Environment Committee on Dec. 9th, 2024

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given those recent comments, I like to look and I assume you do, too, Commissioner, at outcomes, not aspirations, targets or goals.

Commissioner, I'm going to ask you a pretty simple question based on a quote from that very parliamentary secretary. I will read the entirety of the sentence from Hansard:

Today, thanks to the work of so many Canadians, including that member, we are ahead of our initial 2030 target and firmly on track to meet the targets set out in our 2030 emissions reduction plan.

Is that a true or false statement?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

That's the reason I included the final paragraph in my opening statement today. If I can give you a fuller answer than just yes or no, I can explain.

I believe different people are using “on track” in different ways. I want to define how I'm using it, and it's up to the committee whether you agree with my formulation. By “on track”, I mean three things: a plan with concrete measures that add up to meeting or exceeding the target; reliable modelling of the reductions that the plan is expected to deliver; and effective implementation of actions that result in significant year-over-year reductions.

Until those three elements are seen, I believe, in the way I'm using “on track”, the Government of Canada is not yet on track.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I thank you for that.

I think back to a previous comment you made at this committee. You mentioned that Minister Guilbeault's department privately admitted to you that additional measures would need to be implemented if they want to hit those emissions targets. Now, when Minister Guilbeault was asked at a recent meeting whether or not he would raise the carbon tax above $170 a tonne, he said, “No decision has been made.”

I was unable to ask the bureaucrats questions at the last meeting thanks to frivolous points of order by members on the government side.

My question for you is this: In your discussions with ECCC, perhaps even privately, do you know whether ECCC ever did modelling above $170 a tonne post 2030?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

We're not aware of that.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

In the conversation you had with those officials, did they indicate what other measures might be on the table to actually help achieve those results?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

This is one of our concerns from our report this year. The third part of our report, under the net-zero act, looks at the progress report, the first one that Environment and Climate Change issued. When there is a gap between the plan and the expected results, they're required to put in potential additional measures in the report, and in the back of that report, the progress report, they list some additional measures but they're very vague, with “We will explore,” that sort of wording—I don't want to quote them directly because you can look at it. There's a need for concrete additional measures, not just vague assertions of possible future measures, in order to bridge that gap.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Would it be reasonable to expect that they want to continue to either accelerate beyond 2030 or hasten the pace of the rising carbon tax? As well, the minister recently discussed the fact that he is “very supportive” of discussions to create a new global carbon tax on international shipping. Given those ongoing discussions, do you suspect that either one of those options might be what the government is looking at in terms of additional tools to try to reach their failing targets?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I don't believe that the progress report had any additional measures relating to carbon pricing at the end of it, if I recall correctly. I don't have that with me but, no, I don't think there were any additional measures listed that would be in the carbon pricing category.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Would it be reasonable to think the government is looking at that as a known tool that they already have in their tool box?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

It would be reasonable to ask them that, but not me.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I would love to—next time.

Let me move to, broadly speaking, some international conversations regarding transferring money to less developed nations to deal with adaptation to climate change. Do you have any sense, in terms of a dollar value, of what the Government of Canada currently sends, through any department, to countries around the world to various other governments for climate-related programs? Also, have you ever considered doing a value-for-money audit on the tax dollars that are flowing to other countries to help combat climate change there?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Auditor General Hogan recently released a report on international assistance. It wasn't specific to climate change, though, so that would be our office's most recent analysis of Canada's international aid efforts in general. We haven't done an audit specifically, a deep dive into the international climate finance side of things. No, we haven't.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Is that something you would consider doing? There are obviously pretty large dollar values associated with this. I think it would be reasonable to find out where the money's going, what it's going towards, and whether or not Canadian taxpayers are getting value for that money. Is that something you would consider?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I need a yes-or-no answer to that. You're not required to give a yes-or-no answer, but that's—

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I think any environment and sustainable development topic could be considered. We'd have to look at it according to our lens of whether looking at it is an efficient use of our resources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner and staff, for being here for even more discussions, which I think are entirely appropriate for our committee.

Commissioner, in some of the recent discussions at committee, we talked about the implementation of the emissions cap. We also talked about the lack of sign-on by some of the larger emitters in Canada and, maybe, some of the things that are delaying that, either at the board level, technically or at the production level.

