ENSU Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 26, 1998

• 1105

[Translation]

The Chairman (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

[English]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

This morning we have the pleasure of welcoming a friend of this committee, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, Mr. Brian Emmett, and his colleagues. They have produced, as you know, a second report. You will recall we went through the first one roughly a year ago, in May I believe. The report was the object of examination as of 8 o'clock this morning in this room. Those of you who are here, including myself, had an opportunity to appreciate the clarity, the substance and wide-ranging scope that the report covers.

Without further ado, then, we will want to hear from Mr. Emmett on his report. Once he has completed, we will have possibly two quick rounds of questions. I want to make sure that you are aware we will also meet this afternoon at 3.30 p.m.

A voice: It's tomorrow at 3.30 p.m.

The Chairman: No, it's tomorrow at 3.30 p.m. when we'll examine Bill C-32, with witnesses as indicated in the notice that was sent to your office by the clerk last week. That is tomorrow at 3.30 p.m., not today.

Mr. Emmett, welcome again. Would you like to introduce your colleagues, please? The floor is yours.

Mr. Brian Emmett (Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, it's a pleasure to be here again to discuss my second report, and my first truly substantive one, which was tabled earlier today in Parliament.

With me at the table are my colleagues Ellen Shillabeer and Rick Smith; and with me in the room are Wayne Cluskey and Dan Rubenstein. They are all members of an outstanding team of professionals who have put together the report you have for consideration today. After some brief introductory remarks, we will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Last year at this time I reported that with respect to the issues concerning the environment and sustainable development, the government too frequently makes promises it does not keep, the government has trouble meeting the challenges of managing the environment and sustainable development, and information made available to Parliament and to Canadians is either insufficient or excessively difficult to understand.

The report tabled today contains more evidence on these points and reaches a similar conclusion: the federal government urgently needs to apply the principles of good management to the problems of the environment and sustainable development. If performance does not improve, there will be direct consequences for Canadians. The environment and our health will be threatened, the capacity of the federal government to act will erode, and the government's capacity and its moral authority to lead will diminish.

Let me summarize our findings in the three broad areas that we judge to be of critical importance.

First, sustainable development strategies require departments to consider the impacts of all their activities, operations and policy decisions on the environment and sustainable development. This is a new tool and it is one that is unique to Canada. How well did departments do? That's a key question for us.

First, the response by departments was positive and encouraging. Many people put time, energy and effort into their sustainable development strategies, and departments did most of the things suggested in the Guide to Green Government. But departments failed to establish measurable targets, and without measurable targets progress cannot be assessed by Parliament and by Canadians. This is a serious problem. We have recommended that departments present targets to the House in the spring of 1999.

• 1110

Beyond this, strategies tend to focus on today's issues rather than tomorrow's issues. Chapter zero of our report presents the trends that world leaders discussed on the fifth anniversary of the Earth Summit last year. These trends, such as increases in population, in pollution and in resource use, have important implications for the environment. But strategies, in my view, did not look over the horizon to determine what new activities are needed to cope with these challenges. I would like to see the strategies become more challenging, more imaginative, and more change oriented.

In the fall of next year we plan to publish a paper containing our expectations for the next strategies, which are due in the year 2000.

Federal activities take place within a global context, and this is the second theme in our report. For several reasons Canadians have a keen interest in environmental protection and in the potential impacts of global environmental deterioration. We are the stewards of the world's second largest country. We have the world's longest coastline. We are particularly vulnerable to the effects of actions by our neighbours, by the world community.

With a reputation for leadership in international affairs, we are also in a good position to influence the global environmental agenda through our ideas and our actions. This will be particularly important in the 21st century as global environmental issues become more numerous and more complicated.

[Translation]

We set out to identify our global commitments and to see if Canada is meeting our obligations. We discovered that there was no system for cataloguing these agreements, or for determining whether Canada is in compliance. We therefore developed a database of international agreements that in the future will be managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

While Canada is party to 230 different agreements, we focussed our detailed examinations of Canada's performance on two: climate change and biodiversity, both the subject of conventions signed at the Earth Summit in 1992.

Climate change in particular is a daunting problem. In Canada our goal is to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Strategic direction on climate change has been provided by the National Action Program on Climate Change (NAPCC). This is a federal, provincial and territorial initiative.

[English]

However, by the year 2000 emissions are expected to be at least 11% above 1990 levels. We wanted to understand why and to identify lessons to be learned from this experience.

Canada's record of performance is similar to most other developed economies, with a couple of exceptions. Nevertheless, as you well know, it puts us in a difficult position to begin to work towards the much tougher goal agreed to by the government at Kyoto in 1997. Our work shows that the federal government has not applied sound basic principles of management to the implementation of this policy commitment.

For example, we found no unambiguous written description of the roles, responsibilities and contributions of those involved. The federal government's own role is complicated by the absence of a clear federal lead on this issue.

There was no overall plan for implementation that set milestones and interim targets to guide the efforts of the partners. There was limited results-based monitoring and no summary-level reporting to Parliament to assist in its oversight role.

A new management regime is required, with roles and responsibilities clearly defined, agreed and recorded, together with a comprehensive implementation plan with interim targets and deadlines, a monitoring process, a process for making adjustments as needed, and the regular provision of high-quality information and analysis to Parliament.

• 1115

In 1992 Canada also signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Biological diversity refers to the complex variety of life on earth and the need to preserve it as a source of new medicines, crops, and for the simple enjoyment of life and nature. Today many plants, birds, animals and other forms of life are being threatened by increased pollution and the destruction of habitat worldwide.

Canadian implementation of this convention has been slow. Only two of eight federal implementation plans have been completed to date. And again, we find they do not contain deadlines, resource information, expected results or performance indicators. Since biodiversity requires much the same cooperative approach as climate change, a lack of attention to these basic elements may well lead to management difficulties and a failure to implement.

Once again, this reinforces the central theme of my report: if we are to keep our environmental promises, we need to take action, and take it now.

[Translation]

We need to make sure that the action we take is the right action, and likely to achieve our objectives. To do this, we need good tools to make good decisions.

Because of its importance to good decisions on the environment, we looked at environmental impact assessment. Large scale environmental assessments overseen by panels are rare, around 10 per year. Therefore we focussed on the bulk of the activity under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the 5,000 screenings carried out by the federal government under the Act each year.

First, we found problems with their scope. Screenings may not consider all of the environmental impacts of the project. Second, monitoring is a problem. We found that it is not possible to say, for example, whether the assessment process actually reduces harmful effects on the environment.

We found that the federal index, designed to make information available to interested Canadians, is incomplete and difficult to use. Furthermore, most of these screening reports that are intended to show the work done on assessment were not completed, nor were they included in the index.

Finally, we also noted that although in 1990 Cabinet directive requires the environmental assessment process to be applied to policy decisions, progress has been slow.

[English]

We found some good management practices in environmental assessment. These give us confidence that problems can be fixed, and that environmental assessment remains an important instrument for making better environmental decisions.

