Environment Committee on June 4th, 2013

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank all of our guests. I very much appreciate that you're here with us.

We've had quite a discussion today about energy efficiency and its impact on sustainable development. There was quite a bit of talk about that also in the first hour.

One of the comments Mr. Sawyer made in his answers to Mr. Sopuck was that we're suffering from a lack of bringing sustainable development technologies to commercialization and it's one of the challenges we face. That brings me to some of the questions I have for Ms. Sharpe, because the work that Sustainable Development Technology Canada does is very much geared to bringing commercial success to the work that's been done as far as sustainable development research and actually bringing that to fruition is concerned.

Minister Kent referred to the government's approach to reduce GHG emissions in the transportation sector as part of our sector-by-sector approach. SDTC has played a key role in that in a lot of ways. I wanted to talk about one particular project that is very exciting and interesting to me as a member of the transport committee.

We recently completed a study on innovative transportation technologies. One of the things that obviously was talked about quite a bit was electrification and battery power. It was interesting because during the testimony we heard from a lot of witnesses who said, “We're not there yet. We're a long way off from being able to commercialize these products.” Yet shortly after that, in the fall of last year, we actually had an announcement in my riding of Elmwood—Transcona with SDTC and New Flyer Industries about the work that is being done there.

I wonder, Ms. Sharpe, if you could speak about SDTC's involvement in that project, and also some of the great environmental outcomes of that particular project which are readily available today, and also the worldwide impacts that those may have.

[Dr. Vicky Sharpe]

Thank you very much. We do indeed make sure that we are getting these technologies to market, and we do that in a number of ways.

Specifically for batteries and other advanced transportation technologies, you would expect to see greater market uptake with things like fleets and buses before you could move to the very large expenditures that you get for cars in the retail markets. STDC originally concentrated on fleet applications, whether they be couriers, or in this case, buses.

New Flyer builds a lot of buses for the North American market, and therefore, we saw a real benefit in being able to have a collaboration so that if the technology proved out within a real world application, it would be able to impact more broadly. We've got a four year in-service evaluation of a small fleet of buses in Winnipeg Transit. We're examining the charging system, the battery capacity, the component life and reliability. If this works, we'll be able to reduce both greenhouse gases and criteria air contaminants by shifting from diesel to a utility-based generation source of energy.

I believe the annual reduction per bus when compared with a hybrid will be about 90 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per bus per year. I think this will be a way of proving that the reliability is there, the life-cycle costs will be reasonable, and therefore you'll see greater adoption.

I hope that answers your question.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I think it's important to note also if we compare it to diesel buses, we're going to see a 160-tonne reduction. The diesel bus is still the number one bus used especially in North America. It's great to see these technologies being developed and actually commercialized.

It's important to note too in this particular case with the New Flyer that this is happening live. These buses are going to be running regular routes in probably one of the harsher climates in the world, in the wintertime in Manitoba. We're having a real opportunity to see not only the ability to have an impact on the environment, but also to do a close study as to how this can be effectively brought out throughout the world, not just in North America.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Toet, your time is up. Thank you. Those are great points, by the way.

Now we'll go to more great points from Ms. Duncan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for coming.

I'm going to pick up on something Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Sawyer were talking about, the difficulty of determining what is most critical.

Mr. Sawyer, you talked about priority indicators. If there is something that could be done to improve this, what would you specifically recommend regarding priorities?

[Neil Maxwell]

I made several points. Some of this is simply going through and sifting the important from the unimportant. Some of it is quite easily achieved. That was something in our review. We found a lot of improvements that are quite easy to achieve in this draft.

I'd also point out specifically that putting in the financial resources is very important. I noted that the minister spoke about the adaptation announcements of $150 million over a number of years. You can read the entire adaptation section of that SDS and not get a sense of the magnitude at all.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Sawyer, what priorities are you looking for specifically?

