[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 14, 1996

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[English]

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): I'd like to call this session to order.

I'd like to welcome you to our fourth and final round table. In this one we'll be discussing energy savings and energy conservation.

For those of you who are new to our round table and our forum, this is a forum on jobs, environment and sustainable development. Yesterday afternoon we had quite a lively discussion on sustainable development, with different perspectives and different points of view. This morning we took a more practical look at waste management and had a third round table on pollution prevention.

Essentially, we've been following the process of having three project presentations. We've been looking at successful implementations within communities and in businesses, industry and government. This forum is providing members of Parliament with an opportunity to better understand sustainable development and to see where the successes are so they can do some of these things in their own ridings.

I would also like to mention that these proceedings are being televised. We will be using the videotapes from these sessions to give to schools and community groups. Anyone in this room who's interested can certainly ask for a copy as well.

Before we get started with our presentations, we can identify who we are and what our organization is or where we're from. We can start with me. I'm Karen Kraft Sloan, member of Parliament for York - Simcoe and the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of the Environment.

Mrs. Cowling (Dauphin - Swan River): I'm Marlene Cowling, the member of Parliament for Dauphin - Swan River and the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources.

Mr. Nils Larsson (Director, High Performance Commercial Buildings Program, Department of Natural Resources): I'm Nils Larsson from the CANMET Energy Technology Centre at Natural Resources Canada.

Dr. Tom Burnett (Director, Environmental Affairs, Inco): I'm Tom Burnett from Inco's Toronto office.

[Translation]

Professor Jean-Thomas Bernard (Professor, Department of Economics, Sciences, Laval University): My name is Jean-Thomas Bernard. I teach economics at Laval University and I specialize in energy economics.

[English]

Ms Louise Comeau (Director, Sierra Club of Canada): I'm Louise Comeau from the Sierra Club of Canada.

Ms Sue Zielinski (Director, Transportation Options): I'm Sue Zielinski from Transportation Options and the City of Toronto.

Mr. Finlay (Oxford): I'm John Finlay, from Oxford, former member of the environment committee and vice-chair of the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee.

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Mr. Bill Armstrong (President, Energy Pathways, Ottawa): I'm Bill Armstrong, from Energy Pathways in Ottawa.

Mr. Forseth (New Westminster - Burnaby): I'm Paul Forseth, member of Parliament for New Westminster - Burnaby in British Columbia, and a member of the House Standing Committee on the Environment.

[Translation]

Mrs. Guay (Laurentides): I am Monique Guay, member of Parliament for Laurentides and Opposition critic on environmental issues.

[English]

Mr. Chuck Hopkins (Senior Adviser, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization): I'm Chuck Hopkins. I'm with UNESCO and also with Tescor.

Mr. Bob Swartman (President, Canadian Solar Industries Association): I'm Bob Swartman. I am from London and am president of the Canadian Solar Industries Association. We're a national association of manufacturers, distributors, dealers and installers of products that utilize solar energy.

Mr. Lincoln (Lachine - Lac-Saint-Louis): I'm Clifford Lincoln, member of Parliament for Lachine - Lac-Saint-Louis. I am an associate member of the committee on environment and sustainable development.

The Clerk of the Committee (Mr. Etoka): I'm George Etoka, clerk of the environment subcommittee.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Our project presenters, Dr. Tom Burnett, from Inco, Bill Armstrong, president of Energy Pathways here in Ottawa, and Nils Larrson, who is with CANMET, will begin our proceedings here this afternoon.

Dr. Tom Burnett, please. We'll give you ten minutes at this time.

[Translation]

Dr. Burnett: Thank you, Madam Chair. Twenty-five years ago, in Sudbury, our company set up a program to reduce the use of all types of energy. These are the results of this effort over the last 15 years.

[English]

We have expressed the results in this chart, which also appears in the ``Industrial Energy Innovators'' brochure of Natural Resources Canada. We have expressed the results in tonnes of carbon dioxide per pound of nickel and copper produced, since carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas we emit, and production levels change according to market conditions.

The reduction in sulphur dioxide over the same period is comparable and was mandated by an Ontario control order in the mid-1980s. However, we did the energy reduction on a purely voluntary basis, with no government incentive money. We also achieved the sulphur dioxide reductions without government money, although money was available from the federal government.

Saving energy is a win-win situation. We can justify it on the economics alone, with good engineering and technology. We continue to look for new ways to save further energy, including areas such as alternative fuels like methanol, for example, which is produced as a renewable fuel from wood. We continue to look at new ways to use that in place of diesel fuel in the mine equipment. Our energy costs in Sudbury alone are about $12 million a month, and this is reported every month to the chief executive as a critical component of our operating cost.

Currently, we're about 5% below our budget for energy consumption as a corporation. However, we don't have the optimum use of energy. In my opinion as an engineer, that's because of some of the institutional barriers presented by organizations such as Ontario Hydro. We could generate our own power with a modern combined cycle plant probably more cheaply than we could by buying power and using other fuels to raise steam, but this is very complicated to do in Ontario because of current provincial laws.

Policy-makers need to focus more on overall resource stewardship in lieu of sustainable development, which is a concept that is maybe more applicable to the renewable resources such as forests. Our metal products are consumed and then hopefully recycled, although some problems are being posed now to discourage recycling, like the new proposed regulations coming out in CEPA, for example.

Again, recycling of metals is a voluntary thing and can be driven by the economics and the environment. For anyone who wants to institute an energy conservation program, I'll just run through some of the points that we have found in the 20-odd years that we've been doing this at Inco.

It's very important to have the support of senior management, and the management must demonstrate their support by being actively involved and questioning the amount of energy the operating divisions are using.

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You must measure the amount of energy you use. You cannot have a corporate policy of buying energy, whether it is gas or any other form of energy, and not metering it to each individual production area if you want the plant manager held accountable. When you measure it, the plant manager of the copper refinery or the nickel refinery, for example, can then report how much energy is used and how much it costs. The plant manager is then accountable for this within a set budget. He also must make employees aware of how much money it is costing the company so the company can cooperate and understand why things have to be turned off.

We began our program by addressing electricity. This was because at the time, in the 1970s, it was the major energy cost. We extended the concept to natural gas. The next area of energy use we're looking at intensively is compressed air. Then we will be looking at water, as well, to keep track. The same principles of metering, and so on, will apply. Thank you.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Next is Bill Armstrong from Energy Pathways.

Mr. Armstrong: I wanted to talk briefly about two different things we've been involved in.

First of all, I'm involved with the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. I manage a national job creation program for young university and college graduates to work in environment, energy, occupational health and safety, quality management, and in a growing sense in work related to technology adoption and export development.

The CMA came on the scene to assume sponsorship of our program at a time when they were getting involved in the Canadian industry program for energy conservation, CIPEC. It was a sort of reconstitution of a very successful initiative Energy, Mines and Resources had been running for a number of years. This initiative had ceased to operate for a couple of years. It seemed to CMA that the job creation program was a good match with their new responsibilities organizing voluntary industry response to international commitments we've made for climate change. We felt this was true as well.

The interesting thing is it has taken a long time for that organization to simply communicate the need for industrial commitment, to develop an approach to benchmark and measure energy performance against base years, and so on. It was an enormously complex task and one that, in three years, is only beginning to get to the point where action is actually taking place on the ground.

The sense we get is that when we offer employers a number of different options for their workplace and they have a choice between these options, it's a bit of a barometer of exactly what's on people's minds.

The energy management component of the program - we place, in round numbers, about 1,000 people a year nationally - has run about 7% for the last two or three years. In contrast, quality management has gone from zero to around 30% of our placements in less than two years because right now it is a very pressing, high-profile issue with companies. I think these figures highlight how difficult it is to get things on the ground and to implement this.

Another sign we see is the performance contracting industry. Right now we have a pilot program with their trade association to find and recruit people into this industry in response to the potential for job growth.

Performance contracting, where a third party is providing the capital to make major energy improvements and this capital can be repaid from the resulting savings, is an incredibly attractive proposition. But the growth of the industry has been quite disappointing relative to the potential amount of business out there. Once again, this illustrates the difficulty of getting people to move from attention to these things to actual activity.