Our report looks at three other areas as well, where we are building better tools. In “A Strategic Approach to Environmental Management”, we present the results of a review of practices in some leading corporations like Nortel, TransAlta, and Volvo.

We found that effective sustainable development strategies in the public and private sector have much in common with good strategic planning in general. They involve commitment from the top, a commitment to education and awareness throughout the organization, clear goals, and measurable targets. The key elements are very straightforward, but the results are surprisingly effective.

Good information can lead to environment gains, or cost reductions, or both. This is why we are committed to working with government departments to develop ways of accounting for sustainable development. Our chapter “Counting the Environment In” reports on work with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to develop new ways of using both financial and other information that can help managers make better decisions.

Finally, an old aphorism: what gets measured gets done. We find, therefore, that performance indicators are critical to better operational and policy decisions. In our chapter “Performance Measurement for Sustainable Development Strategies”, we set out the characteristics of a good performance indicator. We hope this will help departments measure more, and ultimately help them to manage more and manage better.

• 1120

Next year we will look at Canada's management of toxic substances, international agreements that affect the Arctic, and harmonization, among other issues. As well, we hope to continue to work with departments on projects such as accounting for sustainable development.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the committee for its ongoing interest and support for our work. The work of the committee is vital to Canada's success in meeting its environmental goals, and I look forward to a continuing productive relationship.

We will be delighted to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Emmett.

We will try to have a good round, possibly five minutes each, since there is quite a turnout today. We will start, as usual, with Mr. Gilmour. Five minutes, please.

Mr. Bill Gilmour (Nanaimo—Alberni, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to talk about the climate change portion of your report, particularly the implementation plan, or lack thereof. You state that there's no way the government is going to meet its stabilization goal of 2000. Did you look further into the goal that they signed on to at Kyoto, and do you think that is an achievable goal, given the lack of management plans in place?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Chairman, we did not look beyond the Rio commitment. We confined ourselves to the stabilization goal. Nevertheless, I believe that many of the observations we've made about management problems leading to the failure to meet our stabilization goal in the year 2000, if not corrected, will make it extremely difficult to achieve a more stringent goal in the future. I think the results are generalizable into the future, even though we did not look specifically at the Kyoto target.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: There is an appearance that the government is attempting to throw money at the problem without a very straightforward plan of how it is going to get there and what the targets are at the other end, and the steps or milestones along the way. One can add to that the fact that the level of trust with the provinces was eroded right from the beginning.

Were these the type of findings you were looking at in your report? In fact, have you tracked any of the money that has gone towards global warming? What is your general impression as to how these moneys have been spent?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Let me answer that in two parts. I'll start, and perhaps ask Ellen to fill in.

What we focused on in this audit was not so much how money was spent, but the recognition that climate change goals and a lot of environmental goals today can only be resolved through partnerships with provinces, the private sector, and others. We found that the partnerships were often very badly defined. People didn't know what their obligations were, and reporting relationships were vague or excessively complicated. We concentrated on structural factors, not on monetary factors such as how money was being spent.

We have, in previous audits, looked at how money was being spent on things related to climate change such as energy efficiency measures. Things like climate change largely require, in our view, a kind of portfolio approach, and need more than one measure.

I think you need to focus on behaviour—how people make decisions about how they consume energy. You need to perhaps spend money on programs; you need perhaps regulations; you need information and education, and so on. The failure to deliver an education and awareness program was one of the major gaps we noted with respect to climate change.

Ellen is the author of the chapter on energy efficiency and on climate change. She might be able to give you a few more details on that.

Ms. Ellen Shillabeer (Principal, Office of the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Okay. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to note that we did not track the resources on climate change. During the planning phase, we did ask about the federal resources being dedicated to the climate change issue, and we found that the accounting systems were not very reliable in terms of providing us with accurate resources.

At that time, the resources were also building up in preparation for Kyoto, so they weren't typical of the amount of resources that might be applied on a normal day-to-day basis. Also, a lot of the resources were going to research and development on the science of climate change, and we were focusing on mitigation activities. We were having a very hard time separating out the activities that were going just to mitigation.

• 1125

The answer is no, we really can't help you in terms of the amount of resources going to climate change.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Thank you.

A short one?

The Chairman: Yes, very short.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: The striking similarity between the biodiversity and climate change more in the lack of a management plan, the lack of goals—am I reading it correctly? Is this a similar type of problem within the department, that they seem to lack the road map to get where they want to go?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Chairman, I believe a central theme of our report is that we make promises and we don't know how to get there. There is a lack of connection, and certainly it was my experience when I worked in policy at a departmental level that there was a lack of connection between policy thinking and implementation. I believe there is a systemic, under-appreciation of management, of implementation, and so on. That is not to play down at all the value of the leadership role Canada has played in a number of environmental issues. I guess the central theme of our report, in my view, is the need to complement that with much stronger commitment to focus on management, to focus on results definition, to focus on how to get from A to B. It's a systemic problem.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Rocheleau, please.

Mr. Yves Rocheleau (Trois-Rivières, BQ): For my first question, I'd simply like to ask you to tell us about climate changes and their potential effects. Without overdramatizing the situation, could you illustrate or have you already illustrated in a practical way what the concrete consequences can be for some areas of Canada or Quebec? More particularly, I'm thinking about the icebergs that are drifting to the south more and more. What might happen if corrective measures are not introduced soon enough?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Mr. Chairman, I think there's the matter of temperature. Just think about the ice storm we went through recently and the other meteorological changes. I've heard that there is no scientific link between those events and global climate change. We can expect draught, coastal flooding and more unstable weather conditions because of global change and global warming.

Ellen, would you like to add anything?

[English]

Ms. Ellen Shillabeer: Well, Mr. Chairman, I would just draw your attention to section 3.32 in the report, where we summarize the potential impacts on Canada. We point to a number of potentially serious impacts, including impacts on our agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industries. One of the potential impacts, of course, is increased severe weather events. Perhaps that paragraph would expand on some of the impacts that are potential impacts.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Rocheleau.

[Translation]

Mr. Yves Rocheleau: During the last few weeks, I had the privilege to travel with the Fisheries Committee to Baffin Island, Iqaluit more specifically, to Broughton Island and to Pangnirtung. To my great surprise, one of the problems raised by the natives over there is that the fish they're getting is full of toxic substances. Now, we know that industrial human activity is very low in that area of the country and understandably so. However, these people are establishing a link between the toxic products that are found in the fish and the DEW line set up in the 50s by the Americans with the Canadian government's co-operation. Honestly, in your opinion, can that link be established? We're told that the Americans had wisely left barrels full of PCBs on the ice and that, when it melted, like everywhere else, those barrels wound up on the bottom. Is there any danger for the southerners we are that, nature doing whatever it does, those toxic products could come down and contaminate the waters of James Bay, Hudson's Bay, the St. Lawrence River, and the Great Lakes, or are we being overly dramatic when we think these kinds of thoughts?

