Evidence of meeting #8 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 targets.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Jack Layton NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
There should be targets. I'm not quite sure what you mean by a “hard target” so you might want to be precise on that. We don't have a hard target here in Canada, and if I may say so, your government hasn't proposed such a target. It's intensity-based; therefore it's about as far from a hard target as you can imagine.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I'll disagree with you on that one.
If we give major emitters like China and India and Korea up to 20 years before taking on an absolute target, IPCC scientists have said that global emissions are still going to rise. So I'm having some trouble squaring the circle, because if we have to arrest the rising global GHGs in 10 to 15 years but we give major emitters a pass, it's not going to happen.
In fact, we heard that if we were to stop everything in Canada and the United States, for example, global GHGs would still rise. So that question still has to be answered out there.
I want to move on to another issue here, and that's the “offshoring” of manufacturing jobs. You and your party have decried the offshoring of manufacturing jobs, yet by taking a position in alignment with environmentalists that countries like South Korea or China don't have to factor in the compliance costs for taking on an absolute reduction target in the post-Kyoto period, you're allowing a competitive advantage to continue that's going to allow offshoring to continue over the next two decades.
Don't you find that to be a hypocritical position, to decry offshoring on one hand and yet allow competitive advantage by non-compliance with environmental costs? Isn't that a contradiction, Mr. Layton?
NDP
Jack Layton NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
We're losing jobs to places that do have targets and have decided to make their industries more efficient and to build products that consume less energy. So frankly, if we were to get on that track, we'd be in a much stronger economic position.
What we're doing here, unfortunately, is giving our big polluters in Canada a pass. That's what we've done so far with the actions.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
I'd like to share a quote from somebody you probably know extremely well. I'll read the quote first. It was on cbc.ca, April 26, 2007:
If we throw everybody out of work and we shut the whole economy down in Canada--we contribute about two percent of the greenhouse gas problem--that will be offset by China, the United States and others, so there'll be no change at all.
...Let's just transfer all the jobs out of Canada to those countries and we'll all sit around and try to figure out how to buy their vehicles while their people are working and ours are unemployed.
That, of course, was Buzz Hargrove, the head of the CAW.
I guess the question comes down, Mr. Layton, to who auto workers should trust when it comes to talking about climate change targets and job security in existing industries, high value-added industries, like the auto industry. Would that be you or Mr. Hargrove?
NDP
Jack Layton NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Well, we presented a green car strategy together four years ago. If it had been adopted, I dare say that some of those jobs we were hoping to keep in Canada might have actually stayed, because we'd be building the kinds of cars Canadians increasingly want to buy. We'd be doing it here. We had a complex program--I won't go through the details of it--but I announced it with the gentleman you mentioned, as well as with the head of Greenpeace.
Conservative
Jeff Watson Conservative Essex, ON
That quote was from earlier this year, Mr. Layton, so we'll take Mr. Hargrove on that one.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Thank you, Mr. Watson.
Just so you can have a merry Christmas, I'll let you know that there are some good things happening in Canada. In my riding, for instance, we've been capturing CO2 for about 10 years--100% from Dow, 100% from NOVA --and sequestering it. We have a wind farm that started out at 130 windmills producing 82 megawatts and is now 37 producing 82 megawatts. And I'm installing 28 solar panels on my house. That's just so you can see that people are doing things. I could then talk about garbage.
Thank you very much, Mr. Layton, for being here and enlightening the committee. I'm sure they can ask you other questions as time goes along. Thank you very much.
NDP
Jack Layton NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you very much. That was a good discussion. I appreciate it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
We'll go directly to the next session. We've asked our guests to take roughly seven minutes, and if possible, to cut it a little short so that we give every member an opportunity to get in and get through this.
I believe we have them on the line. Okay, we have them both. That's the magic of technology.
Matthew, I understand it's 4:30 a.m. where you are, so thank you for the early morning. Oh, I've been corrected; it's 5:30. Anyway, welcome.
I would ask you, Ms. Donnelly, if you could begin for about seven minutes, and then we'll go to Matthew.