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We've recently done a needs assessment with Industry Canada across a broad number of different subject areas that might be of interest to managers and owners of small and medium-sized business. Environment and energy finished right at the bottom of a fairly lengthy list that covered things like quality management, health and safety, market development, customer service, various categories of new technology, and so on. There is still strong interest out there, but clearly there are a lot of other priorities that get in the way and get ahead of energy management in the competition for internal resources.

The other thing I'd like to raise is that we did some work with Environment Canada on institutional energy use. In an environment like this, an office environment, an institutional environment, we were curious about what the relative contributions to carbon dioxide loading would be, with both building operations and the way employees got to and from work.

We did very thorough surveying in 8 different federal facilities here and in Toronto and found that on average for those buildings, about 43% of their carbon dioxide loading was commuting, and about three-quarters of that 43% were single occupant cars. In other words, it's the one person, one car commuting mode. I think that's a very relevant bit of information for this particular institution.

A number of years ago I was involved in the underlying study that provided a lot of the background for the ``Greening of the Hill'' initiative. To this day I find it kind of mind-boggling that the whole issue of subsidized parking and commuting habits has kind of slipped through the net on that one. Of all the buildings we surveyed, the one that looked best was just a couple of blocks from here at Transport Canada, where they are equally well serviced with public transit and equally burdened with high parking costs.

We have not been able to do a survey at the House of Commons proper, but I think it would reveal something in the order of about a 50-50 split. The difference between that and maybe the 20-80 split over at Transport Canada is purely the parking situation. I think it would be a good opportunity for me to throw out a challenge to the members to revive that issue and consider that as a very central part of any future greening activities within this facility.

Thank you.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much, Mr. Armstrong.

Mr. Larsson, please.

Mr. Larsson: Since this is a sustainable development subcommittee, I'd like to start off with some of the environmental factors that are related to buildings and the way we work with buildings. Obviously none of these come as a surprise: emissions related to climate change; ozone depletion; resource depletion from not only use of building materials but also the use of land, sometimes agricultural land.

There is also the energy involved in production of building materials and their transport to the site, which we call embodied energy. This is not a major factor in poorly performing buildings where the operating energy over the life of the building looms very large, but as buildings become more efficient and if we can extend their lifespan, the embodied energy from initial production and from replacement of components becomes significant. From the operation of the building there is also the impact on air, water and soil systems.

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There's been a great improvement in construction and operating wastes in the last number of years. In fact, one of the people who has worked on my program participated in a previous program called Advanced House program. He built a house where the sum total of the construction waste at the end of the process was one green garbage bag.

Finally is product durability, and by that I mean not only materials and systems; the building itself is obviously a factor. If we're going to reduce environmental impact, it helps if the building is there for a couple hundred years. That also leads to questions of adaptability of the building.

Now I'll move on to some factors more directly related to energy. This is all background that serves as a context for the program to help you understand a little bit how we structured it. There are new ventilation standards that will possibly increase energy consumption, because we need to heat incoming air during the winter and cool it during the summer.

Plug loads, things that you plug in, such as computers, xerox machines, etc., are not increasing but they are now a larger proportion of the total energy consumption as other systems become more efficient. Most people in the building industry would agree that we have relatively poor commissioning procedures, which mean ensuring that the building is actually put up as designed and that systems actually operate as they are intended. As a result, the actual performance is often below the design target.

One factor we also have to deal with is that in terms of the building operator, energy is usually not the largest cost. If we can deal with an owner-occupant, there's a lot more leverage because your employees are much more expensive on a per square foot or per square meter basis.

This leads us to talk about some occupant-related factors. As I think everyone knows, indoor air quality, or IAQ, and the productivity and health of employees are major factors. Thermal comfort and visual lighting quality are factors that occupants take seriously, as well as acoustical performance. Personal control over indoor environment is becoming more and more important for many tenants and individuals working in office buildings. We also have an increasing incidence of environmental sensitivities.

Also, I'd like to point out that of course we have an aging population, which means that people will probably tend to be a little more fussy about the environment they're in, as they are less adaptable to extremes in temperature and humidity and so on.

These are the background factors. My group is called CANMET Energy Technology Centre. It is a smallish portion of Natural Resources Canada. Within CETC we are in the process of developing a kind of umbrella program called BETA. In general, we are encouraging use of advanced technologies. We're putting a lot of emphasis on systems approach, for both residential and commercial buildings. I'll get more into this in a moment. Of course, we also support and provide advice to government programs and the private sector.

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Coming more directly to the C-2000 program, it's a small demonstration program for commercial buildings. We have been operating for about three years. We have partnerships with some of the major utilities and some industrial suppliers. The intent is to serve as an example to the industry and to the market.

We deal with a small number of buildings because, as you can understand, trying to provide support to commercial buildings is an expensive business. So unlike the residential sector, where you can perhaps contribute a lion's share of the cost of the building for demonstration purposes, you simply can't afford to do that in a commercial building.

We are a fairly small tail on a large dog in each of the cases we deal with. Nevertheless we've tried to cover some of these incremental costs to reach the high performance we require.

How does it work? We've followed a whole-building performance approach. If I can take you back to some of the context introduction, the reason for that is we think we can sell energy efficiency and a more benign environmental approach through a holistic approach.

We deal with both process and product performance criteria. In other words, we've developed requirements that both deal with the process of how professionals work together in the design process - the need for commissioning, for example - as well as saying the energy systems, for example, must perform to a certain level.

On the mix of mandatory and advisory requirements, some of the areas we're involved in are of course a little less well established than others. It's easy to be specific about energy consumption, but if you're saying the building should be more adaptable, it's very difficult to be specific. It's more of a developmental process with the design themes.

Nevertheless, the energy target is pretty demanding. For office buildings we have set it at energy consumption of no more than 50% of ASHRAE 90.1, which is a current benchmark for good performance. You can see it's not a piece of cake to reach that level.

As I said, it's a holistic framework. The other criteria are environmental impact; indoor comfort and productivity; functionality, and here we are dealing with some traditional architectural aspects, if you like, such as how functional a room is as a meeting room in terms of acoustics, lighting, HVAC system and so on; and longevity and adaptability, which are both clearly related to long-term energy and environmental performance.

The approach has been to require interdisciplinary work, with engineers and architects working together from the concept design stage onwards. They are required to develop strategies of how they themselves will reach performance targets and establish specific goals.

We have provided specialized technical support to the teams. We're trying to reach a balance between innovation and risk. Of course we'd like to push innovation as much as we can, especially in the energy areas, but the architects and engineers have to stamp the drawings, and the developer is paying 90% to 95% of the cost of the building, so we can't push too hard.

As to the current status of the program, we have one building completed in Kitchener, Ontario, called Green on the Grand. It's a smallish building with very good performance. In fact it beats our energy target. It's about 45% of ASHRAE. The water consumption is down to under 40% of normal water consumption in office buildings.

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We have one building under construction by Bentall Construction in Richmond, B.C., and that meets our targets. It's a slightly larger building. It will be finished later this year.

The third one, in Kamloops, B.C., hasn't started yet. The interesting thing about this one is that it's the third one along so we are more developed in the process. We are finding that the professional costing consultant involved in the process says it will meet the targets in terms of performance, but it will cost less than the original capital budget. This is an interesting phenomenon; it doesn't necessarily cost more.

We've designed several other buildings, some of which have not been built, such as a high-rise tower in Hull. Of course the market for office space in Hull is not that terrific right now. We are monitoring the performance over the next two or three years. Of course, all of that will result in a whole series of workshops and so on to tell the industry about it.

The interim results show that we have system synergies. We have a good performance, not in individual systems, but the integrated design thinking has helped to achieve very high performance in a number of areas and it has not required unusual technologies.

I talked about the costs. The teamwork has worked very well. In fact, our process has been adopted by B.C. Hydro and B.C. Gas to launch a program called ``Design Facilitation'', which uses this kind of expert support and design intervention at the early stage. We're also advising some private developers on adopting it.

Since my time is running short, I will skip to the last two slides. One of the next steps is more emphasis on retrofits. To our regret, we didn't have any interesting retrofit projects come our way. We are working on a second generation of criteria that will be software-based, which will be aimed at helping designers and developers achieve higher performance on their own without our intervention.

