ENVI Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Á

1100

The Chair (Hon. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.))

Á

1105

Ms. Karen Lloyd (Acting Director General, Knowledge Integration Directorate, Department of the Environment)

Á

1110

Á

1115

The Chair

Ms. Karen Lloyd

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith (Manager, National Indicators and Reporting Office, Department of the Environment)

Á

1120

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith (Assistant Chief Statistician, National Accounts and Analytical Studies, Statistics Canada)

Á

1125

Á

1130

The Chair

Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Canadian Alliance)

Á

1135

The Chair

Mr. Bob Mills

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

Á

1140

Mr. Bob Mills

Ms. Karen Lloyd

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

The Chair

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ)

Mr. Philip Smith

Á

1145

Mr. Bernard Bigras

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Bernard Bigras

Mr. Philip Smith

Á

1150

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—St. Clair, NDP)

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin

Á

1155

Mr. Philip Smith

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Philip Smith

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Philip Smith

Â

1200

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC)

Â

1205

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. John Herron

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Paul Szabo

Â

1210

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Karen Lloyd

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Philip Smith

Â

1215

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.)

Â

1220

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

Â

1225

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

Mr. Robert Smith (Assistant Director, Environment Accounts and Statistics Division, Statistics Canada)

The Chair

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.)

Â

1230

Mr. Robert Smith

Mr. Julian Reed

Â

1235

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

Â

1240

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

The Chair

Ms. Karen Lloyd

The Chair

Ms. Hélène Scherrer (Louis-Hébert, Lib.)

Â

1245

The Chair

Mr. Bob Mills

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris—Moose Mountain, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

Â

1250

The Chair

Mr. Roy Bailey

Â

1255

The Chair

Ms. Hélène Scherrer

Ms. Risa Smith

Ms. Hélène Scherrer

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

·

1300

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Karen Lloyd

Mr. Paul Szabo

Ms. Karen Lloyd

Mr. Paul Szabo

The Chair

Ms. Risa Smith

Mr. Paul Szabo

The Chair

Mr. Philip Smith

·

1305

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks

Ms. Risa Smith

The Chair

Mr. Robert Smith

The Chair

·

1310

Ms. Karen Lloyd

The Chair

Mr. Bob Mills

The Chair

Mr. Alan Tonks

·

1315

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

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NUMBER 020

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Thursday, March 20, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1100)  

[English]

    The Chair (Hon. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): As you know, the purpose of this meeting is to study the merits of resurrecting the well-known and badly missed report, Report on the State of Canada's Environment, which saw the light of day and fell victim to austerity, so they say. It informed governments and Canadians about the condition of the environment, and provided a way of measuring the condition of the environment either upwards or downwards

    Since we have a breathing spell between other commitments, it occurred to the members of this committee that it might be a good idea to briefly examine what was done, and to explore ways and means of breathing life into this kind of documentation for the benefit of governments and the public. Not much more can be said in addition to this.

    If there is a coherent framework, I would be inclined to think it would allow various departments at all levels of government, including municipalities, and civil society to contribute to it. The art and the test of its quality will be its readability.

    We are very grateful to Mr. Smith for having sent a copy of Human Activity and the Environment to each member of the committee, and I'm sure those who are not officially members of the committee will be provided with one as well. It demonstrates the point how cut-and-dried figures need to be interpreted and transformed into reasonable language at times. After all, it's the public who needs to be informed, and not just the statisticians—with all due respect to them.

    So we welcome the statisticians today, Mr. Philip Smith, Assistant Chief Statistician, and Mr. Rob Smith. We thank you for the very fine work you conduct day in and day out for the public, for us, and for everybody who is interested in statistical analysis.

    We also welcome Karen Lloyd and Risa Smith, from the Department of the Environment.

    Who would like to speak first?

Á  (1105)  

    Ms. Karen Lloyd (Acting Director General, Knowledge Integration Directorate, Department of the Environment): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    It's a pleasure to be back in front of this committee—and more of a pleasure to be here on a topic other than the one I was here for several years ago. I'll focus my talk today on the current initiatives in reporting, on opportunities and challenges in today's world, and on Environment Canada's vision for the future.

    Reporting on the state of the environment is a high priority for Environment Canada. Indeed, over the past seven years we have produced many reports informing Canadians on the status and trends in their environment. There has been a shift in the style of reports away from large comprehensive reports towards publication of shorter national environmental indicator reports, a series of regional ecosystem-based reports, and single-issue reports.

    For example, Environment Canada has produced two national reports, one entitled Tracking Key Environmental Issues 2001, and the soon-to-be-released companion reports, Environmental Signals 2003 and Canada's National Environmental Indicator Series; and a second document, Environmental Signals: Headline Indicators.

    Environment Canada and its provincial, regional, and American partners have produced state-of-the-environment reports for the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, northern rivers; a state of sustainability report for the Fraser River basin; and a transboundary indicators report for the Georgia Basin and Puget Sound area. A report on the state of the aquatic ecosystem for the Mackenzie River basin is currently in preparation.

    Environment Canada has also produced several national-level single-issue reports, such as Nutrients in the Canadian Environment; The State of Municipal Wastewater Effluents in Canada; and Ecological Assessment of the Boreal Shield Ecozone.

    Other federal departments have produced reports on the state of Canada's forests, agricultural ecosystems, and parks. Statistics Canada produces a report, Human Activity and the Environment, which is the one the chair showed this morning. A listing of some of these reports on the state of the environment produced in the past few years is included in the package we submitted to this committee.

    A surge in global state-of-environment reports, the necessity of reporting through international agreements, and the importance of meeting national reporting obligations, as outlined in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, have highlighted for Environment Canada the need to rethink the way it organizes its information, the way it uses technology, and the types of reports it produces.

    Environment Canada is developing a national indicators and reporting strategy to ensure cohesive state-of-environment and indicator reporting in Canada, and consistent, scientifically sound, transparent contributions to international efforts. Among several options, the strategy will include the proposal to create a national picture from the current regional initiatives; options to develop measures for emerging issues, such as children's health and the environment; assessments of the effectiveness of environmental policy; and the development of tools that support decision-making.

    The draft strategy will become available for consultation within the next few months, and we are hoping that this standing committee, with its historical interest in state-of-environment reporting, will offer its advice on a path forward.

    A surge in international state-of-environment reporting, to which Canada contributes, has highlighted the importance of ensuring standardized data and well-connected monitoring networks, on which state-of-the-environment reporting is based. With the notable exception of the national air pollutant surveillance system, monitoring data for many important issues, such as water quality and biodiversity, are not currently well coordinated and standardized in Canada into easily accessible national networks. Over the past year, Environment Canada has been focusing on some of the work required to turn the existing monitoring efforts into electronically available networks.

    Environment Canada, with partners such as Parks Canada, the Canadian Forest Service, biosphere reserves and others, including municipalities, is nurturing a citizen-scientist environmental monitoring network. The NatureWatch program, a partnership with the Canadian Nature Federation, is perhaps the most visible and engaging component of this work. Testing of the concept, and its ability to link to local decision-making, has just been completed through one-year funding from the voluntary sector initiative.

    Environment Canada realizes that monitoring is the foundation of state-of-environment reporting and that a significant amount of work still needs to be done to ensure we have credible, well-coordinated monitoring networks across the country, on which credible state-of-the-environment reports can be based.

    Finally, advances in scientific understanding of key environmental issues have created a need to develop new reporting tools that reflect the complexity and interconnectedness of environmental issues. Environment Canada and its provincial partners have taken up the challenge of developing new tools to translate complex environmental issues into easy-to-understand indices.

Á  (1110)  

    Two tools of particular note here are the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment water quality index, which has been developed and is currently being implemented across the country, and the Canadian biodiversity index, which is in an early stage of development by the federal-provincial-territorial biodiversity working group.

    In a climate of rapidly developing technologies and evolving analytical tools, Environment Canada realizes that a vision for future state-of-environment reporting requires knowledgeable practitioners who are at the leading edge of understanding how to measure the environment. To ensure that Canada moves into the forefront in environmental reporting, Environment Canada is supporting the development of a community of practice for reporting and indicator practitioners in Canada from the federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, private sector, academia, and non-government organizations. The first inaugural meeting has taken place, and over the next year the community will evolve to ensure that Canada has the knowledge base to take full advantage of the vision we currently have.

    The rapid rise in accessibility of information technology has opened new possibilities for data collection, data analysis, data sharing, and data dissemination, as well as for state-of-environment reporting. Environment Canada is pursuing a vision for the Canadian Information System for the Environment, or what we commonly refer to as CISE.

    A fully implemented decision will improve the continuum of state-of-environment reporting from data collection, storage, dissemination, and analysis through to reporting and tools to influence policy. As a result of a special funding in the federal budget, year 2000, Environment Canada established a task force to develop a vision for the Canadian Information System for the Environment. The report of the task force from this--you should have it in your handout--was given to the Minister of Environment in October 2001.

    Environment Canada is currently doing the foundation required to implement the CISE vision. For example, the integration of important federal and provincial databases on air, water, and biodiversity has begun, as has the development of web-based tools to facilitate state-of-environment reporting.

    The National Round Table on theEnvironment and the Economy was funded to develop a small set of environment and sustainable development indicators, and the same budget announcement enabled the design of CISE. Environment Canada and Statistics Canada will be working together to ensure that production of this small set of indicators are enabled through monitoring, databases, analysis, and regular reporting.

    Statistics Canada is proposing to expand its system of natural capital accounts, which Environment Canada strongly support, and about which I'm sure Philip Smith will be talking to you shortly. We're working together to ensure that the data required for the natural capital accounts can be made available through the Canadian Information System for the Environment and that Environment Canada is able to make use of indicators developed through the natural capital accounts to enhance state-of-environment reporting.

    For the future, Environment Canada envisions a fully functioning Canadian Information System for the Environment with distributed databases providing access to not only monitoring data held by the federal government, but also data held by provinces, municipalities, and private partners. We envision that this information system will enable transparency in all aspects of environmental reporting, from how the data is collected, compiled, and analyzed, to how it is interpreted. We envision that the federal government and our partners will build state-of-environment reports from this information base through the publication of environmental indicators, the development of new reporting tools, and the synthesis of regional reports into a national picture.

