Friday, May 10, 1996

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA

Friday, May 10, 1996

The House met at 9 a.m.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

(Continued)

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

(Concurrent Sections)

ENVIRONMENT

Mr. Deputy Chairperson (Ben Sveinson): Good morning. Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. The committee will be resuming consideration of the Estimates of the Department of Environment. When the committee recessed yesterday afternoon, it had been considering item 1.(b)(1) on page 48. Shall the item pass?

Mr. Gregory Dewar (Selkirk): Mr. Chairperson, yesterday we were talking a bit about BFI and the proposed landfill site in Rosser and the concerns that we had regarding the potential contamination of the ground water in that area.

I understand from the licence that there is a requirement of a liner to be used to protect that. Is the minister aware of this type of liner being used elsewhere in any other jurisdictions?

Hon. Glen Cummings (Minister of Environment): Just hang on a second. I will get information from the department, but it seems to me that this is a previously used technology. The answer is yes, but if you ask me to give you a list of examples, I could not do it at the moment, but we are well aware that it is used in other sites.

Mr. Dewar: Well, can the minister tell us if he is aware of the system being faulty? Are they able to detect any leaks in this system in any other jurisdictions?

Mr. Cummings: Well, I guess I have to be a little careful of what I put on the record here in terms of how it relates to the licence, but certainly I am familiar with the paper that was presented at the hearings that talked about the risk factor associated with installing a liner of this type and whether it would fail at some point in the future or not. I believe that was what directly precipitated the recommendation from the Clean Environment Commission that the level of protection be doubled from the previous presentation of BFI, and that is what is in the licence.

Mr. Dewar: Well, I just want to make the comment again that the minister is responsible for the protection of the ground water in that area, and I am concerned, as are many of the constituents in that area. Individuals who live within the proximity of the proposed site are very much concerned about the potential contamination of their ground water supply and of their drinking water supply.

Once again, I would just like to ask the minister, is he guaranteeing us that this contamination will never occur?

Mr. Cummings: Well, there is a series of protective mechanisms that are in place to take over in case of any kind of an unknown or unpredicted problem, including a leachate collection and test monitoring holes to make sure that nothing is happening. If there is continuous and ongoing monitoring, then remedial action can be undertaken.

So the concerns that are being raised are legitimate concerns, but I believe that they have been addressed in the licence. But that licence is under appeal, and we will be reviewing concerns to make sure that nothing has been overlooked.

Mr. Dewar: I would like to move on to waste reduction and recycling, and so on.

There was a conference. I know the minister attended and I was there. I did miss his opening keynote address on Friday morning. I was at a constituency event in Selkirk, but the title of his address was WRAP Strategy, the Next Steps. Would the minister just enlighten us as to what those next steps are, please?

Mr. Cummings: Well, obviously the next steps are to continue to build on the initiatives that we have taken. One of the announcements I made that morning was that we had agreement on principles of the used oil collection system that might be able to be put in place.

I made the point in my comments that I still believe that education of the public and the ongoing and increasing interest that we believe flows from that will be key to keeping the momentum going in reducing the amount of waste going into landfill. The multimaterial stewardship program and the Used Tire Program have been quite successful, in my view. The acre pesticide container recovery system also seems to have achieved a high level of success.

One of the things that we have to build on and one of the reasons that Manitoba has taken perhaps a more methodical, I prefer to say methodical approach to increasing recycling opportunities and reduction of waste than other jurisdictions, but my critics tend to say, slow, period. But the fact is, we need to develop markets at the same time as we are developing collection capability, and that is very important. The volume drives markets and markets encourage volume if they are in fact profitable. So it is certainly needed to keep all segments of waste reduction moving forward at the same time.

There is a desire on the part of some people to begin to move more aggressively on composting, which is, I guess because I am sort of used to composting and assume that a lot of it goes on out there, maybe I have had less ability to get my mind around the possibilities of this, but there is more and more equipment available out there, for example, to reduce in volume trees, twigs, and yard waste when they come in to the landfill as opposed to putting them in the combustibles, which tends to happen now. So we can chip them and compost them. I guess we will reduce that much more combustion and, certainly, where there are your bigger landfills, we will reduce the volume significantly, just the same as we significantly reduced the volume when we took tires out of the waste stream. Tires are no longer a problem, in my view. I think you would be hard pressed to find a tire buried in the last couple of years in a landfill.

The household hazardous waste, I did not spend a lot of time talking about it at the conference, but certainly it is an issue. The contract, in the short term, has been turned over to Miller Environmental as part of the arrangement in taking over Manitoba Hazardous Waste Corporation, but that is a relatively small contract. The problem there is that it has been a little difficult to get people to bring in their old paint pails and leave five bucks behind to get rid of their garbage or what they would consider garbage. It is hazardous waste if it is put in the wrong place. So we continue to run free household hazardous waste collection depots based on this contract which is paid through the Department of Environment, but it is an issue that is going to have to be dealt with on more of a long-term basis over the next few years. Some jurisdictions are putting a levy on paints and other commonly used household materials.

The other area we should be putting emphasis on is how many of the independent responsible bodies can we develop out there. We have four, or will have four, in the near future and after a while I think the public has a right to ask, well, how many more of these dedicated funds with independent boards out there can you continue to develop. Even though the model works very well, we may have to amalgamate future requirements when we build on this system.

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I will take the opportunity to say that Finance ministers across the country are increasingly sceptical about dedicated fronts and with good reason, because they tend to be overlooked and sometimes abused in their use, depending on the responsible party that is dealing with them. On the other hand, they are, in my view, a system that the public has a high degree of confidence in and my colleagues, the Finance ministers over the last few years, Mr. Manness and Mr. Stefanson, have agreed that these systems, because of the credibility that they present to the public, are areas where dedicated funding can be established and effectively used to run a system. It is a system that has its limitations in terms of how big and how far we let it grow, I suppose.

I would like to indicate that other jurisdictions are looking, particularly at the tire board concept that we have here, with particular envy. Manitoba is probably the only jurisdiction that can claim close to a hundred percent removal of the tires from the waste stream. I think I mentioned yesterday that half of them may still be going for a heat or energy recovery, but nevertheless we have been able to encourage the development of a local industry and that local industry is now beginning to franchise, if you will, its technology into other jurisdictions. But at the governmental level we have had a number of jurisdictions that have reviewed and are looking to do something similar to what we are doing in tires.

By the same token, we are looking at other jurisdictions and what is happening with used oil. B.C. has a complete used oil collection system, probably far too elaborate to be repeated here, and it is based on a refining and use for the oil. We are attempting to learn from them, but we are also attempting to co-operate with Saskatchewan and Alberta to develop a parallel system across all three prairie provinces. So there will be a lot of used oil come on stream at about the same time, and that hopefully will lead to some development of, if not refining, recycling or better end use for the oil than we perhaps have today, but we are looking at a commonality of a levy because we cannot have a variable levy across the prairie provinces on an item like that.

Really, what I also wanted to convey at that time was that the system is entirely built on the concept that the local authorities are very often the best ones to take the lead responsibility and want to express a good deal of appreciation for what had been done across the province.

It seems that I am very often out of step with the City of Winnipeg, but I can claim a very high degree of co-operation and enthusiasm in the municipalities across the rest of the province. Unfortunately, the multimaterial recycling program in Winnipeg has always been tied to a strategy around BFI, and we just finished spending most of an hour talking about that yesterday, so the member is well aware of those implications.

This is our largest jurisdiction. The potential for collection of recyclables in the city is enormous. The door-to-door program is just I think starting to hit its stride, the household pickup, curbside, but considerable frustration, and I touched on this at Portage but did not spend a lot of time on it, that we do not have a program for the multifamily dwellings.

