Evidence of meeting #45 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 role.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Morgan Williams  Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand
Dyane Adam  Former Commissioner of Official Languages, As an Individual
Roberta Santi  Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Machinery of Government, Privy Council Office

4:15 p.m.

A voice

They're all yours.

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Geoff Regan

Mr. Dewar, it's over to you, for the NDP, for ten minutes.

4:15 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

Thank you, Chair.

I thought we'd go local and then go global.

I just wanted to ask you something, Ms. Adam. In your opening statement, you made a comment about anticipating problems and the importance of looking at things at the front end, not just after things have happened, if you will—of anticipating problems. I find this rather interesting and hopeful in terms of how we deal with problems.

Can you give us an example? Often we see, with auditors' reports in particular, that it's always after the accident has happened, as opposed to preventing the accident. I'm just wondering if you can give us an example of how you used that methodology in your work. That would be a good start.

4:20 p.m.

Former Commissioner of Official Languages, As an Individual

Dyane Adam

A lot of the work we do is basically on the facts that we get either from our investigations, our audits, or our special studies, and also analyzing what government is doing, their policies, etc.

One thing that my predecessor did was a study on the governmental transformations when there were budget cuts. That study was very thorough and showed that in fact the linguistic rights of Canadians really eroded over that period. For example, airports were sold without any consideration to linguistic rights, with the consequence, for example, that at the airport in Sudbury, where about 30% of the population is francophone, francophones have no guarantee of being served in their language now.

So based on that, we recommended to the government at the time that they should develop a new policy that whenever they do such transformations they should ensure that there will not be an erosion of linguistic rights. Whatever they do, we do not say, you should do that. You should make sure as you go, or if you do governmental recommendations—

So Madame Robillard at the time did develop such a policy in Treasury Board. And we hope that when they do such a transformation they will check to make sure there is no loss of linguistic rights. That's one example.

4:20 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

If I can turn to Mr. Williams, you were referring to Ontario and your experience in working with the commissioner in Ontario. You'll also be familiar with the Environmental Bill of Rights, then, that Ontario put in place, I believe it was in 1994. Do you have a similar kind of framework to that the Environmental Bill of Rights they have in Ontario?

4:20 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

No, we don't. Our major piece of environmental legislation in New Zealand is in fact the Resource Management Act 1991.

4:20 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

With the work that you've been doing in your role, if you were to go to the government today, and they said you could have anything you want, are there powers you would like to have to extend your office in terms of the scope of the mandate you've been given presently? Is there anything you need, beyond money—which we all need, I'm sure?

4:20 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

That's a very good question.

In fact, we've reflected on that quite a lot recently, because we've just been putting together a 20-year history of the office and have commissioned some writing on that. Given that it's my last two weeks in this role, I've been reflecting on that sort of thing.

In fact, there's nothing we've found wanting in the act. There is nothing that I or my predecessor, Helen Hughes, has found that they couldn't do within the scope of the Environment Act 1986—which is extraordinary, but that's the case.

4:20 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

That is indeed good news.

I would like to follow up on that. You laid out the five areas that your office focuses on, and when you look at the role that you have as a guardian—and it seems to be 60% of the work you do—can you tell me a little bit about this? When you do an overview of a system, a systems analysis, and being a guardian, if I can put it this way, what kind of stick do you have to wield when you uncover something? For instance, let's take a look at water. If you find out that there are improper sewage systems, or there's the lack of filtration systems available, and you uncover this, what kind of stick do you have as a commissioner to wield to force government to act?

4:20 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

The only stick at the end of the day is the power of disclosure. We have no powers other than the powers to recommend. My predecessor said to me when I came into this job 10 years ago, “Morgan, you haven't got any teeth, but you've got powerful gums.”

The reality is that it's the power to actually tell the story to the whole of New Zealand. All our reports get tabled in Parliament. They're not part of an annual report; we do that as a statutory requirement. We table our reports through the Speaker as public documents, and then we have a marketing program that we wrap around them. So we take it out to society, and then that empowers many others to move.