• 1130

Mr. Brian Emmett: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if there are any links between the northern contaminated sites and the problem of chemical pollution. For next year, we've made chemical pollution in the Arctic and the links between that and economic activity in the rest of the world an important part of our work. That's a key element in our work plan.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Emmett.

[English]

Mr. Laliberte, followed by Mr. Herron, Mr. Jordan, and Madam Kraft Sloan.

Mr. Rick Laliberte (Churchill River, NDP): Thank you. I think your report deserves a lot of credibility, attacking two major components in international commitments: biodiversity with a country like Canada and climate change.

I want to focus and try to find out about your vision, your leadership, and your management. In light of the specific department we've been working with—Environment—all the program reviews have just been a spotlight. Program review—actually it's a cutback review. Everything has been cutbacks, cutbacks in the last few years. Now, because of our financial position, in releasing our report yesterday, we have highlighted that in enforcement we need more human and financial resources.

Also, in looking at your responses with biodiversity and climate change, what do you find is the disparity or the difference between voluntary measures and enforceable measures done from a federal perspective or with a federal jurisdictional leadership?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Again, perhaps Ellen can add something on the difference between voluntary and other types of measures.

To start with leadership, I guess having come from the policy world, I think Canadians expect leadership from government with respect to issues as important as these. I have a simple equation in my mind, and that is that leadership requires good policies, innovative policies, vision, but it has to be multiplied by action, and you need the two. Both are necessary but not sufficient conditions. That's why I am so concerned about the lack of management, because I think it feeds back into our capacity to be leaders, to be visionary, to have credible and innovative ideas that are influential in the international arena—which is an arena that's very important to us. I guess that's kind of the little equation I keep in my head about leadership, vision plus action, and—

Personally, with respect to voluntary action, my attitude has always been that there are all sorts of ways of delivering programs. One of them is voluntary action. The question is, does it work? I'm not sure whether we have empirical evidence on that or not, Ellen.

Ms. Ellen Shillabeer: Mr. Chairman, in the chapter we note that Canada is employing a limited tool kit for climate change. It's primarily focused on voluntary measures and limited use of regulations, and yet the federal-provincial agreement is that a broad portfolio is needed. In other words, they've agreed that voluntary will not get us there, but it is an important part of the tool mix. As Mr. Emmett said, we don't have sufficient information on the voluntary measures to know to what extent they can contribute towards the overall goal.

So everybody seems to agree we need other tools, we need to go beyond voluntary, and of course we would not be suggesting one measure over another, but we do say we need a broad tool kit.

The Chairman: Last question.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: In terms of concurring with the view that environmental protection and protecting the state of the economy is job intensive, would you concur that we need more human and financial resources? In the same context, we'd be creating job creation in cleaning up the contaminated sites, cleaning up rivers, fish habitats; we'd be cleaning up the whole aspect of retrofitting manufacturing in factories out there that are spewing pollution and creating greenhouse gases. All this is job-intensive, and if the government would take leadership, it would be a win-win situation, addressing the environment issue and our employment issue.

• 1135

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Laliberte.

The issue of resources has been the subject of a lot of debate and press over the past few months. The Deputy Minister of the Environment has said our resources are short. The committee itself has focused on a shortage of resources. In many ways these are questions that the deputy minister and the committee are in a much better place to know than we are.

What we're trying to bring here is the other dimension. I tend to look at it, again, in equation form: capacity equals resources times the efficiency with which they're being used. What we're bringing to the debate, I hope, with this report is an examination of how effectively the available resources are being used. That's part of that capacity equation.

So I've no reason to doubt the observations made by the deputy minister and the committee on resources. What I'm interested in seeing is that those resources are used as effectively as possible.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Herron, please, followed by Mr. Jordan.

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): My first question relates to your comment in your press release that inadequate environmental assessments may have significant consequences for the environment.

As you stated, 99% of all environmental assessments are done by a screening process. In the 187 you actually reviewed, you determined they did not meet the criteria set out by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and under the act. Could you elaborate a little bit more on that point?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Certainly, Mr. Herron.

Another theme that runs throughout our work is the importance of Canadians in the public sector, in the private sector, and as individuals taking better decisions and having good tools in order to do that. Therefore we attach a lot of importance to things such as environmental impact assessment and the sustainable development strategies.

As you know, environmental assessment is a self-assessment procedure where departments do the screening themselves and the agency is basically the steward of the process. In looking at the process, we found problems in scoping. For example, where a bridge was crossing a stream and needed a permit, we would observe that only the bridge was examined and not the roads leading to the bridge. We found that an excessively narrow definition of the project.

At the moment, another thing that limits the value of this as a screening tool is the limited follow-up. People receive permission to do things on the basis that they will take mitigative measures on the environment, but there's not a systematic procedure for coming back and seeing if those things were actually done or not. So in some ways we don't have an adequate understanding of whether this tool works as well as it should do.

Mr. John Herron: My next question relates to biodiversity. As you said, it has been six years since the Earth Summit, when we signed on to establish a biodiversity accord. Could you elaborate a little bit more on your comment in this release that six years after Canada signed the United Nations convention, you have still not seen information on how well Canada is doing on protecting its plants, animals, and habitats? Could you touch on that from a provincial aspect as well? Is there a biodiversity management plan for the country in any shape, way, or form?

Mr. Brian Emmett: This is something I might ask my colleague, Wayne Cluskey, to respond to specifically.

A number of the things we committed to deliver to the UN are behind schedule. We committed, for example, to deliver a first report to the UN by December 1997. That report still does not exist. At the moment, it is my understanding that of the eight modules that are required for that report to be completed, only two have been completed, and the ones we've looked at we were unhappy with in terms that they lack targets, they lack resourcing information, and they lack a good deal of detail.

• 1140

Again, like climate change, this is a federal-provincial issue and requires partnerships with the provinces, but I'm not exactly sure where we are in terms of that.

Wayne.

Mr. Wayne Cluskey (Environment Audit Team, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): We did not audit what the provinces did. It is a cooperative venture. It's done through the council of ministers. We did not see any reports, nor did we audit any reports from the provinces. We focused strictly on what the federal government has done.

The Chairman: So much for the council of ministers.

Thank you, Mr. Herron.

Mr. Jordan, please, followed by Mrs. Kraft Sloan, Mr. Pratt, and then the chair.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): Thank you.

I want to say I find the results, although not surprising, rather disturbing. But I find your frankness and objectivity on the issue very refreshing. That's from an MP with one year of experience under his belt, so take it with a grain of salt.

I want to ask a very general question, and it touches a little bit on one of the issues Mr. Laliberte was dealing with when he made a distinction between jobs and work. That is, it seems to me there are a number of different ways we can achieve the goal of practices by governments and industries in this country that are healthy on the economic front but also on the environmental front and social front—and I take those terms from your own document.

In the past four or five years, the public servants and the government's structure in this country were faced with the debt problem and responded very remarkably, and I wonder if perhaps rather than sort of command and control, where we're constantly trying to deal with the conflict between economic and environmental issues, we shouldn't be looking more at incorporating these into how we do things.

