Environment Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2006

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

But the point was made by Mr. Harvey that we have until the end of February. It was the decision of the committee—and I respect that, which was the point I was bringing out—that they are going to do it within that timeframe.

Originally the proposal from the Liberals was that we do it I think the following week, but at the suggestion of Mr. Bigras, we sped it up another week. So in the spirit of cooperation, we agreed.

My motion then addresses, is CEPA still a priority? Absolutely it is to the government. Is it a priority to the members across? I hope so. What Mr. Harvey said is that we are willing to work harder. We are willing to work as hard as necessary to keep the CEPA review going, and that's the motion before us. Do the other members support having the CEPA review continue on? And it's basically black and white. We do, and we hope CEPA is a priority. Now I'll be disappointed if they show by not supporting this that CEPA is not important.

But, Mr. Chair, it is a legislative requirement. It deals with toxins and the health of Canadians, and for them to be turning their back against the pollution.... Canadians are dying prematurely because of illnesses due to toxic substances in our environment. We need to deal with it; it's a priority.

We heard from the David Suzuki Foundation. They wrote a paper saying it's one of the biggest crises facing Canada right now—greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, and basically we're at a crossroads. We were told by the commissioner that we're at a crossroads. Is CEPA...are toxic substances in our environment important? Right now we're at a crossroads, and this motion says you support dealing with the issue. Do you support dealing with the crisis or not? This side does, and we will work as hard as necessary to deal with that issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Okay. I think we have all had our opportunity to comment on this.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

We do not want to delay Bill C-288. What we are doing is deciding whether or not we want to add one sitting in order to continue the work on CEPA which we began in April. If we want to do a good job, then we must not lose our momentum or any of the information that we have already collected.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Harvey.

Let's go to the vote. We've been asked for a recorded vote.

[The Clerk]

It's tied, so it's in your hands.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thanks guys. Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed today.

I will vote in favour.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 6; nays 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

We can now move on to the work plan. I believe everyone has two proposals. Having looked at them, there are similarities, so I would like comments on them.

Obviously, we now have a clear direction to our clerk and researchers to go out and give a balanced panel once we decide on what the exact topic should be.

So could we address the work plan issue? Who wants to start?

Mr. Godfrey.

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

Mr. Chair, it seems to me the way to proceed is to see what our possibilities are and where there is common ground, get that out of the way, and then zero in on the differences.

The last work plan we submitted anticipated that there would be four sessions, and then we decided to open it up. Did you make it that we have actually six sessions for witnesses before we have to do clause-by-clause on the 5th? I think it's the 6th.

Okay. So the good news is that we actually have a couple of extra sessions beyond what we worked on.

I think the second piece of good news is that if I were to look for commonality, there is I think one session that deals with accountability issues. That is covered in our work plan as meeting number four, and in the Conservative work plan, although these meetings are not numbered, it's section 10 issues, where we have issues about the Auditor General's office, and the witnesses seem to be more or less the same. So it seems to me that if we take that off the table as being agreed upon--that is to say, it will be the last session of witnesses--I think there's enough commonality there.

What we then come down to is that we have five sessions into which we must find a space or a reorganization for three sessions from the opposition list and five sessions from the Conservative list. So now the challenge comes down to finding the place where we can again tighten up the list, perhaps, and find any more common ground.

One of the questions that obviously stands out, where there's a real difference of opinion--at least, on the two proposed lists--is that on the list of opposition witnesses we have two sessions that deal with an update on impacts. In other words, it's all about urgency. I cannot find a similar section in the Conservative plan, so that's a clear difference. On this side, given how this file is evolving and just to remind ourselves of why we're doing this, what it's about--climate change, global warming--I think we as a group would very much insist that we have a session on impacts. Once we get beyond that, the only other question is whether in fact on the impact side it may be possible to take some of the....

Well, I guess there are two kinds of impacts. There are the impacts of global warming itself and there are the impacts of attempting to do something about it. So there are two kinds of impacts: what is the cost of inaction, as Nicholas Stern would say, and what is the cost of action? Maybe that's one way we can pull out some of these witnesses.

Maybe that's really what we're talking about, and maybe we need another session, and you see, I think if I look at the Conservative list, the whole concept of target setting, action to date, and previous plans seems to me to be very much a similar kind of exercise. It's the history of what we've tried to do and what we're trying to learn from that, and how that would be reflected in what we're trying to do in this legislation.