I'm trying to piece together your 10 reports. What would be really helpful is something like what the CCI, the Canadian Climate Institute, puts out to say, “It's a 440 megatonne goal. Here are government policies. Each one is contributing towards that goal.”

You mentioned in this morning's meeting how important pricing pollution is in terms of reaching our goal. That's one of our key policy planks, and the Conservatives made it very clear that they would get rid of that. What impact that would have on meeting our goals is a question I would put back to you on, let's say, a summary audit. We also have the clean fuel standard. We have the net zero accelerator we've mentioned this morning, the capital cost allowance for clean technology adoption, transportation progress on EVs and others. We mentioned the emissions cap this morning, and the number is about 11 to 15 megatonnes of the 440.

Is it something you could consider pulling together, the 10 reports, to say, “Yes, we're not on track overall. There's a high risk in this area if you eliminate price on pollution.” We also know price on pollution is going up, and even in the last question by Mr. Leslie, we do have goals to increase by 2030. Beyond 2030, there will be more goals that we'll work on internationally.

Could you comment on how we can pull this together, in terms of an audit that would come back to us as parliamentarians, to know where the key risks are?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

There is a lot there.

As I mentioned earlier, there are over 140 measures in Canada, and some of them have either no emission reductions associated with them or very small emission reductions. We've looked at about 40 measures so far—20 this year and 20 in other audits, I believe.

We summarized the recent ones in appendix A of this year's report, and the newer ones that we looked at are in the body of the report. Should we look at all of them every year? I'm not sure that would be the best use of resources, because many of these measures are of marginal importance from a GHG reduction point of view. They're quite valuable from a capacity-building or an enabling point of view.

As I indicated earlier, if there were a plan that added up to at least 40%, I'd be more inclined to consider doing a deconstruction and analysis of it to see whether it really adds up. Right now, as we were in 2021, we still have a plan that doesn't add up to 40% to 45%. I'm disinclined to go through every line of every measure when we already know that it's something at 36% or lower. I don't know if this—

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

The vagueness of saying that we're not on track is what is bothering me. It's not politically motived although there are politics involved. If we remove the price on pollution, which is one of our signature policies, that should be reducing 30% of overall emissions and is an escalating factor, which means it will have more effect as time goes on.

Things like the clean fuel standard that's being brought forward and is going through regulations could be applied to some of our major emitters in the transport industry. I don't get a sense that you've looked at that in terms of what the context is. It's putting into context what your individual 10 reports are.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

The context piece is our lessons learned report from 2021 where we tried to bring everything together. We have an appendix of all our reports listed in there. Then, with this year's net-zero act report, we have an appendix that tracks recommendations that we've made, a sort of continuous reporting approach, so I think we are doing an element of what you're asking.

As to the controversy over whether Canada is on track or not, that was why, just a few minutes ago, I defined how I'm using the term.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

There's complete agreement with the department that they are not on track according to the definition that I'm using.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Fortin, the floor is yours.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. DeMarco, you're obviously aware of the zero emission transit fund, which the government has established. It's said to have invested $2.75 billion together with the Canada Infrastructure Bank in order to further Canada's commitment and contribute to the purchase of school buses and other zero emission public transit vehicles.

I'll spare you all the program details because we don't have time to go into them here, but, as we've recently seen, the Lion Electric Company, which builds electric school buses and is headquartered in my riding, is experiencing major issues. It invested in, developed and prepared to deliver thousands of school buses because it was told at the time that it had to prepare for that and that the market would be flooded. The program provided for funding that was to cover up to 50% of vehicle acquisition costs.

However, Lion Electric's clients, which are school bus network operators, are unable to purchase the buses because the federal government has apparently revised funding for acquisition costs downward. According to what one of the ministers concerned told me, funding seems to be limited to 25%, or 30% at best, of acquisition costs, which wasn't enough.

Since school bus operators can't make a profit from their operations with subsidies that low, they're still buying diesel buses.

Do you think the federal government is doing the right thing by limiting its investments and letting school bus operators buy diesel buses instead of electric buses?

Shouldn't it stand by its commitment to fund 50% of acquisition costs as planned?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have very little time.