Evidence of meeting #6 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 budget.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of the Environment
Is it in the main estimates or in the supplementary estimates?
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of the Environment
Oh, yes, I have page 143 here.
Every minister—it's a statutory amount that we get from Treasury Board Secretariat—has a budget for their office and their staff. This is, essentially, the budget our minister has, the Minister of the Environment. It would be the same if you go to—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
But it's limited to ministers related to the environment?
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of the Environment
Yes, that's right—and their staff.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay. I was just looking to see whether it was possibly for anything else, because things do happen.
This one is an even smaller amount. I'm just curious as to what it is: “Transfer to the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada—To support the National Managers’ Community”, followed by dots. What comes after “Community” and the dots that follow it? It's “To support the National Managers' Community”...something.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I believe there's a sort of middle managers community that's been formed in the Government of Canada, and—
NDP
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Well, it's not really an organization; it's just that middle managers have been identified as an important part of the management team—a category. As I understand it, there's an annual conference, for example, that takes place. There's some training for middle managers that's organized by that particular agency. What happens is that all departments get “taxed”, if you will, on the basis of their proportion of middle managers.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
So it's your contribution to this group for middle managers; it's the environment ministry's part of it.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I've got it. Good. Thanks.
Now, for the “Major Projects Management Office”, there's $2.2 million to “improve the regulatory system for major natural resource projects”. The total for that initiative is $19.6 million.
I'll just give you all the questions. I'm running out of time, I know.
What is that? Where is it going to be? What role will it play with the environmental assessment coordinator, as outlined in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. I could read that, but I won't use the time.
They're a coordinator, too:
The role of a federal environmental assessment coordinator is to coordinate the participation of federal authorities in the environmental assessment process for a project where a screening or comprehensive study is or might be required
—blah, blah, blah.
What is this entity, where is it going to be, and how does its role potentially overlap with that of the assessment coordinator?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
The Major Projects Management Office is going to be set up under the auspices of Natural Resources Canada. It's going to just play a coordinating role in terms of bird-dogging: making sure that the environmental assessment process is moving along, but as well, once an environmental assessment is done and decisions are taken, making sure that departments are following up on the permitting process.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
So it's not a change in the process? It just facilitates it?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
No, it's not a change to the process.
What has happened is that in the last budget a certain amount of money has been set aside, for one thing, to set up this major projects office, but also to provide additional moneys to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and to a handful of departments that are most involved in the actual permitting process at the end of the day, increasing their resources so that they can deal with these major projects in a more timely way.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I'm not exactly sure whether the coordinator—
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Stewardship Branch, Department of the Environment
The coordination office is going to track the process. They're going to be “one window” for industry to understand where a file is, either in the environmental assessment or in the permitting process. They're going to try to make the permitting process move more smoothly with the environmental assessment—there have always been criticisms of the lag time between the two processes—and they will help share best practices or troubleshoot any problems among the various departments that issue permits, including Environment Canada.
So the $2 million you were talking to was for Environment Canada to do better on its permitting.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The question I would ask here—and if I had had the time when the minister was in the room, I would have asked him, but I think it can suffice to get that response from you—is on the issue of advertising.
On the matter of advertising in Environment Canada, it was asserted by the Liberals opposite that your department is spending money wildly—big amounts of money and, it was implied, irresponsibly, I guess—on advertising.
I would like to know specifically whether you can you tell us what kind of advertising programs Environment Canada spends its money on, so that you can enlighten all of us and the public as well about your budget for advertising by Environment Canada.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Our advertising budget for 2007-08 is proposed to be just over $8 million a year. That's for advertising not just Environment Canada, but really for the government's new ecoAction plan. The first component of that campaign was on the ecoEnergy retrofit grant, and that was carried out in the spring and summer of 2007. The second component is going to deal with the ecoAuto fuel efficiency vehicle rebate. And there's an additional amount, over and above the $8 million, which is $85,000 to conduct evaluations of the 2006-07 campaigns that ended on March 31, 2007. That's what our advertising budget is.
Conservative
Maurice Vellacott Conservative Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK
I understand those are pretty significant kinds of things. My constituents constantly call our office and want more information on this kind of stuff—and it's good stuff. The retrofit of homes and the rebate on vehicles are pretty crucial stuff.
You probably could have given us much more detail here, but you summed it up in a nutshell pretty quickly. Can you cite the figure again that you spend on advertising, and how does that amount compare to other departments?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
To be honest, I couldn't tell you how it compares to other departments.
Basia, do you have a sense of it?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
It's less. We don't have here today the numerical comparisons, but we're very confident that the level of advertising in Environment Canada or on the environment file is substantially less than other advertising budgets in government.