[David Sawyer]

We think that four or five major priorities in the SDS would help to focus beyond the thematic areas. Pick four or five action items that are priorities and then add budget items, line items, the resources being spent, and indicate results. You should actually indicate results. Lay down some performance metrics in time. Trade-offs are also important. Tie in the SD with the social aspects and talk about some of the trade-offs. A lot of the activities have strategic environmental assessments, regulatory analyses, or all kinds of policy assessments. One can agglomerate those trade-offs and make them clear so we know what we're getting for what we spend.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Sawyer, you talked about improving governance. What would you recommend to improve governance?

[David Sawyer]

In the context of this SDS, I would pick up on two points.

One is transparency. It is really hard to figure out what's going on in the current document. Besides echoing long-standing observations from the commissioner's office, we need to indicate performance a little more clearly.

Also, I would echo the comments I made already. The one addition would be implementation road maps, again this forward-looking strategic view. These are long-term, complex issues—most of them—that have been tackled, and there is a need for a longer-term view as well.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Maxwell, I'm not sure if you're able to do this. You said that most of the 34 targets lack sufficient clarity. Are you able to table with the committee which ones are sufficiently clear? For those that are not, what is required to make them sufficiently complete and clear?

[Neil Maxwell]

We are in the process of doing that detailed work. In two short weeks, we'll have that out as a public report for the minister.

On the governance point, that's an excellent question. The easiest thing is, there's a fifth theme that isn't in the strategy, and it's about integrated decision-making. It's referred to very broadly but without any targets and goals. If I had a single thing I'd like to see, it would be to develop how the government intends to improve its decision-making. They need to integrate the three pillars and put that in with the goals and targets. Then people could track how well it's being improved.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Could you elaborate on integrated decision-making?

[Neil Maxwell]

The government has some tools now, things like strategic environmental assessment. That's attempting to look at new proposals. It's related to that project de loi to look at new decisions, to analyze the environmental impacts as well as the social and economic ones. There are some existing tools, so the question is how the government will improve these tools over the course of the next three years.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Are there any recommendations you'd like to make to the committee?

[Neil Maxwell]

We have quite a number of recommendations. We're still working on them.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Could you share some of them with us, please?

[Neil Maxwell]

Some of them I've already shared in the opening statement.

There's another thing—and perhaps this gets to the governance issue that David raised as well—we think should be done, which could be an important improvement, Rather than simply doing a lot of bottom-up collection—and a lot of this exercise having to do with this strategy has been essentially Environment Canada going to all the other departments and asking them what they're doing about air and water—

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

They're asking for an inventory.

[Neil Maxwell]

It should be more top-down, more directed towards priorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Duncan. We're out of time.

We'll move now to Madame Quach for five minutes.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for having come to testify before us today.

My first questions will be for Mr. Sawyer.

You have found a certain number of gaps in the sustainable development strategy. May I remind you that this strategy is now in its second phase. Should we be seeing more results? Are there enough credible tools to measure progress? Once again, we are hearing about developing indicators. We are still at the theoretical level, whereas we should be acting. Do we have the necessary tools to act, and implement all of these indicators?

[David Sawyer]

Thank you for the question.

To me it's unclear whether we have the tools and whether we are achieving the result. From the document, it's unclear. That indicates an opportunity, perhaps, to make it more clear or to improve systems and practices, to fill the gap, as it were. Looking at the FSDS right now, it's really hard to track results. For all of the activities that are listed in the back of the document, we simply don't know where progress has occurred.

Do we have the tools? I think that's an open question. I actually might defer to Mr. Maxwell on that question.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Mr. Maxwell, do we have tools to measure progress?

[Neil Maxwell]

We'll have a lot more to say in the fall. In the fall we are going to be reporting on the first substantive progress report, which was tabled, as I mentioned, in February, at the same time as the draft strategy. So I'll defer, if I may, to what we will have to say in October.

It's a very important question, and I appreciate that.