Environment Committee on March 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

I'd like to call our meeting to order and again welcome the environment commissioner. We have him as a regular guest, it appears, and that's good for all of us.

Some of our members were not at the briefing we had when you released your report. You have 14 chapters--obviously a fairly major report.

I know you and I have talked. If you can summarize that and give some suggestions to the committee, in the second hour we're going to go through future business, and that would help us a lot in terms of how we deal with your report.

So I'll turn it over to you. Tell us about your report, please.

[Ron Thompson, Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Joining me are my colleagues Richard Arseneault, Andrew Ferguson and Mary Anne Strong.

As you know, we tabled our Status Report last week. It included 14 chapters, five of which showed satisfactory progress and nine of which showed unsatisfactory progress.

We have provided to the committee, in both official languages, the summary of last week's Status Report, which I presented during the in-camera briefing on March 6. I understand that this document will be appended to the minutes of this meeting. I would normally repeat this presentation this afternoon, but time does not permit.

I am here to offer suggestions, at the chair's invitation, for topics from our Status Report that the committee might consider appropriate for future hearings.

As you know, our audits have revealed that two of Canada's fundamental tools for good environmental management are broken, and that both, in our view, need to be fixed. I am referring to the sustainable development strategies, which we reported on last October, and to the strategic environmental assessments, which we reported on last week. Both of these tools would benefit greatly from the introduction of an overarching government plan or strategy for dealing with environment and sustainable development issues, along the lines suggested by Bill C-474 that we discussed on Monday.

Under the circumstances, the committee might consider holding a hearing to flush out what's being done to review and hopefully to strengthen both the sustainable development strategy and the strategic environmental assessment processes. Environment Canada and the other departments and agencies with which they are working could discuss the review of the sustainable development strategy process that is now under way. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and related entities could speak to the review of the strategic environmental assessment process. The purpose of such a hearing would be to monitor and encourage government as these reviews are carried out and to help ensure that they consider the need for an overarching government-wide plan or strategy.

A second hearing could focus on contaminated sites where satisfactory progress is being made and on contrasting this with areas of concern in the Great Lakes where progress is unsatisfactory.

The purpose would be to explore, with Environment Canada, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and possibly Infrastructure Canada, the possibility of applying lessons learned in dealing with contaminated sites to areas of concern.

A third hearing might look at the greening of government operations. Public Works and Government Services Canada, together with Environment Canada, could be invited to explain what they intend to do in future years to strengthen this area.

Finally, a fourth hearing might focus on invasive aquatic species. Witnesses could be the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and also Transport Canada.

Mr. Chair, these are four suggestions that the committee may wish to consider as it develops topics for future hearings. Obviously, we would be delighted to discuss any other topics from our Status Report that the committee considers appropriate for a hearing.

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my brief opening statement. We would be very pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

I think, again, as we discussed, putting forward some concepts on how we might deal with this report and how we might bring in government officials to explain and be accountable for some of that legislation--I hope the members agree with me--is most helpful in guiding us in our second hour when we're actually looking at how we're going to proceed with some of these topics. Thank you very much. That's a really good start.

If we could, let's start with Mr. Scarpaleggia, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

I've been reading chapter 7, which is on areas of concern in the Great Lakes Basin. I'm quite intrigued by that.

I'm wondering why the performance of these agreements appears to have been so dismal. I'm really pondering the issue. Is there something in these kinds of federal-provincial agreements—I think there were other partners, but actually, it was mainly federal-provincial—that makes it very hard to be specific and to inject accountability? It seems to be almost endemic to those kinds of agreements, especially in our federal system. The minute the federal government wants to impose conditions, the provinces say we shouldn't do that; it's not right. As a matter of fact, when the environment minister came, he said--just as an aside, and I'm not being partisan here--that when it came to the environmental trust, there's one taxpayer, and it's not for the federal government to tell the provinces what to do. So I'm wondering if there is something endemic in those agreements that makes it very hard to achieve goals.

Second, are there too many extraneous factors when you're talking about the Great Lakes? Perhaps, despite best efforts, we don't get the results because of pollution coming from the United States. Maybe this would be the case with contaminated sediments, for example.