We are looking also at the issues related to location and density. This relates to Bill Armstrong's point. It doesn't help very much if we have a high-performance building but everyone drives a four-by-four to get there. We're doing some joint work with CMHC on mixed use, medium height, medium-to high-density buildings to see what kinds of system efficiencies we get by really focusing more on downtown locations. Of course we're doing joint work with other agencies under PERD, which is the panel on energy research and development.

Finally, our interim conclusion is that both process and technology innovations are needed, and of course we do need public-private partnerships. That's really vital to reach success. In a program like this, you have to have very good outreach to tell the industry what has happened, warts and all. They're pretty knowledgeable people out there, so we have to give the whole spectrum of the findings.

Finally, the holistic approach we followed is more difficult and complicated, but it's extremely worth while.

Thank you.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much, Mr. Larsson.

We'll begin the round table discussion part of our session this afternoon. In the other round table discussions we have been limiting individuals to three to five minutes. I know you have a lot to say and a lot to share. You may want to ask a question or make some comments or you may want to share some information about projects you've been working on.

Who would like to lead off? Louise Comeau, please.

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Ms Comeau: Is it all right if I use a couple of overheads?

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Go ahead. Sure. And your clock is ticking now, Louise.

Ms Comeau: Yes. I'll move quickly.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): We have a small problem. We have a vote at 5:30 p.m., so it makes it hard to go beyond our time.

Ms Comeau: I just wanted to follow up on Nils' point that the C-2000 program is an excellent program and one the Sierra Club has been promoting as a pilot project. It is a much more expanded pilot project for governments to consider as we decide on the next steps under the climate change action plan. It's a very, very important program and I'll point out why.

I'm a member of an organization belonging to a network called the Climate Action Network. Using Natural Resources Canada's own models, we have analysed what would happen in Canada if we in fact retrofitted buildings. Just in the commercial sector, what we did was to assume we would retrofit 13% of buildings by the year 2000 and a total of 22% up to the year 2010. Retrofitting those buildings generated $11 billion in savings. This is a lot of money in the pockets of businesses to reinvest in their companies and operations and to reinvest in job creation in Canada. So we think the commercial sector is very, very important.

For a number of reasons, the other sector we think is very important is the transportation sector. These reasons relate to energy. You won't be able to see this. So I'll just read it to you and show you the visual.

Because fossil fuels contribute so much more than just carbon dioxide, they're also primarily responsible for our sulphur dioxide emissions and the emissions causing smog, which is our nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. We're improving the efficiency of the vehicles we're driving only marginally while increasing the volume of vehicles on the road. What we assumed was a technically possible and economically viable strident increase in efficiency that would improve fuel economy standards for vehicles to five litres per hundred kilometres. This measure alone reduced carbon dioxide emissions in Canada by 26 million tonnes. And this same measure generated $7 billion in savings in the economy.

So energy savings save money. The problem is we have barriers. I think the barriers in the general sense that our speaker from Inco was talking about are not the same as those applying to what Bill Armstrong was getting at. And the point is that if you're a very large, energy-intensive company spending $12 million a month on energy, you notice.

Most of our economy is made up of smaller industrial companies, commercial operations and so on. If you're a small company, your energy costs are 5% to 10% of your overall operating costs. So you don't notice. Because you don't notice it as an overall cost, and because you're not educated on the environmental impacts of all of the atmospheric problems we're talking about and all of the other upstream issues, you don't pay attention to this problem.

Some large companies such as Inco do pay attention. They can do things voluntarily. But the fact is, for the rest of the economy you have to regulate.

We have two areas I think are particularly important. One is the building code. And National Resources Canada did a lot of very hard work to develop an improved standard. But only one province will adopt it, and that is British Columbia.

We have a big problem in this country when the builders continue to argue and win on this last first-cost psychology point. They are convincing governments that the costs associated with improving efficiency of the home are all that count. But when you buy an energy-consuming house, your second cost is also extremely important. And in fact what we're potentially going to see in Ontario is a reduction of building code standards. Builders say this will reduce the cost of homes, but in fact it will very much cost consumers and cost our environment.

So education and regulation are very important. In the building sector the Energy Efficiency Act must keep expanding, and in the transportation sector we have to improve fuel economy standards for vehicles. We need a massive public education program in Canada that focuses on trying to get at these barriers and at making the public more aware of the environmental impact of the energy we use.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Mr. Lincoln.

Mr. Lincoln: I would like to follow up on what Louise brought up.

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It seems to me if you take the people in this room and the experts we have among us, we have enough knowledge. We have enough capacity to use the technology the knowledge gives us. It is sad to say, but the problem is the coordination and the will to carry it out, especially at the highest levels.

I'm wondering how we can make practical changes to our systems to will help us better meet our national and international commitments. I can't help but be struck by what Louise says and think of a building like the NRDC building in New York City or the Audubon building. They've proven there they can produce a building that is far more efficient than average through retrofitting an existing building, putting in materials that can be obtained from hardware stores and all our supply stores. They used no special materials. The NRDC people have told me if all commercial buildings in the United States performed as well as theirs, the United States would save the total equivalent of all their imports of oil in one year.

It baffles me that we're still fighting about building codes when the examples seem to be there and are so tangible. These examples prove it. The savings have been documented in energy costs, maintenance, and in every aspect of the buildings. We have so many examples around. Today there are buildings like this in Montreal for people to see, for people to copy and use as models.

I would like to ask one of our panelists why it is so hard to convince the builders and architects who are still skeptics when we have such fantastic examples before us.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Mr. Burnett.

Dr. Burnett: I think one of the things may be that many buildings are occupied by tenants. We find at Inco that you don't start to save energy until somebody is accountable. Until you meter the energy in to the silver refinery, for example, the manager doesn't know how much energy he is using.

We had to spend a lot of money on basic things like meters. For the office building Inco occupies in Toronto, the energy isn't individually metered in. We don't know how much energy we are using in our office. But we can tell you how much we're using in all sorts of our individual plants.

I think this is an issue that could be addressed in a building code, too. You could force people to measure the gas, the electricity and the water in each subunit.

Mr. Lincoln: I have one very short question. Why can't we, for instance, emulate the example of Bonn, Germany? They started a mass movement of using one typical building as a model and replicating it throughout the country in various industries and businesses, so that instead of being one lost in a crowd, it becomes the norm. I don't see why we can't do this here. Maybe this is what we should do.

Dr. Burnett: I'm sure you're aware, sir, the energy costs in North America are still about half the world price.

Mr. Lincoln: Maybe.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you. Mr. Hopkins.

Mr. Hopkins: Thank you. I'd like to make three points that I think are extremely relevant to the discussion that has been going on to this point.

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The word ``education'' keeps coming back. At the Rio Summit the only word that was mentioned more often was the word ``government''. Everyone kept coming back to the importance of education and public understanding. I think Napoleon had a wonderful line about leadership, about not being so far out in front of the troops that you are perceived as the enemy.

I think one of the things slowing us down is that politicians can only move as far as they have public support that will be there for them. The same is true with the corporate world. You can only develop products and market them if the general public is going to buy them and is willing to pay for them. Now it's interesting that some of these products are actually cheaper. That may go a long way. But some of them also have hidden costs because of the way in which things are actually priced here.

The importance of formal education - schools and so on - and informal education from NGOs and from parks departments and that sort of thing...and also what is so extremely important is education that arises from informal education. That is from the media at large. Quite often that is not in sync.

Earlier today some young school students were in here. They are well down the road in doing some really neat environmental things. Being a formal educator - I've just left work as a school superintendent with the Toronto Board of Education - I'm also aware of the changes that come through when they hit that teenage level. They are much more swayed by informal education.

Moving into the world of energy, let me make this slight move, because we found that to try to develop good, sound, sustainable development education - not just environmental education, but truly sustainable development education - at a time of very severe budget cuts was almost impossible. But we did find that by using the retrofitting of our schools we generated tremendous savings. And surprise - the public sector was finally into it. We also found out that if teachers and students understood what was going on in that school and collaborated with it, there was an additional saving of anywhere from 5% to 20%.

If you take an average of 10%, the savings within Metro Toronto alone are estimated at $22 million. We could be generating an additional $2.2 million that could fuel curriculum development around sustainable development education, which is far more than what we would really need even if we were to take a part of that and put it into curriculum development and reverse the trend of it totally eroding, of it moving away.

