Environment Committee on April 12th, 2016

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Thank you.

Canada is a big country, as you well know. Wales is geographically a little smaller. I'd be the last one to say in Saint John, New Brunswick, that you need to do exactly the same thing that's happening in my community. We have a large country, and I think that local decision-making.... We have to be very careful when we talk at a national level about what we're setting for standards and how to evaluate. We have to be very careful, because we have a very large and diverse country.

Where am I on my time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have one minute.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I'll go back to Ms. Pearce. You started talking at the last minute, and I know you wanted to say something more. Do you remember where you were at? You were in mid-sentence, and we ran out of time with your answer.

[Catherine Pearce]

I'm afraid I don't remember.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

I'm going to give you the go-ahead.

[Catherine Pearce]

Just to reinforce that message, actually, Canada is a very vast country, and the needs of society are very broad from one end to the next. The language that needs to be used, in terms of engagement and encouraging participation of the public, has to be unique and tailored to the different communities of this beautiful country, and also in terms of how the government relates to the public as well. There is not a one-size-fits-all in terms of the process by which we can open up the relationship between public and governments, and also in terms of broadening out that trust.

One element of ensuring that governments are on track and ensuring their performance on these targets.... The element of disaggregated data is also incredibly important and incredibly complex when we look at the concerns of Canada and in terms of checking on progress. There's a huge amount of work that needs to be done—I don't need to tell you this—in terms of how we actually define what it is we're trying to meet and how we ensure that we're actually meeting those targets.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Good. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Fisher.

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

Pretty much everything has been said.

I agree with Martin—excellent conversation. We could go around the table and talk about this all day.

Ms. Pearce, I've always felt that real environmental leadership has to come from government, that the strategies we set for ourselves will have a greater impact down the line. Notwithstanding legislation or regulations, do you feel that private businesses take a cue from the government and will change their ways, if we lead by example?

[Catherine Pearce]

I think it's quite a complex relationship, actually.

When we talk about leadership, it's often the case that leadership can be found from the private sector just as much, if not more so than in government.

I think, in many respects, it's how governments take on this responsibility and ensure that not only is it not marginalized but it's covered across all different departments, with leadership from a key central agency at its core. There is much to learn of how the private sector, how businesses actually incorporate a sustainability approach, if you like, to ensure their performance is actually meeting and ensuring environmental targets that governments have introduced.

In many respects, there are examples around the world where corporations are actually imposing and showing leadership, and showing the way on how governments need to be taking on business, how they need to be introducing targets, and how they need to be ensuring that they have the right strategy to meet those targets.

When we talk about sustainability, it is up to all of us, isn't it? It's up to governments. It's up to business, and it's also up to the public at large. We all have a relationship to play. I think the relationship among those three different sectors is actually very key.

There are many elements, the bottom up, the grassroots level, which are really demonstrating action in this area, because they're tired of waiting for governments or private sector to take the lead. There are many examples around the world where we can actually learn from one another, and I think that relationship is quite sophisticated. There needs to be elements where we can learn from one another. We talked about lessons learned. I think this really needs to be brought out a little more.

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

Super, thank you.

Madam Chair, we talked a lot about legislation versus policy versus strategy. We've talked about a good plan being effective only if it's enforced. We've all shared almost the same thoughts all around the room in previous meetings and today. We also talked about strengthening the role of the commissioner, and Ms. Pearce mentioned that as well. Mike mentioned, you know, giving her some teeth. We've talked about finding ways to measure success. We've all talked about the goals, the targets, and all the indicators.

I might be off on this, but I believe, Mr. Davies, you mentioned that Wales has their plan. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you might have said it was enshrined in law. Can you clarify that? Are you indicating that what you have in Wales now is somewhat stronger than a policy or a strategy? Notwithstanding the fact that you said it's not a silver bullet, I like what you've done where you've come forward a year before an election and you put the onus on the politicians to have success and enforce those successes.

This is a year old now. Are you seeing any successes, any measurables that you can share with us today? A lot of what you said when you spoke for 10 minutes was very much the same thing we've talked about around this table, and the musings we've had.

[Peter Davies]

This is now a law. It became law in April of this year, so it's just become law. We passed the bill. It received royal assent last year, became an act last year. It's now been passed into law, so it's become law in this last week or so. It is now a framework. Very simply, it is about our long-term development path, about how we, as a nation, want to develop. It sets out our long-term development path—a set of goals, a set of measures against those goals, a requirement on government to set milestones of progress. It's tied into the electoral cycle, so obviously, it links back to the democratic process. It can't be dictatorial; it links back absolutely to the democratic process.

But our experience with the political parties in introducing this act into law has been...as one of the opposition parties said, “You know, we're not disagreeing about where we want to get to in the long term, but we are disagreeing about how we get there”. That's what politics is about.

The legislation, if you like, sets out our long-term development path. There will be a lot of debate and discussion politically about how we get there and what the best mechanism is for achieving progress, making progress against those milestones. But what we've tried to do is set out a basis for consensus on what we want to try to achieve as a nation, set some clear measures in place, and set some clarity about how we get there, such as the principles of involving communities in decision-making.

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

If I can just summarize what you just said, the law has more teeth than the policy or the strategy or the act. Is that something you see as a beneficial move forward for us?

[Peter Davies]

Absolutely. The previous situation I used to refer to as being a cut-and-paste duty. In other words, the officials cut out the statements and pasted them into new policy documents, and that was the degree to which sustainable development was actually implemented in practice. It was simply set out in the introduction to documents as saying this complies with the sustainable development duty. We now have something that is much clearer and much more focused on what it is we are trying to achieve, with measures of performance against that.

