:
I call this meeting to order.
Good afternoon, and welcome to this sitting of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. This is pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study on strengthening the role of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
We have four witnesses this afternoon.
[Translation]
Three of them are here with us, while the fourth is in New Zealand.
[English]
From the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand, we have Mr. Morgan Williams, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Williams.
We also have, as an individual, Ms. Dyane Adam, former Commissioner of Official Languages.
From the Privy Council Office, we have Roberta Santi, assistant secretary to the cabinet, machinery of government; and Mr. Patrick Hill, director, strategic policy, machinery of government.
[Translation]
Good day and thank you for joining us.
We will begin with short presentations. I believe each person has seven minutes. Correct?
:
Good morning. Greetings from Aotearoa. It's a pleasure to be online. It's a balmy 21 degrees here in Wellington, a little warmer than where you are. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share.
I'm not going to spend ten minutes talking to you. Having read many of the transcripts of the last few weeks on what you're working on, I think it would be much better to have a dialogue. But perhaps I could just start by being very brief in terms of the background to my office, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the oldest office of this type in the world, which was established under the Environment Act 1986. I assume that members of the committee will have access to this and perhaps have a look at it.
I think it's also really important to understand the context in which this was born, because it was born very much pre-Brundtland. It was born as a concept in the early eighties, when there was growing concern in New Zealand about the lack of independent voice representing environmental matters—that is, independent of government. That concern came both from civil society in New Zealand and also from the first OECD environmental audit of New Zealand in 1981. So there's a fair history that went into the evolution of the office and the reforms of many aspects of our governance, which you'll all be rather familiar with, right through the 1980s.
There have been two commissioners in the role in 20 years—Helen Hughes from 1987 to the end of 1996, and me since 1997.
I think what you're really interested in is the nature of the office—its relationship, obviously, to Parliament and government. As I think you all understand, I'm an officer of Parliament. I report to the Speaker of our House of Representatives. I have exactly the same relationship as does our Auditor General and our ombudsmen.
If you look at the key in the act, which I assume you will have access to, you would look at the functions and powers in section 16 and you would look at section 17, matters to which regard be given. I can come back and talk about the details of those, but I think in terms of the functions, I will just read subparagraph 16(c)(1)(i), because it really is the heart of the way this office operates in our core function. It says that the commissioner shall be able to:
Investigate any matter in respect of which, in the Commissioner's opinion, the environment may be or has been adversely affected, whether through natural causes or as a result of the acts or omissions of any person or body, to an extent which the Commissioner considers warrants investigation;
In that, if you go on and look at matters to which I can give regard, that includes policy matters, which seem to be an area of a lot of discussion.
So how has that played out in terms of the actual way we've gone about our work, and how has that evolved over the 20 years? We've evolved a work program that really falls into five areas.
The first one and the one that I, in the last 10 years, have put over 60% of my effort into is what we call systems guardian work. In essence, it's doing quite large investigations of the way we're managing, thinking, researching, advancing whole pieces of the system of our society. We've looked at oceans, we've looked at cities, we've looked at agriculture, and we've looked at water. Those are our big systems studies.
The second role is in effect being an environmental ombudsman with a small “o”; that is, taking on board concerns from society—and we get hundreds a year. We tend to look at the systemics behind them—what is this concern telling us about wider issues?
The third area is, in fact, environmental management order, where we look at specific pieces of management. To give you a very recent example, it could in fact be by a state-owned enterprise of government. We did an environmental management systems and performance assessment of Solid Energy, our state-owned coal company, quite recently.
The fourth area is to be an adviser to parliamentary select committees such as yours. In that capacity, I want to be absolutely clear that we're acting as an adviser to Parliament. We're acting as an independent adviser to the committees when they're considering bills or other matters before them, such as petitions. We also act as an adviser when committees are charged with the task of assessing other government agencies, such as the Ministry for the Environment or the Department of Conservation. We frequently do that in close cooperation with the Audit Office.
In the fifth area, we operate as an information provider, a facilitator, a catalyst. In other words, we're out there very much advancing the concept of environmental sustainability in an education realm, in a societal realm, and in a business realm. This highlights the fact that we go to a lot of effort to actually market our reports quite widely, because we believe our findings and our assessments need to be taken to as wide an audience as possible, as often as possible.