I think one of the important things is that with a role like this, which at the end of the day is only ever recommendatory—and I think that's exactly how it should stay—you have to look at its influence away beyond the actual recommendations. Counting up action on recommendations is absolutely no measure of the performance of an office like this, anywhere in the world. What you need to be looking at always is what is the wider conversation, dialogue, that you generate, and what subsequently flows from that. We've worried a lot about our influence. We do outcome assessments of all our reports two, three, or four years later, and we look away beyond just the response to the recommendations, and that's an important point.

4:25 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

In other words, you're more outcome-focused than looking per se at the last thing that just happened. You're looking at where the policy is going and what the outcomes are that were to be achieved, and you measure those. Is that a fair way of putting things?

4:25 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

Yes, we're very focused on the long-term outcomes. I'll take you back to the example of The cities and their people. In that piece of work, there were no specific recommendations. We deliberately didn't put forward recommendations. We put in a whole series of areas that needed critical thinking and focus. Five or six years later, you could actually see the influence. And that wasn't our assessment; many others were making that assessment. But you have to be really patient in terms of the outcomes that you can achieve from this sort of work.

4:25 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

The last question I have is this. How many times do you report to Parliament? You have your annual report, but does it depend on the work you're doing and the reports you're engaged in?

4:25 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

Absolutely. We will table anywhere from three or four to seven, eight, or nine reports in a year, and that's entirely dependent on the size of our work stream. And we don't table all our reports. If a report does not have specific recommendations, we don't always table it in Parliament, but we do sometimes what we call “think pieces”. We did one that we released in 2004 on education for sustainability, and that one doesn't have any recommendations, but it was distributed very widely.

4:25 p.m.

NDP

Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Geoff Regan

Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar.

Now we'll turn to the Conservatives. Mr. Warawa has indicated that he is going to share his time with Mr. Harvey. I don't know if he's going to hear me since he has gone to the back of the room, but I'm not sure it's advisable to share that with him. Unfortunately he isn't here to hear himself being teased.

Anyway, over to you, Mr. Warawa.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

As you've said, I'll try to share my time. Can you give me a heads-up when we're at five minutes? I have a habit of taking more than the five and using up some of Mr. Harvey's time, but hopefully I can do this quickly.

I would like to direct the questioning this afternoon to Mr. Williams.

As you are aware, we're looking at who the Commissioner of the Environment would report to. At present she reports to Parliament through the Auditor General's office, and she has done an incredibly good job over the years.

A little bit of the history, which you may be aware of, is that in 1993 the former Liberal government had in their red book a promise to have the Commissioner of the Environment as a stand-alone office, as is being proposed today. They did not keep that promise, and they had the commissioner as part of the Auditor General's office.

Recently there was a change in the position of the Commissioner of the Environment. Madame Johanne Gélinas is no longer the commissioner, and now we have Mr. Thompson as the interim commissioner. Almost immediately after the change from Madame Gélinas to Mr. Thompson, because Madame Gélinas is so well respected, as is Auditor General Sheila Fraser—both have done a terrific job in serving Canada--there was suddenly this motion from the Liberal members to have the commissioner as a stand-alone.

We're in a political environment in which one would question the motives. The Liberals had a chance to have that position as a stand-alone. Now, suddenly, it appears that maybe it's because of years of critique by the Auditor General. I hope that's not the motive, but it appears that it may be a possibility. So this is the environment we find ourselves in.

In my questions I want to be specific about the pros and cons of having the commissioner's role be independent of the Auditor General. When the Auditor General was one of the witnesses here—as was the former Auditor General—the testimony we received was this , and I'll quote from her presentation: “The Office has become a world leader in environmental auditing. Auditors from around the world have requested our advice and many of them haven taken courses on environmental auditing that we developed here in Canada.”

She also raised concerns in a letter dated February 5, saying, “As I mentioned last week, policy advocacy and legislative audit simply do not mix. Auditors cannot in fact, or in appearance, audit their own work.”

So the question before us is what the best structure is. Could you provide your perspective? What are the pros and cons of having the commissioner be independent from the Auditor General?

4:30 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

I'll open by saying that I don't really want to get into the politics of the Canadian debate.