    Reporting will be expanded to not only report on the state of the environment but also to assess the effectiveness of environmental policy and support decision-making. We also envision that organizations outside of the government will be able to assess the state of Canada's environment from their own perspective, to evaluate the success of environmental policy and to compile independent comprehensive reports.

    This vision is based on Environment Canada's belief that we are responsible to satisfy the public's right to know the state of their environment in concepts such as open access to data, transparency in methodologies, respect for proprietary information, and the facilitation of independent reporting through provision of analytical interpretive tools.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Á  (1115)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Lloyd.

    This report would be more complete if you could add a few sentences, ad lib if you like, as to what has happened since October 2001.

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: But we certainly have had several discussions in attempts to get funding for the Canadian Information System for the Environment. Within Environment Canada there was a reorganization and a new group was created, which I head, the Knowledge Integration Directorate. It then combined together the group that is implementing the Canadian Information System for the Environment, that is, the National Indicators and Reporting Office. Dr. Smith heads up that office. This Dr. Smith, as opposed to these ones. Also, it has combined that with the Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network Coordinating Office.

    Resources were reallocated within Environment Canada to support the development of the Canadian Information System for the Environment. We've undertaken numerous projects with our partners, within environmental groups, with provinces to integrate databases on air quality, water quality, water quantity, and biodiversity. Through that we are developing tools to help such things as environmental assessments. A considerable amount has been done in the last year to implement CISE.

    We're now undergoing discussions with our colleagues and certainly with Statistics Canada to set the priorities for the coming year on CISE. I'm quite confident that Environment Canada will reallocate resources as well to continue to implement it.

    Perhaps Dr. Smith could talk about indicator work in the last year, as well. Would you like to hear about that as well, Mr. Chair? This assists the Canadian Information System for the Environment.

    The Chair: Keep in mind that what we are interested in is information to the public. How all this translates into public information is something that will be helpful to know.

    Ms. Risa Smith (Manager, National Indicators and Reporting Office, Department of the Environment): We did release the report in 2001 called “Tracking Key Environmental Issues”. I sent over a box with copies for everybody.

    Anyway, the follow-up to that report is a report card called “Environmental Signals: Canada's National Environmental Indicator Series 2003”, which is currently at the printers. As soon as that's available and released by the minister, we'll make sure that everybody here has a copy of it.

    We've had actually since the early 1990s an indicators program where we look at trends and key issues. This “Environmental Signals” report is the first time we've put those all together into one picture. What the concept is, is to go forward in much the way they've done in countries like the United Kingdom, with this course set that we have right now, and consult with Canadians on whether this is the right set of indicators or whether we need to supplement it with others that would satisfy their need to report on the environment.

    There's also a lot of global reporting on the environment. There's a geo report that UNEP does. The report just came out yesterday by the World Resources Institute on watersheds of the world. There's OECD that does an indicators report. We spend a lot of time providing the Canadian information to those reports.

    It's not just our own reports that we put out, but also the reports that come out of international organizations. As well, I've brought copies of some regional reports. We just released a report on the state of the St. Lawrence River. We've done one on the state of the Great Lakes, the state of Georgia Basin, Puget Sound. There's a sustainability one on the Fraser Basin. All these reports are done with partners.

    Environment Canada works with their provincial partners, sometimes municipal partners. In the case of the Fraser Basin, we also worked with private industry and community partners to produce regional-based state-of-environment reports.

    There is a handout. I gave you a handout that summarizes the current initiatives. I think you all have that--“State of Environment Reporting: Current Initiatives”. It lists a lot of the work that we're doing.

Á  (1120)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Smith.

    Now, Mr. Smith.

    Mr. Philip Smith (Assistant Chief Statistician, National Accounts and Analytical Studies, Statistics Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I'm very pleased to be here today, and I thank you for the opportunity to address this committee. I have a presentation to make that will refer briefly to the history of the state-of-the-environment reporting, the status of that at the moment, and where it might go in the future.

    National statistical organizations like Statistics Canada I think have always played an important role in state-of-the-environment reporting in this country and in other countries. I think their comparative advantage in this field arises, first, from their professional expertise in collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating statistical information; second, from their impartiality and objectivity; and third, from their capacity to link socio-economic data with the physical environment information.

    As an example, since statistical agencies already collect and publish a lot of information about production and consumption of goods and services by Canadian businesses, governments, and households, I think statistical agencies are well placed to draw connections between that behaviour by businesses, consumers, and the like, and the associated generation of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

    Statistics Canada produces annual estimates of greenhouse gases and other emissions by economic sector. Understanding the connections between these emissions and the associated production of goods and services is vital when it comes to developing and implementing appropriate policies.

    Statistics Canada has been actively providing information on state-of-the-environment reporting since the 1970s. It was in 1978 that we first released our environment statistics compendium, Human Activity and the Environment, which you have all received a copy of. Initially, it was produced at five-year intervals. We've recently started producing it at one-year intervals in a slimmed-down version. Our intention is to continue producing the thicker version at more infrequent intervals.

    This volume of statistics and analysis relating to the environment and humankind's impact on it is a best-seller, reflecting the fact that Canadians are, indeed, concerned with the state of the environment. Committee members have a copy of the latest version, as I said.

    We're quite proud of Human Activity and the Environment, but we do know there's room for improvement and we welcome any suggestions the committee may have in this regard.

    It's been 17 years since the government released the first State of the Environment Report. It was co-authored by Environment Canada and Statistics Canada and released by the Minister of the Environment, Tom McMillan, in May of 1986. At the press conference, the minister also released Human Activity and the Environment in 1986, referring to it as the State of the Environment Report's official statistics compendium or companion. The two reports were well received at the time, and they were followed in 1991 by a second State of the Environment Report and in 1996 by a third and, as it turned out, a final State of the Environment Report.

    Environment Canada and Statistics Canada shared a joint public advisory committee on state-of-the-environment reporting in these years, and the two departments collaborated very closely in the preparation of the reports.

    Now, over the nearly 30 years since Human Activity and the Environment first appeared, Statistics Canada has broadened the scope of its reporting on the environment quite considerably. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the development of new surveys providing statistics on waste management, revealing, among other things, a rather discouraging upward movement recently in waste generation per capita.

    Surveys of this kind are of considerable value, not just in identifying developments like this one that I just mentioned, but also in tracing the underlying reasons and devising appropriate policy responses. New surveys of the demand for and the supply of goods and services aimed at environmental protection were also put in place over this past decade. The demand for products of this type arises from businesses, from governments, from households, and of course it varies considerably over time, depending on regulations from government and a variety of other factors.

    The industries that supply these environmental protection products are an increasingly dynamic sector in Canada, dominated by small business and generating significant exports and employment opportunities. Statistics Canada has also devoted a great deal of effort over the past decade to producing a better measure of Canada's wealth.

Á  (1125)  

    The pursuit of sustainable development is, in the end, I believe, a matter of preserving and hopefully increasing national wealth over time. Statistical measures of wealth, therefore, can provide a good benchmark for progress or lack thereof, but it is critically important that wealth be defined in a sufficiently comprehensive way. In the past, Canada and other countries counted only produced assets in our national wealth, by which I mean what you might expect: housing, consumer durable goods, cars, appliances, factories, bridges, airports, machinery, and those sorts of things.

    We now have a broader measure that also encompasses the value of the nation's subsoil mineral assets, agricultural and commercial land, and standing timber. For example, we know from the timber wealth statistics that the trend over the last 40 years has been a decline in Canada's timber assets of on the order of 0.35% per annum. In future we hope to broaden the wealth accounts even further, working closely with Environment Canada and CISE, as Karen has just described, to include measures of Canada's water, air, and wildlife assets.

    There's been a lot of very fruitful collaboration internationally over the last ten years in the development of consistent frameworks for environmental analysis. In fact, the United Nations are about to release new guidelines for the compilation of environmental accounts in a volume entitled System of Environmental and Economic Accounts.

    Statistics Canada was instrumental in the drafting of this book. Economic and environmental accounts detail the relationships between the environment and the economy, and in so doing they help policy-makers identify appropriate policy levers to bring about needed change. For example, water accounts record the quantities of Canada's water resources that are used by industries, governments, and households, and the quantities of pollutants that are injected back into those water resources. Information of this kind is invaluable to society if it is to design and implement policies to avoid occurrences like the Walkerton episode and to preserve our water assets for future generations.

    I think Canada has made significant progress over the last 25 years or so. Our capacity to monitor and analyze the state of the environment is far better today than it used to be, as a result of new surveys and improved physical monitoring by the federal and provincial natural resource and environment departments and the development of rudimentary environmental accounts revealing much about the overall state of the environment and its relationship to the underlying economic and social driving forces.

    Of course, still very much remains to be done. A principal concern, I believe, relates to the lack of comprehensive, timely, and accurate information about air and water quality, as I just mentioned. And another is the need for better information on the quantity, origin, and nature of pollution flows into the environment.

    Much has been happening in the past few years that we expect will lead to substantial improvements in Canada's state-of-the-environment reporting. Perhaps the most important change is the rapid improvement in our computing and communications technologies. Really revolutionary developments in this area are enabling improvements in organizing and updating, visualizing and disseminating state-of-the-environment information. The Internet is rapidly supplanting older, more expensive, and less effective business models. Interconnected databases and sophisticated data manipulation tools are allowing us to deal with the incredibly complex world of environmental data in ways that really were not possible just a few years ago.

    Three years ago the government initiated a task force, as Mr. Lloyd just mentioned, to create a Canadian Information System for the Environment. The chief statistician was a member of that task force, and it submitted its recommendations in the fall of 2001, as I believe the committee is aware. Environment Canada is working to implement those recommendations and we are giving our full support at Statistics Canada.

    Another important development at the federal level is the environment and sustainable development indicators initiative, which was put forward by the Minister of Finance in the year 2000 budget, at the same the CISE task force was created. The premise for this initiative was that future ministers of finance should be encouraged to speak directly about the state of the environment in their annual budget speeches to Parliament, just as they now speak about the state of the national economy.

