Evidence of meeting #4 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 process.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
The answer is yes.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay.
Just to step back just for a moment, on this question of confidence and the question of tracking the companies' performances on pipelines, have any of the new conditional interim measures that the government has brought forward addressed your concerns around that tracking?
11:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
We haven't audited that yet, so that will be the next one.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Great.
I'd like just a quick answer on the sustainable development strategy. Five out of 1,700 cases were actually performed. That doesn't sound like it has been important to anybody in the administration of government over these last two decades or that sustainable development and the reporting on it is important at all.
11:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Remember that this was a cabinet directive on strategic environmental assessment.
Most people know about environmental assessment when it comes to projects. If you're going to build a mine, you have to do an environmental assessment. This tool was to talk about policies, programs, things like—I don't know—the budget, things that are happening within government.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
11:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Right. It was to not just look at the social and the economic, but also to look at the environmental implications. We found that this tool of strategic environmental assessment was used in five out of 1,700 proposals that went to ministers. It was much better when it went to cabinet, in that 110 out of 250 proposals that went to cabinet looked at this.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
For decades now, the idea was that when bringing policies forward through the administration of government, we were going to look through this environmental lens and ask that question. In only five out of 1,700 cases was that question asked.
11:25 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
That's correct.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay. That's a pretty low bar. We hope the new guys have a better chance at that.
Thank you very much for the time.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you. I have one question.
Thank you very much, Commissioner Gelfand, to you and your staff for being here. We very much appreciate your coming forward with this great report and also all the work that you consistently do.
In this report, there seems to be a common theme, whether it's on the pesticide side, whether it's on the pipeline side, or whether it's in past areas as well in studying different departments. We heard from CEAA last week as well. There's a common thread of being under-resourced. I'm wondering if you identified that as one of the root causes of a lot of the deficiencies that you've outlined and characterized in your report.
11:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
When either the Auditor General or the commissioner goes in to audit almost any department, one of the classic things that everybody will tell you is that they don't have enough resources. It doesn't matter where you go in what area of government, or whichever thing you're looking at, they will all say that they don't have enough resources.
Because of that, in our audits we tend to try to go beyond that and try to help the departments with our recommendations. We try to figure out how they can do it within the existing budget envelope. It's almost too easy an answer to say that they need more resources, because they would always say it. Every department that you go to and ask how they're doing will say, “Well, we could use....” I mean, I could say it. We could use more resources.
We can all say it, so we tend to not go in that area as much, unless it's obvious. Unless it's really big, in most cases we won't go there, and we'll try to help them come up with other ways to figure out how to achieve their mandates.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
But at the same time, it does seem to be a common theme throughout, given that in the monitoring, the enforcement, and the research aspects of it, every single one of them has identified the trend that these things are becoming more onerous and are not being fulfilled as a mandate. Would you agree with that?
11:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
That's a pretty hard.... That's a bit too broad for me to agree or disagree. Again, every department, every part of government, would claim that it needs more resources, so we try to look at everything else other than that issue, unless it's flagrantly the issue.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you.
I'd like to pass this over to my colleague Darren.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much, Commissioner.
What is a concern to me is the issue of apparent communication or the lack thereof when you're talking about the updating and the briefing of ministers and the cabinet directive. I see this as something that's absolutely imperative, and it shocks me.
I don't know whether.... You spoke about resources. I don't know if it's the lack of resources or a directive from somebody else or some other office, but isn't it absolutely imperative that the cabinet ministers are told and that there's clarity on what is an important environmental effect?
That's the thing that jumped out at me when I was reading these notes. I was thinking, “Really? We have this occurring every day where we have no communication or briefings or updates of the ministers on what could be an environmental impact in our country?”
11:30 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
In our audits, we've been looking at this for several years. We are going through every department to see how well they're doing on this, so you'll hear about another four or five departments next year until we've done all of them.
Generally, we have found that this cabinet directive is not being followed when proposals go to ministers, even when there's good news. There have been some “good news” stories. The Canada Revenue Agency, through changing something in the tax code, has saved 18 million pieces of paper a year, and nobody even celebrates that. There are positive environmental effects that are not being communicated as well as negative environmental effects.
I would absolutely agree that the tool is really important. I bring up the example of trying to decide whether you should put solar panels up on your house. Most people, when they're making that decision, are looking at the economics. What's the payback and how long will I live in this house? The second thing they're going to think of is what to do when it's not sunny. How is my family going to get on the Internet or use the fridge if there's no sun? What's the social impact? You also hope that everybody is thinking about their carbon footprint and what it means, and including that when they're trying to make that decision.
In the past, most decisions have been made looking at social and economic aspects and not thinking about environmental aspects. The whole purpose of environment and sustainable development is to bring in that environmental lens. It doesn't mean you make the decision based on environmental aspects, but they are given the same weight as the social, environmental, and economic aspects.
We will continue to look at this year after year.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Thank you very much.
We are now entering into our second round of questioning. We were going to go to Mr. Amos, but I know that Mr. Gerretsen wants to speak.
Just to be clear, we have a very short first panel, until 11:45, and then we will change the group talking to us and start again.
11:35 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
You can use all those questions that I gave you.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Mark Gerretsen Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm going to pick up on what we were just talking about on sustainable development and implementation. I liked your example of the solar panels and the three different things that people consider.
However, my sense is that the third one, the environmental impact, is not so much a variable that helps people with the decision process as it is something that makes people feel good about what they're doing. You have the economic one, you have the social part of it, and then you say, “And by doing this, I'm doing something good for the environment.” I don't think it's necessarily a breaking point or a tipping point, but it makes people feel good about what they're doing.
I think this speaks to the underlying culture, and that's something you brought up earlier about culture and how things are done. To be fair to Mr. Cullen's point about only seven of the 1,500, I think you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the fact that.... I'm by no means trying to defend any government over the past 20 or 25 years. I think it's more about the fact that the culture isn't there to bring this forward and to make people want to celebrate it.
My question is about how we change the culture, which I know is a very difficult thing, so that people start defaulting to that, so that people start saying we have to look at it through this lens. What's your recommendation on that? Seven out of 1,500—these are just the times when people actually took the time to record the fact that it was happening. How do we start to make a change in the culture so that it becomes a default that people go to?
11:35 a.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Right now the tool you have in front of you is a cabinet directive. You could strengthen that cabinet directive and make it a rule or a regulation. There are ways that the lawyers in the group—and I'm looking at Mr. Amos—could help us figure out how to make it so that you must do it. Right now you must do it, but it doesn't get done.