I guess that is why I was pleased to see yesterday an announcement from Urban Affairs that they are signing up a red box collection system with James Zonnefeld for a number of their units. The city has been unwilling to run a pilot in this area although they began to make some moves recently. I want to encourage them to continue with that, because I think the multifamily dwellings may in fact be very profitable.

Mr. Chairman, I think I will just leave it there.

Mr. Dewar: The minister mentioned the used oil program that they are contemplating. You mentioned the levy. How do you envision that levy to be charged?

Mr. Cummings: We have a broad-based consultation committee, industry, municipal, the environment community is represented by the Recycling Council. The Department of Environment obviously is represented and is facilitating it. There is significant industry representation on the committee actually.

I guess I cannot make an announcement on how this is likely to be done. My preference is that it would be a levy that is included in the price and run by the industry, but it has to be accountable. As the member well knows, I ran afoul of the beverage container industry when they wanted--there was considerable disagreement and in fact some encouragement by the consumers association and others that the levy be a clearly marked add-on type of levy.

There are lots of collection systems out there that are run in other ways. This system may be one that we can basically have the industry take responsibility for the stewardship, run the program, but they will have to run it on the basis where there is an open door to the input on the management and the scrutiny of the funds and how they are allocated, and that I guess will be the subject of further discussion. It might end up being something altogether different. I just stated what my preference would be, but I am trying very hard to work with the consultative process.

Mr. Dewar: The subheading for the conference is titled The 50 Percent Solution. How far are we along as a province to meet that 50 percent waste reduction target?

Mr. Cummings: We are 50 percent there. No, the department informs me that our best figures show that it would be--we are halfway there. I have to say that I disagree to some extent. I think we are doing even better than that in some areas, probably not in total, but certainly in some areas, some municipalities are indicating that they have 70 percent reduction in the volume coming to their landfill since they have had an educational and promotional program in their jurisdiction to encourage recycling. They are not getting 70 percent of their volume reduced by recycling but just simply getting the people to think about what they are doing makes so much difference.

Yard waste becomes an obvious one. When you have closed your landfill and all you have is a dumpster, then you start looking carefully at what you are doing with your yard waste. There is no reason that most of the yard waste cannot be reused onsite or handled in a different way. The reduction of tires out of the landfill, that is an enormous volume. I am hopeful that we will hit--we have another five years pretty well to reduce by another 25 percent.

I would make this one observation, however. The department, and rightfully so, encouraged me to have more funds allocated so that we could actually judge more carefully, by surveys and so on, how we were doing on the volumes. I guess my concern was more of a practical one. If we have some money to spend, let us spend it on the programs and keeping things moving, and we will use other methods to try and determine the reduction of volumes. But I would be the first to admit that we, by my own hand, have probably limited our ability to say precisely what the volume reduction is.

Mr. Dewar: Could you tell me then, in terms of the volume, what was the volume of waste generated in 1988? The 50 percent is based upon 1988 figures.

* (0920)

Mr. Cummings: I think the Fenton report had--the original WRAP report, Dr. Fenton used numbers, but I do not think we have the number here. If we get it in the next few minutes, I will give it to you.

Mr. Dewar: I am just interested in finding out how much is generated now and how much--I guess by the year 2000 your hope is to have that reduced by half. I am just interested in hearing the actual figures in terms of waste generated.

Mr. Cummings: One area where there is an interesting development is in commercial waste around packaging, commercial/household. Delivery of certain items is still heavily packaged. The national packaging protocol calls for changes, and they claim that they have met a number of the objectives that they laid out for themselves. They measure their volume of waste by weight, so it makes quite a difference, waste versus volume. Stretch wrap is obviously a lot lighter, but some of the products, cardboard in particular, the use of it is not going to go down. I use the example of shipping cupboards, for example, and international competition. You will see semitrailers rolling from Canada all across the United States, producing furniture, cupboards and those sorts of things, and I think we know in North American society, you are not going to accept anything that is damaged except at a dramatic discount. So packaging has its value on the other side, reduced freight, better consumer acceptance and all of those things, but cardboard packaging, I do not think, has gone down, while at the same time the industry is saying that by weight they have met a lot of their objectives. I guess that highlights the idea that economics to a considerable extent will drive this. Getting the weight down saves freight and saves money, so there is a combination.

I should have known this figure on a per capita basis, we believe that we have gone from a thousand kilograms in 1989 per household down to 790. I suppose the number of households are probably up a bit so 790 probably reflects that.

Mr. Dewar: You mentioned the tires. A number of years ago there was, I assume they are still interested in setting up a plant in Selkirk to recycle tires or, actually, to extract the energy from tires. Jentan, I believe, is the name. Has that company applied for a licence? Maybe you can just tell us the status of that company.

Mr. Cummings: They are in the early stages of licensing. The department informs me they have asked for a list of, I believe, 23 more items to them to provide information on as part of that. To be fair, one of the things that has always been of concern around this project is that originally, and I cannot state what their position might be today, but originally there was an issue around availability of tires and whether they would actually be able to put the technology in place and supply a sufficient level of tires or whether they would have to go back to traditional forms of energy on an ongoing basis for a big percentage of the time.

I do not think the concerns were so much environmental as they were from a business plan as well and their interaction with I, T and T. I am not completely familiar with but there have always been some questions raised about the technology. I think as the department has been willing to treat it straight up, just meet the standards and the economics of it, the company would have to deal with it. It is not our responsibility to try and second guess them on the economics of it.

That original discussion was between Jentan and the tire board, not even with the department. The tire board indicated that the tires were up for competitive bidding. We are not in the business of giving anybody preferential treatment in terms of contracting the tires. They bid up. In fact, we provide a central registry, I guess, of information as to where they might contact people to get the tires, but the way the system works is that the present users collect and redistribute the tires and it is the end user who interfaces with the tire board. In other words, the Winkler operation, after they have processed and can prove they have processed a certain number of tires, are reimbursed at the higher level, $2.80 or something like that--$2.50. But where the tires go for combustion it is around a dollar. I mean, we do not pay as much for combustion, and I think that has also been a source of frustration for Jentan, and they might have to bring the tires in from outside of the province to keep a sufficient supply, frankly.

Mr. Dewar: Mr. Chairman, we are all paying the 2-cent levy on beverage containers. What is the status of that fund? Is there a surplus now, I believe?

Mr. Cummings: Yes, there is.

Mr. Dewar: Well, what is that surplus at the moment?

Mr. Cummings: About $3 million, but there may be a $2-million outstanding debt against it if the city puts in a claim for the level that we believe they might be doing.

Mr. Dewar: So you are speculating that the city may be required to draw on that fund. As you are aware, there were a number of concerns raised by the chair of the civic works and operations committee. There was a bit of a squabble between yourself and the city in the media recently. Can you explain or give us some background as to why there is this misunderstanding?

* (0930)

Mr. Cummings: Well, I speak very highly of them. Frankly, there need not be a disagreement. I have no problem whatsoever with the city program potentially needing to draw on the provincial funds. That is what it is there for. The levy is only on beverage containers right now. There is always some considerable concern about why we have not applied it yet to newsprint of some sort. There is an issue there trying to sort out the PST and the WRAP levy and the fact that the industry has come through a heck of a shakedown recently. But newsprint is a big portion of the recyclable stream, and a very important part of it, frankly. In fact, I am informed that the city could draw as much as $2.5 million from the fund, assuming that recycling markets do not go up or down. It could cost more, I suppose, if it goes down. The fund takes in roughly $5 million, and we have over 100 jurisdictions signed up on it now. It is considered a generous payment, frankly, but one thing that I have always stressed is that this is there to buffet the fluctuations in the recycling market. It has now gone past being a recycling issue. It is a market management issue, and the fund is there to buffer the fluctuations.