Á  (1130)  

    Responsibility for the environment and sustainable development indicators initiative was given to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, under Dr. Stuart Smith, another Smith for the collection here.

    NRTEE, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, established a task force to develop a recommended set of environmental sustainable development indicators, and the report will be presented to the government later this spring from that task force.

    It appears that NRTEE will recommend that the government expand the national accounts to facilitate the production of the ESDI indicators, the environment sustainable development indicators. I brought along with me a short document called “Building a Sustainable Development Information System”, which I believe has been circulated to committee members, outlining our plan in this general direction.

    I myself was a member of the NRTEE task force, and it met several times over the past three years, discussing how best to go about selecting the state-of-the-environment indicators that the government had requested. Early on, the task force reached the conclusion that some kind of conceptual framework was needed, and they embraced the capital approach, again as Ms. Lloyd mentioned, and set their focus on picking indicators that would represent, or signal changes in, various components of Canada's environmental wealth or assets or capital, if you will.

    In the end, it proved to be extremely difficult to identify a small number of indicators that would do the job in a sufficiently comprehensive and reliable manner. The task force concluded that the indicators at least would be a stop-gap solution, and that in the longer term a better solution lies in developing a more complete system of environmental accounts within the structure of the existing national accounts so the environment can be related easily and directly to the GDP nationally and internationally.

    A key challenge for state-of-the-environment reporting at the present juncture is the need for improved environmental monitoring. Good environmental information should be consistent through time in order to facilitate time series comparisons and analysis. It should also be consistent in aggregation, so that the users of that information can readily roll up the statistics to see the big picture, as well as drill down to see the many highly variable local situations we face in Canada. And finally, good environmental information should also be consistent in terms of standard classifications of industries, geographical regions, pollutants and the like, and with respect to other related socio-economic information.

    Canadian state-of-the-environment reports have, in the past, addressed these issues as best they could, but they are challenges that remain today, and as we address them more fully the quality of future reports will be considerably improved.

    In summation, I believe Canadians need a solid information base if our country is to be able to deal effectively with growing challenges as the natural environment deteriorates in the face of unrelenting pressure from human activities. The Walkerton episode, the Kyoto debate, the loss of fish stocks on the east and west coast, and the rising pollution levels in our pristine northern territories are but a few examples of situations where Canadians need better information. In my opinion, the results of the CISE and the ESDI task forces point the way to major improvements in this regard.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Smith.

    We'd better start a round of questions, because I'm sure the members have a number of very keen observations to make. We'll start right away with Mr. Mills, Mr. Bigras, Mr. Comartin, Mr. Herron, Mr. Szabo, Mr. Tonks, and then the chair.

    Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Thank you very much.

    I'd like to bring it back to the real people, the ones we really want to address and get the information to, and I have several questions.

    I see in here that we rate 25th in I assume the industrialized world in terms of environmental information. Obviously I don't think we should be 25th; I'd like to see us much higher on that scale.

    And to give a few examples, first of all with climate change and Kyoto it seems to me we're asking Canadians to reduce their emissions by 20%. I wonder how we're going to monitor that. I wonder how we're going to go to industry. How are we going to know when they achieve that, etc., in terms of actual monitoring? Do you have the capabilities? What is being put forward? How are you going to inform Canadians as to how they're going to achieve those kinds of targets?

Á  (1135)  

    The Chair: Mr. Mills, I'm sorry, but may I ask you to focus on the major topic before us, which is whether and how we should have a solid information system, rather than going into Kyoto or specific issues.

    Mr. Bob Mills: I was using examples of where Canadians need help and how are we going to deliver that, because a statistical report and a whole bunch of statistics are not going to help Canadians decide how they're going to achieve their targets.

    I would use another example, the Sumas project in the Fraser Valley. Twelve plants are being proposed. They're proposing to put five tonnes of carbon into an airshed that's the second worst in Canada. How are those people going to deal with those kinds of analyses? How are your reports going to do that?

    When we come to garbage, if you ask the federal government, they say it's a provincial matter. When you ask the provincial government, they say it's a municipal matter. You ask the municipalities, they say they can't deal with it properly because they don't have the resources. There's a lot of buck-passing between provinces, municipalities, and the federal government. How are you going to address that?

    And on things like extreme weather, I was involved with the Pine Lake disaster, and we were told there weren't enough people on the ground to monitor the violent changes that can occur in a matter of five minutes coming over the mountains, yet now we're closing weather stations in Calgary and so on. We're going to have less human element on the ground to analyze this.

    I'm wondering how you're going to deal with those kinds of problems, because that's where real people are at. Everyone cares about the environment, and particularly their environment.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mills.

    May I circulate this State of Canada's Environment - 1996 copy from the library so as to give everybody an opportunity to see what is before us for discussion?

    I appreciate Mr. Mills' concern, but I would like to direct the dynamic of the discussion mainly onto the reporting issue in general. However, if you wish to comment on the specifics put to you by Mr. Mills, by all means do that, but try to relate to the broader issue as well.

    Ms. Smith.

    Ms. Risa Smith: Over the past few years since that comprehensive report, Environment Canada has actually been focusing more on regional reports. For example, I'm circulating the state of the St. Lawrence report, which was just released, and state of the Great Lakes, Georgia Basin, and Puget Sound.

    After we do a big report, we do an evaluation of it, and the feedback we get does relate to what you're saying. People do want to know about the state of their environment, but they don't want to just know the facts; they want to know what they can do about it and how it relates to where they live.

    That's why we've been focusing on these more regional reports, because they're closer to where people live and what they can do about it. For example, the state of the St. Lawrence report was released about two or three weeks ago, and I was there. There were about 300 people at the launch, a lot of them mayors, the public. The trends in that report did provide them with the kind of information they need to know--how we are doing right here where I live.

    We have been focusing on that, but I think what's missing is the synthesis of that into a national picture. That's the next step we realize we have to focus on. The regional kind of work that really relates to people has been our focus, but now we need to go back to take that and create a national picture from it.

    Does that answer your question?

Á  (1140)  

    Mr. Bob Mills: But after that, where it all comes out, that's where it really matters--to the people.

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: I'd like to respond to that.

    Although the goal of the Canadian Information System for the Environment is to link databases nationally, we're very much aware that putting out information in a way in which Canadians can use it is extremely important. We are right now undergoing a polling effort with the citizens of the Ottawa-Gatineau area to ask them what type of environmental information they're seeking and how would they like it delivered to them.

    The Chair: Mr. Smith, would you like to comment?

    Mr. Philip Smith: One of the things I would like to say in response to your questions is I think I should confess we're not as good as we'd like to be, or should be perhaps, at Statistics Canada in communicating with the public. But when it comes to Human Activity and the Environment, this is one of our best-selling publications. There are a lot of Canadians who buy it or use it in libraries. We deposit it in all the major public libraries across the country. We also make it available through our e-stat facility, which is education and statistics, to students in the schools all across the country.

    In fact Human Activity and the Environment has been found to be a very useful teaching resource by teachers in high schools across the country. It's become one of the major sources of demand for the publication in the last several years.

    But no doubt we could do a lot more to reach out and get this kind of information into the hands of ordinary Canadians, I agree with you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Smith.

    We'll come back for a second round, and perhaps then you will be asking broader policy questions, if you feel inspired.

    Monsieur Bigras.

[Translation]

    Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    First, welcome to the committee. The use of environmental information indicators is a major concern of mine. You develop information systems but for me, what is essential is to integrate this information in government decision-making and in making economic choices.

    I will start with an easier question. What type of parameters do you have to take into account to develop environmental indicators which will allow for economic choices that would, in the end, be based on those indicators? So, when you develop indicators, what are the new parameters you now have to take into account?

[English]

    Mr. Philip Smith: I could take a crack at that one.

    The integration of environmental information, both with other forms of environmental information and with underlying economic and social information, I think is, as I said in my opening remarks, quite important for policy-making.

    The work we've been trying to do the last several years now to develop these environmental accounts I think goes directly to the matter you were raising. I've always found it useful to look at the parallel between economic information and economic reporting, as done by the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Industry, and environmental reporting.

    In the case of economic reporting, we have an integrated framework--the national accounts framework--that all countries of the world subscribe to. It has standards that have been approved by the United Nations and that interrelate all this economic data on demand and supply, production, transfers, exports, imports, employment--all those different things--in a consistent framework of industry classifications and commodity classifications and so on.

    I think it's fair to say we have quite some distance to go with environmental data before we have that same degree of integration. But this environmental accounting initiative that I spoke very briefly of earlier is an attempt to go in that direction to build a similar kind of integrated structure for environmental information and to build it in a way that links in directly to the economic system we already have that works so well for monitoring the state of the economy.

    I hope that responds somewhat to your question, sir.

Á  (1145)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Bernard Bigras: But to deal with the development of those indicators, you must have discussions with the department of Finance. I would like to know if there is a good relationship between this department and that of the environment? Is there good cooperation between the two?

    You mention in one of your reports that sustainable development and environment indicators could be used by the department of Finance to measure the impact of economic development on the environment.

    When you mention that these indicators could be used by the Minister of Finance, does it mean that you have some doubts about the use not only the Minister of Finance but also other departments will make of the tools you have developped?

[English]

    Ms. Risa Smith: The whole National Round Table on the Environment and Sustainable Development indicators initiative, which both Ms. Lloyd and Dr. Smith referred to, was actually initiated by the Department of Finance and the Minister of Finance at the time. That's the way it should work: the minister requests them and you develop them. Then there's a greater likelihood they'll be used.

    There's a whole flurry of work in this area around the world. For example, the United Kingdom is at a state now where, when the Prime Minister releases information on the economic state of the nation, he also releases the environmental indicators at the same time and talks about sustainable development. The kinds of indicators they release in the U.K. are actually things like trends in bird populations, things people are interested in that relate to the environment. They're very popular. The Prime Minister in the U.K. holds those up together to ask whether or not, as the economy is developing, the environment is being destroyed. Are they in sync? I think that is actually what our own finance department is intending.

