Environment Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2009

[Jim Prentice, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Let me try to speak to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

A quick answer, and then time will expire. You have one minute.

[Jim Prentice, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

One minute?

First, I'm glad that Mr. Martin has graduated from my “employee“ to my “official”. I'm sure he'll continue that upward trajectory.

Reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere is largely about coal; 41% of the carbon in the atmosphere came from burning coal. Canada actually burns much less coal than anybody else. One of the achievements we have as a country is that 73% of our electricity stock is non-emitting. This is a Canadian achievement about which not enough is said. To be clear, a lot of credit goes to those provinces that have developed extensive hydro and nuclear systems.

All in all, some provinces are still very dependent on coal. In our country, about 16% of our electricity system is dependent on coal burning--in contrast, I would emphasize, to the United States, where over 50% of their electricity stock continues to burn coal.

If one examines the capital stock in the Canadian electricity sector—I'll close with this, Mr. Chairman—you will find that many of the existing coal-burning units reach the end of their useful life in the time around 2020 to 2025. This provides a public policy opportunity for Canada to continue to clean up our electricity system, I hope to achieve a 90% non-emitting status.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Warawa, last round of questions to you.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Minister, I want to thank you for being here. You've already been thanked, but not a lot of people realize how busy you are. I do. I realize you had to adjust your very busy schedule.

The committee has been listening to witnesses on Bill C-311, the NDP bill. We heard from every witness that the approach to having a continental, harmonized North American approach was bang on. They all recommended that. There was discussion on the targets, and if you accept a harmonized continental approach, is it realistic to have different targets from the U.S.?

We heard from industry with our last group of witnesses that it could kill our economy, particularly our economic recovery. Everybody said harmonized approach.

I would like you to share a little bit of what has happened since the visit to Canada by President Obama, meeting with our Prime Minister. What has happened since that February visit? Things have changed. There's been a lot of progress. I'm particularly interested in the priority of developing and deploying clean energy technologies. Canada is really excited about what we're doing on carbon capture and storage. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?

The other priority is building a more efficient electricity grid based on cleaner renewable generation and expanding clean energy research and development. How important is that?

These are all important to the world. When I was in Copenhagen five weeks ago and in Berlin a year and a half ago, we heard how the world is depending on Canada to develop and commercialize carbon capture and storage. We are a world leader.

Per capita, what kind of contribution is Canada making compared to the rest of the world in some of these incredible technologies the world is relying on? How important is having a harmonized approach, and what is happening? Could you update us on that?

[Jim Prentice, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Thank you very much.

Let me deal with that in a couple of ways. I will come to the clean energy dialogue. As you know, at the last visit on the part of the Prime Minister and me and Minister Cannon and others to Washington, the Secretary of Energy in the United States, Steven Chu, and I provided a report detailing what has been done under the clean energy dialogue.

Let me go back to the essential issue of whether the targets and the approach that Canada is following are sufficiently ambitious. I know that this committee has been wrestling with Bill C-311 and will continue to, and I would just emphasize that given the structure of our economy, our climate, our geography, and the nature of our industrial base, we need to have targets that are aligned with our major trading partner and we need an approach, as represented by the clean energy dialogue, that is aligned with our major trading partner.

If you look at what's taken place around the world in terms of the targets that other countries are agreeing to, Canada's target is, in fact, very ambitious. Our 2020 target is to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020 from a 2006 baseline. If you compare that to President Obama's provisional target—and it is provisional upon Senate action in the United States, and provisional on an international binding agreement that applies to all major emitters—the United States is talking about minus 17%. So we are consistent.

If you look at what the European Union is proposing, their targets are equivalent, essentially, to minus 14% from a 2005 level. So again the targets that we are talking about in Canada are quite consistent.

What Bill C-311 puts forward is the notion that Canada would double our reduction targets for 2020 to what is essentially minus 39% below 2005. If our country did that—and I caution the members of the committee on this, because I know you're dealing with this bill—our target would be completely out of line with the targets of all of the other major industrial democracies with whom we compete. This could be done only at an exceedingly high economic cost that is completely out of line with the cost that other countries have found to be acceptable.

If you look even at the most recent Pembina Institute-David Suzuki report, they quantified the cost as being up to 3.2% of GDP. Look at the analysis in the United States. What the United States is prepared to take on as an economic cost is something in the order of 1% of GDP. The European Union targets are in the order of 1% of GDP. All of this is chronicled and detailed in economic analyses in those jurisdictions.

