[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, September 25, 1996

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[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think we have a quorum.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), consideration of climate change and the national energy program, I want to welcome here today the Assistant Deputy Minister of Atmospheric Environment Service....

It's obvious I haven't met Mr. McBean. I welcome instead Madame Louise Comeau. We will have your presentation and start off the way the agenda says we should start.

Ms Louise Comeau (Director, Energy and Atmosphere, Sierra Club of Canada): Thank you for allowing time for the committee to hear about the results of a very important project Sierra Club has been spearheading for at least two years now. I've had the opportunity to give you some of the initial results previously, so I'll go over that part a little bit more quickly today.

I think the real opportunity we have today is to explore what the implications are for the Canadian economy should we actually move forward on real climate change commitments. I'm happy to say that the analysis shows a very positive result for the Canadian economy.

First, I'd like to just give you a bit of historical context around how this study came to be. Then I'm going to show you some overheads and open the floor to questions for either myself or Carl Sonnen, who is here with me from Informetrica.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Could I just make an intervention here? We do have some members of the media here, and it's customary that we don't have media in this room. We will allow the media to stay for a short while.

So pursuant to the rules of the House, the media is not supposed to be here. We've had some time here, and Ms Comeau has introduced herself.

Mr. Knutson (Elgin - Norfolk): Could I ask a question? It's the camera that's not supposed be here. We allow journalists in, right?

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Yes, that's correct.

Ms Comeau: Madam Chair, would it be all right if Gordon McBean went first?

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): That was the arrangement we had hoped to make.

Ms Comeau: He's here now - and I'm happy. If we can change the agenda, if it's not too cumbersome for the other people, and if everybody's in agreement, we will go with Mr. McBean first.

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Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Welcome, Mr. McBean. I hadn't met you before, so obviously I didn't know whether you were here at the table or not. I want to welcome you. As the vice-chair of this committee, I'd ask you to go right ahead with your presentation.

Is Ms McKenzie here?

Mr. Gordon McBean (Assistant Deputy Minister, Atmospheric Environment Service, Department of the Environment): I don't see her yet, but it's my understanding she is coming, Madam Chairman.

I apologize for arriving a little bit later. I didn't realize it was quite so difficult to make it through security in this building - which is I guess a good thing.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. What I would like to do, if the committee is agreeable, is to make a presentation on the science of climate change. I would invite you to ask any questions at any time you wish. We could go through this efficiently and informally, I hope, if that is appropriate.

What we are concerned about is the changing of the greenhouse effect in that it governs our climate system. I think it's probably best to recognize that there is a natural greenhouse effect that affects the climate. This is somewhat similar to a greenhouse you may have in your backyard. It works in the sense that there are gases in the atmosphere that affect the way in which the energy...[Technical Difficulty - Editor]...in the atmosphere. The presence of these gases effectively works to trap energy in the lower part of the atmosphere and warm the climate.

It is very fortunate that we have a natural greenhouse effect. If you go out into outer space and look back at planet earth, and you make measurements, you would expect that the average temperature on the earth would be about 18 degrees Celsius below zero. In other words, it would be frozen solid. Of course, living on the ground, we know the average temperature is about 15 degrees above zero around the globe. This difference of 30 degrees Celsius is due to the natural greenhouse effect.

Our concern is that the natural greenhouse effect, which is a real phenomenon - there is no scientific dispute about this - is being changed by human activities. The gases in the atmosphere that cause this greenhouse effect are primarily water vapour, which is not changing very much, carbon dioxide, which is changing rapidly, and methane gas, which is also changing rapidly.

This slide shows a measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the principal human-effected greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The period of time is from 1000 AD through to 1800 through to the present. What you can see is that for a long period of time - in fact, we can extend through scientific measurements these records back to 6,000 to 10,000 years - the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases was very close to 280 parts per million. It may have gone up by ten, down by ten, but it stayed in a value close to that.

What we see in the last roughly 200 years is a very rapid increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So the atmospheric concentration in this year now is in excess of 360 parts per million.

The insert diagram here shows not only the atmospheric concentrations but also the amount of greenhouse gas or carbon dioxide emitted by human activities. The vast predominance of this carbon dioxide that humans emit is due to burning of fossil fuels - coal, natural gas and oil. Some part of it is also due to clearing of land, but in most recent times, if you look over the last roughly ten years, human activities are putting about seven billion tonnes of carbon per year into the atmosphere. About five and a half billion tonnes of this is due to the burning of fossil fuels in one form or another.

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The result is very clear. I think the scientific community is in very strong consensus that this rapid increase in the amount of carbon dioxide is directly due to human activities and primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels.

We have similar kinds of things, for example, for methane gas.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Before you go on, Mr. McBean, I just wanted to be sureMr. Asselin is able to follow. Do you happen to have a copy of your slides in French?

Mr. McBean: No, not at this moment.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Are you able to follow, Mr. Asselin?

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin (Charlevoix): Yes, provided, the interpretation is available.

[English]

Mr. McBean: Other gases such as methane are also important and show a dramatic increase. Whereas the amount of carbon dioxide has increased by approximately 25%, the amount of methane has more than doubled, increasing over 100% in less than 200 years. Most of this increase has occurred in very recent times. It is also due to changes in human activities affecting rice paddy production and other such things.

As I said, when these gases are put in the atmosphere, they really cause a marked increase in what we call the greenhouse effect. Through an understanding of the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere, scientists are able to calculate the rate of change of the climate that would be associated with changes in the greenhouse effect.

Let's see how things might go if we look ahead in time and concentrate particularly on carbon dioxide, the gas which is responsible for 60% or 70% of the international total effect of the greenhouse. Carbon dioxide is not the only gas, but it is by far the most important gas humans are changing in the atmosphere.

There is a group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is sponsored by the United Nations agencies, the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Program. It has gone through a very extensive scientific review and consensus and preparation of reports.

Many Canadian scientists and probably 1,000 to 2,000 international experts helped prepare the reports of the intergovernmental panel. These reports were approved by government representatives in a variety of meetings over the past year, culminating in a meeting in Rome last December. There the synthesis reports and summaries were agreed to word by word by all countries, even though countries such as Saudi Arabia had some concerns.

What I'd like to show through this diagram is a projection ahead to the next century. What will happen in the next hundred years? We don't know what the emissions of carbon dioxide due to human activities will be. But if you ask economists and energy people what their emissions would likely be, you can get their best estimate, which is this line down the middle. If you assume they have large amounts of energy use involving fossil fuels and large population growth, you could get a curve up like this. If you assume there was almost no population growth - rather a hypothetical, unlikely scenario but nonetheless possible - then you could get a relatively low rate. Each of these corresponds to a change in the amount of carbon dioxide human activities will put into the atmosphere every year.

The important thing I really want you to notice in this is if we take any one of these curves - say this represents the middle with a straight line like that - the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases much more rapidly than a linear increase. It is actually curved upward. Mathematically we call this an exponential increase. The reason for this is that basically every carbon dioxide molecule we put in the air stays there approximately 100 years.

In a sense, if you could say the relationship between these emissions is like our annual deficit and the amount in the atmosphere is like the total debt, there is a very cumulative effect. So as we keep putting gas in, it keeps accumulating. There are processes to remove it, but they work much more slowly than we are putting it into the atmosphere.

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The result of this that is the atmospheric concentration, which was down here before we had the industrial revolution, will perhaps be more than double the industrial value by the end of the next century.

So if we could go back to this diagram, what I'm saying is that by any reasonable projection the amount of carbon dioxide that used to be here will be somewhere way up off the top of the graph by the year 2100.

The other thing to note is that we have international conventions. I think you are aware of these. Canada is a signatory to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which talks about stabilizing emissions. This means stabilizing the amount of stuff we put into the atmosphere each year.

Because of this accumulated effect, even if we stabilize emissions, the amount in the atmosphere continues to go up - in the same way as, if we stabilize our deficit at $10 billion per year for the next hundred years, the national debt still goes up. The atmosphere works in a somewhat analogous way and we will end up, even if we stabilize emissions, with the atmospheric concentration coming to almost double the pre-industrial value by the end of the next century.

In order to simplify this, let's just look at emissions. To actually stabilize the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we have to dramatically reduce our emissions globally. In fact, you'd have to reduce them by 60% globally relative to what they are now.

