Environment Committee on April 28th, 2008

[Pierre Sadik]

In many respects, the schedule will pay for itself, Mr. Warawa. The items in the schedule are items for which the act stipulates short-, medium-, or long-term targets. Short-term is within one to three years, medium-term is within five to ten years, and long-term is 25 years.

Some of those targets would be undeniably positive for Canada. If we were to reduce the constituent components of ground-level ozone, if we were to clean up the water, and if we were to take certain harmful pesticides out of our food chain, the savings in health care alone would be in the billions of dollars.

There is some work being done around that kind of thing. Your Transport Canada department has recently done some work on the environmental burden of disease caused by motor vehicle emissions and quantifies that in terms of what harmful emissions from motor vehicles and other modes of transportation are costing Canadians and Canadian society. Then, of course, there are the priceless benefits, quite apart from the cost to our health care system, such as having your parents live longer, not having premature morbidity, and having healthier children.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I hate to cut you off, but I think my time just ran out.

Was an analysis done to prioritize the list?

[Pierre Sadik]

No.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Toner actually had a comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Go ahead, Mr. Toner.

[Prof. Glen Toner]

It's to Mr. Warawa's question about why the Liberals are doing this now. I must admit that I've had the same thought.

You sometimes hear that governments are just too busy. When they were a government, a lot of us were telling them to make these changes, and they didn't make them. But it's sometimes said that governments are just too busy and that political parties have time to think when they're in opposition. So maybe they've learned from their mistakes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Scarpaleggia, on that note, go ahead.

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

I would also add that situations evolve, and understanding and insights evolve. We're in real time here--

[Prof. Glen Toner]

Absolutely.

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

--in government and in opposition. We can't forget that every time we tried to move, we had a Prime Minister who denied that climate change existed--sorry, who's now Prime Minister. We had a leader of the opposition who claimed that it didn't exist. Our chair, in fact....

Okay, I'll stop there and go on with my question.

Actually, I'd like to get down to this idea of information gathering. Information is so important in creating effective action, achieving targets, and so on. It's important in setting targets.

You mentioned the state of the environment reports of 2000 and 2003.

[Prof. Glen Toner]

Sorry, the dates were wrong. That was the early nineties--1993.

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

Were these reports comprehensive in terms of gathering information or in getting it from governments--municipal, provincial, and federal? To your knowledge, were there any problems gathering that information in the sense that some jurisdictions might not have liked to provide it, and so on and so forth? Was there real cooperation around that?

[Prof. Glen Toner]

I wasn't personally involved in these reports, but I think so. There was a general societal sense that we had to get a sense of the state of the place, and there was a real sense of cooperation in the scientific community. There would be something on water, but there'd also be something on the St. Lawrence. So there was an ecosystems orientation to it. They'd gather the information and tell the story about the state of the environment and how it was changing in these areas.

As far as I know, everybody was quite happy. All the scientists from all governments and elsewhere were willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in. This was an early and open time, too. People were really enthusiastic at that time to contribute to expanding our knowledge about Canada.

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

Other supranational agencies, such as UNESCO, gather information, so I imagine it wouldn't be too much of a problem under this bill. For example, Statistics Canada gathers information on activities that are in provincial jurisdictions. They have reports on water consumption.

Perhaps Mr. Newman or the other two panellists would know this. Is there a legal requirement for entities operating in a provincial jurisdiction to report to Statistics Canada such things as water consumption or recycling rates or what have you, as Mr. Bigras mentioned? Is there some sort of legal lever that allows the federal government to get this information?

[Pierre Sadik]

Mr. Scarpaleggia, under various pieces of legislation, including CEPA, bilateral agreements are entered into by the federal government and the various provincial governments, for the provinces to aid in the reporting of the emission of items under the national pollutant release inventory. There is, in the interest of national environmental—

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

Under CEPA I can see that.

What about Mr. Bigras' point about recycling rates? We may not have a specific answer to that yet.

In terms of the Commissioner of the Environment's vetting these plans, it sounds almost as if we're being dragged into the debate we had about a year ago in this committee as to role the Commissioner of the Environment has. We're getting back into this potential conflict between Madame Gélinas and Madame Fraser.

Do you think a Commissioner of the Environment or an Auditor General, under whom the commissioner would be working, might see it as a little too political to be judging the strategies of federal departments?

[Pierre Sadik]

Subsection 4(8) is the section in question. It deals with the national SD strategy. It says that—sorry, it's subsection 8(4):

The minister shall...submit a draft of the National Sustainable Development Strategy to the Commissioner for review and comment, including whether the targets and implementation strategies are capable of being assessed.

Mr. Ron Thompson, who reports directly to Ms. Fraser, was comfortable with that provision, and therefore so am I.

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

In a sense, it's a bit like Bill C-288, where the commissioner is being called on to judge whether certain steps in the process have been followed.

I have no further questions. I don't know if my colleague—

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Your time is up anyway, Mr. Scarpaleggia. Thank you.

Mr. Harvey, please.

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

Welcome.

I only have five minutes. I think most of my questions can be answered by a simple yes, or no. That way, I can get in as many questions as possible.

The bill contains a reference to sustainable development, to energy consumption and to what is possibly the main source of GHG emissions, namely CO2 or CH4. In your opinion, is hydroelectricity a “sustainable” source of energy?

Mr. Sadik.

[Pierre Sadik]

The hydroelectricity generated through run-of-the-river types of facilities is certainly a sustainable and renewable source of energy, yes.

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

Mr. Toner.

[Prof. Glen Toner]

The same question?

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

Your answer is the same?

[Prof. Glen Toner]

Yes. The run-of-the-river stuff is very interesting.

I'm not opposed to dams and hydroelectricity power from dams if they're done well, thought out, and the implications for the rest of the ecosystem are taken into consideration. Hydro power, in that sense, is part of the energy mix.