Environment Committee on Nov. 18th, 2020

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Alexandre Roger]

Honourable members of the committee, I see a quorum.

I must inform the members that during the election of the chair, the clerk of the committee can only receive motions for the election of chair. The clerk cannot receive other types of motions, cannot entertain points of order, nor participate in debate.

We can now proceed to the election of the chair. Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the chair must be a member of the government party. I am now ready to receive motions for the chair.

Mr. Baker.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I would like to nominate Mr. Scarpaleggia for chair.

[The Clerk]

It has been moved by Mr. Yvan Baker that Mr. Scarpaleggia be elected chair of the committee.

Are there any further motions?

Seeing no other motions, I declare Mr. Scarpaleggia duly elected chair of the committee.

Congratulations, you may now take the chair, sir.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Just as a point of clarification, do we have to vote on it or is it just a motion and that's the end of it?

[The Clerk]

Because there was only one nomination, it was by acclamation.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Wonderful. Congratulations, Francis.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Before the chair gets to rule me out of order, I want to congratulate him as well. I've known Francis Scarpaleggia for many years. This is a very appropriate choice for your chair.

Thank you, members of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. May. That's very kind of you. Indeed, we have worked together for a long time, and it's been a great honour for me.

First of all, thank you to everyone for your confidence.

Thank you so much for your confidence.

It will be a great pleasure to work together to advance environmental issues.

We're at meeting number six, and the committee is meeting today for a briefing by the Auditor General of Canada and the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of September 23, 2020. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking, rather than the entirety of the committee.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Members may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. There are three channels.

For members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in the committee room. Keep in mind the directives from the Board of Internal Economy regarding masking and health protocols.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. I think that's pretty standard practice. If you are on video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. Those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you are not speaking, please put your mike on mute.

With regard to the speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking from members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses. We have, from the Office of the Auditor General, Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada; Andrew Hayes, deputy auditor general and interim commissioner of the environment and sustainable development; Kimberley Leach, principal; and James McKenzie, principal.

My understanding is, Mr. Clerk, that we have five minutes for opening statements. That would include all witnesses. We'll try to follow that rule and see how it goes.

I imagine Ms. Hogan will be going first.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Congratulations on your recent nomination to the chair of this very important committee.

We prepared some slides and submitted them to the committee in preparation for our appearance today. I encourage you to keep them as reference tools for my office's mandate.

To maximize the time for questions from the committee, Mr. Hayes and I will cover only the highlights of our presentation.

I will start by discussing the activities of our office, which are presented on slides 8 to 11. More than half of our financial auditors are involved in annual audits of financial statements of the Government of Canada and the three territories. This also includes annual audits of several Crown corporations. In these audits, we express an opinion on the financial position on the basis of accounting standards.

We also perform special examinations, which are actually performance audits, but within a Crown corporation. The law requires a special examination at least once every 10 years in all parent Crown corporations.

The audits that Parliament is most familiar with are performance audits. These audits look at whether government programs are managed with due regard to economy, efficiency and the environment. We also look at whether there are measures in place to determine if programs are effective. This is commonly referred to as auditing the four Es.

We may comment on policy implementation in our performance audit, but we will not comment on policy itself.

The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development assists me in the areas of my mandate when they relate to the environment and sustainable development. All of our performance audit work, whether it is issued under the banner of the Auditor General or the commissioner of the environment, follows the same planning, execution and selection processes, and we have the same standards for quality.

Many of our performance auditors enjoy the mobility of working on any one of our performance audit products.

I'll now hand it over to Andrew, the interim commissioner of the environment and sustainable development. He can discuss some of the other work we do with respect to sustainable development strategies and the petitions process.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General and Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you very much.

I am pleased to be here today. As Ms. Hogan mentioned, my role is to support her in the work she has to do for her mandate that relates to environment and sustainable development.

Each year I have the privilege of submitting an annual report for tabling with Parliament. In that annual report there will be a commentary on the petitions process, which is a process that is available for residents of Canada to ask questions about environmental matters and sustainable development and to receive a response directly from a minister. To date, between 26 and 27 departments and agencies have been subject to the petitions process. In the future, at the beginning of December, that will become almost 100 because of the amendments to the Federal Sustainable Development Act last year.

In my annual report, I also have to comment on sustainable development strategies and the progress that departments and agencies have made in support of the federal sustainable development strategies, goals and targets. In terms of the scope of that work, it was at one point 26 or 27 departments and agencies. At the beginning of December, that's going to rise to about 100.

You will also see in my annual report audit reports that look very similar to the ones that are presented by the Auditor General periodically. From time to time, we can have one or two in the annual report, but we've also been privileged in the past to be able to table a separate report taking one of the Auditor General's periodic reports for the purposes of tabling environmental and sustainable development audits.