    It's not easy to come up with the right indicators, but the round table did do the right process. They consulted hundreds of people across the country. It was an amazing process. At their first meeting, 650 people showed up to tell them what the right indicators would be. There has been incredible engagement, but coming up with the right measures and then getting them into regular use is a process. I have no doubt they'll be used, but there's a timeframe involved.

[Translation]

    Mr. Bernard Bigras: What I would like, apart from a presentation of indicators, is for us to be able to fully integrate them, and I wonder if this will happen. For example, in a balance sheet, you have assets and liabilities. The issue of contaminated sites in Canada is a liability which should show in a governmental balance sheet. So, will we get to a point where we will not only have indicators and state of the environment reports but also an integration of these aspects into the economic statements of the canadian government?

[English]

    Mr. Philip Smith: That's an excellent question, one we're struggling a lot with these days, both in Canada and internationally.

    The ideal would be to have a balance sheet that would include all of Canada's wealth, not just our tangible, market-valued wealth, but also the less tangible, non-market-valued wealth, all on the same balance sheet, so we could see our wealth and make the trade-offs appropriately.

    We've been moving to try to broaden the scope of the balance. As I mentioned before, we have included standing timber on the balance sheet. We've done that by making an estimate of the value of standing timber by calculating the total volume of timber, using information from Canadian Forestry Service, and applying a market price. It's a hypothetical but well-founded estimate of the value of that standing timber.

    Doing this for our clean water or water resources is far more problematic still, but it's a task Environment Canada and Statistics Canada are focusing on increasingly. I think it will take years, maybe decades, maybe longer, before we really have dollar valuations on these less tangible, non-market assets, but I think it's worth trying to do.

    In the meantime, I think what we can do is put a lot more effort into measuring the physical dimensions of these assets. We could do better--and we're trying to do better, as Ms. Lloyd mentioned--in gathering together all the information available on air and water, and their quality, and on wildlife, in Canada.

    Valuation is problematic. As I say, some progress is being made. But where we can make more rapid progress in the short run is on getting better measures of the physical quantities and qualities involved, and to think of them as being connected, at least conceptually, to that balance sheet you referred to, even though we can't put dollar figures on them right away.

Á  (1150)  

    The Chair: Merci, Monsieur Bigras.

    It takes an enormous amount of self-discipline not to ask a question following Mr. Bigras, but I will keep it for later.

    Now on to Mr. Comartin.

    Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—St. Clair, NDP): Mr. Chair, out of respect for your position as chair, I would be more than prepared to allow you to take my time, if you really need to jump in.

    The Chair: Thank you for allowing me to ask a few questions, Mr. Comartin.

    When you measure timber value, as you say you have done, do you also include in the GDP economic activities related to things like cleaning up after an oil spill, for instance, as positive economic activities?

    Mr. Philip Smith: If you're thinking of an episode like the Exxon Valdez, the GDP as it's presently defined measures the market value of production of goods and services. For example, if we could measure sales of cocaine, it would be a part of GDP because it has a market value. Prostitution services are bad, but they have a market value. Conceptually, they're within the scope of GDP.

    If a society spends resources to clean up a mess that it's created, that gets into GDP too. It's seen as productive simply because people are prepared to spend money on it. Personally, I think it is productive.

    The question that's often raised is whether GDP should also include an adjustment for the reduction in national wealth that occurs as a result of an episode like the Exxon Valdez, which reduces our national wealth. That should be an adjustment made on the balance sheet. I don't believe it should be an adjustment in GDP, because GDP is aimed at measuring production activity and income flowing from production, and the episode itself is not production. It's simply a destruction of existing assets.

    To me, it's analogous to the 9/11 episode, where huge assets were destroyed overnight and the American balance sheet was cut substantially. That's the way I regard something like the Exxon Valdez episode. It's something that should be reflected on the balance sheet as a major drop in Canada's national assets. But I don't see it as something that should affect the GDP.

    The Chair: Mr. Comartin.

    Mr. Joe Comartin: Just to pursue this issue using another example in terms of your approach of quantifying water, when the oil industry pumps all that fresh water under pressure into the wells to force oil and gas to the surface, totally contaminating that water in the procees, the water still exists but is no longer of any human value in terms of consumption. How do you put a price on that?

    I guess I'm questioning, therefore, the methodology you are proposing to use of just taking an inventory of the quantity of water we have in this country.

    Let me do a follow-up question. One hears that we have the greatest amount of fresh water of any country, which is probably not true. We are probably second in that regard. But so much of it is contained in icebergs and in frozen stores underground that are not accessible. Are you going to try to quantify that as well, and if so, does it have that much meaning when it doesn't have, from a strictly financial or economic perspective, any value at all because it's not accessible?

Á  (1155)  

    Mr. Philip Smith: I think those are some profound questions too. As I said before, I think it's quite useful to measure quantitative and qualitative characteristics of our natural assets. To the extent we can go to the next step and put a value on those assets, this is a good thing. It can be a very difficult thing to do, though some might judge it's not a practical thing to do for many of our assets.

    In the case of something like water, the value of water clearly depends on its quality, as you were just emphasizing, but it also depends on where it is and how accessible it is. We obviously have enormous quantities up north, which have little if any market value because they are not easily accessible.

    There are ways to approach valuing water. We do spend money to buy water in stores these days. Water has a price when it's bottled, pristine, and clear. Businesses and governments are prepared to spend some amounts of money to keep the water clean. They may not spend as much as they should spend, some would say, but they do spend significant amounts of money on preventing or reducing pollution, or on cleaning up polluted water. The very fact we spend that money through a government process or in private industry or in households is in effect valuing the water. By spending that money, they're putting an implicit value on the water, and it's possible to try to infer what those values are.

    This is really the kind of thing I meant when I talked about movements in the direction of putting a value on water. I'd certainly be at the front of the line agreeing that it's difficult. As I said, some would say it is not a very practical proposition to try to put a very well-defined or easily agreed to value on all of Canada's water assets—at this state anyway.

    Mr. Joe Comartin: I suppose what I'm doing, Mr. Smith, is really challenging the assumption we should even be going down this road on a dollar basis. The model we should be building on to evaluate this should be based on the natural system and its health, as opposed to what this is really worth in an economic sense.

    At one point, I thought that the national round table was looking at this type of wellness model. They were looking at this model, rather than at a financial economic assessment.

    Is the natural model completely off the table?

    Mr. Philip Smith: I don't see these as much as alternatives as complements. There are different ways of looking at the same issue. It's quite useful, I think, to look at it simultaneously from different perspectives.

    To my mind, you can't get away from the value question in the end. The value question is all about priorities; that's what values are. We make priorities as individuals by deciding to spend money on this or not on that, or to work and earn money, or to have leisure and not earn money. In the end, money is the currency of priorities.

    The difficulties of valuing these assets are enormous, but that's the challenge we face. I think we probably all agree that in some sense these assets are not getting the value they should get in national and local decision-making. Sometimes it's a failure of the market system, a failure of the normal valuation process, which causes the sorts of problems we have. I don't see how we can avoid dealing with values—extremely difficult though it is to estimate them.

    Maybe I'm not answering your question.

    Mr. Joe Comartin: I would like to comment—although I know Dr. Smith wants to get in too.

    My comment is that I have no argument with you over values, but I'm afraid that by using an economic dollar value you may be usurping our ability to develop other models that would be more acceptable.

    Mr. Philip Smith: It wouldn't be my intention to do so.

  (1200)  

    The Chair: Dr. Smith.

    Ms. Risa Smith: I'll just point out to you that the indicators the round table chose were not monitored. They chose six indicators, and five related to the environment. The units they chose were actually environmental units: the extent of wetlands; the extent of forest cover; the percentage of population exposed to air quality that causes health risks; and the percentage of water bodies that are poor or marginal, based on the water quality index that looks at chemical parameters of water.

    There's a lot of work involved in evaluating or monitoring the environment. It is very difficult, so in the end the round table chose not to do that. What Statistics Canada wants to do is very exciting and is happening on an international level, but to actually realize it, as Dr. Smith has pointed out, is very difficult. I think that's why the round table in the end chose not to do that.

    The Chair: Mr. Herron, please.

    Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I apologize for coming late, so if my questions are a little off topic, that's my excuse.

    A voice: And your norm.

    Mr. John Herron: That's my norm as well, quite often.

    These brochures are awfully pretty. They really are. There are nice pictures in them of flowers, owls, water, and all that kind of thing. The comment was made that we're collecting this type of information and data so we can make decisions and develop policies to identify trends where we need to take action and develop policies. To tell you the truth, I was quite perturbed when I saw the icon of the Walkerton water tower itself.

    There's a clear consensus that once this data is collected, how do we make sure we translate this information to make it valuable beyond policy to also fill legislative gaps? For instance, on the Walkerton issue, at the end of the day, in terms of the pollution of a water source to some degree, the farmer was more than just exonerated from doing wrong. There was a legislative gap from a federal-provincial perspective in developing policies about what activities could take place, and at what intensity, near municipal water sources, whether they be wellheads or surface-based water supplies. So that's a policy framework, a regulatory framework, that needs to be done.

    There's often a legislative gap as well, and they're using the Walkerton example. Beyond the heinous and legal actions of the Koebel brothers, tests were done during that time. We have national drinking water guidelines, not standards, so there isn't a public right to know. We already had a guideline in place that tested for E. coli, but we had no framework to determine whether there was a public right to know E. coli was there; that there was a substance in that water that could have a detrimental effect, even through short-term exposure to human health.

    So help me out. When we've made these really pretty brochures and taken an inventory of some things, how do we ensure there are formal recommendations to fill legislative gaps? How do we translate this inventory beyond a brochure that will go to my office--and I might keep for a little while before I recycle it--to make sure it actually fills legislative gaps?

    I think this is valuable work you folks are doing, but the problem is I don't think governments translate that work to solve problems, address policies, and develop legislation that this inventory proves needs to be done. How do we go from pretty brochures to legislation that actually makes the brochures even prettier?

