality, both surface water and ground water, soilerosion, wildlife habitats, education and awareness,capacity building and of course climate change,which is actually a new one for our organization.

BBEMA’s no stranger to climate change actually andwe’ve done a number of projects, some of themyou’d probably be familiar with, we have worked witha number of departments - green home visits, greenbusiness planning, nutrient management planning inthe farming area, the Enviro Club concept I’ll mentiona bit later, a new project Energy Busters and the OneTon Challenge. BBEMA is one of the 37communities across Canada that will beimplementing the One Ton Challenge as a pilot in thecity of Summerside. So we’re quite excited aboutthat. And the PEI Plant Watch, which is an Islandwide monitoring program.

I’m sure you’ve heard through many of the

presentations before us that PEI will be one of themost impacted provinces due to climate change. It’sprobably has the potential to supercede any otherenvironmental issue on Prince Edward Island.However, the fact that the concept of climate changeis quite complex and it’s not always readilydemonstrable makes climate change sometimes anebulous concept for the public. A more awarepublic on the issue is part of the battle. And justrecently that has been addressed with someassistance through the PEI Climate Change Hub.

So we’ll be talking here about concerns and ourrecommendations so you’ll see the slides will bepresented that way. So here we go with encouragingcitizen action. Reducing greenhouse gases for theaverage person is not an easy sell because thebottom line is we have to change our behaviour andI’m sure everyone knows how easy that is. So beingwell acquainted with implementing social marketingis a way to address this. Social marketing isbasically a way one identifies barriers to changingbehaviour and utilizes some techniques such asprompts or commitments, incentives and framingyour message properly. So we recommend thatgovernment staff attend workshops on socialmarketing and learn how to deliver more effectiveprograms

And this is a big one - government leadership. Ifgovernment expects the public to make efforts inreducing their impact on climate change then it’simperative that all levels of government there’sleadership shown. And these include things such ascommitting significant resources both financial andhuman; setting time lines and acting diligently on theimplementation of new policy initiatives and thisincludes regulation, legislation, incentive programs,cooperative research and monitoring, developmentof alternative energy and demonstration of it as wellso the public knows about it and understands itbetter; cooperative development of of energyconservation programs for all government staffincluding MLAs; investing in digital hybrid vehiclesfor the government fleet when you need to replaceyour vehicles and having staff in fleet vehicles gothrough regular emission clinics.

I’m going to turn this over to Leslie now, my partnerin crime here.

Leslie Hartling: We do recognize that thegovernment has contributed resources to the issueof climate change. For example, the wind test site in

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North Cape and the district heating system inCharlottetown we do consider to be highlycommendable initiatives. However, we feel thatgiven the broad scope of the problem there needs tobe more resources to address the issue of climatechange. One way to go about doing this is to fosterpartnerships with NGOs. Community groups can bevery effective partners in projects that need to reachthe public. We can conduct programs very costeffectively. However we can’t actually do it for free.So this is why we need to partner together. BBEMAhas partnered successfully with government in thepast and we do encourage and welcome futurepartnerships.

For example, just to give you some ideas, within theBBEMA organization we do have what is known asthe Maple Plains Agro-Environmental demonstrationsite. This is a site that’s used as an educational toolfor farmers, members of the public, school groups,etc. We feel this will provide a good opportunity forthe installation and demonstration of wind power orsolar power and other alternative forms of energy.BBEMA is also involved with citizen monitoringprograms. In particular there’s the Plant WatchMonitoring Program. Plant Watch requiresvolunteers to monitor the blooming rates of specificplant species and this is used to track and monitorthe effects of climate change by scientists. So toextract the most information from this plant watchprogram, long term information is required.Therefore we hope to continue to coordinate thisprogram in the future and we welcome futuregovernment support in order to help us recruit,educate and motivate volunteers for this program.

Related programs which government could supportinclude the Sky Watch Program and this is sort of ameteorological monitoring program which BBEMAhas implemented with school groups in the past. Aswell there’s a program called Ice Watch whichvolunteers also track the dates in and out of variousbays in coastal communities and this is also tomonitor the effects of climate change. Also, asBrenda mentioned there’s the One Ton CommunityChallenge which we’ve just been awarded fundingfor. This will assist citizens in the Summerside andsurrounding communities to reduce their greenhousegas emissions by one ton. And this pilot has thepotential to reach a large number of people throughvarious programs and campaigns that we’ll be doing.

In selected schools what we’ll be doing is acampaign called Energy Busters. We’ll be providing

students with energy and water conserving materialand educating them on this issue of climate change.In the community at large we hope to work oncampaigns such as anti-idling, tire inflation clinics,etc. And we appreciate the interest that has beenshown to us thus far by the climate changecoordinator in the Department of Environment,Energy and Agriculture and we appreciate anyfurther human, financial or other resources fromgovernment.

Now, as you’d just heard a lot from the lastpresentation we also are very concerned aboutvehicle emissions because they are one of thelargest contributors to green house gases. Werecognize that public transportation has been difficultto implement but we also support publictransportation within the cities. We feel this is a veryworthwhile initiative. However, another part of this isthat it’s important to also ensure that the vehicles onthe roads are well maintained to avoid extra outputsof green house gas emissions. Vehicles shouldhave to meet particular emission standards within aparticular time frame so this will require somevehicles to undergo maintenance to do this. Werecognize that there are people living on fixedincomes who require their vehicles to get to work.They have no other alternative. Even if there werepublic transportation they would still require this.However we would support that they maintain theirvehicles and if there would have to some sort ofgovernment subsidy program to help them do thisthat would be a good idea.

