Environment Committee on May 19th, 2021

[Shannon Joseph, Vice-President, Government Relations and Indigenous Affairs, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers]

Thank you very much.

My name is Shannon Joseph, and I am the vice-president of government relations and indigenous affairs for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers or CAPP.

CAPP represents the upstream oil and natural gas industry in Canada. We would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear and to be part of its study of Bill C-12.

This legislation and Canada’s work to fulfill its climate change commitments are important to all industries and all Canadians. CAPP and our member companies are strong supporters of and investors in environmental performance and innovation. We want to work with the federal government to achieve its climate change goals. That said, we would highlight for the committee that the pathway to net zero that Bill C-12 sets out is also intended to create economic opportunities for Canada.

We took note of the Prime Minister's comment, particularly on the occasion of the April 22, 2021, climate summit, that our climate change response can be “our greatest economic opportunity.” As members can appreciate, you manage what you measure, hence the inclusion in the bill of milestone climate change targets towards 2050 performance measurement requirements. If the path to net zero is to create growth, investment and jobs, then as well as environmental performance, we need economic targets, and economic performance metrics must be built into this legislation as well.

Beyond this, pathways to net zero are going to look different in the diverse regions of our country as we pursue this agenda. This fact must also be integrated into the bill in the ways that the strategies are developed and evaluated. This should done in close collaboration with provincial and territorial governments and their climate change strategies and policies. Canada is an exporting country, and oil and natural gas are our number one export.

We contribute more than $1.1 billion annually to Canada’s economy. We employ over half a million women and men in well-paying, skilled jobs coast to coast, including 63,000 jobs in Ontario and 18,000 in Quebec. Our national supply chain outside of Alberta includes over 2,700 different firms with annual purchases of over $4 billion. In addition, we purchase over $2.4 billion annually from indigenous-owned businesses representing about 11% of our procurement in the oil sands. We are one of the largest employers of indigenous Canadians and are committed to our important role in reconciliation.

I highlight these points because this industry is an important part of Canada’s economic and social fabric and we have played and want to continue to play a role both in both supporting Canadian prosperity and helping Canada and the world achieve their environmental objectives.

An important way we will play that role is through innovation. One of your other speakers talked about technologies being available, but many still need to be developed. According to a 2018 study by Global Advantage Consulting Group conducted for the Clean Resource Innovation Network, or CRIN, about 75% of all clean technology investment in Canada comes from the natural gas and oil industry.

Not only will our leadership in innovation help to reduce emissions here at home but through technology sharing and export, Canada can help reduce global emissions around the world. An example of this is carbon capture utilization and storage. The Weyburn-Midale project in Saskatchewan is one of the world's largest and longest running. We hope to see more of these projects.

Our emerging liquefied natural gas industry in British Columbia also has a role to play in reducing global emissions and in generating internationally traded mitigation outcomes or carbon credits for Canada under the Paris Agreement.

China alone is adding one new large coal-fired power plant to its grid every two weeks. Coal-fired generation is also continuing to grow in India and southeast Asia, all with a focus on improving living standards for their citizens. If these facilities ran on Canadian natural gas, they would generate significantly lower air pollutants and significantly lower GHG emissions, as Ontario experienced when we switched power sources.

We cannot afford, either environmentally or economically, to take a narrow view of what climate change mitigation can look like in Canada. Bill C-12 should articulate the role that economic sectors and other stakeholders will play in the development of plans and in achieving targets. It should ensure that expertise in the technologies and opportunities available to different sectors and regions are brought to bear on Canada’s advisory panel and overall decision process.

We recommend a greater role for the Governor in Council, and in particular the Minister of Finance, in the development of targets, plans and supportive policies under the act, especially given their potential effects on the whole of Canada’s economy and society. We don't think it is appropriate for all of that to rest with one minister.

By working together, industry and government can accelerate innovation and develop technologies that reduce emissions while delivering responsibly produced energy to meet global energy demand. We hope our recommendations to the committee can support Canada in this process.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Next is Dr. Sabaa Khan from the David Suzuki Foundation.

Go ahead, Dr. Khan.

[Dr. Sabaa Khan, Director General, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, David Suzuki Foundation]

Thank you, Chair.

Dear members, I appreciate the invitation to appear before the committee today.

Climate change laws, such as Bill C-12, are a key governance tool in the quest to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In order to be effective, not only does this legislation need to pass, it also needs to incorporate the necessary amendments that will enable it to meet its ultimate objective of achieving—

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm getting the French translation through the English channel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll just stop there for a second, Dr. Khan.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

The French translation is also on the French channel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The wires got crossed somewhere.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

We're getting two French channels instead of one English.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I see.

