Environment Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I made this mistake at the last committee meeting as well.

It is important that if we are doing Bill C-288 to be on the aspects of Bill C-288. It is with respect that I offer this. The questions are around the Clean Air Act. We have a whole legislative committee that is going to be struck for that. I think our duties right now are to look at this bill and its implications.

While I appreciate Mr. Warawa's enthusiasm for his government's bill, it is not actually before us. I waited for the question to be arrived at through the commentary, but it is more the questions of Bill C-288 that are of interest to the committee right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen.

I would ask you, Mr. Warawa, to get to your question if you can. Your time is running.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Yes, I have a minute and ten seconds.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

The question concerns the suggestion of immediate impacts, in addition to what the government is already doing, concerning Bill C-288. We need specifics. Can you give any additional specific recommendations on what the government should be doing?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Yes, and I've laid them out quite clearly, for example, in The Morning After. I believe you only need four or five policies. The policies I've seen so far seem wrong-headed to me. On the public transit subsidy, we're just simulating that right now. I may come out with something from the C.D. Howe Institute, but our guess is that it will have very little effect on people's use of transit. It will effectively be a transfer payment to people who already buy transit passes; therefore, its cost per tonne reduced would be exorbitant, at $500 or $1,000.

Likewise with ethanol content. If you don't put in the other policies that I'm talking about to constrain people's use of the atmosphere, it could very well be that the refiners that are built to help make ethanol would burn coal or whatever was the cheapest fuel available, as we've seen in the United States. We're also doing a simulation for the C.D. Howe Institute that we will probably come out with at some point, and it will show again a negative effect of that kind of policy.

Unless you're interested in moving very quickly on a strong message about use of the atmosphere in the way I've talked about, I don't think your policies will work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We're going to Mr. Godfrey and Mr. Silva.

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

These are three questions to you, Mr. Jaccard. I know my colleague Mario wants to ask questions as well, but these are three interrelated questions.

If we took seriously your suggestion to get on with the four or five policies that you've proposed, by what date would you be comfortable in saying we would see predictable, measurable effects against the business as usual case if we hadn't gone that route? What's the earliest date we could see that? That's the first question.

Secondly, would I be right in assuming that part of the answer to the question is, of course, the price that you put on things? Whether it's a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, depending on what you put into the machine, you're going to get certain kinds of results. I guess that shows us the policy options and the choices we have to make.

The third question is, whatever route you go, whether it's a shallower or steeper rate of increase on the carbon tax or on the cap-and-trade system, isn't it possible to express what is going to happen by 20-whatever—you're going to tell me what the date is—as a target? In other words, that would tell us, as a society, that if we want to get somewhere in the vicinity of this, these four or five policies have to play out over this period of time and at this rate. In other words, that would suddenly be the target against which we would contrast the Kyoto benchmark or the Kyoto target. Forget about this achievability factor.

I just want to know the date by which we can find out the results if we took your advice. By when could we measure it? Give us some sense of the ratios. Can we express that as a target?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could also pose my questions and he could answer them and save time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Yes, go ahead.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Professor Jaccard, you mentioned the fact that you don't agree that there should be known targets. You said no to targets, but yes to obligations and constraints. You want to put on penalties, as you put it. But when you set targets, don't you also set obligations to meet those targets? I'd also put constraints when putting targets, so I'm a little confused by your statement. Maybe you want to clarify that as well.

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

I'll do that first. It's a semantics issue.

I've gotten irritated over the years by governments talking about targets. In fact, politicians do that often. They get up and talk about a target, but there is no means of achieving it. I notice that in certain policies where people really mean business—let's say the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1990—they don't talk about it as a target; they talk about it as an obligation, a cap, a requirement.

If someone says that this is our target, a target to me implies some notion that you might not achieve it. I guess that's my idea. What we're saying is that if we listen to the scientists, we really need to have some firm requirements that we're going to achieve.

The question was when we would see change if the policies were implemented immediately. You'd see change immediately.

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

Measurable change?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Yes, because the way capital stock turns over, people are making decisions all the time, right now, on a new electricity generating plant, or a lot of other smaller decisions, such as what kind of vehicle they're going to buy. The government is doing advertisements with Rick Mercer, warning people that this is how much more expensive it's going to be to get fuel the next time they go out to buy a car and for them to look at what their options are. So that capital stock is turning over incrementally all the time.

When I say “measurable”, of course, there are bands of uncertainty, so it's probably not three years down the road, but I would say that's already going on. In our models and with the data that starts showing up from Statistics Canada and others, we would be able to detect that on a five- to ten-year timeframe. That's in the “Burning Our Money” C.D. Howe report that I think you've used before. It shows that you are already inflecting away from the growth path that you are already on. So that would happen immediately.

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

In other words, we can find a way around this semantic difficulty. I mean, with that predictable effect, the effect is felt immediately, the measurability is over a five- to ten-year period, if I understand it, and the degree of the effect depends on how drastically you put in the price incentives. Is that right?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Yes.

The distinction I need to always make, and this was even in the national climate change process, is that people confuse actions--the things individuals and businesses do to reduce greenhouse gases--with policies. The policies need to be immediate--there are some delays, which Bob has legitimately pointed out--and then the actions happen incrementally, over time.

Quite often I get frustrated. People will say, oh, the actions are going to happen over time, so we'll implement the policy later. The point is, no, the actions don't even start until the policy is there.

You also asked about the intensity. That's why you need that graduated signal, to say to people, look, it's going to get more expensive to keep using the atmosphere in this way. We want everyone to know that, because that really helps business in thinking about the research and development and the investment dollars as they head down the road.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Ogilvie, I know you want to jump in. Could you do that briefly, please?

[Ken Ogilvie]

If I could, because we have a really interesting.... This is hot off the press, from about a week ago; it's primarily about acid rain.

[Dr. Bob Page]

Everybody is selling their publications.

[Ken Ogilvie]

That's right. I have more here.

There is a good dose of science and policy in here. It's a microcosm of climate change as a much bigger issue. We have used science and the convention protocol process marvellously well; we have used caps and targets and so on in the process. There is a meeting and a sequencing as to how policy gets done--and the interplay with the science. I would encourage you to read this, even the science parts, because they were written to convey that we have solved other problems by using these approaches.

There are specific meanings to this whole process of conventions and protocols, which Canada literally invented around the acid rain issue internationally. I think it is very important to understand how we have solved problems in the past.

Having worked in policy and written cabinet documents and all that sort of thing for a few years...you need something if you're the policy person who is writing for cabinet. You need a target. You need something to work against. It has to be specific. You can't go to cabinet with a goodwill list of ideas. You have to have something you're pushing back on. We do need to get targets or caps or whatever we call them--I don't really care. But you do need a policy framework; you do need some targets, some science, and a process on top of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Ogilvie.

Mr. Harvey.

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

In the Kyoto Protocol, it was understood that there would be foreign carbon credit purchases. Various amounts were put forward. Do you believe that Canada can move ahead by purchasing carbon credits overseas, Mr. Page?

Answer yes or no. We only have a few minutes left and I have other questions to ask.

[Dr. Bob Page]

Very quickly, I'll go back to the words I used earlier: a safety valve in terms of international credits, to try to cushion Canada against heavy price increases, and in instances such as I mentioned before, where we had to go international, because domestically we didn't have a policy regime in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Anybody else want to jump in on that one?

Go ahead, Mr. Harvey.

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

Mr. Ogilvie?