Environment Committee on April 12th, 2016

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

Thank you for that.

That moves nicely into my second point, which is the attempt to reframe it. Some of that attempt has involved talking about “future generations”, and using that term in titles instead of “sustainability”. I agree that it means different things to different people, and you're spending half the time trying to explain that to people.

My next question is about teeth. We've heard a lot of motherhood statements about being sustainable. Some of our guests today have talked about ways of measuring it. One of the discussions I seem to continually hear come up around this table is about how to enforce this stuff. How do you actually create the legislation that forces the higher-ups in government...? We heard about that. How do you make sure this stuff actually takes place? What are the repercussions for it not happening?

Ms. Pearce, would you like to start by answering that? Then I'd be happy to hear from the other members, as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have two minutes to answer that, so maybe take one minute, and then we'll let some of the others on the video conference chime in.

[Catherine Pearce]

I have just a couple of points, really, before I pass it on to other witnesses.

This is about high-level commitment, isn't it? Sustainable development isn't just something we forget about, and then think about when everything else is done. This demands huge attention across all sectors of government. It demands high-level commitment.

As has already been mentioned, we need to be ensuring and introducing short-term, mid-term, and long-term targets. We need to be introducing a strategy of how to do that. Also, enforcement is a key point in terms of accountability, in terms of introducing indicators to ensure that we're meeting those targets, and in terms of ensuring that we are actually gathering the data to check that we're meeting those targets.

How do we rectify the situation if it's going wrong? Not only do we need to ensure that there are assessments of all the decisions being made, which reflect on social and environmental aspects too; we must also determine what elements of punishment we need to bring in.

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

Can I go to Günther? He had talked about how they have become successful in Germany, and they seem to have a high measure of success.

Has that been because of certain enforcements that have been put in place to ensure that these things happen because of the repercussions that might be associated with them?

[Prof. Günther Bachmann]

Mark, I have to say that this is a wonderful question you pose. Very bluntly, you will not regulate yourself into sustainable development. Sustainable development is more than just regulation. We have these legal impact assessments in place, but it would be more important, I think, to create a notion in society that with sustainability there's something in it for the ordinary person. That comes with the huge understanding that we have of the impact on food of sustainability and of jobs created by sustainability.

That is why I think creating wealth is a prerequisite, as is keeping it within the planetary boundaries. It all comes down to what wealth is and what “wealthy” means to you. The German green economy is prospering and is an increasing economic part of Germany. That is where people have put their trust.

You mentioned Greece. I just came back from Athens where, together with the National Bank of Greece, I introduced the Greek sustainability code. It is for companies in Greece, and it's about creating trust and prosperity. That's the way forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

I think that's a wonderful segue back to that first question: what is wealth and how do we measure that? It's much broader than money.

Let's go to the next questioner, who is Mr. Cullen.

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

Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses.

I want to get a reference point with Ms. Gelfand. I'll note for those witnesses who are not present that we have our environment commissioner gracing us with her presence.

How long have we had sustainable development strategies and goals within Canada?

[Julie Gelfand, Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development]

For the sustainable development strategies and goals, it's been a long time. Do I know the exact date...?

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

Has it been 30 years?

[Julie Gelfand]

No, it hasn't been 30 years.

[A voice]

It was 1997.

[Julie Gelfand]

It was 1997, so that's almost 30 years.

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

All right.

In your last report, over that time—just over 20 years—we've talked about five out of all of the reports forwarded to government actually complying with the notion of sustainable development.

[Julie Gelfand]

What we talked about was a cabinet directive on strategic environmental assessment, which is different from the sustainable development strategy.

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

Right. So if there's a directive that is meant to be sent and isn't being sent and isn't being applied.... I want to get into the question of compliance that a number of my colleagues have picked up on today. I'm intrigued by my Conservative colleagues insisting that somehow the economy exists outside of our environment and our ecology. It's a fascinating fifth-dimension perception.