In addition government support could be required atsome NGOs public campaigns, for example, like Imentioned our anti-idling and tire inflationcampaigns. Support staff from the government couldhelp but as well other resources such as providing ahybrid vehicle for display.

Another issue is that of green power. Based on thefact that there were members of the public on PEIthat have converted to green power by paying extramoney for kilowatt hour for their electricity we feelthere is a definite potential for people to convert toalternative energy. However there needs to befurther incentives for people to actually make thisconversion. If information about the most effectivegreen power systems was readily available andpromoted by government along with some sort ofincentive or compensation for conversion this wouldmake it much more attractive to people of the public.So we feel both the provincial, federal and municipal

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governments need to work cooperatively to makethis feasible.

Another idea is to have green power demonstrationsite where members of the public can actually seegreen power in action and this is something BBEMAis very interested in and we would welcomepartnership or support from government. We alsorecommend that government explore the potential toencourage PEI companies to produce and distributealternative energy systems so that we have localsuppliers. For example, in Denmark the companythat produces wood turbines called Vesta, they’vebeen very successful world wide so it’d be great tosee something like that on PEI.

Another issue related to power is that people maygenerate their own power with renewable energysystems but currently there’s no provision forindividuals to sell it back to the power company whentheir energy is in surplus. We feel there should besome provision made and agreement reached withMaritime Electric to allow for this sort of net meteringsystem where people who have produced greenpower to credit it back to the power company. I’llturn it to Brenda again.

Brenda Penak: Home energy use is the area I’mlooking at here and 20 per cent of all energy used inCanada is in the home so reducing things such asspace heating, cooling, lighting, appliances andheating water would be really effective in reducinggreen house gases. Several communities groups,including BBEMA have been involved in energyaudits as such and right now there’s a privateindividual, a company that implements theEnerGuide Program on Prince Edward Island and wethink it’s really important that the provincialgovernment also promotes that program because it’sa way we can reduce green house gases in homesor one of the ways.

We think there should be some major cooperationwith the federal government to offer incentives andrebates for retrofits. Our own office, we try andpractice what we preach so we were able to receivea grant from the Shell Environmental Fund thatallowed us to do a number of retrofits in our officeand some of those were more expensive obviouslylike replacing doors and others were less expensive.Energy efficiency information should be readilyavailable to new home buyers and builders. Thismight be done through real estate agents, etc. Andsetting standards for new building energy efficiency

is also something we’d like to see.

Industry is another big user of energy and also aproducer of green house gases. And the provincialgovernment, Island Waste Management Corporationand Environment Canada and BBEMA in 2002actually worked with a number of companies onPrince Edward Island towards establishing a newinitiative, a fairly new initiative that’s been working inQuebec called the Enviro Club. This is a programthat helps small and medium sized businessesbasically improve productivity, promote efficiencyand prevent pollution. And this would includegreenhouse gases. On PEI we wanted to engageabout 15 to 25 companies to help them throughinteractive workshops, diagnostic assessments andthe development of made to measure technicalpollution prevention measures or environmentalmanagement systems. We identified some verygood projects with 12 companies or so but for themost part in order to engage in the full Enviro Clubthey were not able to do that because of funding. Sowe’re hoping that government may go back and lookat this again and see what can be done because Ithink there could be lots of progress there.

Agriculture and climate change - BBEMA isintimately involved with the agricultural sector andwe see that GHGs are being produced by agricultureand we would really like to encourage thegovernment to continue encouraging managementplanning on all farms and working cooperatively,particularly with the Environmental Farm PlanningCommittee and the Conservation Clubs, East andWest, as well as federally funded GHG orGreenhouse Gas Emissions mitigation program.There’s great potential again at the Maple Plainsproject for this. At that particular farm we areimplementing nutrient management plans, we havenutrient management fact sheets and we havevarious signs and interpretations so when people docome to the farm they learn a little bit about whatnutrient management planning is. Leslie?

Leslie Hartling: As I had mentioned earlier we dobelieve that the energy from Waste District heatingsystem that currently operates in Charlottetown is avery commendable initiative. However it’s alsoimportant to recognize that no further sites havebeen established. So we recommend thatgovernment expand this concept to othercommunities since these type of systems not onlyreduce our dependency on fossil fuels but provide alocal economic benefit. Also explore the possibility

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of utilizing different sources of biomass such asstraw. And we feel the provincial government shouldcollaborate with the federal and possibly municipalgovernments to make these feasible as a pilotproject.

Another concern is that from a workforce perspectivethere are few technicians that maintain, build andtroubleshoot alternative energy systems on PEI.One example is that the individual who services GOthermo pumps is located in Southeast NewBrunswick. So we feel that PEI really needs to havetechnical support people living and working out of theIsland that can readily maintain alternative energysystems. What we feel is that we need toincorporate this into our education system trainingpeople here on the Island. We feel that the provincein cooperation with industry, federal government andpossible Holland College, might consider forming atrades or training program that deals with buildingand maintaining renewable energy sources, solarwind, geothermal district heating, etc. as well asincorporating green architecture into this. Again,piloting demonstration products to provide a viewingof these operating systems in a practical setting withvarious partners. As we’ve mentioned we’re veryinterested in this type of thing. It would be a meansof getting the average citizen aware and interested inlearning about these things.