What I'm saying is, we can spend a lot of time trying to get managers to apply principles of good management, or we can make sure the good management involves the assessment and responsibility for costs over and above the economic, because virtually everything we do is return on investment, profits and loss, internal rates and return. At the end of the day, we're constantly going to be trying to deal with that conflict.

I know I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, because you say next year you're going to be looking at accounting for sustainable development. I wonder if maybe we shouldn't be devoting significant resources to how we measure activities in terms of their effects on the environment, the economy, and society, and making sure— because I think with the civil service having demonstrated the flexibility to adapt to the fiscal challenges of the deficit, we don't need to change their behaviours; we just need to change the rules. They'll apply all the creativity they brought to that problem to this particular problem.

I think it's a much more viable strategy in the long term if we apply full costing, because at the end of the day the problems we're identifying have price tags associated with them.

There were a couple of things in your own documents that sort of tweaked my concern a little bit. I'm quoting from your “Counting the Environment In” press release.

You say you have a win-win, where you can save money and protect the environment at the same time. I would argue that protecting the environment inherently has cost savings associated with it, and we have to quit making that distinction. I realize there's nothing we can do about it now; that distinction is there, and that's the problem we're dealing with.

But when you talk about how we can limit greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, as well as lowering total costs, that kind of phraseology disturbs me, because I think we need to be starting to think that reducing gas emissions and other environmental impacts also lower costs and need to be reflected in how we evaluate performance.

Is that what you had in mind when you were saying next year you're going to look at the accounting for sustainability? Is there going to be an effort to try to break down some of those barriers between the economic, environmental and social well-being of this country and how we measure that?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Let me answer that in a couple of ways, Mr. Chairman. It's an excellent observation.

I think the title of commissioner of the environment and sustainable development contains a recognition that if you, for example, went out on the Sparks Street Mall at lunchtime and asked people what they would rather have, the environment or the economy, they would tell you to ask them a question that meant something. They do not see it as a trade-off. They can't see why they shouldn't have both and they can't see why civil servants, for example, aren't smart enough to deliver on that.

• 1145

I think that is really built into what my mandate is. I don't look on it as the environment or the economy, I look on it as the environment and the economy.

Certainly as we looked out there at surveys of the best activities by the best corporations—Volvo, TransAlta, and a forestry firm named AssiDomän in Europe—corporations all over the world are doing this, and not for altruistic reasons but because they want to maximize return to shareholders in the long term. They want to be in business in the long term. They want to be prepared for the 21st century. I think that in the best corporations there is a recognition that green business is good business. I would like to see in the government a recognition that green government is good government.

I think you're absolutely right that given the correct web of incentives and information, civil servants are very creative and they're an outstanding resource for the country, and they're more than capable of responding to that challenge. The problem is that it's hard to come by.

Mr. Joe Jordan: Yes. I think it would also bring voluntary compliance into the realm of credibility if the rules themselves, the behaviours that the rules guide, reinforced the types of activities we want and we didn't have that conflict.

I have one more quick question.

The Chairman: Very short, please.

Mr. Joe Jordan: You outlined quite correctly the fact that we're the second largest country in the world and have the largest coastline and we have a certain stewardship of responsibility. One of the arguments you get when you go down this road is that we can't be too far ahead of our international partners or we're going to suffer some economic Armageddon.

Do you think due to the fact that we are stewards of such a large piece of this earth, somewhere along the line we have to just start acting domestically within the best interests of Canada and deal with whatever that economic Armageddon might be?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I guess I come back to what I said earlier. I do think that because of size and the fact that we have a small population and a huge country, we're vulnerable to insults by others, and therefore we need to be able to participate in international forums—to punch above our weight, I think, is a term the British use. We'll only be able to do that if we have the credibility of our actions to back us up.

So I think it's a self-reinforcing kind of argument. You spoke as a new MP; I speak as a new commissioner. The longer I'm in this job and the more I learn, the more that distinction between the world of policy and the world of doing dissolves, and policy without doing becomes almost a contradiction in terms for me. So that's where I am.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Madam Kraft Sloan, please, followed by Mr. Knutson, Mr. Pratt and Mr. Charbonneau.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to compliment you not only on the substantive content of your reports but also on the way they've been laid out, because it makes them very accessible. It's important that this kind of information be accessible to Canadians.

I wanted to go back to ask you to build on some of the comments you made earlier about the lack of connection between policy and how to get there. You had said that this was a systemic problem. I'm wondering if you could talk about, from your experience, why you think this systemic problem exists and how we can remove this systemic problem, remove the barriers and find some solutions.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mrs. Kraft Sloan.

Mr. Chairman, somebody asked me recently what I had learned in my brief time in this job. I replied half facetiously, but only half, that I had learned what a bad job I'd been doing when I was in the policy world. In working on big policy initiatives, I don't think we had ever thought to talk to the people in the department who were responsible for getting from A to B. We always focused on whether we were doing the right thing; we never focused on whether we had the capacity to do things right, to actually make that journey. I think it's symptomatic of an undervaluation of implementation. It's considered the less glamorous part of the jobs that are available for public servants to do, and I think many of the rewards are seen to be with policy and innovation. Few seem to be associated with solid management, setting clear targets, measuring, accounting.

• 1150

The challenge of global warming is an inherently more exciting subject than green accounting. You just can't get a lot of people really energized by that. My colleagues are energized by that because they see it as being so vital to being able to do things well, to being able to change. That's the sort of systemic undervaluation of the part of the agenda that just requires people, to be blunt, to put butts on seats and do that long, hard slog of trying to come to grips with some really difficult issues such as measuring the environment, setting a target that's meaningful and good, putting together an implementation plan. These are tough, detailed issues that need more attention.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: I think also, to be fair, one of the things you had talked about in your sustainable development strategy section was that the private sector has learned a lot over the years about how to do good sustainable development strategies.

One of the things I wanted to point out was that on page 1-23 of chapter 1, “Greening the Government of Canada”, you talked about some of these sustainable development strategies and that they focus mostly on past achievements as opposed to setting specific changes for the future.

One of the things I've had a lot of involvement with, as indeed have our chair and others on this committee, is the need for the baseline study of taxes, grants and subsidies. I note in here, as you have noted on page 1-23, that it is supposed to be a requirement for departments to talk about how they are going to reassess this baseline and how we are supposed to be moving away perverse ecological subsidies, which I think gets to a lot of the concerns around the table, with some of the sexier items like global climate change and things like that.

I'm just wondering how we can encourage the departments, as it were, to be more involved in setting these objectives for the future—not just talking about past accomplishments, but talking about how they are going to change the way they operate, particularly in the light of what you've identified on page 1-23.

Mr. Brian Emmett: I think one thing everybody can do in the committee and so on is just establish— Let me take a step back.

The sustainable development strategies are probably not going to get the attention they deserve, in my view. Climate change is a very important issue, and people want to talk about it, biodiversity and so on. These tools are a unique thing that were created by the previous government. They are potentially extremely valuable. I think it's up to me, as part of my job, and the committee as part of its job and parliamentarians in general as part of their job, to demand that those strategies be as good as they can be.

