Environment Committee on March 23rd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'd ask for a quick response.

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

You seem to have a set a goal, namely to develop harmonized climate change strategies with the United States. What exactly does this mean?

[Michael Keenan]

In terms of the honourable member's description of the process, just before the last question, I would say, yes, that is the approach.

In terms of your last question, I believe the minister actually spoke to that in a fairly specific sense when he appeared at this committee last week on the main estimates. He described key next steps that he envisaged in terms of moving forward with regulations to address greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector, harmonized with the United States.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Woodworth, it's your turn.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses, Mr. Keenan and Ms. Weber, for coming to us today. I have appreciated your crisp and clear presentation.

Quite frankly, I'm very excited about this strategy simply because it does represent such a step forward and I think it's going to turbocharge the government's efforts on the environment.

I'll take one of the things you said, Mr. Keenan, as a starting point on that, that the draft strategy “represents the first significant improvement to sustainable development planning and reporting since 1995”.

As I understand it, in fact, the existing or previous system was established by the former Liberal government in 1995. Almost immediately it became subject to criticism and it was clear that it was not achieving the intended results.

What did that government do? Well, that government did nothing. That government did nothing for 11 long years.

In fact, in 2001-—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Bigras has a point of order.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

As we know, Mr. Chair, committees engage in non-partisan work, to the extent possible. We started off fine, but I would ask you to tell the member to get back to the subject at hand.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I think that's a matter of debate, because politics does enter into committee all too often in my opinion, but we are politicians at the end of the day.

Mr. Woodworth, perhaps you could be a little more gracious with your comments.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'll be more gracious. I'll be less enthusiastic. I was in some respects responding to Mr. McGuinty's earlier comments about folks needing to put this in perspective. So I did want to comment that in 2001 or 2002 the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development made some observations, and again nothing happened with those, but then our government was elected, and in just 18 short months, we produced an all-party agreement on a new approach. We're grateful to Mr. Godfrey, we're grateful to Mr. Warawa, for coming up with that. And now, hardly more than 18 months later, we have this strategy in front of it.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to say that I'm very proud to be part of a government that does the heavy lifting on the environment and a government that does deliver results.

In particular, I noticed that among your comments, Mr. Keenan, was a statement that the management of sustainable development is now going to be linked into the core system that the government uses for planning, priority-setting, budgeting, decision-making, and managing results. This certainly seems to be a significant change over the old system, and I wondered if you could describe some of the ways that new system is an improvement over the previous one established by the former government and also how as a result it addresses some of those criticisms by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

[Michael Keenan]

Thank you for the question.

The new system or the proposed system that's described in the consultation paper before you does represent a significant change. It is absolutely true that the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has commented repeatedly on the weaknesses of the system. I think in the minister's message, there's one of the better quotes. He said it was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without having the box to show you what the jigsaw puzzle is supposed to look like .

I think the shift to the whole-of-government approach where you bring together all of the pieces so you can see what the box is supposed to look like is a key innovation and a positive change in terms of the management of sustainable development.

The second one, which I think is mentioned several times, is the fact that the sustainable development is now linked to the expenditure management system. I'll give you an example of why that's particularly important. The Government of Canada has a very significant clean air agenda. There are currently 44 programs delivered across nine departments, which add up to, I think, about $2.2 billion a year, all with the goal of advancing clean air. If you look through the sustainable development strategies, it's hard to get any sense of those programs. Those are very important programs that speak to a very important environmental goal. Under the former system, you couldn't get any decent picture of what they were. Now as it happens, as part of the expenditure management system, the Government of Canada put a summary of those programs and what they're accomplishing in Canada's performance report, a key Treasury Board document that describes the results achieved for the more than $200 billion of taxpayers' money that's spent by the federal government.

That kind of information describing what the government is doing on clean air and what effect it's having in terms of air quality would be at the core of a new sustainable development strategy. I'd submit that it would be one that would have information to enable parliamentarians and Canadians to get a clear picture of something like clean air and what's going on, which would represent in a practical, concrete sense a significant improvement.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

We're now in the five-minute round.

Monsieur Ouellet, s'il vous plaît .

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have to say that I have a problem with the wording. Could you clarify a few things for me?

