Environment Committee on March 22nd, 2016

[Julie Gelfand]

I guess I would argue that when you think about what sustainable development is, when you're thinking about the needs of future generations, you want to look at the decision you're making today and what the impact will be 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now. If you're thinking like that when you're making those decisions, you're thinking about all three aspects on an equal footing.

But each decision will be different. The minister would have to make each decision, and may weight one thing more than the other. The problem we have right now is that when they're making those decisions, most of the time they have zero information about the environmental impacts, negative or positive—nothing. What we're saying is that they should be getting that information, and then how they weight the decision is up to the politicians, who make those calls. Sometimes they may weight something more strongly because they're thinking about the environmental impacts. Other times it may be a social reason that they make the decision. Other times it might be an economic reason.

What we're calling for is that the information be available to the decision-maker about all three aspects. Then they decide, based on the criteria in their head at that time, where to go. But at least they have that information.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Do you envision some kind of standardized reporting system that is properly displaying all that information? Mr. Godfrey talked a little bit about decentralizing, for lack of a better expression, the role of who's overseeing this, or not who's overseeing it, but how the act is implemented through different departments, taking it away from just the environment department and kind of putting it into every department.

Do you envision some kind of standardized way of how this information is reported, or do you envision that this is different in each department?

[Julie Gelfand]

Mr. Godfrey did indicate that it might be an interesting concept to put the sustainable development strategy in a central agency. You heard from Mr. Vaughan that many governments are in fact doing that. The sustainable development strategy, the achievement of the sustainable development goals, is to report directly to the Prime Minister through separate offices. The way it is structured currently—love you, Paula—

[Voice]

Oh, oh!

[Julie Gelfand]

—is that it's buried inside. It's not at an ADM level; it's buried at a director general level, the federal sustainable development strategy.

So when Paula calls out and says, “Hey, everybody, come and help me work on the federal sustainable development strategy”, she's likely getting people at the director level and maybe even below, meaning that just in terms of where the strategy sits, it's not at a high enough level to do the horizontal work that Mr. Godfrey is talking about. That's number one.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I just want to give Mr. Godfrey an opportunity, too.

[Julie Gelfand]

Okay.

Number two, in terms of how we get that information to ministers, I think we could talk about that to try to figure out what's the best way to make sure they get all three pieces of information. But for now, let's make sure they get it.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Yes.

Mr. Godfrey, did you have something to add?

[John Godfrey]

Yes, I did.

I want to be clear that I wasn't arguing for a more decentralized model. That's what we have. I'm arguing for a more centralized model in the sense that there needs to be some place at the heart of government...and there are only three central agencies at the federal government. There's the Prime Minister's Office, or PCO, there's Treasury Board, and there's Finance. They're the only ones with the kind of mission to roam and the authority to be able to compel, frankly.

A line department can do its very best. I thought we were quite clever in the way we gave them as much authority as we could under the act, but at the end of the day, you need to have an overview of how all this stuff hangs together. There are also synergies that will take place. If you're going to be interacting with your provincial counterparts, you need to have a kind of united front, if I may put it that way, or a cohesiveness, to use Scott Vaughan's words, which doesn't currently exist.

You need a central clearing house so you can get the big picture, the presiding intelligence over the system. If need be, you also need the authority to ask the tough questions on a yearly basis, i.e., what did you actually mean by that? I think the environment department goes only a certain distance, but it's only a line department.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you. This is very useful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm sitting here trying to think of how, if a Canadian walked into this room, he or she would try to make sense of all the very interesting things that have been talked about today with these noble intentions in a well-crafted bill that are hit and miss—and that's being generous—in terms of whether they manifest or not.

This cabinet directive has been ignored—Ms. Gelfand can help me here—from 1993 or....

[Julie Gelfand]

From 1990.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

From 1990, a little less than 1.5%, 2% of the time. Is that right? So I'm wondering what carrot or stick it needs. We've talked about different mechanisms: placing this in a different department, placing it within Finance, placing it within PCO. One of the witnesses we called, either a current or former head of the PCO...to say, “You're in charge of the government, so what are you doing about this? If less than 3% of the time this is actually happening, that stinks.”

What carrot and stick would you suggest needs to be employed to get that up?

[Julie Gelfand]

What I'm suggesting is that the cabinet directive be entrenched in the act. I'm not a lawyer. There are some lawyers at the table who could help me figure out how to do that.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So it becomes the law rather than a suggestion?

[Julie Gelfand]

Right, exactly.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

What would be the consequence of breaking that law, then?

[Julie Gelfand]

At least it would be a law and not just a directive. A directive is easily ignored. I can bring attention to it, but that's about it. If it's in the act, then I believe line departments would actually pay more attention.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I want to get Scott in as well.

John, what do you think of that?

[John Godfrey]

One of the things that is potentially useful in getting people to pay attention at the director general level and up is that section 12 of the current act says:

Performance-based contracts with the Government of Canada shall include provisions for meeting the applicable targets referred to in the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy and the Departmental Sustainable Development Strategies.

In English what that means is that civil servants above a certain rank will have their annual performances reviewed. In part one of the considerations will be how much they adhere to the targets in the Federal Sustainable Development Act.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Has it ever happened?

[John Godfrey]

Well, my understanding, and perhaps the commissioner knows better, or the department can confirm this, is that what it's turned out to mean in practice is about how they are they meeting the greening-of-government stuff within their own departments, not how the actions of their departments are actually improving the sustainable development strategy.

You could read this a couple of ways, but I think if you read it in the more stringent way, and there is no reason not to, and perhaps somebody from the Department of the Environment can comment on this, there is already a bit of a carrot and a stick for civil servants to make sure they're being active on this file. It would seem, but I would defer to others, that maybe that hasn't been the case. But under the clear meaning of the act, it could be the case.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Well, let me just hazard a guess here that if it was costing people money—

[John Godfrey]

They might pay attention.