Tree planting can be an excellent means of reducingcarbon dioxide because trees act as carbon dioxidesinks. We feel the native tree and shrub plantingprogram should certainly be continued and expandedespecially it can be important around building andhomes. Trees can help buildings retain heat in thewinter while providing cooling through shading in thesummer. Also along with helping to reducegreenhouse gas emissions trees have additionalbenefits and government should promote these aswell. For example, in riparian zones trees providebio-diversity, uptake nutrients and reduce runoff.

Regarding reducing waste and using recycledproducts, 100 per cent post consumer paper, themost environmentally friendly form of paper, is notcommonly used. So we feel government shouldendorse and promote this type of paper. Anotherissue related to this is to explore the potential forcreation and use of non-tree paper. For PEI farmersto supply agricultural products for non-tree paperproduction. This would not only provide an economicbenefit but help to diversify the crops that are on theIsland. And I’ll give it to Brenda again.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Leslie and Brenda,pardon my interruption but there’s about 10 minutesremaining in the presentation.

Brenda Penak: It’s just a few slides. We’re goingto get through there real quick. Just as aninformation, approximately 92,000 pounds of wastecan result as when you demolish a house. Thiscreates a bunch of waste that is often burnedcreating greenhouse gases. Recently BBEMA wasasked to provide information to the subcommittee ofthe Ministers Advisory Committee for theEnvironment, similar to this consultation I guess, andwe submitted some ideas about C & D. We’d like tosee potentially a website for, say buy, sell and tradeof used construction materials. Establishing of adepot - actually in Halifax there is a type of depotcalled Renovator’s Resource Warehouse. It’s forrecycling old construction materials for peopleinterested in purchasing items with character. We’dlike to attract, encourage and provide . . . we’d like tosee the attraction, encouragement and provision ofincentives for the establishment of companies too,that actually develop products with recycled content.So there could be economic benefits by looking atthings in this way.

Public recognition - positive acknowledgement forindividuals, agencies, groups and companies whoare addressing the issue of climate change isimportant. And it also sets an example, it providesinformation to the public. And so something like that,a special recognition award that would be set upwould be a very useful we believe.

We’d like to thank the committee for hearing ourpoints and also we realize that the provincialgovernment, no government alone, nobody alonecan combat climate change by themselves so weencourage partnerships. And we thank you for thatand just a summary of our recommendations.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: I thank you Brenda, Ithank you Leslie very much for your report today,your presentation. And we do have a good 10minutes here available for a question and answersession so I’ll start taking a list of questioners fromour committee members. Anyone wish to begin? Ifnot, I will. I was interested to hear you talk aboutSky Watch, Ice Watch and Plant Watch. I waswondering how long these programs have been ineffect on Prince Edward Island. Are there anyresults or any trends developing, anything you canreport on that?

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Leslie Hartling: I could speak to that. I act as theprovincial coordinator for the Plant Watch program.We do have a few years data. I wasn’t there whenwe started.

Brenda Penak: Maybe just two.

Leslie Hartling: Yes, they’re sort of maybe twoand one year where it sort of was getting up andrunning. So there’s not that much data so far on thePlant Watch. But we’re getting schools involved andthey often give us great information. So we’re reallyhoping to expand this program so we can get somelong term data and see any trends. Right now youcan’t really see from a couple of years.

Brenda Penak: Can I mention of something, inHalifax or in Nova Scotia they’ve got historicalrecords, people have kept diaries. Some granniesand grandpas have kept diaries in books and we’retrying to find those people on PEI. There’s got to besomebody out there that has record. In that way wecould actually look at, you know they usually do adiary of dates and times of blooming of plants aroundtheir homestead and we’re wondering if that existswe could make some comparisons. Right now we’vegot no historical data.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Another question, I’msorry, go ahead Mr. MacAleer.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, first of all yourpresentation was well presented.

Brenda Penak: Thank you.

Wes MacAleer (PC): This Enviro Club, what wereyou trying to do with the companies that you relatedto? Was this an energy saving . . .?

Brenda Penak: It was pollution prevention, energysavings. So saving, water saving, energy,preventing pollution. Looking at innovative ways ofa company handling an issue where they identify thekey, I guess gap or an environmental problem. Andwe had very minimal funds through federal andprovincial governments to address that. We had asmall contract basically. But it did go in and make apre-assessment, if you would, to see what some ofthose issues were in the companies and identifiedareas that they could take under to combat climatechange or energy efficiency or water problems orpollution prevention. But a number of the companieswould need significant resources to do that.

Wes MacAleer (PC): To correct the problems.

Brenda Penak: Yes.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Yes, Ms. Bertram?

Carolyn Bertram (L): I just want to comment .Thank you for your presentation. One of the lastslides was about the C & D debris sites andbusinesses that are using sustainable practices andI think you’re the first one to mention that today interms of sustainable practices for businesses. AndI don’t know, have you read the book The NaturalStep to Business? It’s a great book, isn’t it?

Brenda Penak: Yes, that whole process is reallyamazing.

Carolyn Bertram (L): It’s really (indistinct) . Sothat’s what I thought it was, really reflective of thatwhole mind set. Good.

Brenda Penak: Thank you.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Well, if there are nofurther questions I want to thank you both very muchfor your presentation today on behalf of BBEMA .Always a pleasure to hear from your association.