We're replacing the natural science school on Toronto Island, where all students in the city of Toronto spend a week in residential environmental studies. One thing we're doing is replacing the mechanical room in the new building so that it becomes a classroom, and so that every student goes through it and spends time in the mechanical room understanding energy flow, grey water treatment, and all those kinds of things. It's all there in very easily interpreted and monitored ways. They can actually meter what goes on in the various classrooms so they will have that kind of understanding.

Let me move to the third and last point. How can we come up with a specific project that will help in the greening of the schools themselves? Because quite often students in the classroom are told one thing and they walk out of that classroom and into a cafeteria that is all disposables. They do not see the building being operated in a green way and there's just a tremendous dichotomy. Once again, what they see around them is not what is being taught to them.

Two years ago, out of Rio, the world came to an agreement of something called ``Agenda 21''. Agenda 21 was a plan that all of the nations of the world came up with for things that need to be addressed - there are roughly 40 chapters - before the year 2000. It's pretty dry reading. However, a group of roughly one thousand young people from around the world got together through writings and so on and submitted their youth version of Agenda 21. With it came fantastic drawings and illustrations, all signed by the young people, along with which country they were from, their age and so on. There are four pages on each chapter, with two pages outlining the problem and two pages outlining some hope and some solutions.

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Now you can't address the complex issues of Agenda 21 in four pages, but as a consortium of roughly forty different groups all coming together - some from the private sector, some from government, and some individuals - we have raised funds to be able to put a copy of this youth version into all the schools in Canada. They're being distributed within the next week or two.

The idea is for the young people to realize that there is a necessary agenda for the world, so how can they come up with a school-based agenda or an agenda based on youth clubs or a community-based agenda? And working along those lines, what are the issues for the world? For the world, it was oceans, atmosphere and so on. For the school, it may be cafeterias, day care, secure lock-up for bicycles, reduction in graffiti, monitoring lighting, etc. It's theirs.

The third thing would be a personal Agenda 21. What are the kinds of things you can do to make that personal commitment so that you understand going to work in a four-wheel drive is not necessarily the particular route to go?

I'll just wrap this up. The book is going to be supported on SchoolNet, so it's not just a distribution of the book, both in English and French. Young people will be able to talk and to discuss the concept of developing a school-based Agenda 21. For example, what kinds of things can we do in school gardening? What kinds of things can we do? Then that will be moved into the international theme through the Internet.

Thank you very much.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): That's a very exciting project.

The next three people I have on my speakers list are Professor Jean-Thomas Bernard, Ms Sue Zielinski and Mr. John Finlay.

Professor Bernard.

[Translation]

Prof. Bernard: Thank you for your invitation.

The opinions presented until now were all, more or less, related to specific projects. Mine will be a more global approach, on the macro scale, and I'm going to use Quebec as an example. My comments could also apply to many other provinces, including Manitoba and British Columbia, where the use of hydro-electricity is rather high.

Let's have a look at the past, the recent past, that is. The interest for energy efficiency programs, such as those have launched public utilities providing electricity appeared in the United States en the middle of the 1980s because of two things: the oil prices, which until then, had had an impact on the price of electricity, and the setbacks experienced by the nuclear industry.

Of course, this meant that electricity production costs were very high, higher than the prices set by the public commissions. Because of this gap, hydro companies had an interest in reducing the use of electricity. As electricity use went down, hydro companies could cut their losses and the amount of the bill sent to consumers. Both parties benefited.

It should be noted that this first initiative had mixed results; by that, I mean that the results were not quite what was expected.

However, there was a second surge of interest for energy-saving programs. Hydro companies, such as Hydro-Ontario, Hydro-Québec and BC Hydro got interested in trying to balance the electricity demand and supply. Energy-saving programs were then perceived as additional instruments to establish this balance with production.

There is also an other group of individuals who got interested in energy efficiency programs, I mean individuals and groups interested in environmental protection. Their goal was to reduce the overall electricity use.

The two sides sometimes don't agree, as recent events in Quebec has shown. Hydro-Québec had in place, since the beginning of the 1980s, a very ambitious energy efficiency program. When it led to surpluses, the company put that program on the back burner, while the environmental groups argue that energy-saving programs should still be favoured.

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I would like to quickly describe what happened in Quebec through statistics on the overall use. You don't have to memorize all the figures which appear on these transparencies. I just want to draw to your attention the most important data.

Between 1983 and 1993, we can see that, in Quebec, there has been an increase of the overall energy use, about 1.5% per year. This is much less than it was in the past, but what you should remember is that this figure includes a 3.6% increase in electricity use, a 4.5% increase in natural gas use and a rather sharp decline in the use of oil products. As far as coal is concerned, this is not an important factor in Quebec.

Let's now look at the evolution, sector by sector. The curve remains practically flat, which means no increase, in two sectors: the residential sector and the transportation sector. Over that period of time, in both these sectors, use has practically remained flat. It's the industrial sector and the commercial sector which are responsible for most of the increase in Quebec. Over the last 10 years, it's in these sectors that we can see a relatively steep increase in energy use.

If we link energy use and other indicators, such as demographic and economic growth, the results are quite interesting and the picture is rather different from the one I just presented. What we have here is energy use by dollar of production costs in Quebec. We can see that, during the 1980s, from 1983 to 1990, energy use by dollar of production costs has rather substantially declined. Since then, the curve remains relatively flat.

If we look at the other indicators, for instance, household use, it's the same thing, a decline during the 1980s and then, a flat curve. In the commercial sector, there is practically no change. In the transportation sector, there was a decline, followed by an increase and then, by a sharper decline. In the industrial sector, there was basically no change in energy use by dollar of production costs.

This illustrates how the situation has evolved; during the 1980s, some initiatives have been taken, which is not the case any more.

Does that mean that Quebeckers are no longer interested in energy savings? Not really. A review of energy policies has been undertaken, and the main objective is clearly a level of energy efficiency which can only be achieved through a decrease in use, by household or by dollar of production costs.

Why is it so difficult to reduce energy use in Quebec? As this gentleman argued, prices offered to consumers, particularly in terms of electricity, are not in sync with the message we should give people regarding energy efficiency.

The figures we have here are produced by Hydro-Québec. Therefore, I think they are reliable. They tell us two things. Here, we have the cost of the service for each type of customer, the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Here, we have the price charged, what the consumer is asked to pay. Here, we have the ratio of production costs to prices charged. We can see that customers in the residential sector are asked to pay about 70% of the cost; in the commercial sector, it's 93%, close to 100%; and in the industrial sector, 75%. How can we expect people to save energy if the price they are being charged does not reflect real production costs?

If we look at past trends, we can see that when prices were relatively high, people adjusted. However, since deregulation took place, in 1985, prices have remained relatively low. As it was mentioned earlier, electricity prices in Canada, particularly in Quebec, in British Columbia and in Manitoba, but also in the other provinces, are among the lowest in the world. We cannot, therefore, expect the same energy efficiency programs to bring about the same results.

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I think that the first thing we should do is to have full-cost pricing. Then, we could see what other efficiencies could be introduced. In sum, right now, try as we may, the message we give to consumers is ambiguous. Thank you.

[English]

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Sue Zielinski, please.

Ms Zielinski: My comments are about how organizing principles can have very practical applications and repercussions. I'm going to be talking about transportation.

I'll start with chickens, which apparently these days don't just cross the road but spend a fair bit of time on it. Apparently some Ontario chickens go to Mexico in a truck, where they get packaged and frozen and sent back to Ontario tables to be eaten, and that's no thanks to frequent flyer or frequent fryer points.

It's not difficult to understand that this kind of back-and-forthing isn't so sustainable energy-wise or generally for the environment. Even all the advances in alternative fuels have not managed to offset the environmental and social damage caused by ever-increasing car use, truck use and road use.

The problem with our transportation system as opposed to some of the other environmental issues is that we're so tied in. It's not likely we can just implement a sort of blue box program.

Physically our cities and towns are built around cars and trucks, making it almost impossible to consider or even imagine other options.

