Environment Committee on Oct. 8th, 2014

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

The point is that if you continue to dig your hole, if you continue to do the same thing over and over again—

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. McKay, there's a point of order.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I rather agreed with the chair's intervention earlier, that when Mr. McKay asks a question, he should allow the witness to answer it first. I thought the witness was in the course of trying to answer Mr. McKay's question when Mr. McKay intervened and asked another question.

So some courtesy would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Well, I appreciate the courtesy of not interrupting. Thank you.

The issue here is that she makes recommendations, you agree with her recommendations, and your agreement is that we'll continue doing what we're already doing.

[Chris Forbes]

A lot of the things we're doing now we think are good practices. We've discussed some of them already in some of our responses in terms of how we engage with the provinces, the kinds of publications we put out, whether it be emissions trends or whether it be our reporting to the United Nations. We think we are doing a lot of good transparent reporting and we are engaging in a lot of discussions with our colleagues.

I guess—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Do you think it's a great practice to continue to negotiate with the oil and gas industry? Paragraph 1.19 states, “Although detailed regulatory proposals have been available internally for over a year, the federal government has consulted on them only privately, mainly using a small working group....” When was the last time you actually met with oil and gas?

And where are these regulations? Are they sitting on the minister's desk?

[Chris Forbes]

That's a lot of questions in one.

I guess—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That way I don't have to interrupt you.

[Chris Forbes]

Touché.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I'm not going to interrupt you while—

[Chris Forbes]

It's getting a bit.... It's moving too fast for me right now.

Just in response to one of those points, and Mike earlier mentioned it, this is about regulatory proposals and discussions. I'm not sure about all the discussions that have gone on with the oil and gas sector, but these are about regulatory proposals, not regulations—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

We're in the year of our Lord 2014.

[Chris Forbes]

I'm aware of that, yes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

And we have a target of 2020. All of your data says—including what the commissioner says—that you're going to miss. You haven't even tabled the oil and gas regulatory proposals.

Is that it? Have I got it?

[Chris Forbes]

Again, I guess what I would say—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I hope that that's all factual.

Is it?

[Chris Forbes]

Well, I'd go back to the projections, and what I would say about those projections is that they tell you the difference between where we would be with all of the measures that have been announced in place, versus the target.

That doesn't tell you that you're going to miss. It tells you the gap you have to address under current economic projections. That's what that tells you.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Well, I guess if I'm going off the cliff and I don't put my foot on the brake, there's a projection that I'm going to go on.

[Chris Forbes]

I would have to respectfully say that I think it tells you what the cumulative effect of the things you would need to do to meet that target would be. Whether we get those done or not will depend on actions at a number of levels of government—actions of individuals, businesses—and I think that is to be determined.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But all of your charts on page 24, the ones you've published, plus the ones that the commissioner thinks you should publish, are all going in the wrong direction. They are all going up, not down.

We are five years away from Copenhagen. It's a little difficult to accept that these are merely trends and that something might happen to reverse that trend.

[Chris Forbes]

I'm not sure there's a question there, but—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

There's not.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Mr. McKay.

You didn't fall off the cliff, by the way.

Now, Ms. Freeman, for five minutes.