For example, I look at the list of challenges that leaders considered when they did their overview of Rio plus five in New York last year. That's a daunting set of challenges into the 21st century. I think Canadians and MPs have every right to expect that departments will be looking out over that horizon and preparing themselves to deal with those challenges of the 21st century.

I think what we need to do is see more of that. One of my jobs is to set an ever higher bar for the intellectual and strategic content of these strategies over time. They're new tools, departments have made a valiant effort, but we need to keep pushing and pushing because this is a tool that needs to work.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mrs. Kraft Sloan.

Next round, Mr. Knutson, please.

Mr. Gar Knutson (Elgin—Middlesex—London, Lib.): Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Commissioner, I just want to make a brief point. I find the reference to the 2000 goal, which I guess we signed in 1992, somewhat confusing. I think what Canadians are concerned with more— Certainly we've known for some time that we weren't going to reach that goal. There's sort of a reference to it and a reminder that we're not going to reach that goal by the year 2000.

• 1155

I'm more concerned with whether we're doing the things now to meet our Kyoto commitment. If the intent of the report was to set off some alarm bells that we're not doing the things now to set off the Kyoto commitment, I think you needed to make that point much more directly.

This report doesn't comment on where you think the secretariat is going. Are we optimistic about their success? Is there a sense that if we fall behind— The federal government has agreed with the provinces, I take it, to study the issue for some time before they come out with their plan. Does that create alarm bells, in that any discussion about climate change needs to discuss those issues? I would suggest as strongly as possible that it's all well and good next year to move on to other issues. Climate change is so big that maybe it's something you have to come back to year after year, and make a chapter every year until we have some confidence that we're getting it right.

My sense is that if a government official were sitting beside you, they would talk about all the wonderful things they're doing that aren't mentioned here. They would talk about the secretariat, they would talk about the $50 million in last February's budget, and they would try to give us a real sense that we're moving forward. They would talk about the agreements we're signing with the provinces.

I'm just wondering, is that a lot of smoke or is it real? I haven't read it all, but it sort of predates that discussion and I think we need something a little more current.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Knutson.

Mr. Chairman, this is a conversation we had with ourselves internally before we embarked on this audit. We talked about it. Everybody knows we're not going to meet the stabilization target in the year 2000. Isn't that the story? Is there anything more to be told there? My attitude was then, and it is now, that we needed somebody to look underneath the numbers and see why, and ask those questions: Why? What went wrong? Was it a structural problem or was it a one-time failure?

The conclusion we came to in the report is that these are structural problems that need to be addressed. Things like the secretariat were basically coming into being just as we were closing off this report. We didn't have a chance to study them. We didn't have a chance to report on them. We do, as a matter of course, come back to the work that we've done on a two-year cycle and do follow-ups, and we will do that.

But my own view is that we identified a number of structural problems—inadequately defined leadership, inadequately defined partnerships, inadequately defined targets, lack of planning and so on—that the secretariat needs to deal with. I think basically it's almost a work program for the secretariat if it is going to be successful in achieving the Kyoto goal.

So I think the observations we make are valid in relation to Kyoto. If they're not corrected— The job of the chairman of the new secretariat is to produce an implementation plan. The committee has asked us to have a look at that implementation plan, to evaluate it against what we've learned from our audit work, and we basically agreed to do that. So we will be coming back to that in the future. But I think the lessons we have learned are really valid for looking forward as well.

Mr. Gar Knutson: When will we expect that report?

Mr. Brian Emmett: You would expect that report some time after the secretariat produces their implementation plan.

Mr. Gar Knutson: When's that?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I believe it's about 18 months from now, but it's 18 months to two years.

Mr. Gar Knutson: Is that good enough?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I think it's about what we can do to help the process along. We have a chapter that identifies a number of things. The government can choose to look at them.

Mr. Gar Knutson: Do you have an opinion on whether the 18-month timeframe is good enough, or at that point are we already going to be behind the eight ball? That is really the critical question, in my mind anyway, but others—

• 1200

Mr. Brian Emmett: That's not a bad point. As time passes, we're going in the wrong direction. We have a Kyoto target. Each year we pass with greenhouse gases increasing means it's a deeper hole we're into and will have to get ourselves out of. On the other hand, I think it's worth it to take the time to correct the structural problems we have and make sure we're on a path we can sustain.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Knutson. Mr. Pratt, please.

Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question relates to the issue of climate change as well, and I'm looking at your news release, “Climate Change, Federal government record: Too Little action”. On the flip side, you talk about the checklist results and key elements in managing climate change commitments. Down the list there's the interjurisdictional agreement on measures designed to achieve the goal, and you show no progress at the federal level on that.

On this whole issue of federal leadership, I'm wondering if that is because the federal government simply hasn't tried hard enough to get agreement with the provinces, or is it because the provinces have varying levels of commitment on environmental issues in general and on climate change in particular.

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'll ask Ellen if she could answer that, as author of the chapter.

Ms. Ellen Shillabeer: It was very clear at the beginning that the goal was to try to get formal agreements with the provinces, and obviously that hasn't happened. Canada has a national action program that outlines some ideas and options that could be taken by the provinces and the municipalities, should they choose to do so.

It's recognized that they have other priorities and resources and constraints. So the agreements we think are necessary to define who will do what by when and with what resources simply haven't come to be. I would hope over the next 18 months we will get to written agreements that outline the contributions of the various parties. I think that's absolutely essential to get to whatever target we choose in the future.

Mr. David Pratt: Are you seeing any flickers of determination, innovation or creativity that would lead you to believe some of these agreements might be possible over the next little while? What will it take to correct the problem?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I see some flickers, but it's hard to know whether they will kindle a flame and eventually a fire. There's the creation of the secretariat. It's difficult to know in advance whether these are positive steps or not. But certainly the importance of a global climate change target has been reconfirmed. We've signed on to a binding agreement, and so on. Whether the lessons that have been learned from the past 10 years will be learned and applied to an implementation plan for getting to Kyoto, we just need to wait to see what happens.

The Chairman: Mr. Charbonneau.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): I'm very impressed with this report too. Even though I have not yet read it in full, I can see that it sets out the importance of ensuring the integration of economic, social, environmental and international objectives. The sustainable development strategy must include those four elements. I believe it's a message we'll have to deliver on an ongoing basis.

As for the matter of climatic change and the implementation of Canada's commitments, you're emphasizing that it's necessary to set up a new management structure. In your report, I didn't find any really specific description of the present structure. However, we do know that responsibility is in the hands of two departments, Environment and Natural Resources, a national secretariat, the national round table that reports to the Prime Minister, and also, but more recently, a federal-provincial secretariat. Based on the knowledge we already have on the structures that already exist, what's your opinion as to a better structure that might be set up? Do you have more specific or more concrete suggestions for us?

• 1205

[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'll ask Ellen to respond to that, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Ellen Shillabeer: Mr. Chairman, one of the frustrations in the audit was trying to sort out exactly what the federal government meant by saying it was “the leader” on this climate change issue.