Culturally we're constantly reminded, with the help of a $5 billion annual car advertising budget, that the car is the vehicle to sex and power, to the point where we'll gladly sacrifice our organs for the sake of our cars. I don't know if you can think of any other machine that would inspire us to pledge our eyes in case we die as a result of using it. I don't think we feel that way about our blenders or our lawn mowers.

And economically at present our livelihoods are intricately tied to cars, trucks and roads, but rather than getting stuck in the classic ``jobs versus environment'' or ``cars versus environment'' debate, how do we instead creatively and constructively transcend it?

I'm involved in a Toronto-based consortium that is currently addressing this question in both a practical and a theoretical way. The sustainable transportation economic development initiative is a job creation and economic development initiative related to a diversification of transportation options.

Our work is based on what I call an ``access over excess'' approach to transportation planning. Because there's so little time, I've drawn some pictures to illustrate the need for a new organizing principle for the way we think about and plan transportation.

I'll start with our current approach, which I call the transportation-based, or excess-based, system. It's based on two assumptions. The goal is basically to move people and goods from A to B and back very quickly. That's the way we work right now. That's what a transportation planner does. The two main assumptions are that transportation is necessary to meet needs and that transportation is cars and trucks. It's fairly pervasive.

That means the next logical step is that cars and trucks and their infrastructure are necessary to meet needs. This then leads to the fact that to better meet our needs and solve problems, sometimes not even transportation problems, we must increase and improve upon cars, trucks and their infrastructure. Increasing and improving upon cars, trucks and their infrastructure squeezes out other options, which then leads back to the idea that transportation is necessary to meet needs and transportation is cars and trucks.

With this approach, almost all the economic spin-offs are car- and truck-related and don't necessarily benefit the local economy. As a result, this is what happens to our innovations.

The to-do list for the best and the brightest is all related to cars and trucks. For example, if we want to solve air pollution problems, we think of alternative fuels. If we want to solve the safety problem, we think of air bags and anti-skid brakes. If we want to solve crime, we computerize and close off and we get car alarms. If we want to solve the congestion problem, we think of road widening, smart cars and IVHS. I guess the best and the brightest also do laundry. I'm hoping they do.

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To offer an alternative organizing principle.... I call it an access-based approach, and it concentrates on meeting people's needs, providing access to people's needs, not moving people around just for the sake of moving them around. By the images I've chosen, you can tell what my bias is.

The goal is to provide access to people's need. It starts with access to people, places, and goods as is necessary to meet needs. It can be achieved in a number of ways. So, rather than transportation being the only way in which we achieve needs, we can do it in a number of ways. We can move people and goods and services closer together. We can look at urban redesign, densification, mixed-use zoning, a large number of things. We can look at technologies, not to improve upon cars but to hook up electronically to look at trip reduction, demand management - all sorts of things. Also, we can diversify sustainable transportation options. We can build actual models of transportation options, such as walking, cycling, transit, and telecommuting, in that order.

From there, transportation is one way of meeting people's needs, but not the only way. In a positive way we can open up new social and economic and innovative opportunities.

What I wanted to show was that with each new branch of how needs can be met we can see many different economic spin-offs on a local level. For example, if we start to do urban redesign, many small businesses and services can begin that can help that happen and that can bring money back into the community, as opposed to having it go off to other countries, as it does with the car-based infrastructure.

I'm just going to sum up now, because I'm sure I'm running out of time.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): We'll build that into your presentation.

Ms Zielinski: The practical advantages of the access-based approach are energy-saving, because there are fewer trips, there are shorter trips, there are more local trips, and there are not so many in the car; improved environment locally and globally; new business and economic opportunities locally and nationally; new and longer-term job opportunities - and I have a paper, if anyone wants it later to see the comparison between job creation for car-based infrastructure and that for sustainable transportation infrastructure; improved health and community life; cheapness, since sustainable transportation infrastructure is about the least-cost approach you can look at; and community and citizen involvement in decisions related to transportation, because more locally based transportation decisions can involve more people.

Finally, how can we get there from here? We all - public, private, community, government, everything - need to invest in research, infrastructure, technologies, practical initiatives, and businesses geared at reducing the need for unnecessary travel, and especially the need for unnecessary private automobile travel. That doesn't mean fun travel, fun trips; it means just anything that's unnecessary.

We need to invest in research and development, infrastructure, technologies, practical initiatives, and businesses geared at diversifying sustainable transportation options and providing affordable, enjoyable, environmentally sound access for all Canadians, including seniors, children, the disabled, and marginalized communities.

We need to invest in advertising sustainable transportation as the sexier way, which we don't do. We think of it as a sacrifice. We have to start turning it around and saying that's the sexy way to go.

We need to invest in public and citizen involvement related to transportation decisions and make and amend policies to adopt an access-based approach to meeting needs.

There are a number of current practical projects that I could have explained if I'd had ten minutes. You can talk to me about those afterwards. I've got tons of paper about it.

Thanks. That's it.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Mr. Finlay.

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Mr. Finlay: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm going to confine myself to a couple of questions on a point of information. I want to support Mr. Hopkins's contention, though, that government and education are two of the areas that are most responsible for changing people's attitudes and hopefully moving forward into a more energy conserving society.

Dr. Burnett mentioned CEPA in his brief presentation and I thought he said some of the new proposals in CEPA may discourage recycling. I wonder whether he could provide us with a little detail on that.

Also, in Mr. Larsson's presentation on C-2000, he said that unusual technologies are not needed to reach performance targets. I wonder whether he would expand on that a little bit. We've done a lot of talking about new technology in the last day and a half. I think I know what he means but I think some clarification would help us all.

Dr. Burnett: In CEPA there are the proposals that label a lot of things as hazardous waste. When something is labelled hazardous, it's far more difficult to find people to gather, collect, and transport it to a metal processing facility, for example, where it can be turned back into a useful refined metal.

I think that before the government labels a car battery, for example.... Legally if you buy a car battery at Canadian Tire and it doesn't work when you get it home, theoretically you have to have a permit under law to take that back to the store. Nobody does that, I'm sure, but that's just the theoretical concept. In the practical sense, if you were taking back thousands of batteries and you didn't have the permit and the truck upset, then you'd be into a great deal of difficulty.

I think the government has to be a little more realistic in some of the objectives of labelling things as persistent bioaccumulative toxics and recognize that some of these things aren't that bad and they are recyclable. In the nickel business, about 80% to 90% of our product is recycled eventually. In the copper business it's about 60%. Platinum is virtually all recycled eventually. The market is there for it. I think the government needs to be careful of labelling things as hazardous.

It isn't just the Canadian government. The OECD is doing the same thing in trying to ban the export of dead car batteries to places like Taiwan, where the entire lead smelting industry is based on burnt-out car batteries from developed countries.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Mr. Larsson.

Mr. Larsson: What I meant when I said that unusual technologies weren't required was that the kinds of technologies that ended up being used in the small number of C-2000 buildings we've built have been off the shelf, commercially available technologies, such as T-8 lighting systems and high efficiency gas furnaces. In some cases, the design teams had to look a little further afield to find the right model of equipment and so on.

High performance windows are also commercially available. There are argon-filled, low-E glazing windows, for example, with fibreglass frames. We didn't have to have some of the things that those of us who are architects like to sketch out when we're talking about advanced buildings: fancy light shelves to reflect light into the building, thermal storage, expensive floor systems, expensive custom-made control systems. We didn't need that.

We ourselves didn't have control over the systems chosen. We had the control of saying you have to reach the performance target, and we could put a number of suggested technologies on the table in front of the design teams, but of course it was their choice. They have the responsibility to operate it and to take legal responsibility for it. Of course, therefore they tend to be as conservative as they can be and still meet the targets.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you, Mr. Larsson.

To build on a discussion of new technology or maybe old technology, alternative technology, we have Mr. Swartman, please.

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Mr. Swartman: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

The Canadian Solar Industry Association, as I mentioned earlier, represents manufacturers, distributors, installers and designers who utilize solar energy for water heating, air heating and generating electricity.

A lot of people think we don't have enough solar energy in Canada. I don't want to embarrass anybody by asking if you believe that. I've just come back from a conference in Holland, and there are literally thousands of solar water heaters being installed in Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. There's a tremendous industry going on. There are currently nineteen major projects in Germany similar to what we did in Canada ten years ago. Our technology is as good as or better than what I saw in Europe.