Brenda Penak: Thanks very much.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Now we have our nextpresenters upcoming, representatives of the Town ofCornwall. Will you be requiring any special slidepresentations or anything of that nature or just astrictly oral presentations?

Peter Meggs: I’m afraid not.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right. That’s good.Now we do have a couple of committee memberswho may have to depart shortly, at around 4:00o’clock but rest assured, I would say to ourpresenters here, that transcripts of ourpresentations, word for word, are made and I’m surethe committee members will be catching up withanything that they’ve missed by way of thattranscript. So without further ado I do want tointroduce Peter Meggs, representing the Town ofCornwall and also is it, not Kevin MacCarville, is it?

Micheal Zinck: Micheal Zinck.

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Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Michael Zinck. Andyou’re both councillors out there are you?

Peter Meggs: Yes.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right. We’re tryingto keep ourselves to about 30 minutes totalpresentation time and that includes question andanswer period as well. So Mr. Meggs, without furtherado the floor belongs to you and your colleague.

Part IX: Town of Cornwall, Councillors PeterMeggs & Micheal Zinck

Peter Meggs: Actually you’re in for a treat becauseyou were worried about 30 minutes or more, we’re alot shorter than that. I do have hard copies of ourpresentation. I guess what I’ll do is I’ll just pass themaround the table and just wait a second soeverybody has one. So, Mr. Chair, and members ofthe committee I’d first of all like to thank you verymuch for the opportunity to address this specialcommittee today on the important issue of climatechange strategy for Prince Edward Island. I noticethat previous presenters included the Sierra Cluband the Public Transit Coalition. So, you know,you’re going to hear a few things from us that you’veprobably heard already today and that’s fine. We’llkeep our presentation brief. Councillor Micheal Zinckand I co-authored this submission with the blessingand input of other councillors on Cornwall TownCouncil, as well as the Mayor of course and townstaff.

And we’d like to begin our presentation byacknowledging, first of all the A- grade received bythis province on the 12th annual Real Report Card ofthe Sierra Club of Canada. I’m sure the Sierra Clubdiscussed that when they were in earlier. The SierraClub particularly noted the progress made by theprovince in the field of wind energy. Now, we findthis progress commendable but if we focus on theminus designation that PEI received we begin to lookfor ways to improve even further and one reasongiven for the minus is the lack of action ontransportation quote, unquote. We feel that theprovincial government has been very active lately infederal-provincial negotiations aimed at includingHighway 2 in Canada’s national highway system. Incontrast leadership by the provincial government inthe area of public transportation has been lacking wefeel and PEI remains the only Canadian provincewithout any significant public transit system.

Now an editorial in the Guardian, this past summerI believe it, was called for the inevitability I supposeof public transit on the Island, that its day will come.And the editorial stated that “neither the municipal,provincial or federal governments have backed uptheir applause for public transit with hard cash. Andas a result they’ve disappointed the lobby groupsthat have been anxious to get the buses rolling”. Now it is our contention that a public transit systemfor a municipal region the size of Charlottetown andarea is achievable. The town of Cornwall as amember of the Regional Transit Committee isworking in partnership with the city of Charlottetownand the town of Stratford to accomplish the goal of aregional public transportation system for the Capitalarea.

Public transit can be an important component of ahealthy environment and the provincial governmentmust be a key player in its implementation. Theobjective of reducing the number of fossil fuelburning vehicles on Island roads must be acornerstone of any government policy. Islandersmust be given alternatives to the use of privatevehicles. Alternatives which would alleviate trafficcongestion and parking concerns, result in fewerroad repair costs and realize savings which could beredirected to other budgetary concerns. Wepropose that a share of provincial gasoline taxrevenues be set aside in a reserve fund intendedexclusively for public transit initiatives. Theprovincial government increase the tax on gasolineby 3 cents a litre in this years budget submission inorder to address the provincial deficit. And we’dsuggest that public transit priorities are deserving ofa share of overall gas tax revenues.

On a different note the town of Cornwall is alsocommitted to the improvement of watershed andgreen space areas within its boundaries. And thetown urges the provincial government to increase itssupport to community groups working to improvewaterways and wetland areas. Within Cornwallefforts by the town and residents to improve theHyde Creek area are a prime example of this. Ourcommunity calls on the provincial government toprovide the appropriate expertise and financialsupport to local stakeholders who can contribute tothe improvement of the existing ecosystems of theprovince.

So again, our thanks for this opportunity to addressthe committee. In closing it should be noted that oneof the consequences of global warming is the rise of

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sea levels, a consequence which would mostnegatively impact two areas of Canada, one beingthe Beaufort Sea and one being Prince EdwardIsland. Climate change coordinator Erin Swansburgmade the point before this committee that PEI isparticularly sensitive to climate change and thecommittee chair, Mr. Collins himself, has affirmed theneed for this province to do its part to reducegreenhouse gas emissions. Governments at alllevels must devise climate change strategies whichseek to alleviate the effects of global warming andthe inauguration of a public transit system andinitiatives which address wetland and river coursepreservation must be two key factors in any viableprovincial climate change strategy.

So again, Councillor Zinck and I and on behalf ofCornwall Town Council would like to thank thecommittee for the opportunity to make ourpresentation.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Councillor Meggs andCouncil Zinck, thank you very much for yourpresentation today. I’m happy to say we have ampleopportunity for some questions and answers heretoday. And I know the issue of public transit hascome up several times today and I have no doubtthat many of our committee members would havequestions that are related to that. And maybe if Icould get the ball rolling on that issue for just amoment. Can you update this committee from theperspective of the town of Cornwall where you standright now? How deeply involved are you indiscussions with your counterparts Charlottetownand Stratford, in the development of a public transitregional system?