What's being proposed in Bill C-311—the committee needs to know this before you vote on it—is that Canada would take on economic costs that no other industrial country is taking on at the climate change table in Copenhagen. So be careful with this. These targets are completely incompatible with the principles of U.S. harmonization, with which, frankly, everyone I speak with in this country is, broadly speaking, in accord.

All of the premiers support this. All of the environment ministers are consistently talking about the importance of harmonization with the United States, not damaging our economy. Industry is in agreement, and the ENGOs have been in agreement with how we go about that. So that's a caution on that.

In terms of the clean energy dialogue, my friend points out that carbon capture and storage is a critical part of this. We are working together with the United States on carbon capture and storage, the definition and building of a smart grid for the electricity system. These are two extremely important initiatives.

Carbon capture and storage holds the promise of reducing emissions from coal-burning thermal plants. In the next 25 years there will be over 2,000 new coal-burning thermal plants built on the planet--that's 2,000. Some of those will replace existing stock, but reducing our emissions into the atmosphere is largely about constraining coal emissions. CCS is the only known technology that can reduce those emissions, and Canada should lead the way.

And on a per capita basis, no one in the world is investing more in carbon capture and storage than the Canadian federal and provincial governments together.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Prentice.

With that, I do appreciate, Minister, you extending your time. I know you have a busy schedule.

Mr. Shugart, Minister Prentice, and Mr. Martin, thank you very much for coming to committee today.

We're going to suspend briefly while we allow officials to come to the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We are back in order. We're moving on to our second panel of people from the Department of the Environment.

We have Basia Ruta, the assistant deputy minister and chief financial officer, who is no stranger here; Cynthia Wright, acting assistant deputy minister for environmental stewardship; and Mike Beale, who is the acting associate assistant to the deputy minister. Michael Keenan is not here, but he'll be joining us. He is the assistant deputy minister for strategic policy.

From the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency we have Daniel Nadeau, who is the director general of corporate services, and from Parks Canada Agency we have Céline Gaulin, who is from the office of the chief administrative officer.

Welcome, all of you, to the table.

Before we start off, I like to always remind committee members that when we have public servants at the table, we want to pay particular attention to the rules. I'll quote from O'Brien and Bosc, page 1068, chapter 20:

Particular attention is paid to the questioning of public servants. The obligation of a witness to answer all questions put by the committee must be balanced against the role that public servants play in providing confidential advice to their Ministers. The role of the public servant has traditionally been viewed in relation to the implementation and administration of government policy, rather than the determination of what that policy should be. Consequently, public servants have been excused from commenting on the policy decisions made by the government. In addition, committees ordinarily accept the reasons that a public servant gives for declining to answer a specific question or series of questions which involve the giving of a legal opinion, which may be perceived as a conflict with the witness' responsibility to the Minister, which are outside of their own area of responsibility, or which might affect business transactions.

I just ask that everyone keep that in mind. I will be excusing witnesses from making those types of comments.

With that, I'll kick it off with a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Scarpaleggia.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you to all the officials for being here.

We now have a number of provinces that have come out with targets. Has anyone added up the equation, added up those targets, to see if they are consistent, on a Canada-wide basis, with the short-term targets the government is proposing? If so, does it all add up? Are some provinces out of line with what the federal government is proposing, and if so, which ones?

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

Mr. Chair, I will ask Mr. Keenan to answer this question, please.

[Michael Keenan, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment]

Mr. Chair, I would say, as the honourable member has indicated, that a number of provinces have laid out a number of targets. The interpretation of how they align and their consistency is actually a matter of policy, which I believe the minister spoke to in his opening remarks.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Interpretation is one thing, but you can convert everything to a common year for the purpose of contrasting and comparing. Whether it be 2005 or 1990, it doesn't matter. I would think that, as officials, you would have been tasked at some point with doing those calculations. I'd really like to know if they add up. And if they don't add up, who's going to have to make up the slack?

[Michael Keenan]

Mr. Chair, in terms of how provincial targets add up, if you go across the country they add up to a number that would differ from the Canadian number. I don't have the actual megatonnes here. In some cases, they're quite close; in some cases, they vary significantly.

For example, in the case of Quebec, Quebec's emissions in 1990 and 2006, as reported to the UNFCCC, were virtually identical. So in that case, the 20% reduction from 1990 is also a 20% reduction for 2006, and it equals the Canadian target.