I think unfortunately, but realistically, that's not going to happen. If we have stabilization of emissions we get this line, and the result, in a similar type of diagram, is that if we stabilize emissions we get the atmospheric concentration going up.

What does this mean? If the atmospheric concentration goes up, the greenhouse effect gets stronger and stronger. Every year we get more greenhouse effect than we had the previous year. Our climate science tells us the climate will get warmer and there will be other changes to the climate of the globe.

Next I will show you some examples of global values of climate change corresponding to those types of emissions I was showing on the previous diagram. This is the present time. The scale is such that if you look ahead to the year 2100 or, let's say, to the year 2050, the temperature will change globally by between one and two degrees Celsius and by the end of the century by somewhere between one and four degrees Celsius.

Your reaction may be, well, what's one degree Celsius? We know from observations the global climate has been very stable. In the last 10,000 years the average temperature of the earth has probably not changed by more than half a degree Celsius. So what we're talking about here is a change of temperature in a period of roughly 100 years that is greater than any temperature change we've seen in the last 10,000 years. It is not only greater even at its lowest likely possibility, but in these kind of changes of up to four degrees Celsius, we're talking about phenomenal changes.

You might be interested in knowing that when we had an ice age covering all of Canada and all of North America, where we had three or four kilometres of ice stacked up over Ottawa, the global temperature only changed by five degrees Celsius. So when we talk about changes of four-degree warming, we are talking about changes similar to the earth going in and out of an ice age, which we know happened with catastrophic consequences during years past.

There are other things that correspond to this. Not only is the temperature warming. There are many other consequences.

One we talk about that I think is very important is the global sea level rise. Again, we have various possibilities. It could only rise as little as 20 centimetres, although this is unlikely. A mid-range value is about half a metre and a possible value is in excess of one metre of sea level rise.

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If you take one metre of sea level rise and you go to a country such as Bangladesh, one metre, which is within the range of what I'm talking about, would inundate 17% of the total land of the country of Bangladesh, with 71 million people being affected. If you go to the Netherlands it's only 5.9%, but it's a large fraction of the population.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Are you able to give us any perspective on this in Canada?

Mr. McBean: In Canada the sea level rises will certainly affect areas such as Prince Edward Island. It's not going to make it a multitude of islands but it will certainly affect coastal zone areas. I used to be a resident of Vancouver. The lower Fraser Delta region of Lulu Island, near Vancouver, would be another affected area.

Mr. Knutson: What about St. John's?

Mr. McBean: If you just walk about the country, anywhere that is a metre or so above sea level now is going to be at sea level.

Now, what you have to think about or recognize is that this doesn't come by itself. It comes with increased storminess, as I'll talk about later. So the likelihood of storm surges bringing the ocean onto the land areas is increased.

The reason I wanted to mention this in the context of these countries is that one of the key issues, for me anyway, as a citizen of the country and the world, is the international equity question. If you're a citizen of the Marshall Islands, basically your country disappears as a result of the benefits that people globally are gaining, and mainly in the developed countries, by burning fossil fuel. We have presumably gained the benefits of use of fossil fuel, increasing the greenhouse effect, causing climate change, causing warming, but the poorer natives of the Marshall Islands, where approximately 80% of the land will disappear with one metre of sea level rise.... It's just insurmountable for them.

Canada has the infrastructure and technology and to some extent the monitoring capability to build dykes, and we do that. The Prince Edward Island causeway has been built one metre or so higher as a result of incorporating that. It's a financial cost. In other countries it's a life-and-death situation.

The other thing I would like to note - and I don't want to go on too much longer, but I have been known to give this talk for three hours; Louise was there - is that the temperature change will not be uniform. This is from the Canadian Climate Centre, part of Environment Canada's modelling group, which we have run, a world-class climate prediction model. If we put in reasonable projections of greenhouse gases and other things, we can project the temperature changes at any time, at any place in the globe in the future.

These models are not perfect. You really have to look at them with a very broad-brush picture. But the important thing to note is that the areas that will warm most are the areas at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The areas of the Arctic Islands, the central regions of North America, will warm most. The areas of tropical regions will warm least. There will be all these variations, such that even in the middle of the next century - this is a map for the year 2047, roughly fifty years from now - there would be some areas where in fact it will still be cooling. But overall, as we move ahead, there will be this gradual global effect of climatic change.

As for some of the other things there will be, it's not just warming. The models and our understanding of the way the climate system works will give us indications of precipitation increasing in the wintertime in high latitudes. According to our model predictions, the coast of British Columbia will get even more rain in the wintertime. But in the summer in most cases we indicate that the interior continental regions, the prairie wheat belt country, will actually see a decrease in summertime precipitation, or at least it will be about the same, and with increased evaporation because it is warmer, there will be a net loss in soil moisture or moisture available for crop growth.

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The other kinds of things we expect to see are related to more of what we call ``extremes''. Over the past summer we have seen a variety of extreme events. I don't want to claim that all the extreme events of the past summer, the Saguenay floods, the Calgary hailstorms, were necessarily due to global warming, but they are indicative of the type of events we would expect to see happening more frequently in a warmer climate.

We would expect to see, for example, increases in precipitation intensity. We have reason to believe in various parts of the world there will be more frequent and severe droughts. Basically, as you get to warmer situations, slight changes in temperature result in more extreme events.

Let me give you a couple of other kinds of indicative results. We have seen already, for example, the economic losses due to natural disasters. In our part of the world most of these disasters are due to what we call meteorological events: floods, droughts, tornadoes, storms of various kinds - a dramatic increase. The insurance community is very concerned about this. If we look at the changes we would see in wintertime storms, we would expect an increase in the likelihood of winter storms over our areas in a warmer climate.

There are other kinds of things as we get into what we might call the indirect effects. As for biological processes, in a sense our cold winters have shielded us from a number of parasitic and virus-type diseases that do not or seldom occur in Canada. As you warm the climate, and particularly warm the winters, which will actually warm slightly more than the summers, the likelihood of various kinds of contagious diseases and the viruses associated with them surviving the winters and continuing to grow such that they can become more health-threatening will increase substantially. If we do global mappings of increases in malaria, we see the possibility of malaria-type events moving into Canada, and other kinds of pests in the forest ecosystems.

In the Canadian north we are already seeing, through our Mackenzie Basin impact studies, the loss of permafrost. The native communities tell us they have already seen changes in the distribution of wildlife and some effects on forest activities in ways that are obviously affecting their lifestyle. As we look towards the future we can see in a sense increasing numbers of those kinds of events in the future. Lake levels, for example, in the Great Lakes are expected to decrease.

We are doing a number of these continuing studies to document the magnitude and the socio-economic as well as environmental impacts better. Those kinds of reports are gradually coming out as they are being completed. The Mackenzie Basin study, I understand, has been made available to you. Relatively soon we will be completing other studies, on the Great Lakes and a whole Canada-wide country study, which will try to put a better documented case on the various impacts.

In conclusion, the impacts of climatic change are significant. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change. The scientific community has now reached a consensus that climate change due to human activities is in fact happening, and it will happen with an accelerated rate in the years to come.

.1600

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Thank you very much, Mr. McBean.

We will go on questions before Ms Comeau's presentation. I should make mention of the fact that we do have a vote at 5:30 p.m., so we may have to speed things up just a little bit.

Before going on, I would like to welcome two new members to our committee, Ms Daphne Jennings from Reform and also Mr. Jack Anawak, a government member. They are both new regular members here.

Mr. Asselin.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: This is something we can readily acknowledge. I remember that in Quebec, particularly, we used to have more snow when I was young. The roads would be closed by snow storms. There is less snow nowadays, it starts to fall later in the autumn, and it tends to linger on in the spring. Temperatures are cold in the springtime and begin to warm up only at the beginning of June.

This year has been quite different. Temperatures have been cold in June, compared to the beginning of July .

The impact has been felt on most activities, particularly farming. Farmers face a problem in the Spring, at seeding time, because they do not know what kind of temperature will prevail during the growing season. They can have drought conditions as well as floods like the one we have experienced last summer.

There are also problems in logging. Either we have a very wet summer, and then we have problems with access roads, or a dry spell causing forest fires.

