Evidence of meeting #22 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reductions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Okay.
You mentioned a measurement mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If you say that Canada has not established such a mechanism, that means that other countries have. You said that we have not conducted any quantitative studies here; what are you basing that on?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
One of the problems is that there is no model. Approaches vary from one country to another. One of the objectives of the Copenhagen meeting was to develop a standardized model for measuring all reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. At another meeting, I saw that England and Sweden had systems for measuring reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In any case, one size does not fit all countries, and that is one of the problems. The U.S. has its approach, and other countries have theirs.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Is there an effort to develop a model in Canada? Did you find that anything had been done on that front?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Environment Canada said that it was not possible to develop a model to measure all reductions, but it also said that it had made efforts to increase or measure reductions.
Mr. Arseneault, that was the gist of their answer, was it not?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes, absolutely. I have nothing else to add. The government is working on an approach.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
As someone who has worked in this area, how long would you say it will take before we have a model that we can use to carry out valid evaluations?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
In order to do an evaluation, the thing being evaluated needs to have been in place for a certain period of time. We cannot evaluate something new. We have to allow time for implementation, and that takes several years. Therefore, we have to wait a certain number of years because the 2007 plan, the 2008 plan and even the government's other plan, called Turning the Corner, are relatively new, young. A certain number of years has to go by before we can evaluate how the various measures have performed.
That explains the difficulty we had in terms of observation: we were not looking at things that were necessarily in place, only things that were being developed. It is difficult for auditors to provide clear findings in such cases. We did what we could with what we had. We used the government's own data and were able to carry out an analysis based on that.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
In other words, Environment Canada currently has no evaluation tools. Is that right?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
If we consider the various measures, there are different tools, but there are no comprehensive tools.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's certainly a pleasure to welcome you back. It's certainly good to see you here and know that everything is well.
I'd like to thank you for being here today. The nature of the questions I'll be pursuing will deal with fisheries.
Could you just enlighten the committee here, without getting into specifics—I don't need any names or résumés—as to the expertise contained in the office that worked on the audit pertaining to knowledge regarding fisheries and aquatic sciences?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
This was actually a considerable undertaking. This was two different teams. It was headed by Mr. Maxwell.
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Thank you, Chair.
This was a particularly strong team in terms of knowledge and background. The two principals who are here, Kevin Potter and Eric Hellsten, have spent many, many years—actually, probably longer than they wish to admit—in audits in this area. Kevin and I both were involved back in the 1980s—and we did supplement. In general, when we need special expertise we supplement it. We had, for example, an environmental lawyer as part of this team for about a three-month period. So we get expertise where we need very specific expertise, in addition to what we're able to provide in the Office of the Auditor General.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Is that expertise as it pertains to auditing or expertise as it pertains to science-based knowledge of fisheries and aquatic sciences? Or is it both?
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Primarily it's auditing. It's expertise that has been gained over, as I say, several decades of work and awareness of these issues. We refer quite often in this report to the fact that many concerns remain that were identified in previous audits and that the department said that it was going to act on. So it really is knowledge that we've gained on the ground.
We do have an advisory committee, I might add, for all our audits, in which we bring in that kind of specialized expertise. So we bring external experts in at key milestones in a project to make sure that we're not off base in terms of science.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Very good. Thank you for that.
I understand that sometimes you get asked difficult questions pertaining to policy, which is the realm of politicians, so I'm not going to ask you specifically about whether you think a policy is a good policy or a poor policy. But as it pertains to the fish habitat management program, was the assessment of the policy objectives and the plans in place more relevant in your study, or was it more relevant to measure successes or failures in relation to the plans that were set out from the policies? If you understand the nature of my question...what I'm asking is, were the plans sufficient in order to fulfill the policies? And if so, what's your assessment of the overall plans in relation to the policies? Were they adequate, and would they stand the test? And would you know if they were or were not?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I'll turn this over to Mr. Hellsten, but I think we looked at both. We looked at the overarching policy objective of the habitat policy, but then more specifically we looked at the internal systems and controls that were in place by Fisheries and Oceans as well as Environment Canada--these are their systems--to provide assurance that the goals they have set were being met. So we've looked at both. We looked at the overall policy and then we looked at the systems and practices in place, and we said that the systems and practices were deficient. There were gaps, and overall quality assurance was lacking within their systems.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
So the issues you have then pertain more to the ability to deliver on the plan rather than the actual quality of the plan itself as it relates to achieving the objectives of the policy.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We wouldn't look at the overall quality of the policy objectives. We looked at the quality of the delivery within the departments.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
So you wouldn't be able to provide this committee with any knowledge or any expertise as to whether or not the actual implementation plans were sufficient to meet the policy objectives.
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I might just clarify. I think on the latter, we are able to say whether the policy has been implemented as it was set out. I'll give you a very concrete, explicit example, and we talk about various policies here. The key one is the 1986 habitat policy, and our concern led to a recommendation that said that after 23 years, a number of aspects of that policy have not been implemented. Our recommendation was to say that after 23 years, you either have to confirm that you still intend to implement that part of the policy or tell Canadians what your game plan is.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Very good. In your presentation, Mr. Vaughan, in paragraph 6, following on the line that Mr. Maxwell has just started, in the 23 years since the habitat policy was adopted, many parts of the policy have been implemented only partially by Fisheries and Oceans Canada or not at all, and then you say this could be putting fish habitat in jeopardy. But you simply don't know, do you? You simply know what you can measure by what's documented within the department.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I think that's a fair characterization. We didn't go and do a field testing and say these will be the results. You have to assume the systems are in place for a reason, and in this case the reason is to protect fish habitat. If the systems aren't working, I think the conclusion is therefore that the habitats are at risk, but we didn't go and do a field test to look at different sites to see whether or not conditions have improved. That's the role of the government.
