:
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, we can begin.
Welcome.
Madam Gélinas and your colleagues, welcome.
This is meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the 2006 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
Witnesses before the committee today are from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Madam Johanne Gélinas, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development; Mr. Neil Maxwell, principal; Mr. Richard Arseneault, principal; David McBain, director in the division; and Kim Leach, director in the division.
We welcome all of you.
Pursuant now to Mr. Cullen, who has distributed a notice of motion, members, before we go on, Mr. Cullen has indicated he will do this very briefly. Do I have consensus with the committee, before we have Ms. Gélinas, to allow Mr. Cullen to briefly introduce his notice of motion?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Alan Tonks): Okay.
Mr. Cullen, very briefly, please.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Members of Parliament, I'm pleased to present to you this afternoon my sixth report as Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
[Translation]
This report deals mostly with the federal government's approach to climate change covering up to mid-June 2006.
In the course of our audit work, we have tried to answer three basic questions: Is Canada on track to meet its emission reduction obligations? Is Canada ready to adapt to the impact of climate change? Is the government organized and managing well?
The answer is no to all three questions.
It has become more and more obvious that Canada cannot meet its Kyoto Protocol commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. In fact, instead of decreasing, greenhouse gas emissions in Canada have increased by 27% since 1990.
Let me walk you through each of the five chapters of my report.
[English]
Chapter 1 addresses how the federal government is organized to manage its climate change activities, whether it is able to report the costs and the results of its efforts, and on what basis it developed key targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
It also addresses new tools the government has chosen to help achieve its climate change objectives--a domestic system of trading greenhouse gas emissions, and Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a foundation set up to help reduce greenhouse gas through technological innovation.
Government action has not been well organized or well managed. The government has not defined its leadership role, nor has it identified the responsibilities of each department. It has been unable to come up with the basic tools it needs to measure its progress. Even though more than $6 billion of funding has been announced since 1997, the government still has no system to track the spending and results of its climate change activities. In other words, the government has no way to report returns on its investment.
Another major problem with the government's approach is its failure to address the biggest greenhouse gas emitters--transportation and heavy industry, which together represent the lion's share of all emissions in Canada.
In the transportation sector, which produces 25% of all gas emissions, the only well-defined measure in place is a voluntary agreement with the car industry to reduce emissions by 5.3 million tonnes by 2010, which is only 2% of the overall reduction needed to meet Kyoto's commitment. In addition, we found the agreement falls short in a few key areas for voluntary agreements--mainly, the lack of a third-party independent verification of the model, data, and results that will be used to determine progress.
As for the industry sector, which is responsible for 53% of all emissions, the government has steadily, since 2002, lowered greenhouse gas reduction targets. The reduction now expected from that sector could be only 30 million tonnes, of a total of the expected 270 million tonnes of reductions needed to meet Kyoto's commitments.
In other words, according to the data we collected during this year's audit, the two sectors responsible for 78% of all Canada's emissions could contribute only around 20% of the expected emission reductions. Even if the proposed measures are implemented, they will only, at best, slow down the growth in greenhouse gas emissions, not reduce them.
The two principal tools for reducing emissions--the system of large final emitters and the national emissions trading system--are still under construction, after more than four years.
[Translation]
Chapter 2 deals with adaptation. Unfortunately, we found that adaptation is where the efforts of the government were especially disappointing. Despite commitments to take action going back to 1992, there is no federal strategy to specify how the effects of a change in climate would be managed.
The failure to make significant progress on adaptation efforts risks Canadian social and economic well-being.
[English]
Chapter 3 looks at three Natural Resources Canada programs that each received $100 million or more to reduce greenhouse gases emitted during energy production and consumption: the wind power production incentive for renewable energy, better known by the acronym WPPI; the EnerGuide for existing buildings for energy efficiency, abolished in May 2006; and the ethanol expansion program for renewable fuels. We found that while these programs yielded results, it was difficult to assess whether they reduced emissions as planned because their targets were unclear. There was also limited reporting of the results these programs achieved with the money spent. We expected Natural Resources Canada to tell Canadians how successful the programs were at reducing greenhouse gases, but with unclear targets and inconsistent public reporting, we wonder how parliamentarians could assess whether these programs are working.
