Evidence of meeting #32 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cepa.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

David Boyd  Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Mark Butler  Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
Gordon Bacon  Chief Executive Officer, Pulse Canada

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

But you will agree with me.... Go ahead.

5:10 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

The last thing I want to address is the economics. I'm perfectly fine with creating a system of national pollution taxes and using that revenue to offset other forms of tax, which then addresses the economic concerns.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

The revenue neutrality of it. Yes, I do understand. But the challenge is not only nationally, but our largest competitor is the United States and except for California, there is no carbon pricing across the United States. They may have pollution taxes, but when Canada has a carbon tax and a pollution tax, now you're starting to tilt the playing field against Canadian businesses. That's why I'm a strong proponent of a North American approach to addressing not only greenhouse gas emissions, but addressing the non-greenhouse gas emissions that I think, for the most part, you've been referring to.

5:10 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

Right.

Well, I'm referring to emissions of over 350 toxic substances that are reported by big business in Canada to the national pollutant release inventory. My understanding is that the United States is looking at a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions which will effectively put a price on it similar to a carbon tax. Everyone in the world is moving toward the pricing of carbon. Canada is taking some steps of leadership. I think it's anomalous for us to say we're going to put a tax on one pollutant and ignore 350 other toxic substances that we're pumping out.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

I'm not disagreeing with you on the substance of what you're saying. What I am saying is this has to be done on a North American basis. We have economies across the country, regional and provincial economies across the country, in which a tilted playing field can really disrupt job creation. As the United States moves forward as well, it's certainly my belief that we have to, as much as possible, coordinate our efforts with the U.S.

5:15 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

Except for the fact that if you design pollution taxes correctly, you can address those competitiveness concerns through revenue recycling, revenue neutrality. Again, I can go back to the example of Sweden. Sweden took a leadership position in the European Union and put quite a significant tax on emissions of nitrogen oxides. The result of that was a dramatic decline in nitrogen oxide emissions and the development of some new technologies that Sweden was then able to export.

The beautiful thing about pollution taxes is that they create an incentive for continuous improvement, which is exactly what we want. We're developing clean technologies that we can then not only use here, but export to other countries.

5:15 p.m.

Conservative

Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC

That's helpful. Thank you.

5:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Thank you very much.

The last questioner is Mr. Amos.

5:15 p.m.

Liberal

William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC

Dr. Boyd, my first question continues the theme of pollution taxation.

Do you think it would be appropriate for this committee to recommend that the Government of Canada, first, undertake a comprehensive assessment of how pollution taxation could be undertaken in a manner that maintains competitiveness with our most important trading partners and, second, consider doing so in conjunction with our closest trading partner?

5:15 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

There's already been a lot of academic work done on pollution taxes and competitiveness, so you might be able to appoint an expert panel to draw together that evidence. If we're going to move forward on pollution taxes, we need to put it in CEPA, and we need to get started. I think that the time for study is done, and the time for action is here.

5:15 p.m.

Liberal

William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC

I'd like to turn now to the issue of the integration of procedural and substantive rights that enable the Canadian citizens' right to a healthy environment. Can you give me a short list of what you think some of the top procedural reforms would be that would enable greater participation in the provision of information? What are the tools that are not there? Obviously, there's the citizen supervision which is weak and which could be modified. Can you give me a few broad strokes?

5:15 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

Certainly. Let's start with access to information. At the current time, if you're a Canadian citizen looking for information, it's very difficult. I'm purportedly an expert in environmental law and I find it hard to find information about various Canadian environmental law policy initiatives. There are different websites. There's the chemicals management plan website. There's the Canadian environmental assessment website. There's a species at risk public registry.

What Ontario has done under its Environmental Bill of Rights has worked very well. It has created one-stop shopping through the creation of an electronic online environmental registry where all of the information is available in one place. You simply plug in a search term and, voila, you have the information you're looking for. I think that would be probably the single most useful thing we could do in terms of citizen access to information.

In terms of public participation, there are many things that we could do to improve that. One is that there are now, as a result of legislative changes by the previous government, unprecedented barriers to public participation in important environmental processes under the National Energy Board Act and under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Citizen participation is no longer open to the public. You have to fill out application forms online and then have someone judge whether you're eligible to participate.

Then there are access to justice issues. It's clear that some of the provisions we have in Canada, like the environmental protection action under CEPA, don't work. Coming up with creative ways to grant access to judicial and administrative remedies is really important. I think we can put all sorts of creative elements in there.

I really love the idea that comes from the Philippines, that in any environmental litigation there has to be a mandatory period of mediation between the parties to see if the issues can be resolved before they go through that tortuous court process.

I'll include a whole bunch of recommendations in my brief about access to information, public participation, and access to justice.

5:20 p.m.

Liberal

William Amos Liberal Pontiac, QC

Thank you for that.

I'll stay on this theme, but I'll go to an area of concern that I know will be raised by those who feel that increasing access to judicial remedies by citizens creates a potential for the courts to be crowded with applicants who seek to stop projects without regard to the broader public interest.

Would you agree that the challenges we face around social acceptability of resource development could actually be alleviated if citizens felt as though they had recourse to an independent judicial body that they trusted?

5:20 p.m.

Adjunct Professor, Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual

Dr. David Boyd

I think that in order to gain social acceptability, there is more than just access to justice. You're going to have to be making decisions as a government that show respect for people's right to breathe clean air, to have access to safe drinking water, and all of those other substantive elements of the right to a healthy environment. Then you also have to respect their rights to information and participation. Through public participation we get better decisions, and not only better decisions, but decisions that can be accepted as long as they're consistent with those other principles.

The issue of social licence is a thorny one, and I think as we move forward in the 21st century with greater scientific clarity about the challenges we face, decisions will be evaluated not just on whether the process was fair, but whether the substantive outcome advances us towards a sustainable future. In my opinion, that's the real challenge. We need to make decisions in Canada that make us a more sustainable country, not a less sustainable country.

5:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte

Thank you very much to all of our guests for taking the time to be with us today to have such thoughtful discussion on these important issues.

I also forgot to recognize James Maloney. Thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate your being here.

I'll end the meeting a bit early because we really don't have time to start a second round. It's been a very good session.

The meeting is adjourned.