Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the committee's work.
I served the Government of Canada as a diplomat and senior executive from 1980 to 2010. I have since been practising law, mediation and arbitration with CMKZ.
International environmental law was one of the connecting threads of my career from 1981, when I prepared the adoption by the United Nations of a program for the development of environmental law, to 2004, when I left my position of director general of Environment Canada's Climate Change Bureau.
So I am sensitive to the role that the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development could play—a role I believe is underused—in ensuring that Canada's policies are up to the environmental challenges facing our planet, with the climate emergency being first and foremost among them.
Therefore, I welcome MP Collins' initiative to dedicate today's hearing to the possibility of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development becoming an officer of Parliament. There are many reasons why I think this is an excellent idea. Given time constraints, I will briefly mention only four.
First, it was the original idea. The position was originally conceived as independent when the Liberal Party promised it in the 1993 election. But when the Chrétien government created it two years later, it placed it in the Office of the Auditor General, as a subordinate appointed by the auditor general.
Second, history demonstrates the limits to the effectiveness of the commissioner's work that arise from his subordination to the auditor general. You will recall the conflict that very publicly opposed Auditor General Sheila Fraser and Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Johanne Gélinas in 2007. The latter was publicly presenting her devastating report on the federal government's record on fighting climate change, when she learned through the media that the former had just ended her mandate. Ms. Gélinas insisted on tabling her own report with parliamentarians and defending and explaining it herself. That same year, your committee adopted a motion recommending that the commissioner be made an officer of Parliament, supported by the Liberal Party, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, but the Harper government didn't act on it.
Third, the chronic underfunding that has plagued the Office of the Auditor General for 10 years now also limits the commissioner's effectiveness. As Karen Hogan stated last May: “Resource constraints strain our ability to fulfill our mandate at the level we would like it to be.” From 2010 to 2020, the Office of the Auditor General went from 27 performance audits per year to 14. This lack of resources, which hinders Ms. Hogan's work, hinders even more so the work of her subordinate Mr. DeMarco. The next federal budget should ensure that these two functions are carried out by two officers of Parliament, each with predictable and permanent funding consistent with their mandate.
Fourth, and in my opinion the most important reason to finally make the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, 26 years after the creation of the position, an officer of Parliament is the urgency of climate action.
Let's be clear. The results achieved by successive Canadian governments in the fight against climate change, as opposed to their promises, are a national disgrace. Every time Canada has set a target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it has missed it because the emissions have continued to rise.
It is far from certain that the strengthened federal climate plan, announced last December, will enable Canada to meet its agreed upon target under the Paris Accord to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030.
In fact, the 2021 edition of the climate change performance index shows that, not only does Canada remain firmly at the bottom of the pack, but its relative position is slipping: while last year, only six of the....