Just to sum up, Mr. Chairman, what I'd like to leave the committee with is perhaps a starting point for some discussion. The way we work in thinking about environmental sustainability is very forward-focused. It's recognizing that we're actually trying to advance something in our societies and economies that is extraordinarily complex. It needs an enormous amount of linking between the components of governance, of law, of policy, of investment, and so on.
For twenty years now, our work has aimed to do what we say is tilling the thinking and the landscape ahead of policy formation. Policy formation is absolutely and clearly the job of elected governments, and we go to a lot of effort to make sure we don't get, as we say, sucked into the process of being a policy adviser. By golly, we are out there to shape and help and amplify the ripples of many others who are trying to do just that, but we stay very clear of that role ourselves. With the demarcations we've been making over those five functionalities, we don't believe we've ever really gotten into conflict in over twenty years.
On that, I'll close, Mr. Chairman. I think there's a pretty rich canvas on which to have a discussion about how we work. We admire the work Canada is doing, and we have learned a lot from the evolution of your office in Ontario and the one in the federal system.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chairman, committee members, good afternoon.
In the past few years, it has been my pleasure, as Commissioner of Official Languages, to take part in a number of round tables and conferences concerning the role and nature of the various officers of Parliament. If any consensus has emerged from those debates, it is that there are notable differences among these parliamentary organizations in their history, mandate and size, that make any generalization a difficult proposition. I would nevertheless venture to say that, of all those officers, it is the Commissioner of Official Languages who, under the act governing his or her actions, has the broadest range of tools to enforce full compliance with the objects of the legislation for which he/she is responsible, the Official Languages Act. Like Mr. Williams did, I will be presenting to you, in broad outline, the role and major characteristics of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
As most of you know, in passing the OLA in 1969, Parliament created the Office of Commissioner of Official Languages. As the Co-Chairs of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism wished, the various commissioner have acted as the “active conscience” of the Canadian public in language matters, since, when the first act was passed, language rights were more an ideal than a reality.
As the Official Languages Act, which was revised in 1988, expanded the scope of the Commissioner's mandate to include development of the official language communities and the advancement of English and French in Canadian society, the role of the Commissioner went beyond being an “active conscience” to become that of an agent of change. In my view, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982, which made the Official Languages Act a quasi-constitutional statute, since it refers to language rights, also reinforces this agent of change concept. It refers to advancing “the equality of status and use of English and French”.
But coming back to the OLA, section 56 of the Act is central to the mandate of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and it is appropriate to cite it in full:
56.(1) It is the duty of the Commissioner to take all actions and measures within the authority of the Commissioner with a view to ensuring recognition of the status of each of the official languages and compliance with the spirit and intent of this Act in the administration of the affairs of federal institutions, including any of their activities relating to the advancement of English and French in Canadian society.
Three main points emerge from this section. First, the general nature of its wording gives the Commissioner broad leeway in determining the scope of his/her mandate. Second, the expression, “it is the duty of the Commissioner to,” has a character than an expression such as “the Commissioner may or is entitled to...” would not have. Third, this clause sets out the Commissioner's twofold role, to protect and promote the language rights of Canadians. I feel this dual role is specific to the mandate of the Commissioner of Official Languages as compared with those of the more conventional officers of the Parliament of Canada.
The Commissioner has a certain number of powers with which to carry out his/her mandate. To ensure compliance with the Act, the Commissioner conducts investigations into complaints received from citizens and employees and recommendations where those complaints are founded. The Commissioner may also conduct investigations of his/her own initiative, often in the form of more general audits or evaluations. The Commissioner has the power to conduct follow-up to the implementation of his/her recommendations, to report to the Governor in Council if any problems persist and to table a special report in Parliament where he/she believes any matter requires its immediate attention. The Commissioner is required to table an annual report in Parliament on his/her activities.
With a complainant's consent, the Commissioner may also file court remedy proceedings in Federal Court, if other measures have not corrected departures from the Official Languages Act. Commissioners have done so repeatedly during the history of the Commissioner's Office.
Under subsection 78(3) of the OLA, the Commissioner may also appear as a party to any court proceedings concerning the status or use of English and French. The Commissioner has accordingly intervened in the cases involving Montfort Hospital in Ontario, municipal mergers in the Montreal region and the bilingual status of Canada's capital. In some instances, this has led some to say, wrongly, that the Commissioner intervenes in areas that are not under federal jurisdiction. However, the Commissioner does so based on his/her mission, which includes the development of official languages communities and the advancement of English and French in Canadian society. As already noted, that mission is not based solely on the OLA, but also on subsection 16(3) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which refers to the role of Parliament and the legislatures in advancing “the equality of status or use of English and French”. These instruments thus establish Canada's supreme statutory framework for language rights.