Peter Meggs: Well Councillor Zinck and I are, theMayor asked us to be the liaison people on theTransit Committee which involves Charlottetown andStratford and there have been a couple of meetingsso far, most recently in the summer time we met withour four MPs and most recently the town of Cornwallmet with Mr. George Brookins from Trius Tours justto do a little planning on how exactly we can movethe whole process along. Councillor Zinck mightwant to add to my comments but I wouldn’t say we’rerolling too quickly but we are trying to make progresson getting the process moving.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: And I’m taking questionlists here from committee members. Anyone like tocontinue this line of questioning or any otherquestion areas? Mr. MacAleer?

Wes MacAleer (PC): I’m just wondering if youcould elaborate. Has there been any studies done inCornwall as to who the clientele would be and wherewould they be going? I mean what is the bestscenario that we could predict? Are they going to goto the Shaw Building, are they going to go to themall? There’s different levels of service and what I’mwondering is have we identified the most lucrativeaspect of this so that we can get the thing startedwhich is the big problem? Because everybodywants, you know, an Island wide transportationsystem which is very expensive, and if you startedin the most populated areas and the most lucrativeroutes may get this thing off the ground and thereforeat least initiate it. So I’m wondering have youidentified that?

Peter Meggs: Right. I guess I might start by sayingmaybe lucrative isn’t the right word because weknow that with public transit we’re not into a moneymaking situation. We know that at best you’re in abreak even situation, probably not. There’s going tobe some subsidization involved to make it a viablesituation. In terms of the town itself, studies are, Iguess it’s safe to say that studies are forthcoming.A questionnaire is forthcoming in fact. ButCharlottetown is going to be going through thatprocess first. There was the Entra Study that wascommissioned by the city of Charlottetown to provideinformation on what the best way to go in terms ofpublic transit was and there were scenarios in thatstudy that included Cornwall and Stratford. The waywe would like to see things evolve, of course I guesswe’re going to have to wait a little bit, perhaps that’snot the right term but we want Charlottetown to takethe lead on this being the larger municipality and forus to be able to piggyback onto whatever systemCharlottetown devises.

Most simply if there is a system that was envisionedby the Entra Report that has fixed routes going to,say from the Confederation Court Mall out to EllisBrothers on the one hand and out to theCharlottetown Mall on the other hand, then the mostlogical first step I suppose would be for us to run acomplimentary route that went from perhaps theCornwall Plaza out to Charlottetown Mall. SoCouncillor Zinck and I have sat down and we’velooked at different possibilities and we’ve shared ourpossibilities with Mr. Brookins and with the Mayorand so forth. So that’s where we’re at right now. Ithink we want to . . . I agree with you that the Islandwide transit system is a ambitious vision and it’s avision I think that’s going to be realized someday but

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we do want to start with what we can realize in theCharlottetown area. And once the fixed routes are inplace in Charlottetown then it’s time for Cornwall toget on board with that and I don’t know if Mike wantsto add anything to that.

Micheal Zinck: Just, agreeing with Peter, thediscussions we had recently with Mr. Bookins areleading to the very question - how do you identify,who would possibly use the system, where theywould come from and where they would be goingand that is going, that work is yet to be done for thecity but I assume something will be forthcoming fairlysoon. Once that work is finished we have asked fora copy of it and we will then do a follow up piece ofwork very similar to what the city is going to do toestablish the, to set the questions and find out theanswers for the town of Cornwall - who would usethe system, when would they use it, where wouldthey go, what would they be willing to pay for it?Because we do, again, we’re not going to makemoney.

The question is how much of an operating subsidywill the town have to put into the system each year tokeep it running. And then when you get to the pointof asking the residents, okay, for this level of serviceto meet what you say you want are you prepared topay the operating subsidy because of the impact it’sgoing to have on your taxes? Assuming all else isequal, not assuming any green money nor moneyfrom the province nor from the federal governmentnor anywhere else, because you can only count onwhat you actually get, and I think it would be clearthat we would go to the people with what we have inhand and say this is the cost of operating the system.

But on the same token we invest money intoprograms such as recreation where we know theyhave quite a high fuel cost but we determine that notto be a cost but investment in our children and ouryouth. Therefore, in the same manner, are wemaking an investment in our environment byspending X amount of dollars on a publictransportation system. One of the key issues I thinkfor government will be you’re going to have to find away to make the cost of taking that alternatetransportation , and that means generally the secondor third vehicle in the house, higher than the cost ofgetting involved in the public transportation system.That will be, I think, your difficult issue. I’m reachingthe point with two teenagers and we’re looking,talking about a second vehicle. If there was a busservice travelling along the Trans Canada Highway

and I could simply say to them go up to the stop andtake the bus if you want to go to the mall and it wasthere I would get them to do that. But if it’s not thereor it’s so inconvenient that they would basically neveruse it then you’re into buying the second car.

