Environment Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

Under the gas tax?

Oh, you're talking about the other program itself. In terms of incentives, we are partnering in providing the funding. If you look at the small community funds and provincial funds or the national fund itself, these are usually done one third, one third, one third.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Right, yes.

If I have time, it's probably going to be a short one—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one minute.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

—but in 2007, Health Canada proposed three main improvements to its oversight of cosmetic safety. In 2012, Health Canada decided it was no longer pursuing these improvements and that it was looking for other ways to achieve the goal of improving the oversight of cosmetics.

Do you have any more information on the other improvements that Health Canada wanted to explore? If so, do we know if these improvements would be more or less effective than proposed in 2007?

[Julie Gelfand]

Is that for me or for the department?

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Well, I'd appreciate a comment from you first, and if there's—

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have a very short time. I'm going to do a quick second round.

[Julie Gelfand]

Yes.

What we have in our report is what we know, so you'd really have to ask the department.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Okay, over to the department, then.

[Hilary Geller]

One of the major improvements that was made was the implementation of a streamlined electronic system for notification. That allowed us, among other things, to clear a backlog. We had a backlog of approximately 10,000 notifications before implementation of this system, and that's really allowed us to become much more efficient. It's one of the major changes.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I'm looking at the time and I think there are still a lot of questions that people would like to ask. If you're willing to stay with us, I'm willing to extend it for another quick round of questioning, but I wanted to have us think about something while we're doing that. We didn't do this last time.

We now have these reports in front of us, and we're listening and asking questions, and then you leave. What do we do with this? Last time we kind of embedded some of it in our work. There's a thought here that maybe we might make a motion that these departments come back, and the commissioner comes back, to give us an update in a year. I want you to consider whether that's something we want to do. We have heard from all the departments. Everybody says, “Yes, we're going to implement these recommendations”. Maybe we can ask you guys to come back in a year and give us an update on where we are with this.

Secondly, I know we are the committee on sustainable development, and I know the gas tax was changed a bit of change over time, and maybe we do want to focus it back on sustainable development. I'm not sure. This is something that the committee can consider. Maybe we need to make a motion, then table that in the House. That's something we could consider.

We'll move on for another round. I'm looking at the time. We do need some committee time for some work that we have to do at the end, so I'll give us three minutes each on a round, and we'll start with the Liberals, if that's okay with you.

Mr. Bossio, you have three minutes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

We've had a lot of discussion around infrastructure and whether it's meeting the GHG emissions targets, etc., that we're planning on moving forward with. The question that I have, in my particular case, is about very small rural communities, which don't have the financial resources or the tools and resources to determine whether the projects they are actually targeting are going to meet that requirement.

Just as we're doing in the asset management plan, should there be a fund there for small municipalities to be able to tap into through the FCM to be able to measure whether these projects are going to meet those targets? Should the government be funding that?

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

You have two questions. First, ne, should there be funding for small communities? There is an existing program right now under the small communities fund for populations under 100,000.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Yes, I know that.

[Dr. Marc Fortin]

That funding is available for small communities.

Now I'll address your second question about measuring. We are going into the new bilateral agreement with the new programs with the provinces. Infrastructure Canada is going to embed in those agreements a performance measurement on the outcomes and incomes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Finally, I'll go back to the cosmetics issue. As we know, there are other jurisdictions that are developing standards at a quicker rate than Health Canada is, in certain areas—I'm not saying overall. Would Health Canada think that it would be good to have as part of their mandate the ability to tap into these other standards that are being developed and utilize those moving forward as far as determining the health risks associated with some of these chemicals is concerned?

[Hilary Geller]

Using standards is a critical way that we try to work as efficiently and effectively as possible. It's much more efficient to be able to reference a standard and be part of a standard development committee than it is to come up with our own regulations. Indeed, it's something that we're looking at doing increasingly, especially under our new legislation, which significantly expanded the scope of products for which we're responsible.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Christina, once again, I apologize for cutting you off there. I would invite you to make written submissions, if you like, afterwards in reply to some of the questions. It's just impossible in this setting to really get full-hearted questions and answers to them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Over to Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Again, I want to go Ms. Gelfand on the gas tax. I think you know that we're not being combative, but that we're just trying to get to the root of some of these issues.

In 2005, that agreement was exclusively focused on environmentally oriented projects. The Conservative government in 2014 decided to expand the projects to reflect additional priorities that the municipalities had. It's not to the discredit of the Conservative government that this was done. In fact, it's a credit to that government that indeed it listened to 4,000 municipalities across this country and said, you've got priorities that may not fall into that very narrow group of projects.

The 2014 agreement doesn't carry the reporting requirement and doesn't carry a singular focus on environmentally sustainable projects, yet your report still suggests that reporting and collection of data should continue going forward. You do understand that when you collect data and try to determine greenhouse gas emissions, whether at the municipal, federal, or provincial level, that's an expensive undertaking, especially if you're talking about upstream and downstream impacts?

Are you suggesting that the federal government carry on based on the report that you've issued?

[Julie Gelfand]

My suggestion, quickly, is that if you set out objectives—that we want to have more community centres, we want to fly to the moon, we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—you need to figure out what performance indicators you're going to have, and you wrap it up and you report back to Parliament, because you're spending a lot of money.

I'll pass it over to Kim, if she has anything else to add.

[Kimberley Leach, Principal, Sustainable Development Strategies, Audits and Studies, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thanks, Julie.

I just wanted to point out that was a requirement at the first round of the gas tax to produce outcomes reports. Each province had to report on the outcomes. Those were required to go to Infrastructure Canada. Infrastructure Canada was going to report on that to Parliament. That overall report didn't happen.

In 2009, all of the provinces did submit outcomes reports, but those were the only outcomes reports submitted. In 2012, that was supposed to happen again, but they didn't all come in from the provinces.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Did the provinces actually report, or did they just fail to report altogether?

[Kimberley Leach]

As we mentioned in the audit, there are a couple of signatories that did not report on outcomes to Infrastructure Canada.