Whether it be through these court appearances, research work on various language issues or educational and media activities, all successive commissioners have promoted this fundamental value that is Canada's linguistic duality. In so doing, they have promoted, in particular, minority language education rights, the learning of English and French as second languages by young Canadians and exchanges between language communities. In a way, they have sought to create the conditions for advancement toward equality, not only in federal institutions, but in Canadian society as a whole.
Lastly, one final power that establishes the Commissioner's role as an agent of change and promoter in language matters is his/her authority to review any regulations or directives made under the OLA or any other policy that affects or may affect the status or use of the official languages. This is an innovative role that enables the Commissioner to act upstream of legislative changes so as to ensure that proposed legislation that may have a significant impact on language rights takes the principles of the OLA into account.
During my term, I exercised this monitoring function in a number of areas, in particular immigration, air transport and sport. Also during my term, I recommended that the government clarify the scope of Part VII of the OLA, which the Parliament of Canada ultimately did by passing the bill introduced by Senator Jean-Robert Gauthier. In so doing, the Commissioner exercises his/her mandate proactively to assist the government and Parliament in putting in place legislation and policies that comply as fully as possible with the spirit and letter of the OLA.
In my view, this approach is more constructive than criticizing after the fact. The Commissioner of Official Languages has an obligation to take all measures, in the context of his/her mandate, to overcome difficulties and roadblocks before the rights of citizens and the official language communities fall victim to planning or administrative errors.
In closing, I want to emphasize that, as an officer of Parliament, the Commissioner must display a high degree of rigour and responsibility in all his/her work, in both monitoring and promotion. Since the Commissioner's various reports support and contribute to the work of parliamentarians, the latter must have assurances that the research and analyses underlying the Commissioner's actions and recommendations are sound. The credibility of the position and of the institution itself are at stake.
Thank you for your attention. I will be happy to take your questions.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
[Translation]
Good afternoon everyone.
I would first like to introduce my colleague, Patrick Hill, who is the Director of Strategic Policy in the Machinery of Government Secretariat of the Privy Council Office.
We are very pleased to be here today as the committee studies the role and function of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
I would like to begin by briefly setting out the role of the Machinery of Government Secretariat and then turn to the role and function of the Commissioner as set out in the Auditor General Act.
[English]
One of the key roles of the secretariat is to provide the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister with public service advice on the broad structural issues of government organization. This includes providing public service advice on changes to the organization of the government, including the creation, alteration, or wind-up of governmental bodies. These responsibilities are largely discharged in two ways: by developing options and proposals for the Prime Minister's consideration, and by exercising a challenge function in assessing proposals for the Prime Minister that are brought forward by others.
As members know, the legislative framework establishing the commissioner and setting out that officer's functions is found in the Auditor General Act.
[Translation]
The Commissioner's position was established by Parliament through statute in 1995 as a senior officer appointed by the Auditor General and forming part of the Office of the Auditor General.
[English]
The act sets out that the mandate of the commissioner is to provide monitoring and reporting on progress of government departments toward sustainable development. It also provides that the commissioner shall, on behalf of the Auditor General, report annually to the House of Commons concerning anything that the commissioner considers should be brought to the attention of the House related to environmental and other aspects of sustainable development. This includes the extent to which departments have met the objectives and implemented the plans contained in their sustainable development strategies, the number of petitions related to the environment, their subject matter and status, as well as the exercise of Governor in Council authority regarding sustainable development strategies.
The commissioner is a statutory officer within the Office of the Auditor General and has the same independence as the Auditor General herself. That is to say the commissioner, like the Auditor General, discharges his or her role independently of the government of the day and reports to the House of Commons. As an agent of Parliament, the office performs an oversight function of the executive and is accountable directly to Parliament for the manner in which it delivers on its legislative mandate.
We look forward to the deliberations of the committee, including the perspectives of the witnesses appearing before it on the issue at hand. In addition, we await the results of the Auditor General's internal review of her office's environment and sustainable development audit practice.
We would be pleased to answer questions you may have. Thank you.