How can you explain to us that in Canada, we had hail storms in Calgary and floods in Quebec? My own area has been affected by floods. Everybody knows the Saguenay area has been severely affected, but the whole area of Charlevoix has not been spared. How can you explain these local phenomena? Obviously, the flood has been caused mainly by the collapse of the Ha! Ha! Lake dam. This dam collapsed because of a lack of control over reservoir levels. I would like to get an explanation from you on these very worrisome phenomena.

On the other hand, I find solace in the thought that in a few years, our children may be living in some kind of Canadian Florida. They will not have to shovel the snow and will trade their snowblower for a lawn mower.

Can you explain to us these unusual events that happened in Quebec this year, and more particularly the Saguenay flooding?

[English]

Mr. McBean: These kinds of events have always occurred. It doesn't give us much consolation, but we do get floods and do we get hailstones of this type. What we are seeing is more of an increased frequency of these kinds of events. We think that is consistent with the kinds of things that will happen, and are happening, with global warming or climatic change.

I think it's important to know, as I tried to stress, that climatic change does not affect all of the country at the same rate at the same time. We will always have variations. For example, if we look at the average temperatures over Canada for the decade of the 1980s compared with the previous decades, some parts of Canada, such as the regions of Labrador and Newfoundland, were actually relatively cold. There may be connections here with the disappearance of the North Atlantic cod. Other parts, particularly up into the Mackenzie Valley, were particularly warm.

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That particular event, the Saguenay flood, was a type of what we call a mid-latitude storm. It occurred in a way that is very unusual in the summertime, but nonetheless our computer models - we use the same ones to predict climate and weather - did predict that the flooding.... Well, we didn't predict the flooding. Our job is to predict the rainfall amounts. And I believe our forecasters in Montreal released heavy rainfall warnings two days before the beginning of the heavy rainfall events, and they actually forecast very heavy rainfall amounts.

So I think it's the kind of thing we understand well enough, and we're saying that in the physics of it we can figure out why these kinds of events happen. We have a certain amount of skill in predicting them a few days before they are going to occur, or in the case of a tornado only a few hours before. Our concern in this context is that in our models we see the likelihood of more of these kinds of events as we look into the future.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: I have a second question, if I may.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Asselin, in view of the time constraints, could we wait until a little later? Could we go on to Ms Jennings? I ask you to keep your questions brief, andMr. McBean, could you keep the answers brief as well. Thank you.

Mrs. Jennings (Mission - Coquitlam): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hello, Mr. McBean. I was quite interested in what you had to say. Much like in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, you told us almost what is going to happen. It was almost like a prediction. I didn't hear you say what we could do to prevent anything or what your plans are. Do you in fact have some plans? Just what direction are you going to hit us with? I hope you certainly are going to -

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): I believe that's going to be part of Ms Comeau's presentation.

Mrs. Jennings: Is this a duo? I'm sorry, but I didn't hear your introduction.

Mr. McBean: Yes, Louise is not part of Environment Canada, but I'm sure she'll have a very substantive discussion on that. We certainly have developed a strategy for.... I guess there's only one issue. In my view, climate change is unfortunately inevitable. We need to have a strategy to try to reduce the rate at which it changes, and Louise will talk about parts of that. We also must have a strategy to adapt to the kind of climate change that will happen regardless, unfortunately.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Knutson.

Mr. Knutson: I'm sorry, but I had to step out. I apologize if this question was asked.

When comparing Canada with other jurisdictions, which jurisdictions are taking the most aggressive approach in dealing with greenhouse gases? What can we learn from them?

Mr. McBean: There are very different responses in different countries, and I think Ms Comeau will speak to this. There are countries in Europe that are taking very aggressive approaches for a variety of reasons, and there are other countries that are essentially saying it's a non-issue. They won't talk about it. There is everything in between. Canada is somewhere in between. We do have a strategy to reduce emissions or to at least control the rate of increase.

Mr. Knutson: My point is that I'm not sure why.... If the industry minister were to say we can learn things from leading-edge technologies from other countries.... But it seems difficult to start a discussion on what we can learn from other countries. I just want to ask you again which countries - or states, for that matter - are taking a more aggressive approach than Canada is, and what might we learn from them?

I know Canada is in the middle, and we like to hold ourselves up as being one of the international leaders in terms of environment and all that good stuff, but at some point it would be nice to say there's an example of a program in California or an example of a program in the Netherlands or an example of a law that maybe the Canadians could learn from.

Mr. McBean: There are many of those.

Mr. Knutson: Can you just give me a couple of examples?

Mr. McBean: There are examples in Europe of technology. There are examples of regulatory approaches through laws in many countries of the world. It's not a case of one example. I think one needs what you might call a ``mixed approach'' to this. There are things we can do in energy use reduction. Through more efficiencies there are -

Mr. Knutson: And can you just give me an example of -

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Knutson, that also will be addressed by Ms Comeau. We have a vote at 5:30 p.m., and I'm anxious to leave any questions or matters that Ms Comeau will be dealing until that point.

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Mr. Knutson: Okay.

You're not from the government, right?

Ms Comeau: No.

Mr. Knutson: As a parliamentarian I am concerned that a government official can't tell me what we can learn from other countries.

Mr. McBean: I can tell you.

The Vice-Chairman (Mrs. Payne): If I could interrupt, Mr. McBean will be staying here during Ms Comeau's presentation. So if there's a question that's not answered to your satisfaction in that presentation, we'll have Mr. McBean address it. I know what you're wanting to do, but in the interest of time we have to try to avoid duplication.

Mr. McBean: I would be quite happy to answer, but I thought she was going to.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: I think we should have Mrs. Comeau's presentation right away and then ask questions to both witnesses after that. It would be easier to proceed that way.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): That's probably a good suggestion, because otherwise we're going to have duplication and we probably won't get as much effect out of it. Probably we'll go on to Ms Comeau's presentation, and then you can ask the questions of either.

Ms Comeau: In fairness to Dr. McBean, you are asking the scientific community to provide you with policy advice. There are other people in Environment Canada who are perhaps in a better position to talk to you on what the policy response has been. That's why I think there's some hesitation there, because Dr. McBean is very good at the science and that's what he's here to tell you, but they are always more reluctant to move into the policy discussions.

To set the members at ease, I'll give you a bit of information about myself and why it is that I'm here giving you the presentation on the policy discussion. There are other people at Environment Canada who could do that or in Natural Resources Canada who should do that. However, we are in a situation here in Canada where there is significant resistance to the steps that Canada needs to take in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Sierra Club has been very involved for the last five years in trying to bring solid information to this work so we can have a reasoned, informed debate about what we need to do. As part of that work I spent more than two years as part of a stakeholder advisory committee that included energy and environment departments and officials from across the country, as well as other stakeholders, including energy stakeholders.

We worked very hard to try to develop a package of measures that Canada could implement to achieve our goals. We were unable to do that.

To follow on that process rather than accept that failure, Sierra Club pursued the analysis further and we approached Natural Resources Canada to ask them if they would permit us access to their computing technology. They are respected for their energy forecasts here in Canada, and we did not want to have a debate about how we did the analysis. So I pursued the very same approach as governments had used in previous processes to analyse how Canada would approach climate change. We have a credible report, a credible analysis, that we've just released today that includes Natural Resources Canada's abilities at the micro level, and we were able to raise funds to hire Informetrica to do the general economic impact analysis.

This is exactly the same process that was followed by governments when they looked at what Canada could do on climate change. So I'm just going to present a very brief overview of what we can do on this.

To set that context, I'd like to inform the members that Environment Canada has just released its latest greenhouse gas emission numbers for Canada. From 1990 to 1995, our emissions have increased 9.5%. We are supposed to stabilize at 2000, but clearly we are not headed in that direction.

I'd like to point out to the members that this rate of increase in emissions is twice that of the United States and twice that of the OECD. That's an important point, and I'll get back to it shortly in terms of how I see us being vulnerable to climate change, which I just wanted to point out is happening in Canada at three times the global rate. It's very important in the Northwest Mackenzie Basin area. We are vulnerable from an environmental point of view. We are vulnerable from an economic point of view.

I will speak to the issue of what other countries might be doing.

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But just to show you some of the results of this study and what we tried to achieve, building on what had already been analysed by Natural Resources and governments, we asked what we could achieve if we pushed those things somewhat further. I'll get into the details.

