Environment Committee on Feb. 26th, 2007

[Morgan Williams]

We have a very wide range, and in fact that's a very good question. I come from a science background, as did my predecessor. When I started this role 10 years ago, I was tending to recruit in specific science disciplines. But quite quickly we found that we needed a much broader base, not simply in discipline or subject, but also in life experience. So we put a lot more work into our recruitment, which gets people who have a very rich canvas of experience behind them in terms of life and work. We have people who span political sciences, economics, physical sciences, and all the usual ones related to things in health and chemistry. And we've had people who were historians, for example, on our staff.

So we now go for a very wide range of people, and one of the real characteristics we look for is a talent to sift oats from chaff, because we're dealing with such complex systems. We tend to find that people with double degrees--that is, a degree that's in the arts and the sciences, or it might be in law and political science--give you another dimension of strength.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much.

Now we're going to turn to Mr. Vellacott for five minutes.

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

I want to initially ask questions to Mr. Williams, and possibly to Roberta or Patrick if there is time. But my colleague may have those as well.

First, and this may be hard, Mr. Williams, but I appreciate that as a professional and as an objective civil servant, you've given us a lot of the pros in terms of having the commissioner's role be independent of the Auditor General and the pros in terms of the advocacy role as well, or of extending it to that.

Can you think really hard about whether there are those who would say—and you probably won't agree with them, and I understand that perfectly—in the public debate in New Zealand, that these are some of the cons, some of the negatives, of having your role be independent of the Auditor General? And also, are there naysayers, if you will, who would also suggest that there is some downside or some con or negative in respect of having an advocacy role?

You might have to kind of think hard, because your bias would obviously state it in terms of the positives. But are there those who have raised these in the public arena? I may be asking the wrong person, but I'm going to try here and hope that, as an objective civil servant, you might offer some of those critiques by others, which you would, of course, dismiss.

[Morgan Williams]

The first thing is that the question of whether we should be part of the audit office has never been asked, because we never have been. Maybe that's a blind spot that the whole of New Zealand has. We've never thought of that model, because we had an auditor's office, we had an ombudsman's office, and then we established a commissioner for the environment office. So that one's never been debated.

The second part of your question, I think, is absolutely on the button. Has there been debate about the role, and are we doing enough of some things? Yes, of course there has been.

One of the things is whether we should be focusing more on bigger systems and whether we should be more of an advocate or less of an advocate. And yes, that has waxed and waned.

Should we be more targeted in our work and look at particular sections, such as legislation around water management, which we've signalled is important, in great detail, or should we do more on the bigger systems? Should we focus more on the concerns that are coming from citizens? Some of them are quite focused, very small concerns.

That debate waxes and wanes. But at the end of the day, with a piece of legislation like this that creates an office like this, if it's going to be very independent, it's inevitably going to be shaped by the strengths of the appointee, the commissioner. That's the very nature of these sorts of roles and the capability the commissioner brings together as a team.

What I've also done in my 10 years is develop a series of strategic plans. We bring together a very wide collection of New Zealand citizens who have a great interest in this broader sphere of work. And we've actually involved your Canadian commissioners in that process. We've developed a series of rolling five-year strategic plans, which sets a frame and signals to New Zealand society, and signals to Parliament, what it is that we think are the strategic areas, and the components of those, into which we think we should be putting our very limited resources.

So in a sense, that's a way of going out and having a wider conversation with New Zealand about what it is we do, how we do it, and whether it is being effective.

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

Generally speaking, I would assume there's a ringing endorsement all around in terms of your advocacy role, your independence, and so on. Does nobody have a contrary statement in respect of any of that?

[Morgan Williams]

No, the only contrary statement has come from some of the more right-wing elements of our Parliament. It's not specific to this office. It's whether you need these sorts of instruments in our democracy at all—the so-called grievance industry model—that they get concerned about. I'm sure you have those sorts of debates as well.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

Is my five minutes just about up? Where am I?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

You have 30 seconds for a very short question and answer.

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

I'll turn it over to Chris, because I think he has a line of questioning and he wants to proceed.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

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

We didn't render him five minutes at all?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Perhaps you have a very short final question.

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

Okay, I'll put it this way, very quickly to Ms. Santi.

Was there anything at the time the 1993 red book promise was made in respect of this whole issue of an independent commissioner? You made a point here that you provide “public service advice in respect of changes to the organization of government, including the creation, alteration or wind up of governmental bodies.”

Did you give any advice or do any kind of a report, internal or otherwise, with respect to whether to proceed with an independent commissioner back in or about 1993?

[Roberta Santi]

I wasn't doing this job in 1993, but I think there are a lot of issues on the public record in terms of why the government and Parliament chose the option it did choose. I think there are a number of issues. It was placed in the Auditor General's office for one reason, because of the past that the Auditor General's office had with respect to the audit function, and as well, the credibility the Auditor General had at the time and the importance of impartiality with respect to this issue.

I believe there were also issues around institutional streamlining, etc. A decision was taken during a period where there were very significant cuts taking place across government, and so there was great attention brought to bear on the resource implications for establishing such an office.

I think those are largely the ones on the public record.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vellacott.

We'll go to our last set of questions, for five minutes, in order to finish in time to deal with the motion before us.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I won't take the five minutes, but thank you, Chair.

I want to go back to Mr. Williams. I just had the chance to glance at your executive summary that you cited, The cities and their people.

One of the things I noted here and that I wanted to ask you about is that in the executive summary you had asked for the establishment of a sustainable development unit to inform ministries in terms of how they could better meet the goals of a sustainable economy and a sustainable society. In your report—I guess this is a little different from what we've seen—that's where you're actually pushing policy by way of recommending, but you've also done a study at the same time. It's my understanding from your testimony earlier that the study you did was something you took on by yourself. You weren't charged with that responsibility. That's correct, right?

[Morgan Williams]

That's correct.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So then you came out with these policies—I really like some of these recommendations—for government to grab on to. I guess it was called Global 21. Is that the name of the recommendation series you had?

[Morgan Williams]

It was Agenda 21.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

How was it received by government and how was it received by the population at large?

[Morgan Williams]

There was a very, very good reception, particularly from the local government in New Zealand, and that's where a lot of what we were trying to say was picked up, and many things started to evolve. So think of it as an empowerment of voice within local government, both executive and elected.

In terms of what happened at the central government level, it mainly played out in terms of what happened in the shift in research funding to all the areas around cities and settlements and the layers within that—so thinking about cities in a sustainability context. We raised a lot of issues around elements in that, like, for instance, the mobility land-use interconnections, all the water issues, both the potable water and the treated. We subsequently did another piece of work that we published under the title, Ageing Pipes and Murky Waters.

If you look through all our reports, we go to a lot of trouble to think about how you characterize the nature of what we're trying to talk about. So where we were looking at the flow of science, for example, into environmental policy, the title of the report was Missing Links. Where we were looking at economic instruments in terms of managing waste, the title was Changing behaviour.

Why am I saying that? I'm saying that because we need to be effective in this. You need to actually capture hearts and minds with those first simple things, and then they get grabbed by all sorts of people and picked up. It's an empowerment process.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks, Chair. That's fine.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar.

Now I want to thank all our witnesses.

Mr. Williams, when you started this morning you mentioned that it was 21 degrees. Are you in Christchurch or Auckland?