Environment Committee on June 19th, 2007

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney. Thank you for a job well done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Harvey.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Mulroney, before the G8 meeting in Germany, were there member countries who had no Kyoto obligations, or no obligations to reduce greenhouse gases?

[David Mulroney]

Are there G8 members who have not signed the accord? Yes, the United States.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Did China have greenhouse gas reduction targets?

[David Mulroney]

No.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

But it had signed...

[David Mulroney]

Nor India.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Is the success of the G8 meeting due in part to the fact that these three countries have been persuaded to subscribe to the concept of greenhouse gas reduction? Is this where Canada's leadership became so important?

[David Mulroney]

The success of the G8 meeting lies in large part in the fact that consensus was achieved on the importance of global targets and the need for each country to establish targets. It was very important to arrive at a consensus with member countries like the United States.

With other countries like India and China, the process is now underway. For the next months or the next year, the goal will be to continue to urge each of these countries to commit.

The real challenge lies ahead. We have left Heiligendamm with an agreement to move forward collectively, with an agreement to engage the key industrializing countries. We all know the economic story of China; it will, within very short order, become the world's largest emitter. It's tremendously important to engage them in a discussion. So we've proceeded with an agreement to create a framework that does engage them realistically.

The G8 members, under the leadership of Germany, had convened a meeting at officials level before the final summit that for the first time brought the five countries together in a discussion with the G8 on climate change, but it was understood that this was very preliminary and would only be really blessed and approved and launched following Heiligendamm.

So we come away with, I think, a two-step process: first, the engagement of the U.S., and second, a process to engage the others.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Was the environment, or more precisely, the reduction of greenhouse gases, a major topic at the recent G8 meeting?

[David Mulroney]

Yes, the environment was the most important topic for the G8. The other topics were economic development in Africa and a dialogue on major international questions, like peace in the Middle East and Afghanistan, a matter that the Prime Minister brought up for discussion just after his visits to Kabul and Kandahar.

The items on the agenda were climate change, Africa, economic development in the G8 countries, and major global issues.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

But the environment was Item 1.

[David Mulroney]

Exactly.

[Luc Harvey, Conservative, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Fine.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harvey.

Thank you very much, David, for appearing. I hope that was informative for all the members. We know a little more about what a sherpa does, and we certainly thank you very much for appearing before us.

Just so the members know, the clerk contacted Mr. Bramley. and he's at a retreat. I understand that he advised the clerk on Thursday about that problem.

We do have Mark Jaccard on the line.

Mark, are you still there?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

I'm still here, if you can hear me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

All right.

I understand that you can only be with us until 12:30. Is that correct?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Okay.

What I would suggest to members is that if we could have Mark do a brief presentation for us, then we'll divide whatever time is left—probably we should have about seven minutes—and do a seven-minute round, one round, with Mr. Jaccard. And then we'll get to Mr. Drexhage in the last half hour, if that works for everyone.

Does that sound okay? We'll proceed, then.

Mark, can you give us a presentation of up to 10 minutes, please?

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Yes, thank you.

Hello, everyone. I'll keep it quite short so we can better have time for questions, and I'll also try to be very brief in my answers to questions.

I released a report with the C.D. Howe Institute, as I think everyone's aware, a week or so ago. That was something I had been working on since the government released its final set of climate change policies. There are actually three different sets of policies that we talk about since the government came to power. So we wanted to have all of this together.

The media contacted me in April, when the government came out with its policies, to ask what their effect would be, and I declined to answer, because as I'll explain in a minute, we really need careful analysis and modelling using computer models that have, yes, uncertainty associated with them, but they're the best tools that we human beings have to try to estimate the effect of our policies. We have learned a lot in 20 years of policies that have not been very successful, and that's sort of what I'm going to address right now.

The question I'm obsessed with as an analyst is how I can help policy-makers establish policies that will actually achieve their targets. I do find that when I hear lengthy discussions about targets, and even a little bit with your previous speaker, I get this very strong urge to keep shouting out, “What's the policy link to the target?”

In fairness to you politicians, there is a lot of political pressure on you to make strong statements about strong targets, and yet at the same time, there's a lot of political pressure on you not to match those statements with effective policies, because unlike what many people will have told you--and even, unfortunately, many of my environmentalist friends--reducing greenhouse gases involves policies that change costs for people. Some people will react negatively to those, and you'll have to do a lot of work to get the media understanding that that's actually the only path to get there. That's where I believe we are dropping the ball over and over again, when I look historically. Unfortunately, I feel we are still dropping the ball looking forward.

While my current comments are, yes, critical of the current government's policies, because those are the particular ones I'm focused on, I think you're all well aware that I've been critical of the policies of the previous Liberal government and even of what I've seen in the policy proposals of other federal parties. I guess I'm not going to be making a lot of friends here, but I really think that in the interests of our moving from two decades of discussions about targets to actually making changes, people like me are going to have to try to move the discussion in that direction. That's also why it was interesting to listen to the previous speaker talk about--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Just excuse me, Mark, for one minute.

Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

The point of order is that the topic is the G8 meeting and the policy and the influence internationally of the results post-G8. Perhaps I could encourage Mr. Jaccard, whom I respect greatly, to keep it to the topic. It's not on his C.D. Howe report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Warawa.

I'm going to ask Mark to continue. I believe you've heard the comment and will direct it in that direction, if you can.

Carry on, please.

[Prof. Mark Jaccard]

Yes, and my apologies. I was completely unaware of what the topic was. I just knew you wanted to hear me as a committee.

So am I permitted to talk about--