Madam Clerk, could you look into that for us?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Angela Crandall]

I'll check.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It happens from time to time. I don't know why.

[The Clerk]

We should be good now, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Go ahead, Dr. Khan.

[Dr. Sabaa Khan]

Thanks.

National legislative approaches to climate policy have become imperative to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Not only do they have the potential to reflect authoritative and transparent state commitments, but they may also significantly facilitate and accelerate economy-wide decarbonization by providing predictable cross-sectoral regulatory and investment environments.

Canada's climate legislation will not exist in a vacuum. It will form part of an emerging global network of national climate laws, all of which are driven by the common global legal objective to tackle anthropogenic climate change. While no two national climate laws are the same, their frameworks draw on some common key requirements, obligations and procedures.

Our submission to the committee draws on international examples in the area of national climate legislation to inform substantive and procedural amendments to Bill C-12, which would give this draft legislation the specificity, concreteness, transparency and accountability standards necessary to effectively map, monitor and reduce Canada's emissions.

While Bill C-12 in its current form embodies all core elements common to most climate laws, it falls behind international best practice in several respects. We understand that the government's intention is to require science-based targets, but we are concerned that as currently drafted, Bill C-12 leaves open the door to sidestep IPCC science and recommendations. In establishing targets and crafting mandatory climate plans, an independent scientific body is mandated to play an advisory role. However, under the current provisions, this body's composition, resources, capacity and functions remain loosely described.

A robust Canadian climate law could trigger the rapid collective transformation that is needed within the public and private sectors to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, strengthen adaptation efforts, and enhance resilience across the country. Climate legislation should foster greater public transparency, ensure government accountability, and provide a clear, quantifiable and practical vision of how Canada intends to reduce economy-wide GHG emissions.

A robust legal framework for climate change can guarantee a leading role for independent science in determining Canada's climate ambition and ensure that this ambition never regresses. It can also ensure that Canada's plans of action to achieve periodical emissions reductions targets on the path to net zero do not deviate from the latest scientific recommendations of the IPCC.

Some climate laws go so far as to call for the explicit alignment between federal budget policy and climate policy, assign emissions reduction obligations for certain sectors to specific ministries, and even mandate the government to produce a global climate strategy related to imported goods, bilateral co-operation, and international climate finance. In the best cases, climate laws mandate independent scientific bodies to play a strong role in advising and monitoring government actions on climate change, and oblige the government to respond publicly to their advice, recommendations and reports. These mechanisms ensure that climate policy-making is not led by electoral cycles, but by the long-term objective of net-zero emissions by 2050.

We have before us today an opportunity to ensure the passing of robust climate legislation, which would propel us securely and collectively into the era of economy-wide decarbonization. It is essential that our climate legislation bind the relationships between climate science, government actions, and public engagement if it is to make a meaningful contribution to achieving net zero by 2050, and the end-of-century objective of the Paris Agreement.

In order for Bill C-12 to become a catalyzing force for change, target setting, plan rollouts, reporting obligations, monitoring procedures and the accountability framework must be significantly strengthened.

The issue of offsets should also be clearly addressed. In this respect, the David Suzuki Foundation supports the amendments recommended by Ecojustice and West Coast Environmental Law to the committee on Monday, which would help bring Bill C-12 up to the international standard of the Paris Agreement, in terms of accounting for anthropogenic emissions and removals in a manner that promotes environmental integrity, transparency, accuracy, completeness, comparability and consistency.

I strongly encourage members to work to strengthen the bill in line with international best practice, and to approve it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Dr. Khan.

We will now move on to Ms. Geneviève Paul, the Executive Director of the Québec Environmental Law Centre.

Ms. Paul, you have the floor.

[Geneviève Paul, Executive Director, Québec Environmental Law Centre]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the members of the committee for having invited me to testify.

The adoption of a climate act is urgent and necessary, and we welcome the tabling of this bill. However, if the act is to have the means to achieve its ambitions, we believe that the bill must be improved. The bill would provide a much-needed roadmap. We propose the addition of a compass and the necessary landmarks so that we can arrive at our destination without getting lost along the way.

Here, then, are our five main recommendations.

Firstly, we believe that it is essential not to make the advisory body multipartite, but rather an independent body with the required expertise, something that is not guaranteed by the current provisions. As Quebec has just done with its advisory committee on climate change, we must draw inspiration from international best practices that have proven their worth.

We therefore propose that the selection process be independent. Members could be recommended by a diverse selection committee that would include indigenous representatives appointed by the Governor in Council. These members need to be independent, meaning that they ought not to have any relations or interests that could be harmful to the achievement of the committee's mission, as is already the case in Quebec.

