Environment Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2007

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

I suppose if I can assist you in your question, in the IPCC there is mention of the issue of adaptation. I'm assuming the government officials have read that part of the report. If you're asking for implications from those findings in the IPCC on Canada, that might be something Mr. Gray can help us with.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'll try.

In the synthesis report that Dr. Stone and Dr. Weaver have answered numerous questions about, there is a section on adaptation that lists numerous possibilities and numerous things people should keep their eyes on. An interesting aspect of it deals with combining, where possible, activities to address both mitigation and adaptation at the same time and looking for opportunities for other co-benefits to those activities--for example, if it was water quality or air quality or biodiversity, if you're dealing with something related to landscapes, forestry or agriculture.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Can you tell me a little bit about the research the government is doing in that area?

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Sorry, what research do you mean?

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I mean the research on adaptation.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

Francis will be able to speak to this a little bit. We have an adaptation and impacts research division, under Dr. Zwiers. Dr. Zwiers is the director of the atmospheric science group.

Actually, no, it's not under it, is it?

[A voice]

No.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

No, it's under a director general.

But we have a small group--about a handful--roughly eight or nine scientists in our impact and adaptation group who are scattered across the country.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Is it true that the funding level is at the lowest it's ever been for that department?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

In 1920 it was lower.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

Mr. Alghabra, if I can reference you, the comment made by Dr. Weaver earlier was for funding for external groups, which would be difficult for Mr. Gray to answer. It was not in terms of internal funding for the federal government.

Again, if you would like to reference that back to the IPCC, I understand the intention of your question, but time is short, and I think you might want to focus your interest.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'm just trying to gather my thoughts. What I was intending on going to, I'm not able to.

Can you tell us a little bit about some of the work the department is doing on adaptation, then? I'm not talking about research.

[Dr. Brian Gray]

I'd be happy to be formally invited to come back to speak to that, and to have the appropriate officials from our department. I'm not in a position right now to speak to that.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

I appreciate your frustration, Mr. Alghabra. Unfortunately, time is over, and questions were unable to be heard.

I think we have our last questioner. Mr. Harvey.

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

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. It's not just an hour and a half or two hours that we should have, but rather a few days. I am the last person to speak with you and I only have five minutes. That's very short. I'll try to be brief and I ask you to provide brief answers.

Thank you as well for helping us repair perhaps the last 13 years of Liberal government rule, which resulted in a 36% gap between the Kyoto Protocol and us.

I've been to China and I've been to India. I've also been to Africa. I saw various things and I've made various observations. During my visit, we learned that 2,300 new coal-fired power stations were being built in China, whereas here we are trying to close seven coal-fired power stations and make significant emissions reductions.

I also heard that we weren't making enough of an effort, whereas $9.1 billion has been invested. Only $1.4 billion had been invested over the previous 10 years.

My question is this: how much money would we have to invest for you to find it satisfactory?

[Prof. John Stone]

Is it up to me to answer? I can start.

I have always held that you can't buy your way out of the climate change problem. It's not going to be enough. Money will certainly be required to develop the new technologies and to put in subsidies and incentives to get people to take them up, but I don't think you can solve this problem simply by pouring money into it. There has to be an element of political will and political leadership and political example.

Sorry, it sounds as though I'm preaching. I don't intend it to sound like that. But as the IPCC talks about, and our chair mentioned, it's a matter of lifestyles. It's a matter of aspirations. It's a matter of imagination. All of these are essential ingredients.

It's not just money. There are lots of things we can do that don't necessarily cost money, which mean slight changes in lifestyles, lifestyles which are not absolute in any way.

I can't give you a number. It's going to have to be significant for the technologies. But it shouldn't simply be money from the federal government. It should be money from provinces. It should take advantage of the self-interest of large-scale industry and the like.

There are a lot of aspects of that question to be answered.

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

Mr. Stone, what is your weight?

[Prof. John Stone]

What is what?

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

How much do you weigh?

[Prof. John Stone]

I haven't weighed myself in a long time. In kilos, it's about—

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

I'll have to interject. I'm not understanding

the purpose of your question.

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

You'll understand. When I ask them their weight, most people answer 100 pounds or 200 pounds, whereas we switched from the Imperial system to the metric system more than 30 years ago. In light of that, how long do you think it will take to change the attitudes of populations so that they become aware of the environment and change the way they do things?

[Prof. John Stone]

I think it sometimes can be very quick. I think it sometimes can take a while.

Let me give you an example. In the 1970s the Japanese, for the first time, made an entry into the North American car market. That was because we had an energy crisis at the time. But what you saw was that within a few years, the Japanese car industry had something like a 40% share of the North American car market. Why was that? Why did people go out and buy these Japanese cars? Sure, to some extent I believe it was because they're more energy efficient, but also because they were better built, they had more bells and whistles on them, and frankly a lot of people thought they were cool. That change happened very quickly.

So I think with the right incentives and the right technologies, changing those aspirations can happen very fast. There are clearly a lot of things that won't, because you have embedded capital investment--for example, coal power plants and the like. But I think there's no simple answer to that.

I'm not a sociologist by training, but I think some things can happen quickly.

[The Acting Chair, NDP, Nathan Cullen]

On that positive note, I'll thank our witnesses—and Dr. Weaver on the line—for being here today.

The meeting is adjourned.