  (1205)  

    Ms. Risa Smith: I think you're asking about the next step of the state-of-environment reporting, just to bring it back to the topic. When we did those big compendiums it was more to just put out the information, and somehow good decisions would come out of it. Now there's a trend toward actually taking it to the next step and doing the policy analysis that meets those trends.

    For example, Switzerland has just put out a report that's quite interesting. They put out a statistical compendium on the state of the environment and then a companion report, which includes the policy and legislative responses to that. Are you suggesting that's the type of thing you'd like to see us do?

    Mr. John Herron: If you do this, that's really all they become--brochures, you know, data, information. But the whole idea of collecting data and information is that you actually utilize it. I think when a clear trend has been detected through the collection of information, there's a moral and ethical obligation to point out where those legislative or public policy gaps are. And without that kind of measurement tool kit, I think that's all we'll have, more often than not, in brochures.

    Everybody understands that when you want people to think about the environment, you make a direct connection to human health. There's an immense amount of pull into that. People connect with the environment when you connect it with human health.

    It makes sense that on page 1 of your brochure you put Walkerton, because it connects with human health. I apologize, I haven't read the whole document, but in scanning through, there was no real reference to the need to fill a legislative gap.

    Also, there are two issues there. One is the public right to know. If that test had belonged to the public--not to the municipality, not to the province, but actually to the public--people would not have died, if that legislative gap had been there.

    Also, in terms of protecting our water sources, the frameworks, we now know there's an issue about.... The simplest thing is you shouldn't have a dry-cleaning operation right next door to a municipal wellhead. It's probably not a good thing to do. But I think you need those kinds of frameworks about what activities can take place near municipal water sources.

    If the Swiss are going down that track, I highly recommend it. You know, universities call it plagiarism; in the real world it's called being resourceful. So copy it and do it.

    Thanks.

    Ms. Risa Smith: I'll just point out that there is a shift away from the type of report we did in 1996.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Szabo, please.

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the witnesses. I think this is the beginning of something very important for this committee to have this opportunity to have basically a round table.

    I've had some experience with the National Air Pollution Surveillance Network, NAPS, and my frustration at the time was understandability and looking for the commentary that would give me some indication in lay terms whether the trends were significant and how serious it was, when you considered what the measured levels were in the range of acceptability.

    This is a very narrow issue, but I think it goes to what the chairman was alluding to earlier about the value of the communication down to Canadians at large. It's very difficult and it seems to still be difficult. Is that something we can address, or are you addressing it in the work you're doing?

    Ms. Risa Smith: That's a route we are going down--the development of indices. On that particular issue, there's quite a flurry with Environment and Health Canada as partners to develop a better air quality index that's understandable and is health-risk-based out of that NAPS data--the development of issue-based indices. There's water quality and air. It's not easy to do, actually, but there's a flurry of work on that, and it came out of a challenge from the minister.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Do you get any feedback from advocacy groups that have had to appear before say an environmental assessment board hearing, and have they had an opportunity or have they expressed their experience in dealing with a jurisdictional tribunal? Have they expressed any frustration in not being able to properly represent themselves, in having to engage an environmental lawyer to speak on their behalf because they just can't express it properly?

  (1210)  

    Ms. Risa Smith: No experience, no.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Do we have any way of knowing whether or not people who are involved, grassroots--they might be ratepayers' organizations that have an environmental issue locally--want to push it toward participating in an environmental assessment review panel or something like that? How do we know whether or not they're able to access and understand the information we're providing?

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: I'm sure there's more experience in our department within groups other than us, but within the group we're part of we have the citizen scientist programs, where community groups get together to decide what it is they care about in their community—clean air, clean water, protection of species at risk: whatever it is they view as valuable. They can set up programs to monitor the environment, to track it, and to provide that information to hopefully influence the local decision-making level.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: In my work as a parliamentarian as well as prior to being a parliamentarian, air quality and particulate matter issues in our community, because of the Ohio Valley impacts, have been very important to my area. We have also a coal-burning generating station, so there are greenhouse and health issues, etc.

    One of the things we have found is that there is often contradictory opinion on a variety of issues related to measurements, because of the range of information. There does not appear to be a body that is independent and credible to make the assessment of whether or not published material of other groups has properly represented the information and the facts.

    How do we ensure, when someone produces any of these documents, that there's something almost equivalent to or like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval that I can rely on and use when I make representations, so that I can point out that other information people have is not in fact based on information that has that Good Housekeeping seal? Do we have a credibility review, an integrity review?

    Ms. Risa Smith: We do, for all the work we put out, and I'm sure Statistics Canada does too.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: There's certainly review—of your own work.

    Ms. Risa Smith: Oh, did you mean of other people's work?

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I pick up a document here. How do I know what I read in this document, because someone's associated with it—I see the Province of British Columbia is associated with this—and the representations with regard to environmental matters have been credibly represented?

    Mr. Philip Smith: It's a good question. I'm not familiar with that particular document, and you're just holding it as an example. I guess it's a matter of who wrote the document and takes ownership for it and their reputation. It's a matter of what data or studies they are citing in the analysis and what the reputation of those sources is.

    In the academic world, of course, we have peer review processes, so that if somebody wants to put forward an article on an important topic, it gets peer-reviewed before it's published, and one has a degree of assurance of the value of the research by virtue of the fact that it's been published. But since we have an open society and anybody can publish anything they want to, in the end we all have to be somewhat vigilant when we're looking at documents, because there's never going to be a guarantee of quality other than the reputation of the person or organization who's writing the document.

    I'm not sure I'm really helping with these comments; they're probably obvious.

  (1215)  

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I'm a chartered accountant, and in business they use the opinion of a chartered accounting firm to opine on the credibility.

    My last issue, Mr. Chairman, is just because they brought this lovely book, The State of Canada's Environment, and I just decided to flip to a section to see what's here.

    I notice in a chart here, “PCB Levels in Human Breast Milk”, showing the trend lines over four- and six-year periods, showing in 1975 modest levels, very high levels in 1982, down in 1986, and then all of a sudden in 1992 the experience in Ontario, Quebec, and Canada at large is showing increasing levels of PCBs in human breast milk.

    I looked at the reference for the chart, and this large book, published in 1996 on data up to 1992 only, simply said that since 1982 we've really come down a lot, but it made no mention whatsoever that the trend line seems to have bounced back.

    Is there a way I could move from this to something more? If I say this is a concern of mine, how do I take advantage of the wealth of material here, if it's just going to tease me with pictures and trend lines but not explain to me why something improved and now is deteriorating, but adds “we're not going to make any comment on it”?

    Ms. Risa Smith: Maybe I can just answer that in a bit more general way. I think you asked me a very important question, and it's really about credibility of information.

    You held up the Georgia Basin report. In my previous life, only a year ago, I was with the Province of British Columbia, so I know something about that particular one.

    The way you have credibility is to be transparent. The way you do that is to make public the data you used, where it came from, and the methodology you used to analyze it. Even though maybe somebody at your level would just look at the trend and it might be only a few people who would look at those technical backgrounders that explain the data and the methodology and have a discussion on whether there are any problems with methodology or some cautions, there are enough people who look at that who will then evaluate the credibility of that document.

    Anything we put out has to have that kind of transparency. That's where I hope Environment Canada will be moving with state-of-the-environment reporting. Through the Internet, you can do that. Click on that and you'll know where it came from, and you'll have the whole transparency issue.

    So, to me, transparency is credibility.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Szabo.

    We have Mr. Tonks, Madame Scherrer, Mr. Reid, the chair, and then a second round.

    Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you for your deputations today. I actually thought this was going to be an exciting exercise for us, to try to build, or at least understand, the architecture that's available, for people to understand where we are with respect to environmental sustainability, where we want to be, and how we're moving along that critical path, that the state of the environment reporting would provide us with that kind of a dynamic window, if you will, and then that can be used as a tool for policy development.

    I'm not sure that the average citizen is linking the two. They want to know where we are, but definitely the government and we, as policy-makers, want to be able to share with our groups, as you have so well characterized them, the new knowledge, the ability to Internet the community activists groups with information so they can be part of this whole accountability exercise on the environment.

    Having said that, you make two points. Ms. Lloyd, I think you indicate in your report that we had developed water quality indexing, and we're on the road to developing a biodiversity index. To me, those are indicators that you have indicated are worth exploring further, and you're working on that.

    First of all, I'd like to know more about how you are taking that so that the architecture would be understood by the public. Very simply, these are indicators in biodiversity, these are indicators in water quality, and we can satisfy ourselves to some extent that we can see that moving point that will give us a clearer picture of whether we're improving or not. I'd like to know more about that, and I think the committee should know more about it.

    The other one is, I don't understand--well, maybe I do, but let me put it out here--how national capital accounts would be a better way to go than indexing. To me, the two are indicators of getting better or getting worse, are policy tools to be used to reflect, through your national capital accounts, your policy direction.

    My concern is, Mr. Smith, on the round table, you seem to be indicating that actually indicators are okay, but they're really just temporary, that we need to influence the capital account and we need to go on to a capital account manner of stewardship in accounting terms. I don't see them as contradictory at all. I see them as policy tools, and so on.

    But let me just say, the intent is for us to develop architecture that is simple for the public to understand. My concern is that we seem to be getting away from that.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence.

  (1220)  

    The Chair: Dr. Smith, would you like to address Mr. Tonks' questions briefly, if you please?

    Mr. Philip Smith: Yes. I don't think there's a contradiction at all between the capital accounts approach and indicators. If I seemed to suggest that, it was unintentional.

    I participated in that round table exercise and I saw the task force questing for a framework. It was the capital framework they ultimately arrived at. Without a framework, it's very hard to make much sense of indicators. There are thousands of them. We talked a minute ago about PCBs in breast milk; there's an indicator. There are literally thousands like that. And if we array them all on the table, some are looking good and some are looking bad. What do we do with them all? How do we bring it all together? Each one individually tells a story that's kind of interesting, and we can all go off in a different direction looking at one of the indicators, but at the same time we need some way of bringing them together into an overall picture.