Mr. Lincoln asked why we don't do what they do in Bonn. Well, one of the things they do in Bonn is encourage individuals to utilize renewable energy, and they do that by giving them a tax credit. If a solar system costs 10,000 Deutschmarks and the useful life is considered to be ten years, one-tenth of the capital cost is allowed to be written off each year, so 1,000 Deutschmarks is taken off the person's income tax. The government loses some income tax, but it generates jobs and business that don't exist now.

These nineteen sites I mentioned in Germany are of this sort. This is in London, Ontario. It's a fitness centre. This is a nursing home in Amherst, Nova Scotia. This is an apartment building. All these projects were built twelve years ago through a program in which the federal government contributed 50% of the cost in the subsidy program. Subsidies aren't the way to build an industry, but it gave us a lot of good experience. Now we need something different.

Mr. Martin in his recent budget used the ``r'' word, renewable energy. A lot of people think renewable energy is all treated fairly. Renewable energy includes wind energy and biomass.

If used in manufacturing or processing, solar water heating and solar air heating are under class 43.1, and there are benefits. The capital cost allowance is at 30%, which means it's written off over seven or eight years. If it's a project like one of these, which isn't used in manufacturing, it's under class 1 and it's written off over thirty years at 4% per year.

The building owner doesn't have any encouragement to invest in this kind of project. We would like to have a level playing field so we're treated the same as other renewable energies, like wind energy.

The usual assumption is that photovoltaics producing electricity can be used in remote locations, where it's so expensive, but I heard just the other day of an interesting application in downtown Toronto, one of the major commercial centres in North America. A limited amount of power can come into the core downtown area of Toronto. Toronto Hydro and Ontario Hydro are looking at increasing the capacity, but to this time it hasn't happened.

The City of Toronto doesn't want to see R.L. Hearn Generating Station or Lakeview Generating Station used, because they produce carbon dioxide. The time of the year when the most electricity is needed is in the summertime, when there's the most sun available. There's a peak during the daylight hours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. when the most energy is available for photovoltaics.

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It doesn't matter how much you can produce electricity for, whether it's 8¢ or 10¢, if you're going to have a brown-out or a black-out in downtown Toronto. If you can obviate that by having photovoltaic panels to produce electricity, then it's worth while. The economics are overwhelmed by the need.

Again, photovoltaics are under class 8 for capital cost allowance, and the write-off is at 20%, so that's about twelve or fifteen years. But it's still not as good as wind turbine or other devices that are allowed under 43.1.

One of the ways the government can help is through information dissemination, and I should compliment the departments that contributed to Renewable Energy, a guide the Solar Energy Society published last October. It lists all known renewable energy suppliers, and there's editorial copy describing the potential of solar energy in Canada.

To summarize, things need to be done through the Income Tax Act to encourage commercial installations of solar air heating, solar water heating and photovoltaics, and other things could be done to encourage individuals to utilize solar water heating.

Thanks.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much.

Mr. Lincoln.

[Translation]

Mr. Lincoln: I would like to ask a question to Professor Bernard. You mentioned - and this also something Dr. Burnett noted - that one of our problems comes from the fact that energy costs so little to Canadians that it does not encourage them to invest in conservation initiatives, at least, not on a large scale. We should therefore reflect production costs in the prices charged to consumers, so that they realize how much energy actually costs. This way, there would be an incentive. It seems perfectly logical.

However, if we price energy so as to reflect its full cost, there will be an outcry on the part of consumers who are going to refuse to pay more than they do at the present time, because they are used to low cost energy.

How can we solve this dilemma? This is what my question is about. Do you think we can find an answer in the comment made by Mr. Swartman? He said that introducing fiscal incentives over the long term, to encourage renewable energy and conservation methods and penalize energy use which damages the environment, would work best to help us reach our objective.

Prof. Bernard: I could send you copy of a research study of mine, which, of course, is a purely academic document. It's very difficult to get people in Quebec to accept an increase in the price of electricity, and there are good reasons for that. Electric heating is so widely used that every time electricity prices go up, consumers are hit rather hard, particularly those who have a low income. Its a problem we're always confronted with.

As far as I am concerned, I think there are two ways to tackle the problem. One is rather technical. On your hydro bill, there are two types of charges: one, the subscription cost, which is what you pay, per day, to get the service and which has nothing to do with use; two, a charge which reflects the kilowatts-hour used.

We thought it would be best to link the message we want to give consumers to the charge reflecting their electricity use. We therefore considered whether it would be possible to lower the price of the subscription, which has nothing to do with use. It's just a charge imposed by producers on consumers to provide a service, and the amount is not based on the number of units used.

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Once a household is connected, we can send a message to the consumer through the price established for the service. If the charge for the connection to the network, which amounts to about 30¢ per day, in Quebec, that is $10 to $12 per month, could be lowered or even eliminated, the consumer could save between $120 and $150 per year. The charge for electricity use could then be increased. This could prove very useful.

At the present time, environmental groups are saying that overall costs should be taken into consideration, not only production costs, but also those can be linked to the impact on the environment. We believe that we should start with full-cost pricing if, later on, we want to take into account environmental costs. If we don't manage to reflect in the prices we charge the cost of all these dams and the rest of the necessary equipment, how are we going to be able to charge for the cost relating to all these carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere, and so on?

If we readily accept to finance the cost of the damage caused to the environment, we should just as readily agree to pay for the dams, the connection lines and the salaries of Hydro-Québec employees.

I rather hesitate to go the way Mr. Lincoln suggested, because as soon as you start to grant so-called indirect subsidies...

What he wants, of course, is a level playing field. I could not agree more, because all forms of energy should be treated fairly. On the other hand, if we think that one type of energy is not properly priced, and if because of that, we lower the charges for another, what will happen in two or three years when a new type of energy becomes available on the market? The people who produce it will say that they want to be granted some advantages, because that's the way the other producers have been treated.

I think we should try to deal with the problem immediately, rather than wait for it to spread to other sectors. That's what I think about this issue.

[English]

Ms Comeau: I'll follow up somewhat on what's being said here, because there are two paths we have to look at.

I've been working on this issue for a long time now. There is theoretical stuff around. Full-cost pricing is just great, but until we get the Canadian public to understand that using energy makes them sick, that smog is affecting them - it's hurting their lungs, it's causing heart disease, there are toxic chemicals in the air - I don't think we're going to get public support for the initiatives we're trying to pursue.

At the same time as we're looking at full-cost pricing, we've got to eliminate subsidies to the fossil-fuel side of the energy sector. If we move on restructuring of the utility sector and we move on elimination of subsidies, over time energy prices potentially could start to rise. The only way you're going to put in the health costs is through taxation, but no government is interested in pursuing that at the moment. At the same time, over time, if we ever get down that road, you're going to have to put in place ways and means for consumers to reduce the energy they use and you're going to need things such as on-bill financing, so your utility company helps you borrow the money and you pay back the loan from the energy savings you have. You have to have that. It is the same as your not being able to tell people to get out of their car without providing them with transportation alternatives. You have to move down both paths.

The point I wanted to make was around symbolism and just how important symbolism and leadership are. I'll allocate this to all parties, but my first couple of examples are with the current government.

On June 3, Prime Minister Chrétien and Anne McLellan will be in Fort McMurray to announce $4 billion in investments in the oil sands. Would Mr. Chrétien go with Mr. Swartman to announce the opening of a project? Would Anne McLellan open up a C-2000 building?

How many ministers will resign because the red book commitments will not be met? None. Not one.

Would Preston Manning go to the opening of the wind farm in Alberta?

Mr. Forseth: He sure would.

Ms Comeau: Would he? Has he?

These are the questions I'm asking, because if we don't get that leadership happening in Canada, if we don't get the symbolism....

The only energy projects our Prime Minister has taken the time to be present for were the opening of a nuclear plant in Romania and the opening of the oil sands. Brian Tobin campaigned on expansion of Hibernia and all of the new oil and gas development there.

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We have to get the excitement, the sexiness, the leadership and the symbolism happening around the energy efficiency projects and the renewable energy projects we now have, to get it happening for what I consider to be an energy vision that is at least 20 years or 25 years out of date.