Would a third explanation, perhaps, have something to do with the scientific capacity of the government to analyze these agreements? In other words, if you take economic analysts and have them create these agreements, you're not going to have the scientific input that might tighten the agreements a bit. I don't know.

Fourth, is one of the reasons we don't reach our goals that there isn't enough funding? For example, you say that municipal waste water infrastructure is inadequate. That's sort of outside the scope of the agreement. It depends on how much money the federal government, the provincial governments, and the municipal governments are injecting into plant requirements.

Those are my questions.

[Ron Thompson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Scarpaleggia. Let me address them briefly and then talk a little bit about this proposed hearing that I suggested a moment ago.

I think whenever you have a need to have the federal government liaise and interact with and deal with the provinces and the municipalities and perhaps other stakeholders, by definition that's a complicated exercise, and nobody would undersell how difficult that can be. But that is the situation we're faced with, and we're not persuaded that it's an impossible task. What we've concluded, looking at this chapter, is that despite all of the commitments and agreements that have been made over the years, there has been a lot of talk but not very much action.

Our concern is that we don't think there has been enough federal leadership, frankly, in order to pursue the partnerships—and I'll call them partnerships—that need to be created between the different levels of government in Canada, to pursue aggressively the funding that would need to be coming in from all three sources, perhaps four sources, and to set out a management approach to dealing with this.

That's why we suggested, in terms of the second hearing, that perhaps the committee might want to hear from government officials who have dealt with contaminated sites, because there the government has put in place quite a good management structure, quite a good sense of direction from the top, realistic objectives—at least they seem realistic to us—and of course some funding, and they're moving forward. Now if the government can do it over there on contaminated sites, is it not possible to do at least some of that over here in looking at aquatic invasives?

So to your question about how difficult it is and whether there are endemic problems in getting at these issues, I think it would be very helpful to the committee to have the affected government departments sitting here and for you to ask them. I think they need to say that.

About extraneous factors, I think I may have mentioned that. It's difficult to deal with other levels of government and other levels of funding, but not impossible.

On scientific capacity, again I would want to hear from the departments that are faced with managing this file. We didn't really audit scientific capacity, Mr. Scarpaleggia, but certainly that's an issue. You don't just need money; you need expertise and ability to clean up these sites, and I'd like you to hear from the departments.

Funding is an issue, but in terms of the dollars that are put in our chapter, you should remember that those are the total dollars to clean up these two different kinds of contamination. The federal share would be about a third of that, which is not inconsequential but not the whole thing either.

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

I'm just wondering if the difference between the cleanup of contaminated sites, which you say has been fairly successful, and cleaning up the Great Lakes might not have to do with the fact—and maybe I'm mistaken—that when it comes to remediating contaminated sites, those are federal contaminated sites, are they not? So the federal government has sort of complete control over the process.

You bring up a good point about coordinating government departments, and that's why I've suggested to the government that it create a junior minister for water to coordinate the 20 federal departments and agencies that are involved in these issues—and because the Minister of the Environment, whomever that might be at a particular time, has many other issues to deal with. So you bring up a good point about coordination, and hopefully we'll follow up on your recommendation about inviting the departments.

I think science is a big issue. We've heard that the Department of Environment's capacity to deal with water issues is dismal now because of cuts over the years, and I don't know if that can be addressed by your department.

Lastly, would you plan to do a similar analysis on the St. Lawrence action plan? Or maybe you've done that recently and I'm not aware of it.

[Ron Thompson]

Maybe I could ask my colleague Andrew Ferguson to respond to that.

[Andrew Ferguson, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Richard may have more information on the St. Lawrence action plan, which we may have looked at in connection with the Great Lakes work a few years ago.

[Richard Arseneault, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Yes. In 2001 we did a big audit of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and we looked at what was going on there. In this audit we decided to focus solely on the Great Lakes.

Those 17 sites that were identified as areas of concern in the Great Lakes--this is based on science. The scientists have said that these are the areas where there are problems.

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

I wasn't suggesting that. I was suggesting that when they craft the agreements, perhaps the scientists aren't involved enough in specifying what needs to be done. I don't know, I'm not a scientist. I'm just raising the issue.

[Richard Arseneault]

Okay. I get your point.

[Andrew Ferguson]

The agreements go a long way in specifying the action required to clean up these sites and identifying who should be doing it, but they don't really get to the commitment from the various parties involved that they will do it by a certain date.