We strongly recommend that scientists make up the majority on the advisory body, as is the case in France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Quebec, among other jurisdictions. We propose that its terms of reference be clarified and broadened, and that they not be subject to the discretion of the Minister of the Environment, as is currently the case. For example, the body should be consulted on major issues such as setting interim targets.

To ensure that science guides our actions on climate issues, we suggest that the body be empowered to issue advice to all government entities. Such advice should be made public, and the body's annual report should be presented to Parliament, not the minister.

To improve subclause 22 (2), which is already a step in the right direction, we propose that the Minister of the Environment and any other minister who decides to disregard scientific advice from the advisory body be obliged to justify this decision, as is currently the case in the United Kingdom. Because the issues are so important and changing at such a rapid pace, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development should report every two years rather than every five.

To support the government in this admittedly complicated task, we propose the compulsory use of a climate analysis grid to be developed by the advisory body. This grid would help analyze government and administrative decisions on the basis of their impact on climate and on their achievement of targets to ensure that the actions of the entire state apparatus remain coherent.

In addition to a strong advisory body, the bill must also provide for interim targets and five-year federal carbon budgets. The bill mentions that one of the objectives is to ensure compliance with Canada's international commitments. This means that the act should refer directly to the Paris Agreement's flagship standards by setting normative benchmarks for GHG emission reductions and providing for means-based obligations, in addition to a milestone target as early as 2025 rather than 2020, as provided for in the Paris Agreement and on the basis of the best available scientific data. Furthermore, the act should include a performance obligation to ensure compliance with targets. Quite simply, we can no longer afford to miss the targets we set for ourselves because we have some catching up to do.

We felt reassured earlier this week to hear that there was a desire to strengthen accountability in the bill, and we hope that this will be reflected in the amendments.

Last but not least comes public participation. The bill falls short of Canada's international obligations concerning rights related to participation in public affairs and access to information, which must amount to more than an opportunity for the public to comment. In addition to making it obligatory to consult the provinces, as is the case in other legislation, we would like to see the act provide mechanisms for public engagement, awareness, training, and education. If we are to withstand the climate crisis, everybody must rally to the cause.

The Minister of Environment and Climate Change said this week that saving the planet shouldn't be political, and that it was rather a matter of believing or not believing in science. The goal of our proposals is to make science central to the bill while ensuring that the necessary guidelines are in place to fully address the crisis. It is in everyone's interest, and we are counting on both chambers to do what is required. We are submitting proposed amendments to you in the appendix to our brief and remain available to provide the legislator with guidance and support so that we can respond as required to the greatest threat currently facing humanity.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. Paul.

Professor Meadowcroft, now, from the Transition Accelerator.

Professor Meadowcroft, you have five minutes to make opening remarks.

[Prof. James Meadowcroft, Professor, School of Public Policy, Carleton University, Transition Accelerator]

In French we say "accélérateur de transition".

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

"Accélérateur de transition", okay.

[Prof. James Meadowcroft]

I'm from the Transition Accelerator, which is a national non-profit organization focused on building transition pathways in regions and sectors across Canada.

We issued a recent report called “Pathways to net zero: a decision support tool”, which we will send to the committee. I would urge you to look at. It goes into quite a lot of detail about concrete steps in various sectors to move toward net zero.

I'm going to talk about a few of the high-level findings of this report. I'm not proposing particular amendments to this piece of legislation; I'm sure members have a whole series of propositions before you. Really, my comments are focused more on the background and on how we should understand net zero.

The first thing I want to say is that net zero, from our point of view, changes everything. Once it is formally adopted as a goal, it changes the way the climate problem is framed. Net zero means balancing any residual emissions with removals, and since most of the negative emissions technologies are highly uncertain as to their outcome, permanence and cost, what that really means is driving down emissions towards actual zero in all sectors of the economy.

Why does it change everything? Essentially it's because it means that the climate issue is no longer about reducing emissions by a certain percentage before a certain point, but simply about stopping producing greenhouse gases; that's to say, absolutely squeezing them out of the economy.

For years our argument has been about how we find low-cost emissions to get to x percent. Forget that. What we need are new systems that simply don't emit greenhouse gases. The only way to get rid of these GHGs is for the large social systems of provisioning—transport, the way we move goods, the way we move people, the way the agri-food system works—have to go towards net zero. This means large-scale changes to those systems. Those systems, however, are already changing in response to all sorts of disruptive currents. Think about autonomous cars, which are pushing the boundaries of what transport systems will look like.