:
Okay. Let's look at some of the wonderful input we've received from different actors in Canadian society.
You may not have seen this, Ms. Santi, but we received a letter from probably the most distinguished Canadian in environment and sustainable development ever, Jim MacNeill , an officer of the Order of Canada, who was the secretary general of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the so-called Brundtland Commission, in the late 1980s.
He says in his letter to the committee—I'd like to get your response to this: “Having dismissed a Commissioner, there can be no doubt in anyone's mind that future Commissioners will serve solely at the pleasure of, and will be simply agents of, the Auditor General.” Would you agree that from a machinery of government perspective, if the Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development were made fully independent, we would not face this potential problem in the future? Is that right?
:
I actually have felt, as my predecessor did, that that's the absolute core of the office. It's a very major education exercise at the end of the day.
I'll give you two examples of ways in which we know we shifted the system or made a major contribution.
The first one was a big piece of work that we did in 1998 looking at cities and their people. That was in fact an unpicking of the way that we were investing in and thinking about the cohesion of the place where 85% of kiwis now live. What we discovered, amongst many things, was, for example, that there were lists on about $1 million New Zealand going through the public science good funding—which at that stage was about $380 million—into what we would call the systems research of cities and settlement. That seemed extraordinary. We knew a lot more in New Zealand about how ryegrass grew than about how our cities were growing.
The result of that and of a number of other parts of that report was to place a major emphasis—and there has been a major growth to many tens of millions of research—on the place where most of us live. So that really shifted the system.
Another piece of work whereby we've created a major dialogue is our examination of the intensification of farming in New Zealand. Our land-based industries basically pay the bills in New Zealand. Through that piece of work, we've created an enormous conversation and debate. It's been pretty rigorous. What it has done is to get many people in the public and private sectors to look at the strategic direction of the primary industries of New Zealand, which are fundamental to our economy and fundamental to our well-being. That's because we got out there and very strongly told our story.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to the witnesses.
Ms. Adam, you provided us with an overview of the Commissioner's position, recalling that it was created in 1969 following a major inquiry into bilingualism and biculturalism. You stated that when the position was created, official language rights in Canada were more an ideal than a reality. You further stated that the 1988 revision was not out of step with the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognized language rights.
Fundamentally, the position of Commissioner of Official Languages is based on an ideal and encompasses duties that are even more important than those of the Commissioner of the Environment.
Do you foresee a day when the Commissioner of Official Languages will enjoy a lesser degree of independence and will become part of the office of the Auditor General with a view to further protecting official language? In your opinion, would that move be a step backward?
:
In my opinion, we would be sending out a very negative message to Canadians if the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages were stripped of its independence and reduced to the status of being part of the office of the Auditor General. That's my personal opinion.
Mr. Williams, as Commissioner for the Environment in New Zealand, you serve five functions. You act as a guardian, an advocate, an auditor, an information provider and an adviser.
In a submission to the environment and sustainable development committee, Ms. Gélinas, the former Commissioner of the Environment, reminded us that in reality, the role of the Commissioner of the Environment was limited to conducting environmental audits. She compared that role to the functions of the Commissioner of Official Languages or those of the Privacy Commissioner which have investigative and advocacy components.
What emerges from this comparison is the realization that the Commissioner of the Environment has fewer powers.
In light of your myriad functions, Mr. Williams, and in spite of your role as a guardian and advocate, do you feel the office of Commissioner for the Environment in New Zealand has encroached on the political sphere?
:
That's a complex question. But I think the point I would make is that we're 20 years old, and we've been operating under an act that amazes me in terms of its extent and breadth and powers. No Parliament in the 20 years has actually expressed concern, to the point of taking anything back into the chamber, about the work of the commission, under two commissioners. So we must have got something right in the sense of serving what the architects of this were really looking for.
I think the reason it's worked so well is that we've tended to focus very much on the forward-looking, on investigating the systems role, and on investigating the concerns of society, and less on the strict, what we would term, audit role.
Our audit office does, in fact, environmental audits. We work very closely with our audit office, and in fact, a member of my team, a senior member who's with me today, actually acts as an adviser when they're scoping their non-financial environmental orders. They clearly do that. We have no problem with overlap.
