Evidence of meeting #28 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 provincial.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Mr. Chair, I'm new here, obviously, but I'd like to make a couple of observations, as I've been listening today to the discussion about this bill.
I found it interesting that there doesn't seem to be any full costing of the bill, and I think we heard that a little bit earlier. There's no prioritization of the schedule yet, and there seems to be almost some disagreement on whom the bill even applies to.
But the thing that really concerned me, when we started talking about the application of the entire bill, is what it would mean in terms of consequences. I understand this means there could be no federal involvement with or support for things that ran contrary to this bill. I think it was Mr. Sadik who said there would be, basically, no hydro dam power across this country if this bill were fully implemented. There would be no nuclear power allowed in this country if the bill were fully implemented, or the federal government certainly could not be involved in it. There would be no biofuels, except for the cellulosic, which is not commercially available or viable right now. And there could be no coal power.
I'm concerned about the consequences. What we've got here is a classic opposition bill that really lays out massive costs and consequences with no need to be accountable, particularly for the opposition. I'd like to make that observation, and I'm willing to listen to anybody's comments on that.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
I'm certain our witnesses here may want to respond to that. I know Mr. Sadik would like to.
April 28th, 2008 / 5:10 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
As I said at the outset, Mr. Anderson, this bill does not stipulate or mandate one ounce of emission reduction or pollution prevention, in and of itself. The bill creates a framework, which then hands it to our leaders, you people, to sail the ship of sustainable development in the right direction, to bring forth a poor metaphor.
As I also said, Mr. Anderson, no one is suggesting or contemplating that any nonsustainable sources of energy would be turned off tomorrow. We would be looking at a phasing-out of nonsustainable sources of energy while sustainable sources of energy are being ramped up. Those two things would be done in such a fashion that the lights would come on every evening, the television would come on, and the transport—be it buses, subways, or cars—would go wherever it has to go every day.
This bill would require government to look ahead, to make its choices with its eyes wide open in terms of future consequences, and to the extent that it's possible—and that the political will is there—to take into account those consequences in the course of its day-to-day decision-making.
5:10 p.m.
Prof. Glen Toner
I didn't see any prescribed outcomes either. What I understood the bill to be saying was that the federal cabinet would make and continue to make the decisions about how to allocate resources in this country, but they'd do it with the best information possible, fully understanding all the implications from a sustainability point of view of the types of decisions they take.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Just to pick up on that point, is there anything that prevents the government from doing this right now? What stops the government from...? As you said to Mr. Anderson's question, there's nothing in here that prescribes any pollution reductions, per se. It's asking the government to look through a sustainable lens when addressing decisions.
It boils down to this. We've had so many iterations of a plan. We've had so many subcommittees, cabinet committees, green plans, and intentions all well and good. If we made half the effort in the actual rollout of the plan and then the actual performance of the thing that we make in the announcing, we wouldn't be in the predicament we're in.
To my first question, is there anything added to the powers of government, the government in this moment? Can the transport minister not look through a sustainable lens when designing legislation? Can the industry minister or the finance minister?
5:15 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
Right now the policy-makers, the legislators, are running off in 12 different directions. This is a template, just as we've had a template in the past--the one Mr. Toner referred to--a deficit-cutting template. This is a template for sustainable development that will impose on decision-makers a series of boxes they have to check and perform. They can still, of course, ignore the boxes, but there will be consequences. The bill talks about performance-based contracts. It talks about targets, and it talks about monitoring and very public reporting in connection with the targets, performance, and monitoring.
5:15 p.m.
Prof. Glen Toner
Can I just respond to your question? It's an interesting one.
If we read back through so many of the commissioner's reports over these past ten or eleven years, so often they have said there's no nerve centre; there's no one pulling all this together at the centre. It seems to me that one thing that was helpful about this act was that it would require a secretariat in the Privy Council Office to support a cabinet committee. There would be a nerve centre at the political level, a nerve centre at the bureaucratic level, which would tie all of this stuff together in an integrated way that is not being done now. We get, as a consequence of that, much more sectoral thinking, in terms of the decision-making system, when there are huge horizontal implications of these sorts of decisions for Canadians.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I would assume--and forgive any cynicism of experience--that if a government lacks the political will to do these things, it can still, even with this as legislation, find its way around it and not do sustainable practices in its policy-making.