    I think that's what state-of-the-environment reporting tries to do, to see the components of the picture but to bring them together as well into a total picture. I think the task force spent quite a bit of time initially questing for that framework to allow them to organize their indicators, to choose indicators, to put them in some sort of a priority ranking, if you will.

    They were looking for aggregate indicators too. There was a feeling that if you get too particular, too specialized, with the indicators, they may not be sufficiently representative of the broader phenomenon one was trying to represent. That led the task force toward higher-level indicators.

    I see the capital framework as that, a framework within which to think about the indicators. We think, well, what are the different types of environmental capital we have? We have clean water capital. We have clean air capital. We have wildlife capital of different types. We have biodiversity capital. We have subsoil mineral capital. We have fertile land capital. Perhaps we need indicators to represent in the best way we can each of these different categories of natural capital.

    The problem came in trying to find one indicator that would adequately represent any one of these broader categories. It's almost impossible to find one indicator that does it, which pushes one into more and more and more indicators, and that gives you a bit more comfort that you're covering all the bases, but it does so at the cost of more than one can cope with in seeing the big picture. It's kind of a dilemma, but I think, relating back to this kind of an accounting framework approach, that at least it helps me put the pieces all together.

    I'm an economist, not an environmental specialist, so I tend to look at the thing from that angle. And when I think about the economy out there, it's enormously complex, just like the environment is. But if we tried to represent the economy with a handful of indicators that weren't connected together in some coherent way, I don't see how it would work. So we've built a framework where, sure, there are indicators--the unemployment rate and the CPI and the GDP and the trade balance and so on--but they all connect together in a coherent conceptual way.

    There's been a lot of questing for that on the environment side, and we're not there by a long shot. Not all of the task force members were in agreement--there was great diversity of thinking around the table; that was the strength of the task force. But certainly some of the task force members, like me, really saw this as a good direction to go in future, to try to build a better framework for environmental information that would connect to the economic framework we already have available.

  (1225)  

    The Chair: Would anyone else like to answer?

    Mr. Philip Smith: Yes, my colleague here, Mr. Smith, would also like to respond.

    Mr. Robert Smith (Assistant Director, Environment Accounts and Statistics Division, Statistics Canada): Thank you, Mr. Tonks, for your question, because I think it's a very pertinent one. It offers the opportunity to address what for us I think is the kernel of much of this issue.

    Mr. Smith has done an excellent job of describing to you the rationale behind our desire to adopt a framework first, and then consider the indicators that fall out of that framework second.

    I'll just add one point to what he has already said. In the absence of a framework, in the absence of an approach that is grounded in some sort of theoretical understanding of what it is you're trying to measure, which manifests itself in the form of a framework, one ends up with a very data-driven approach.

    Unfortunately, in the environment game, the data we have available at our disposal today that have been developed over the last 25 years, although they're very, very good in some domains, by and large, don't cover the whole territory very well. We have pretty good data on air quality, some data on water quality, and so on. But once you get beyond those two broad domains, you really start to note the underlying weaknesses of environmental information.

    So if you take the data-driven approach to the development of environmental indicators, you run up against a brick wall pretty quickly. We turned the question on its head, saying that, regardless of what data we have available to us today, what's the framework that we want to draw indicators from? What data are necessary to populate that framework with information? Then what indicators fall out of the framework?

    That's sort of the ideal way one would approach the problem. It is indeed the way economic statistics have been built up over the last 60 years or so. The framework came first, thanks to John Maynard Keynes and others. Statisticians came second and said okay, now that we have someone who has defined for us an analytical framework within which one can understand the evolution of the economy, how do statistical offices respond to that framework, build up sets of economic statistics, and ultimately aggregate those economic statistics into meaningful indicators?

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Tonks.

    Mr. Reed.

    Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize for my lateness. I came from an ethanol meeting.

    I wonder if any methodology has been developed to take us to the next step. This is incredibly important information, and it reflects the impact humans have on the earth, in our country particularly. Is there any methodology that either is available or could be put together that would reflect the true cost of product that we use?

    In other words, I'm an advocate of whole costing. I wonder if there's any way of taking what is essential information here and moving it into the price of the product, the real price of the products we use as humans.

  (1230)  

    Mr. Robert Smith: I'll give that one a shot. It's one that's very near and dear to my heart, as a matter of fact.

    I think the conceptual framework you're talking about is one that we call a material flow framework, essentially, where you look at the economy not from the perspective of the circular exchange of goods and services for money and labour, but rather as a linear exchange of materials from the environment into the economy and then ultimately back into the environment again. From that sort of linear perspective, the economy can be seen as sort of a material throughput machine.

    In order to do what you want to do, which is to look at the full cost accounting of the production of goods and services, one has to look at that linear throughput machine in all of its detail, all of its aspects. So you have to be able to create an information system that tells you about the extraction of raw materials from the environment: water and timber; biomass--fish, trees, things like that; subsoil assets--oil and gas, minerals, and so on. That's one side of the equation.

    On the other side of the equation, you need to have an information system that tells you about what those materials are ultimately transformed into and then rejected back into the environment. So you have carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, various forms of toxic pollutants, heavy metals, and so on.

    That's the bare bones of a framework that would allow you to do that kind of full-cost accounting, and then you have two options at that point.

    There are analytical techniques that can allow you to turn that kind of an information system into measures of the material intensity of production. For example, I have numbers that can tell you how much greenhouse gas is embedded in $1,000 of automobile production. If you want to know that, I can tell you that today. I can tell you the same thing for water, and the same thing for energy. I'd love to be able to tell it to you for steel and copper, and so on; unfortunately, we don't have those data yet.

    But effectively, you have two options that you can follow at the point at which you have your information system built: you can leave it all in physical terms and then talk about the greenhouse gas intensity of an automobile in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide, and that's an option; or you can follow the more complicated, and perhaps ultimately more satisfactory, route of trying to value carbon dioxide emissions.

    Then what you can do is look at the full cost of an automobile on a comparable basis. So all of the inputs and outputs would be measured, using a common yardstick. The yardstick that we have available to us, for better or for worse, is dollars and cents.

    That's a hugely complex task. To actually value all of the inputs and all of the outputs, good and bad, in the economic system in a meaningful way is hugely complex.

    I personally am an advocate of starting with the physical measures and making darned sure that we get good, robust physical measures, and where we can, moving forward on the evaluation front. But I think a great deal can be said that's meaningful by looking at the relationship between physical flows of materials and energy, and the goods and services that we produce and consume in the economy.

    If we actually had, as we do in the economic world, comparable systems of accounting among different nations, we would be able to compare one another. So you'd actually be able to look at a Mercedes-Benz produced in Germany and compare it to a Ford Tempo produced in Windsor and say something meaningful about the full ecological cost of those two automobiles. We aren't there yet, but we'd certainly like to be there one day.

    Mr. Julian Reed: Well, I certainly hope you will be there one day, because we are constantly looking at debates using new kinds of products and so on, and we really don't have a hard look at their true cost. When as a consumer--and I'll reduce it to very simple terms--I go to the gas pump and I see gasoline at so many cents a litre, I have no idea what its real cost is in the environment. I have no idea whatsoever. Maybe, as the majority of citizens, all I care about is the cost of that litre going into the tank. I don't know whether you have to add on another 30¢ or another 50¢ a litre or whatever, but I hope we do get there at some point.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

  (1235)  

    The Chair: Perhaps quantifying the value of the environment, Mr. Reed, is as elusive as quantifying the value of having a baby.

    Madam Scherrer is not here, so it's my turn.

    The question I would like to ask you is this. According to your paper here today, we have national-level reports; regional state-of-environment reports; environmental index development reports; reporting on emerging issues; and national resource departments' vision of state-of-environment reporting. Then we have, from Statistics Canada, Human Activity and the Environment, and then for the masses, for the entertainment of the unwashed like us, “Tracking Key Environmental Issues”.

    Do you see the need of a national reporting product that brings together regional data, regional trends, and then national trends? Yes or no?

    Ms. Risa Smith: I think what we've done is all these regional pictures, but now we do have to synthesize it, because when you read all those regional reports, what you see is there are certain issues that are common across the country in all watersheds. At the federal level you need to know that. We've done that somewhat, but not in a way that obviously satisfies you, or we wouldn't be here.

    The Chair: Mr. Smith.

    Mr. Philip Smith: I believe the Minister of the Environment, through his or her department, has responsibility certainly to report to Canadians on a regular basis about the state of the environment. As to how he or she does that, there's a lot of room for judgment on that, and it's buried over time. Should it be in a thick book or should it be on the Internet or should it be in a series of smaller books on specific topics? I don't have a particular view myself on that.

    The Chair: But do you see a need or not?

    Mr. Philip Smith: I see the need for regular reporting of the state of the environment, definitely.

    The Chair: You do.

    The next question then would be, if there is a need, should the model be the one established by the Report on the State of Canada's Environment, or should it be a different model?

    Ms. Risa Smith: I think in today's world we're thinking of a different.... You mean the 1996 report. Should that be the model? I don't think that's the model for today's world. I think it was the right model for 1996, but it's not the right model today.

    The reason for that is today we can make.... I think Mr. Szabo pointed it out. In that report you could go to a particular graph and you wouldn't have anything behind it. But in today's world we can do it differently. We can spend less money on printing reports and we can have a more integrated type of reporting, where we have something for the high level, maybe indicators, a small set, but we have more details and more transparency at another level. We can do that now. The technology is there to do that. It's a different model, but it's a better model, I think.

    The Chair: Would you like to describe it?

    Ms. Risa Smith: Well, if I were in charge of all resources, which I'm not, what I imagine is we would have size. We'd have a Canadian Information System for the Environment, and in that, you'd have access to all the distributed databases held by municipalities, provinces, even private industry, if they were willing. And then from that, you would build up a set of indicators relevant at a regional level, and you would build from that a set of very high-level indicators that would be relevant at a higher level.

    In fact I heard a talk the other day that the most important and scarcest resource in the developing world is time. So if you want to attract the attention of decision-makers who aren't interested in the environment, you have to translate that all into something very short for those people. I think we can do that in today's world, and we're working towards that. But you have to tell all the stories around it. You have to interpret it.