The point I'd make is that environmental sustainability is a systems process. It has deep connections with society and the economy as well as with environmental matters. There's no way we can empower many others in society unless we can actually work on a much broader canvas than the audit canvas gives us. That's not saying that the work of audit offices and the work that your federal office has done is not in fact top class; it is, absolutely. But to advance environmental sustainability, and sustainability in general, just needs a lot more scope.
:
A lot of the work we do is basically on the facts that we get either from our investigations, our audits, or our special studies, and also analyzing what government is doing, their policies, etc.
One thing that my predecessor did was a study on the governmental transformations when there were budget cuts. That study was very thorough and showed that in fact the linguistic rights of Canadians really eroded over that period. For example, airports were sold without any consideration to linguistic rights, with the consequence, for example, that at the airport in Sudbury, where about 30% of the population is francophone, francophones have no guarantee of being served in their language now.
So based on that, we recommended to the government at the time that they should develop a new policy that whenever they do such transformations they should ensure that there will not be an erosion of linguistic rights. Whatever they do, we do not say, you should do that. You should make sure as you go, or if you do governmental recommendations—
So Madame Robillard at the time did develop such a policy in Treasury Board. And we hope that when they do such a transformation they will check to make sure there is no loss of linguistic rights. That's one example.
:
The only stick at the end of the day is the power of disclosure. We have no powers other than the powers to recommend. My predecessor said to me when I came into this job 10 years ago, “Morgan, you haven't got any teeth, but you've got powerful gums.”
The reality is that it's the power to actually tell the story to the whole of New Zealand. All our reports get tabled in Parliament. They're not part of an annual report; we do that as a statutory requirement. We table our reports through the Speaker as public documents, and then we have a marketing program that we wrap around them. So we take it out to society, and then that empowers many others to move.
I think one of the important things is that with a role like this, which at the end of the day is only ever recommendatory—and I think that's exactly how it should stay—you have to look at its influence away beyond the actual recommendations. Counting up action on recommendations is absolutely no measure of the performance of an office like this, anywhere in the world. What you need to be looking at always is what is the wider conversation, dialogue, that you generate, and what subsequently flows from that. We've worried a lot about our influence. We do outcome assessments of all our reports two, three, or four years later, and we look away beyond just the response to the recommendations, and that's an important point.
Thank you to the witnesses.
As you've said, I'll try to share my time. Can you give me a heads-up when we're at five minutes? I have a habit of taking more than the five and using up some of Mr. Harvey's time, but hopefully I can do this quickly.
I would like to direct the questioning this afternoon to Mr. Williams.
As you are aware, we're looking at who the Commissioner of the Environment would report to. At present she reports to Parliament through the Auditor General's office, and she has done an incredibly good job over the years.
A little bit of the history, which you may be aware of, is that in 1993 the former Liberal government had in their red book a promise to have the Commissioner of the Environment as a stand-alone office, as is being proposed today. They did not keep that promise, and they had the commissioner as part of the Auditor General's office.
Recently there was a change in the position of the Commissioner of the Environment. Madame Johanne Gélinas is no longer the commissioner, and now we have Mr. Thompson as the interim commissioner. Almost immediately after the change from Madame Gélinas to Mr. Thompson, because Madame Gélinas is so well respected, as is Auditor General Sheila Fraser—both have done a terrific job in serving Canada--there was suddenly this motion from the Liberal members to have the commissioner as a stand-alone.
We're in a political environment in which one would question the motives. The Liberals had a chance to have that position as a stand-alone. Now, suddenly, it appears that maybe it's because of years of critique by the Auditor General. I hope that's not the motive, but it appears that it may be a possibility. So this is the environment we find ourselves in.
In my questions I want to be specific about the pros and cons of having the commissioner's role be independent of the Auditor General. When the Auditor General was one of the witnesses here—as was the former Auditor General—the testimony we received was this , and I'll quote from her presentation: “The Office has become a world leader in environmental auditing. Auditors from around the world have requested our advice and many of them haven taken courses on environmental auditing that we developed here in Canada.”
She also raised concerns in a letter dated February 5, saying, “As I mentioned last week, policy advocacy and legislative audit simply do not mix. Auditors cannot in fact, or in appearance, audit their own work.”
So the question before us is what the best structure is. Could you provide your perspective? What are the pros and cons of having the commissioner be independent from the Auditor General?
:
I'll open by saying that I don't really want to get into the politics of the Canadian debate.
