Environment Committee on Nov. 20th, 2007

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Thompson.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We are into the second round.

Mr. McGuinty, for five minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson and team, for being here this afternoon.

Mr. Thompson, there is a green ribbon panel, which you said was struck by the Auditor General's office. Its mandate, in part, is to examine not just the role of the commissioner's office but the sustainable development strategies as well, in part?

[Ron Thompson]

Yes, Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Chairman, it's looking at how we are implementing our mandate, and part of our mandate deals with sustainable development strategies. As a matter of fact, it's kind of a strange situation in the sense that they are required to be produced under the audit office law. So that's why they're looking at them.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

How much is the green ribbon panel going to cost?

[Ron Thompson]

I don't know. That's a very good question. It won't be cheap, but I really don't know, sir.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Can you estimate?

[Ron Thompson]

No, I can't. It will be made public when we report on our performance next year, I would think.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Can you estimate what this review that the government wants to pursue would cost?

[Ron Thompson]

No, I can't do that either, Mr. McGuinty. It depends on whether they are going to be hiring outside consultants in terms of out-of-pocket costs. They may want to do that.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Sorry, sir, but who's “they”?

[Ron Thompson]

They would be the driver of the review, in this particular case Environment Canada, the Deputy Minister, Michael Horgan.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Right.

Why would a deputy minister at Environment Canada be driving a government-wide review when responsibility for sustainable development strategies doesn't reside with that line department or its minister?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Chairman, that's another good question. I got at that a little bit just a few minutes ago, when we talked about the recommendation we made. We're recommending that the government do a review, because sustainable development and the sustainable development strategies that fit under that are a government initiative, not an initiative of any one department, as you have quite properly pointed out.

But we did consult on that. We wanted to address the recommendation to the right official or the right body. And after a lot of consultation, with current deputies, former deputies, PCO, Environment Canada, and others, we determined that the recommendation should be addressed to the government.

We then wrote to PCO and asked if they would reply to this recommendation on behalf of the government, being the central agency, or suggest someone who would. They replied to us and said that they were asking Environment Canada to reply on behalf of the government.

So there is a group of central agencies involved, Mr. McGuinty--PCO, TBS, and of course the line department, Environment Canada.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It's interesting how, from a machinery of government perspective, the default drive from your colleague officials in PCO and PMO and elsewhere is again to punt this issue to the least-funded line department in the federal government, Environment Canada.

I want to switch gears for a second to another issue, which I'm hoping will be part of your February report. That is the question of former Bill C-288, now the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act for this country, a binding law on the government.

Will your office be reviewing the government's breach--or breaches, potentially--under that law, which is now of course being enforced in Federal Court by a number of environmental groups? Will you be reporting to Canadians very clearly on the extent to which this government has in fact broken its own laws?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Chairman and Mr. McGuinty, I have a couple of comments on that.

Bill C-288 requires that the commissioner's office, our office, do an audit--if I can put it that way--in May of 2009 of the take-up of the plan. We are making arrangements now to do that. We are in the early stages, but we will certainly be doing that and getting ready to do it early on.

As you probably know, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy had a look at the plan that was put forward on, I think, August 23. They issued a very interesting report on that plan--which the committee may want to have a look at--that offered some challenges, frankly, regarding the numbers that were associated with certain targets in the government's plan.

Hopefully, over the next two years those challenges will be met by the people who prepared the plan so that by the time we come around to auditing that in two years, we'll have something a little more solid to look at.

But we certainly are looking at Bill C-288. We're involved in it. I met with the national round table a couple of times to talk about their work, and we're going over to see Environment Canada to talk about the round table's report, probably before Christmas, to get a sense of what is going to change before we get into the audit game.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

Mr. Vellacott.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson, for being here today.

We've actually had some of this discussion already in terms of where some of the problems of not coming up with a strategy have resided over the last number of years. I think it's fair to say, although I know it doesn't go down well on the other side, that this government has been busy fixing up some of the Liberal messes on the environment. A year and a half really isn't a lot of time to do that, but we'll do our very best.

With this period of time ahead, looking for a review of the plan and then a report of that in October 2008, I'm wondering--and I'm guessing we all would be rather keen to know--what your suggestions would be. Once the report is tabled or the review is before us in October of 2008, how much time on average would it take to then get on with the implementation of it? Of course it depends on what that report is, but would it be six months, a year, a couple of years? What would you advise in terms of what it will take to implement a sustainable development strategy out beyond October 2008?

[Ron Thompson]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Vellacott and Mr. Chairman.

In terms of an overarching, government-wide sustainable development strategy, that might well take some time to put together. It depends on how much use Environment Canada is able to make of the collectors, by topic, that I mentioned a little earlier, coming out of these existing sustainable development strategies. They've asked departments to tell them, over six subject areas, “What programs and activities do you have under each of these?” Now, if that's useful to Environment Canada and the government of the day in coming up with an overarching set of goals, an overarching strategy, then it might not take that long to put something in place.

The best person to ask, of course, is the Deputy Minister of the Environment--who perhaps should be sitting here with me today--but I would think something could be done for the next round of strategies, which would be tabled in December of 2009, with that something being at least the beginning of an overarching strategy, maybe one or two elements of that, and having those one or two elements back down into sustainable development strategies of at least some of the government departments.

That would be a very good start, and that would be a long way from where we are today, sir.

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

Right. So it would be a little better than a year, anyhow, to get that initial start and at least some of those elements under way as you go to December 2009.

You mentioned in your report that former governments, Liberal governments, have rarely examined sustainable development strategies. On page 35 here I read the following:

The federal government’s commitment to produce a federal sustainable development strategy dates back 15 years, to Canada’s pledge at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. That commitment was reiterated in 1997 at the Earth Summit+5 in New York, where Canada promised to have a national strategy in place by 2002.

And on it goes.

What do we make of that? Would it be fair to say that they didn't get the job done, or that sustainable development strategies were not a priority? There was the rhetoric, there was the language here in the report, but despite all those grandiose promises, it wasn't a priority and the job didn't get done.

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Chairman, the job hasn't been done yet.

One criticism of audits is that we're always looking back and criticizing what has happened. I would like to suggest to you that there's a whole lot more to audits than that. Look at where we're sitting today: we looked back, we found out what wasn't working, and we identified certain elements that should be working better. Now is the time, though, I would suggest, for all of us to look forward. There's never been a better time to put in place what should be in place to make these sustainable development strategies work. We have a committee that's obviously interested in that. You have a commissioner and his staff who are very interested in that. We have a government department that has been given the task of carrying out this review and that has expressed to me quite a lot of interest in it.

I think it would be helpful for us to look forward and to try to encourage each other to put in place what should be there to make this work.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Vellacott.

I would like to thank our guests for being here.

This was probably one of our best sessions. All the members kept to their time limits and we got definite answers from the witnesses.

Again, thank you very much.

[Ron Thompson]

Our pleasure.