We have two federal departments, Natural Resources Canada and Environment Canada, that are the co-leaders on the issue, and that's about as far as we got in trying to find a written description of what the federal government is doing to “lead” on this issue. So I guess where we would start with the new management structure is some clarity in exactly what the federal government intends to do to lead on this issue.

We can't comment on this climate change secretariat that was just set up at the end of the audit. They didn't even have a mandate or resources as we were concluding the audit. Obviously in the future, we would be looking at the secretariat and asking questions about its mandate and role.

We do say in the chapter that we believe the federal government has to sort out how to best organize itself to deal with the issue, but we do not prescribe a particular management structure.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: I have a second question, Mr. Chairman.

The Auditor General reminds us that on climatic change, the government has suggested a three-pronged approach: decreasing emissions, adapting to new situations and improving knowledge.

However, we know that there's also a fourth element that is now surfacing both in the Department of Environment as well as elsewhere in federal government spheres. It's something called joint implementation, which is a scenario where you exchange emission rights or pollution credits with other countries. How relevant is this fourth element or feature in the implementation of our commitments? Do you see this as avoiding our commitments or something helping us to avoid them, or is this something that will contribute to the implementation of our commitments? How important is this fourth element which seems to have a lot of weight with some senior government decision-makers?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Mr. Chairman, joint implementation is one of the economic tools being used to pursue our goal of stabilizing the greenhouse gas emissions. To my mind, this is one element of a greater array of tools available for regulation, information, education purposes and so on which are also important. In my opinion, it may or may not work. It's a matter of effect.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: As for exchanges of emission rights or emission credits between businesses within one country and other industrialized countries, whether from the north or south, do you think this system has any kind of future?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I get the impression that there is a long road before we get to a situation where you'll have joint implementation. We don't have the necessary tools and right now there is no limit. We have to face a lot of other things before being able to set up an exchange process.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: Maybe we're not that far away from that debate because at the Buenos Aires conference in Argentina, next November, those questions will be addressed by all parties during discussions on the Kyoto protocol. Those questions will be raised in a few months.

• 1210

Mr. Brian Emmett: yes, that's true. In my opinion, it is most important to get developing countries to participate in the agreements concerning climatic change. For example, we've seen the enormous importance of having the less developed countries participate in the Montreal protocol. It's important to have a system which supports the participation of less developed countries in matters concerning climatic change.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Charbonneau.

[English]

There are no more names on my list, so I'm ready to start the second round, the quick one, but please allow the chair to ask a few brief questions.

Mr. Emmett, on page 18 of your observations report, you have in exhibit 7 a list of tasks for this year, for next year and for the year following. Could you give assurance to this committee that you intend to include a study on enforcement, and if so, in which of the years?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I understand that the report you published yesterday has a recommendation on enforcement and a request to the Auditor General. It's certainly something that is high on our list of priorities. I do want to discuss it with the Auditor General before responding in a conclusive way.

For example, as we do the management of toxic substances, as we look to the Arctic and other areas, enforcement is going to be an important component of those issues.

We've also done a good deal of work on enforcement in the past that we can draw on. As you know, several of the issues we've discussed with you to date have had an enforcement component, like transboundary movement of hazardous waste, where we said we didn't know whether we were in compliance with the Basel Convention, and like ozone depletion, where we were worried about inconsistent enforcement across the country.

Certainly we have some work to draw on and it is important subject for us.

The Chairman: This committee is particularly interested in an enforcement study preceding the signing of an enforcement subagreement between the federal and the provincial environment ministers.

Mr. Brian Emmett: I didn't hear the complete question, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: This committee is interested in a study on enforcement related to the proposed signature of a subagreement on enforcement amongst the environment ministers.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes, I understand that, and we have begun the work that you had asked of us earlier with respect to equivalency in administrative agreements under CEPA and Fisheries Act. But as far as committing to do work in the future is concerned, I wouldn't want to make that commitment lightly. I do want to discuss it with the Auditor General.

The Chairman: Fine. You will let us know.

Mr. Brian Emmett: We will let you know.

The Chairman: The next question has to do with the phenomenal performance of National Defence on page 1-18, exhibit 1.6, “The Conformance Picture by Department”. And the question I would really love to ask you is, what will National Defence be required to do in order to remain number 1, particularly in relation to the sites north of 60°, which are crying out for attention, namely, PCBs and other remnants of the DEW line and war activities that are an item of consistent complaints by aboriginal people and Canadians living north of 60°?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'll ask Rick Smith, my colleague who oversaw the evaluation of these strategies, to answer, if I may.

Mr. Richard Smith (Principal, Office of the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Mr. Chairman, in response to your first question about what what National Defence has to do to keep on top, the answer's quite simple. They'll have to do what they said they would do in their strategy. That's going to be the next phase of monitoring we're going to go through in terms of sustainable development strategies.

With respect to your specific questions about the DEW line, I'd have to go back to see specifically what they committed themselves to doing in their strategy before I could answer that question.

The Chairman: Fair enough.

In your press release today, under chapter 6, you have a stunning statement in the third paragraph, and I quote: “The report found that a majority of the 187 screenings examined did not meet criteria set out by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.” How are we to interpret that statement? Is the law to be modified? Are amendments necessary? Is the process at fault? What does it mean?

• 1215

Mr. Brian Emmett: My interpretation would be that the law is fine. Again, I think what we need is better management and a correction of the process. We've been encouraged by what we've seen from the assessment agency so far, and we have confidence that we can conclude on an optimistic note in that chapter that the problems we have identified will be rectified.

The Chairman: My final question is this. There have been discussions around the table in the first round on the question of structure, and you stated that the structural problem needs to be addressed. That raises the question as to what is the root cause of the structural problem. If one is to conclude that structures are the reflections of political will, then when we deal with structures, really we are not dealing with the root source of the issue.

You can function extremely well with bad structures and achieve the impossible sometimes, or you can achieve very little with very good structures if there is no political will to drive them. Would you like to comment on that observation, namely the danger of focusing too much on structures and too little on political will? Or is that beyond your mandate?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Maybe it is, but let me answer anyway and get myself into trouble. Political will does not appear in this report. I don't think the term appears anywhere. It came up a lot when I talked to people. People kept saying to me, “Where's the political will on the environment?” I react against that term because I think it is a convenient blanket excuse for bureaucrats not to do their jobs well.

There may be a lack of political will. There may not be. Somebody else I think should make that judgment, but I don't want to see it used in my reports as a wastebasket for excuses for poor performance. So I've chosen to ignore the term and concentrate on what I think we can bring a value to, and that is a discussion of the management techniques applied to the environment, which are deficient.

The Chairman: Thank you.

A second round, Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Thank you. I was remiss in my first round to compliment you on these reports. They're exceedingly well done, and as with my colleagues, I like the candour; I like the straightforwardness with which you have approached it.