Chapter 3 also looked at the federal efforts to tackle emissions produced by the oil and gas industry. We found that in its battle with climate change the federal government has not taken into account the unprecedented boom in that sector. Emissions resulting from the increased exploitation of oil sands could double by 2015, cancelling any other efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.
[Translation]
Chapter 4 concerns sustainable development strategies. Our findings this year represent good news, to a degree. In three quarters of the cases we examined, departments are making satisfactory progress on their strategy commitments.
[English]
Chapter 5 contains two parts: the annual report on petitions, and the results of an audit we conducted on a commitment made by Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, and Public Works to purchase 20% of their power from green sources by 2006.
It is interesting to note that increasingly Canadians are raising the issues of climate change and air quality in environmental petitions. Canadians are informed and concerned about climate change.
Most responses addressed questions raised. Some did not. An example of a response that did not address the questions posed is that of Finance Canada to petition 158, concerning subsidies to the oil and gas industry and federal efforts to address climate change. Your committee may wish to get Finance Canada to clearly explain the extent to which the sector is subsidized.
We found that the government has not been able to deliver on its commitment to buy 20% of its power from green sources by 2006, as it stated it would do in a response to a petition in 2002. As a result, it has not met its expected contribution to greenhouse gas emissions reductions in Canada.
[Translation]
At the end of our audit, my conclusion is this: the federal government has done too little and acted too slowly on Canada's commitments to address the challenge of climate change. Looking forward, a massive scale-up of effort is needed.
I have identified five areas that I believe are crucial: provide sustained leadership; integrate energy and climate change; develop a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; push ahead with adaptation; and, assure governance and accountability.
Each area is important, but the call for leadership by the federal government applies to them all.
I believe that there is an important opportunity for parliamentarians to pursue the concerns I have raised in my report. Clearly, there are many issues that government officials need to explain, among them: what progress is being made in developing a robust system for collecting and reporting information on expenditures and results? What was learned during the Treasury Board-led review of climate change programs and, how is it being shared and used?
The federal government has accepted all of my recommendations. Therefore, I expect the government's new plan to spell out clearly how these recommendations will be taken into account.
So, when the new climate change plan is available, parliamentarians will be able to see how the government has responded to the specific recommendations made in my report, and the five areas I identified as crucial to future progress.
Mr. Chair, that completes my opening statement. I and my colleagues will be happy to respond to your questions now. Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Ms. Gélinas, for your presentation.
I would just like to note, for my colleagues' information, that you are a Commissioner and your job is to assess the twenty-five departments required to present sustainable development strategies. It's important to clarify your role.
My questions have to do with the EnerGuide program. As the new Bloc Québécois critic on issues related to natural resources, I would like to try and understand why the Minister terminated this program.
I read in your report that, for existing homes, the EnerGuide program had resulted in a 27% reduction in average energy consumption and that the Department can prove that the program led to a 0.7 megaton reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
My reading of the situation is that there was some effect, possibly minor, but nevertheless a positive effect. I would like the benefit of your expertise to try and understand why the program was eliminated.
When inspectors or evaluators would go to someone's house to do an assessment and advise people about the renovations needed to increase energy efficiency, do you think these assessments were important in terms of enabling the government to measure and collect the data, in order to determine whether this program was playing a part in reducing greenhouse emissions by enhancing energy efficiency?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, everybody, for being here. I'm going to focus my questions on the governance side and the accountability side.
Page 1 of chapter 1 of the report talks about responding to climate change, management across multiple departments, and the challenge of that. It also talks about levers, resources, and expertise to manage this adequately.
When we then go further into the report, on page 10 it talks in paragraph 1.15 about the 1998 report, saying we had sporadic performance. In paragraph 1.16 it refers to where the 2005 Standing Committee on the Environment reported, and again there was no leadership of this structure.