But the observation I would make first is that the environmental work of the office in Canada is superb. For instance, the assessment of your nation's action on climate change in 2006 was an extraordinarily good piece of work. So that is clearly what can be done within your current structure.

I think the more important point to make is that auditing is just one of the powerful tools for the assessment of progress, the assessment of the intent of what governments do. The thing about trying to advance environmental sustainability and everything that flows from that is that it is so much wider that you need to have many more quivers in your bow. Choose your analogy. But you cannot rely—and nobody would pretend that you can—on all the constructs of good audit methodology, which Johanne and others in your commission used to a great extent.

So you need to think about what it is that you're trying to achieve with the office. As has my predecessor, I very much focus on the outcomes that we're trying to achieve, the differences that we're trying to make, and the complexities that we're dealing with.

The point that I really want to emphasize is that we absolutely agree with your Auditor General that you need to stay distant from the policy formation of the government of the day. We go to some length to do that, and there's no way that we view our role as policy advice to government. We very clearly position ourselves when we offer advice to select committees, which we do quite regularly, that it's advice to the select committee; it's not advice to the government. If we feel that we're getting what we call sucked into the government policy processes in any way, we step back, and make that step back absolutely explicit.

In 20 years, we've never created any conflict in the way we work. Do we comment on policy? Absolutely, we do, because at the end of the day you can't be outcome-focused without being able to comment on whether the policy was a good policy in the first place. Many of our pieces of work are quite focused on whether the policy was in fact a good policy in the first place, not simply on whether the policy was carried out in a way that was the intent of the original architects.

I'm not sure if that helps.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC

Thank you; it does.

As far as time goes, I'll take the whole 10 minutes, and we'll give Mr. Harvey his round. How much time do I have left?

4:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Geoff Regan

I was only joking about it not being advisable to take the time away from Mr. Harvey. You have about two and a half minutes.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC

Okay, my apologies again to Mr. Harvey; I seem to do this every time.

My question to Mr. Williams regards the motion we have that asks the commissioner to take an advocacy role. I've asked the mover what is meant, what's the definition of advocacy. He indicated that he wants to hear from the witnesses first.

If in Canada it was the commissioner's responsibility to take an advocacy role, do you think that's a good idea? If so, what would your definition of advocacy be?

4:35 p.m.

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for New Zealand

Morgan Williams

You can't do this job unless you're advocating for better environmental management, advocating for more critical thinking about how you approach the management of natural capital, and advocating for the intelligent and sharper uses of the tools that we use in our economies and societies.

I'll give you an example. We did a piece of work looking at the use of economic instruments to improve the management of waste systems in New Zealand. We said, here's a whole bundle of tools that we're not using well. In that case, we advocated that much more critical thinking be put around, and the critical application of economic instruments be made to, the management of waste flows.

The role of advocacy is simply a way of saying that the role is to argue critically for more constructive ways of getting to good environmental outcomes, for greater efficiency in the use of resources, for living within the planet's limits, and for all the things that we're so familiar with.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC

Thank you.

4:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Vice-Chair Liberal Geoff Regan

Thank you very much, Mr. Warawa.

Now we'll turn to Mr. Rota, for five minutes.

4:35 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In her statement, Dyane Adam made a statement.

The following is noted on page 3, and I quote:

Third, this clause sets out the Commissioner's twofold role, to protect and promote the language rights of Canadians.

Then I go to a letter that was addressed to us by Madame Gélinas, and it states: “A commissioner must be able to offer a vision, an approach, a way of acting, and a general orientation. He or she must be able to debate, to promote activities, to work with departments in other ways than simply through audits.”

I guess the crucial question here is whether we want an environmental commissioner or whether we want an environmental auditor.

I have a question for both Mr. Williams and Mrs. Santi.

Mr. Williams, how would you operate differently if you were operating, over the last 20 years, as an auditor rather than as the commissioner?

Mrs. Santi, how do you see the Auditor General's office acting as a protector of a cause, such as the environment, as opposed to reviewing past performances as an auditor?

Mr. Williams, perhaps you can start. Thank you.