So your difficulty, I see, will be at that point of you putthat system together and people are still buying thesecond car and taking all those second trips. Youhaven’t saved the gas, you haven’t saved the wearand tear on the road. You essentially haven’t savedanything but now you’ve added another cost oranother taxpayers costs that’s not being fully utilized.And that is why in the proposal we talk aboutredirecting some of the gasoline tax or addingadditional to the gasoline tax because you have tomake the cost of getting that second car and makingthose trips in that second vehicle essentially costprohibitive so they turn around and look at the publictransit and say, instead of getting the car, go take thebus. And that’s, I think, your difficulty you’ll be into.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Well Councillors, ifthere are no further questions . . . yes, Mr. Brown?

Richard Brown (L): Well so the federalgovernment is proposing to cost share or reallocatesome of the gas tax it collects and it’s in negotiationsright now with the Canadian Federation ofMunicipalities. So is the town of Cornwall willing toforego some of that gas tax rebate in order topublicly fund a transit system? If the feds came upand said, okay, right now I guess it’s going to beanywhere between 22 to $24 million will be returnedto the province of PEI or not to the province, to themunicipalities. There’s a constitutional issue there.The provinces are the parents of the municipalitiesand therefore they should get the money andredistribute it out. I’ll argue that point later on. But ifit comes that the feds say okay, here$25 million forPEI, it’s to be divvied up to the gas usingmunicipalities, Charlottetown should be allocated thismuch, Cornwall should be allocated, Stratford. Isyour municipality willing to say, well take a portion ofthat or take our money and put it into transit.

Peter Meggs: Well, I hope it doesn’t have to be aneither/or proposition. There should be funds forinfrastructure and funds for transit and you shouldn’thave to forego, you know, needed infrastructure,repairs and so on for the sake of finally having publictransit on the Island. So I hope we aren’t given thatsort of an ultimatum.

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Richard Brown (L): No. No. I guess if there’s twocomponents. (Indistinct)of that federal although it’scoming. But if there’s two components of that federalissue, you know, the transit system and the publicinfrastructure you’re willing to give up, you know,your share into it, join it.

Micheal Zinck: And that’s certainly a discussioncouncil would have to make and so would eachcouncil that might receive the revenue.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: And you could say atthis point it’s hypothetical.

Richard Brown (L): No, it’s coming. Because wedidn’t think equalization was coming but we’regetting $800 million over ten years.

Peter Meggs: But to answer your question we arecommitted, the Town of Cornwall is committed to theidea of public transit. We are of the mind that this issomething whose time has come and how we movethis ahead, whether we do it in piecemeal fashion orhowever we’re going to do it I think there are a lot ofpeople who are tired of the delays that have beenhappening in the past few years and are just anxiousfor civic leaders to show a little bit of leadership onthis and to get the process moving.

So the questionnaire is a good idea because it willgive us a better idea of just exactly where we can gowith the whole idea. We don’t want anymore studiesor anything like that, you know, we think we’ve got afirm fix on how the system could be set up but weneed to know that there is going to be a demand forpublic transit and everybody’s going to have to showa lot of patience in this too because it’s notsomething where we’re going to have buses justpacked to the rafters right from the first day. This issomething Islanders are going to have to get used toso we’re going to have to give this a good breakingin period.

Richard Brown (L): And I guess I agree. We aregeographically, Stratford, Cornwall andCharlottetown, it’s basically the same size asFredericton. Like there is a model there that can belooked at and their cost of benefit and their ownanalysis can be done. I don’t think we need anymore studies into it either. Studies are just amechanism of delay and you know, we’re saying let’sstudy this again. Well, there are hundreds ofmunicipalities across the country that are the samesize as our three municipalities . . .

Peter Meggs: Or smaller. Smaller municipalitiesthan Charlottetown that have public transit.

Richard Brown (L): That’s all I can say. And Ithink we have seen a lot of those municipalitiesthroughout Canada. Would be yes, we have a publictransit system because our provincial governmenthelped out. And that’s what I think this committeeshould recommend.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right. Thank youvery much, Mr. Meggs and Mr. Zinck . I appreciateyour appearance here today.

Peter Meggs: Thanks very much for allowing us topresent.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: I’ve certainly learned agreat deal here today. It’s been a long day I know.We’ve had nine full presentations. We do have oneother item on our agenda and that is the discussionof next steps. Now, first of all Ms. Labchuk wasunable to be with us today. She was to make a shortpresentation I understand. Should we . . .

Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk): She’s goingto submit in writing.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: She will submit inwriting. Very good. I’ve been assured she willsubmit something in writing to us for ourdeliberations. Now, when next should we gettogether and hopefully at that time we’ll be joined byour Climate Change Coordinator, Ms. Swansburg.Any suggestions from committee members of anappropriate time to gather? Get your date books out.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Why don’t wetidy up where we want to end up. Do you want tomake a report on a certain date, ie. the Legislature?

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Good point.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, do we want to callanyone else?

Richard Brown (L): I do but they won’t let me, theHouse Leader.

Wes MacAleer (PC): The House Leader, what? Ijust asked whether or not there was anyone else thatwe wanted to . . .

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Richard Brown (L): Well, you shot me down onMaritime Electric.

Wes MacAleer (PC): No, I don’t think it’s aquestion of shooting you down. The question is dowe want to have the group of people that theyrepresent, which is industrial users, that’s all. I meanif you’re going to single out one company I’d sayforget it. But if you’re going to call in a bunch ofindustrial users. What about the 12 companies thatwere in this Enviro Club? Do you want to talk tothem to see what . . .