We looked at energy efficiency and the transportation, building, and industrial sectors, the increased use of renewable energy in the electricity sector. I mentioned that NR Canada and Informetrica did the bottom-up and macro studies. Just to give you a sense of what we tried to do - I won't get into the details - there are programs here that speak to residential buildings and commercial buildings, both new and existing. The biggest impact in Canada, one we have to get our minds around, one of the biggest things we can do, is to retrofit all our existing building stock. We absolutely can't meet our commitments without thinking about how we're going to retrofit our building stock.

We've focused on transportation because transportation is the fastest-growing area for greenhouse gas emissions, not only in Canada but in all industrialized countries. Our biggest reductions came from higher fuel economy standards for vehicles. We reduced emissions by 26 million tonnes from looking at higher standards there. We also looked at demand-side management: what you could achieve if you invested in commuter rail, public transit, and so on. We also analysed what the impact would be if the electricity sector fulfilled future growth with energy efficiency, cogeneration, and renewable energy. It's very powerful.

There are other places where greenhouse gases come from, outside the energy sector. We also generate greenhouse gases from our landfill sites and from our waste stream, and methane from up-stream oil and gas production.

We also looked, of course, at the impact of a carbon charge and changing fiscal policy. I'll get into that.

You don't have to look at all the numbers. I'll just give you the total.

The package of measures, according to NR Canada's analysis, reduced emissions by more than 176 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That's a large amount. But because the projections in Canada - the business-as-usual world, the world we expect to be the same for the next fifty years as the last fifty years - project such growth in Canada, all that achieves is basically to eliminate that growth. We got down to about 8% below 1990 levels. That's how energy-consumptive, energy-intensive the Canadian economy is.

The energy department is projecting a 22% increase. We eliminated that and we got down to 8% below 1990 levels.

These are the aspects you get a sense of.

Energy demand is down to 25% below projections. Renewable energy consumption is up 19%. That's where we have to go. That's what it is we were trying to achieve.

If the measures had been implemented in 1995, they would have stabilized our greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by the year 2000. We would have made our international commitments. We could have done that. We can't do it now, because we haven't started implementing this program.

We also know we have to reduce after the year 2000. So we looked at the role a carbon charge might play. We imposed a very small carbon charge. In fact, the countries that are achieving their greenhouse gas commitments do have carbon charges in their economies. Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, all have a carbon charge. It's already a fundamental part of their economic system.

What we did, though, was to neutralize the impact of that carbon charge by reducing the GST to 5.5% from the current 7%. Because of that, the impact of moving on our environmental commitments generated not only job creation, which I'll get to, but an increase in disposable income, which I'll get to.

Just to show you how small a thing we are talking about with this carbon charge.... Carbon charges are a very emotional issue in this country. They really shouldn't be. This is about sustainability and moving towards sustainability, and quite frankly I just can't understand why we can't deal with what the economists tell us is the most efficient instrument.

A small carbon charge of $20 per tonne in 2000, then $25 per tonne in 2005, would increase electricity prices 2%. That's about $0.12 per kilowatt. We're talking about very small amounts: 1.3¢ per litre of gasoline. So we're talking of a very small carbon charge. In fact, I strategically selected the smallest charge of any country in the world.

.1620

Because we used the revenue generated - and at $77 billion it's substantial - we are playing with a big amount of system. We used that to reduce the GST and, through that process, reduced increased disposable income. According to the analysis, we generate through the program spending. This is because you're investing in the Canadian economy, you're becoming more efficient: your buildings, your industrial operations, your transportation sector, and your delivery system are all more efficient. You become more productive, more competitive. We create demand for products, particularly manufacturing and service jobs, and on a cumulative basis could generate 550 persons-years of work to 2000 and a further million to 2010. I think it is a very positive result.

There's been much talk about how, because of the energy-intensive nature of our economy, anything we do in Canada is going to devastate our economy. The most powerful result from Carl's work, at least for me, was that no matter what we do on climate change, this program did not change the size of the economy from where it is expected to be in the year 2010 by more than 1%, up or down.

So any negative impact, even in Alberta, is less than 1%. What Carl has explained is that, given the world moving ahead as all expect it shall, in 2010 the economy will be 35% to 45% bigger than it is today. That's the expectation. If we move forward on this program, the economy in the most what we call negatively affected area of the country, Alberta, would still be 34% to 44% bigger than it is today.

So the concerns that people are talking about are really much more about myth-making than about reality.

The fascinating result is employment. We will increase employment even in Alberta, because we'll be moving from a very capital-intensive production, in terms of oil sands and so on, to much more a service and renewable energy economy, which is much more labour intensive.

These are the kinds of things we tried to understand and tried to look at in our study.

I want to show you what the latest projections are from Natural Resources Canada, in order to give you a sense of the size of the dynamic we're trying to deal with. Then I will give you my recommendations and finish.

Every two years Natural Resources Canada analyses the economy. Where are we expected to go? In fact, they use Carl Sonnen's outlook and they ask what we expect for interest rates, economic growth, population growth, and world oil prices. They feed all that into the computer models and they do energy projections. We are now involved in a process of the next one, which will be available in 1996.

They're finding that because we've actually raised the energy efficiency standards in residential buildings, we are actually not going to increase energy demand. It's actually going to stay flat in the residential sector. So instead of energy demand growing until the year 2020, we can keep that one flat.

Our program, because we actually did some retrofitting in the residential side, reduced energy use even more. The fascinating thing I want to point out is that we are projecting an increase in energy demand in the commercial sector of 21% by the year 2020. What we could achieve if we actually moved ahead now to retrofit buildings is a reduction of 17.7%.

The future does not have to be the way an outlook predicts. It is one way of looking at the world, and we have another way of looking at the world that could help Canada not only contribute to its greenhouse gas reductions but also develop some technology that could help us compete internationally.

On the industrial side, NRCan expects energy demand to increase by 60% by the year 2020. This is a huge sector in Canada. We have a very energy-intensive sector and our initiatives -

Mr. Finlay (Oxford): Could you tell me the difference between energy demand and energy intensity?

Ms Comeau: Energy demand would be on a total basis. Energy intensity is literally divided by GDP, or in the sense of buildings it would be by square footage. So how much energy are you using for a square foot of commercial building? How much energy are you using to produce a dollar of goods? That's why they give you an intensity number.

.1625

What you actually find is that on a per-product or per-dollar basis we are slowly improving our efficiency, but growth in population, economic growth, and so on are basically soaking it all up. We're not getting the reductions we need.

Canada's challenge in fact is to accelerate our process so we get more efficiencies that exceed the growth rate. That's our challenge. That's in fact what's happening economically with countries that are moving ahead on this. We'll get into that.

We did reduce industrial demand by 5.7%. It's not as much as I would have liked, but it was the one sector where we had the most difficulty in trying to assess how to approach it.

In transportation, they're predicting energy demand will rise 32% by the year 2020. We achieved a 26% reduction.

This is a challenge for Canada. As you all travel across the country - I've also travelled across the country - it's quite stunning just how auto dependent we are. Not only do we build our cities to guarantee that, but we are dispersed in terms of the way the country is built. This is a real challenge for us. But we are not commuting between Halifax and Toronto every day. We can become more efficient in transportation within our cities and we can utilize rail more between cities. There are real opportunities in the transportation sector.

With that kind of overview, I want to talk about what we tried to do with this analysis. We're suggesting the following approach.

I have, by the way, started the process of briefing Anne McLellan, because she was good enough to support this work, I think in recognition of the contribution the Sierra Club had made previously.

We can get into a big debate around your study, my study, your assumptions, my assumptions, and so on. Canada needs experience. We need to move beyond the arguments and the talking to try to get some real on-the-ground experience.

We have, for example, many people who say - economists tell me this all the time - if there's so much efficiency out there and so much opportunity to save money, why aren't we doing it? If the buck were on the floor we would have picked it up. The reality is there are barriers preventing those opportunities from being fully absorbed. So we're proposing a pilot project approach.

What we learned from the study is that every province, depending on its fuel mix and its economic mix, has a different greenhouse gas opportunity. For example, B.C., Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, even the Maritimes, have more opportunities in transportation. Your utility sector is coal based in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia, so they have more opportunities on the renewable energy side. For the industrial sector the real opportunities are in Ontario and Alberta.