    The other thing that I think is different from the model you saw in 1996--and I think I heard this around this table--is the model of just saying here's the science, the trend is going up, it's going down, and not linking to policy isn't relevant in today's world. In today's world, we have to go the next step and we have to do something like Switzerland does--here's the science, but at the same time, here's the policy and legislative response. We have to include all that.

    And the other thing we have to do that's different is we can't have our reports totally driven by science. We have to hear from the users what they need to hear to make decisions, and that is also different. Those reports were done by the scientists telling us what we needed to know--and that is important--but also the decision-makers have to tell us what they need to know, and we have to be sure we provide that type of information as well. So it's a different vision, I think.

  (1240)  

    The Chair: We will hear from the statisticians now.

    Mr. Philip Smith: Yes. I think state-of-the-environment reporting involves collecting, organizing, disseminating, and analyzing information. If you compare what we were in 1996 with where we are today, there have been enormous changes in the world since then.

    With the development of the Internet in particular and the growth in the amount of information that's much more readily available, I think Canadians today are looking for online access to much more detailed amounts of information. A book like this that tries to pull it together in an easily readable form is useful for some people, but there's a growing demand from the more intensively interested Canadians for the source information, not just for summaries of it.

    When it comes to analyzing the information and reading its messages, which is an important part of state-of-the-environment reporting, I don't think we have any particular monopoly on ability to do that analysis here in Ottawa. That's again, I think, a good feature of the new world we're in today, that by making the information more readily available through size, and through Statistics Canada's databases for that matter, over the Internet in a hopefully very user-friendly way--an increasingly user-friendly way--it becomes possible for all interested Canadians to get access to the state-of-environment information, do their own analysis of it, draw their own conclusions, and act accordingly.

    The model involves improving and expanding our databases, making them more easily available to Canadians through the Internet, and yes, doing some analysis and disseminating of reports in Ottawa. But I guess my sense is that our Ottawa reports are decreasingly important in a sense, because there's so much more scope now for Canadians generally to prepare their own reports, if we disseminate the information well.

    The Chair: Madam Lloyd, would you like to comment on what we just heard in the last few minutes?

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: Well, I certainly agree with what both Smiths said. We've been working very closely with Stats Canada in the last three years to develop systems that are much more transparent. I think the key point that Dr. Smith made is in terms of focusing on what people need rather than us thinking what they need and putting that out--what is it that's going to influence the decisions you make or influence policy decisions and point out where the legislative gaps are that Mr. Herron referred to.

    That's a huge focus, not just within indicators within Environment Canada, but everything in Environment Canada now is to go out and understand what people need better. So that is the type of information we put out. I think that's one of the huge changes in our approach.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    We can go back now to Madame Scherrer, and then we can start the next round.

[Translation]

    Ms. Hélène Scherrer (Louis-Hébert, Lib.): I shall wait for the end of the last round, if I may.

  (1245)  

[English]

    The Chair: We can, then, start the second round.

    Mr. Mills.

    Mr. Bob Mills: It has been very interesting. I guess I came here thinking we probably needed a document like that, but probably have changed my mind now from listening to you.

    The citizen involvement of today is very different from what it was. Getting the information soon enough, becoming involved in the process soon enough, is the critical issue, and to make sure, whatever format we put this in, that it is possible.

    I see a couple of problems, though. First of all, I come back to the differences. If you asked for indicators between different provinces, I think you would get differences. I think you would get a conflict on environment. As I've learned, environment is very different from province to province, as is their attitude towards the federal government, and so on. I'm not sure how you accomplish it, but could you get a set of indicators that would be accepted by everybody, provinces and territories?

    It comes back to Mr. Szabo's question about accuracy. There's so much stuff out there, and we or most average citizens really wouldn't know if this scientist is accurate or not, or what his reputation is or his past works are. I see this as a federal-provincial problem of deciding on those standards, and the question of accuracy, as Mr. Szabo indicated, is extremely important. I don't know how to fix this.

    Finally, Mr. Smith suggested we take the environmental cost of changing to a Mercedes versus a Ford. Does this mean we would carry that so far as to determine, possibly, trade arrangements? Might we decide that while we can't afford to produce Fords because they are too hard on our environment, it's better to import them and let the Germans have the environmental cost? Is that where we could go? That could really open up a whole ball of wax.

    He said it; I didn't.

    Ms. Risa Smith: I can just respond to your federal-provincial-territorial question. I think it's a very good question, and one I've been personally involved in for many years.

    We have the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment—we used to have a state-of-environment task group, and now it's a network—and through it we have worked on developing common sets across the country. You do get into some very interesting differences between provinces. Through that mechanism, because everybody's at the table and it is a mechanism that reports up through the political process, we have been able to develop some tools and some indicators nationally. In fact, that's where the water quality index comes from: it comes from CCME State of Environment Task Group. Then there's a water quality task group working together to come up with something that would work nationally and which all the provinces would agree on, because it's mostly provincial data that goes into it.

    It's the same with this biodiversity index we're just in the infant stage of developing. It is through the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Biodiversity Working Group, which reports to the biodiversity ministers. That's the ministers of wildlife, agriculture, fisheries, forestry—I think that's it. It reports through them. Then you have all the provinces and territories and the federal government sitting down together and coming to common ground. That's very exciting, because again, if the data isn't held by the federal government but we want a national picture, we have to work together. And we are doing so. It's critical. It's kind of exciting to do it, because you get into resolving some differences.

    I think it was a good question.

    The Chair: Mr. Bailey.

    Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris—Moose Mountain, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Like a student, I have two red-hot excuses—

    The Chair: Excuse me, could you hold on to your red-hot excuses for a moment? Mr. Smith has not finished his comments.

    Mr. Philip Smith: Thank you. I'll try to be brief. I wanted to also add a few more comments in response to your question.

    Environmental information is still relatively new. For 30 to 40 years nobody cared about the environment, I think it's not too great an exaggeration to say. That's not true about most of the rest of our information systems. So there are interesting parallels, I think, with other information systems vis-à-vis the question you asked.

    The one that came to my mind when you were posing your question was that of public finance statistics. Each provincial and municipal and federal government devises its own public accounts system and reports its revenues, expenses, and deficits balance sheet differently. And that's fine. They each have their own perspective on that, their own needs. But when Canadians want to compare the public finances of different levels of government, they need a way of bringing those public finance statements together in a comparable way.

    We've been very active in that at Statistics Canada over the years, working with provinces, and we've established standards. One of our roles is to take the public finance statistics that the provinces produce for their own purposes and transform them into a common basis of accounting so that they are comparable and can be aggregated and compared across the different jurisdictions.

    I think that's what we have to do with environmental statistics too. It's like what Ms. Smith there was saying. We have water quality measures at the provincial level that are each designed by each province to meet its own needs, and rightly so; but at the same time, there's a need for some sort of coordinated approach to bringing these statistics together to produce aggregates and to permit comparability. And this CISE organization that we're trying to establish in Canada would have a major role in doing that. I think it's a very important part of the current thrust of government policy.

  (1250)  

    The Chair: We have Mr. Bailey, Madam Scherrer, Mr. Szabo, and the chair, and then we'll sum it up.

    Mr. Bailey.

    Mr. Roy Bailey: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I was going to say that I had two red-hot excuses for being absent for the first part. I was involved in different occupations. And after doing some reading here I want to give to you a quote, although it's from a different area, the area of testing. This was a sign I had in my office, which said “measurements must be scientific, but in reporting it must be spelled out in lay language”. That zeroed in on what you were saying.

    I want to give you a couple of examples that language is constantly evolving and changing. If you'd have asked me when I was a teenager what's a “tree-hugger”...it's new language. Or if you ask the people where I come from today, they will tell you what “no till” means. We take on new language.

    But it's very important that in this field.... You have a huge audience, and they are a receptive audience, but it has to be in their language. I'll give you an example. The spring after metric was invented--

    An hon. member: In Canada.

    Mr. Roy Bailey: --in Canada, here I am out in the field that is measured by acres, not hectares, on a tractor that I know goes miles per hour, not kilometres per hour, with a tank and a pressure that has nothing but pounds per square inch, and, finally, there were some other measurements in litres and not gallons. Quite frankly, I gave up. I simply was not equipped to make all of that variation without possibly killing me and the whole crop. So that was the biggest problem. Later I became an expert, and people were coming from all over for me to help them with their spray. But it was very difficult.

    I want to point out that somebody mentioned the e-mail and the volumes of books. Just think what advantage you people have in reporting now. There is always an appetite for the environment. Environment's a big seller as long as what you are reporting is digestible for the reader. Don't get into the fix I was in, and I really want to emphasize this. Because even when I pick up a magazine I can't read all of, and that's the New England Journal of Medicine, they even have come down so lay people like myself can read that. I use that as an example.

    And I want to congratulate you for what I have heard so far, because just as there was a big difference between 1992 and today, think what the difference will be in 2010.

    Thank you.

  (1255)  

    The Chair: Madame Scherrer.

[Translation]

    Ms. Hélène Scherrer: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I realize, after Mr. Bigras's question, that this has probably been asked while I was away, but it is a very practical question that touches on the thickness of the document, the possibility of updates. How do you manage to update such a document and to make sure all the information it contains is relevant? How do you make sure that people won't shy away from this document when they wish to consult it? It is worse than a phonebook. You only need to start to leaf through it and you get discouraged. In fact, we are very happy about the number of copies around, but if I look at the number of citizens that should regularly consult it, I find that the number of copies that have been used so far is very small.

    Given the fact that science evolves very rapidly these days, that more and more citizens are concerned about their environment, do you think it could be updated much more frequently in the future? To publish such a document is so costly that it is only done every ten years. On the other hand, we nowadays evolve every year on sustainable development and the environment as such. How can one tries, in a department, to be efficient and not obsolete? Because now, the day a document is published, it is not relevant anymore. How could we ensure that as many people as possible will have access to it in a user-friendly way? The time you spend just to glance through it, this is too much.

[English]

    Ms. Risa Smith: That's precisely why we're not producing those exact types of documents.