Carolyn Bertram (L): Can I just add to what you’resaying. At the last meeting I mentioned about thehigh schools. I mentioned to someone over the lastcouple of weeks since our last meeting and Bluefield,they were very interested but they didn’t see it in thepaper and they had . . . I guess Colonel Gray has agroup also . . . and I really feel that we should behaving these groups come in before we make anyreports. They echoed the comment it’s so importantthat the voice of youth is heard. I know it was in thenewspaper but there are a lot of students andteachers and school that wouldn’t see it in thenewspaper. And I think every highschool on PEI,there’s not that many, should be notified, we pick aday and if there’s any that say they want to come in,they do. If there isn’t then we forget about it. Buthaving youth input, I really think we should.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right. We’ll considerthat as a motion then in terms of an invitation to thehigh schools.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I don’t know if that’s whatyou were speaking about.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Would that be okay,Ms. Bertram?

Carolyn Bertram (L): Mr. (Indistinct) is that his lastname, that was here.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: If we consider that asa motion of an invitation to all Island high schoolrepresentatives to come forward?

Carolyn Bertram (L): I’m not sure if the juniorhighs have any. I would think more high schoolswould be, if any.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): That’s where theEnviro Clubs are.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Because isn’t Darcy’s, he’sthe head of . . .

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Yes.

Jim Bagnall (PC): I think that’s a great idea.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Do you want to dothat? Very well.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Contact every high school on PEIand ask them if they’d like to make a presentation.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: So that motion fromMs. Bertram, all those in favour say yes.

Committee Members: Yea.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Contrary nay? Motionpassed. Invitation will be extended. If you want topick a date for that as well. What would be anadequate lead time for the high school students.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Until the House opens I’mavailable any Thursday.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Any Thursday. Allright.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Can we go after kids are outof school, at 3:30ish?

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, that’s the 4th and the11th.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Well, the 11th is not agood day.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Then there’s the 18th.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: The 4th or the 18th ofNovember.

Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk): OnThursday, the 4th there is a Community Affairs andEconomic Development Standing Committeemeeting already set for that afternoon.

Wes MacAleer (PC): So much for that.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: The 18th of November.

Wes MacAleer (PC): We’d have to meet on a

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Monday then. Because once we’re in the House . . .

Jim Bagnall (PC): If we can get a couple moremeetings before we go into the House it would bebetter if we can any way, shape or form. Becauseonce we get into the House we’re really busy.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Well, Mondaymornings are, at least I know for me, they’re officehours, district office hours. But the afternoons . . .

Carolyn Bertram (L): How about an eveningmeeting? Like I think that would be . . . like highschools don’t want to miss their . . . well I don’t thinkthey should . . . miss their class time.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: An evening meeting.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Yes.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: What night would yousuggest?

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): We should givethem 10 days to two weeks to prepare.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Exactly.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: So that would at leaststart on November 15th, is a Monday.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Maybe we want to wait until afterthe new year to finish off this thing.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, it’s either November 1st

. . .

Jim Bagnall (PC): We can do a little interim reportand then finish after.

Carolyn Bertram (L): November 15th. Did you saythat?

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: That’s a Monday,Monday evening November 15th. Now, again this ispresuming that the high schools will respondpositively and say that they want.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Well, if they don’t, they don’t.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Why don’t we ask them what timethey’d like to present. Because maybe the schoolwill make available time for them to come in in a day.

Wes MacAleer (PC): What about November 8th,guys. The 15th is too . . .

Jim Bagnall (PC): I can’t see them not coming.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: But then you’re lookingat getting coordination from nine Island high schools.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I think, Chester is a teachertoo, I think as a teacher, just pick a day, pick thetime and they can come. And two weeks, Chester,you said two weeks. I think two weeks is plenty oftime.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Monday, November15th, evening. 7:00 p.m.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Why don’t we go in the afternoon.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We just talked abouttaking them out of school then.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I don’t think they should missschool.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): And that evengets into busing for some of them.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We have two teacherson the committee. We’re not going to haul them outof class.

Richard Brown (L): We’re not going to beat them.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I think a couple of hours,7:00 to 9:00 I think would . . .

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Monday, November15th 7:00 p.m. Climate Change Committee meetswith as many high school student representatives aswish to come forward.

Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk): I have aquestion. When I send the invitation to the highschools, is it to their club or is to . . . if they don’thave a club is it to any teacher, to any classroom?

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): The best thingto do is to get a contact if you possibly can.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Call each high school andask.

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Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Find out whichteacher is working with either the Science or theEnvironment Club.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Well, we know with Bluefieldit’s Darcy Flynn is Bluefield. Mr. Gillan’s son-in-law.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Of course you willmention to them that marvellous website youdeveloped and all our links.

Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk): What kindof a presentation are we asking for. Just whatthey’re doing on this issue.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Just give ourperimeters to them that we gave to the others andthey will know exactly. The Charlottetown Rural Highcontact is Rob Redmond. Colonel Gray, they dohave a club there this year but I don’t know whowould be the contact.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Why wouldn’t we just contact theprincipal.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Because it getsleft on the desk.

Jim Bagnall (PC): And ask him if he . . .

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): You wanted ananswer.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Left on the desk.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): For Montaguethat might be the best way is to send it off to thePrincipal. Because, again I’m not sure if anybody isdoing anything in environment directly.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Ron Diamond would be the onein Montague.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: And could we at thistime have the committee’s approval here, I foundtoday that everyone’s presentation went right almostto the mark of 30 minutes some of them, right on themark. Is there anyway we could encourage them tokeep their presentation to 15 minutes? Would it beimpolite to ask that? So that we would at least thenhave 15 minutes of discourse with them in terms ofquestion and answer which I find sometimes farmore enlightening than the actual presentation itself.

