Evidence of meeting #21 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was departments.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We looked at Treasury Board and Environment Canada, two departments that are key to managing the problem of contaminated sites. The four major departments with 89% of the problem are Fisheries and Oceans, National Defence, Indian Affairs and Northern Development. There is another department whose name escapes me.
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
It is Transport Canada, I think.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Right, it is Transport Canada. Those are the four main departments. Other departments have contaminated sites as well, but those are the four main ones. We highlighted these four departments to show how things were going.
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Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
Have you received timelines for decontamination work from those four large departments?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The federal government has an overall plan, and each department has developed a plan that is appropriate for its own situation. In some cases, the plans are not complete because they have not yet examined all their lands to see if they contain contaminated sites. These are five-year plans. So they do not coincide with the government's 2020 goal.
This is what we found during our audit. We talked to the Treasury Board.Treasury Board asked departments to make sure that, the next time they draw up their plans—because they have to draw up a five-year plan every year—it is adjusted to meet the government's overall goal.
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Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
But you listed 340 sites that have been cleaned up and 480 others that are in the process of being cleaned up.
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Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
It is a long-term project, that is for sure. How many decades did it take to create the problem? It is also going to take a long time to fix it. What is interesting and quite remarkable in this chapter is that there is an expert department, Environment Canada, and a central agency, the Treasury Board, working together to give direction and support to the departments that have to implement the plan. In addition, there is a fund that allows priority to be given to the sites that will be decontaminated first.
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Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
I want to ask about military dumpsites. They are in chapter 13. Are these military dumpsites just in the ocean or does it also include the military dumpsite in Lac Saint-Pierre?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes, it does. A petition was received from someone interested in ocean sites. When we were doing our first audits, we were more interested in ocean sites, but the Department of National Defence told us that we do not have just ocean sites, but also a program that includes land-based or freshwater sites. So yes, the program now is a global one that includes ocean sites and all others. They are including them all.
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Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
In chapter 7, it says that understandings with the International Joint Commission have not been observed. Has that had consequences on the agreement between Canada and the United States?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That was not one of my chapters, but we know that the consequences are not very serious.
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
There seem not to be.
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Marcel Lussier Bloc Brossard—La Prairie, QC
Mr. Thompson, you talked about four possibilities for future meetings. I missed the first one. What was it?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The first dealt with sustainable development strategies and the strategic environmental assessment in the context of the government's overall sustainable development plan or strategy.
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Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
It does. I do not see anything else.
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Greening operations are in there too.