Environment Committee on May 16th, 2007

[Howard Brown]

It would not be built into the business-as-usual forecast. We certainly think it's an extremely promising technology to reduce emissions and in fact to reconcile--and this is a little bit to Mr. Bigras' point--the emissions that come from the production of fossil fuels with our environmental aspirations.

Canada and the Province of Alberta have formed a joint task force on carbon capture and storage. That work--to take it out of the lab and get it going in the ground--is ongoing.

I think carbon capture and storage is really seen globally as perhaps the most promising single technology to allow us to address climate change. There is no better place in the world to capture and store carbon than in the western Canada sedimentary basins. Without wanting to anticipate the conclusions of the work the task force is doing, I think the missing piece is really a price on carbon that will make it economical. That, of course, is what the regulatory program being led by my friends at Environment Canada will provide.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you very much.

I will go now to Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Scarpaleggia for a five-minute round.

Yes, go ahead, Mr. Manson.

[Alex Manson]

Mr. Chairman, in the context of looking at the 20% reduction from 2006 by 2020, there is carbon dioxide capture and storage included for a substantial portion of the oil sands emissions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Oh, good, thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. McGuinty. I put the clock back.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have two very quick questions. The first is to Madame Cléroux.

Madame, I want to go back to a question I put to you and give you an opportunity to answer it again. I asked you specifically whether, under the cabinet directive on the environmental assessment of policy, plan, and program proposals, you have conducted a full environmental assessment--a socio-economic assessment--on society, on the economy, and on the environment? Has that been completed?

[Cécile Cléroux]

The work we have done covers all of the elements that we normally cover, but it has not been a formal evaluation.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Forgive me, the first answer I got was that you said in the affirmative that it had been conducted. There might have been some confusion. Now I'm hearing that there has been no environmental assessment conducted on this plan pursuant to the cabinet directive. Is that right?

[Cécile Cléroux]

What we have done is an evaluation that includes all of the components that we normally do, but it was not done following all of the elements of the directive. That's why I might have created confusion with my previous answer.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, for example, was not brought in to help you conduct this mandatory environmental assessment?

[Cécile Cléroux]

The answer is no.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Okay. Can I go to Mr. Beale, very quickly?

Mr. Beale, I'm having a really hard time with page 9 of the plan, the “Regulatory Framework for Air Emissions”. There's a little box down here. It's a target box that talks about a few things. I've read this and read it again and yet read it again. There is nothing in this regulatory framework that deals with specifics as to how the offset system is going to work or how new entrants will be dealt with. For example, what is a clean fuel standard?

Given those two egregious holes, how is it possible that Canadians can believe almost anything in this plan? Given the size and the magnitude of the potential impact of offsets and new entrants' clean fuel standards, how can we believe the numbers in this plan?

[Mike Beale]

The targets that are in the plan are fixed for GHGs, and they will be written into the regulations, for existing facilities. They are not dependent on external factors.

The targets for new facilities embody a component of cleaner fuel standards. We will be consulting, sector by sector, with how that cleaner fuel standard should be applied in an individual sector. Therefore, the estimated reduction that would come from a new facility will depend, at the end of the day, on the precise definition that is given to a clean fuel standard pursuant to those consultations that we have just started.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Scarpaleggia, you have a couple of minutes.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Do we know how the offset system is going to work, in all its detail?

[Mike Beale]

No, because—

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Actually, please stop there, Mr. Beale. I appreciate that direct answer. If you don't know how part of the system is going to work, how can you make bold predictions about its success?

[Mike Beale]

Again with respect, the targets are as I and Madam Cléroux set them out earlier. The targets are not dependent on the design of the offset system. The offset system is one of the compliance mechanisms that's available to industry in order to meet its target.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

So if you don't meet the targets, we can come back and say, we didn't meet the targets because the Conservatives didn't get it done; they hadn't figured out the offset system as part of their plan. Can we do that?

I didn't mean to be facetious there, Mr. Beale.

I've been listening to ads on the radio in my car, grinding my teeth, because they have this propagandistic element to them. I don't know if you've heard them. The government came out and said, “Under our tough new climate change plan....” The word “tough” is repeated a few times within the 30-second blurb. Isn't that more a subjective statement? It would be like saying, well, under our great new budget, you can deduct transit pass costs or whatever.

How can we be making that statement, that we have a tough plan, when the head of the United Nations climate change body has doubts about our plan? Al Gore doesn't think it's so tough. What's the basis on which we're saying that it's a tough plan? Is that just spin, or is there some objective measure behind it?

[Mike Beale]

We reference in the framework document a study done by the World Resources Institute that talks about what's important in achieving reductions is the stringency of the target. Our estimates are that if you were to compare our target for greenhouse gases that we're imposing on our industry on a go-forward basis, it is at least as tough as any other target in the world. In our view, it's as tough in terms of the reduction it's requiring of our industry, as is being required of any other industry by any other regulated system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Perhaps I'll go on now to Mr. Warawa, please.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thought it interesting, Mr. Chair, that here the committee is hearing a critique on advertising that encourages Canadians to protect the environment and use energy more efficiently, and it's coming from a previous government that was involved in the sponsorship scandal. It's quite shocking, Mr. Chair.

I found yesterday's meeting.... I believe it was yesterday when we had a presentation on carbon sequestration and we were looking at solutions. The purpose of today's meeting, from what we've heard from the opposition, was to find out about the plan. But what we've seen instead are attacks on a genuine attempt to find out details of the plan and to find out how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How can we, as Canadians, as a Canadian government, and as parliamentarians, work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a clean environment for Canadians?

Unfortunately, we've heard some rhetoric here and very few questions for Natural Resources Canada. We heard that they wanted to have Natural Resources here, but they've had very few questions for them.

We've heard comments about meeting the targets, and I appreciate the questions on that. When we were dealing with Bill C-288 there was a comment made by Professor Claude Villeneuve, from the Université du Québec. He said he wanted to comment on the bill, and he was referring to Bill C-288, the Liberal Kyoto bill. He said, “This bill would have been excellent if it had been introduced in 1998. Today the bill can't be valid if the tools to achieve the desired ends aren't available”.

What we've heard on Bill C-288, what we've heard on Bill C-30.... I asked every witness at Bill C-288 whether we can meet the Kyoto targets, and every one of them, except for one, said no, it's too late. And we know that, Mr. Chair. But the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and clean up the environment.

This is what we heard yesterday from Grant Thomson. He's the senior vice-president of NOVA Chemicals. He said that he thought what the government has done is set very tough-to-achieve targets. He said if we were to sit back and look at this, and where we would like to have seen it, “They're probably tougher than what we were hoping to see three or four months ago.” He was referring to our targets. He goes on:

I think they've also set an aggressive timeline in terms of this policy. At the same time, they're trying to walk a tightrope, perhaps, balancing between improving the environment and at the same time trying to make sure the economic growth in this country continues.

My question for the department would be this. I have a minute or two left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

You have one and a half minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I have one and a half minutes.

The government has tried to reach a balance between cleaning up the environmental mess left by the previous government and providing a healthy environment and a healthy economy. The opposition has ganged up together and tried to force, within seven months now, meeting targets that will not be met. They've heard from every witness that they can't be met.

Do you believe that what we have presented here to Canada, the framework that was presented about three weeks ago, on April 26, strikes a balance between improving the environment and providing a healthy economy?

[Cécile Cléroux]

All the work that was done to support the proposal that has been retained by the government is going in that direction. That is, it's a balanced action between the benefit to Canadians, the cost to the economy, and the capacity to achieve real results and real reductions over all open-air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Absolute reductions in—