I suppose I have had an issue with the city in terms of who takes responsibility for the recyclables at the time that they have been collected. My view is that the city has enough leverage that it could have got a pretty good bid from a significant player in the recycling business who would have just gone out and done it for a certain price per household or per tonne collected and then would have accepted the responsibility for the market fluctuations and the city could have still interacted with the fund based on that type of an arrangement.

My concern is how well the city recyclables will end up being marketed and whether that will have a beneficial or a negative effect on the fund. It is too soon to make an observation yet, in my view. It was an issue that I raised at the time prior to the city issuing its contracts. They chose not to take my advice. It was free advice so I guess it was worth exactly what they paid for it, and we will see how it shakes down. But there need not be any hard feelings between the city and myself on this particular program, because I believe that the majority of the population is pretty much on my side. We are on the side of the angels, trying to get more recyclables pulled out of the waste stream in Winnipeg, and we will continue to push forward on that basis.

Mr. Dewar: At the conference that I attended, that was a big concern, of course, the way the prices have dropped from last year to this year, in particular I believe for paper, newsprint and so on. I assume that you are monitoring the market, and what do you see for the future in terms of markets and where prices are heading?

Mr. Cummings: I have not got an official market analysis in front of me. I did see a market analysis of the newsprint industry not too long ago which indicated some upturn in the price of virgin paper, so I expect that would be followed by an upturn in recyclables. One thing that could affect this is that I believe some of the states are starting to withdraw their mandatory requirement for recyclable content and newsprint used in their jurisdiction. Interestingly enough, that was something that Dr. Fenton and his group and the original WRAP strategy recommended against, and we did follow their recommendation in that respect, and it has in that sense turned out to be the right thing to do even though we were criticized quite severely at that time for not following the lead and encouraging further recycling. But there is increasing demand for recyclable material out there, going into the de-inking facilities, so I think that should be positive.

The opinion of others expressed through the department is that we should be looking at stable or maybe even slightly down. There are a number of things that impact on it and, as I say, for example, Abitibi, or now Pine Falls Paper, sells into a market that used to require a fair bit of recyclable. If that were to change, I suppose that would have negative impact on the system here.

Mr. Dewar: Another one of the presenters was Ian Wright from Miller Environmental Corporation. Can you tell us, enlighten us, as to how that relationship is going between Miller and the Manitoba Hazardous Waste Management Corporation?

Mr. Cummings: Yes. The business arrangement between Manitoba Hazardous Waste Corp. and Miller Environmental became effective the 1st of January. We had originally aimed for the first of November and then the first of December, but January became the logical point to turn it over because of the way the books were kept, et cetera. It is business as usual. Miller has not taken any dramatic steps, but I think the principals are planning on being in the province. If they have not already been here, they will be here shortly, and I think that they will be assessing their business plan and deciding what initiatives they are prepared to support.

They have an agreement that they will spend $3 million in capital investment in the plant over the next two years, I believe it is--I am going by memory now--two to three years, anyway, and an additional $5 million based on the business plan at that point. Miller is a very stable company, whether they are in the hazardous waste business or not, and I am not at all worried about their living up to their end of the agreement, but it will be their decision what the dollars will be invested in.

Mr. Dewar: Will the Miller Environmental Corporation or the Hazardous Waste Management Corporation be appearing before a committee of the House as the Hazardous Waste Corporation has in the past?

Mr. Cummings: No, but the wrap-up of the Hazardous Waste Corp., their final annual report, I suspect, will be in front of the committee, but as of the 1st of January it is cut off and will be operating as a private-sector entity and could even be reporting through the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson), if we chose to, because it would be a financial--we are a shareholder, not an operator at that point, and it is a privately operated company, a partnership, of which ManHaz owns 50 percent. Now, ManHaz would do whatever is deemed reasonable. ManHaz could report a year from now, but they would not have a heck of a lot to report because they are basically a shell board responsible for receiving any rental monies that would come in from Miller. The day-to-day operations would be handled by the Miller Environmental Corp.board, of which we will appoint half through the Manitoba Hazardous Waste Corp.

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Mr. Dewar: The 2-cent levy, now, I believe there is some confusion out there as to whether or not the PST and the GST are charged on that levy. Is it or is it not charged on that levy?

Mr. Cummings: Well, as a matter of fact, there was a fair bit of confusion at the start. It is, in fact, charged, but again credit goes to our Finance minister. He made it very clear he was not looking to cause any grief for anybody by accepting windfall PST profits from a levy driven by the best of intentions, environmental reasoning. The estimated amount of PST that would be received on that revenue stream is in fact added to the MPSP fund on an annual basis.

Mr. Dewar: So the revenue generated because of the placement of the GST and the PST, or I guess the PST, on that levy does not go into general government revenues?

Mr. Cummings: Yes. It is collected in its normal fashion but the Minister of Finance (Mr. Stefanson), by agreement, turns over what is the best estimated amount actually to the two funds. I forgot to mention the same thing happens on the tire fund. It is about 280 on the multimaterial program and 160 on tires.

Mr. Dewar: And, of course, the GST would go to our friends in Ottawa then?

I want to, before I leave this issue of recycling and waste management, just ask the minister why his government forgave the WRAP levies of close to $862,000 that were applied to beverage container companies who failed to reach their targets?

Mr. Cummings: I want to correct my earlier response on the GST. I am not sure that GST is collected on beverage containers, for example. I am not totally familiar with the tax but I think tires attract GST, the beverages would not. There is a further question about the forgiveness of the levy against the beverage container industry. This has been a constant source of aggravation, which is now, I believe, well accepted in the industry.

Manitoba embarked quite strongly to respond to the industry-driven initiative which was known as CIPSI. We were prepared to be, frankly, the first jurisdiction in the country to fully embrace the CIPSI model, which was that the industry would have provided in block funding an amount of money toward running of the recycling program similar to what we have in the province right now.

It became evident fairly quickly that the industry was not--and that was the grocery products industry which was fully integrated with the beverage container industry in this case. They were not prepared to put the kind of money into the program that we felt was necessary so we withdrew from those negotiations. I would suggest the best thing that happened was that, when we withdrew, the regionally managed sections of the beverage container industry came onside and decided that they would be prepared to work with our government in establishing a program because Manitoba did not have a program. We had quotas for which the beverage container industry could be penalized if they did not meet the quotas, in terms of recycling.

So when we proposed what is now the MPSP program, they were a little excited, frankly, feeling that we were only dealing with beverage containers in the initial stages, instead of the full CIPSI program which would have brought in contributions from all sorts of sectors, including newspapers. The unfairness of the CIPSI program in my view was that newspapers would carry the maximum amount of the cost.

Newspapers are in fact more recyclable than most other products but they are not necessarily a litter problem. They are not necessarily a waste problem and they are readily known as recyclable products. So I thought there was an unfairness in the CIPSI proposal, and there is some unfairness in the proposal that we now have in place, inasmuch as the newspapers are not yet contributing, but in the initial stages when recycled paper was at a very high value, they were in fact contributing strongly through the value of their product. They were not drawing down and were in fact creating the profit stream for some of the recycling activities.

The beverage container representatives in this area came to the table in negotiations and said that they were prepared to co-operate, as I said a moment ago, and that they realized that they were going to be putting--out of their industry was going to come $5 million per year, roughly. I think we thought 4.7 or something, to begin with, or 4.3. About the same time they had run out of time on a notice that we had put them on previously about not having their recyclable rates up to speed, and they were eligible for fines of up to eight hundred and some thousand dollars.

They put forward their resources, they put forward their co-operation, and we recognize that, whether it is a hidden $800,000 fine or whether it is a levy that is not hidden, in the end the consumer pays it anyway because it comes out of the margins that the companies put on their product, and it is not spread across Canada as some people would have implied. It would have showed up in regional cost here.

