Evidence of meeting #8 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 strategy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
I love the SDGs everybody is talking about. I'm looking at them, and there are all the best intentions, but what's really happening?
I'm trying to think, how do we take these targets and these goals and all the rest of it and make it real? How do we build in accountability, enforcement, and all the rest of it? I've heard many things as far as legislative changes, as far as data, are concerned. We need data. We need to be able to measure. We need a central body. We need education. There are so many different aspects.
Scott gave a number of examples, as did Julie, of some of the actions that are just starting to happen around the world. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here.
In looking at the best practices that you see, I'm sitting here, thinking, where do we start? It's an evolution, not a revolution. Even though we are a changed government, where do we start to make the changes to build on that to make it more effective, accountable, and enforceable?
I'll start with Scott, and then ask Julie.
12:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Very briefly, when you look at it, there's a lot going on right now. At the international level, the World Bank, the IMF, most UN agencies, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, they're basically reframing their work, beginning with the measurement around the SDGs.
One example is we're working with the World Economic Forum, the Davos group, as well as UNDP and PDAC, to look at what the SDGs mean, specifically for the mining sector, and then going through that range of what it means in terms of trade policy and market access if you don't comply. As well, are there potential market advantages to demonstrate to world markets that you are in compliance?
I agree with you. The SDGs at their worst are policy sprawl. There are 169 targets. How do you actually think about them all at the same time?
I think the emerging practice is to say you can't do it all at once, but you have to set a strategy to say what your priorities are moving forward. The second part, which has been at the centre of this conversation, and I think it's the right one, is then from the Canadian perspective this all-of-government coordination of having a central agency—and Mr. Godfrey referred to it; it's a limited number, the PCO, or PMO, or TBS—that actually can help to coordinate this. Getting this all-of-government coordination, from my perspective, is about as tough as it gets.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
The first thing is to legislate and put in.... Once we legislate as to the central agency, the department that's going to drive this forward.... No offence to Julie, but the environment commissioner is not the one to drive it forward. It has to be driven by the legislative agenda and that accountability.
By making it central, then establishing the measuring points, the different points you're going to measure at, and then building criteria of enforcement and accountability around those points: is that really where you...?
12:15 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, International Institute for Sustainable Development
Absolutely, I'm nodding my head in agreement. I think that's exactly the right sequence. I think enforcement may be early, but I think that getting that measurement and then getting it out in the public domain.... We heard from Mr. Cullen. The numbers speak for themselves. If you're only getting 18% compliance, that should be sending up a red flag that the system as it is is not working—
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
So the federal government leads and establishes this, and then it also puts us in a better position. Once again, you're not getting all governments to agree to this at the same time. You have to have leadership happening at the top to establish the model or the framework, which then feeds down to the provincial and municipal levels, once they see that it works and that it happens.
12:15 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Could I add a couple of things?
I think that Scott has talked about the idea of putting it in a central agency. Mr. Godfrey has done the same thing, and I would agree with that.
I think the other thing is the role of this committee and the role of other parliamentary committees. Right now, the FSDS comes only to your committee, the committee that's concerned with the environment. If this were a broader strategy, more like the Welsh one that considered health, the economy, culture, equity, and all of the things that are in the sustainable development goals, is this really the only committee that it should come to? Probably not—
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
But if it's in a central body, I would assume that the purpose of that part of the legislation would be to get it out to all government departments and all committees.
12:20 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
One of the things I tried to say in our opening statement is that we think these strategies should come in front of all the other parliamentary committees. What is the Department of Health doing in terms of implementing a sustainable development strategy? What's the Department of National Defence doing?
What are all the other parliamentary committees doing to ensure the well-being of future generations? That's a role that parliamentary committees can play.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you very much. I'd like to pass the rest of my time to John.
Sorry about that, John.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
That's okay.
In the one minute I have, Mr. Godfrey, this is the burning question I had as I was reading everything and as you spoke today. Was there one thing that you had to trade away in order to get the legislation through which you felt was important and needs to be brought back in, or were you satisfied overall?
