Environment Committee on Dec. 5th, 2017

[Julie Gelfand]

I know that back in the 1990s there was a big debate about where the commissioner of environment and sustainable development should be. Should it be a separate officer of Parliament? That was quite a large debate, and the then auditor general, Denis Desautels, argued that it should be in the audit office.

I know that members have asked me throughout the three and a half, almost four years that I've been commissioner what I think about that decision, and I say that it's up to Parliament to decide. I can tell you the advantages and disadvantages of having it in the audit office. There are big advantages to being in the audit office, but it limits me to talking about the audit that I've done. However, I do have the discretion to pick audits.

If the government said, “We're going to meet the needs of future generations,” I guess I could somehow figure how to audit on whether the government is ready to meet the needs of future generations, and to see if we can figure that out. It's not crystal clear. I don't have any specific recommendation. Those of you who have lived with the commissioner for 20 years—

[Andrew Ferguson]

I would add that in many of the audits, we do address issues that could compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. We focus our attention on shortcomings in the implementation of current policy objectives which, if not addressed, could potentially compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Commissioner, you've said before that when a new FSDS is tabled, it should be deemed referred to all relevant committees. I guess the suggestion is that it's just going to come back to us. What are your thoughts on that? What specific committees do you think it should go to?

[Julie Gelfand]

If you look at the sustainable development goals, there's the Brundtland commission definition, and then there are the SDGs, which include many aspects of health, education, good jobs, infrastructure, clean energy, life on land, and climate action, all kinds of things.

It seems to me that this is much broader than just the environment committee's job. It's Natural Resources Canada, it's Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, it's Infrastructure, it's Finance, and all the decisions they make. That's why we have recommended in the past that the FSDS go beyond simply this committee, because yet again, this isolates it and it's made to be seen as just an environmental issue. If you look at the SDGs, sustainable development goes way beyond environmental issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have 20 seconds.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I can't get my next question in under 20 seconds. I might be able to get the question in, but I wouldn't get the answer.

[Julie Gelfand]

I could keep talking for 20 seconds.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

It's all right.

Monsieur Godin.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Gelfand. It is always a pleasure to welcome you here. I always like to discuss things with representatives of the Office of the Auditor General, because I feel safe. I commend your directors and you, and I thank you for being with us.

In your presentation, you spoke of the new principles being proposed. When you speak about principles, these are intergenerational equity, prudence, the polluter pays principle, internalization of costs, openness and transparency, the contribution of aboriginal peoples, collaboration, and a results-based approach.

My question will be very simple, Commissioner. Are we not muddying the waters? Is there not too much here? At a certain point, are we not losing sight of things by casting too broad a net, which may mean that we will not reach our objectives? When we introduce a law, our purpose is to improve it. However, if we ride off in all directions and want to satisfy everyone and every principle, I think we may lose sight of the objectives.

I'd like to hear what you have to say.

[Julie Gelfand]

That is a very interesting question.

Until now, we examined the principles and came to some conclusions.

First, it is sometimes difficult to be very precise. For instance, with regard to the principle of prudence or the polluter pays principle, are we really going to calculate the cost of all the pollution? That is what the polluter pays principle means.

We were somewhat concerned. We thought two things. First, we wondered if we could be more precise in expressing what we wanted to say. That would help.

Secondly, we are going to audit the Federal Sustainable Strategy and the strategies in each department. We will have to audit them with these filters. We are going to examine all of the programs and strategies of the departments and verify whether they incorporated all of these principles into their work. It's a considerable task.

If I were at the Department of Health, for instance, and heard the commissioner say this publicly in front of everyone, I think this might cause some panic, because in my opinion, every department considers that the goal of its sustainable development strategy is simply the greening of government activities. However, it is much broader than that.

And so I will examine the principles. I would like them to be more specific, but I can tell you that we will achieve this. We are not exactly sure of how we will proceed. However, I will ask my colleagues, who are very brilliant, to prepare a methodology that will allow us to audit the federal strategy as well as the departmental strategies.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Madam Commissioner, this means that these are evaluation criteria. These are elements that will allow you to do a good audit of the various departments.

Did I understand you correctly?