In other provinces, it varies significantly.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

So when the minister says there's a consensus, there isn't, because the numbers just don't add up. There's no real consensus across provinces.

Did I understand correctly that intensity targets are out now? That plan has gone by the wayside, along with all the other plans the government promised over the last four years. That's out now. They've realized the error of their ways, and we're going to hard caps by industrial sector. Is that true?

[Mike Beale, Acting Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment]

I think the minister made it clear that we're moving to a North American cap and trade system.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

It is hard caps by industrial sector.

He also made it clear that it is very possible that the bills currently before the U.S. Senate might not pass. If they don't pass, that essentially means that the U.S. doesn't have a real target. What then happens to the 20% by 2020 that is the Canadian target? I guess we'll have to drop that next year. Is that something else that's going to have to change because then we'll be out of line, and we won't be harmonized anymore?

[Mike Beale]

I don't think that's something we can speculate on.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Okay.

In terms of municipal waste water effluent regulations, I believe that in the summer, the minister made an announcement that we'd have regulations before the end of the year. Is that going to happen?

[Cynthia Wright, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Stewardship Branch, Department of the Environment]

I can take that, Mr. Chair.

Environment Canada is still working very hard on those regulations. As you can imagine, they're quite complex. They cover 4,000 different systems. We will probably slip a couple of months, but we're still aiming to finalize the regulations in part II of the Gazette by the end of 2010, so we're not changing our end target date.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Okay, but they were supposed to be announced in December. That's what the minister said in his speech in July, I think it was, in Saint John, New Brunswick. Again we're missing another deadline, which the minister himself was able to choose, and yet he's missing his own deadline again.

My next question has to do with the water situation at Shannon, in Quebec City. You mentioned that in the supplementary estimates there's a certain amount of money for assessment management and remediation of federal contaminated sites. Would that money relate to the work the government is doing at Shannon?

Is the environment department involved in that, or is that just purely the Department of National Defence?

[Cynthia Wright]

The lead for that is the Department of National Defence. Environment Canada has provided some technical information in the past, but it really does not need to do so because Defence has quite a lot of expertise in this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

The time has expired.

Mr. Woodworth, you have the floor.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the very considerable contingent that we have for the expertise it brings to our committee today.

I was thinking about the kinds of things that our government has done in its very young history, right from the Environmental Enforcement Act to the clean air regulatory agenda, the management of contaminated sites, and the unprecedented expansion of Canadian national parks, which in fact represent an unparalleled global carbon sink. There have been many accomplishments and many remarkable environmental achievements over the last few years.

I imagine those have kept you folks all pretty busy, so I want to thank you for your service.

I noticed that in the minister's remarks, there was mention of $25.2 million in the supplementary requests, which is requested in support of regulatory activities under the clean air regulatory agenda. I must confess to not knowing a lot of the details of that particular accomplishment of this government, so I would like to ask some questions. I have the feeling that perhaps Mr. Beale could tell me a bit about the policy considerations here.

Can you tell the committee how the clean air regulatory agenda funding will be used in order to improve the air quality for Canadians?

[Mike Beale]

Thank you.

The clean air regulatory agenda funding is the core support for our work on air pollution and on greenhouse gases. It supports the science that will underlie our advancement in air quality and air pollution. It underlies the policy analysis, and it underlies the regulatory development.

To give one example of some of the science funding, our clean air regulatory agenda funding on science for air quality provides support for 32 background air quality monitoring sites across Canada. In addition, through a series of MOUs with provincial governments, it provides support for 184 air quality monitoring sites in urban areas so that we can have a good picture of what is happening to Canadian air quality.

In addition, it provides support for policy development. One of the initiatives that's been taking up a lot of the work of my group, but also of all provinces and stakeholders, is a multi-stakeholder and federal-provincial initiative to develop an approach to air pollution in Canada. This has been a very time-intensive and resource-intensive exercise, as it's been going on now for a little bit over a year.

There was a report of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment just last month on the progress that has been made. The ministers agreed to give the group another few months, so around the end of March there will be a report to ministers on a path forward on a policy approach for air pollution in Canada.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

You mentioned that it's a core support approach regarding greenhouse gases. I don't know whether or not the air quality monitoring sites you've mentioned are simply monitoring for pollutants, or if some monitoring, measuring, and reporting of GHGs is being done, either at those sites or in some other fashion under the clean air regulatory agenda.

Could you tell us a little about how the greenhouse gases are being monitored and measured?