There's a question I have for Mr. Bachmann. In terms of compliance being connected to success, in Canada we've had many strategies. We've had many government protocols that do not get followed. The compliance rate is abysmal, and that's been admitted to, and that's been across different types of governments.

Do there need to be fiscal measures, penalties, or financial penalties for deputy ministers and senior cabinet people who are meant to be applying these directives? What is it that has been successful in Germany in regard to actually following through? Does Canada need to consider some of those applications here?

[Prof. Günther Bachmann]

I would be very interested to hear about an example where we could work with fines and regulations in the way you've expressed. It's not what we are doing in Germany, but I can say that maybe what you've just sketched out is an alternative.

We're doing it by a kind of public watchdog function. Once a year, we have an annual sustainable development summit where our prime minister, the German chancellor, addresses a crowd of 1,000 to 1,500 people who are really committed to sustainable development. We have this follow-up procedure in the parliament, so there is not a legal compliance mechanism but a political compliance mechanism. People get asked.

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

I like the public shaming option as well.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[A voice]

I'm sure you do.

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

Ms. Pearce, in some of your testimony I think you mentioned the public watchdog notion, as Mr. Gunton has talked about, something that allows the Auditor General's office, perhaps through the environment commissioner, to be a much more stringent watchdog. In your experience, is this something that has been effective?

[Catherine Pearce]

Very much so, yes. In all the institutions I've mentioned, there is the element of a watchdog or an opportunity to provide accountability to government and to public offices on their commitments if they're not meeting them.

Also, to widen that window, it allows that access within the public. There are many concerns around lack of interest, or apathy, or actually just a lack of transparency about what is happening within government. It is important for the public to see that within government their first port of call and their first concern is looking to sustainability to ensure a kind of safeguarding of their needs.

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

Accountability and transparency are the buzzwords of any new government, as is true with this one. The notion in Germany that the prime minister's chief of staff is the one who's chairing these meetings holds it to a very high level of authority.

Mr. Gunton, there's the question of what these sustainable development strategies are meant to look at. It's great if federal departments are saving on photocopying or having a few recharging stations for electric vehicles. There's also this notion of every federal decision that's being made also passing through the sustainability lens. That seems to me, just in terms of a broader impact on something like climate change, to be a much larger fish to go after.

Am I conflating two different ideas around sustainability? I would hate to simply have an internal government approach to making federal departments more sustainable, as noble as that exercise is, because when I consider the power and the influence of each of those federal decisions over the sustainability of Canada, that seems to be a very much larger and more important objective.

[Dr. Thomas Gunton]

I agree, and if you look at the sustainable development strategies that we have, they're really a compilation of individual departmental initiatives. You need to start at the other end with a clear statement of what you want to achieve, clear targets that are over the short, medium, and long term, and then you need to develop strategies to meet those targets. You need to monitor to see if you're meeting those targets, and you need to take remedial action.

On the question of performance—

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

Just a question on that because I think in your testimony you suggested that what we have so far does not have measurable.... How can we be accountable if there's no way to measure success or failure from the government's commitments?

[Dr. Thomas Gunton]

Yes. That's exactly the point and the starting point has to be clear, measurable targets: short-, medium-, and long-term.

For example, you could even have a quantitative target for greenhouse gas reductions of 30% by 2030, but if you don't have short- and medium-term targets to constantly monitor the degree to which you're meeting those objectives, there is no compliance and there's no accountability.

I look at the example of federal fiscal policy where we were very successful in the 1990s. What are the lessons learned from there? And we were successful in doing that. Number one, you have to have clear, quantitative targets, which they had, short-, medium-, and long-term fiscal targets. You have to have a clear strategy, which is a budget that shows how you get there. You had performance introduced for the deputy ministers, which required compliance with them. If you didn't meet them.... You had all those elements together. You have to apply the same kinds of strategies for all the different dimensions of sustainable development.