Bill C-377 (Historical)

Climate Change Accountability Act

An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change

The purpose of this enactment is to ensure that
Canada meets its global climate change obligations
under the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change by committing to a long-term
target to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions
to a level that is 80% below the 1990 level by
the year 2050, and by establishing interim targets for the
period 2015 to 2045. It creates an obligation on
the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable
Development to review proposed measures to meet the
targets and submit a report to Parliament.
It also sets out the duties of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

[David Sawyer]

That's a very good question.

The regional implications will depend on the emission intensity of the electricity. Quebec, then, being a low-emitting generator of electricity, would benefit greatly, one would think, with an increased rise in the price of electricity, because they're supplying into the grid at very low prices, and as price goes up there's more profit to be made.

So the growth in the electricity sector under either of these targets—again, minus 35% under Turning the Corner, or Bill C-377, minus 50%. You're talking about a significant expansion in the electricity sector--more renewables, more hydro power, and so on--so yes.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all. This has been a good panel. I think it's been interestingly balanced.

I have a comment on Turning the Corner, the plan of the government.

Now, the question was put to you, “Was Bill C-377 costed?” The question I'd put back to the government is, “Was Turning the Corner costed?” The answer clearly, from Mr. Sawyer's remarks, is no. The only way in which you could achieve Turning the Corner was if emissions were priced at $100 a tonne. The government plan calls for them to be priced at $15 a tonne.

Clearly a factor of six is not a costing; it's a gross error. I just would make that observation.

I think the overall thrust of several of your remarks is that we've been a bit too leisurely in our approach. We haven't gotten our act together, and there are many things we could do. The purpose of Bill C-377 is not to provide a full plan that is going to answer what you ask for. It is simply to set an ambitious target that lines us up with the scientific reality of where we are and what we need to do as a planet and as a country.

So let me ask you this. If we accept everything that particularly the Council of Chief Executives has called for, and the Gas Association as well, which is a total plan covering the entire Canadian economy—not the industrial half but the part that deals with the built environment, the transportation sector and the bio-sector, which is agriculture, forestry, urban waste—then surely what we would need as our metaphor is a World War II mobilization of the economy metaphor, not a leisurely 100-year metaphor where we need to get all the targets up in place. We didn't know that in 1940; we just knew we had to win the war. You couldn't know when you would complete the Sarnia rubber plant; you just knew you had to do it.

I guess what I'm saying is that we don't have a complete road map. We do know the direction. We want to win the war on climate change just as much as we wanted to win the war last time.

Don't we really need a plan that covers the whole economy and all parts of the emissions spectrum but that also is far more ambitious, far more urgent than anything we've seen to date?

[Dr. Shahrzad Rahbar]

As I said, I think Bill C-377 implicitly focuses on the large final emitter side. I have no issues with a regulatory framework. It's not clear on how the other 50% should be addressed, and in my estimation, the other 50% matters. Our own emissions matter. Regulate us; I'm not disputing that. But we need to get a lot smarter on how we deal with the other 50%, and I'd like to see some focus and leadership in that.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I'm sorry for cutting you off. I have only a minute left.

How does Bill C-377, as you see it today, need to be improved?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

The ultimate goal—and I appreciate your comments—with Bill C-377 is to provide leadership. I believe Canada is providing leadership internationally to get all the major emitters participating. There has been a focus on the other 50% in Canada, and I believe our Turning the Corner plan does that. But I appreciate your challenge to do more on that.

How can we get Canadians involved in picking the low-hanging fruit? But also, over the next twelve years, which goes very quickly, by 2020, you see an absolute reduction of 20%, as it is in our Turning the Corner plan.

Ms. Rahbar, how do you see Canadians actually lowering the amount of energy they're using, those who use natural gas, which you represent? How can we reduce that, both at the large final emitters but also for the average homeowner?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

For Bill C-377, for instance...?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Was it $200 for the Turning the Corner plan and $300 for Bill C-377?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

While I have your attention, I'm going to ask some specific questions. Of course, you're not going to be able to give specifics, but maybe you can give a general comment regarding the cost.

You were suggesting that by 2020 with Bill C-377, your analysis was about $300--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I sure will. I was just addressing the topic that Mr. McGuinty had brought up.

In terms of this policy crisis that was spoken of by Mr. d'Aquino, maybe it's a lot of political rhetoric—which I am guilty of, at times, maybe by the comments I've just made—but I would think that if we all pulled in that same direction, as you're suggesting, maybe we could start moving forward on this. I think there is a willingness when you deal one on one, but when you get in this political environment, sometimes there are different agendas at work here.

The government has provided a very clear, focused agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020.

Mr. Sawyer, I have some questions on those numbers. What will that mean in 2020? What will it mean for gasoline prices and whatnot?

So the agenda is ambitious. The notices of intent to regulate were issued. The negotiation and consultation time is almost at the end now. The meat on the bones of that regulatory framework will be seen very soon. I look forward to your analysis on that as we see that policy and those regulations developing.

On Bill C-377, I have asked every one of the group of witnesses so far this question: should it be costed? I asked Mr. Layton when he was here, and he said it hadn't been costed. He was hoping the government would cost it. But he suggested that I ask Mr. Matthew Bramley from Pembina, who was also a witness that day. Mr. Bramley also said that they were consulted. Actually, their report—from the David Suzuki Foundation and Pembina—is what Bill C-377 was based on.