So I agreed, and willingly agreed, that, given their full co-operation, the implementation of the MPSP, that these fines would be waived. They were not in fact waived for a long time. It is only recently that they have in fact been waived.

So you could argue that this is not something that should be negotiated. It was not in fact negotiated. It was in fact in response to a diligent effort to get in place a recycling program, and that is the only basis upon which they could be dealt with.

They never came to my office and asked to negotiate. What they wanted to do was get a program in place that the industry and the public would get the best benefits out of. So the decision was made on this basis.

The beverage container industry now, and this year as well, will carry 100 percent of the total recycling program in the province unless we put some further levies on. Even then they are not likely to kick in until next year. So I think, really, if you were to put it in the crassest terms, we are looking at $10 million that we are taking out of the industry that otherwise we would have been looking at about an $800,000 fine.

Mr. Dewar: I would like to move on to an issue that is of great concern to myself and to many in my constituency and actually residents north of the city and deals again with water, and I think that is probably one of the most important environmental issues we have to deal with now. This relates to the fact that the Selkirk and District Planning Board approved a draft plan calling for changes to their plan which could create potentially 3,000 new residential lots between Winnipeg and Lockport, and as I mentioned yesterday that is on both sides of the Red River in the R.M.s of St. Clements, West St. Paul and St. Andrews. The municipal board is currently conducting hearings in Selkirk and I attended some of the hearings and heard some of the presentations. Unfortunately I was unable to hear the Department of Environment's presentation and I would be interested if the minister could tell us today, explain to the members here today what the presentation was.

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Mr. Cummings: Well, the position of the department was that we were opposed to reduction of lot sizes because of the history of problems we have had with clay soils and absorption. I believe the member might know that there has been some discussion for a number of years on new regulations for the establishment of private sewage systems, and I think maybe I have the words garbled a bit, but management of individual sewage, implementation of that might allow for something different provided permeability levels are met. The question very likely how they would meet them and the assumption is that they might not be able to meet them, but one should never assume that there might not be ways that this area could be subdivided differently.

The city has been upset with me over the BFI decision. Frankly, this decision goes the other way. The city might be happy to see less small lot development in rural areas. At the same time this is the kind of issue we have been trying to get the capital region to deal with for the last five or six years. Gathering of information and having the municipalities and the city face the stark reality of what the impact of their decisions are is really the way that I see this committee unfolding, and that is on the waste disposal issue, that is why we are gathering all the information even though the BFI application was in the works.

We have to have all of the municipalities and the city face the reality of what is out there, and this is another one that is exactly the same, in the sense that we gathered this information and I would have to say that the only way of describing the reaction of a number of the rural municipalities was ballistic. They were very, very unhappy with the idea that somebody assumed there were 8,000-and-some lots out there with potential to be developed. In reality they felt there was an awful lot less than that and maybe the actual numbers were somewhere in between, but I can tell you that if you think the reaction to BFI is high, this one will be equally as high, but it will be the other way.

Mr. Dewar: I do agree with the minister. I did listen to part of the presentation by a representative from the Department of Rural Development, and he raised a number of concerns regarding the septic fields on the clay soils in the area and the lack of knowledge as to the ground water supplies and made mention that public services may be demanded in the future at great cost or required at great cost if the sewage needs to be piped or water needs to be transported from a great distance. I understand, and perhaps you can just comment on it, that that is the situation now in parts of the R.M. of East St. Paul.

Mr. Cummings: Yes, that is pretty much the issue. I have to reorient myself as to where the exact locations are, but I believe East St. Paul is one of the areas where there is difficulty, where we have got sewage running from one yard to the next, obviously pitting neighbour against neighbour. There are a number of ways of dealing with this that unfortunately those in the area probably do not want to deal with. Putting in a sewer and water line is one solution, and it is the most expensive solution. Individual solutions could be to go to different types of systems. Low-volume water usage would be the first step in reducing the overload on some of these septic systems.

Personally, I believe that there is opportunity for private sewage treatment systems where groups of houses could be hooked together. There seems to be technology out there but, in the end, somebody has to take responsibility for running it, and a loosely knit group of householders getting together and saying that they will undertake this probably does not provide a very viable answer in the end either. It needs to be the responsibility of the municipality or otherwise. The other solution is composting toilets, I suppose, extremely low-volume toilets, low-volume shower heads, all those things to get away from putting anything other than gray water out into the septic system are part of that.

It has always been my view that this regulation--I got broadsided on this regulation about five years ago in some of the early meetings of the Capital Region Committee, and one group at the meeting wanted nothing to do with this because it would destroy the opportunity for subdivision, and the other municipality, one municipality in particular, was righteously indignant because we had not moved in this area, and they wished to impose stronger environmental regulations on subdivisions on their own than what we were prepared to support them on. This problem is now also coming to a head, and I guess we will see more of it this summer, more of it in terms of dealing with it.

Mr. Dewar: Does the minister have a figure in terms of volume of the waste water, the gray water, I believe they call it, that could be generated if they do double the size or double the amount of residential lots? What they are asking for now is to move from four-acre lots to two-acre lots. Do you have an estimate as to how much gray water would be generated if such a move was to go ahead?

Mr. Cummings: I do not want to confuse the terms, and maybe I used them interchangeably a moment ago. Gray water would not be septic, but in terms of volume, that varies widely. That is why, I guess, I referenced the usage within the house.

I guess the stereotypical problem in this type of system is if a family of four leaves a fully developed housing situation in the city of Winnipeg, goes to the rural area and is hooked onto a well or whatever, believe they have more or less unlimited water supply at least, and continue to use water at a rate the same as the city or maybe even greater. A septic field in this area just cannot handle it unless it has about five acres to spread out over. So doubling the number of lots would certainly compound the problem because you just could not contain it easily on two acres unless you separate the septic from the gray water and use the gray water for other reasons.

(Mr. Jack Penner, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair)

That is country living and I am afraid what we have too often on these subdivisions is people wanting the fresh air and the trees and the birds and the river going by behind them living in the country, but they want all of the city comforts, and this is one area where the two do not necessarily coincide.

* (1000)

I am told that 60 gallons per person per day is the average water consumption. So, by having twice the number of families, a calculation could be made, but if you take 60 times four, you are looking at 240, 250 gallons-a-day discharge from a household. That would overload or come close to overloading a septic system, in my view at least, and I have lived in the country all my life. That would overload a system in soils that were even more permeable than the Red River clays. I mean, that is trouble. In my household, a thousand gallons, plus the rainwater off the roof, will probably last two weeks or longer because we were always used to using less water. So by comparison, you are talking about half of that.

Mr. Dewar: I am pleased that the minister has taken this position. I was very much concerned about the changes and the potential impacts upon the environment.

The other issue is the ground water supply and regulating that supply, I believe, or allocating that water is the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, but it is your responsibility to protect the quality of the ground water. What legislation is there in place currently to protect ground water in this province? Do you think it is sufficient to deal with all these problems that we are encountering?

Mr. Cummings: The Environment Act, The Dangerous Goods Handling and Transportation Act and certain provisions in Natural Resources. So the acts that they administer regarding the management of wells, installation and stopping contaminants from getting into the ground water, those are areas where we enforce to prevent contamination of the water.

Now, the member asks, is there sufficient regulation out there to protect ground water today? Yes, but that does not mean that there are not additional things that we could or perhaps even should do. We as a government have identified on several occasions that the No. 1 priority--or certainly No. 2, if not No. 1--is ground water in terms of environmental protection because once it is contaminated, the chances of decontaminating it are very poor.