Aldyen Donnelly President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
Thank you.
As a quick question, does the committee have my submission in front of them?
President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
And are we passing out two pages or more?
President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
Okay. Thank you.
I just want to make a few remarks, and I hope they are constructive.
When I'm asked the question of what would Bill C-377 mean, I do come at my response from a rather narrow perspective. The question I'm asking is, is there anything happening in this bill that I think might motivate the private sector to invest more in a carbon-free future than they are investing at this time? Unfortunately, when I look at the bill, my response to that question, the question that obsesses me, is no. So I want to go back and ask why it is no.
The reason it's no is because industry saw the Government of Canada commit to stabilize emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, and we did that in 1992. Interestingly enough, very shortly after the Government of Canada made that commitment, the Government of Canada actually slashed funding for the EnerGuide program, a program initiated previously under Brian Mulroney's Green Plan. Then in 1997 we committed to cut emissions to 6% below 1990 levels over the 2008 through 2012 period, and industry waited for a long time to learn how government was going to convert that commitment to industry obligations. In 2005 the government gazetted an industrial regulation that required us to cap our emission intensity facilities at 13.5% below 2004 levels by the end of 2012, and that gazetted regulatory proposal created an unlimited supply of emission rights to new facilities, as long as the facilities met a new source standard called a BARCT standard. Then three years later, in 2007, we're looking at the prospect of a regulation that would require facilities to reduce emission intensity by 16% below 2006 levels by 2010, with restrictions and a reduction level applying to new facilities.
When you're in a private sector and you're looking at that history, and now you add the prospect of yet another emission target to the list, it doesn't get money to flow. I'm wondering if I could maybe ask the committee to look back and ask, are there two or three bits of infrastructure of information that you, the committee, can put in place, which information, once in place, helps us move forward faster at least this time? On the first page of my submission I'm asking myself this question, whether it's for this bill or any other bill if and when government produces a plan for compliance with the law. Have we agreed on some standard measures against which we're evaluating the plan? So every year when there's a budget, when we're trying to form our opinions about what the budget means to us, we can read clearly what the current and future gross domestic product forecasts are that the Minister of Finance is using. We may or may not agree with those forecasts, but we know the context in which the plans are being built, and we can evaluate them and what they mean for our business planning purposes.
On my front page I'm showing you that over the last year, at least, the four--actually more than four--leading assessments of plans that the government has been producing have been published, and they use a very wide range among them of business-as-usual emission forecasts. If we're in business, we can't compare the evaluations that are before us because the business-as-usual forecast is an eternally moving target.
For us to move forward, I wonder if this committee might sit down and say that maybe one of the bits of infrastructure we need, however imperfect--and maybe you want three sets of them--is an official Canadian business-as-usual forecast, so that all of us know what the ground is that we're trying to shift.
The second thing I put in front of you, on the second page, is an estimate of what Bill C-377 means in terms of burden by province. This is a simple analysis. It basically starts with the National Energy Board reference case forecasts for all of the provinces and the National Energy Board population forecasts. Then it takes the goal of Bill C-377, and given those emission forecasts and those population forecasts, it explains what it means if we apply the obligation to reduce by 25% from 1990 levels to each province across the board, without differentiation.
Every time anybody puts anything forward, I think it's important to start with a page that looks like this.
As a final decision, this is not my recommendation for a business-as-usual forecast to use as our baseline--I understand that no one is proposing undifferentiated targets within Canada--but my view is that if you stare at that table on page 2, I think you see some enormous challenges that can divide the country very.... It frightens me, and it frightens me that we're not looking at these realities. What it says is that with undifferentiated targets, we're asking Canadians to cut emissions somewhere between 27% and 54% per capita by 2020.
To me, it's not the scope of those reduction objectives that's so scary, but the range of 27% to 54%. If you look at where the biggest burden is placed, it's Saskatchewan. If we move forward on further discussions without having this kind of material in front of us and without recognizing that we haven't had a plan in the last 15 years of trying because we're not openly looking at regional implications, when we try to get civil servants to do it without guidance from Parliament, it can't be done.
