Environment Committee on Dec. 4th, 2007

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here today.

I would like to pick up on questions asked by my Bloc colleague and push them a little further.

In your opening remarks--I was disappointed we didn't get copies of those, by the way, because normally we have those to review, but we didn't get them--you did make reference to many lofty goals your government has set for the environment, things you want to achieve, and yet you have a little over $13 million that wasn't spent in 2006-07 and you want to carry that over into 2007-08.

What I'm having trouble understanding is that with all the pressures you talked about--you told us your budget is limited--and, as we understand it, there's freezing of certain expenditures happening within the ministry, some cuts and reallocations.... With those taking place, and with your goal for the environment being the protection of Canada's environment, there was $13 million that didn't get spent in that fiscal year. I'm concerned that perhaps you're more concerned about pleasing the finance minister and the Prime Minister, in terms of having money left over, than you are about pushing to fight for the environment.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'll turn this over to my deputy, but I will say that if I was that concerned about $13 million, I wouldn't have asked and received $1.5 billion for the money to go to the provinces to help fight global warming. I wouldn't have asked for the $220 million for the Nature Conservancy of Canada; $30 million for the Great Bear rainforest; the Northwest Territories protected areas strategy; I wouldn't have asked for money to clean up Randle Reef, $30 million; I wouldn't have asked for money for Lake Winnipeg, for Lake Simcoe, for the Great Lakes, amongst many other things.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm glad you chose not to answer, Minister.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

No. I'm telling you, on a budget approaching $1 billion.... As a former minister yourself, you'll understand that you don't come right down to the wire, but I'll ask the deputy to--

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You gave a partial response. Many times, a well-spent and well-placed $1 million can have what some would see as a $1 billion impact in terms of keeping a lot of groups going, meeting their staffing needs or all kinds of things. So $13 million may not seem like much to you, but to the people who pay the bills, that's a lot of money.

With the environment being the priority, how can you come here and say that you have all these fiscal stresses happening within your areas of responsibility but there's still money left over that was already allocated from a previous year?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'll ask my deputy to respond.

[Michael Horgan, Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment]

In fact, $13 million is actually pretty close to running the department close to the line. In Environment Canada, the carry-over from year to year has been in the order of $25 million to $40 million per year, so a $13 million carry-over from last year is actually a reflection of how tight the situation is.

It does show that the department is conscientious in terms of trying to reduce its carry-over, but the carry-over in the previous year was, I believe, $35 million. It's down from $35 million to $13 million. Departments are allowed to carry over operating expenditures from one year to another up to a certain limit, and $13 million is actually fairly....

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Your point, though, I think is well taken. There are a lot of needs and there are a lot of priorities.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's my question. That's just my point. I haven't heard it yet. I've heard about circumstances and comparisons to other years, but either the environment is a priority and we need to put every resource....

The money was already approved. It's not like you're in here with new money. So give me a little bit more than just....

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Let me just respond. There may be somewhere in the department where someone has left and the position goes unfilled for two or three months while they're seeking a qualified candidate. There may have been some money set aside for someone to take French language training and they weren't able to go for certain reasons. There may have been a group that couldn't spend it by the end of the year. I'll ask my ADM, Basia Ruta, to also respond.

[Basia Ruta, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of the Environment]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

We can only spend money that Parliament provides to us. As you know, we get money in dribs and drabs through the year. We have the main estimates, and then we have supplementary estimates. So just about every single organization will carry forward an amount. It's a timing difference. Managing to one percent, as our deputy said, is basically what we have to do, or we would not be complying with authorities. We do get some money that comes in at the end of the year.

In terms of your question about what we've done with the $13 million, well, of course we've allocated that to other priorities, including the Canadian Wildlife Service. We have supplementary estimates before the House. If they are approved, then we'll be able to use that money. Otherwise, we are in a position of only being able to budget and spend the amount of money that Parliament authorizes for us. Indeed, we've done that.

If I could, I'll just provide a bit of a skeleton in terms of our main estimates and our supplementary estimates. Included in our main estimates is also about $74.5 million that's dedicated for new work. So we have to spend it on clean air initiatives, on toxics, and on the clean air agenda. It's also decreased by a certain amount of temporary funding we had for species at risk, but our supplementary estimates are fixing that. There's a bit of a timing difference. Also, as our minister said, there's an expenditure reduction of somewhere in the order of $10 million.

So that brings us to a net increase of about $38 million. Now our supplementary estimates, as we said, are close to about $290 million, but there's a big item in there for Harbourfront Centre, which we can't use.

So it's a bit more than last year, but we are doing everything we can to reallocate. One other area that we did focus on department-wide was one of our larger expenditures, which is travel and correspondence, and not just in one program. We believed we could create efficiencies, and we've done that as well.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

There's no coordinated effort to underspend, let me assure you.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I hear you, but I just heard about the expenditure reduction of $10 million. Is that what you said?

[Basia Ruta]

It's just an increase over last year, because in effect, what we have for this year is about $37 million in total, and that includes....

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

A total for...? That's the expenditure reduction?

[Basia Ruta]

That's accumulated. That's right. Basically, it affects our core activities. We're like other departments; we're not the only ones. We would have $9 million from the expenditure review exercise a few years back, the first round, and in the second round, as our minister has said, there's about $22 million. Some of these also were government-wide efficiencies that departments had to absorb.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Can I get more specifics on what was cut internally to achieve those expenditure reductions?

[Basia Ruta]

The vast majority, really, weren't identified at the time from any specific program, so we've been trying to gather efficiencies as we can.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm sorry, but what does “gather efficiencies” mean? We're hearing, as opposition politicians, there are cuts, there are freezes going on, there are reductions going on inside the ministry, and we have money being carried over, and now I'm hearing about the line expenditure reductions, but you can't tell me exactly where they came from, that they were just cherry-picked along the way. I thought that's how the $13 million got created.

[Basia Ruta]

Well, we've had a very deliberate exercise of going through all of our programs and activities to make sure we understand where the spending is. We've taken some broad-based initiatives, as I mentioned, on travel and conferences, where we have some discretionary spending, to see how much we can reallocate to higher priorities. We've also looked to see what activities we might be able to defer.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Like? For instance? Could I please get some details? I'm not hearing anything. With great respect, I'm hearing no detail.

Please tell me, what did you cut? What kinds of things? Somebody?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'll give two examples. When I arrived at the department I said I was committed to more action and less talk, so I'm not interested in having conferences to discuss a program but in taking action on the program.

In my involvement with the Federal Accountability Act, I said I was not interested in excessive travel, but that it should be focused on important business, such as environmental enforcement and real needs. So I put some markers down on that.

We have some very competent managers within the public service. At the end of the day, you're correct, I'm accountable, but at the same time, we let the managers manage. They're operating a program—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Minister, I still haven't heard one program reference, one actual example of where the money was cut.

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I gave you two examples, travel and conference spending.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

And how much is that worth, roughly, in the ballpark?