In the majority of these sites there are two issues causing most of the problems: contaminated sediments and overloaded municipal treatment works. Those issues are well understood. I don't think it's a scientific capacity issue there, frankly.

[Ron Thompson]

Might I add one other thing, Mr. Scarpaleggia? I don't mean to hog the floor.

Paragraphs 7.36 and 7.39 contain new recommendations to the government. The government has responded to those and has set out new commitments and timelines for these issues. That might be a logical place to begin discussion with the departments involved.

They say they're taking it seriously. I don't deny that they are, and they've set out some new commitments. But the trouble we've had in doing this work is that we've looked back at commitments made previously and they basically have not been met.

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

You seem to suggest that governments are required to report to the IJC under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Did they not report anything?

[Ron Thompson]

Andrew.

[Andrew Ferguson]

We understand there have been memos, but not the kind of report the IJC would have expected.

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

Thank you very much for your answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Thank you.

Mr. Bigras, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to share my time with my colleague Marcel Lussier.

In your report, you indicate that a majority of the areas you dealt with get a grade of “unsatisfactory”. What leads you to assign a grade of “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory” to a particular area?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Bigras, thank you for that question.

It's important for the committee to understand this. When we look at a commitment or a series of commitments that have been made in a prior year, we look at the actions that have been taken from the point at which the commitment was made until the point of our audit. We try to assess the level of activity in the intervening period on a scale from one to five--one being basically nothing done and five being pretty much full implementation of a recommendation or addressing of a finding. Most of these commitments would probably be in the middle somewhere--say, two, three, or four.

The second thing we do in forming a judgment is to try to think through in our own minds how difficult and complex it is for the government to address this issue, this commitment. If it's very difficult and very complex--and some of these issues are--the level of activity could be a two or a three, but we would still be satisfied, when doing the re-audit, that the government had gone as far as it could reasonably be expected to go at that time, in our view. We take into account those two factors.

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

My second question deals with chapters 9 and 6 on invasive aquatic species. Perhaps I am repeating myself, but I already gave the first [Editorial Note: inaudible] during your presentation.

Mr. Cannon announced his intention last August. An agreement was signed with Canada, Quebec and Ontario in order to open a door to the continent, which, as a consequence, would once more raise the question of intermodal transportation in Canada. One of the apparent priorities is the modernization of maritime infrastructure. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is dealing with the matter, and the result for us will very likely change our way of looking at maritime transportation, perhaps by widening and deepening the St. Lawrence Seaway to the extent that ocean-going vessels can enter fresh water, thereby putting our ecosystem in danger from more invasive species.

Given that you say in your report that Fisheries and Oceans Canada does not seem to have correctly identified the invasive species, I would like someone to assure me, at very least, that Transport Canada's strategic environmental assessment is reliable. We can make strategic decisions in transportation, like opening a door to the continent, encouraging maritime transportation, but, at the same time, our ecosystems become threatened. We have a biosphere reserve at Trois-Rivières.

Is Transport Canada's strategic environmental assessment adequate, given the discussions that are currently underway between Quebec, Canada and Ontario?

[Ron Thompson]

The short answer, Mr. Bigras, is I don't know, but I'm sure Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans would know.

What you've just added to the table, sir, is another element to a possible hearing with those two departments, looking at aquatic invasives.

I had thought, initially, that the fact they're coming in faster than DFO can deal with them and getting to the bottom of why that's so with DFO would be a good hearing. Certainly, Transport Canada should be at the table in any such hearing, because they're responsible for ship ballast water.

But what you've just added is yet another dimension to this, which is a very good one, and that is, what kind of work has been done to get a sense of the environmental impact of all of this. And I don't know, but I'm sure these two departments could tell you.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Thompson, I would like to come back to chapter 3 on contaminated sites. The amount of $2.9 billion dollars set aside to decommission nuclear power stations is not included in the $3.1 billion. Are contaminated nuclear sites included in the list of 17,800 contaminated sites?

[Ron Thompson]

I believe it is. There weren't that many of them, but yes, I think they probably are.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Four major departments are involved with 89% of the contaminated lands. We have Fisheries and Oceans, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, National Defence and Transport Canada. Which is the fifth department?