To my way of thinking, sustainable development has to include the environment. In order to preserve the environment, development must often be restrained.There is also the social aspect to be taken into consideration. On page 19, you refer to implementation strategies. Mention is made of chemicals, but does that also include asbestos, uranium and tar sands? As for point 2.2.1, I don't quite understand what choices you are going to make. On what will you base your choices? Will you take into account the three key elements of sustainable development?

[Michael Keenan]

Thank you for the question.

I would start with the more specific question, which is with respect to implementation strategy 2.2.1 in the background tables. That implementation strategy and those activities relate to the chemical management plan that the Government of Canada is pursuing, which is to go through in large batches and assess a wide range of chemicals that are in use today to get a sense of their potential risks to the environment and human health, and then to develop management plans accordingly.

I probably can't tell you a lot more about those details because I don't work directly in that program, but I would be happy to provide more information to you, if that's helpful.

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

Could a parliamentarian or simply a departmental official ask you to include uranium or tar sands?

[Michael Keenan]

I would submit two things.

There is a process by which the department, in collaboration with other departments like Health Canada, is working through large batches of assessments. My understanding is that their prioritization is a scientifically based prioritization. I would imagine that they would take input from whatever sources in that prioritization. I can't speak to that in any great detail, simply because I don't work in the program.

What I would say is that the questions you're asking here speak to, if you will, the transparency that comes out by describing this chemical management plan. And then having to report across the whole government how much progress we're making in reducing the risks to Canadians and to the environment from toxic substances would help parliamentarians in providing, I believe, their rendering accountability to our work, and also providing us with guidance by suggesting we've missed, for example, uranium. I don't know where uranium is on the list, but that's an example of the kind of input that can come from this kind of process.

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

For instance, could a standing parliamentary committee such as the natural resources committee contact you directly and request certain information?

[Michael Keenan]

Yes, absolutely. Again, I'm probably one of the worst people at Environment Canada to respond to questions on the chemical management plan, simply because I don't work directly—

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

That was just an example, but it could be another committee.

[Michael Keenan]

Yes, absolutely.

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

Do you include other types of projects? As I was saying earlier, there are three pillars to sustainable development. If the government were to ask you to assess or issue an opinion of a wind energy project, would you do that?

[Michael Keenan]

I'll clarify a couple of points.

The first is that sustainable development does have three pillars, as the member has indicated. However, the purpose of the Federal Sustainable Development Act is actually highly focused on the environmental pillar, and that's indicated in section 3, where it says that the purpose of the act is to “provide the legal framework for developing and implementing a...strategy that will make environmental decision-making more transparent and accountable”. It is for that reason that the goals and the targets in the implementation strategies are all focused on the environment. It's driven from the purpose of the act.

The second dimension here is that this strategy brings together a wide range of programs and activities across 32 federal government departments and puts them into a coherent picture. So depending upon what the activity is—and it provides great transparency as to what activities relate to what results—the question would be directed to any one of the 32 departments.

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

However, if we get back—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Merci beaucoup.

Mr. Armstrong, the floor is yours.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Keenan and Mrs. Weber, for attending committee. I very much enjoyed the presentation and your very articulate response.

It's good to see that accountability measures are included in the strategy, and I believe the whole-of-government approach is very applicable to making this project work. Thirty-two separate silos all making separate reports would make the implementation of this report immeasurable and as an administrator myself, I always believe that if a goal cannot be measured, it cannot really be achieved. The smart criteria and the continuous review process will support the implementation of this strategy.

My question deals with consultation. The previous system involved little consultation with Canadians and stakeholders. Will that be different in the new system?

[Michael Keenan]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, that's one area of market change under the new system. The act requires that there be an extensive consultation in every three-year cycle of the new system. We have just launched the first such consultation period. It has to run at least 120 days. In addition to having a specific role for the two parliamentary committees and the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, there is a specific role for the sustainable development advisory committee, which we were discussing a few minutes ago. That's a very robust committee with 25 representatives covering every province and territory and key sectors. Among all these different organizations, the mandated stakeholder consultation every three years, there is a pathway of significant engagement and stakeholder consultation as part of this strategy.

It's interesting that we're in, in essence, the end of the first week of this consultation and already I think we've received 20-some submissions online on a range of things. There's good advice there and there's also a lot of comments on the targets. It speaks, I believe, to the transparency that's coming out of this in terms of putting this all together.