Environment Committee on Nov. 28th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Ms. Comeau.

[Louise Comeau]

I'll just speak to the importance of setting stretched targets and the reason why Kyoto is so valuable. John said on several occasions that we need realistic targets, as has the government.

I spent seven years working with communities across Canada and set up the Green Municipal Fund, which achieved significant emissions reductions from projects. That happened because we set a very high bar. We said, “Don't come to us if you can't look at achieving 35% reductions from your current performance.” We did that because we wanted people to stretch. We have serious barriers of people not understanding what their potential is. We never had a case where people couldn't meet those objectives.

The challenge we face is that people lack confidence in their capacities. They don't understand how easy it is. Reductions are easier than you think, and we make money at it. That's why realistic targets are not enough. You need a stretched target that drives people to be more creative.

So I encourage the government to go beyond just looking at what we can do now and push industry to be creative and come into the system in a much more creative way, with real targets.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We'll have Mr. Godfrey, please.

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

I'm interested, of course, in how the business community is--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

A point of order. Mr. Chair, you allowed 30 seconds to respond for each of the four witnesses and--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We're at 14:22 in terms of the time. This topic is about Kyoto, so we have a wide range. It's to update us on Kyoto, so I think we can listen to everyone.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Chair, you allowed--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

They will have their opportunity, Mr. Warawa.

We're on to Mr. Godfrey, please.

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

What I would like to do is turn to the business community, because it seems to me that if I consider the position over time of not only your organizations but others--the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, the Canadian Petroleum Producers Association--your position could be summarized as the following: you have moved from skepticism to despair without an intervening period of leadership.

You have in your paper, Ms. Hughes Anthony, both positions beautifully laid out. You have, on the one hand, repeated, I hate to say this, the old canard--it's really stale--that there is much controversy surrounding the science around greenhouse gases, climate change effects, and human activities. It is on page 4. But then you urge us, in the spirit of despair, to get on with adaptation, because it's clear that no action will be enough to stop the effects of climate change; you can only slow down the changes. There is on the next page a dispute about the science. So here we are, we've moved from one to the other.

In terms of lack of leadership, you refer, and you have done over the years, to the badly flawed Kyoto Protocol, the fatal flaws of trading systems, and so on. But you fail--you always fail--to come up with a credible alternative at the international level. I can remember a press conference you gave with this coalition for climate responsibility or something, some kind of a front organization you all set up and which has now disappeared into the mists of time. I don't understand, given the evolution of the science and the evolution of our understanding of the economic impact on the world of not getting on with it, of not mitigating, why you don't change the discourse. I don't see why you, as the business community, don't take a leadership role and get on with it, instead of asking for more broad reviews and consultations and all the rest of it, which has the effect of slowing it down and making it harder to meet our commitments under the protocol.

[Nancy Hughes Anthony]

Mr. Godfrey, I think you may have taken liberties with some of the text in my presentation. I would disagree with some of your characterizations.

We don't argue about the importance of climate change. We totally agree with the importance of climate change and the importance of Canada doing something about it and being part of the international effort to so do. We do feel that way back when, Canada negotiated a set of targets and timelines without taking into account certain absolute facts, like the fact that at that particular time, Canada was at the beginning of an extensive expansion of its oil and gas, and particularly of its gas exports to the United States, which as you know, are counted in our targets, and that our economy was growing and so on. So I feel that we, for starters, at that time negotiated badly.

Now, that perhaps is irrelevant. The point is, we do need to make the effort. I have referred to, and I can give you detail on, what many, many companies have done in many sectors of the economy to reduce greenhouse gases. I think there is leadership there. I think the time is now to stop pointing fingers at each other, and the time is now to kind of get on with a positive plan that involves business, that involves governments at all levels, that involves the environmental groups, and that should involve consumers. But it has to be something that is realistic enough for Canadians to get behind.

I don't go to meetings in Bonn, Nairobi, and Bali. I'm concerned about the competitiveness of businesses in ridings like yours, Mr. Godfrey. They have to know what the rules of the game are. I don't think, at this point, that anybody understands what the rules of the game are.

So I do take exception to your remarks, and I think it's the time for us to be coming together on a more practical basis, not poking fingers at each other.

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

I'm simply reading from your presentation, where you say there's much controversy around the science.

I'd like to get a reaction from Mr. Bramley or Ms. Comeau.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Very briefly, please.

[Louise Comeau]

Obviously the scientific consensus is strong, so I'm not going to get into that debate, but I would comment on the need to challenge this perspective or rhetoric that somehow Canada should not be participating in international negotiations.

It comes back to our security. It comes back to the comments made by Mr. Bigras around the issue of adaptation. This country will be hit hard by climate change, and it will hurt our economy. We can only protect Canada if we secure reductions from all countries in the world. That's why we have to show that we are serious about our targets, so that we can demonstrate leadership so that other countries will take on comparable targets.

That's why we'd better be in Bonn, that's why we'd better be in Nairobi, and that's why we'd better be in Bali.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Vellacott, please.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

I have some questions for you, Ms. Comeau, about a paper written by Kathryn Harrison, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia. She said you were a co-author, along with the Martin PMO, of the widely discredited Liberal climate plan, Project Green.

Is Dr. Harrison's paper correct in that respect?

[Louise Comeau]

No, actually, and I can explain that very easily. Kathryn did interview me, and she has corrected her paper.

Sage is funded by foundations, just as a number of environment groups are in Canada. I was funded to develop a climate plan for Canada, which I did do. It has nothing to do with Project Green. It is available to anyone who wants it.

I did finally--

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

So you played no role in--

[Louise Comeau]

Hold on, I'm not finished.

I published my paper, with the IISD in fact, and that paper went into--

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

I need to jump in here. I only have five minutes.

[Louise Comeau]

Well, do you want the answer?

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

I want to know if you had any role in creating Project Green.

[Louise Comeau]

I provided a paper that went into the system, and I was consulted on some of the measures that were in there, as were other groups, such as Pembina and so on. Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada developed Project Green. That is a government plan and not anything to do with our work.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Okay.

The Harrison paper--and maybe this is something that's suggested now--credits you with the idea of a climate fund to purchase emission credits. Is Dr. Harrison's paper correct in respect to that?

[Louise Comeau]

I had proposed the clean energy trust, which was similar to what I'd created with the green municipal fund. Samy Watson, the deputy minister at Environment Canada, created the climate fund, which does not in fact represent the proposal I made. I was proposing a carbon bank for Canada that would have financed projects in a variety of ways. What came out of the department was a project or a fund to buy offsets. That's not what was proposed.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Were you or your organization paid by the Liberal PMO or the Government of Canada to develop or implement any of those plans at all?