But the observation I would make first is that the environmental work of the office in Canada is superb. For instance, the assessment of your nation's action on climate change in 2006 was an extraordinarily good piece of work. So that is clearly what can be done within your current structure.
I think the more important point to make is that auditing is just one of the powerful tools for the assessment of progress, the assessment of the intent of what governments do. The thing about trying to advance environmental sustainability and everything that flows from that is that it is so much wider that you need to have many more quivers in your bow. Choose your analogy. But you cannot rely—and nobody would pretend that you can—on all the constructs of good audit methodology, which Johanne and others in your commission used to a great extent.
So you need to think about what it is that you're trying to achieve with the office. As has my predecessor, I very much focus on the outcomes that we're trying to achieve, the differences that we're trying to make, and the complexities that we're dealing with.
The point that I really want to emphasize is that we absolutely agree with your Auditor General that you need to stay distant from the policy formation of the government of the day. We go to some length to do that, and there's no way that we view our role as policy advice to government. We very clearly position ourselves when we offer advice to select committees, which we do quite regularly, that it's advice to the select committee; it's not advice to the government. If we feel that we're getting what we call sucked into the government policy processes in any way, we step back, and make that step back absolutely explicit.
In 20 years, we've never created any conflict in the way we work. Do we comment on policy? Absolutely, we do, because at the end of the day you can't be outcome-focused without being able to comment on whether the policy was a good policy in the first place. Many of our pieces of work are quite focused on whether the policy was in fact a good policy in the first place, not simply on whether the policy was carried out in a way that was the intent of the original architects.
I'm not sure if that helps.
In her statement, Dyane Adam made a statement.
[Translation]
The following is noted on page 3, and I quote:
Third, this clause sets out the Commissioner's twofold role, to protect and promote the language rights of Canadians.
[English]
Then I go to a letter that was addressed to us by Madame Gélinas, and it states: “A commissioner must be able to offer a vision, an approach, a way of acting, and a general orientation. He or she must be able to debate, to promote activities, to work with departments in other ways than simply through audits.”
I guess the crucial question here is whether we want an environmental commissioner or whether we want an environmental auditor.
I have a question for both Mr. Williams and Mrs. Santi.
Mr. Williams, how would you operate differently if you were operating, over the last 20 years, as an auditor rather than as the commissioner?
Mrs. Santi, how do you see the Auditor General's office acting as a protector of a cause, such as the environment, as opposed to reviewing past performances as an auditor?
Mr. Williams, perhaps you can start. Thank you.
:
If you're talking about a policy advocate, I think that is one of the issues. There is a tension between policy advocacy and the audit function. I think the Auditor General dealt with that issue when she appeared before the committee recently, and so did the former Auditor General, Mr. Desautels.
From a machinery perspective, I don't have advice on this, because we really have not looked at this in any depth, since it's a very recent issue that developed less than a month ago. I think one of the big questions from a machinery perspective that we do ask when there's a proposal on the table is that the form has to follow the function. So the question is, what do you want? What are you trying to do, and what outcomes are you trying to deal with, and what's your diagnostic of what's not working now? To me, clarity around that then helps you figure out, from a machinery perspective, what are the various technical aspects, or what are the various possibilities from a structural perspective that can make you deliver on this?
So the starting point is this: what's the public policy goal, and what's the definition around advocacy, and what do we mean by that?
I found the testimony of Mr. Williams very interesting, because he described his advocacy role in a pretty interesting way. He said he focuses on tilling before there's actual policy formulation. I think there still is a question about what you mean by advocacy before you can decide how you can best put a form around that.
:
I want to initially ask questions to Mr. Williams, and possibly to Roberta or Patrick if there is time. But my colleague may have those as well.
First, and this may be hard, Mr. Williams, but I appreciate that as a professional and as an objective civil servant, you've given us a lot of the pros in terms of having the commissioner's role be independent of the Auditor General and the pros in terms of the advocacy role as well, or of extending it to that.
Can you think really hard about whether there are those who would say—and you probably won't agree with them, and I understand that perfectly—in the public debate in New Zealand, that these are some of the cons, some of the negatives, of having your role be independent of the Auditor General? And also, are there naysayers, if you will, who would also suggest that there is some downside or some con or negative in respect of having an advocacy role?
You might have to kind of think hard, because your bias would obviously state it in terms of the positives. But are there those who have raised these in the public arena? I may be asking the wrong person, but I'm going to try here and hope that, as an objective civil servant, you might offer some of those critiques by others, which you would, of course, dismiss.
