Evidence of meeting #18 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pipeline.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
I can take two seconds.
About $38 million went out last year.
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
Let me double-check just to make sure I'm giving you the right information. It's about $40 million.
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
Yes, we can table that.
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
Yes.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Last year at committee, my Conservative colleague from Peace River—Westlock pointed to the fact that many of the grants and contributions from Environment Canada were being sent to American universities, adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Has the department rectified this at all? Has it clarified the purpose or redirected funds domestically to Canadian universities?
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
I cannot answer that question. We'd need to look at that one by one.
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Services and Financial Management Branch, Department of the Environment
Yes, definitely.
December 1st, 2025 / 12:40 p.m.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Is the department currently working on ways to increase the accuracy and transparency in its modelling? This changed angle a bit. In the modelling work that's being done, there's a lot of uncertainty in how good those models are and whether they're fit for purpose.
What is Environment Canada doing to fix that?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment
We're continuing to work with partners in the government, in provincial governments and in academia. There are modelling workshops taking place. Yes, we are continuing to work on the quality of our model estimates.
We've invested in—
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
When do you expect that to be completed, or to be able to offer an improved or useful model?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment
Some of those improvements have already been incorporated into our models. We are releasing the latest set of projections at the end of December.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
The commissioner's most recent audit found that Environment and Climate Change has still not identified which specific measures are essential to meeting the government's emissions reduction targets. He raised the very same concern the year before, in 2023. This means that it is a repeated deficiency and there's been no demonstrated improvement.
Given that, your department can't say which policies are driving results, whatever the metrics are.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment
There are challenges in isolating the GHG reduction impacts of individual measures just because of the nature of the....
No country releases individual estimates of GHG reductions associated with individual measures in their climate plans, because it's a very difficult modelling exercise. This is due to the interactive impacts between the measures and because of the complementarities. It makes it hard to distill the impact of individual measures, but what we can do is—
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Can I interrupt, please?
That illustrates exactly the point of hanging all of these projections and legislation on the models that are broken and don't work.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment
The models are not broken. What we're saying is that it's much harder to have accurate estimates of individual measures.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Yes, but you're impacting individual industries and individual Canadians.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and International Affairs Branch, Department of the Environment
Collective contributions of entire packages of measures are models. When we release our projections at the end of the year, you'll be able to look at how they compare with other private sector models and the estimates of the PBO, the Climate Institute and so on.
Conservative
David Bexte Conservative Bow River, AB
Thank you.
I'm going to move to the Impact Assessment Agency. Is it customary to have many of your department grants and contributions given to individuals, rather than organizations? How many individuals receive grants for the policy dialogue program and similar programs?
President, Impact Assessment Agency of Canada
We'll have to follow up to give an exact breakdown.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Angelo Iacono
Thank you very much, Mr. Bexte.
The floor is yours, Mr. Grant, for five minutes.