Going to international environmental commitments, you stated, and I'll quote:

— Canada does not systematically track the implementation of its international environmental commitments. As a consequence, Canada does not have an overall picture of how good a job it is doing at meeting the obligations it has undertaken: where it has been successful; what gaps remain;—

We deal with biodiversity and climate change in the reports, but how far afield did you go, and is this a pattern throughout the agreements, that they are fairly piecemeal at meeting our obligation?

Mr. Brian Emmett: That's a little bit of a difficult question to answer at this point in time. We've catalogued the 230 agreements. They are now available on our web site.

How far afield did we go? We went back to 1909 and began with one of the most important of the agreements that Canada has signed, and that is the Boundary Waters Treaty, and we go forward from there.

Many of these agreements, I think, you will find are bilateral agreements that deal with the management of waterways or of migratory animals or birds and things like that. Our problem with it is the fragmentation of the picture. Many of those agreements are probably embedded in the work programs of departments, the Canadian Wildlife Service, the International Joint Commission, and so on. Much of that work is probably getting done.

What is lacking is a centralized basis for sort of looking it up and saying, yes, we have this agreement, we are meeting our commitments, or we're not, and we need to do things, or we don't. It's an information problem. I guess we were led there by noticing that there were problems with a lot of the big agreements we'd signed recently, and it led us to ask, well, what other commitments have we signed that we may not even know about that may give us problems?

• 1220

So we went back. The result is a very nice computerized database where you can search and get capsule summaries of where we are on a variety of agreements: global, regional, bilateral with the U.S.—they cover the range.

The Chairman: Perhaps we'll have one question each and see whether there is enough steam for a third one.

Monsieur Desrochers, s'il vous plaît.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière, BQ): Commissioner, in chapter 4 you say that the number of known species classified as endangered in Canada increased remarkably during the last ten years. What kind of percentages are we talking about? Second, in what areas did you find this increase in the number of known species? What do you plan on doing in future years to deal with that situation?

[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: I might ask Wayne Cluskey to take that question.

Mr. Wayne Cluskey: We've indicated that only 1% of the species have been identified,

[Translation]

but we didn't conduct this audit in any specific area. It's a problem that exists all across Canada and that varies depending on the kind of mammal, animal, bird and so forth.

Mr. Odina Desrochers: So, nothing specific in that sense? It was across the board.

Mr. Wayne Cluskey: It's in Canada and also on a worldwide scale.

Mr. Odina Desrochers: A lot was said about structure before, but doesn't the environmental problem have more to do with the matter of leadership and federal government leadership?

Mr. Brian Emmett: The theme in my report is the lack of management. Once again, I define leadership as being a combination of both vision and action. To date, we've had a lot of vision.

Mr. Odina Desrochers: But not a lot of action.

Mr. Brian Emmett: We played a creative and innovative role in international negotiations, but we have problems with action and management in the area of our commitments.

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Desrochers.

[English]

Mr. Laliberte, please.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: I guess in your report you deal with sustainable development. One example you used was measuring A to B, but in my mind sustainable development is a cycle. It's a circle; it's not a linear path. I think that's what we all have to live by. Whatever we put into the system— what goes around comes around. Transboundary pollutions and climate change are certainly signs of that now.

I wanted to touch on 6.55 and 6.56. You deal with cumulative effects. Assessments sometimes will assess projects, and you alluded to a certain bridge or project-specific— But when you have a number of projects impacting cumulatively and the assessment people aren't addressing this issue—

I go back to your formula of capacity and resource equals efficiency. The whole environment capacity expectation is a lot higher. We never had CEPA before. Endangered species, climate change—we never had these major issues. Your capacity's bloated. Division expectations are high.

Can you concur that we don't have enough resources to formulate and balance the efficiency of this?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Again, we're back to an area where I don't feel particularly comfortable: second-guessing the Deputy Minister of the Environment, the Minister of the Environment, and the committee, who have all been discussing the issue of setting priorities with respect to the environment relative to other demands on the government. I think our value-added is the focus on the efficiency with which the available resources are being used, and that's very much where I want to make my own personal contribution.

• 1225

In some ways, I feel my opinions on resources are no better than those of any other average Canadian who's a voter and interested in this issue. So I prefer to stick with what we know and I think where we can make a value-added contribution.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: I just wanted to share a view that in addressing our environmental budgets in this country sometimes we compare ourselves to the United States at one-tenth, but I think we're larger in terms of our environmental responsibilities in this country, given our geography and coastline, so that we should be balancing ourselves to geographic responsibilities as opposed to population differences with another country.

The Chairman: The question is, isn't that so?

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Isn't that so?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

That is a good question, and one of the things the questioning we have received from the committee over the past several months has prompted us to do is think much more about the international aspects of our work. When one says there are x inspectors, or y investigators, or something like that, it's very difficult to know if that is too many or too little, and in comparison to what?

One of the things we have been trying to integrate into our work program is looking at the experience of other countries, and how much they devote to it, to give us some sort of understanding of where we stand in relative terms. Those are things I think we can bring to the table and add to the discussion.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mrs. Kraft Sloan, please.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: I wanted to go back to the earlier question I had raised about this being a systemic issue, moving from vision to action, and also the conversation that you had with the chair.

If vision is in large part the contribution that political will makes to the side of the equation, I also think that what we are talking about are cultural and organizational changes, or the culture of the organization. And on page 5-20, number 5.94, in “A Strategic Approach to Sustainable Development”, I think you've articulated this very well when you say that “Sustainable development is a search for new ways of thinking and acting. It is a process of change”, etc.

So I think encapsulated in this paragraph, it really talks about the kind of cultural change that has to go on within the departmental organization, and that's why when this committee made recommendations about sustainable development strategies, I really thought this was an important tool that would allow for the development of organizational change, for encouraging the cultural change and the value changes that have to occur in those organizations. But along with this there has to be some coaching and training, and as you've mentioned earlier, the committee has to stay on top of this and demand that some of the gaps you've noted in the sustainable strategies be met.

I'm wondering if you feel that when we're starting to talk about the action component we are talking about cultural change in these organizations as well.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Kraft Sloan.

Mr. Chairman, I think one of the things I said in the opening statement was I would very much like to see these documents become more change-oriented documents. Cultural change tends to bring to my mind changes that are really difficult and take a long time. But what I'm really looking for is a little bit simpler in some ways. Couldn't we take some small positive steps in the right direction towards meeting some of our commitments towards sustainable development?

That's why we've described sustainable development as a journey, so that we can get this idea of moving directionally in the right way, without pausing inordinately to get excessive precision on that. I do think, over the long run, that one does need to have a change in what one thinks is important.

For example, when we looked at the best corporate practices—and one of the things that might distort our picture a bit is that we only looked to the corporations we thought were the best, because we wanted to learn techniques from them—one of the things we found is that there sustainable development strategies are not an add-on, are not an afterthought, are not something we have to do because someone has asked us for it. They're a central value of the corporation. I don't think corporations would probably distinguish between their business plan and their sustainable development strategy. And I think that over the long haul that's where our departments have to go, so that there is not a distinction between our definition of the business we're in and sustainable development. -*-*-*-*DISK$HOC$DATA01:[FIN_EDIT]ENSU54020301.TSE

• 1230

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: And by taking these small steps and by having a process like these documents it encourages those kinds of changes.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: So you don't have to have someone who is constantly haranguing and harassing.

