Environment Committee on June 18th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Hyer.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

To avoid getting bogged down in that debate, I would like to answer the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay, Mr. Hyer's offering to answer.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I would say that I do not know the number. I do not know the answer to the question.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I'd like to speak to that point of order, Mr. Chair, for five seconds.

As a point of order, in the Library of Parliament briefing note provided for this committee today, it says on page 2:

On 20 April 2009, a request was sent to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) to provide a full costing of the legislative proposals contained in Bill C-311. On 18 May 2009, the Hill Times reported that the PBO office responded that it cannot fulfill the request with its current budget.

Now, as a matter of point of order, when a question is clearly answered, can a continuing series of questions being put to a witness compel a witness to answer a question that is answered?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

If a committee member is asking a question, and we hear the same questions and the same answers over and over again when we go through these processes of holding hearings, I believe that it's that committee member's time and his or her questions that are being asked, and the member is entitled to get appropriate responses from the witness. So I think that even though there is information in the brief, we don't always refer to everything in the brief. It's also based upon the testimony coming from the witness.

Mr. Hyer has answered the question. I do want to move on.

Monsieur Ouellet, s'il vous plaît.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I would like to thank Mr. Hyer for having the courage to come and defend his bill from the attacks that some people want to launch. I am not one of those people. In fact, I would like to know a little more about it.

It seems to me that something is different in this bill from what you have proposed before. You said, in fact, that you would like federal targets for all of Canada, and that those targets would apply to every province. Clause 7(b) reads as follows:

(b) limiting the amount of greenhouse gases that may be released in each province by applying to each province the commitment made under section 5 and the interim Canadian greenhouse gas emission targets referred to in section 6;

Mr. Hyer, is this not the territorial approach that would satisfy the Bloc Québécois, in particular? Are you going back on this part, or did you just not notice it?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you for the clarification.

It's my understanding that while this bill clearly seeks to set national standards and goals overall in Canada, there is flexibility for the provinces to have different targets. And if you or any of the provinces or parties feel that can be better clarified in the bill, we're open to amendments that would make it even clearer.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Hyer, in Ottawa yesterday, I attended a lecture given by Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a foundation created by the government. The topic was infrastructure. The foundation's specific goal is to reduce greenhouse gases by greening infrastructure through the infrastructure contracts. These people have clearly shown, time and time again, that many more jobs would be created if infrastructures were green. They say that, in the long term, Canada would be at a great advantage if infrastructure were to be more sustainable. They were talking about all infrastructure.

Do you not find it curious that this foundation, created by the government, is telling us exactly the opposite to what the government itself is telling us, that it will be more expensive? Of course, you know that your bill is going to be attacked by a government that claims that the measures you propose are, and will continue to be, expensive. That is what we expect to hear. At the moment, any number of infrastructure projects are being put in place, costing billions of dollars. If we required all those projects to be green, or to be made greener, more jobs would be created.

Would you agree with that?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I certainly agree with you, Mr. Ouellet. It is my belief, as well as the belief of many in government agencies and non-profit agencies, scientists, and technicians from around the world, that there is huge potential to create jobs through new infrastructure. So if you're asking me if I agree with what you just said, the answer is yes.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

From what I heard yesterday, these are additional jobs. There was also a lot of talk about globalizing green equipment. They said that, if Canada developed expertise in green infrastructure and produced green equipment, it could export both all over the world.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

That would be my belief, as well.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

The argument that the Conservative government uses is that a bill like yours would cause economic damage. Do you think that is a correct statement?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I guess my simple answer would be that there are those who are focused on the potential problems with this bill; what I see far more of is opportunities. There are incredible opportunities in this bill. Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and other countries are already moving at light speed, at the speed of electricity, literally, to implement these kinds of ideas--wind power, solar power--through technological and various incentives. A huge percentage of the houses and garages and shops in Germany now have solar panels on them that go directly into the grid, and they have already provided way beyond their predictions in terms of the percentage of electricity produced. I see opportunities more than problems.

Will there be dislocations? Absolutely. There were dislocations a hundred years ago when we switched from horses to cars.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Watson.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witness for appearing today in defence of the bill.

Mr. Chair, if I don't complete my full time, I would like to defer it to one of my colleagues.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Your bill, if I can characterize it appropriately, is a post-Kyoto bill, right?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I would say that's a good summary, yes.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Is meeting the Kyoto target a prerequisite for meeting the targets in the bill?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

The answer is yes and no. Obviously, on the way to a new post-Kyoto target, we're going to have to meet and pass some of the previous Kyoto targets, although not on time. Are we going to necessarily need to follow the same pathways, or lack of them? I think not.

This bill looks forward, not back. As we know, we have not met our targets under Kyoto. Do we give up? I hope not.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

To the question of scientific targets, we had Dr. John Stone, a Canadian scientist...part of the UN IPCC's fourth assessment report. I asked Dr. Stone whether these were scientific targets—the 80% below 1990 by 2050. That is, are they based exclusively on science? The answer to that, of course, is that they weren't. There was a value judgment applied by the UN IPCC that only developed countries would take on the target. They're not exclusively science-based in that there's a determination that in order to address this, Canada must take on this particular total, or that developed countries would take on a particular total.

Are we in agreement that it's not a scientific target, that there is an additional value judgment applied beyond science?

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'll agree and I'll disagree. I hope I won't sound facetious here, but hear me out for a second.

I have a really smart 13-year-old, and he just did a science project for the science fair. It was a well-designed project and he did a lot of statistics on it. At the end, I said, “Michael, what did you learn from your science project?” He said, “Dad, I learned that you can never really prove anything and you can never really disprove anything in science. All you can do is get the statistical probability that you almost proved or disproved something.” I said, “Michael, in grade seven, you are light years ahead of most of the master's degrees and some of the Ph.D.s on the planet.”

To get slightly technical here for a minute, we have one experiment, no controls, one planet, no degrees of freedom, and we are never going to know with certainty what's going to happen in the future, based on the science. At some point, all of us—both sides of the table, all sides of the table—are going to have to decide for ourselves that value judgment as to how much risk we want to accept and what kind of planning we want to do.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Right. My point at the time of asking Dr. John Stone, of course, was that value judgments are the purview of politicians, not scientists.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

That's true.