What we're proposing...and I'm part of a structure that includes federal and provincial energy and environment departments across the country. I've made this suggestion to them, and given the cutback situations and the way government departments are feeling because of program spending, this seems to be an approach that could take us forward. Each of the jurisdictions - and I'll get to the federal responsibility in a moment - would agree to undertake one or two pilot projects that are quite beneficial to their province in terms of where they could get real reductions. That information could then be shared with other jurisdictions across the country and we would select projects that look as if they would be good candidates for being replicated, such that you could share that information and we could use it across the country. In that way we could get maybe ten to fifteen pilot projects going across the country, and they would give us on-the-ground experience, help us evaluate the real costs and benefits, and we could look at getting some of the bugs out, if there are any bugs.

That's one approach we're suggesting. The other thing that's happening now - and the IPCC has suggested this very strongly - is don't lose any opportunities. We are looking at opening up the electricity market in Canada to more competition. I think that's a very good thing. We think that's a very exciting opportunity in Canada. The problem is you have to ensure that the process, while we want to spur competition, also includes a regulatory framework that creates room for renewables and demand-side management.

California is now looking at, for example, renewable set-asides, where a portion of the needs of the market pool, the electricity pool, would be met by renewables. We cannot let electricity restructuring go by without doing this. Electricity is the key to renewables - the absolute key.

The other big measure was fuel economy standards for vehicles. The Americans set that standard through the ``big three'' and Canada adopts it voluntarily. Nothing has really been improved there since the 1980s. We are suggesting the Canadian government immediately begin negotiations with the U.S. on higher fuel economy standards.

.1630

When I gave Paul Martin a copy of our report at the national round table meeting on Friday, he mentioned we are now about to engage in a process of tax reform analysis. I think what we would like to see is that a carbon charge offset with the reduction in the goods and services tax be part of this.

We're also suggesting the federal budget include tax changes to equalize the treatment between renewables and conventional energy, that it is clear and NRCan acknowledges there is a discrepancy between how renewables and conventional energy are treated.

What we're hoping to see is that by November energy and environment ministers, when they meet, will take up some of these ideas and take them forward so we can begin the process of reducing our emissionsThe reason I'm concerned is that in the international negotiations we are starting to see a much stronger representation from the United States on whether or not we're going to have further reductions post-2000. They have now signalled their intention to support a legally binding protocol after the year 2000. Germany see this as part of its industrial strategy and so does Japan. Japan is host for the third conference of the party's meeting, where we will sign a protocol. Their view is that this is about technology and they want a very strong technological component within the protocol. One can understand why. Trade, economics, jobs and business are what this is all about.

My concern is with Canada's emissions growing twice the rate of the U.S. and OECD and about four times the global rate, we are increasingly vulnerable to demands in the international negotiations for reductions that are greater than other countries. We are extremely vulnerable.

I think what we've tried to do here is analyse, in a credible way, some initiatives Canada could undertake and we are happy to answer questions.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Thank you.

Before we go to questions, we probably should hear from Mr. Sonnen.

Do you in fact have a presentation to make?

Mr. Carl Sonnen (President, Informetrica): No, Madam Chair. I was asked to come along as a resource person.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): That's fine. Thank you. In that case, we'll continue the questioning on this side.

Mr. Knutson, did you want to -

Mr. Knutson: No, I'll pass.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Steckle.

Mr. Steckle (Huron - Bruce): I'll accept the challenge. This is pretty technical stuff for us.

The question that would come to my mind is why we are higher than the United States in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions. We have a lower population. We do not have the level of industry the U.S. has. Is it because of our climatic conditions here and because we have a colder climate?

Having asked this question, subsequent to it I want to ask the second question. Should Canada be pursuing the notion of entering into and perhaps being host to nuclear fusion, the ITER project, as we know it? The first stage of this is, of course, taking place in England. Should Canada be looking at nuclear fusion as an energy source of the future?

Ms Comeau: In terms of the U.S., I just want to be clear. What I'm saying is the rate of growth in emissions in Canada is twice that of the U.S. The U.S. is the largest emitter in the world and responsible for 25% of global emissions. They are huge. But they are doing more around efficiency and renewable energy than Canada is. We installed one windmill last year in Canada.

Mr. Finlay: It was in my riding.

Ms Comeau: If I had been smart, I would have known that.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms Comeau: What is happening in the U.S. is they are pursuing energy efficiency more aggressively. They have a green lights program, a motor program, utility programs. So there is just more activity and there is more uptake at the industrial, commercial level. Where they have not moved forward is on transportation and they are vulnerable there as well.

Mr. Steckle: We're moving right at this moment on MMT.

Ms Comeau: Yes, but that's not going to help me with efficiency.

In terms of nuclear, the approach groups like Sierra Club takes, and in fact even the intergovernmental panel has taken, is that we are pursuing what we call the least-cost energy approach. We don't see why we should take up the most expensive energy options when there is so much inexpensive energy around. There is so much inexpensive energy efficiency, and compared to nuclear, your renewables are coming out ahead given how expensive this technology is turning out to be.

I have no opinion. I am not qualified to talk to you about the nuclear fusion opportunity.

.1635

Mr. McBean: I would agree with Louise that the idea of going into a very costly program like nuclear fusion doesn't really make sense in view of what we're talking about. There are much better economic ways of doing the emission reduction.

Mr. Steckle: But should this science be pursued given this is not going to become a reality for the next probably 50 years in any event?

Mr. McBean: Well, as a scientist I would say it is something we should be looking at, but we should look at it from the point of view of the pursuit of science as opposed to looking at it as a solution to this kind of issue.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Thank you.

Go ahead please, Mr. Finlay, followed by Mr. Anawak.

Mr. Finlay: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go back to Mr. McBean for just a minute.

Those were alarming sorts of increases on those graphs. I take it those are based on the present situation and you've made no adjustment for the fact that we have said we're are going to reduce our emissions by the year 2000 to a 1990 level and by the year 2005 to the 1988 level. Isn't this the paper we signed some time ago?

I raised this in the House because there just isn't any way we're going to make it. I don't know whether we keep fooling ourselves, but I take it those figures, Mr. McBean, are not affected by that.

Mr. McBean: Well, what we were showing was a range of scenarios of global emissions. What I was trying to stress was that even if we limit emissions, as is agreed to under the climate convention, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will still double by sometime early after the year 2100 and we will still see some climatic change. This would happen even if every country of the world were to limit their emissions to their 1990 levels in the year 2000 and forever thereafter.

Mr. Finlay: It would then level off.

Mr. McBean: Yes. It will eventually. It will level off early in the 22nd century. That gives you some consolation.

I'm not trying to say taking emission reduction isn't important. We need to do this because we have to reduce the rate of change. But at the same time the climate is warming and will continue to warm.

Mr. Finlay: I think your example of the deficit was good, but it also reminded me of what I think is true about ozone depletion. Even if we stop all the fluorocarbons and everything else that affects it, it is still going to thin out for awhile until those molecules disperse, die, or whatever.

Mr. McBean: Yes. The freon molecule has essentially about the same lifetime of 100 years or so as a carbon dioxide molecule. So in this sense it is a similar issue.

Mr. Finlay: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Anawak, please.

Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): Thank you, Madam Chair.

When you have a list up there of the 10 provinces but no territories, especially when you're talking about raising the taxes on the gas or hydro, it is always a little disheartening to see. The highest cost of living anywhere in Canada is in the north, especially in the area I represent. I just wondered if you're promoting raising taxes on gas because of the possibility of savings on energy. Is there any consideration given to the north, given we have the highest cost of living anywhere?

Ms Comeau: Yes. In fact, part of the reason why you're not seeing it, unfortunately, is the way that NRCan does its analysis. Every region of Canada was analysed. When they do the analysis they merge B.C., the Yukon and Northwest Territories into one lump and they do the Atlantic as one lump as well. So they complain on one side and you can complain on the other side, but that's how the analysis was done.

In fact, we did look at the opportunities. Please just give me a second to flip. I actually can find it quickly because I know my report pretty well.

.1640

Mr. Anawak: Maybe I'll just go on.

I know that some experimental programs are going on right now in terms of wind power and wind generation. Are there any more plans that your organization or governmental agencies are looking at to harness wind power or other sources of energy in the north?

The only source of power right now in the area I represent is fossil fuels or fuel-powered turbines. Are there any plans to pursue?