In this case, aquifers that are being heavily drawn on, I am not sure that there is a chance of domestic draw over the capacity of the aquifer in that area. I am not totally familiar with it but, generally speaking, domestic has not been overloading the draw on these aquifers that we are aware of. But when you are looking at domestic water supply from ground water and sewage disposal problems in the same area, the level of risk is doubled or more because if you have a well in your backyard and a septic system, too, you better make sure your well is well sealed if your septic system fails. I mean, that is an obvious example of where we have some significant concerns about how subdivision relates to septic disposal. It does not make the developers very happy, but you will see more and more of them moving to cluster developments where they will put some kind of infrastructure in including septic systems, if you were to ask my opinion on how this might be dealt with in the long run.

Mr. Dewar: Last summer, in terms of water--and referring to my extensive notes here--there was a great deal of concern about the high count of fecal coliform in around the beaches here in the province. Levels--Grand Beach with 340 units; The Forks, it was high as 1,160 units; 530 units at Middlechurch and so on and, of course, the ongoing problem that we face in Selkirk with the Red. Some of that issue has been dealt with and, hopefully, in the near future we will no longer be required to draw on the Red River as an emergency source of drinking water. But I just want to raise the issue, I raise it every year, and that deals with the action that the minister has taken to clean up the Red River.

What action is he planning on taking in this upcoming year to deal with the high counts in the Red River?

Mr. Cummings: I do not mean this to sound uncaring, but it has probably just had a big flush. That will clean a lot of it up. It is more of an ongoing rather than a specific year-by-year issue, incremental as well. I would suggest that there is a third item that is now being watched additionally, and that is agricultural operations. As they increase, we have to make sure that they are not increasing at the expense of the environment.

I will just go back one quick moment. I said that there were not too many examples of domestic draw exceeding aquifer supply. There are two obvious ones. One is Winkler, and Selkirk. As a matter of fact they get up to the max of that aquifer from time to time, and there are a couple of others in rural Manitoba, I guess. So I take back that original statement.

But in terms of the Red River, the city's ongoing upgrading program, they are actually scheduled for improvements on their plants, so we can give you a predictable schedule. The city, because of the magnitude of the program, as I have said before, we are prepared to schedule it on an affordable basis for them because we are looking at big bucks, and that is the one thing that has impacted on this.

I would say in defence of myself and the department, however, that the only reason it is not done yet is for the reason that I just stated, and in fact we have seen more movement in the last three or four years than I would have predicted prior to that. The city actually agreed quite willingly to a schedule once they realized that we were determined that they should do something. So their budget will in fact over a period of years allow them to schedule implementation of more disinfection.

Mr. Dewar: Will the department be monitoring the fecal coliform count this summer? Hopefully we will be at a stage where we can enjoy the beaches we have in this province. Will they be aggressively monitoring the count in the southern basin of Lake Winnipeg?

Mr. Cummings: The answer to the member's question is yes, the department monitors, and it was evidenced last year, I guess. We shut down some areas, but there was monitoring, and some areas were shut down by order last year. It was unfortunate that it had to be done, but, nevertheless, public health comes first.

Mr. Dewar: I do agree with the minister. Which beaches were shut down and when?

Mr. Cummings: I cannot give you an exhaustive list, but the number was not that high. It was beaches at the south end of Lake Winnipeg that were impacted in '94. In '95, I do not think I have--the one that has had the most action over in '95 was Pelican Lake. I am also informed by the department that the Winnipeg south end treatment plant will have disinfection on stream this year.

* (1010)

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Yes, Mr. Chairperson, excuse me for not necessarily knowing what line we are on, but I do have a question.

Mr. Cummings: It is wide open.

Mr. Lamoureux: Wide-open discussion.

I would like to be able to ask a number of questions of the minister regarding landfill sites in particular and possibly even go on to some biomedical waste.

A while back, the CEC met over at the Convention Centre and had public hearings. I had made a presentation as the local MLA regarding the proposal to have a landfill site built just north of Rosser which is being sponsored by the BFI. The BFI was the company that was looking at authorizing or getting this landfill site. The ministry has just authorized or given the okay for the landfill site to go ahead.

There are a number of concerns and I want to take the opportunity to express what I believe I have expressed to CEC. CEC did come up with a recommendation. The recommendation that they came out of on those public hearings was that in fact the provincial Department of Environment has to demonstrate more leadership in dealing with the capital region and landfill sites or waste disposal sites.

My presentation that I made was that a lot of people might say, well, gee, you know, you happen to border the area in which the landfill site is being located and the only reason I was in opposition to it was because I did not want it in my backyard. So I decided to address that issue.

Mr. Cummings: I would never say that.

Mr. Lamoureux: Of course, the Minister of Environment would never say that--but, Mr. Chairperson, I felt that it was probably in my best interest to take the offence and indicate why it is that I was not taking that approach, at least not at that point in time. At some point of time in the future, discussions on it--I might have entertained the thought of taking that approach, but I did not think it was necessary at that time, and this is the reason why. In the discussions that I have had with a number of people regarding landfill sites, it was indicated to me--and these were primarily individuals from the different municipalities, in particular, Selkirk and the city of Winnipeg--that the city of Winnipeg and the capital region as a whole have a number of landfill sites that if properly utilized we would not require any additional landfill sites. I had talked to some individuals who had definitely implied--and I am not an environmentalist by any stretch of anyone's imagination--but the individuals who were talking to me were definitely giving me the impression that the city of Winnipeg does not need to even have more than one landfill site. Now we have two landfill sites, and it seemed to me that we were going to get a third landfill site at that time servicing the city of Winnipeg.

I presented the argument, first and foremost, what the CEC should attempt to do is clarify for us how many landfill sites are necessary for Winnipeg and the capital region. I did not see a recommendation to that degree but I did see a recommendation, as I indicated, that said that the province has to take more of that leadership role. So, having said that, first and foremost, I would ask the Minister of Environment, in his department's opinion and in his opinion, is there really a need for three landfill sites, given the population of the city of Winnipeg and even the capital region?

Mr. Cummings: Well, I went through this to some extent with the member for Selkirk (Mr. Dewar) a few minutes ago and yesterday, and I quite agree with the recommendation of the commission and the member for Inkster that there needs to be co-ordination in the capital region. One of the things that I have acknowledged, however, is that that co-ordination has to be based on the municipalities and the city jointly knowing the ramifications of their decisions, full knowledge of what may or may not happen 10, 20, 30 years out. There needs to be a full range of long-range planning and a strategy for implementation of services, not just landfill, all manner of services. Landfill just becomes the most obvious flashpoint today.

Just a few minutes ago, we were talking about small-lot subdivision in rural areas. That is going to be the next flashpoint in this debate about capital region planning. We sat down, starting three or four years ago, and had a significant strategy process put in place through the round table process. The city participated fully and, to their credit, the present mayor and the previous mayor committed themselves and attended regularly on behalf of council but, in the matter of putting that planning in place, all parties agreed to participate provided the province would not take the hammer and legislate agreement. It had to be a mutually agreed agreement.

There were a number of people representing different jurisdictions who would not be at the table if the consequence of being there meant that the province would seize the hammer and implement by law some of the recommendations of that strategy. Now, you can ask, if you wish, the wisdom of even continuing discussions on that basis. Nevertheless, they were continued, because I believed there was a lot of good will at the table and willingness to co-operate but, at the same time, a desire to maintain a good element of independence.

You can look at the amalgamation of the city of Winnipeg, if you want, in terms of independence versus amalgamation or a legislated solution to diverse supplying of services. Amalgamation of the city of Winnipeg may have been seen to be a very good idea, but there are still lingering problems with that amalgamation today.

The organization of the fire department I believe is an example. They still inherited the regions, the management hierarchy and all of those things. I am not here to criticize it; I am only pointing out that even amalgamation has some lingering problems that are associated with that enforced solution.

