Evidence of meeting #2 for Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was going.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
As long as we have a process that ensures that specific suggestions for either proposed legislative reform or regulatory additions.... As long as we come prepared, I think we can get it done quickly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Let me make a suggestion. If we're going to do this, we have witnesses on the strategy and we'll just hash that out a bit in one of our sessions. It's up to us whether we think in half a meeting we could.... If we want to hear from anybody else about the legislative changes that may be proposed in the act and we give drafting instructions.... Which way are we going?
We heard some good suggestions about which way we might want to be going, but I think that it needs to be fleshed out a little bit with a discussion, for example, through drafting some instructions to our analysts for drafting our response for the minister in terms of making those changes. I'm thinking that the 12th and the 14th could be used: one for the strategy and the other to flesh out and do some drafting instructions for the act. I'm open. I put down four. I'm trying to get to two. From what I'm hearing, I'm not even sure I have agreement on two, so I'm not sure—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I might be in a foul mood today, but I'm very frustrated with the process at this point.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
While I appreciate Will suggesting that we could crank climate change into this and perhaps get something out of it, I'm going back to what the committee agreed to. We passed it weeks ago.
While I appreciate the enthusiasm for sustainable development goals and strategies, and the conversation that we just had, I look at your March 8 proposal to us and the thing that we agreed to unanimously as a committee around climate change isn't there at all.
NDP
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Can you please read it to me, though? I'm convinced. I know I wrote it in there.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I can see “improving the effectiveness and implementation” in the motion right now .
We also heard today that a true FSD and sustainable development goals could include things like culture, language, and heritage. There are 169 different measurements on SDGs right now, of which climate may be fewer than half a dozen. It's hardly a climate change strategy and it's not the mechanism that the federal government is proposing to deal with climate change, according the minister and the interprovincial conversations. It excludes the provincial elements. It excludes the economic aspects of the motion that this committee agreed to pass, and passed unanimously.
My frustration is that it's fine to say you suggested four and now you're willing to go down to two, but I'm saying, wait a second, this is not what we agreed to as a committee. What we agreed to was something entirely different.
Where I get frustrated is that we're on our eighth meeting today without a calendar. It's challenging, and the longer this goes.... It feels like we made some good working concessions at that meeting when we looked at different motions and tried to incorporate. I incorporated some of the Conservatives'. Mr. Amos and the Liberals huddled and reincorporated other things rather than vote against a motion to study climate change, and now we're trying to wed that motion that we voted for into another thing entirely.
I'm saying that SDGs, sustainable development goals, may be an aspect of the climate change conversation, but the largest conversation in this country dealing with the environment—and it's the new name of the department—is climate change. I am flummoxed and confused as to why it's taken so long to agree to the elephant in the room for this country, which is how we're going to meet climate change goals.
Do you understand my frustration?
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
What I'm attempting to do here is to exactly get to what you're trying to do, which is, let's make an impact on climate change. What tools do we have in the federal government to do that?
I realized that SDGs could be a very effective tool if there's an appropriate act, if there are appropriate measures, and if there are appropriate performance measures and accountability. I realized that we could have a powerful tool to effect results on climate change.
It was not on the original list; it was fourth. I thought this was an opportunity...and not to jump ahead of the other two. I want those other two to move ahead, as we agreed. But through the SDGs, if we do it right and we spend just a little bit of time on it....
Although we intended to go a certain way with the committee, I don't think we ever intended to close down our committee to something that might come at us from the minister or from somewhere else. I mean, the minister has asked us. We're not driven by the minister. But I saw an opportunity to see this process affect the impact and have movement on climate change.
That's why I'm kind of surprised, because your motion brought climate change up to a higher level in what we had agreed, and I thought, okay, this—SDGs—does that.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
My argument is that it absolutely doesn't, because if it were to, then in the reports coming out of the environment minister's office, SDGs would be the vehicle that would be implemented through the provinces' discussions. It ignores entirely the motion we incorporated in from the Conservatives around clean technology.
Then there's the private sector. SDGs are entirely about the workings of government—the procurement of government, the policies, whether ministers are being briefed properly when they're reviewing policies on climate change. That's all well and good. I'm not disparaging that. But to try incorporate it in and say that this is a replacement or an additive, I'm telling you, from my experience around this place, it isn't a replacement; absolutely not. It ignores the concessions the opposition made with respect to the clean energy industry. It ignores provincial, municipal, and first nations efforts with respect to achieving our goals, which is acknowledged by everybody to be critical to the federal efforts to meet those targets.
While I appreciate the effort to try to make the two things work or to bring it up in a different way, my implicit direction back is that it doesn't; absolutely not. I'm an open-ended guy, and of course I don't think things are built in concrete, but I'm eight or nine meetings into this committee without a calendar and frustrated. We've proposed calendars. We've gone around and gone around. Now there's a suggestion suddenly on SDGs.
We don't work for the minister. The minister has asked for advice. We had a day on which we heard from the leading people in this country about this thing. We heard three or four recommendations that the analysts can give back to us, and we can sign off or not. But going two, three, or four meetings into this thing is another conversation that's been plunked into this committee that the committee did not contemplate when we first put our calendar together.
Liberal
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
Thank you.
I agree with Mr. Cullen to the extent that it would not be fair for us to try to take the climate change work that we agreed to do and fit it into the FSDA work, which we also agreed to do. I don't think that's the suggestion.
You correctly articulated that in the FSDA stuff, there are no SDGs in this. It's just a sustainable development strategy. We agreed to do FSDA stuff. It clearly indicates in the resolution that was passed that we will assess the FSDA with a view to improving the effectiveness and implementation of legislation to ensure accountability of federal institutions, and that this may include integration of climate change considerations at all levels of federal decision-making.
There was a specific focus on climate, but that's not to take away from the other resolution passed. It's simply to say that we agreed to focus on climate considerations in the FSDA, in reviewing the FSDA. These are both great climate conversations to have.
I agree we need a calendar. We will get to a calendar.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
I don't think there's any competition here. All we're doing right now is suggesting that there are some major gains to be achieved on climate accountability, to bind this government and future governments so that the operations, policies, and programs are rendered so that the footprint is lessened. If we're able to achieve a series of legislative and regulatory recommendations following the FSDA that will help ratchet up federal obligations, and that will show a way forward for other governments to improve the measurability, say, of climate outcomes in relation to government operations, that's great. I think we have the power to do that. What we don't have the power to do....
We'll see how this plays out in the resolution you've proposed and the work we do in relation to that motion, which I look forward to doing.
We will see how much we're really able to influence those processes, whether it's clean technology or intergovernmental matters; I think our ability to influence will be less. But I think if we present to the government a series of recommendations that says we want the FSDA to be changed in this way and that way, we can have a major impact on probably the most significant actor in the climate question in the country.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The concern we have is that SDGs are mentioned in the motion as the second item, unless I'm reading a motion that was further changed.
Liberal
William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC
I guess what I would propose is that we place our focus on the climate aspects of the FSDA.