    I do have to say something, though. There is actually a market for those reference documents. In fact, they were hot sellers as well, and we did do some cost recovery from those and made back quite a bit of money from selling them to libraries. They were used as textbooks in universities. There's no other source of Canadian information consolidated in that way. So they do have a market, and nobody is filling that market.

    But if we were to have this kind of vision of open information at different levels and do some high-level reports, it would allow perhaps somebody, a publisher, to put together that kind of information for a textbook, for example. Right now, they can't do that, because they can't access all the information.

    In my way of thinking, if we had size, it would actually enable that type of thing. So we would still do reporting, but there would be other types of products, and there is definitely a market for those types of products too. It just doesn't serve you.

[Translation]

    Ms. Hélène Scherrer: No, you are right. You are quite right to say that this document is a reference document in universities, in places where there is a special interest for the environment. in libraries.But I think, taking into account the present situation and the concern for the environment, that we need not only reference documents but action-based ones, so we can act very rapidly.

    These reference documents contain a wealth of information but it often take years to collect that information. If we want to be able to act tomorrow, we need a document other than a reference document, an action-based, very specific document, in various areas. We should move in that direction and make documents more accessible to municipalities, to all those who do not want to make a study but to act in the very short term.

[English]

    The Chair: Any comments?

    Ms. Risa Smith: I'm totally in agreement that this is where we're going, and I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. Szabo.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Mr. Chairman, I like the big book, only from the standpoint that it's a macro, or an overview, and it allows me to touch a lot of bases in a cursory way so that I can then pick and choose where I want to go. So I hope there always will be that macro picture of the issues, or the emerging issues, on a broad base so that people will be able, for general interest purpose, for general knowledge purpose, to appreciate the significance of the environmental impacts in our lives.

    Public education, Mr. Chairman, is a very large part of this, because if we want as legislators to be productive and constructive and create good legislation, we do have to hear from people from all walks of life across all of Canada. But if they don't have the stimuli to motivate them to think about these issues, and see the breadth and how important it is, we may not get as much productivity out of that exercise as we otherwise could.

    I raise this because the preamble or the premise of all meetings to do with the environment is that everybody is in favour of clean air, clean water, clean everything. But I'd like to know from the witnesses whether we have in fact a credible survey of Canadians in terms of their support for environmental priorities relative to other priorities on the table.

·  (1300)  

    The Chair: Some of what you've said is very political, but let's see whether they are--

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Mr. Chairman, it's anecdotal.

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: Certainly the government does numerous pollings on that issue and there's constant feedback as to where the environment fits relative to other issues of the day, and it is always near the top of the list.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: More as a general concern for the environment.

    Ms. Karen Lloyd: Yes, but there is polling done by several reputable polling companies in Canada on that.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I think if you were to ask, are you in favour of clean air, water, etc., it would be very difficult not to say yes. It's like apple pie and motherhood.

    In your experience in doing these surveys, are you satisfied that Canadians have the proper perspective on environmental issues as they relate to our air and our water, as opposed to health? Because if the health issues are driving public opinion, it would be a no-brainer to say it's number one almost, right up there with health. Or is it in fact my interest or my priority with regard to the general environmental population of issues?

    The Chair: I know you're not here to give your impression of public opinion surveys, but anyway, try briefly to answer the question.

    Ms. Risa Smith: I'm not sure if this is actually what you've asked, but I'll try it anyway.

    There's a flurry of work right now on the relationship between human health and the environment. This flurry of work is in Canada, it's internationally, it's in Europe. The World Health Organization is involved. Our minister, as have many others in many organizations, has made a promise to find a way to link those, and I think that is where actually people will be more engaged in the environment, when they understand better the relationship between human health and the environment.

    It's not easy to make that relationship because it's a multiple effects kind of model and it's not causal. You can't say that if you do this, you get so many cancer rates. It's more complex than that. But there is certainly a very big effort, international and national, to make those connections more solid and to tell Canadians about them.

    Did that answer your question?

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Mr. Chairman, if I may, to help, I raised it because there was a big debate about whether Kyoto had anything to do with health.

    The Chair: We will conclude in ten minutes, so Mr. Smith, please respond briefly.

    Mr. Philip Smith: The comment I wanted to make was just to note two specific cases of surveys of this type that I am aware of. One was a survey of the importance of wildlife to Canadians on which Environment Canada and Statistics Canada collaborated during several occasions, I believe, in the 1980s and 1990s. Although we haven't done that survey for quite some time, we did look there specifically at Canadians' attitudes toward wildlife.

    The other survey is a bit further removed from what you're saying, but I think relates to it. Statistics Canada has done a survey on the behaviour of households vis-à-vis the environment on a number of occasions where we ask questions about the extent to which households practise environmentally friendly practices, whether they recycle, whether they walk to work, and whether they have a compost in their backyard and so on.

    That's not quite the same, but I think, Mr. Chairman, you said it right: certainly at Statistics Canada we don't do a lot of opinion surveys; we're mostly focused on measuring factual issues.

·  (1305)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Szabo.

    Mr. Tonks, please.

    Mr. Alan Tonks: One of the ways to close the accountability loop in terms of what we say and measuring what we do against that is through the Auditor General and the Auditor General's annual report--I believe it's an annual report--on sustainable development, which comes before this committee.

    As you develop this framework, and the framework of selectively aggregating in various areas key indices, do you see any benefit to doing some dialogue with the Auditor General in terms of that methodology, so that it not only is a consistent methodology in terms of state-of-the-environment reporting, but it also has some applicability, if you will, as a methodology with respect to whether we are being accountable in the public accounts approach for prioritizing and carrying through with priorities, programs, and so on? Because that's part of what the Auditor General attempts to hold us to. It's either an observation, or if you want to make a very quick response to it, would that be--

    Ms. Risa Smith: They have come to talk to us about indicators, so there is a dialogue, but they don't really want to engage with us because they like to evaluate you, so it's a somewhat different relationship. But they have actually come and talked to us about how we develop indicators and thought about doing some sort of analysis of that.

    The Chair: Mr. Smith, briefly, please.

    Mr. Robert Smith: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    The same is generally true of us. We've had several meetings over the past eight years probably. In fact, since the creation of the environmental arm of the Auditor General's office, whenever that was, around 1995 or 1996, perhaps 1997, we have had four or five meetings over those years with people from the Auditor General's office, and they have always expressed a great deal of support for our work in the development of environmental accounts. They're auditors. They love standardized, classified, tabulated information. They couldn't be any happier. They have been quite supportive and have provided us with good feedback. They're not as interested in auditing Statistics Canada, I guess.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Well, let me try to sum it up. We have come frequently across the observation that there are various levels of information, and several interventions have explored variables and different and desirable approaches. If I look at Human Activity in the Environment: Annual Statistics 2002, for instance—what strikes me is this excellent publication has a text of 30 pages and charts of 40 pages, a ratio in that respect, and that's quite understandable. This is the world of statisticians.

    If I look at the other extreme, Tracking Key Environmental Issues, this is a paradise for a photographer. It is a very fine, readable text, and very short on charts and graphs and statistical background and trends; nevertheless, it's there. It is a completely different mix of information.

    So the question is whether in the public interest—which operates at so many levels, and I don't mean that in constitutional terms—it is desirable to produce something that makes a yearly assessment and provides a measurement of progress or lack thereof from year to year in a readable manner. We had from you a reasonably positive answer to that effect.

    What I would like to ask on behalf of the committee is whether you would provide us with a joint set of recommendations upon which both parties, so to speak—the statistical and the environmental departmental parties—agree about how to proceed from here, taking into account, of course, the excellent documentation you produced today, including the current state-of-environment reports.

    This gives us a picture not of a highly coordinated set of productions, so to speak: it seems as if everybody has good ideas, and they launch them and produce a report. But there doesn't seem to be a policy thought behind these five areas. They are all desirable on their own merits, but there's not that coherence to which Mr. Smith, for instance, referred earlier, and also the coherence Mr. Szabo was attempting to establish.

    It is against this background that the committee would need and would appreciate from you a set of recommendations as to what to do next, in the light of what has happened since 1996, or earlier—whatever timeframe you want to choose. Is that an unreasonable request?

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    Ms. Karen Lloyd: Speaking on behalf of Environment Canada, I don't think it is an unreasonable request. We'd be happy to work with Statistics Canada to develop some recommendations for your committee to consider.

    The Chair: You've been in the field, you know it, and you understand the complexities, and you also have an idea as to what is in the making—for there are some very intriguing paragraphs in your presentation, Ms. Lloyd, as to what is in the making or is about to happen, which is unclear, but you would know more. So it would be good also, for the reasons given by Mr. Mills, and by Mr. Bailey in terms of semantics, to have a recommendation that outlines how we should make recommendations to Parliament and what should be the next step. From the wisdom and the knowledge in your respective departments, I'm sure we will be well guided.

    Mr. Bob Mills: Mr. Chair, where I started with the specific examples is what the people on the ground need to have as well. I used the Fraser Valley as an example, the Sumas project. There are 6,000 people who showed up to get involved in that project, and they need information. Whether it's the relationship between health and environment, the water table, sewage into the river, they need information and they need help.

    How can we do something in Environment Canada that's going to be usable on that scene, whether it's there or southern Ontario or the smog question in Toronto, so that they on a practical basis can use that material to help them deal with the issue that pertains to them on a regional basis? Somehow, if you can fit that in, how do you address that problem?

    The Chair: On behalf of the committee members, I would like to thank you very much. It was a very informative couple of hours, quite a learning experience. Perhaps we only touched the surface, but we look forward to you coming back soon with your recommendations. Is that all right? Thanks.

    Mr. Alan Tonks: On another issue Mr. Chair, just before the members leave, I understand that we're attempting to table Bill C-9 and the amendments that committee had made. Staff would be very much available to meet individually or together next week.

    I understand that some of the members will be out of town. On behalf of staff, they will contact your offices to set up an opportunity for discussing the committee's amendments and the process whereby some resolution or harmonization is taking place with respect to the intent of the committee and what the government will be bringing forward.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    The meeting is adjourned.