5:15 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
It can't without there being a heck of a big stink about it.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
This is what I'm curious about. I've looked at the performance-based contract component of this bill. It's one of the smaller pieces--which disappoints me--and I'll be interested in how we can beef it up. When I've talked at this committee and other places about what the consequences are of bad performance or non-compliance, I'm a little suspicious that there isn't more push-back from government. I'll be honest with you.
For example, when we put through, as the committee will remember, a bill on phthalates, there were implications directly linked into the bill about banning a toxin out of the system. There was quite an extraordinary effort from within the civil service to and fro, saying “Don't do this” and “Don't do this”, because they were seeing implications to their work life. We went back and forth, and it took longer than many of us suspected to get the bill through. I'm not seeing any of that right now.
5:15 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
That's because this does not mandate or stipulate one ounce of reduction or pollution prevention. It's just the next step. The battle will come when the first strategy has to be—
5:15 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
Then the government can battle within itself, and the different parties and so on can battle.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
So on the performance-based contract side, as the only rock in the stream that I've been able to hold on to, in terms of consequences of failure, do you have any suggestions to enhance this component of the act to put the fear of God into some of these folks who are supposed to carry out these sustainable contracts?
5:20 p.m.
Senior Policy Advisor, Sustainability Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation
How do we get politicians to do it?
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Glen Toner
Deputies and ministers--but particularly deputies--are now given performance-based contracts that designate certain activities that they have to do with respect to other statutory obligations. It would certainly be possible to list work in this area, but to be honest, I'm not privy to these things. I don't see them. I don't know what level of detail they would go into with deputies. But once a minister has made the commitment, and the deputy understands that, and it's serious, and it's written into their letter, they would then want to hold their senior management group within the department responsible for delivering in that area as well, you'd think.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley, BC
I want to go back to the schedule at the end of Bill C-474. This will be for Mr. Sadik and Mr. Toner.
Mr. Toner, you said in your presentation that we have to get it right, and there have been a lot of questions and concerns raised today. This committee has a habit of rushing things. On the other end of the spectrum, things take a long time. What we want to achieve is a balance. We want to get it right. This may take more than three minutes, or three meetings.
Mr. Bigras raised some interesting points that I didn't see when I first read this. He brought up urban development. In my municipal background, urban development zoning was covered by municipal government. The schedule refers to municipal waste—that's municipal government. Municipal government is created, at least partly, by the province, so ultimately it is a matter of provincial jurisdiction.
On turbidity in the water, the goal is for cleaner water. You want to reduce turbidity in water. Does this mean the federal government would be overseeing levels of turbidity in the rivers in Quebec below the dams?
We have an incredibly broad range of issues in this bill. Mr. Godfrey is open to amendments, and he has some amendments ready to introduce. But on this list of issues, the possibilities are vast. There are going to be vast financial and logistical implications from this: scientific capacity, training, equipment, human resources, monitoring systems. If we rush through this to get a bill in place before Mr. Godfrey leaves us— and we will all miss him, some more than others—there will be many questions. We have issues like livestock density. Why is this in there? Is it an appropriate thing to have on the list? Automobile dependence....
Mr. Toner, would a smaller list be a better strategy? This larger list raises a lot of questions and provincial jurisdiction issues.
5:20 p.m.
Prof. Glen Toner
As for how many committee meetings you should have, I have no idea.
As for the size of the list, I had nothing to do with it. It materialized in the legislation. I guess one could go through and say yes, this is less controversial or causes less potential conflict with provinces in this case or that case.
I would really like to think that this has some national coverage from coast to coast to coast. We know that livestock density, feedlots, and other sorts of things can have serious implications for water quality, fisheries, and so on. I don't know. Is that the right one to have in? We'd have to go through this on a one-by-one basis, and I don't think you really want to do that.
I want to be sensitive to provincial concerns. I recognize that urban design issues are not under provincial jurisdiction, but they have huge implications for the sustainability of this country, given that 80% of Canadians live in cities. To the extent that the federal government is highly involved at the regulatory and financing levels for a lot of these sorts of things, including cities, it seems to me that it's not something we should get too concerned about. I think we need to have national coverage on this thing from all levels of government. If all these reporting systems are integrated in a reasonable way, we could get that coverage. How else do we compare ourselves with what the U.S. or the other OECD countries are doing in these areas?