Richard Brown (L): Mr. Chairman, you did a goodjob today. Keep it up.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, I don’t know.

Jim Bagnall (PC): If you do that Wayne, 15 minutes,is not giving them much time. And if anybody hasdecent presentation and we want to ask them aquestion we’re going to take them well over the timelimit ourselves.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Okay, we’ll stay to thesame format as today?

Carolyn Bertram (L): Chances are you’re not gohave every high school, I don’t think.

Jim Bagnall (PC): And not only that we don’t wantto leave an impression that we got them in here andwe want to rush them out the door either.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): And thechanges are that the kids won’t be as free to ad-lib,they will want to read, as some of these people didtoo.

Wes MacAleer (PC): I don’t think you can do it inless than 30 minutes.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Very well then. Isthere any other business? Any other that thecommittee members would like to bring up?

Jim Bagnall (PC): We still haven’t made a decisionwhat we’re going to do with these large industrialcompanies or whether we’re going to have Irving’s inor whether we’re going to have Maritime Electric in.At the time Richard brought it up at the last meetingbut we said we would deal with these first before wedecided what we were going to do in the future.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: And we’ve done that.And now we’ve also made special (indistinct) schoolson the Island.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Maybe what we should do is dothe students first and then decide whether want to dothese others after.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): I don’t think wecan by-pass the industries.

Jim Bagnall (PC): I don’t think we should. If we’re

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going to do this right we should have everybody inhere.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, if you look at the size ofthe province, the industrial complex has to be a partof the solution. So whether we get to talk to them ornot, that’s where the (indistinct)

Jim Bagnall (PC): That’s why I was saying earlier Idon’t think we should cut off this committee reallyquick. I think that maybe what we should be doing ismaybe meeting with the students, getting that donebefore we go into the House, bring an interim reportinto the House. Tell them that we are still preparedand after the first of the year when things haveslowed down a little bit bring in, have a few moremeetings to finish off and do a good job on this ratherthan rushing the report.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We want to know whatsome of these major companies on Prince EdwardIsland are thinking on the issue of climate change asit relates to their operations and their service toIslanders.

Wes MacAleer (PC): And if it includes MaritimeElectric, fine. But don’t single them out as the onlyguys in town.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Cavendish . . McCains.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Yes, four or five major . . . I don’tthink there’s too many. I think Erin can probably tellus the six top, you know, companies on the Island.And she said the last time I was talking with her thatthere was only seven or eight major companies onPEI that would fall into some of these categories.

Wes MacAleer (PC): So let’s get her advice onwho we should maybe contact, yes.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: All right. Very good.Is that agreeable to committee members?

Jim Bagnall (PC): I wonder while we’re doing thatshould we do something, a followup on these onesthat we saw today before we continue into the nextphase, before we forget about what all thesepresentations said to us.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Good point.

Wes MacAleer (PC): What were you thinking?

Jim Bagnall (PC): Like maybe some kind of, youknow, . ..

Wes MacAleer (PC): Synopsis maybe?

Jim Bagnall (PC): Yes, of what . . . maybe Mariancan kind of put together something on thepresentations that we saw today.

Marian Johnston (Committee Clerk): A spreadsheet with recommendations from each presentation.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Yes. And then we can decidehow we’re going to . . .

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): Get the thematicareas because like the city transit, you know, that’sone that kept jumping up again and again. There’sa bunch of thematic areas.

Jim Bagnall (PC): I think we should review thatbefore it gets lost in the next part of what we’re goingto do.

Wes MacAleer (PC): Well, that could be part of thenext meeting.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: And, Jim, this would besomething that would be sort of behind closed doorsbecause this would be like a preliminary deliberation.We’re just talking catching our breath and catchingup of all this nine presentations today. So that wecan have something on the record of how we felt.

Jim Bagnall (PC): Also have the writtenpresentation that will be coming in.

Wes MacAleer (PC): So if we have only one highschool that’s prepared to meet we’re still going tohave this 15th of November.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: I think we should.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Or we can come to them.One of the other. Why don’t we go to them? Wecould go their high school. Might be kind of neat.

Wes MacAleer (PC): But I mean if you have 10.

Carolyn Bertram (L): Well, no, we’d have it here.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: I think the betterexperience for the student would be to come to the

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Coles Building.

Carolyn Bertram (L): I think so too.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): I had a couple ofgroups in here before and that’s a pretty neatexperience.

Jim Bagnall (PC): So do we meet again before the15th again to go over these other presentations ornot?

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: I don’t think so. I thinkit’s going to take time for Erin to get up to speed onthis because she’s on holiday this week and we’reasking her to assist us and maybe by her reading ofthe transcript she could come up with some of thethemes that she’s seeing there and it might be niceto get this pair of, sort of an arm’s length view of it sothat she could probably zero in on the themes thatcame up over the nine presentations and give ussomething on that meeting date further down theroad that we could sit down and have a nicediscussion sometime post November 15th. Are weagreed on that.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): We are.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: We would entertain amotion for adjournment then.

Honourable Chester Gillan (PC): So moved.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: So moved by MinisterGillan. All those in favour say yea.

Committee Members: Yea.

Wayne Collins (PC) Chair: Contrary nay?Adjourned.