Environment Committee on March 22nd, 2007

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Those are the priorities of the governments of Manitoba and Ontario.

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

Very well.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

They used the money for that, yes.

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

Very well.

Let us come back to the matter of vehicles. You mentioned your $2,000 program. Could we have a special bill so as to make this $2,000 rebate to purchasers of hybrid cars retroactive, so as to include people such as Mr. Warawa?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

No.

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

It is impossible?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Unfortunately, the answer is no. I spoke with the mayor of Brandon, Manitoba. He purchased his car three days before the provincial announcement and he will not be getting any money either.

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

It would have been better to wait.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

It would have been better to wait.

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

It would have been better to wait!

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Allen.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for coming here today.

I want to follow a bit of the line of questioning on the provincial side, in the relationship with the provinces. Looking at the supplementary estimates for 2006-07, I see that we don't have a lot of integration and work with the provinces in that time, but I'm sure there has been a lot of work done in 2006-07.

So my first question is on the amount of effort leading up to this year's budget in working with the provinces. As a second part of that, I know that for provinces I sure like to see money get to the level where people are better equipped and more nimble to deal with the problem, so I think these transfers to the provinces are certainly effective.

So based on the recent announcements that we've made on transit, on lessons learned between 2006-07, the budget for this year, and certainly the announcements we've made for Ontario and the ecoTrust, could you comment with respect to the provinces' reaction to this change for the ecoTrust this year? How are the premiers reacting to this announcement?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I think it's a welcome engagement with the provinces. I hope we can extend it further to talk about what we can do. Energy, particularly electricity, is by and large a provincial responsibility. So now that we've put some money on the table to show that we operate differently, I hope there can be greater engagement with the provinces on a variety of initiatives, not just on climate change but also on other issues.

There also has to be a real acknowledgement that the provinces are all at very different places. New Brunswick's energy mix, in terms of their fleet, is very different from Nova Scotia's. Quebec's is very different from Saskatchewan's. So we have to keep that in mind. I've had very constructive meetings with a good number of my provincial colleagues, not all of them in the first 70 days, but I'm looking forward to, for example, meeting the new minister in your province.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

In the interest of some of the discussion that we've had before about making sure this money flows and is not just announced, can you give me a timetable for when we anticipate that we'll be completing the rest of these provincial announcements and we have all our ducks in order, so that the money will be spent?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We're working very hard on that. We successfully concluded discussions with New Brunswick recently. It was announced, I believe, last week by our colleague the Minister of Veterans Affairs. I would hope in the coming days there are just a few left.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I have a final question, Mr. Minister.

With respect to some of the lessons learned from the Commissioner of the Environment's report that we saw in 2006-07, when we saw, between 1998 and 2004, a lot of money announced, nothing done, and we saw the emissions go up, one of the things that she talked about was coordination of the departments. Would you share, based on this past year, recognizing that you've only been the minister for 70 days, what kinds of things you are doing to make sure that you and the Minister of Natural Resources and what not are all on the same page and that we're going in the same area, including the Minister of Agriculture, who has a lot of responsibility for the fuels file?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I think the creation of the cabinet committee on the environment and energy security does allow a forum where you can have a group of ministers with a significant overlap, where their responsibilities have shared interests, to collaborate together is productive. The Minister of Industry is obviously at that table, because we're doing industrial regulations. That's a big issue. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities obviously has a significant role to play.

So I think that's a principal policy- or decision-making vehicle. The horizontal management and the accountability framework are important as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Cullen.

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

Thank you, Chair.

The press are reporting that your boss today announced that in two weeks we will have targets announced in this country. The question I have is about the process that the NDP created around Bill C-30, the so-called Clean Air Act. All parties in this Parliament agreed to a process to move forward and to put our best ideas on the table, the ones we can most support, and then put that back to Canadians and at long last perhaps make Canadians proud of the work MPs are doing on the environment for a change.

Does the announcement by your government that you're coming forward with targets not supercede some of the good work some of us here entered into in good faith as members of Parliament, to set targets and timelines for Canada, which is what the Clean Air Act is being rewritten to do?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I would appreciate and acknowledge that the New Democratic Party, your leader, and you as critic have certainly, with the idea of having a special legislative committee that this would go to before second reading, introduced a constructive initiative. I appreciate the ideas and suggestions that have come forward, whether, as I mentioned earlier, on early action or in Mr. Layton's talking about CDMs. We're following through with the commitment we made when we released the notice of intent to regulate concurrently with the Clean Air Act and the policy. It certainly does put more meat on the bone to supercede. I hope it complements.

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

It can almost be guaranteed that the targets the NDP have proposed to change your government's bill will be more strenuous than the ones your government will be proposing in a couple of weeks. Will you accept the work of the committee in setting targets and timelines for this country to get back on track with our Kyoto obligations?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'll certainly accord full and due respect to the committee's wise counsel. I'd like to see their conclusions before I sign on. This would be--

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

My goodness, this is going to be a bill of Parliament. This will be passed hopefully with a majority of the votes on that committee, and then eventually by Parliament. I don't know why that would be due to your consideration; that's just the law. Shouldn't you accept the law, if you were to respect Parliament and the work of Parliament?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

It's not a law until it's passed, but the bill hasn't even been voted on in the House of Commons, I would say.

I could ask you, if the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois, and Liberals pass a bill that the NDP don't like, would you agree to support it?

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

Thankfully we're in a process right now where I get to ask you questions. It's a great fortune of mine.

On the question of a national retrofit program, particularly for low-income Canadians, there are a number of people living on the lower end of the economic scale who simply can't afford to make such changes to their homes and, as a consequence, disproportionately pay more for energy as energy prices rise. Will you reintroduce a program that will allow Canadians who don't have the means to fund this themselves to gain access to these types of changes?