Environment Committee on Dec. 5th, 2017

[Nick Xenos]

Treasury Board also has an annual departmental sustainable development strategy. In there, it reports against all of the targets. I don't know that it's for me to say if it's a good job or not. I think it's probably more for this committee and the commissioner. I'll leave you to make that judgment.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Okay.

How far has the Treasury Board itself come to greening its own operations?

[Nick Xenos]

As we are at Treasury Board, we of course want to focus on greening Treasury Board's operations as well. We've created a TBS-Finance green network—we're in the same building—within Treasury Board, so we are looking at different ways in which we can green our own operations.

Really, Treasury Board is just leasing two buildings that are owned by Public Works. Our footprint is relatively limited. It's a small department, but of course we're looking across the board at working with employees, looking at fleets, and looking at tenant behaviour in our buildings. We, our headquarters, are in a LEED gold building. There is composting and good waste diversion. It's a water-efficient building.

I think there are a lot of things that we're implementing within Treasury Board as well.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

The final thing I want to point out is the 19% reduction that you talked about. Is that on the previous 26 departments? Now we're actually going to be dealing with 90 departments. Is that right?

[Nick Xenos]

Yes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Really, then, that 19% number didn't represent all of government. It represented 26 departments, or just under a quarter.

[Nick Xenos]

The 19% represents 15 departments, the 15 major departments. With the proposed amendments, we would expand that to cover more departments.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

There's a lot of work to do.

[Nick Xenos]

There's a lot more work to do, but we do know what the other major departments are. They've been working in various areas, of course, but there's still work to do to get to the 40, for sure, yes.

[Mike Bossio, Liberal, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Once again, thank you so much, Mr. Xenos.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Mr. Aldag.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

In your testimony, you make a comment about the second-largest emitter, PSPC, “working to make its office space and leases low-carbon and piloting a zero carbon retrofit”. That jumped out at me. We recently finished a study on built heritage. One of the suggestions was that we look at incorporating in built heritage some heritage-friendly building policies in PSPC and making it a “heritage first” kind of procurement strategy.

As we look at amendments for this act, I'm curious about where we stand now. When you make comments about working towards making office space and leases low carbon, how does heritage fit into it? Are we there already? Do we have the tools necessary to make those kinds of considerations, or do we need to be more explicit in this legislation on how to encourage agencies, departments, and Treasury Board in putting heritage first in its policies and actions?

[Nick Xenos]

In terms of the heritage and greening, for example, those heritage buildings pose a particular challenge, of course, because their heritage aspect is really important, and of course we'd want to preserve that as much as we can. I think the heritage of the Parliament Buildings and of a lot of the things the government owns is critical, and I don't think we want to take anything away from that.

On the other hand, for heritage buildings, as they're older, you can go hand in hand to protect heritage and lower your energy requirements for those buildings. Often, they're quite old, and just a general refurbishment of the buildings or a retrofit keeping their heritage character will get you a lot of carbon emissions savings. Upgrading the water and those facilities will get you a much greener building in the end. I think it's very consistent. I think you can do both.

In terms of the greening government part, we have instruments. In terms of the broader heritage components, my counterpart Ms. Kathleen Owens was here on October 19, and she spoke at length on the heritage considerations. I would defer to her. She would be the expert in that area of heritage and real property. In terms of greening, I think we're okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We're out of time. Thank you very much.

Mr. Shields.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

In the Federal Sustainable Development Act, there is no word for the term “greening”. Where do you get this definition? What is greening? What's your definition?

[Nick Xenos]

Of the centre for greening government?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

No, the word “greening”.

[Nick Xenos]

Well, in terms of the centre for greening government, our mandate, of course—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

No. I'm looking for the definition of that word.

[Nick Xenos]

For the word “greening”, I would—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

You're throwing it around here, and it's not in this document. Where's the definition for that word?

[Nick Xenos]

We're using it in the environmental sense.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Which means...? Words mean things. Sometimes they're really important.

You throw that word around. What does it mean? You have no definition for the word “greening”.

[Nick Xenos]

We're using it in terms of looking at the environmental impacts of government operations and in terms of focusing, we're looking at carbon, but we're also thinking more broadly than that. But it's not—

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

From my point of view, if you're talking about the public, people, parliamentarians, and a broad understanding, I think you need a definition for that word, because it's not in this document that we did. There's no definition of the word “greening”. If you're from Saskatchewan, it means the Saskatchewan Roughriders—