The task, then, is not to get rid of some emissions from the ways we're doing things now, but to engineer new systems that will be better in many respects and also be low carbon. This means the electricity system, the way we build buildings, transport and agri-food have to go through major changes.

One implication of thinking about it this way is that the focus should be on sectors and regions. Why? It's because the problems in agri-food are not the same as those with buildings or transport, and one policy instrument cannot drive these changes. There are different obstacles and different enabling factors. The same is true when we think about Canada's regional identity and differing regional political economies. Pathways will thus be regional and sectoral.

We also need to think about what the system will look like when we get to net zero and planning function of that. This will allow us to avoid some dead-end pathways.

An example I'll give you is blending ethanol with gasoline, which Canada has proudly been doing for more than a decade and which is not advancing us toward net zero, even though it may secure some incremental reductions, because the world is headed toward an electrified personal vehicle transport system. Industry has already opted that way, and there's not enough land anyway to create biofuels everywhere.

What we need is an analysis that looks at what these pathways to net zero are at the system level, not at sets of policies that encourage incremental emissions where they look fanciful, or where they look promising, if you like, because we will waste enormous amounts of investment building infrastructure that turns out to be useless a decade later because it isn't actually on a pathway to zero.

The last thing I would say is that t's great that Canada is moving toward a net-zero understanding of the climate problem, but what we really need is a strategic vision now about what the pathways are to get us there.

For a long time, the tendency has been to do a little bit of everything, to finance this and finance that. There are a few big things that make a difference, and we should be putting as much investment into these as possible: electrifying personal transport, decarbonizing buildings and driving the remaining carbon out of the electricity system. These things are big. We have the technologies. We know how to do them now.

Many other things like aircraft emissions are important and will have to be done, but they are not the priority now. There we need R and D, and we need experiments to identify solutions that can be rolled out at scale.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Professor Meadowcroft. That's very interesting.

We'll go to our first round of questioning, the six-minute round. I believe for the Conservatives it's Mr. Jeneroux, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, Mr. Jeneroux, go ahead.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Yes, you are correct, Mr. Chair, and thank you.

Thank you, panellists.

I don't know about you, Mr. Chair, but I have yet to hear a panellist who says they like this bill. It seems to be across the board. I guess maybe the minister liked the bill. Outside of that, it seems that everybody is pointing out what appear to be flaws with the bill.

That said, I want to address most of my questions to CAPP.

Ms. Joseph, thanks for your presentation. In your remarks you mentioned the lack of economic targets and lack of accountability. I'm hoping you can expand on some of that. The question for you is, would you then agree that there needs to be a tracking system for those economic targets?

[Shannon Joseph]

Thanks very much for the question.

Yes. When we first saw this bill, one of the things we thought was where the economic aspect of this was, because we know that the environment and the economy need to go together. They need to be thought of together.

We put forward amendments that were really about integrating those goals, looking at an economic target that goes alongside of what we're trying to achieve with net zero. Specifically, we think that if the goal is to create new jobs, etc., we should be measuring whether those jobs are being created. How does that look regionally and nationally? Are we attracting investment? How is that looking regionally and nationally? Is our real GDP increasing? How is that looking regionally and nationally? We ask these questions because, ultimately, a healthy economy and investments are going to be needed by industries, not just ours but manufacturing and others, to do the type of innovation that's needed.

If the government is only measuring its performance based on emissions reductions and not looking at this other side of the equation, it's potentially going to pursue solutions that are inefficient and cause unintended problems. If you look at them both together, you're going to find optimal solutions, especially when you put on that regional lens. We think having that built into the legislation in terms of the targets and reporting is critical.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

You touched on some of that regional piece. I hope you can expand a bit on that—about the provincial and territorial roles. I think a major issue with not just this bill but also multiple other pieces of legislation by this government has been the failure to respect other jurisdictions, as well as the introduction of redundant regulations, instead of having that collaborative piece with other provinces.

Is there any part here of Bill C-12 that you would find redundant when it comes to the other provinces and territories?

[Shannon Joseph]

The issue is just a lack of consideration. There is nothing in the bill that requires the federal government, in its planning process, to explicitly take into account the measures that provincial and territorial governments are taking, and how their measures interact with federal measures.

We think that is very important. Our companies operate in multiple jurisdictions across the country. When we look at our experience with a policy like methane regulation, we're happy today that we have, in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, equivalency agreements with the federal government. Before we had those agreements, we were very concerned about double management of the same molecules of CO2 and how that was going to work—the costs it would impose and what that would mean for our ability to operate, innovate, to employ people.

There are consequences from operating without consideration of these policies. The more the bill reflects the fact that those other policies being implemented provincially must be considered by the federal government, I think the more we can avoid double policies and inefficiency.