Environment Committee on March 10th, 2008

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

As a closing comment, because my time is up, I want to thank the office for revisiting the areas of concern in the Great Lakes. I think that was something we wanted two years ago--if you recall, we were having dinner. I want to take an opportunity to commend you for revisiting that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We're going to start the second round.

The word “fairness” was brought up earlier; I think Mr. Godfrey brought it up. I wonder if we could get on the record how you would define “fairness”.

[Ron Thompson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I think that is an important point to get on the table. When we looked at this initially, there was the concept of “audit” in here. Audit is something we obviously do day in and day out in the Auditor General's office, but it does have certain rigour and strictures that could make the work we would do under this act quite cumbersome.

I suggested that instead of talking about audit we talk about assessment and the assessment of fairness. Let me explain what I mean by that. Let's say there's a measure put in for the government, as a whole, and that there are, say, three or four individual measurements as to success or failure. The fairness concept would have a number of dimensions. First of all, are those three or four measures the right measures in giving a reading as to whether that government initiative is actually succeeding or failing? They may be the wrong measures.

Second, is there a case that these measures are being inconsistently reported every three-year cycle in order to show what the government wants to show rather than what a consistent time series would show? So if you have the right three or four measures, are you reporting them in a consistent way, period after period after period?

All of that folds into the concept of fairness that we had in mind in suggesting that to Mr. Godfrey and colleagues. I think it's probably the best term to use.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Okay, thank you.

Do you have a question, Mr. Godfrey?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Well, I am open to hearing from colleagues, but they are looking studiously in other directions, so let me try something.

Mr. Cullen has certainly raised the question of making sure that people are held accountable for their actions. I want to turn that around a bit. This reflects a conversation we had about helping departments learn. A lot of thought went into the monitoring and reporting language under the rubric of getting departments to state upfront what they hope to achieve and whether they've done so or not. In other words, it's this whole notion of trying to push responsibility back.

Do you want to talk a bit about how this has worked, and maybe give examples, in Parks Canada or the Food Inspection Agency?

[Ron Thompson]

I'd be very pleased to talk about that.

I remember one time in another life, with the Office of the Auditor General, I was charged with the responsibility of leading an audit of one of these agency reports--in that case, it was an assessment, not an audit. I was given a draft of this thing. The agency report was designed to show the performance of the agency in meeting its objectives.

I happened to be up in Whitehorse, and I was flying back from Vancouver to Ottawa. I had about five hours, so I pulled out this draft report--it was 95 pages long. I read it across the country. About the time I got to Calgary, I was getting a little suspicious. When I got to Regina, I was getting really suspicious. When I got to Winnipeg, I was getting kind of angry. Because the 95 pages told a good story of this particular agency and what it did, but I couldn't tell from the words used whether what it did was good or bad, because I had no idea what the expectations for that agency were going into the year.

This is not to be critical of that particular agency. It's been a struggle in performance reporting of departments and agencies for a very long time. I think they're getting better, but it isn't the easiest thing to do.

I remember getting off the plane, and the next day I had lunch with the head of the agency. I said, “You know, this was an interesting read in one sense, because I could understand everything you did last year. But the frustration is I don't know whether it was good or bad. I didn't know whether you had a good year or a bad year, and that depends totally on what you say you were expecting to achieve during the year.” He sort of laughed, and said I was right.

In this particular case, the next year, and particularly the year after that, the agency did put expectations in. And I think the report was a lot more relevant, certainly relevant to committees like this.

That's what I'm talking about in terms of expectations, Mr. Godfrey.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Do you think we can get at that through this strategy of planning and asking that of individual departments? Would that be part of what we could anticipate?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Godfrey, I would certainly hope so.

It starts with one or two, or twenty--I don't know how many you can do initially--government-wide targets. You'd want to be as clear and precise as you can be with those. Then you would want a mechanism to back those targets up into the departments that are able to contribute to achieving them. So you would have a series of departmental targets.

I don't see why that couldn't work, sir.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'm done, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

Mr. Vellacott.

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

If you'd be so kind, Mr. Chair, to cut me off at about four minutes along, I want to pass it to my colleague for roughly the last minute or so.

Mr. Thompson, we appreciate your being here.

I have two quick questions. I'll state my questions right up front, and then you can respond, giving yourself the time you need for both of them.

In this bill, as you well know, there are some legal and constitutional issues around the way powers are structured. In some previous comment or response you did allude to that. Some would suggest it may require some further analysis yet.

First off, I have a question on that. From a legal point of view, have you done some fairly careful analysis of those parts of the bill? Are there other constitutional and jurisdictional issues that you see with the bill? That's my first question.

When you last appeared before our committee, Mr. Thompson, you stated you were reasonably happy with the full review of sustainable development practices that our government has undertaken, which will be reported back in October 2008. The second question simply is this. In your view, is this private member's bill the best way to address sustainable development issues across government?