Symbolism is important. Leadership is important. We have to find a way to make this worth while for politicians, a way that makes it politically worth while for them to be present at these projects to say ``This works for Canada and this is something we're proud of and we want to be present for it''. I think we have a big problem here because we don't have that symbolism.

Mr. Lincoln: Right on.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Would someone like to add a comment?

Mr. Forseth: I would like to interject. Perhaps Preston Manning would be at a wind farm, but I must also say that the Prime Minister came to my riding and was involved in the infrastructure program for some secondary sewage treatment. Often it's the size of the dollar amounts, the commitment, that is related to these public announcements, but I think the point that we have to begin to look at the more long-term strategies has been made.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): I think if you look at the history of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development over the past two and a half years, a lot of the things that Louise and others around the table have been talking about are things we have been promoting.

Prior to Christmas we undertook a review of barriers and disincentives to sound environmental management within the fiscal framework. One of the areas we looked at was energy conservation. And certainly the whole fiscal area, the tax system of government, is one that has to be closely looked at. If governments are no longer making direct subsidies to mega-projects, but are opening the door to tax incentives, shall we say, is it a subsidy if it comes in the front door or if it comes in the back door?

I think the comments Mr. Swartman made are very well taken. Not only is the field uneven between renewables and non-renewables, it's uneven in the field of renewables itself.

Are there any more comments? Mr. Caccia.

Mr. Caccia (Davenport): What Clifford, Louise and others are saying, and what you just said, Madam Chair, of course brings to mind the fact that there can be two types of budgets: the conventional type of budget that continues to see growth in isolation as an economic concern without taking into account environmental policies, which is probably the pattern adopted by most OECD countries including Canada, and a type of budget the committee to which you referred to earlier last December called ``sustainable budgeting'', a form of budget that integrates economic goals with environmental goals. The two are quite profoundly different.

The second type, the sustainable budgeting, would first and foremost tackle the so-called ``perverse'' subsidies, as some are calling them. Namely, they are those subsidies that maintain a dependence on fossil fuels. The sums are considerable and are embedded in our present budgetary practices. We're not talking just millions of dollars. We're talking about larger figures that have not yet really been clearly identified.

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An attempt was made by a task force in 1994. However, it completed its work without tackling unsustainable subsidies. And we are still in the dark because we have not been able to launch this kind of effort as to what exact amounts in our taxation system would permit a shift from the present dependence on fossil fuels to a dependence on renewable sources of energy. In that respect we are in the dark, still in the middle ages, so to speak.

Needless to say, Canada is still partially a developing country, and with the resources in the west has the constant attraction of developing its own resources in certain regions. Therefore, there are intense and very large economic interests that dominate the political scene. I don't really know how we are going to resolve that if we are to deliver on our international commitment of stabilizing carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000, with a reduction in the following decade. I really don't know, and yet, that is probably the crunch of our energy dilemma.

We should be doing the things Mr. Swartman has been saying today, and we should be naturally.... It was the object of an enlightened approach in the late 1970s when Alastair Gillespie was Minister of Energy, with a five-year program intended exactly to provide competitive advantages and incentives and the like to the newly born renewable energy sector. At that time it helped to launch something that since then has just been struggling and barely keeping alive.

The political will - when it exists - can produce this shift, Madam Chair, and the question is how we are going to generate it again.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft-Sloan): I think someone on the other side said something about Napoleon, about marching ahead of the soldiers and being accused of being taken for the enemy. There is this whole love affair with the automobile. Sue, I think you made a lot of wonderful points about this. I'm wondering what airline gives the frequent flyer points.

The attachment to the automobile and to the infrastructure and all of that is so strong. Gasoline prices go up 6¢ or 7¢ and there is a public outcry. What we've been talking about around this table is real heresy and political suicide in some respects, but the reality is that we will have genocide.

Developing the political will and having the commitment is absolutely crucial to being able to do any of this, but getting the public onside and having them understand what these kinds of things mean is also crucial. And if anyone has any observations about how we deal with the love affair with the automobile and all that entails....

Ms Zielinski, please.

Ms Zielinski: I just wanted to comment on the idea of how threatening it is to say ``Let's question the automobile''. From the political point of view I think we need to work on something positive. We need to build models of safe, liveable communities. That's exactly where we need to get the public onside. I think there have been many examples, at least in Toronto, of traffic projects where people have agreed to even reduce parking so their kids can play and so their streets are better.

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There is a certain amount of ``I want this in my neighbourhood but nowhere else that I'm going to drive''. But this is the way it starts, by building those models where people start to understand how it works. I think that pilot projects throughout communities and cities can inspire people to want those things without saying we're going to get rid of the car. That's not what we're after. We're after a transition to something better and to something that's not a sacrifice.

It's not that life is going to be worse; life is going to be better. That's why the whole idea of advertising and talking about these sustainable options as something beautiful and exciting I think could create much more of a political will than saying we're going to tax you or we're going to take something away, especially your car, which represents everything for you.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Building those kinds of communities becomes more problematic in communities like mine because most of the people who live in my riding commute into the city, are farther south, depend on going somewhere to get fresh, potable water or getting their kids to school or to the hockey arena because they live in a rural area.

When we think of Canada stretching from sea to sea in particular, as opposed to sea to sea to sea, there is this thin, long band of population that is stretched across the country. So this has always been a real dilemma for us.

Mr. Larsson: I have one observation on reaching audiences to try to change their way of looking at things and change demand essentially; you're probably all aware of it, but I think it's good to remind ourselves. It's good to differentiate and be very focused on the groups we're dealing with, because they all have different motivations.

In my field, for example, we deal with developers who are speculative developers who have a three-year or five-year time horizon for return on investment. We deal also with people who are owner-occupiers who have a much longer time horizon. You can do more things. You can justify more measures there.

Then there are commercial tenants. The large commercial tenants have facilities managers but there are lots of small commercial tenancies out there whose owners know nothing about building performance perhaps but have some obligation to their employees in health terms. They also have an interest in having maximum productivity from their employees. That's one group we see as a kind of interesting group for information. We're technology centred, but to get out information to people who can make a difference it's worth while differentiating like that.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you.

We are getting to the end of our program. We've done very well with our time. I want to compliment all of the participants and I hope that people have the opportunity to speak to each other individually where you have an interest. We will end this session with summaries from both of the opposition critics and then I'll throw in a couple of words myself. We'd like to start with Paul Forseth.

Mr. Forseth: We've had four main themes and sessions. One was on sustainable development, another was on waste management, and there were also ones on pollution prevention and energy savings. I suppose all of those discussions collectively are about how Canada needs to change as a country and it may be turning our minds to envisioning a new Canada for the next generation.

The sustainable development section certainly brought to our minds that we need to examine ourselves as a society. Certainly it's about our health and how we live, the health of the future generations, how we interact with the environment and how that can be done on a sustained basis so that we don't hurt others and hurt ourselves or our surroundings both for now and the future.

The point I came away with that's most significant to me is that development, especially economic circulation activity, jobs and so on, need not be in opposition to caring properly for the environment. In fact we can do both together in symmetry. If we do that properly it can actually be an economic boost for jobs both in the short term as well as getting at that long-term sustainable development ideal we talked about.

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In regard to the waste management segment, it brought to mind that Canadians still need to create much less garbage per individual. We're still out of step with some of the other industrialized nations. We have a long way to go to reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover, both on a personal basis and at the corporate and industrial level. We need to learn to live a lot smarter.

On pollution prevention, certainly we have to produce less waste and consume less energy per person as front-end strategies instead of being concerned about clean-up and remediation. It's a matter, I suppose, in the long sense of a social conscience about how we live and what is seen as socially acceptable in lifestyle. Law and government can't do it alone.

In the last segment here, about energy savings, I've heard that it's often a matter of price to get at that idea of full-cost accounting so that it's more fully user-pay in all its aspects. Often that's taking into account all the vectors, the incentives, the disincentives - the perverse ones as well as the good ones - and developing an economic model that truly affects what we do.

In summary, we have governments, we have non-governmental agencies, laws, regulations, public pressure, public understanding, education, lifestyle choices. These all affect our community behaviour as a nation.