Mr. Brian Emmett: But that would be ideal, absolutely. I'd be out of a job.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: And hopefully maybe we can make that happen.

The Chairman: Questions? All right, third round, very briefly.

Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Thank you.

Very briefly with the international commitments, would it be possible for the committee to get a printout of your list of where we are on those international commitments? I think it would be helpful.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Absolutely. We'd be delighted to provide that, and we have web cards with our web address on them. We had a demonstration yesterday. It's an elegant database that allows you to do all sorts of things. It's very nice. But we'd be delighted to provide a printout.

Mr. Bill Gilmour: Right.

The Chairman: Mr. Laliberte.

Mr. Rick Laliberte: Along the lines of climate change and the international commitments we're making, given the nature of you being an auditor I'm sure you would like to see a closed loop aspect of us doing a lot of our efforts domestically and keeping our investments domestically. What do you see in that aspect?

I know our government is going into Bonn next week to start preparing itself for Buenos Aires. But in comparison, are there any measurements or instances that you see of a percentage between international and domestic interests? And I wanted to refer you back to the cumulative effect. I wanted to know the difference between Environment Canada's position on cumulative effect assessment and Parks Canada's position on cumulative effect. You didn't expound on it.

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'm not sure I can expound on Parks Canada versus Environment Canada with respect to cumulative effect.

With respect to the closed loop, yes, we do have in our mind a mental model of how people should approach the environment, and it's a very simple model. Plan and have your vision. Do take the steps towards sustainable development. Learn. And then you plan again based on what you did and learned. And you keep going on a cyclical basis: plan; do; learn; plan; do; learn. It's a simple kind of circular model.

With respect to the division between domestic and international, I must say that I've got to the point where I don't make much distinction between the two any longer. The borders are so open that in the case of problems we're interested in today like ozone depletion, like climate change, like biodiversity— These are problems without borders, where emissions put in the air in Buenos Aires are as important as emissions put into the air in Toronto, for example. I don't really make that distinction in my mind between what is a domestic action and what is an international action. It blends together for me. That's one of the reasons we attach so much importance to getting a handle on international agreements, and living up to our commitments and so on.

I think there is an impression in the general community that international agreements are things that impose inconvenient obligations on us. And people don't really understand enough, I don't think, that we enter into an international agreement because we get benefit of the actions of others as well; that we get benefits of the actions of other countries joining with us to achieve the environmental objectives that we find important.

The Chairman: Mr. Jackson, followed by the chair, and then we'll adjourn.

Mr. Ovid L. Jackson (Bruce—Grey, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I just have one question.

There always seems to be the talk about trading credits, and to me I don't think the notion is accepted. If we use the analogy in sport—in hockey or in basketball and soccer—a pass is probably one of the most important instruments in scoring a goal. People in the past maybe never got credit for it, but now we know that if people don't do this you can't win the game.

• 1235

We talk a lot about credits, co-generation and all that kind of stuff. How far advanced are the international standards with regard to these credits? Are we just talking about them, or do people recognize that if they take certain actions perhaps they're important and there's a way of doing that, or is it something we just talk about?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'm not an expert in this area, but my understanding is that these are at a very early stage. People are beginning to conceptualize them.

In the U.S. I know they trade, but they trade domestically on sulphur oxide emissions, for example, and have had some success, I understand. To trade internationally, with respect to a ceiling that's not yet been established and accounting standards that don't exist yet, is a way down the road.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: How are we doing domestically? Do we have something going? Are we doing that? That's where you start, is it not?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that question. The departments involved might be able to give you some information on that.

The Chairman: The secretariat on climate change might be able to answer that question in a few months.

Thank you.

Mr. Emmett, to get your mandate clearly on the record once again, if I remember correctly, your mandate is one whereby you solicit plans, and then comment on the performance of the respective department on their plans. Is that a fair and simple description of the magnitude of your powers?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Parliament has asked departments to submit plans to them on what their sustainable development and environmental goals are. There's no provision in the legislation for me to lay down for departments what has to be in their plans. But they have to be environmentally sensitive, for example. We have used, as a basis, A Guide to Green Government.

The Chairman: So your power is to comment on the content of the plans.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes, our mandate is to force departments to be explicit about their environmental objectives, and then hold them accountable over time.

The Chairman: Going back to some questions asked earlier this morning, if the plan proposes a timetable that seems to be anachronistic, not one that would be desirable, do you have the power to comment on the timing of that plan?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Personally, I think we can make comments on that by referring to what's going on in the broader community.

The Chairman: So if Canada were to be late with its climate change plan, at a certain point in the future you would have sufficient jurisdiction or power to express an opinion on that particular aspect of the Canadian plan.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes, I believe that's correct.

The Chairman: All right, that's very helpful.

Secondly, there are two departments whose statutory mandates give the ministers responsibility to implement sustainable development policies, as you know. One is the Minister of Industry and the other is the Minister of Natural Resources. Does that fact put the two ministers in a particularly privileged position? Conversely, are other departments that do not have that clause in their statutory mandates put at a disadvantage? Does that make any difference, perhaps, should be my question?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Whether or not that makes a legal difference I'm not qualified to say, but certainly with respect to our treatment of the departments, we treat every department the same. They are required by the law to submit a sustainable development strategy and to report on their performance relative to it.

The Chairman: Would you be entitled to expect more from those departments that have sustainable development in their mandates?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I have not taken to the view that we are. I take the view that every department in the Government of Canada is required to submit a sustainable development strategy that we can monitor and comment on. One of my jobs is to continually raise the bar for all these departments and, hopefully, make these sustainable development strategies more and more meaningful and better documents as they are renewed every three years.

• 1240

I don't think the mandates, in the case of NRCan and Industry Canada, give them a special obligation or that the lack of that in the mandates of other departments give them special dispensation. We treat them all the same.

The Chairman: Finally, when you talk about raising the bar, do you mean that within the next 10 years you will be expecting greater and greater performance in the attainment of sustainable development as defined in your report?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes, I would hope we can work with departments to see that they produce better plans, that we have better management tools and, therefore, that we have better performance. The Auditor General has a very nice little motto. It's nice because I can remember it; it's short. It says “We want to make a difference”, and I think the difference we want to make is to see that gap between vision and action begin to close and the erosion of that capacity to lead stop.

So, yes, I very much want to see over the next 10 years significant improvements in performance.

The Chairman: Well, at the cost of being a petty thief, I would like to echo the sentiments already expressed by my colleagues to say we are extremely impressed by the documents you produced today. They seem almost to be the equivalent in sustainable development of a mini Encyclopedia Britannica. We congratulate you and we look forward to your next year's production.

We thank you and your officials for the fine work you are doing and for appearing before us today.

The meeting is adjourned.