I want to point to paragraph 1.21, which says Environment Canada currently has the leading responsibility, and then there are other statements that say Treasury Board Secretariat should take the lead in these programs that go across. We then have the Climate Change Secretariat, which was phased out in 2004 and which had a leadership role. How can you help me reconcile all these people who were in charge, and what are your thoughts on that?
:
Yes, climate change obviously is a horizontal issue touching a number of departments and central agencies. Leadership was given at different times to Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada on this. There was a secretariat that was reporting to the deputy ministers of both departments at one point. It was serving a purpose of federal coordination with the other departments, along with facilitation, as well as reporting. Since they've disappeared from the horizon, no one has replaced them.
Treasury Board got involved at one point. The central agencies decided to get involved when the decision was made to ratify Kyoto and all that. They decided to take more of a leadership role in terms of trying to put in place the structure that was needed. They decided to produce what's called an RMAF, a big plan, a map of all the federal programs, just to find out what exactly is going on in all these departments. Once you have this map, you then can come up and do a program review, and that's what they were trying to do.
What they also tried to do was put a system in place to capture the information that was needed in order to do proper management of the file. They wanted to know how much money has been spent on these programs overall, and what results have been achieved.
There was a program review. The results have not yet been transmitted to Parliament or to Canadians, but there's certainly a lot of information there. That was the logical sequence in which to do it, but they came in very late in the process. A number of programs were in place, but they were not talking to one another; they were not connected. They might have caused some duplication in some cases, but no one knows. The program review was the way to do this.
When we looked at this, we saw transitions going on as well—transitions between governments and the transitioning of key people in the civil service who deal with this issue. This transition of people also caused some more delays, so essentially the situation was not a clean one.
Now, when we were looking at making recommendations to the government, we wanted to make certain we were going to be addressing the recommendations to the right bodies of the government, so we were going to go to central agencies. Those central agencies told us they are not responsible for this, they are there to assist departments and ministers. Therefore, they said Environment Canada has the leadership.
That's why we have this story that is kind of complicated in the chapter.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome to everybody this afternoon.
I apologize for the Blackberry. It's a bit of a cultural shift for me, seeing that blackberries are usually better in puddings and buns in Labrador than they are ringing next to your ear. That having been said, I'm glad you're here.
I have a couple of comments, first of all. I was in a community of about 250 people this summer, and one of the elders in the community was telling me there's less ice, less sea ice, and this is something that has been going on for years now, and that type of thing. He was saying they were going to have to change their snowmobile trails. I was thinking at that particular point that if they had to do that, it would cost more money because they'll have to build them over land instead of across sea ice. It's going to take more time for the movement of goods and services.
It struck me at that particular time how important this whole issue is, and how it affects people in a community of 250, and how they are becoming in tune with not only a local, regional, or national problem, but an international problem and challenge.
In that context, I am wondering with respect to the Kyoto Protocol and the targets that were set out, what's your assessment of how important those protocols are, those international targets that have been set and Canada attaining those particular protocols and targets? There is some talk of a made-in-Canada solution, and I don't see it as only a Canada challenge. It is something that the global community has to address as well, isn't it?
I am wondering about this because the current government seems to think the Kyoto Protocol is not that important.
I guess I'll start off by giving a little bit of a summary of one thing that I don't know if you can really answer. The one question I have is whether we are sometimes looking at the leaves and not seeing the forest. There are other environmental problems out there too. There are other ways of tackling this.
Canada is responsible for about 3% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. When China, Russia, or places like that get rolling, what's 3% in the overall world scheme? I sometimes wonder if maybe we're looking too close to home or maybe not concentrating, because this is not a zero-sum game. Technology exports to help China clean up a coal problem or something like that might be a better way to tackle some of this. I'm just blue-skying here, or even looking at....
As the Minister of Environment pointed out, there are other environmental problems. I mean, 3% out of the whole world's carbon dioxide emissions, even if you accept absolutely everything.... There is the open question of what it would do, and that's something that's not seen. I know that's not something addressed in the audit per se, but it's a broader question that the policy people have to deal with.