(Mr. Deputy Chairperson in the Chair)

I suppose the very fact that BFI put forward a proposal because, if they are a business entity, they must believe that there is a business plan that will support operation of another landfill, but this regional committee that has been meeting was well-aware from Day One of the proposal for another landfill.

There are also other proposals out there. St. Clements has a proposal for a landfill. I believe Ritchot has a proposal. Two or three municipalities have in fact made an arrangement with the City of Winnipeg recently to rent space in their landfill or to hire them to remove their waste at so much a tonne. The City of Winnipeg would not, as recently in this--the member would have got a letter from the City of Winnipeg that says in '94, they opened up for negotiations to the surrounding municipalities to use space in their landfill. Unfortunately, I wish they had done that six years ago or seven years ago when the problem was ripe to be fixed, when we first put the Capital Region Committee together. That was when we needed to have the willingness--we have been talking for seven years. I was Minister of Municipal Affairs when we disbanded the ad zone and tried to replace it with the Capital Region Committee, and we are still dealing with this issue eight years later. It comes down to the fact that unless there is a desire on the part of the public or the better interest of the public as a whole to legislate the plan in this area, it has to be agreed on co-operatively between the duly elected organizations that are at the table.

The BFI proposal was around six, seven years ago. It was in East St. Paul, I believe, originally, where they were going to site it and because of some local politics and a number of other things which are not relevant anymore, they left there--pardon me, not East St. Paul, West St. Paul. They ended up finding a friendly community in Rosser or a friendly R.M. in Rosser. So that issue was on the table-- even when the proposal first came up, the city I suppose could have struck a blow at that point if they had aggressively gone after surrounding municipalities.

* (1020)

The problem I have is that we are regulating the closure of an awful lot of landfills out there. We want them closed. There are a lot of municipalities out there, particularly north of the city, that are looking for space. Are they going to haul from Eriksdale down to BFI? I somehow doubt it.

But BFI is not just about going after commercial waste in the city of Winnipeg. It, as a political issue, has been an issue with the municipalities for access to landfill space with or without building their own, and the co-operation to get to use of one landfill did not rise to the surface quick enough to deter BFI from continuing with their proposal. If the government of the day were to--as many people have asked and as I believe you were asking, why did the government just decide there is not going to be another landfill and just frustrate them to the point where they would go away. Frankly, that is an abuse of the environment process, in my view. It had to be handled openly, which it was.

You may not agree with the final conclusions or the recommendations of the Clean Environment Commission, but the process was allowed to proceed because there was not a planning or a legal mechanism in place to kibosh it, frankly, without compromising the principles of this government which is to allow open discussion and independent decision making of the relevant elected bodies and that includes school boards, municipalities, city of Winnipeg. After a while, the province does not need to presume the responsibility for the decision making of every one of the jurisdictions across the province. That is the bigger picture.

The close-up look at BFI, not too far away from the airport--we discussed that yesterday, the decisions made around that, the recommendations or the approval from federal transport authorities. All of those things were brought into the decision-making process.

Specifics of the licence: I am not going to discuss that at this committee because I am responsible for hearing any appeals now that the director has issued the particular licence.

Does there need to be an additional volume? You can argue that Brady could hold a hundred years' worth of garbage or 80 years worth of waste, but BFI has put information on the table which I believe the public has not had a proper opportunity to look at where they are prepared to talk to the City of Winnipeg about how they can actually save the city some money, and it is a considerable amount of money.

It is not my job to advocate on behalf of BFI about their proposal, but I mentioned yesterday the very fact that they are going to have leachate that needs to be treated, they are prepared to pay the City of Winnipeg to do that. The city could make money treating the leachate from that site, if they chose to. They may choose not to do business with them at all. So, therefore, what will happen? They will either hire another municipality or they will build an onsite treatment facility.

Swapping of waste. Why should the city haul from the very north part of the city down to Brady when they could do a swap with BFI, and BFI would give them the same price that the city would give to BFI to put something in Brady? Whatever arrangements they want to work out, there are millions of dollars on the table here in that respect.

The city has been making Brady a significant profit centre. I do not for one moment ignore that, but, as I just went through the decision-making process, I am not too sure that the member can show me, other than the province imposing by law a planning process on the region that you could have had a different conclusion than what we have today.

Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairperson, if you follow through on what the minister has just finished saying, if Laidlaw decides tomorrow that they too would like to have a landfill site and they want to build one out east of Transcona, in fairness to Laidlaw, would they not then also be granted the same treatment that was given to BFI as long as they go through CEC, and CEC says, well, there is no marginalized environmental damage by having another landfill site located there, is it then fair for us to say, look, you are going to treat Laidlaw in the same fashion you have treated BFI?

Mr. Cummings: I would answer the question directly. I did indicate that St. Clements is looking to site a landfill. I mean, it is the same issue whether it is a municipality or whether it is privately held. I know there is a certain aura that some people put around a privately run waste management facility, but the fact is that if you look at how markets around any kind of waste management are unfolding across North America, the cost of the infrastructure--I mean, the Charleswood bridge is a perfect example. Who would have thought 10 years ago the private sector would build a bridge and lease it to the city or precisely what the arrangements are?

The same thing is true in terms of private versus public investment in infrastructure. You could without any problem see all sorts of water lines, for example, a possibility where the private sector believes they can put up the money and the management expertise and sell the water on a competitive basis to municipalities where they might not otherwise have been able to afford to put the system in if they operated individually. There is an example of that west of the city right now where municipalities are talking in that respect.

I use that as an example to say that as a regulator, and the minister representing the regulating department, I do not have a problem regulating the private sector; they are easier to regulate than the public sector. The amount of political pressure that the public sector can put on a department to avoid fully implementing their regulations is enormous. I mean, we just talked about the Red River. We have treated the City of Winnipeg reasonably. The other side of it is public pressure on the public entity, the municipality, can also be very high, to force them to do things that maybe they would think are beyond their responsibility if they had been in the private sector. I realize that it cuts both ways.

Your question about could another landfill be put in the area, yes. I sure as heck am not promoting one. As I told the capital regions meeting the last time we met, we have got to face each other and look across the table and look at the reality of what they are doing. They want massive investment of their own dollars. I guess this is the one area where they have come to a realization that it is not necessarily their own dollars they are investing. I suppose that puts less pressure on them when they allow this kind of private sector development, because what you are doing is pressuring an existing, publicly funded, publicly built landfill at Brady, but we had a situation where there were commercial haulers in the city of Winnipeg who were taking waste out of the city, not to Brady. They were avoiding tipping fees at Brady. They were taking it to other landfills.

It has not been such a public issue, and it has not been a problem because they were putting it into licensed facilities, but they were shopping around because the city, 15 to 20 years ago, made the decision that they were not going to pick up commercial waste except once a week. A lot of commercial operations out there need it twice a day probably. So they were faced with hiring their own truck to take away their own garbage and then they were being charged a tipping fee wherever they took it. So they have a reasonable expectation that they should be able to shop around and see what the charges might be for tipping fees. That is what attracted BFI, I presume. I should not presume anything, frankly, but you could see where that would be a logical extension of why a private sector operator might think it would be reasonable to put a landfill somewhere in the area.

* (1030)

Mr. Lamoureux: At this point, I do not think it is necessarily private versus public. What I am looking at is what is in the public's best interest in the capital region, and I do not believe for a moment allowing anyone that wants to have a landfill site to giving them the authority to construct and operate the landfill site is the best way to go. I ultimately would argue that, look, how many landfill sites, the type of landfill sites or size or capacity--I do not know the technical jargon that most would know. I am just applying simple common sense, saying how many landfill sites does the city of Winnipeg and capital region require? Now, once you have determined that, then you can look at potential locations. The Minister of Environment talks about Ritchot, talks about St. Clements. We could talk about Laidlaw. Who knows what is out there in terms of individuals or groups, or whether it is public or private that wants to be able to cash in on waste disposal, and there is a phenomenal amount of money that is out there for disposing of waste.