That's something we would all want to be part of, so that's a third session, and then maybe a session on mechanisms. In other words, we would clearly want to know the plans and we will have a chance to do so, because, fortuitously, the Nairobi meeting will update us.

As I remember from Montreal, part of the issue is what we do after 2012. Once we have that information, we should somehow incorporate that understanding of international mechanisms and what penalties would look like and what new targets would look like, with regard to how that would affect the proposed bill.

I see four topics where we can rejig these things and get a balanced witness list. That leaves us a fifth. The fifth session would be a reminder; it was on our list as meeting number three, which is a reminder of how other countries are doing, because this is very much part of the debate. We've had a lot of discussion about other countries not meeting their targets. What are they doing about it? We could benefit from an update about all that, and then we go to the accountability issues and a sixth session with the Auditor General. Then we go to clause-by-clause.

Does that help a bit?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

What would be very helpful, too, for both of these lists, is to prioritize them. That would help our staff a lot. If we had the most important witnesses as a priority, then our clerk and researchers will try to achieve that, as we decide these topics.

Mr. Warawa, do you want to respond to Mr. Godfrey's proposal? You have a plan on the table as well, and then we'll go to Mr. Bigras and then Mr. Cullen.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Godfrey introduced his plan a week ago. We've submitted a plan, and there are some overlaps.

I had a little difficulty following some of his suggestions, but if we were to start with what he is proposing for meetings for next week, the 7th and the 9th, is he wanting to stay with the theme of urgency and have the first meeting on impacts of climate change: scientific, social, economic? Is that what he's proposing?

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

Yes, although I'm open to discussion. What I'm really trying to do is find a way of bringing these things together, finding some common ground, so my first thought was whether this is the right sequence. I'm still not sure.

The first order of business would be an update on the urgency of the matter, the kind of thing that Nicholas Stern was talking about, where we have a confluence of scientific and economic information, the cost of business as usual, if we do nothing.

The next one would be the potential costs of doing something. What are the risks of taking more aggressive action? Nicholas Stern puts it at 1% of GDP. We have lots of witnesses, who can be condensed a bit--lots of folks from industry associations, particularly the oil and gas sector, who are going to give us short-term costs. We don't need them all, but we can get a fairly good--so a kind of economic cost of action, according to some. And we'll have a balanced list there.

That was sessions one and two, if we can pull this off.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Excuse me, could I interrupt for a quick question? I'm not sure who it was, but somebody mentioned David Suzuki. You had him on your work plan of November 2, which is today. Is he not going to be available any other day?

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

I think that's the situation as far as I know it, but we just had to let that go.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

That's unfortunate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Again, if we have a priority list, then the clerk will do his very best to get those priorities to fit in. Of course, obviously Tuesday and Thursday of next week become the big challenges for them.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

We may then want to provide plans for our meetings of next week and then be a little flexible, depending on when witnesses are available for the other topics. If we could agree on the focus of the six meetings, we could give the clerk some flexibility to find out when we can best use or have access to the different witnesses. Are you okay with that?

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

I think it will work. There's an advantage in what you're proposing. What I'm now seeing is next week being as I've described, the first meeting on Tuesday being on both the scientific and economic impacts of climate change if we don't do anything. The impacts of action will potentially come on Thursday, and we have lots of people who will talk about that.

We then have a week-long break, at which point I think it would be most timely—and maybe we can even get the minister in for this—for the first session after we return to be an update on the Kyoto process, because it will be concluded at that point. It would be on what's happened. It's a complicated business, and I think we would want to spend serious time on that.

The fourth session, on the Thursday of the week after we get back, would be on mechanisms of various sorts: the ways in which we might be able to get to targets now that we know how the Kyoto process is evolving, target setting, and all those kinds of things.

The fifth session would then be the international session on how other countries are dealing with this and what we can learn from them.

The sixth session would be on accountability, which is when we'll bring in the Auditor General.

If people accept that as an outline, we then have to put on our thinking caps as to how we can take people out of one list and put them on to another. I'm making this up as I go along, but I don't know if that's helpful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We do have to trust our researcher and clerk to plug these people on this priority list in where they fit best, as they can get hold of them.