I didn't peruse the report in detail, but I did try to read as much of it as I possibly could, and skimmed through it. What I would like you to comment further on and what struck me continually as I read the report was that there was a lack of information, it was difficult to assess, it required knowledge to assess, there was the cost of goals, etc. While Mr. Allen dealt with that by talking about governance and control, the overall question I have is while the governance may be one portion of it, how much data collection is there that's accurate, and how much analysis that is totally broad is there between the departments? Does it vary greatly? I don't know if I'm expressing myself well.
I ask this because in order to make an accurate decision as policy-makers, or to make accurate assessments of its working, you actually need very detailed data. You need the economics. You need the science. It's very complicated.
In your opinion, were the departments collecting the data sufficiently? Did they have enough data? Was it just management of data that was a problem, or was the problem the underlying lack of data that they had in total to make the judgments? Because it's one thing if they just have the data and misused it; it's another thing if they didn't have the resources to get it. Could you make a judgment? If it's the same all across the board, just say it's the same across the board. If different departments did better, I'd appreciate if you woud lay out your opinion on which departments performed better and which departments performed worse.
Is that clear?
I would like to come back to the EnerGuide. The Deputy Minister of Natural Resources was here and said that 12¢ out of every dollar was administrative, and 38¢ was the pre- and post-audit, which any reasonable person would say was required.
I think the fundamental question is whether that program was getting bang for the overall buck, and that would be in comparison with alternatives. So if the new government comes in and replaces this program, I'd be very curious to see what kinds of evaluative tools they've used to model the fact that a new program will get better results. We know that most of the homes were getting a 30% increase in energy efficiency. I think it is a valid question. Is that a good performance in relation to the inputs that go into that program?
Madame Commissioner, I'd like it if you could comment on a couple of things. Frankly, we hear from the other party notions like, “We don't really need to be worried about greenhouse gases, because Canada is a bit player. What we should be doing is focusing on clean air.” Clean air, as you know, is a different scenario from greenhouse gases. They are interconnected somewhat, but they're totally different concepts.
We also hear that maybe there are some sectors that have to contribute more. We've heard a lot about the automotive sector, about the transportation sector. Frankly, and I'm not getting into a partisan statement--well, I guess I am--I haven't yet heard the Minister of the Environment talk about the contribution of the oil and gas sector.
It seems to me if we're going to deal with greenhouse gases in a real way we're going to have to get a contribution from the large emitters--the oil and gas sector, the manufacturing sector, the transportation sector--and citizens as a whole are going to have to try to change behaviour.
I wonder if you would comment on some of those points. I'd be interested in your perspective.
:
I can see that. I guess it's us who are exhausted.
We have run out of time, and we do appreciate your being here. The balance of the discussion, very quickly, is how we deal with your presentation here today. So I'm going to thank you and your colleagues on behalf of the committee, and I'm going to now take it back into the committee.
Members of the committee, it seems to me, if I may, that there are a few obvious questions that are raised out of Ms. Gélinas's comments. I've just noted a couple of them. One was that question raised with respect to the response that was received from the Department of Finance on a petition. This is a citizen's petition. The commissioner is indicating concern about subsidies to the oil and gas industry, that she's not satisfied with the response. This is an example to me of what, in terms of closing the accountability loop, we really should act on. She's recommending that the committee may wish to get Finance Canada to clearly explain the extent to which the sector is subsidized.
The other thing is that two questions were raised, and I think members have raised them. One was about what progress has been made in developing a system of collecting and reporting information on expenditures and results. Also, there was one about the review of climate change programs led by Treasury Board and how was it being shared horizontally across departments.
I wonder if I could suggest this, if I may. My suggestion would be that we have our research meet informally with the vice-chairs and the chair next week, and if members wish to attend that, fine, but I'm going to, on behalf of the committee, ask research if they would go over Madam Commissioner's report and pick out those things that we could then look at for follow-up, and then ask the committee if they wish to do that.
So I've given three examples to follow up, but it would be up to the committee. Is there any discussion on that?
Mr. Cullen.