Mr. Chairperson, what we are looking for specifically is leadership from within the Department of Environment, because that is where that leadership role has to come from. The minister says, well, we are not prepared to use the hammer. Well, maybe there is a need to start using the hammer. If you have a capital region and they are unable to come to any sort of a consensus in terms of what is in the best interests of that area, to what degree does the minister allow this to continue on? If I were the president of Laidlaw, I would be, effective not today but yesterday, trying to get my own location, because--the minister makes reference to tipping fees. That is no doubt one of the primary reasons why BFI was as aggressive as it has been to try to get an additional landfill site, but does that resolve the issue? I would argue no, because I understand even the City of Winnipeg, some councillors are currently considering going into commercial waste disposal now as a direct result of the minister approving this particular licence.

So what you have is you have a dispute that is going on between private, public sector, between municipalities and the City of Winnipeg, and this dispute is being allowed to continue on, and at what cost? How does the average Winnipegger or individual living in a surrounding municipality benefit by us allowing this dispute to go on? At what point in time does the minister have to bring in--he makes reference to legislation. Would legislation be necessary? If it is necessary maybe the minister should be considering it. Maybe the minister should be sitting down with the City of Winnipeg and the municipalities and saying, look, we want this thing ironed out. You have an obligation as elected officials to put this question to rest. If they are not prepared to put it to rest, to what degree is the minister going to allow it to continue on?

As I believe it is appropriate, if Laidlaw approaches the CEC or has a proposal, ultimately it has just as much of a right as BFI does to operate a landfill site as long as CEC says that it is environmentally sound in terms of where it is that it is looking at because I do not believe, and the minister I hope will correct me if I am wrong, the CEC said that the capital region only needs one or the capital region can only sustain 10 landfill sites.

I do not believe that is what it did. I believe what it did was just say, given that particular location, it did not have too much of a problem as long as these standards are met. That is my interpretation. Well, using that CEC recommendation, nothing prevents other groups or individuals coming forward saying we too want to have a landfill site. The Minister of Environment, using the logic that he has expressed not only today but in the past, and no doubt in informal discussions, the position is going to be fine, until the city and municipalities or the capital region can get their act together, we are going to let whomever wants to have a landfill site, we will give them the green light, and we will allow them to have the landfill site. I do not think that is in the best interests of Manitobans, that in fact, the Ministry of Environment could have and should have and it is still not too late to play a stronger role in trying to resolve this issue.

If the minister wants to make it a private versus public issue, well, if that is really the big issue, a question of privatization, then privatize one of the current landfill sites and provide incentives to allow that to take place. Did those sorts of discussions even occur? My best guess is that they did not occur, at least I never heard any feedback that they occurred. But how can the ministry through me or directly to the public justify allowing anyone that wants to be able to establish a landfill site, how can they justify allowing that to occur? Or at what point in time does the ministry say no, we have enough landfill sites, or we are going to have an overall approach at dealing with landfill?

This whole argument of, well, look, you know, the municipalities and so forth have to operate completely independently and it is for them to ultimately make the decision and so forth. There is a lot of merit to that argument. In fact, Mr. Chairperson, I used that argument when the Ministry of Education here mandated school divisions their tax increases, or disallowed them from having tax increases. So, you know, there are ways in which one could argue on both sides of that.

What we want to know is at what point in time is the Ministry of Environment going to take more of a leadership role on this particular issue?

Mr. Cummings: Mr. Chairman, I guess we have just heard a reasoned dissertation from the Liberal Party on their view of planning in the capital region, which sounds to me like it would dictate to legislation what could develop in the capital region and what could not, sort of an extension in the toll road philosophy that we have seen discussed over the last couple of years.

The fact is that siting a landfill is an extremely expensive business proposition. Even though there are municipalities out there of modest means and small population, we are still considering siting landfills. I think that even they are reconsidering now, given the very stringent environmental laws that are put in place for siting.

If you are talking about the capacity of landfills, Brady versus the proposed Rosser site, and then if your imagination stretches to think that there might be a third one, we are talking several millions of dollars for somebody to put at risk to establish another landfill. So the chances of another landfill of that size is probably remote, based on a business proposition, because at the same time we are looking to reduce volumes going to landfills.

As I stated earlier and perhaps overlooked it, when we are talking about volume reductions here and going to our landfills, we believe we have 25 percent reduction on household waste now, and in fact we have even greater reduction than that going to landfills because tires are out of there as well. So that is a significant volume in itself when you look at 800 to a million tires that used to go to a landfill. So who would want to be in the landfill business?

Some of the municipalities out there, in my view, are making a mistake on behalf of their electors considering putting in additional landfill capacity. But what has happened is, in the area outside of the city at least, they have gone from $5 per capita to sometimes four times that much in order to have to deal with the laws that we are putting in place today for environmental protection. So that in itself drives an awful lot of the consolidation of landfills out there.

* (1040)

Talking about capital region management, the Province of Manitoba, and it is not just the Department of Environment--when I said that the province has not chosen to use the hammer in controlling the number of landfills going in the area, I wonder how many jurisdictions in North America have the reverse problem. They cannot site a landfill, so it is rather unique in the sense that we have this question. But the very fact that we have not used the hammer does not mean that the Department of Environment even has the hammer.

The capital region has the province represented there by rural development, by urban affairs, and by environment, simply because environment is such an important part of the area, and I suppose because I have some historic--the department more than me has some historic connection over the number of years in this process. We have had a minimum of four meetings a year with the capital regions and more often on committee basis. We have had probably 25 to 30 meetings of the capital regions in the last number of years, so I directly rebut what the member said about why do we not get everybody together and force them to do something about this. It is an interesting concept. The same thing was said when we talked about Headingley, St. Germain, the area at the north end of the city where East St. Paul, I believe, wants to hook onto the city sewage mains. The sewage main, as I understand it, is oversized at that end to accommodate further development. It is oversized right at the city's boundary, but nobody has ever agreed to that hookup.

People from time to time have contemplated more of a regional-type approach to the management of public affairs in this area. I am not sitting here pointing fingers at the city any more than I am pointing them at the surrounding municipalities, but the leadership of those municipalities on behalf of their electorate have to make the best decisions on a monetary basis for their taxpayer. The city is most unhappy with the possibility of another landfill being developed. I understand that. I even appreciate why they might be unhappy, but sooner or later somebody is going to ask what was the margin that they are putting into the city coffers as a result of what is going into that landfill. I am told that it is in excess of several million dollars. It is not the $7 million that we are talking about in terms of potential disagreement between the city, myself and BFI about what financial impacts, and more so than that, the city is not going to lose control of its household waste. This is a commercial waste issue.

I believe that there are ways that the city and the surrounding municipalities can come to a more amicable solution on this. If they had done it sooner than later, we might not be facing a commercial entity that was prepared to compete for some of the commercial waste within the city, but they will also be competing for waste in other parts of the surrounding area and no doubt will do it aggressively, because they are talking about putting in recycling capability and not just being a dump. So they have every reason to be confident that they will compete out there. If the city reacts by saying that this is a straight loss of revenue without looking at how they may contain their costs at the same time, then I would hope that that is not a route that they will take. In fact, I am confident that the city councillors are pretty capable and that they will, on reviewing this, look at their costs as well as the revenue stream that comes out of Brady site.

But I repeat, unless we are prepared to take legislative authority--and I guess I am being encouraged to do that by the member for Inkster--and impose a plan on the capital region, I do not think any other conclusion could come out of this.

Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairperson, what I am encouraging the Minister of Environment to do is to play a leadership role, the same thing that CEC, the Clean Environment Commission, encouraged the Minister of Environment to do, and to that end, a very, very specific question in hopes to get a very, very specific response: Does the minister believe that it is in the capital region's best interest to have this third landfill site built, which will primarily serve the city of Winnipeg?

Mr. Cummings: I guess I was trying to indicate that given some, by rough estimates, 25 to 30 meetings that have occurred and that a strategy has been developed for the area and that a mutually beneficial approach to projects is the right approach, I think we have provided leadership. The only problem is that we have not necessarily got a crowd following. There is independent decision making going on out there that we still must respect.

I think if we were to consider other areas besides waste disposal, the capital region has got an awful lot of strengths. There are a lot of people who do live outside the city who work and spend dollars in the city, and they live in the surrounding region. The surrounding region benefits from the city, its metropolitan or urban lifestyle, the amenities that are available here. It is a mutually agreeable area to live in and they should be able to feed off each other in a positive and not a negative way.

I think the opportunities that have been identified through this Capital Region Committee have been quite enormous. The number of them that have been built upon following on that, I am not so sure that we have seen the benefits that we identified, but the very fact that there might be some additional housing developed outside of the city is balanced off by the fact that the city receives enormous revenues and benefits from being the hub of not only this area, but all of the province.

So I am not an advocate for any particular company, I am an advocate for looking at the best way of providing services to the public short of legislation and, believe me, legislation has been discussed. As I said a few minutes ago, the condition of keeping the capital region still meeting was that the province would not immediately turn around and use that information to impose a legislated plan in the area. The member cannot have it both ways. I mean, if he wants this legislated or if he wants legislation to control the number of landfills in the capital region then please say so.

Mr. Lamoureux: Mr. Chairperson, I would suggest to you that if in fact you cannot justify three landfill sites to service Winnipeg and the capital region, in order to prevent it, if it required legislation, then there should be legislation. How do I tell the constituent that I represent, look, we are going to have a landfill site built even though it is not necessary but because the province failed to be able to bring the parties together and come up with some sort of a consensus that would have seen the more appropriate number?

I could ask the minister to demonstrate, because I said right at the beginning, you know, I am concerned like every Manitoban about our environment but, by no stretch of the imagination am I as intellectually capable as many others in terms of dealing with this particular issue of the need for landfill sites and the number of landfill sites.

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I guess I would challenge the Minister of Environment to provide someone that does have that expertise, that could justify, not politically or philosophically, but could justify the need for an additional landfill site, the current additional landfill site that is being proposed, how it is in Winnipeg's and the surrounding area's best interests, not economically, but environmentally, that it is in Winnipeg's best interest. I would challenge the minister to be able to provide someone that is in a position to be able to do that.

Mr. Chairperson, I look forward to the minister, hopefully, providing me that. Failing that, I would have to assume--because he did not really answer the question--the question was does Winnipeg and the surrounding area need to have this other landfill site? Having said that, I want to concentrate on what the results are of this decision or the government's inability to address this particular issue. Well, from the City Council's perspective, they would argue that because of loss of revenues we are going to either have to increase property taxes or we are going to have to cut back on services, that is at least in part. The minister could respond by saying, well, gee, maybe they should not have been charging as much. Well, what do other municipalities charge for dumping fees? I understand that Winnipeg is relatively competitive with those fees.

One could ultimately say, what are the citizens--how have they come out overall in the capital region? Well, environmentally, there is no argument that has been put forward to justify having this other landfill site. What then prevents other companies from bringing forward landfill sites, such as--as I have pointed out--Laidlaw? I know if I was the president of Laidlaw, given this government's and particularly this minister's position on landfill sites, I would be planning, if not trying to bargain to get a Brady or the Summit privatized. I would be attempting to establish my own landfill site because, again, I am at a bit of a disadvantage if my competitor, that being BFI, has their own landfill site. So, in essence, the minister is opening the door for anyone who is prepared to meet the standards that have been set out to have yet another landfill site built.

Philosophically, what has been gained? Well, many might argue that garbage disposal is best handled through the public sector and many others would argue that it could be equally, if not better, done through the private sector. I am not prepared to enter into that particular debate at this point in time, but I do know what many councillors are talking about today is that City Hall should now get involved in a commercial garbage disposal. The minister shrugs his shoulders. Well, let them, is the implication. How have we really benefitted throughout this whole process? At times, I do believe that the government could have played--was the Premier brought in on some of these discussions in order to assist coming up with a compromise in which everyone would benefit? Mr. Chairperson, I believe that everyone could have benefitted.

I sat through the presentation from BFI and Kim Sigurdson and so forth, an excellent presentation. There is no doubt that BFI could provide a landfill site that is at the leading edge and, no doubt, Laidlaw could do the same thing. If the will was there, no doubt the City of Winnipeg could do likewise. Does that then mean that we should have all these landfill sites servicing the capital region? I would say not. The individual or the minister responsible has really let down the people of Manitoba who are in that capital region because, ultimately, what you have done is you have given the green light.

I think CEC was right on when they made the recommendation that they wanted to see more leadership coming from the province on this particular issue. I, too, was wanting to see more leadership coming from the province and we really have not seen that. I appreciate the minister is responsible for the final appeal, and I would request that the minister take this final comment from me on this issue, for today anyway, as my personal appeal to the minister. That is, before, ultimately, BFI starts any sort of construction at least demonstrate to the constituents that I represent, and the people that live in the capital region, that there is a need for this landfill site that is strictly based on environmental arguments, not on economic arguments, because the economic arguments should have, could have, and still could be resolved if the will was there, and the people that have to ensure that will is there is the Department of Environment headed by the Minister of Environment.

With those few comments, Mr. Chairperson, I am prepared to stop asking questions and I will save my biomedical waste questions until possibly next year. Thank you.

Mr. Cummings: Well, I am tempted to respond somewhat harshly. The member is trying to hurt my feelings. The fact is, however, that I have heard his concerns, but let me only say that environmental need is a different term than when you see operations intending to provide service, and I am not talking about landfills but in the broadest sense. An environmental regulation is to protect the environment from any harm or damage that an operation may impose, and I think we are, by my choice, mixing and matching the planning and environmental law or enforcement of environmental regulations.

I have no argument to the idea that there needs to be better planning, but it is going to have to be done with the co-operation, albeit perhaps coerced co-operation in some cases, in the capital region. We are not backing away from the capital region concept. We have got all of the players at the table, and I think the one thing that will happen is that they will face the reality of their decisions sooner than later, and in this case, they face them later.

Mr. Deputy Chairperson: 1. Administration and Finance (b) Executive Support (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $332,900--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $78,400--pass.

1.(c ) Financial and Administrative Services (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $813,300--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $476,100--pass.

2. Environmental Management (a) Environmental Operations (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $4,303,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $1,014,000--pass.

2.(b) Environmental Management (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $2,675,400--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $2,232,000--pass.

2.(c) Legislation and Intergovernmental Affairs (1) Salaries and Employee Benefits $163,800--pass; (2) Other Expenditures $89,700--pass.

Resolution 31.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $10,478,300 for Environment, Environmental Management for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.

3.(a) Salaries and Employee Benefits $235,500--pass; (b) Other Expenditures $166,300--pass.

Resolution 31.3: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $401,800 for Environment, Clean Environment Commission for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.

4. International Institute for Sustainable Development $1,145,900--pass.

Resolution 31.4: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,145,900 for Environment, International Institute for Sustainable Development for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.

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The last item to be considered for the Estimates of the Department of Environment is item 1.(a) Minister's Salary $25,200.

At this point we request the minister's staff leave the table for the consideration of this item.

Is there any debate on this item?

1.(a) Minister's Salary $25,200--pass.

Resolution 31.1: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $1,725,900 for Environment, Administration and Finance for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1997.

This completes the Estimates of the Department of Environment.