Ms Comeau: I think the program you're talking about is called PV for the North, and Natural Resources announced that last year. What we've been pushing the energy minister to do - and any support you could provide here.... She's about to announce a renewable energy strategy for Canada that includes PV for the North, and possibly some green procurement.

You may have heard of green procurement. It is a program that's being considered where the federal and provincial governments actually demand from the marketplace that some of their electricity be met by renewables, and some changes to the research and development.

Because NRCan will not give me any indication of what they're hoping to achieve - they won't tell me how much they're going to spend and they won't me tell how much renewables they want to install - what we're asking for is a target. Canada needs a renewable energy target. You don't get someplace if you don't know where you're going. So we are hoping that when this renewable energy strategy is announced it will include a target for Canada.

In terms of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon governments, what we're finding is strong support for the renewable energy option because the costs are so high - 22¢ a kilowatt hour for electricity in the Northwest Territories because of the diesel. So that's where our real cost-effective opportunities are.

But the other reason why we're getting support now, from both Mickey Fisher and Steve Kakfwi, is because climate change is happening in their territory. I have actually received correspondence from the Yukon government acknowledging that, that they're very concerned about the impact forest fires are having on them. So I can't tell you - it's not sitting right here in front of me - what the potential is in the Northwest Territories, but that number or that information is definitely available from Natural Resources Canada.

Mr. Adams (Peterborough): I apologize for coming in late.

I listened with interest to the last part of your presentation, and I've read the material. I'm intrigued. Perhaps it's a technical thing and perhaps it's something you've covered, but you're talking about emissions growth and the oil industry being responsible for as much as 50% and so on. Then it goes on and it says the transportation sector appears responsible for the remaining 50% of emissions growth. Given the confidence of the rest of your material, I wondered why it says ``appears''.

Ms Comeau: The reason is that, given the kind of work I do, I end up doing kinds of analysis work. We are now in the middle of a process with Natural Resources Canada where they and the federal government and provincial governments are analysing how Canada has done. We've had a national action program on climate change; how have we done?

So the numbers are initial. We don't know the full answer yet, because data are still coming in. The initial numbers we were given - the 1995 numbers, for example - are still somewhat preliminary. They're still trying to finalize those. Then when we looked at what happened in terms of the growth, how we got from there to here, how that happened, that's the initial analysis, but it won't be finished until later in the fall. So that's why I wasn't sure.

Mr. Adams: How is it, then, that you can calculate the total transportation energy demand and its increase and so on? So if you know that already.... I'm not being picky. It is quite striking. You've explained it to me, but elsewhere you have the calculation of total transportation energy demand and its growth. If it appears in only the one place, why is it so confidently calculated in the other?

Ms Comeau: That's understandable. We're dealing with the world of energy forecasts and then we're dealing with the real world. The real world is Environment Canada's inventory of emissions - 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995. Energy forecasts are presumptions and assumptions. You plug in this, this, and that and it shoots out projections of where we might be in the future.

.1645

So while the forecast may sound like it's more concrete, the reality is that it's hard to know the truth. Forecasts are just one scenario of a possible future world. We can't predict the future.

Even though NRCan can say that given our assumptions on improvements and energy efficiency in cars, the vehicle miles travelled, economic growth, population growth...and plug it into their computers, and out shoots the projected energy demand growth, that's the world of the future we're playing in. And Environment Canada says, okay, fine, you can do that. But the fact is that every year Environment Canada counts up the real numbers and that's that.

All I'm saying is that they're still getting some final data in on that growth in the last five years. They've split it out. They think that's the way it happened, but they want to be cautious until they finalize their report and they've gone through peer review. This process takes a long time. It goes through a lot of peer review, a lot of feedback and meetings across the country with experts to make sure the numbers are right.

Mr. Adams: That is remarkably clear. If I might, as someone who is very interested in what you're doing and who is, by the way, very empathetic to what you're doing, when you're talking to us - and this is no disrespect to members of Parliament - I think you should remember that you're actually talking through us to some great group that's behind us, which is the record, which is the people of Canada and so on. I urge you, because of my colleagues.... You heard from their questions that they try to do the same.... If you can articulate this stuff so that we can understand it, the odds are that anybody can understand it.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Adams: And that is very important for you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): You're very right, Mr. Adams.

Mr. Adams: And she even included me!

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mrs. Jennings, then Mr. Asselin.

Mrs. Jennings: Thank you, Madam Chair. Now that I've heard both sides of the argument per se, I've just noticed something that you have on page 38 under background. I notice that you gave just part of the answer. You point out that the fires have been so severe in recent years, in the five years...it's the worst record. You go on to say that the Arctic Sea ice is down by 5%, there are unusually warm temperatures and changes in ocean currents, and the El Nino effect.

You have all these things. And yet, we heard from Mr. McBean - at least I got the impression - that the most notable of everything is the human influence. Is the human influence also to blame for all of these things that have occurred? Have we in some way caused them to happen as well? Are they in spite of everything we've done or in addition to everything we've done?

Ms Comeau: Can I just make sure that at least my own report is clear? I'm suggesting that the human influence - our energy consumption - is causing climate change and that these are some of the things we are starting to see...like the forest fires.

Mrs. Jennings: As a result of what we've done?

Ms Comeau: That's right. It's energy consumption, it's putting the gases into the atmosphere, changing the climate. Hotter, drier -

Mrs. Jennings: The forest fires to the extent that they are -

Ms Comeau: That's right, and the projections are that we can expect to see significant increases in forest fires in Canada because of hotter, drier conditions. I won't get into all of the details, but these are the kinds of things scientists have talked about that we should be looking for.

Mrs. Jennings: Excuse me just a moment, Madam Chair. From this, we would then draw the conclusion that you're saying these things are going to continue, and in fact more so if we do not do something soon to change the direction in which we're headed.

Ms Comeau: That's right.

I just want to make one other thing clear, because I do take your point. Part of my presentation today was more technical than usual, partly because I've done this presentation here before and I was afraid I would bore you with repeating myself, but I take your point. Oh, my point just slipped right out of my head -

Mr. Adams: Madam Vice-Chair, could I make another comment? As for your second point, your presentation was excellent, so don't apologize. It was well-intentioned advice. The presentation was fine.

Ms Comeau: Thank you, I appreciate it.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Asselin.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: Mr. McBean's presentation has been very interesting, but I would have liked him to make his views more explicit. We did not have quite enough time to listen to all you had to say. It is really interesting to look at the future and the impact of the greenhouse effect. These two dimensions can complement each other. Mrs. Comeau also had to make her presentation rather fast, and some information is missing. We are really pressed for time.

.1650

Mrs. Comeau, we have just been handed a paper dated September 1996 which you wrote. I think it has just been printed.

Are you here today to make a presentation on your book or because you have been invited by the Standing Committee on Environment?

[English]

Ms Comeau: Yes, absolutely. This is a presentation to explain the results of this work to you.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: I see. So, you have been invited by the committee. When one reads this book, it is easy to realize that there is a lot of research behind it. I think it is beautifully done. It is really a reference book that must be useful for all those interested in environmental matters. I would like to know the extent of governmental involvement, through the Department of the Environment or the government itself, in the research and preparation of a book such as this one. What has been the financial contribution of the government?

[English]

Ms Comeau: Yes, I will. In fact, I think part of the reason why this study was funded is that doing so provided government with an opportunity to get information it couldn't get itself politically.

For example, Natural Resources Canada was officially prevented from analysing a carbon charge because of some statement that was perceived to have been made to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers by the Prime Minister. That is a fact.

There is so intense a debate in this country around what we are going to do on climate change that there is paralysis in government. I see the support I received for this as a way for governments to try to keep the debate going. I really appreciate the support I got. This is how it happened. When the -

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: May I interrupt? Time flies, and I am afraid I will not be able to go to the bottom of the issue. You have got a contract as a subcontractor to do this work for the government. This work has been paid for by the government.

[English]

Ms Comeau: No. Here's how it happened. I made a proposal to Environment Canada asking if it would support the Sierra Club in doing this analysis, which it did. Environment Canada provided some financial support for the analysis. I approached Natural Resources Canada to ask if it would support the Sierra Club in this work by allowing us access to its computer technology, and the energy minister said yes.