:
The first thing is that the question of whether we should be part of the audit office has never been asked, because we never have been. Maybe that's a blind spot that the whole of New Zealand has. We've never thought of that model, because we had an auditor's office, we had an ombudsman's office, and then we established a commissioner for the environment office. So that one's never been debated.
The second part of your question, I think, is absolutely on the button. Has there been debate about the role, and are we doing enough of some things? Yes, of course there has been.
One of the things is whether we should be focusing more on bigger systems and whether we should be more of an advocate or less of an advocate. And yes, that has waxed and waned.
Should we be more targeted in our work and look at particular sections, such as legislation around water management, which we've signalled is important, in great detail, or should we do more on the bigger systems? Should we focus more on the concerns that are coming from citizens? Some of them are quite focused, very small concerns.
That debate waxes and wanes. But at the end of the day, with a piece of legislation like this that creates an office like this, if it's going to be very independent, it's inevitably going to be shaped by the strengths of the appointee, the commissioner. That's the very nature of these sorts of roles and the capability the commissioner brings together as a team.
What I've also done in my 10 years is develop a series of strategic plans. We bring together a very wide collection of New Zealand citizens who have a great interest in this broader sphere of work. And we've actually involved your Canadian commissioners in that process. We've developed a series of rolling five-year strategic plans, which sets a frame and signals to New Zealand society, and signals to Parliament, what it is that we think are the strategic areas, and the components of those, into which we think we should be putting our very limited resources.
So in a sense, that's a way of going out and having a wider conversation with New Zealand about what it is we do, how we do it, and whether it is being effective.
:
There was a very, very good reception, particularly from the local government in New Zealand, and that's where a lot of what we were trying to say was picked up, and many things started to evolve. So think of it as an empowerment of voice within local government, both executive and elected.
In terms of what happened at the central government level, it mainly played out in terms of what happened in the shift in research funding to all the areas around cities and settlements and the layers within that—so thinking about cities in a sustainability context. We raised a lot of issues around elements in that, like, for instance, the mobility land-use interconnections, all the water issues, both the potable water and the treated. We subsequently did another piece of work that we published under the title, Ageing Pipes and Murky Waters.
If you look through all our reports, we go to a lot of trouble to think about how you characterize the nature of what we're trying to talk about. So where we were looking at the flow of science, for example, into environmental policy, the title of the report was Missing Links. Where we were looking at economic instruments in terms of managing waste, the title was Changing behaviour.
Why am I saying that? I'm saying that because we need to be effective in this. You need to actually capture hearts and minds with those first simple things, and then they get grabbed by all sorts of people and picked up. It's an empowerment process.
:
We can see something there. It's 21 degrees there. You'll be glad to know that here it's a balmy minus 1 at the moment, which is a nice change from the minus 15 degrees we've had recently.
Thank you so much for appearing.
Also, merci beaucoup, madame.
Mr. Hill, thank you so much.
We'll excuse the witnesses, and we're going to now turn to the consideration of the motion by Mr. McGuinty. So we'll just pause for a moment or two while we let the witnesses, if they wish, leave the table. You're welcome to stay with us and have a seat.
There goes Mr. Williams.
Colleagues, the motion has already been moved, I understand, and it's before the committee. Are there comments? Is there debate? Or would you prefer to move to the question?
Mr. Warawa.
:
Mr. Chair, I'd like to come back to a very accurate comment, which is the comment made by the when he discovered that Madame Gélinas was working within the office, had withdrawn but had been dismissed at the same time, as the Auditor General told us in her testimony. The Minister of the Environment said that he was so impressed with the work of Madame Gélinas that she should be appointed as a member of the Order of Canada. I concur.
What I'd like to do now is read some of the operative passages from Madame Gélinas' letter to the committee and for all Canadians to hear. I think these are very important, before we put this motion to a vote. She talks about the duties of other commissioners, one of whom we heard from here today. She says:
If we examine the duties of other commissioners (Official Languages, Ethics, Information, Privacy, etc.), we find that in addition to carrying out investigations, these officials have a duty to promote and encourage best practices, without however becoming merely an advocate for one particular side.
She goes on and makes comments about:
Attaching the CESD's position to the Office of the Auditor General was not intended to restrict the CESD's mission and role to that of an auditor. And yet, this is what the position has become.