[Julie Gelfand]

For my part, that is how I am going to use them. We are asking you, as well as the cabinet, to try to be very precise in what you say on this topic, so that we may let you know if the principles were followed or not.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You said earlier that you could not manage with the team you have currently. I see, having read the act and your comments, that this is a massive file, of extraordinarily scope, one that will require additional staff and a will to comply on the part of the departments.

Do you think the government will be able to make this transition and give itself the necessary tools to reach these objectives?

[Julie Gelfand]

You would have to put the question to government representatives.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Fine.

In another connection, you probably know that I used to sit on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I have a lot of respect for the Auditor General, and for you and the members of his team. Once again, I will ask you if you have the necessary means to impose—and I did say “impose”—the need to respect the rules on the departments. The Auditor General, and you, as commissioner, make recommendations. The departments say that they agree with them and indicate that they intend to comply.

Of course after a year, you can verify what has been done or not, but are any sanctions applied? Do the departments have to be accountable?

That is where the problem lies. Everyone here is full of good will.

[Julie Gelfand]

In principle, the Auditor General submits recommendations and Parliament is responsible for accountability.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Fine, but give us some tools.

[Julie Gelfand]

Ask for action plans after each one of my reports, and ask the departments to render accounts after one year, and after two years, as do public accounts.

[Joël Godin, Conservative, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Commissioner, and your team as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you.

Mr. Bossio.

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

As always, thank you so much for being here. It's always enlightening and enjoyable to have you at our committee.

I want to follow on from Monsieur Godin and Ms. Duncan.

Under the principles, targets are established that are measurable. If we are too prescriptive in that, it doesn't allow the breadth of the ability of our function to measure against those principles. You pointed out there are some departments that are doing a good job with this, and you're able to point to that on the sustainable front. If we're able to have a greater breadth in that ability to measure that, we're able to actually look at certain departments and say, “Okay, they're doing a good job on this and this. They could improve here and here”, and then we can actually use that as the breadth of those best practices, and we can then look at other departments and use those to measure others. We can't think of every scenario or every aspect of sustainability that we need to measure over time as it evolves.

Could you comment on that aspect of it?

[Julie Gelfand]

I'll help you, yes.

I would suggest the committee look quite seriously at the sustainable development goals, including the targets and the indicators, and the Statistics Canada indicators, which are not yet complete. The sustainable development goals, targets, and indicators give you a very good, broad, and full definition of “sustainable development”, including good jobs, infrastructure, innovation, energy, all that kind of stuff. We will be auditing the federal government on whether or not it's achieving very specific targets and indicators of the SDGs. That's part of our sustainable development strategy. Our goal is to try to get as many of both the Auditor General and my audits to look at very specific indicators within the sustainable development goal targets and indicators, and audit against those.

I believe if you're looking for a very big, broad set of indicators and targets, the SDGs could provide that for you. At this point, Stats Canada, I'm going to guess, has maybe around 50% of the indicators at a Canadian level. Once it gets those indicators for all the SDG targets, those will provide a very good framework for identifying whether or not departments, or Canada, are getting to a place of achieving sustainability.

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

You point to another line of questioning that was taken on by Mr. Sopuck. The emphasis is on development. Sustainable is actually in there as well. The economic, social, and environmental aspects all need to be considered under the sustainable development criteria.

Everything needs to be measured against the targets related to those SDGs, which do revolve around... it's not that we're leaving the economic piece out of that picture, but it's just that the other ones maybe have not had as much weight as the economic piece has. I think they all need to be considered.

Can you comment further on that?

[Julie Gelfand]

I would agree that most countries, including Canada, have always looked at the economic impacts. That's always been one of the criteria that's been looked at for almost every decision. The social impacts come next. We think about that next. Sometimes we think about the environmental impacts. The beauty of the sustainable development goals is that they include all of those things, like just societies, good education, good health care, life on earth, life in the water, climate action, and clean energy. That is really a wonderful way to describe sustainable development and to even go deeper to say, “Here are targets. Here are indicators”. That's what our office will be looking at, in terms of auditing in the future.

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

In your comments, you also said that the FSDA is more transparent and accountable. Can you give us a sense of where you see that's going to help you in your job?