We can measure these things by looking at the bottom line. I introduced the idea that others have used about a three-part bottom line. What does it really cost in dollars, alternatives, market forces, and price choices? What does it really cost to harm or to benefit the environment? That's the bottom line. What is the social cost to quality of life and health, and in terms of lost resources to help others in poor human condition? Lost opportunities to do good is the social cost. There is that three-part bottom line: economic, environmental and social.

To close, we've all seen that colour picture of the earth taken from the moon, we've all seen the earth rise while standing on the moon. We see that fragile earth with its colours. It's a delicate closed system. You might say it's a life support system hurtling through the blackness.

The earth is all we have for sustenance. That picture of the earth alone there in space is the only place for life that we know of. We can't go anywhere else. We're not going to get off. We have to take care of it.

At these round tables we've touched on some themes rather lightly, I think. They certainly should cause us to reflect very deeply about these themes of how we can live better, make better choices, teach our children well and also live by example.

Maybe what we have relected upon today can inspire us to care, to act more responsibly, to indeed live in a sustainable society. We must appreciate the fragile world in which we live and dedicate ourselves to do everything possible to protect and enhance this earth I described that picture of, as it is our only home.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much. Mrs. Guay.

[Translation]

Mrs. Guay: It may be that I'll repeat myself a bit, but I don't mind doing it because the issue is important.

I really appreciated the four stages of our round table. Unfortunately, I could not attend yesterday's sessions, but I got the information. Clearly, I gather, everybody agrees on sustainable development. This is a phrase which is now commonly used. However, there is a lack of agreement on the true meaning of the words.

Over the last two years, we have managed to introduce a definition of sustainable development which was not used before. This is a step in the right direction. But we have to go even farther. Sustainable development should become a part of everything we do, every day, in every single type of activity. We have managed to get that far, but we have to continue.

I got very interested in the discussions about waste management, because in every province, this is a serious problem. We know about the problems we have in Quebec with landfills. We consume a lot and therefore, we generate a lot of waste, which we don't know what to do with.

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Everyone now has a blue box. As I was saying this morning, I am quite sure that 70% of the population does not even know what to put in it, or is not quite sure. In this regard, a lot remains to be done to educate people. We think it has already been done, but it is not the case. For instance, my neighbours don't know what to put in their blue box. They do it wrong. That's not true recycling. It's not by giving each household a blue box and a little brochure, and by telling people to get on with it and to recycle that we are going to reach our objective. In some sectors, we have to set our hand to the plough to really manage to recycle.

We spoke a lot about preventing pollution. Clearly, we must try to prevent that type of problem. Prevention is part of the notion of sustainable development. And as far as energy efficiencies are concerned, they start at home, at the grass root level.

On this committee, I always go back to fundamentals, to the grass root level. It's true that it is indeed at that level that things really happen. Just look at your children, at the way they let the water run. As far as they are concerned, its a given, running water, to them, is the most natural thing. And yet, in some countries, the most difficult thing to find is a well or some source of water. Education must start at the base.

I find that in schools, this type of education is sadly lacking. In many schools, they don't even talk about the environment. There might be an event, once a year. This subject should be part of the basics taught to the children at a very young age.

For that matter, the education our generation got, mine or even yours, Madam Chair, did not include, among the basics, anything to do with the environment. The information our children get has improved a little, but we'll need to expand it even more in their education system for them to be able to pursue our work. Otherwise, we are not going to leave anything to our children, not a thing. The planet we're going to give them is going to be completely destroyed. And it will be immensely more difficult to build it up again. We have to take matters in our hands right now, we have to act immediately to maintain the earth in good shape and give people the necessary incentives to do so.

Earlier, we talked about industries. They are asking why they can't get tax points if they perform properly in terms of environmental protection. Why indeed should they not benefit from some type of incentives? This is something we have to explore.

I don't really agree with the suggestion that we should tax waste, because Canadians are already overtaxed. Maybe there is a way to manage taxes. We talked about managing waste. Maybe we should proceed differently. These are the type of things we should explore.

This was very short. The round table did not last very long, but I think that the discussions were very productive. Thank you.

[English]

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): Thank you very much, Monique.

Charles.

Mr. Caccia: May I just jump in for a moment, to make sure that you have the last word, and also to make sure that an expression of gratitude be made for having arranged these panels and the work of yesterday and today?

I certainly learned quite a lot from the interventions, and there are two elements that I will retain for some time to come. One was the discussion of sustainable development, and Madame Guay is quite right - the term ``sustainable development'' constantly needs to be clarified and evolved. In that respect there was a substantial contribution yesterday afternoon, I thought, by the representative from the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, I believe, when she reaffirmed that the term ``sustainable development'' really means the pursuit of economic, environmental and equity goals. I thought that intervention was very helpful.

It may be that in planning another round - who knows when, next year perhaps? - you might want to emphasize arranging the discussions more on the equity side, particularly the equity aspect in the redistribution of wealth in the world, because if we don't do that, of course, we are not going to pursue sustainable development as we should.

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From most of the discussion I am taking back with me the clear knowledge and conviction that law and government can and must give leadership. In other words, governments are absolutely essential in providing information to the public, in providing leadership in the search for alternative approaches, and of course in providing the necessary instruments to permit the profound shifts in society that are needed. Therefore education and information on the part of the government for the benefit of the public and society at large are very essential, and this is one way of communicating and conveying information by way of the arrangements in this room.

I want to thank you for the panel and for the good work the participants have provided to us parliamentarians.

The Co-Chair (Mrs. Kraft Sloan): For those of you who don't know, Charles Caccia is the chair of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development and has made quite a substantial contribution in this field over his lifetime here as a parliamentarian.

The equity issue is a very important one, and I think it has been a thread through all of these round tables. We may not have talked about it directly, but it still kept appearing in different kinds of discussions. Certainly when we had the young people with us last night and today, there it was, right in front of our faces - the intergenerational concerns we all must bear.

In my summary I have a few words. One is ``responsibility''. We all have responsibility - individuals, communities, businesses, government, and nations, and internationally we have responsibility.

Leadership is another very important point. We have to show leadership. Sometimes if the public isn't behind you, you have to show the political leadership to set the path. In a lot of respects I think we've heard in these round tables that the community is really showing the leadership, and as parliamentarians we have a lot to learn there.

Action is very important. We have spent a lot of time in defining the problem. We know the problem exists. Let's stop arguing over the definitions of pollution prevention and toxics and things such as these. The problem exists. It's time to get on to some action and deal with it.

We have a way of getting into action that is through opportunities. This was clearly expressed in a number of the round table sessions. Let's have a positive vision of things on which people can work together. On this idea of projects, we formed a nation when we had a national project. In my own riding, in my own community, when I work on a project I bring people together. They come together because they get something out of it, and they feel good because they've accomplished something.

We talked a lot about linkages. Again, it's a matter of the linkages from the individual right to the globe. As Mr. Forseth so poetically pointed out, it even goes beyond our globe, into outer space.

Linkages are very important, strangely enough, with the new technology that we have available at our disposal, because it brings the globe into our home and it makes us more able to communicate with each other. There are a lot of opportunities through that, as well.

I also like to think about time. We don't have a lot of time. We can look to the past to understand what people who came before us were able to do in terms of sustainable livelihoods and understand the benefits of those things and what might work for us, as well as look to the future and to the people who will come after us.

There was a lot of discussion around redesign. Paul Hawken has often talked about our problem as being a design problem. I think Sue Zielinski showed us some different ways to think creatively about design, which brings up the point Henry Lickers made yesterday, that it has to be fun. Watching those crazy-looking trees made me feel energized and started my juices flowing.

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More than anything I would really like to thank my colleagues from both sides of the House, because the environment is non-partisan. I was very touched by the words I heard from both critics of the opposition. I'm very pleased to have that kind of support and I look forward to more support in that direction. I want to thank my colleagues on the committee for their kind words and support through this process.

Again, thank you. There are booths and displays across from this room. If you haven't had an opportunity, please go over and talk to the people there.

We're going to be going to a vote very soon, from what I understand. Then there will be a reception, which may get started ahead of us, hosted by the Canadian Environment Industry Association. I encourage all of you to attend and follow up on some of those conversations you wanted to have.

Again, thank you. We're adjourned.

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