Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to be here today to reflect on the draft federal SDS. Our CEO, Scott Vaughan, extends his regrets. He's in China working with decision-makers on new programs basically to help China improve its SD management practices.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development has been facilitating the transition to development futures that are more sustainable for about 20 years now. We've been working actively at home from our base in Canada and abroad as a non-partisan thought leader building partnerships and engaging policy-makers in government, business, and civil society.
Currently we're working in about 45 countries. Recently we reviewed 15 global sustainable development strategies. This work basically informs some of our input and thinking today which we share with you.
While IISD has witnessed the rise of sustainable development as a unifying concept, we have also witnessed its calcification under the environment pillar alone, where SD now essentially equals environment. This has raised the risk that SD as a unifying frame could be perhaps passé, with a limited ability to help achieve national development aspirations. But a renewed shift in the SD landscape has recently emerged where there's an increasing recognition that environmental, economic, and social linkages need to be more tightly bundled and thought of in policy development.
In Canada, for example, we are seeing an interesting trend towards revealing the economic value of ecosystem goods and services that is strengthening on-the-ground efforts to manage wetlands, grasslands, and watersheds, helping farming communities, ecosystem users, and conservationists alike. In a sense, we're starting to come full circle where SD as practised is starting to better align with SD as originally conceived under the Brundtland commission over 25 years ago.
The federal government is in good company with the hundred or so countries that have published national sustainable development strategies globally. SD strategies are clearly the vehicle of choice for governments around the world to translate SD policy into practice. In 2012, as I indicated, we reviewed about 32 of these hundred or so global SD strategies to look for lessons learned and to assess the global state of play. Again, our findings are informative and influence our thinking and our presentation here today.
While we found that success hinges on many things—SD is a complex issue—two elements are worth noting within the context of the draft federal SDS. First, an ideal SDS emphasizes good governance and enables implementation, so SD strategies are both governance reform agendas and a north star to signal expectations within and outside government. Successful SD strategies build on elements of good governance, including transparency, accountability, evaluation, and performance reporting. They then commit resources to the SDS agenda in an open and transparent manner, signalling priorities, while implementation road maps make clear the actions that are to come to support the aspirations contained in the SD strategies.
Success hinges on horizontal integration and a dynamic forward-looking view. This is important. I'll pick this up later. There is no doubt that ineffective integration between institutions within and outside government and a myopic focus on environment alone impede SDS success. Integration needs to move beyond the environment pillar, truly enabling horizontal implementation to broaden the SD constituency, both within and outside government. Core central agencies are key to poking and prodding for more horizontal integration and coordination, and for achieving success.
Related is a more forward-looking and strategic view that goes beyond short-term departmental plans and priorities, and addresses long-term uncertainties and risks. Basically, what are we doing? Where are we going? What risks do we need to identify?
With those general observations, I'll now jump more specifically into six recommendations or observations on the draft SDS.
Not surprisingly, we see the federal SDS as currently constructed as a clearinghouse for environment programs. There are long lists in the back of the SDS. There's a need to rethink the singular pillar in the SDS and broaden the focus to more closely align with the balanced view of SDS, the original intent of SD, sustainable development.
While housing the SDS in Environment Canada makes sense, consolidating and centralizing what has been a diffuse function in the past across many departments, it also reinforces the stereotype that SD is an environment issue alone, which we think is a significant risk.
As an environmental clearinghouse, this SDS is less useful as a strategic forward-looking SD document. Our observation is that the draft SDS at best provides a snapshot in time with a limited strategic view and road map for success. A longer term and more integrated view would strengthen this SDS.
We think there's a need to communicate SDS linkages more clearly. Priority areas in the draft SDS have large economic and social consequences and have positive environmental outcomes.
We know, for example, that climate long ago moved from an environmental issue to an economic issue. That explains why we haven't moved on the file. Recently, the head of the IMF concurred in Davos this year and said that climate is the single biggest issue facing economies in the 21st century. This is certainly the case in Canada where the government's sector-based GHG regulations will likely pose costs. These costs are published in the Canada Gazette, part II, and are in the order of $30 billion between now and 2030.
These aren't our estimates. They come right out of the regulatory impact analysis statements. Clearly, these have significant impacts on consumers and households for an environmental outcome. We need to better translate and talk about these linkages and better communicate and articulate the trade-offs of federal policy.
The SDS could be more transparent. There's a deluge of priority indicators and implementation strategies in the back of the document that are confusing to parliamentarians, the public, and certainly to us. There's a need to simplify priority indicators under a few key areas and go deep on those, as well as outline implementation road maps, articulate financial disbursements, and indicate performance reporting in these priority areas.
I have two more quick points.
One is the need to improve financial reporting. It's hard to understand priorities and disbursements in the current document; in fact, it's almost impossible. You have to dig into plans and priorities and other documents to understand what is being allocated to these programs, what the priorities are, and the size of activities. We think improved financial performance reporting would strengthen the document and be more realistic.
Two, there's always a gap in plans between aspirations and actions. We see it in everything we do. Being more realistic and not so aspirational would realign and fix more realistic expectations. We think a more realistic accounting of what we want to do and where we want to go would help.
For these reasons we think some additional effort is required to make the draft FSDS more transparent, more strategic, and perhaps more balanced to reflect the core elements of SD.
Thank you for your time. I would be happy to answer your questions and explore these issues.