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

Let me actually ask Tim, although I realize he's reacting to stuff that's just happening here.

Does this have a kind of logic to it, or are we missing something here in terms of doability, and also in terms—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Obviously, we're going to Mr. Bigras, Mr. Cullen, Mr. Watson, and then Mr. Harvey.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I think we are straying off topic. I read the list of topics. We must not forget that there will be six sittings, which is a limited number. If you look at the government's proposals, you will see that the first one is target setting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent. I hope we will not spend an entire meeting discussing how the 6 per cent target was set. We could easily devote 10 sittings to that issue alone.

Then we have the following topics: actions to date and previous plans. In my opinion, we should first be dealing with the content of the bill itself. For example, is it feasible to require annual plans relating to the targets? Can we do this?

Moreover, the environment commissioner could tell us if this bill is a step in the right direction and if it can indeed be done. We could discuss how the 6 per cent target was set, we can even revisit previous plans, but what is most important is the full consideration of Bill C-288.

Can we submit plans to the House of Commons? What type of plan does Mr. Rodriguez's bill provide for? I think these are the basic elements that we should be tackling before we discuss what will happen in Nairobi and what will come after that.

Let's deal with the basics and the content. I am sure that the government has its own questions and is wondering if this bill can really fly. The government has every right to ask that question. Can annual plans be submitted? Some will say that they cannot, and the question is a perfectly legitimate one.

That is why the bill is before us today. Personally, I think it is possible and it can be done, but the government seems to think otherwise. As far as I am concerned, that is what we should be discussing, rather than spend the next six meetings wondering how the 6 per cent target was set. Because in the end, as they say, it is all academic.

Let's look at the content of the bill, which, to my mind, is much more constructive and is what we should really be doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Let's get input from everyone. Then we'll get back to the actual plan.

Mr. Cullen.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'm in agreement with Mr. Godfrey's comment on the post-Nairobi.... I would only suggest that it seems to take a little dust-settling after these types of meetings for the officials to know what the results actually were from Nairobi.

I am concerned about our putting officials or even the minister in front of us two days after returning from Nairobi. It usually doesn't happen this way in international agreements, that we know what the actual moving forward plan is, for either our government or international governments. So a meeting or two later for that....

The other concern I have in looking over these lists is that there are references in the bill to the provinces and the implementation and equivalency, yet we don't have any witnesses from the provinces, or any representation.

Following Mr. Bigras' point about the attainability of doing this over the next six years, it seems to me that at a minimum the provinces are going to be playing an absolutely massive role in it. I just don't see it as possible that the federal government, with the tools it has available, is going to be able to achieve the reductions of 30% or more.

The second point is that if provinces.... I met with the FCM, and I'm sure others have recently. The cities are often talked about as the vehicle for a lot of this to actually take place. There are places where the federal government works, but there are many places where it doesn't.

My last comment is that we have not spoken of or resolved this “past politicians” or “current politicians” list that the government has provided. That seems to be a point of contention.

As a very last comment, I wouldn't mind seeing some modelling, either from the government or a third-party validator or an ENGO or another country—from somebody—as to what the implications are of using a bill like this to achieve 6% below 1990 by 2012.

I understand there are pieces in this bill that talk about spending and pieces in the bill that talk about the Auditor General. There are pieces in this bill that can't happen, that you simply can't do in this bill.

I understand it was drafted with help, but that raises cause for concern, when you have a comment in the bill asking for the Auditor General to provide comment on policy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Certainly it's the committee's role to do that, and the Auditor General has met with me and I think with some of you to tell you about the difficulties she sees in this bill in terms of the role foreseen for her to play that she can't play.

It's the committee, though, that will be addressing those sorts of things.

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

I don't want to lose that point about the modelling. It is important for us to have somebody—and I don't even suggest it be someone who comes from government—who understands what types of tools would be needed for enforcement, so that the committee has good bearings for its final vote on this bill, on the question, if setting the 2012 target at 6% below 1990 is the objective set out, of what that means.

As to the provinces, I just do not understand how we can get through this without that component being heard from.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

I went to New York and looked at some of the modelling that is done by the UN. They had 40 models when I was there. I don't know what the number is now. What you get out depends on what you put in, in terms of the actual model of climate change. It is a very complex subject.