So yes, absolutely, that is the transition that we've been through.

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

Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Eglinski.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you to all the witnesses who showed up here today.

I'd like to dwell on a couple of things. Yes, as Ms. Gelfand said, sustainability has been part of our government for approximately 30 years, but sustainability was in this country when the first settlers came in. I remember my grandfather, who settled in this country in 1905, talked about sustainability on his quarter section. He planted a crop. The next year he summer-fallowed. He talked about trapping in the early days. He said you couldn't trap in one forest area all the time. You had to take so many animals, and then let it prosper.

Sustainability has always been here. For any individual in this room, they've had a sustainability plan in their life. For us as a government, it's a lot more complex. It's a lot easier when you're an individual and you only have yourself to be accountable for. If you're a corporation, you have a CEO who probably has a lot of clout, because he's the one who's making the decisions. Right now I see us in government with a very broad, complex country. As Mr. Shields alluded, Canada is made up of roughly 12 regions, with four forms of government, and we need to come up with a good plan to meet global expectations.

I'm going to fire a question off to Mr. Gunton. Looking at the demographics of our country, we have the provinces and the Northwest Territories and the different regions of the Northwest Territories. We have provincial governments and the federal government. We have aboriginal people we need to take into concern. One thing we must realize is that if anybody in this country knows about long-term sustainability, it's our aboriginal people, because they've lived off the land and they believe in what the land can give us.

You mentioned earlier that Canada has one of the lowest and Germany has one of the highest.... I understand that they have a fairly tight network on top in Germany. But how do you see us capturing all of Canada to come up with a very strong program?

That's a loaded question; sorry.

[Dr. Thomas Gunton]

That's an excellent and challenging question. This obviously is a very complex institutional environment that we work in.

People have mentioned the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration. I look at some of the examples we've had in British Columbia dealing with things like the War in the Woods, where we brought all of the different groups together, including first nations, sitting around a table for sometimes two to three years, and in these cases coming to consensus agreements on how to move forward in a sustainable way.

It's certainly possible to do. It has to be a multi-stakeholder dialogue. In many cases, such as on the pipeline issues, which are paramount in Canada, we're now using adversarial approaches, where we pit parties against each other in quasi-judicial hearings. We have to move beyond that. We have to go to a collaborative approach involving all the multi-stakeholders. We had a national round table, which was helpful in this process. It would be good to bring some of those kinds of multi-stakeholder mechanisms back together.

Germany also has a federal system, as we know. They have achieved, in our view, pretty good integration between what's happening nationally and all the different levels of government in Germany. There are models to look at there as well.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Bachmann, towards the end of your speech you alluded to going to regional hubs. Can you explain a little bit more about that? I think we have roughly 12 or 13 regional hubs in Canada. How are you working that in Germany, please? What type of information are you looking for from those groups to help?

[Prof. Günther Bachmann]

Germany has 16 provinces, bigger ones and smaller ones. We have a couple of hundred local communities. What we see now is that we have established government links from the federal level to the cities and to the provinces. What we have not yet achieved is bringing in the building communities—the grassroots, the artists, the culture people, the scientists, the forestry and farming people. They are all working in a kind of tunnel. We have not yet achieved a crossover, comprehensive approach that brings those people together. Bringing those communities together is the final task that those four hubs—north, south, east, and west—are supposed to deliver.

There's a certain feeling of working together in this field that we still need here in Germany.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You are out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you for that answer.

Mr. Cullen, go ahead.

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

I want to get back to the public watchdog role. I am going to turn this to Ms. Pearce. How would you imagine it being strengthened to the point where...? The concern I have is that we have been over this over a number of decades here in Canada, and the rhetoric or the hopes have not often met with the results.

We had a meeting organized by a colleague last night looking at Canada's climate change commitments. Even with all the efforts of the provinces and the efforts of the federal government, and even with our current target—which is insufficient to the commitment made by the new government. It was a target made by the old government. We are 97 megatonnes off what Canada has promised to date, and the makeup becomes the question.

Some imagine that what we are talking about here today could apply itself to Canada's becoming more vigorous and more rigorous, and actually making commitments and then following through on them. Do you imagine that to be true under the models we are talking about, the models you have studied, or the one that is being contemplated here for Canada?

[Catherine Pearce]

As I said in my testimony, the position of the current commissioner of the environment and sustainable development is a very strong one, but we believe there are certain elements that would require some adjusting to actually strengthen the mandate of that position and that office.

It generally reflects what is going on with other institutions around the world that reflect similar kinds of powers of independence, responsibility, and an ability to ensure government-wide compliance with their targets on sustainability and elsewhere.

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

Perhaps I haven't been specific enough.

For compliance, imagine, if you will, that the government were to come forward with a plan that required the drastic dropping of the curve of greenhouse gas emissions—federal leadership, a carbon-pricing strategy, all of the mechanisms you would imagine. This would not be easy lifting, by any measure. No one considers it that way.

Do you have faith in the federal development strategies we are talking about—in some office, the commissioner's office enhanced or some other role—to be able to counter the push-back that would be inevitable from such an aggressive or ambitious plan?

[Catherine Pearce]

I certainly think it requires an enhanced position from the existing commissioner's role in order to carry that weight and carry that influence because as we are gathering here, this isn't just down to one agency or one stakeholder. This is across the board and society wide in terms of Parliament and government and private-sector engagement, as well as the public.

In our experience, we have seen that those institutions around the world that carry the most influence and the most weight are those that are connecting with and working with all of those different sectors. In terms of recognizing that a target is failing, or where efforts need to be increased, it is important that the commissioner be able to undertake research and analysis, working with some of these stakeholders, to see what additional efforts are required and why the failings are taking place.