She goes on to say further:
The recent direction taken by the Auditor General, Mrs. Frasier—aimed, among other things, at integrating the work of the CESD group into her own reports and thereby eliminating the Commissioner's report as we have known it since the position was created—lead me to believe that the risk is now real and that this fragile equilibrium is going to be disrupted.
I think perhaps the most telling point of all is where she says:
A commissioner must be able to offer a vision, an approach, a way of acting and a general orientation. He or she must be able to debate, to promote activities, to work with departments in other ways than simply through audits.
And finally she writes, for all members to hear, especially those members who hold her work in such high esteem:
If Canada wants the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development to exercise his or her role fully, he or she must be independent of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, because the two mandates are incompatible.
In closing, Mr. Chair, I agree with Madame Gélinas' testimony. It's unfortunate she was not able to come in and join us in person, but I would like to thank her, on behalf of all members, for her outstanding service over six years, and for her very lucid and to-the-point memo sent for all Canadians.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Ms. Adam, the Commissioner of Official Languages, made it very clear that all officers reporting to the Auditor General were indeed independent and that politicians had no say in their actions or operations.
Over the past six years, Ms. Gélinas has always managed to do a very good job. Her work has been praised by all parties, whether it be the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party. The problem arose on the day Ms. Gélinas perhaps...We'll never know what happened exactly, given the agreement between Ms. Fraser and Ms. Gélinas.
I'm still not convinced today of the need to move this position because in recent years, we have always had good results. No one disagrees with that. Today, the Liberals are proposing a change. To my mind, it's more a matter of having a different perspective on things. Quite frankly, I'm not convinced of the merits of the Liberals' motion.
As for Ms. Gélinas' report, while it has to be considered credible, admittedly, it is not completely objective, since Ms. Gélinas is the victim in this case.
:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Everyone agrees that the role of the Commissioner of the Environment is limited to conducting environmental audits. That begs the following question: should we expand the powers of the Commissioner of the Environment? Should the position be more independent of the Auditor General of Canada?
Two models have been presented to us. In the case of New Zealand, the Commissioner of the Environment performs not only the functions of an auditor, but also those of an advocate, guardian and adviser. It's clear what expanding the functions and powers of commissioners, be it the commissioner of official languages or the privacy commissioner, has accomplished to date.
Ms. Adam stated in no uncertain terms that strengthening the role of the Commissioner of Official Languages had enhanced language rights in Canada. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves whether we want the role of the Commissioner of the Environment to be limited to a simple audit function, or whether we want the position to be on par with that of the Commissioner of Official Languages.
Since environmental protection is an important consideration in Quebec and Canadian societies, the Commissioner of the Environment must be assigned the role of advocate and guardian. This committee and parliamentarians have a duty to take a stand on this issue. Ms. Adam clearly said that it was up to parliamentarians to decide.
If we believe that environmental protection is an important societal value, then we must act accordingly and give added powers to the Commissioner of the Environment. For that reason, I will vote in favour of the motion before the committee.
I just want to take us back to what we're here discussing, and that is the role of this position. Independence is obviously key to it.
When we heard from our friend from New Zealand, I asked him very deliberately about the big stick and how he saw his role. I asked him very intentionally to give us some examples from when he was involved in over 10 years of work. Did he need any further powers? No. Did he actually use his role to go after people? No. What he was saying to us was that his role was to do a number of things, but to be a steward of the environment, obviously, and to animate discussion within New Zealand.
It's very important to remember that it is a different role. If you look at the examples in the United Kingdom, with their Sustainable Development Commission, they've approached the environment and this position in the same manner; that is, that we can't just look at it as a numbered sheet; that we don't just look at how much money was spent and when. It's much bigger than that.
I think the role of the environment commissioner, as my friend Mr. Bigras said, needs to be looked at through that lens. In other words, we're talking about something that requires government to use more than just its traditional reporting mechanism; it has to have further independence to be able to do its job correctly.
I plead to my fellow members to support this motion, putting aside any partisan concerns they might have about where the motion is coming from. Know that the Liberals had promised it before; take some glee in the fact that you're watching them now come back trying to make up for lost time, and support the motion. In the words of a constituent of mine who's already been referred to, Mr. MacNeill, we really need a strong, effective, and independent commissioner, and the need has never been greater. It's time to get on with it, enact it, approve, and implement.
Thank you.