Environment Committee on May 19th, 2021

[Geneviève Paul]

Thank you for your question, Ms. Pauzé.

It is indeed essential to specify in the bill the terms of reference of the advisory body, as well as the selection criteria and the required expertise. There have been proposals about this, for example in an amendment to subclause 21(2), which is based on other climate laws in force around the world.

It's important to avoid making the advisory body's terms of reference dependent on the discretionary authority of the minister, and in particular, to steer clear of the pitfalls of a multipartite body. Based on what I've heard, that's something I find worrisome, and here's why.

We all clearly agree that climate change affects everyone. It's partly for this reason that the CQDE, the Québec Environmental Law Centre, also came up with amendments to strengthen public participation, including all the stakeholders. It's important to hear everyone's voice, including industry players, because if we want to reach our goal, we have to move forward together. There are ways of doing so. For example, a variety of forums could be used to increase participation by the public and stakeholders when the act is implemented.

However, it's important not to turn the advisory body into a group of several stakeholders if we are to avoid the underlying pitfalls of that approach. It's absolutely essential for science to guide our decisions. We need to face up to this emergency now because we didn't listen closely enough to what the scientists were saying before. One of the keys to success will be the fact that we could analyze laws adopted as long as10 years ago, and more recently.

It's therefore critical that the act should specify the need for the advisory body to be independent and that most of its members be from the scientific community. Expertise should also be multidisciplinary.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Mr. Bachrach.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to begin with a couple of questions for Ms. Paul on the topic of the advisory body.

Do you know how other jurisdictions that have similar advisory bodies and that focus more on scientific credentials define those scientific credentials? Are you aware of any of the approaches they utilize? It seems to me to be a tricky thing to put your finger on: What is a scientist, and how much of a scientist does someone have to be?

[Geneviève Paul]

Thank you, Mr. Bachrach, for this excellent question. Yes, I think we can build on some of the best practices that we have been looking at in other jurisdictions.

I would say there are two—perhaps more, but at least two—main criteria we can look at and should include in the legislation. The first one is the criterion of independence. How do we define that? I alluded to that in our introductory remarks. One way to do it is to make sure that the person holding the mandate does not have any interests that could affect his or her ability to fulfill the mandate. When we start looking at that, it reduces the number of possible candidates quite quickly, to be frank, but then we come down to really making sure the person would be independent and would make recommendations addressed to all political parties with a view to putting science first.

We made a recommendation for a suggested amendment with regard to the second criterion. It's based on what we've seen in other jurisdictions. We list some of the disciplines that should be part of the committee. Of course, the first one that comes to mind is climate change science. We have also seen that it's quite interesting to make sure that we have people who are able to assess the different impacts, in terms of vulnerable populations and regions, that climate change has and will continue to have. There's also public policy, for instance, and social science as well, but mostly, of course, it's with climate science in mind.

I hope that answers your question.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you. I appreciate your response.

Mr. Fauteux, I found your remarks at the beginning very interesting. I believe you have an interesting view on this challenge, having worked within government for so long and watched our various stumblings over the years. Could you describe briefly what has gone wrong? What have been the key failings and problematic behaviours within successive federal governments that have led us to such dismal results on the climate front?

[Paul Fauteux]

Thank you for that very important question. It calls for a brutally frank answer.

Ms. Joseph spoke of the importance of the Canadian oil and gas and coal industry—coal less so, but oil and gas more so. That's the reason. Canada is a petro state. Canada exports fossil fuels. Fossil fuels generate an enormous amount of economic activity.

As a result, Canada's climate policy has had, in effect, in reality, as a main objective, the protection of Canada's oil and gas industry. It has not been truly designed to protect the climate. The proof of that is that after all of these years of climate policy, emissions keep going up. Emissions from oil and gas in particular keep going up.

We talk about carbon capture and storage. We have a wonderful demonstration project in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. It is a world leader in this technology. As the professor who spoke earlier said—I'm sorry, but his name escapes me—this technology is completely unreliable in effectively sequestering carbon at an acceptable cost, at scale, in order to meet the needs of the climate emergency. The professor was quite right. We need radical change.

That in a nutshell is why Canadian climate policy has failed. Its real objective was not to protect the climate, but to protect the oil and gas industry.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for that response, Mr. Fauteux.

Is the current bill enforceable? To what degree can Bill C-12—if we amend and strengthen it—account for some of those factors, the intrinsic factors within our governance structures, that seem to undermine our efforts? How effective is this as an accountability measure?

[Paul Fauteux]

Currently it's not, but it can be made so. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Canada is about to finally adopt a climate law. It has never done so and I can bet you it's not going to do so again for a very long time. These things are meant to last. With these things, as Madame Paul- was saying, you put a framework for the transition. We need an energy transition like the world has never known.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which works under the aegis of the OECD, just put out a report a few days ago on the path to net zero. The professor was talking about that. That path to net zero requires that oil and gas that is not in production now never comes into production. The only way that the world, including Canada, can get to net zero is if all of the planned increase in production of oil and gas is shelved. Let's keep production at the current level. That is one way this law can be a turning point. It has the potential to become so.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to our second round.

