In short, it was more luck than good management or brilliant planning, but then luck is what you make of it. Because I had a private member's bill coming up, in 2007 I was approached by the David Suzuki Foundation and asked if I would sponsor a draft bill they had prepared to create, as it was at the time, a national sustainable development strategy for Canada. I agreed and this long, detailed, and ambitious bill became the template for what eventually emerged as Bill C-474.
My first collaboration was working very closely with the David Suzuki Foundation and its talented representative in Ottawa, Pierre Sadik, to make sure that the extensive amendments and compromises that inevitably emerged in committee were still acceptable to the original sponsors.
The second important collaboration was with the then minister of the environment, John Baird, and his office. This was not an easy time in Parliament, as Nathan Cullen will recall, or in the standing committees of the House of Commons. But by being transparent and co-operative, by appealing to the Conservatives own stated ambition for greater accountability, by avoiding partisanship and political stunts, and by building trust, we eventually arrived at a bill that the government accepted and embraced when it came into force.
The third collaboration was with the other opposition parties on the committee, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. We listened carefully to suggestions from them and, where possible, incorporated their ideas into the bill. For example, the Bloc objected very strongly to the word “national” in national sustainable development strategy—as you might have guessed—so we changed it to “federal” sustainable development strategy to remove any suggestion that we were dictating to provinces.
The fourth major collaboration was with the office of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development to make sure that in designing the bill, we were creating an appropriate and functional role for the commissioner. Here I would like to pay tribute to the interim commissioner of the day, the late Ron Thompson, a great civil servant of integrity and strength who played a pivotal role in advancing the bill.
Finally, I must emphasize the importance of close and respectful collaboration with the Senate, the crucial role of which in passing effective legislation is too often misunderstood and neglected by standing committees of the House.
Honourable members, I tell you all this in the hope that the same spirit of respect, consultation, and co-operation may guide your future work. Whether it is in committee of the whole or in the cause of advancing your own private member's bill one day, it is a far more productive way of getting good and useful things done in Parliament.
As for the act itself, it has produced a living document, the federal sustainable development strategy, the third iteration of which, for the period 2016-19, is now before you. When I read the 2015 progress report on the last version of the strategy and then the new proposed strategy, planning for a sustainable future 2016-19, I believe you have the opportunity to strengthen the strategy through your thoughtful consideration and comments, particularly in the area of climate change.
I currently serve as full-time special adviser for climate change to the Government of Ontario. My comments today do not represent the official views of Ontario; rather, they are my own observations based on my recent experience.
The big challenge for governments, national, provincial, and municipal, is that the three major elements of climate change policy, mitigation, adaptation, and economic opportunity, are each whole-of-government or boundary-spanning problems for which current government structures are ill-designed. Merely adding the words “climate change” to an existing line ministry, such as Environment, will not solve any of the three elements of climate change, each of which has its own set of relevant government departments and its own unique challenges.
Instead, I would invite the committee, and indeed the federal government itself, to use the opportunity offered by the review of this new, third version of the federal sustainable development strategy to reflect on how better to deal with the whole-of-government problem. For example, might it ultimately make more sense to house the sustainable development office, currently at Environment and Climate Change, in a central agency, such as the Privy Council Office, the Department of Finance, or the Treasury Board?
Indeed, the committee might wish to reflect on the two-dimensional nature of this challenge. Not only must there be greater horizontal action for climate change across ministries, agencies, and departments at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels, but there also must be greater vertical co-operation and coordination among the three orders of governments themselves.
The challenge of responding to climate change is so great and so urgent that Canada must mobilize all of its governments for the fight, as it did during the Second World War. Using the review of the new federal sustainable development strategy for the committee to focus on this whole-of-government or, more aptly, whole-of-governments challenge would, in my view, be an appropriate and timely response to the crisis.
Thank you.