Environment Committee on Nov. 20th, 2024

[Kimberley Leach]

We have people from the department here who can tell you more exactly about the differences in the modelling.

We have pointed out in paragraph 7.26 that some of the initial estimates of emission reductions were high in the beginning.... Sorry; they were different. The revised estimates were lower than originally anticipated in six of the 12 funding measures that we looked at, which means the modelling was not as accurate in the beginning as it could have been.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Ali, please.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

My question is for Commissioner DeMarco.

In a previous audit, you suggested that an ecosystem approach should be taken to Species At Risk Act implementation.

In your view, how could such an approach reduce the number of species requiring assessment by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada? Could this also better support positive outcomes for species?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Thank you for the question.

That is report 9. It's good that we're getting some attention for some of the other reports. I was starting to think that I brought a big binder here for no reason.

SARA is quite a process-heavy piece of legislation. Should Parliament revisit it, that is one of the things that could be looked at. Instead of going through all of the thousands of species in Canada one by one, from status assessment to listing to management planning to recovery implementation to monitoring and to evaluation, they could consider designating endangered ecosystems and endangered habitats, capture all of the species within that habitat all at once and take an integrated approach.

At this stage, in the way SARA is written, the multispecies approach is just done at the end as an option in recovery. However, if the act is revisited, it could be done all the way through assessment, listing, management planning, recovery and monitoring.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Chair, I'll share the rest of the time with Mr. van Koeverden.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Ali.

My questions concern the oil sands and multi-jurisdictional challenges.

I would generally ask you, Mr. DeMarco, but is there somebody else to whom I should be framing my questions to discuss oil sands emissions?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

The department is here, so if you have specific questions about that sector, the officials could assist.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Okay. I'll ask my questions of both the department and you.

In 2022, oil sands emissions in Alberta were around 87 megatonnes. That had more than doubled since 2006, when they were around 41 megatonnes. As I said, the Province of Alberta has spent $7 million on this ad campaign, and that includes search engine optimization for the words “pollution”, “emissions” and “cap”, so if anybody out there wants to google “emissions cap” to learn a bit about it, they're first confronted with this oil sands-funded corporate propaganda campaign to suggest that it will completely obliterate our economy in Canada.

We know that oil and gas and energy are worth about 5% of our GDP, but they account for 31% of our emissions. The suggestion the Alberta government is making is that it would like to set a cap on emissions just for the oil sands, but it would like to set the cap above where emissions currently are. Alberta doesn't want to commit to any reductions; it wants to create space for more oil sands emissions and it would like to set that at 100 megatonnes. With our goals, if we were to achieve our 40% reduction by 2030, the oil sands would account for more than 20% of Canada's emissions overall.

Do you think it's fair that one part of one sector should account for a fifth of Canada's total emissions?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

All the sectors need to reduce emissions to ultimately get to the 2050 target of net zero. In Canada's profile, the largest sector—and it's been growing in terms of emissions—is the oil and gas sector.

We talked about the difference between production and emissions earlier, but the problem with the oil and gas sector line in terms of emissions rising from 1990 to now is that the total emissions have gone up, even though emissions intensity has improved. Production has increased at a faster rate than innovation for efficiency.

If that had been able to hold constant—in other words, with rising production being offset by efficiency gains—

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

I appreciate that. I don't want to cut you off, but I was talking about the oil sands specifically.

We know the emissions intensity for oil sands specifically has actually increased. It hasn't decreased. They've improved the efficiency of other oil and gas products, but oil sands bitumen production has become more emissions-intensive. We've had oil and gas CEOs here to corroborate that, and they say it's because the products are farther away from their refining facilities.

To be clear, though—and I could broaden my question to include the department—is it possible to achieve our targets of lowering our emissions, mitigating climate change, playing a strong leadership role in the world and demonstrating that oil- and gas-producing nations can be leaders on the world stage in taking climate action if the Alberta government and the oil sands sector are not willing to reduce their emissions?

They're setting targets that allow them to have a 15% increase from here on out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I'm afraid we're way over our time, so I'm going to have to stop you there, but—

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Can I ask them for a yes or no?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes. Answer yes or no.

[Vincent Ngan]

The only thing I can say is the emissions reduction plan tackles all of these sectors: oil and gas, transport, buildings, heavy industry, agriculture, electricity and waste. Therefore, we are making sure that we're decarbonizing key sectors of the economy at the same time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.

We have about 15 minutes, so what I'm going to do is give three minutes to each party. Is that okay?

We'll have Mr. Kram, Madame Pauzé, Mr. Bachrach and—I need a Liberal for three minutes—Madame Chatel. Okay.

Mr. Kram, go ahead. You have three minutes.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you again to the witnesses.

Commissioner, I have one final question on report 7. On page 7, you identified the small modular reactor action plan as “facing implementation challenges”.

Could you elaborate on what implementation challenges the small modular reactor action plan is facing and what the holdup seems to be?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

The details on that are provided in appendix B.

The small modular reactor action plan implementation is facing challenges in three categories. These are “Timeliness”, so the measure was delayed; “Expected emissions avoided”, so there had been no assessment of the expected emissions avoided for this measure, as we heard earlier; and there had not been an assessment of “Value for money”. It faced all three of those types of challenges in our detailed analysis, which is found in appendix B.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Commissioner.

Let's shift gears now to Report 6 on the critical minerals strategy. How many critical minerals mining permits have been issued since the launch of the critical minerals strategy?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I certainly don't know the answer to that.

I'm not sure if you would know, James.

[James McKenzie, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

No. Probably the department would be best for that.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I would say that NRCan would be the best source of information on that, but of course permits are mostly provincial or territorial, not federal. Keep that in mind as well.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Do any of the department officials want to take that?

[Rinaldo Jeanty]

That is actually correct. It's mainly on the provincial level that the permits would be issued.

For example, fisheries permits that could be issued. We have explosives permits that could be issued. Absolutely, we could provide you with them, but the provinces and territories have the main responsibility when it comes to permits for mining.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Okay, but does that include uranium mining? I believe uranium mining permits are federal, are they not?

[Rinaldo Jeanty]

Uranium is on the list of critical minerals—