Evidence of meeting #15 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was kyoto.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That is correct.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
At present, it is about one megatonne. So, two megatons is more or less the maximum we achieved.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
In other words, there has been a one-megaton reduction to date under the three programs we examined. That is all the information we can provide you at this point.
Conservative
Luc Harvey Conservative Louis-Hébert, QC
So we can calculate the rate of effectiveness at approximately $ 800 per tonne at present.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
You can calculate that, but I cannot. There again, you must be in a position to examine all of the programs and their effectiveness.
You are not the first to ask me that question. I think it would be a good idea for committee members to look at the results of the exercise undertaken by Treasury Board, which examined the programs on the basis of their effectiveness, to determine how they were performing. Treasury Board has the answer to your question.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was looking through your report trying to find the sentence that says 2012 targets are unachievable. Was that a conclusion that your group drew in its assessment?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We have said it was doubtful that we could get there.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Based upon the numbers, some targets, and also on the fact—I guess this was the key point—that the two biggest contributors, the transportation sector and the industry sector, were not up to the task.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So based upon the then government's plans and their inability to address these two sectors, Kyoto was not achievable.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
It would have been doubtful that Kyoto targets would have been achieved.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
But the suggestion is not made by your audit that a proper plan, a better plan, one that actually addressed those two large sectors, could achieve Kyoto.
Do you take any international scope in this? Does your office look at other examples of what governments have been doing or what other auditors are doing in assessment? Or is it entirely a Canada-only perspective?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The decision not to look at what was going on internationally and not to do some kind of comparison was made on purpose, because the bulk of the work was to cover federal programs and federal management of the climate change file. At the time, we couldn't cover anything broader than that, so we made the decision to put the international aspect aside.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You said early on that there was no social or economic assessment made when we committed to our initial round of targets. Has there been any assessment made by government as to the actual cost of missing the 2012 target dates?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Not to my knowledge, but maybe Richard knows more.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
To my knowledge, there hasn't been any. I think the previous government was trying to implement its new Project Green and was hoping to achieve the reduction of 270 megatonnes that it calculated would be the target we needed to reach in order to comply with Kyoto. But for the new government, we haven't seen any analysis yet.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So just for the committee's sake and for the sake of us all understanding this, to miss Kyoto, to miss the commitments Canada has signed onto under the United Nations, penalties are incurred by the country in terms of targets, and a limit is placed on the country's abilities to use trading systems and other mechanisms.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
This is what we read when we look at the Kyoto agreement. As we were doing the audit, I asked the same question to my auditors who were doing the work in the departments. I have to say that it's not really clear what the impact of not achieving our Kyoto target will be. That will be a very interesting question to ask of the bureaucrats: if they have made any kind of analysis and report. We were talking about the cost of inaction, but in this case the cost of not committing to this target may have some financial impact for sure.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You looked at one foundation. There are others. Why just one? Why not look at some of the other groups, the non-profits and foundations to which that money had been distributed, particularly under the light that money had been disbursed, not spent, and there was no accounting mechanism?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The main reason we looked at SDTC was that it was really the only foundation that had—and still has—a clear focus on climate change. Also, a lot of money was given to that foundation to achieve greenhouse gas reductions. Those were the main reasons why we decided to go with SDTC.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yet through the simple math of what's left over from what was distributed to these other organizations and groups, the other amount of money, when accumulated, is substantial. It's in the hundreds of millions, certainly.
I appreciate the scope of trying to find $6 billion and only coming up with $1 billion, and how, of that portion of $1.7 billion, this is where a majority of it went. I guess my concern is that as the average taxpaying Canadian is looking at this, $1 million or $10 million is quite a bit of money. We'll be looking at estimates in the next couple of weeks. I'm wondering if we can rely upon your office to know where the budget lines were for money we have not done a proper assessment or analysis of yet.
I'm assuming your audit office was unable to reach a conclusion as to whether money distributed was spent well, so who does know that? Does anybody?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Treasury Board must be able to answer your question. On our side, we can send back to the committee some of the figures we have on how much money was given to other foundations with respect to climate change. We have that information in the office.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
I will just lead off with a very simple question.
In terms of the shortfall in meeting the targets, the Kyoto objectives and so on, if there hadn't been a change of government, would you be saying that we need new targets? Would you still be making an assumption that there are new targets that need to be set?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The assessment we made has nothing to do with who the government is; we look at the numbers. Based on the plan we looked at, you have to conclude that it would have been very difficult to achieve the targets.