As a final point, I would mention that, in terms of my mandate, over the 25 years of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development we have seen many audits of environmental matters. Over the last few years, building on the work of our previous commissioner, Julie Gelfand, we have been expanding the work in the area of sustainable development. In particular, the sustainable development goals from the United Nations have provided us with an absolutely incredible lens through which to look at the activities and progress that government makes in those areas.

With that, I might leave the slides because you do have some information there about our priorities and our upcoming audits, which I suspect might be better covered during questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much for your presentations.

We now proceed to the first round of questions and answers, where everyone has the floor for six minutes.

Mrs. Kusie, you have the floor.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the senior Conservative on the committee, Dan Albas, for giving me the opportunity to be here today.

My thanks to the witnesses as well.

The questions I'll be asking today are relevant to report 1. I will also indicate that this information was communicated in a letter to the chair of the committee of which I am vice-chair, the transportation committee, so this information is specific relative to report 1 and that letter.

My first question for the Auditor General and her team is on this. Within the follow-up audit, you examined a sample of 60 violations in fiscal year 2018-19 and found that in 18 of those 60 violations Transport Canada could not verify “that companies took corrective actions” in an effort “to return to compliance”. This is a result of three possible scenarios.

Number one is that Transport Canada “did not follow up with companies to obtain the required evidence.” Situation number two is that they “did not conclude whether violations were resolved, despite companies having submitted the required evidence that they took corrective actions to address the violations.” Situation number three is the conclusion “that companies had returned to compliance”. However, the documentation was not received in an effort “to support that conclusion”, a very important part of an audit, as always.

Within the first two situations, where there was no follow-up or no conclusion, was it that the department did not have an adequate system in place to follow up on those violations, or was there a system in place that was not being applied?

My second question, relevant to my first question, is this: What information was the department using to conclude that companies were returning to compliance?

[Andrew Hayes]

Thank you very much for the question.

In our report, we noted that the Department of Transport had established a risk-based system for identifying the inspections it would do; however, we also found that the information upon which it based its decisions was not always accurate and valid.

In terms of the examples you raised and the violations, ultimately I would say that we found that the department wasn't following up on the incidents of violations that had been identified in previous reviews by the department.

I will ask my colleague Kim Leach to give a bit more detail, but what I would say is that, in terms of the situations where there was no evidence that violations had been resolved, or where the department had reached a conclusion that they were resolved without information, that is a fundamental level of failure to keep and monitor the documentation.

Kim, would you like to add to that at all?

[Kimberley Leach, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Certainly, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Andrew.

Thank you for the question. You're referring to paragraph 1.30 in report 1 that we tabled on October 27, of course.

Clearly, the evidence showed that of 60 violations, in 18 of them in our sample, the companies were not returned to corrective action. Part of the issue—and you pointed out the several instances in which—

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Ms. Leach. If you don't mind, I think I'll move on to my next question. I feel that you are repeating some of the facts, and I do have other questions to ask.

Thank you.

[Kimberley Leach]

There was nothing in the file is the answer.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Super. Thank you.

My next question for our witnesses is that it was also found in the audit that Transport Canada “did not routinely collect data from provinces and territories, which share responsibility with Transport Canada for monitoring compliance for the transportation of dangerous goods by road”. Why did this occur? Why was this data from provinces and territories not routinely collected?

[Andrew Hayes]

The answer to that question is that there are agreements in place with the provinces and one of the territories. It is for Transport Canada, in our view, to follow up with those provinces and territories to collect the information. The reasons for not following up would be best answered by the department. In our view, they have the tools to be able to collect that information.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Okay, so they do have the tools. Thank you.

I just have a minute left, so I'll go to my last question.

I think most relevant and pertinent to this committee I'm at today is Transport Canada's performance of meeting goal three of the United Nations sustainable development goals, specifically target 3.9, which is, “By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination”.

The department was not meeting its target of 2%. In fact, there was even an increase.

How has the department determined that they will now work towards meeting these targets, and why wasn't Transport Canada able to meet these targets?

[Andrew Hayes]

We did identify in the report that there had been a change to the way that they evaluated and included instances in their list of the rate of reporting dangerous goods releases. Nevertheless, they still did not meet the target. I believe that the department is aware and has committed to taking action to reduce that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Schiefke, you have the floor.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being with us today.

I will start by addressing the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.

One of the Commissioner's priorities is to assess the risks associated with climate change. More specifically, future work will take financial aspects into account, as well as emerging adaptation and mitigation initiatives.

This is a priority shared by my constituents in Vaudreuil—Soulanges. We have experienced two historic floods since 2017, and the issues of risk mitigation are critical.

Could the commissioner explain how these factors are included in the audits?

[Andrew Hayes]

Thank you for the question.

We conducted climate change audits in 2017, and issued a collaborative report with several provinces in 2018. We also conducted audits in the territories. Relevant climate change topics are very high on our list of priorities for future audits. We will be drafting a report and doing some climate change audits in 2022.