I then approached Ontario Hydro's community fund. As an environmental group we are a charity and we do approach various government programs, foundations or corporate community support programs for resources with which to do our work. I approached Ontario Hydro. I was able to hire Carl to do the macroeconomic analysis because Ontario Hydro's community program accepted my proposal to do this study and provided financial support to the Sierra Club to complete this work.

So three groups contributed: Natural Resources contributed no money but did contribute what we call ``in kind''; Environment Canada provided some financial support through their programming, which they use to support environment groups in various works; and Ontario Hydro's community program supported the macroeconomic work. That's how I did the study.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: I see. Since the federal government has participated in the preparation of this paper, will it be translated into French later on?

[English]

Ms Comeau: As a matter of fact, the report will likely be translated for us by the Quebec government through my contacts in Quebec. I work very closely with the Quebec environmental community. We are making sure it's translated.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: Did the federal government not demand right from the start that the paper be tabled in both official languages?

[English]

Ms Comeau: No.

[Translation]

Mr. Asselin: Only in English?

[English]

Ms Comeau: No. Of course not. This is not something you would ever include in a contract. I was provided a very small amount of money to conduct some analysis. The Sierra Club, unfortunately, does not have.... To show you that I do care about this, I spent $1,000 to translate the materials so that you could have the press release and highlight section in French today.

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So we are trying. But I'm also working through other avenues to ensure the whole report is translated. I'm confident the Quebec government will do that, on behalf of supporting its own environmental community in Quebec.

Mr. McBean: Personally, I didn't have anything to do with this contract. As I understand it, Environment Canada has supplied some money to the Sierra Club to undertake some analysis, not to prepare a report and in no way necessarily to make a presentation to this committee. I was invited by the clerk quite separately, as was Louise Comeau. This is not a contract Environment Canada gave to the Sierra Club. As part of our ongoing activities we support a number of environmental groups in carrying on their activities, which we think are useful to have done by non-governmental environmental organizations. This was just part of that kind of funding support.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Mr. Knutson.

Mr. Knutson: Mr. McBean, I don't know if I was the only one for whom that dropped a bomb, but has Environment Canada ever been prevented from doing policy research on a carbon charge?

Mr. McBean: No, I don't think we have been prevented. We have been looking at a variety of economic instruments. I'm hesitating to comment only because this is not my field at Environment Canada. I'm responsible for the science of climate change and the weather service. Ms McKenzie, who is here from Environment Canada, is in the area where this work is done. But I know certainly Environment Canada has been looking at a range of economic instruments, and carbon taxes and other kinds of things are part of that suite of activities. We have felt it was appropriate to look at all kinds of ways in which you can in a sense encourage those kinds of uses of energy, renewable energy in particular, through economic measures, such that they would be enhanced and the use of other kinds of fuels would be reduced. But we have not been specifically directed not to look at one kind as opposed to another.

Mr. Knutson: That's comforting.

Your point was that you know for a fact that Natural Resources -

Ms Comeau: What I'm telling the committee is that for two years I was part of a process that attempted to look at what Canada could do to reduce its emissions. When that committee prepared a list of measures to be analysed, the issue of a carbon charge was on the list to be analysed. It was removed from the list to be analysed based on a comment made by the Prime Minister at a Liberal fund-raiser in Calgary.

I can get you the records on that. I was there. I was told it's here, then two weeks later it was gone. We were told officially that a carbon charge is not politically acceptable and cannot be analysed. I absolutely swear to you that is the truth.

That's part of the way it works. It's a very difficult situation we're in. Officially, you will not see anywhere in the record an official report from the Government of Canada that analyses a carbon charge. I can guarantee you that. And it will be a while before you ever see an official report from the Government of Canada, Environment Canada or NR Canada, that analyses a carbon tax.

Mr. Knutson: Well, I have an assistant deputy minister telling me Environment Canada hasn't been handcuffed.

Ms Comeau: Environment Canada does not have the computing technology to do an assessment of a carbon charge. Natural Resources Canada has that computing capacity.

I'm not at all disagreeing with Gordon. Of course they're looking at every possible instrument. But the power on this issue is with NR Canada. The science, the public education, the support for this work, the work Environment Canada does, are excellent, and that's where they can really contribute. Help us sign international agreements, carry the lead on public education, carry the lead on the environment, carry the lead on the science: that's what Environment Canada is doing, and it's doing a good job. Natural Resources Canada holds the power when it comes to implementing climate change reduction, energy efficiency, and renewable energy, and they have the computing capacity. It's frustrating, believe me. We wish Environment Canada had that capacity.

Mr. Knutson: That's a pretty damning statement about Environment Canada, I guess, that I really should expect Natural Resources Canada to be taking the lead on cleaning up the environment; but that's what I've heard you say.

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Ms Comeau: Jurisdictionally, unfortunately, building codes, fuel economy standards for cars, the utility sector, the jurisdictional capacity to pass laws, everything.... The only other avenue I have is the finance department, for tax reform, subsidies and so on.

This is a frustration for someone who's been working hard on this issue for six years. It's a fact. If you want to talk about building codes, commercial stuff, industrial activities or anything to do with this issue, it's in NRCan's shop. Anything.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Are there any other questions?

Mr. Finlay: I don't need to comment that what the witness has said was strongly said and is probably fairly accurate. I've worked on this committee since 1994. This sort of scenario comes up again and again when we get into some of these issues. It's tantamount to the previous government.

I visited on environmental issues in my riding and I asked the parliamentary secretary of the environment when we were going to get busy on some of these things on sustainability. His answer was that we have jobs in this corner and we have the environment in that corner, and it's sort of like a boxing match. I said, rightly, employment and the jobs, or Industry Canada or Natural Resources Canada - which has some of our biggest industries, such as forestry, mining, oil and so on....

That was the attitude. I think that attitude is changing, and part of the work of this committee is to change that attitude, to get these important things in front of all of us. We just have to keep going. But what the witness says is unfortunately somewhat true. We're making dents here and there, and hopefully we can continue to do that.

Ms Comeau: Could I just expand on one point?

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Yes, you go ahead first, and then I have another.

Ms Comeau: I don't want to leave too negative an impression. I think that would be an inappropriate thing to do.

NRCan is also where our opportunities are. We need to take a positive approach, keep pursuing these ideas and keep being positive about the possibilities. We talked today about the pilot project approach, and Anne McLellan has indicated her support for that. I want to leave a positive impression.

This is not an easy issue, but progress and a positive outlook are really important. The minister has indicated her willingness to support some activities, and we just need to pursue the more positive aspect rather than the negative. But it's a difficult situation.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): In view of the comments that were made on the carbon charge, I wonder if Ms McKenzie, who's here in the room, could comment so we can have the position of Environment Canada on the record.

Ms M. Ann McKenzie (Director, Global Air Issues Branch, Environmental Protection Service, Department of the Environment): Thank you. Let me introduce myself. I'm the director of the global air issues branch of Environment Canada.

I wanted to clarify the shared mandate on climate change. Actually it's shared in a couple of ways within the federal government. On the international front, Environment Canada and Foreign Affairs share the climate change file, so when we go to Geneva for the international negotiation, it is joint there.

On the domestic side, concerning what measures we're going to take domestically, it's Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada. We have a shared mandate. It's not that Environment Canada has responsibility for climate change and NRCan is not in the picture. They're very much in the picture. They share equally in the mandate. We are working closely with them.

Minister Marchi and Minister McLellan have a number of discussions and meetings planned and are certainly looking at the meeting this December with the provincial ministers of energy and environment to determine how we can move this agenda forward within Canada and what the federal government itself can do.

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As you very eloquently stated, it is a challenge. There are no magic bullets. There is a mixture of interests within our economy and our social structure. It is a matter of finding an appropriate mix that is also doable in these times of fiscal restraint and, of course, the shared jurisdiction with the provinces. The provinces have a lot of the policy levers when it comes to what we can do in energy efficiency. I wanted to make that clear.

Add to that the fact that on November 6, I believe, there is a symposium on climate change. I don't know whether the members are aware of that, but there will be a fuller discussion of some of these issues at that time. Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): Is there any further comment?

Mr. Knutson: I'll ask a question, since you opened the door. I've only been in Parliament two and a half years. I'm relatively new to the committee. I asked the new deputy minister in last week's meeting whether he'd been briefed on what other countries were doing to try to clean up the environment. It just struck me as a kind of a basic, common sense question. He said he hadn't been briefed.