So Matthew Bramley said no, and he also was hoping that the government would cost Bill C-377. I also asked Dr. Stone, and he said yes, it should be costed. Every time we've heard from the witnesses—I forget who else there was—we've heard yes, it should be costed.

Mr. Sawyer, you're the first person I've actually heard cost it somewhat. Does there need to be an additional evaluation on the cost of Bill C-377—to put some meat on the bones, so to speak?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Warawa, could you just get on to Bill C-377?

[John Dillon]

And I'm very excited to answer you, Mr. Cullen.

I have two points.

First of all, the suggestion that I took in your premise is that right now pollution happens at no cost whatsoever. Clearly that is not true. We have scads of regulation at municipal, provincial, and federal levels that impose requirements on pollution. In fact, we have permitting processes in several provinces that require companies to deal with greenhouse gases, so the suggestion that it's not priced at all is not accurate. Whether we've got the right price or not, of course, is what we're all here to discuss.

The other point is on your suggestion that setting national targets in Bill C-377 gives clarity to industry. No, I'm sorry, it doesn't. At the end of the day, we need to understand what industry's obligations are. A national target--this is the debate we've been having for 15 years, and I'm sorry to see we haven't gotten any further, because at the end of the day you need to know what the requirements are for industry. We're never going to get to a national target unless every part of the economy and every part of society knows what its obligations are. That's what we don't have. That's what we'd like to get onto, and not a continual debate on more targets.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It's a rather rudimentary question, but as it is right now, the receptacle of waste, the atmosphere, is not being given any due course. Mr. Stern used the notion of the greatest market failure in history—our inability, as the free market is working right now, to capture the cost of the pollution we are creating through the generation of our economy.

No one has actually said it, but I get a sense that they don't like the targets in Bill C-377, yet the measurement and the management—the metric we need to use—is what any business must do. In every quarterly profit, they don't use the number of staplers they happen to own; they use profitability. If they are off those targets, then they have either compensation to pay to their stakeholders or a big problem within the board. The Government of Canada, as the board of directors setting the policy, must set targets based on the amount of emissions that we seek to have as a nation. To base any plan on any other metric seems to us to be foolhardy.

To suggest that the notions you've put forward are too ambitious...I just did a quick look and played some graphs and looked at what's happening in the U.S. Congress. They're right in line with the Lieberman-McCain bill, so if Mr. McCain needs to be accused of attempting to destroy the Canadian economy with his plan and his targets, then perhaps we can apply the same measure onto our own, and now Republicans and New Democrats are hanging out together and making the same economic models, which I suggest is not true.

If the cost of pollution is not captured as it is, it must be captured, and it is the government's responsibility to ensure that these externalized costs that we've been enjoying for so many years—and I'd suggest the energy sector in particular has been enjoying these externalizations of cost—must be captured.

I have a question on the baseline. Ms. Rahbar, you didn't like the 1990 baseline. You suggest it was going backwards in time to look at it. I would suggest to you that the market uses an index to measure whether the market is up or down. Picking a target in time is essentially what is required in order to have an ambition and a goal. Is that true?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Certainly. Let's talk about some of those measures.

I'm just curious. Mr. Sawyer, you did some speculation and prognostication. I'm reminded a bit of the old saying that economists have predicted ten out of the last five recessions.

On the use of carbon tax in your modelling or your projection, I looked through the bill again just to remind myself. Is carbon tax put forward as one of those mechanisms in Bill C-377?

[Dr. Shahrzad Rahbar]

No, I didn't say that.

There's a graph somewhere in my presentation. I'm not an economist. For my sins, I'm an engineer, actually. So I had one of our economist colleagues draw me the graphs. I wanted to see what the National Round Table targets suggest the economy should do, what Bill C-377 is proposing, and what we said we would do in 1990 and didn't act on.

The history speaks for itself. We had a bunch of lofty ambitions that we didn't meet. The National Round Table suggests that the path we should be following is a slightly slower path--to slow down, stop, and reverse.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, folks, for being here this afternoon.

There are so many questions to ask. I'd like to start, Mr. Chair, by following up the line of questioning I put yesterday, which I think speaks to the whole question of the need for Bill C-377. I think it's important for Canadians to understand we're debating a bill that is going to shift targets, a bill that is going to guide Parliament based on science. I think that's the import of what Mr. Layton is trying to put through here, but I think it's also important for Canadians to know that it's impossible to know where we want to get to unless we actually know where we are now. In that sense, I want to link Bill C-377 to the government's plan. These are important questions for us to know in order to understand just how far off the government's plan may or may not be in relation to Bill C-377 and the aspirations and the objectives therein.

I'd like to ask a couple of core questions, first to Mr. Dillon and to Mr. d'Aquino. Will the government's plan achieve what it sets out to achieve? Will we see 20% absolute reductions in greenhouse gases by 2020? If you could help the committee, we've been looking for months now for any kind of evidence or analysis that was performed by the government to substantiate that claim and those numbers. Have you come across these numbers? Will the government achieve what it sets out to achieve?