This is big; this is far bigger than equalization or anything else.
I'm running out of time, but there are two other bits of infrastructure that need to be worked on, regardless of what target you're thinking about; you don't have to have agreement on the target to work on these two bits of infrastructure.
One is answering in your own minds the question of what price is too high. Yes, there's a lot of solar being developed in Germany, and that's great, but Germany guarantees solar power providers a minimum of 10 years at $550 a megawatt as the price paid for that solar. That's $550 a megawatt compared to, say, $5 a megawatt, which is the normal market price in Ontario right now.
It's not my intention to express the opinion that $550 is too much. My question is, what's too much, as far as Canadian politicians are concerned, or is there no limit to the price that should be paid? That's a reasonable answer, but we need to know; we need to hear people tell us what's too much or whether it can be too much.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bob Mills
Ms. Donnelly, I don't like to cut you off, but we're over your time. Could you wrap up very quickly, please?
President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
Sorry. Yes, of course.
The last comment is that the next thing is an investment strategy. The thing I'll leave you with is this: in 1994, eight of the 11 cleanest vehicle powertrains certified by the California Air Resources Board were manufactured entirely in Canada; today not one of the low-emission powertrains certified by the California emissions board is manufactured in Canada.
We had a clean energy infrastructure emerging in Canada in 1994. We didn't lose it because we didn't have a target; we lost it because we didn't have a national investment strategy. I ask you if the committee's time is maybe not better spent on starting to work that infrastructure into our frame of reference.
Conservative
Matthew Bramley Director, Climate Change, Pembina Institute
Thank you.
Good afternoon, and thank you for having me again.
I'd like to start by congratulating Mr. Layton for his leadership and his vision in introducing this bill. To my knowledge, it's the first attempt to ensure that Canada is legally required to do its fair share toward the prevention of dangerous climate change, which is the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has been ratified by almost every country in the world.
A little over two years ago, the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation decided we needed to understand the greenhouse gas emission reductions Canada would have to achieve to play a full part in meeting the UN framework convention's objective. The result was our report entitled The Case for Deep Reductions: Canada’s Role in Preventing Dangerous Climate Change, of which you should have copies.
Our analysis in that report followed a logical sequence of questions: Number one, based on scientists' projections of global impact, how much warming would be dangerous? Number two, to avert that amount of warming, at what level would atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases need to be stabilized? Number three, to stabilize concentrations of gases at that level, by how much would global emissions need to be reduced? And number four, to reduce global emissions by that amount, by how much would industrialized countries' emissions need to be cut?
To address the first of these questions, it was already widely accepted two years ago that to have sufficient confidence in avoiding catastrophic impacts, the world must strive to keep average global warming within two degrees Celsius relative to the pre-industrial level, and today, support for a two-degree Celsius global warming limit is significantly broader. According to the recent Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists, the two-degree limit must be the prime goal of the next global climate treaty. This declaration is signed by distinguished Canadian climate scientists, including Corinne Le Quéré, Richard Peltier, and Andrew Weaver.
I don't have time to take you through each of the stages of the analysis in the case for deep reductions, but our final conclusion was that Canada needs to cut its greenhouse gas pollution by 25% below the 1990 level by 2020 and by 80% below the 1990 level by 2050. These are the same targets Mr. Layton has included in Bill C-377.
This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, confirmed these targets are in line with science. The IPCC's fourth assessment report showed us that to have a reasonable chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming, industrialized countries need to reduce their emissions by 25% to 40% below the 1990 level by 2020 and by 80% to 95% below the same level by 2050. These numbers are shown in table 1 of the United Nations technical paper, of which you should also have copies. Please note the targets in Bill C-377 are at the low end of the IPCC's ranges; in other words, they're conservative targets.
