Environment Committee on June 10th, 2019

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

What I have appreciated about you is your willingness to be frank. You don't pull any punches. I do note that you're surrounded by departmental officials and you're still pretty brutally honest in your comments.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I do want to get into that.

The first issue I want to touch on is invasive species. This is not a new issue in Canada. We've had this issue for decades, yet from what I see in your report, on the face of it, if you look at your statement, it's pretty damning.

DFO and CBSA “had not taken the steps required to prevent” invading “species...from becoming established in” Canadian “waters”. I mean, seriously? It's not like this is a new problem. Also, they didn't know “which species and pathways posed the greatest threats to Canada’s environment”. Honestly, folks, that's a pretty shocking statement.

I didn't hear a mea culpa from our DFO folks here. I'm concerned. Is it an issue of resources? Were you able to identify what's driving these shortcomings?

[Julie Gelfand]

Interestingly enough, when the Auditor General audits departments in performance audits, we don't actually look at that too much. We don't look at the financial side; that's what our financial people do. I think the best person to answer that question would be the officials.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

That's what I will do, then, because there's also an issue here of not enforcing, right? There's a lot of meat here—things that the department's going to have to fix, and fix quickly. I did hear the department suggest that they're just now getting to a point where they have the resources to get this done.

On the west coast, where I'm from, I have also heard that our enforcement resources over the last few years have been completely depleted, and I mean completely. We don't even have enforcement officers to go to court to provide testimony when we're going after scofflaws.

For the departmental officials, can you assure us that the required resources are being deployed to make sure that the shortcomings identified in the commissioner's report are going to be addressed?

[Nicholas Winfield]

I can't speak to the parliamentary allocation of resources to the department, but I can speak to the fact that in 2017 it was the first time we had dedicated resources for aquatic invasive species. We have a permanent resource space. This is not five-year funding. This is permanent.

I think that the report.... We accepted all of the recommendations because we see the need, but I think it's creating the impression that the department is not doing anything on invasive species, which is not true. The report itself was narrow in scope and only looked at the management and control actions for priority species.

We have had a sea lamprey control program in Ontario since 1955. We have had the program for Asian carp for five years and it has now been renewed permanently. We have a ballast water control program on the St. Lawrence River to prevent species from coming in through ballast water in ships.

The primary vectors for invasive species are through marine traffic and through the recreational boating sector. We have science reports that show where the vectors are and what the threats are. I think the commissioner's observation was that this hasn't been formalized, standardized and incorporated into the DNA of the department, if you will, and that's where we're at now. It's to recognize that in a world of climate change, changing species and the movement of these species with increasing trade, we have to control the borders and to control the movement of vessels. We know all of this stuff, and we now have staff that are thinking about this full time.

I can only speak to how we allocate our current resources. Your points are extremely well taken in terms of the level of public concern and the increasing rate of change that's occurring with respect to invasive species, and our collaboration with the provinces and CBSA is absolutely essential, but from a resource capacity, this is managing threats, and we're making a prediction about how quickly they can come.

We're doing the best with what we have, and if it's believed that more should be done, then we will do more, for sure.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

All right.

Ms. Gelfand, you have heard that they have accepted all of the recommendations. As far as you know, are they actually following through on the recommendations?

[Julie Gelfand]

There are two ways of doing that. One is for you as parliamentarians to ask them to come to you with an action plan and to come in front of you as you are doing now. The second way is by doing another audit on this topic, which we won't do right away, but we could do in the next four to five years.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

But you won't be around to do it.

[Julie Gelfand]

It will be somebody else, but you guys will be here...some of you.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I'm glad you're confident.

I have one last question and it has to do with the subsidies, both the tax and non-tax fossil fuel subsidies. When I go door to door, I don't hear questions about this, quite frankly. It may be different in Julie's riding, but in my riding it's not.... However, it is an important issue because we've made commitments to the G20 and UN and Canada should be living by its commitments.

I want to get back to the issue of “inefficient”. I will go to Mr. Marsland, again. How do you define “inefficient”? It's pretty clear that there is some confusion over whether we're actually addressing the issue in accordance with the commitments we've made internationally.

[Andrew Marsland]

Quite frankly, unfortunately, I don't think it's a concept that's susceptible to a simple, singular definition. The department's approach—and we document this approach—is to look at a broad spectrum of considerations and weigh those considerations.

As I mentioned, they deal with effectiveness and relevance. They deal with whether an alternative delivery mechanism to achieve the same objective would be better. They deal with the cost. We look at gender considerations and so on. We have a whole list of considerations, some of which are going to be more relevant in certain circumstances than others, but it's a question of identifying all of the relevant considerations that go towards efficiency and bringing forward an assessment of those to determine whether it's inefficient or not inefficient.

That's a continuum. You can't do a binary assessment of that because it just requires a complex analysis of a range of considerations.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Every country will be different. They will be analyzing inefficiency differently.

[Andrew Marsland]

But I think it is important to have clarity around the scope of considerations—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I agree.

[Andrew Marsland]

—and that's what we attempt to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We're over the time.

We're going to go to Mr. Peschisolido for his six minutes of questions.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

I would like to follow up on both Mr. Fast and Ms. Dzerowicz's discussion of efficient tax subsidies. Something's efficient if you produce more with less, but you have two goals here. You have the goal of expanding the economy in certain sectors, which will actually be inefficient in a sense that it's going to produce more pollution.

How do you then deal with the contradiction? If a subsidy is efficient in the oil and gas sector, it means you produce more oil and gas with less, but for environmental purposes, something that is efficient is actually inefficient because you want to produce less of that stuff. Am I being too simple and too binary?

[Andrew Marsland]

I don't think so. I think any intervention leads to a distortion. That might be a distortion you're trying to achieve. For example, the government decided in budget 2019 that it wanted to encourage businesses to acquire zero-emission vehicles, so it allowed an immediate writeoff. There's a clear objective there. We can measure the reduction in the cost of acquiring those. We look at that and there are efficiencies and inefficiencies in it, but on balance we consider it to be an efficient tax measure to achieve a very clear objective, which was to encourage the purchase of zero-emission vehicles by businesses.

When we look at the fossil fuel subsidies, we have to measure all of the costs and benefits associated with them and, on balance, whether those are efficient or inefficient in achieving the objective.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

I will move over to Madam Commissioner. It's great to see you again, and I, too, echo the sentiments of everyone by saying good luck in your next endeavour. I'm sure you won't need that luck.

The question I have for you is on the issue of the subsidies. Do you think that the various departments are using the same variables and are they using the correct variables in defining what is efficient or not efficient?

[Julie Gelfand]

From my recollection—I'll just look at Heather—I believe that the considerations are very similar in the definition of “inefficient”. Personally, when I looked at the definition of inefficient, I found this list of considerations to be so broad—

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

That it's meaningless.

[Julie Gelfand]

Right. Our colleague said that it sounds right to them, except that, if you're.... It depends on what you're looking at. Are you looking only at fiscal and economic efficiency, or, as you asked the question, are you looking at environmental and social inefficiency?

We find the definition to be, from our perspective.... It's on page 3 of one of the reports. I read it and think, “I don't know how this is a definition of inefficient. It's so broad, I don't know how it helps you do your work.” Hopefully, they can do it.

That's the part on inefficiency. As to the second part of your question—

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

You actually dealt with it.

[Julie Gelfand]

I answered it? Okay.