[Ron Thompson]

Thank you very much for those two questions.

In terms of the legal and constitutional aspect, I've tended to look at this bill as focusing only on federal government activity. Under this bill, we would be asked to assess the fairness of performance information being reported about what the federal government is doing.

Now, the act also includes, as Mr. Godfrey mentioned, the state of the environment nationally, which certainly gets at all levels of government, and I suspect beyond that too. Our assessment would not cover that. However, there is a clause, on what we would be required to do in this bill, that says we would be able to make any recommendations or observations on any matter we wish.

Clearly, if there was something in the “state of the environment” material--we would read it, certainly, we wouldn't just disregard it--if there was something in there that was just horrendously misleading, you bet we'd say something. But in terms of it being covered by our formal assessment, it would not be. Okay?

We've had our own legal counsel have a look at this, obviously. You know, we don't go anywhere without our lawyers these days, and I've had some discussions with our own people in the office who are lawyers. And at this point, for this draft, we're okay with this.

In terms of whether this is the best way to strengthen the SDS process, it is one way. It is one element we were hoping would be part of the government's review of the SDS process, but there are other elements that will probably be uncovered by this review, not the least of which would be the rewards and sanctions Mr. Cullen spoke of, and best practices in other countries. We could learn something from other countries, I expect, on how they might or might not do something similar.

So certainly the review by the government of the SDS process would be broader than the overarching framework we're looking at here, but the overarching framework would certainly, I hope, be part of that review.

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

I'll turn it over to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Warawa, go ahead.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I again want to thank Mr. Thompson for being here today. Your testimony has been much appreciated.

And also, thank you to Mr. Godfrey for presenting this bill. I look forward to working with him on this.

What I'm concerned about, though, is the haste to move forward. I'm actually going to make a motion that we have two more meetings.

I'm thinking of the OECD. They've just released their 2007 report. I think it may be helpful to hear from them and the United Kingdom's department of the environment. Also, we have the Quebec environment minister coming. We have NRTEE coming. We have the Department of Justice coming. To rush through these.... These are all very important witnesses, and we want to allow enough time.

So I'm suggesting that we have two more meetings. I think we're scheduled for our next meeting on April 2 after the break, and then we were going to go into clause-by-clause the following week. I'm asking that we have two more meetings the following week.

That's my motion, that we have two more meetings on Bill C-474.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Go ahead, Mr. Bigras, and then we'll have Mr. Cullen.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I understand the government's attitude, but it seems to me that we could perhaps finish up with our witnesses. We will resolve this matter once the witnesses have left. We have 4 or 5 minutes to go. We could discuss a process that would allow us to organize our future business. If there are no other questions, we could move on to studying future projects. We must decide upon the Committee's future business, but I find my colleague Mr. Warawa's motion somewhat hasty.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

What the clerk and I were just talking about was the potential that on Wednesday--which I would just introduce to you as an idea--we ask Mr. Thompson to shorten his presentation to an hour and then we allow the second hour on Wednesday to look at where we're going and how we want to get there. That's a possibility.

Mr. Cullen, I'll get to you right away.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The process in the last month or so, as to how the committee has picked its agenda and not....

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Thompson, you don't mind our talking about you while you're here, do you?

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

Be careful. You may regret that, depending on how this conversation goes.

In terms of the way the committee has been going and the calendar of events and how they've been chosen, there hasn't been, I would suggest, enough communication about what's been happening. So sometimes committee members have been blindsided by things. I don't think it's appropriate to move a motion at this moment and to start talking about where things are going.

You've made a suggestion that at the next committee meeting we spend some time looking at the various scenarios and options. I will submit, though, that the simple delaying and filibustering of a bill cannot be supported. It sends a signal to all parties that in order to bump legislation off the calendar, all you need to do is talk the clock out over and over again and jump ahead to other studies and start looking at other things. There was a consequence of government members choosing to waste, in a sense, three committee meetings talking. The consequence will have ripple effects down the line on other things the committee was hoping to get to. I assume that government members understand that, and that the consequences should follow the natural course of events.

If we spend time on Wednesday talking about what makes the most sense in balancing things out and we recoup lost committee time, we would look forward to that conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We'll go to Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the comments that have been made. I thought it was a quick and easy motion and a quick and easy vote. I had talked to many of you at the beginning of the committee meeting.

I'm fine with having this discussed next week. We can deal with it later.

I think it's important that we've heard from the commissioner. It's very important that we make sure we have a sustainable development plan and accountability that's effective. I think there is political will in this committee, so let's not rush it. Let's make sure we hear from the witnesses so things are properly critiqued.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Go ahead, Mr. Vellacott.

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

I was just going to comment to Mr. Cullen that the response to the bill his party brought forward was not necessarily an indication that all bills are treated that way. Certain other bills maybe have merits that his does not have at all. I think it's presumptuous to assume any patterns here in respect of the treatment of Jack Layton's bill.