Can Canada reduce its emissions by 80% below the 1990 level by 2050? Achieving that target while maintaining normal levels of economic activity implies moving to a nearly emissions-free energy system. There is every reason to believe this is achievable if Canada implements strong policies that encourage maximum use of low-impact renewable energy, complemented where necessary and appropriate by higher-risk technology such as carbon capture and storage. The case for deep reductions outlines a range of evidence why deep emission cuts by 2050 are feasible from the perspectives of technology, cost, and competitiveness. Table 1 of the UN technical paper citing the IPCC shows that in the scenarios compatible with limiting global warming to two degrees, global GDP could be up to 5.5% smaller in 2050 than in a scenario in which emissions are not controlled. In other words, about two years of GDP growth might be lost in half a century. That's a small effect, and it's one that could disappear altogether as a result of technological innovation.
In this case, I do not believe that the targets in this bill can be justifiably weakened on the basis of anticipated financial costs of making emission reductions. The expected global costs of climate impacts, beyond two degrees of warming—and these are costs to people, for economies and for ecosystems—are simply too great. I would suggest that a country with natural, financial, and intellectual resources as abundant as Canada's must simply decide that this is a task that must be achieved and get to work.
Do we need to set these targets in law and require that measures be taken to achieve them? Yes, we do, because there have been and continue to be too many examples of federal governments adopting greenhouse gas targets and then not doing what is necessary to meet them.
Canada would not be alone with the approach proposed by Bill C-377. It is quite similar to that of the U.K. government's recently published climate change bill.
Some might say that Canada should not take on the science-based targets in Bill C-377 until all other major emitting countries do so. I would answer that this is not a responsible attitude, for two reasons. First, Canadians want to show leadership and ambition in solving this problem. The government has also expressed its desire to be a leader on this issue. Second, we have the resources to do this.
Countries such as France, Germany, Norway, and the U.K. have already adopted targets similar to those in this bill because it's the right thing to do and because they believe they can achieve them.
Others might argue that Canada has special circumstances that should result in our taking on less stringent targets. I suggest that they should specify which countries should have to do more to compensate for Canada's doing less. I would also remind you that the targets in this bill are already at the lower limits of what the IPCC says industrialized countries must achieve for the world to have a chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming.
To wrap up, this is not a political bill, in my view. It's a bill that's about basing policy on science and ensuring that Canada does not transfer our responsibilities to other countries. I see no reason why it should not be supported by all parties.
Thank you.
Conservative
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you both for being on the line.
Good morning to you, Mr. Bramley.
Let me begin with Ms. Donnelly. Ms. Donnelly, I need some clarification. This long report you sent us, of about 12 or 15 pages.... First of all, who is WDA Consulting Inc.?
President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
That's my corporation.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
Okay.
Was this report prepared for this committee in specific response to Bill C-377?
President, Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium
Yes, I put this together over the weekend—as you know, our invitation came late—though most of the slides are slides I had already submitted to the Bill C-30 committee earlier, in February this year, as a witness.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
I was going to say that I recognize a lot of these overheads from Bill C-30 and was wondering how they in fact apply to the specificity of Bill C-377. Thank you for clarifying that.
Can I ask both of you to comment where Mr. Bramley left off?
Mr. Bramley, earlier the parliamentary secretary raised questions about you and about whether your fingerprints were all over this bill, as he implied they were all over Bill C-288. I think he's trying to draw a connection; I'm not sure whether he's trying to make a more pointed statement about it. But it's curious that it falls hard on the heels of the tongue-lashing that environmental NGOs received yesterday from the minister in a very public way about their being responsible for Canada's situation today.
I'd like to ask you both, though, about the comments Mr. Bramley made about science.
Mr. Bramley, you said your Case for Deep Reductions report and Bill C-377 were aligned with science, that this was a science-based approach.
Can you help us both, please, understand, in the wake of the comments made by Professor Weaver two weeks ago about the government not relying on the science—in fact, to quote him, he said he thought the government was drawing its scientific inspiration from an Ouija board.... The IPCC president said yesterday in Bali that the government is not following science, certainly not informing its negotiating position with science.
Can both of you help us understand, in the case of Bill C-377, and in the case of your overheads, Ms. Donnelly, and of your report, Mr. Bramley, is the government's climate change plan, which is the foundation we're standing upon in Bali today—the “Turning the Corner” plan—in fact informed with science, and is it based on the consensual science that now exists around the world?