We have Ms. McLeod kicking off the second round, which is a five-minute round.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and again thank you to the witnesses for the really important dialogue that we're having. I'm going to make an observation and then I'll ask my question.

Mr. Baker, from the government side, talked about the importance of this process to make legislation better. There's been significant discussion about what the panel should look like. In this regard, I do want to note that the government did not wait to listen to our important reflections on what this panel should look like, and has already appointed it. That, of course, has diminished our opportunities to influence it, despite some of the good dialogue we have had on that.

We just had a comment made about our oil and gas sector. I'm going to use an example first and then I'll perhaps go to Ms. Joseph. The government has banned six plastics without doing any sort of analysis of the impact. You ask them what companies in Canada produce plastics, what's the impact going to be, do we import them, where do we get our straws from, and the government hasn't done any analysis of that. I think many of us agree it's important, but the analysis of the impact is also important.

Ms. Joseph talked about an economic analysis. I've heard many witnesses say that as we make this transition we're going to have lots of jobs—albeit just different ones. I don't know what the fear would be about having an economic analysis done that looks at that as part of this particular piece of legislation. We've talked about other sort of benchmarks.

I would open it up for you to perhaps comment on some of the things that have been said on oil and gas, but also on the importance of an economic analysis. If this transition creates more jobs, we should be transparent about it.

Could you go ahead, please.

[Shannon Joseph]

Thank you very much.

First, I would say that it's absolutely critical for us to have an economic lens on the way we pursue net zero and what it changes for the affordability in all aspects of the economy. You don't hear that spoken about in the IEA's report and we haven't heard that from some of the other witnesses, but it is important for people, it's important for businesses, and it needs to be part of how we assess the pathways that we are on.

In terms of the contribution of the oil and gas industry to emissions, our emissions intensity has gone down by 21% and our operational changes can bring it down further. Part of the challenge is the demand for energy here and around the world. The cars that are driven, the planes that are flown, the factories that need our energy, the population that goes up, all of that increases the total demand. Whether that demand is met by Canada or Saudi Arabia makes a difference because of how we produce our energy and the commitments that our companies have to how they produce that energy. I think it's disingenuous to blame our failure to meet certain targets on just one sector.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

When you're asking for some economic analysis, that's not to diminish the importance of Canada's working towards it emissions goals.

[Shannon Joseph]

Not at all. Canada has to pursue its international commitments. All industries, including mine, are committed to that. My members are some of the top producers of hydrogen. We are seriously looking at all types of technology and all forms of energy as we look at our own operations in a way that will transform those things over time.

In order for these things to happen, and for us to deploy large-scale changes, we need to be able to attract investment. That means policies need to be designed in such a way that investing in innovation remains cost-effective. If those policies are not designed with economics in mind, and if we don't measure the economic outcomes we want to see happen as we transition to net zero, there will be negative consequences as well, and public resistance in other issues. We have to advance these things together.

I think we've heard similar things from other witnesses, but that's the key point behind our amendments.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Chair, do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 25 seconds for a comment, I guess.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

What we're mostly focused on today, of course, has been the reduction of emissions, but what we also haven't talked about is the other side of the equation, which is planting the trees and recovering the grasslands. I hope at some point we also have those conversations, because there are a few sides to the equation.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Is it Ms. Saks next on the Liberal side?

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

It is, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay. Go ahead.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you so much.

I want to thank all of our witnesses. This has been a very fulsome conversation, and I'm learning a lot, which I appreciate.

I'd like to start with Dr. Khan, if I may.

Ms. Paul talked earlier in detail about the legislative issues that we're looking at in terms of amendments.

What's missing for me in this discussion right now is the importance of consulting indigenous Canadians and taking indigenous knowledge into account in fighting climate change. We've talked a lot about the nuts and bolts of these pieces, but they are a key stakeholder in this conversation.

I'd like some insight from you, Dr. Khan.

[Dr. Sabaa Khan]

Thank you.

I would say that I'm not in a place to speak for indigenous peoples' communities at this moment.

I would say that Canada has ratified the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I do think those rights have to be upheld in the implementation of Bill C-12.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'm going to move to Ms. Paul, if I may.

We've heard quite a number of concerns about the advisory body being formed before Bill C-12 has passed, and I'm a bit confused about that.

There seems to be some hesitation by some sides to act, even on just forming an advisory body when we've already set the 2030 and 2050 targets. To me, it seems that Bill C-12 is codifying in law what we're already trying to do to ensure that the government makes changes and that a new government can't ignore the issue. It has been made very clear by all of you that this is pivotal legislation for this time.

It would make sense to me that we'd establish formal requirements in the advisory body, like reporting requirements in Bill C-12. Isn't it reasonable that we should be formalizing a body into the law now, even if amendments to it might be needed?