As for this carbon charge - as I say, I wasn't here last year and I don't know the politics behind it - it's just an example of what other countries are doing. Yet it's not an idea that the deputy minister carries around in his back pocket as an example of what we could do, notwithstanding the opposition from Ralph Klein or whomever.

It concerns me as a member of Parliament and as a fairly limited Canadian citizen that this rush of ideas and excitement - you know, here are some exciting things we could do to clean up the environment - don't seem to be coming from the department; they seem to be coming from an outside agency.

I have all the respect in the world for the science and the people who study the problem and want to highlight it by saying, hey guys, it's really serious. I heard this from David Suzuki a few years ago. So this is not new, but there seems to be a real lack of policy alternatives. Options don't seem to be flowing forward.

There's talk about sharing the file with other departments. We share the file with provinces. We're going to work in partnership where we want to take a leading edge with all the rest of the world. But what I heard this lady say to me today was that Canada's basically going to be dragged into this by other countries. We're going to be forced to clean up our environment. It's not because we aren't good guys any more, but we're going to basically be told.

I guess I don't get that message from Environment Canada when they come in front of the committee. I get a message that they're doing the best they can.

So I guess I'm throwing a lot of...I hope they don't sound like accusations. In a sense, they are accusations to the institution, but they're not meant to be accusations to anybody on a personal level.

You told me that you're not limited in what you can research. That's good. I'm comforted by that. She doesn't think you have big enough computers to do it, though, so I don't know what -

Mr. McBean: It's not computers so much, but anyway, go ahead.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): I think in fairness to the officials who are here we should perhaps point out that ministers set the policy in fact. The role of government officials is to carry out those policies, so perhaps those questions might better be directed to ministers.

Mr. Knutson: I'm just trying to get a sense of what the alternatives are.

[Translation]

It is as good a way as any to protect the Department of the Environment.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): I made the comment for what it's worth.

Mr. Sonnen: I haven't established any reason why you would trust me, but the last time I met with parliamentarians, I was there as a resource person for the oil sands task force.

So that may help you to understand that there is a commercial world. I tried to do this on the basis of the limited science that I can apply in the economics area.

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There's a number on page 55 of this document that will probably be important to you. It says that over the course of the next 15 years, with this program, somebody's going to put $150 billion on the ground. I don't know how it works in your riding, but in my household that's not lunch money. Of that, $75 billion is in carbon, and the balance is for a bunch of specific activities.

Here's what I would like to do. This comment is made to help the committee in its further assessments. We had a carbon tax, which was called the OPEC tax. It was the worst possible kind of carbon tax because the tax collector was not here, the tax collector was in the gulf, so you couldn't take the dollars and recycle them back to your citizens. So we have a lot of experience with the carbon tax.

The first thing I would suggest is that you recognize - this is just as the Somalia inquiry worries about four-letter words - that you're worrying about a six-letter word. Debunk the fact that it's a six-letter word. It's not so; it's a tax. We have motor fuel taxes. We have carbon taxes which are a variation on this thing. We have taxes all over the place. The question is this: is $75 billion going to get you a lot of energy savings or not? How do you recycle that?

I want to come back to Mr. Knutson's question, which is the statement that says it should be made simple for us. The devil's in the details on this stuff. Because we had 1973's carbon tax and 1980's carbon tax, and the OPEC shocks, we put together a bunch of research capacity to try to discover what works and what doesn't.

This is part of a family of research that's been in place now for four or five years in which the departments of the federal Government of Canada and provincial governments have participated. It relies on the technocratic outcome of that 1973 carbon tax.

I'm an agnostic about this. I think you can work until you're blue in the face on this, and you may not understand some of the really important stuff, but even a cynic has to recognize - I'm a urea-formaldehyde house owner, which will make you very cynical about people - that a lot of research infrastructure got put into place.

This is directly to the point you raised, Mr. Knutson. There are 120 specific initiatives that people were talking about. Then somebody went away and said, okay, what if we tell the farmers they have to do this? What if we tell someone - you know, the famous small business person and that crowd - that he's going to have to refit his or her building? How do they talk to the banks about that and all the rest of it?

Well, there were a lot of people who went away with a lot of research infrastructure that had been put together and wondered what happened when you do this. How much will it cost? What kind of energy savings will you get out of it?

As I say, I'm a bit cynical about it, but you have to recognize that a lot of that stuff lies behind this. I think that if you're going to get a grip on this stuff, you can't keep it simple. The devil's in the details. The devil's in this building being fixed or this building not being fixed.

The carbon tax is just one of these 120 things. It's studied all the time.

Here's one of the things I would say. If you're going to start worrying about which departments do this, consider this question that we had to consider. Somebody lays on a tax. It has a name. It's $75 billion. What are you going to do with that money?

I can tell you that the Minister of Finance's priority is debt reduction. There are all kinds of ideological positions and party positions about where that is. That $75 billion came directly out of somebody's pocket. You, as parliamentarians, have to refer back to those pockets.

There will be a group of people who will say you should give them the $75 billion and build urban transit and so on. There will be those agendas. There will be the electorate's agenda, which will say you should put it back in their pocket as a direct tax cut, and all the rest. We used a particular mechanism to address that issue.

I'm saying to you that the discussion about the carbon tax then is not a discussion only within NRCan and Environment Canada, but a much broader one, because what do you do with the dollars? Who has claim on those $75 billion, or $150 billion or $28 billion?

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Jurisdictional matters will get involved in this. There are carbon taxes in this country. Go to Toronto. The city hall put it in.

There are jurisdictional issues here. In this one, which is a fabricated thing, the central government, the Government of Canada, comes along, lays a tax on, and everybody lies down and says, okay, I'll pay that. At that point, do the provinces have any claim on that or not? The answer is no. But if you put a carbon tax on where the carbon tax is agreed to be a joint federal.... Whether it's arrived at from executive federalism or how it's going to work I don't know. But several jurisdictions are there with their tax collectors collecting the dollars. Now we've opened it up so we don't have only Environment, Natural Resources, and let's say Finance, or wherever that gets decided, but now we're going to have a whole bunch of provincial interests at stake.

So the carbon tax question is not a technocratic question at heart. At heart it's what you do when you have a big tax system and put it into place. I'm sure there will be many coloured books between now and the year 2015.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Payne): An aside I would make is that any carbon tax that would be put in place would hopefully be put there for a couple of reasons. The main one would be to do further research into the kinds of energy we would be looking at creating. That's probably the primary reason, to try to find alternative sources of energy, and perhaps it would be to have a deterrent for those companies that are producing undesirable fuels.

Mr. Sonnen: One other point of information. I think the devil's in the detail; and the detail is in 120 or 80 specific initiatives. That's where the intelligence is. That comes out of a long process. I hear certain agendas in the questions being addressed. But that's where the question was addressed, where are we relative to something somebody else did? Do we know what we're talking about here? Do we even know how to engineer this, much less understand the business implications, the direct implications? That's where those details are done.

In the predecessor piece of work, the Forecast Working Group work that was done, that stuff is highly detailed, initiative by initiative by initiative. I must say, because it was done by a Government of Canada department, I'm sure that is the document I would read if you want to look at the answers to the question you raised with a degree of careful skepticism. But my guess is that that one is also available in French.

Mr. Finlay: What document is that?

Ms Comeau: A series of documents, which actually form the basis of this document - I've included the details where it matters here - were produced by the government. It's by the Forecast Working Group and it's called Rational Energy Program: Analysis of the impact of rational measures to the year 2010. It's available in both languages and in several technical volumes. Believe me, you have to be very devoted.

The Vice-Chairman (Mrs. Payne): Thank you very much. We've finished up sooner than expected. I want to say....

Did you have another question?

Mr. Finlay: I just wanted to compliment Mr. Sonnen on his overview, because I think he's put things in the kind of perspective that makes us the responsible parties, which I think we are, on what is to be done. These people who have presented to us are there to help us, but it's our political will or our savvy or our dedication to the task and our attitude to our responsibility that will get it done or not get it done. All the reports in the world aren't going to get it done.

The Vice-Chairman (Mrs. Payne): Very true.

I want to thank Ms Comeau, Mr. Sonnen, and Dr. McBean for appearing today.

This meeting now stands adjourned.

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