I'd like to hear if you're satisfied with what we ended up with in the legislation, or if there's something that ended up getting missed to get the support that you needed to get it through as a private member's bill.
12:20 p.m.
As an Individual
As a political realist.... As you know, things haven't always gone too smoothly in committees during the last 10 years. I think that's fair to say.
My objective was to create something, I won't say for the ages, but to survive changes of regime. Therefore, rather than dictating in specific detail what should be in the strategy, I thought it would be more powerful if the government of the day started working on that. That would give future governments the chance to build on it, but the main thing was to keep the machinery ticking over. One of the reasons that I spent so much time working with the commissioner of the environment was to make sure we had a review process that forced people on a three-year cycle to keep coming back, reviewing the draft, coming back to these committees, and so on.
I think it has worked as well as could be expected, or even better. The mere fact that we're having a discussion today is a testament to that.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
By the way, I did appreciate the kind comments about the previous government. We don't always expect that from former adversaries, so it's very generous of you.
I did want to go back to Madam Gelfand and the lack of implementation, really, of the cabinet directive. You said it goes back to 1990, so that directive is actually straddling at least three different governments.
Am I correct in assuming there was no political direction given by any of those governments not to comply with the directive?
12:20 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
There was none that I'm aware of.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
All right. So, this rests with a culture that may have been present within not only the Environment department but beyond that. It was almost benign neglect of a directive that perhaps at one time had been taken seriously, and then faded into obscurity for a long period of time. Is that a correct characterization?
12:20 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
I don't know all the history of the cabinet directive, but when you think about the tools you can use to look at environmental impacts, the two big tools you have are the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which looks at projects on the ground, such as a new mine or a new railway, and examines the environmental impacts. But there's a whole bunch of other things we do, such as decisions, programs, policies, and plans. Also, do we look at the federal budget every year from an environmental perspective? I know for sure that we look at it from an economic and from a social perspective, but where's the environmental assessment of the budget, as an example of a big policy decision that we make?
The strategic environmental assessment tool was to try to grasp and help us look at all three pieces of information—economic, social, and environmental—when we're making policy decisions that have big impacts. You do it for projects on the ground, for things you can physically look at, such as impact on fish, water, air, people, and all that stuff. What about all the policies and plans? That was the idea behind the tool of strategic environmental assessment.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
What hasn't been mentioned, and I think this is very important as we expand this discussion, is the issue of resources. Having served some time in cabinet, I know how complex many of the policy proposals are. We then place them within the context of an environmental assessment or review as we add the social and economic elements to that review. Doing that takes resources, especially when you have complex policies for which you have a multitude of stakeholders who might have to be consulted.
Am I correct in assuming that our departments may be under-resourced right now in terms of being able to do justice to the directive as it was intended?
12:25 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
I've never looked at that question in terms of capacity. When we audit the implementation of the directive, we go in and say, “How many proposals did you send to your minister? Show me them. What's the number? Then show me whether or not you did an environmental scan.” That's the first thing they have to do.
So, it's hard for me to answer specifically whether or not they have the resources. We go in and tell them that there is this cabinet directive and ask if they are following it.
My proposal to you is to consider whether or not you should enshrine it in an act.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
My comment to the members of the government is that if we all agree that we're going to be serious about this directive, and if, in fact, the intention is to bake it into the legislation, then there should also be a discussion about the resources required at each department level to make sure this work can be done. This is not simply going to be an exercise in public relations to say that we did this. It has to be beyond that. It has to be substantive.
I have another question. Do the departments themselves identify which projects require this evaluation, or do you, after the fact, say that there are 1,700 projects or proposals that should have been subject to a review?
12:25 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
For those proposals, we go into the department and ask them to tell us the number of proposals they sent to their minister. They don't even necessarily know how many proposals they've sent to their minister, so we get numbers from 3,500 to 500 to 200. We're trying to get them to figure out what a proposal to a minister is, number one. Then, once we have them, we look at whether or not they have performed the environmental scan, which is phase one of the strategic environmental assessment.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
Are you saying that every single proposal has to go through this screen?
12:25 p.m.
Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Yes, every proposal does, according to the directive.
