Environment Committee on Oct. 9th, 2025

[Kimberley Leach]

Yes, the United Kingdom has a climate change committee. They have carbon budgets that are set into law as well. They have been fairly successful at meeting these targets and these budgets, but I don't know what would happen if they didn't meet them.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Please send us this information in writing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bonin.

Time is up. Thank you.

Next is Mr. Leslie for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's good to see you again, Mr. DeMarco.

When Environment Canada officials were recently before this committee, they insisted that the minister had not in fact walked away from her 2030 emissions targets. Based on what we know today, is there any realistic path for the Liberals to actually meet those targets?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Even though I've concluded for a few years now that they're not on track to meet the target, that's not the same thing as throwing up one's hands and saying there's no hope of meeting a target. It's a matter of will and putting in effective measures. It's only 2025. Time is getting short. Some people are giving up on it, but it is physically possible to still make the effort to meet or at least get close to the 2030 target. A past history of failure doesn't equate with an assumption that they have to fail in the future, because it's not physical phenomena we're measuring but something that is a choice for government to do. Are they going to take enough action to meet a target or not?

The fact is that it would still be possible. It would be very disruptive to try to meet the target, because there's only five years left and we're so far from it, but it is physically possible.

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

You mentioned the word “disruptive” there. You also mentioned effective implementation. In your expert opinion, assuming that the government is still attempting to reach this target, what would they have to do to actually achieve it? From a policy standpoint, are we talking about the lowering of a cap of production of oil and gas? Are we going to need to double the industrial carbon tax? Are we going to need to fast-track the EV mandate?

What specific policies—drastic policies—would be necessary to actually achieve what, as you outlined, the hope would be?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

The choice of policy, as I've indicated in previous testimony before this committee, is for the government. It knows the possibilities. The choices are difficult. Each one has stakeholders or affected parties that might be negatively affected by that choice. Some of them also have stakeholders that will be positively affected by the choice, and so on.

Ultimately, it's up to the government to come up with its selection of measures and for them to add up to a minimum of 40%, based on proper assumptions, without double counting and some of the things we've talked about, but the actual choice amongst the various different tools is not for us to say.

I can say that regulation, pricing and subsidies are the three main ones. To a lesser extent, less tangible things like education and procurement are some of the other tools. Within those, you have experts—such as the gentleman who's on the line with us today—who are better positioned, and within their mandate, to recommend very specific measures.

I can tell you that what we've seen for the last 30 years is plans being created that have not met the targets. The lesson needs to be learned: Create more realistic plans, but more importantly, implement them effectively.

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

Mr. DeMarco, what is the point of the net-zero accountability act if no one is ever held accountable for outlining all these plans yet achieving none of the results aimed for? Does it not make a complete mockery of this?

The Liberal government implemented an act that has no teeth and then went on to break the act by achieving none of the results they set out.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

The degree of accountability was the choice of Parliament in passing that piece of legislation. As discussed with Monsieur Bonin, there was a choice to not have a legal liability associated with it. There's no offence section in the act that says the minister will be committing an offence by doing such a thing and so on.

That's a choice for Parliament to make. Next time Parliament is reviewing this sort of legislation, it will have to look back at what's been tried already and didn't work, learn from that and choose the provisions it thinks are going to achieve the degree of accountability necessary. We haven't had a high enough level of accountability to the point where it's assured that Canada meets its targets, because it has failed on each target.

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

Thank you. I have one more question relating to your great work.

Canadians were able to learn the truth about the Liberal government's $8-billion net-zero accelerator fund in the last Parliament, and about the taxpayer money that flowed to a bunch of big major corporations with no binding requirements to cut emissions and no proof of value for money.

Would you consider conducting an updated audit of that program?

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

I'm sorry, Mr. DeMarco. The time is up.

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

It's a yes-or-no answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

He can answer the question with one of your colleagues when they'll be asking questions.

For five minutes, the next member will be Ms. Miedema.

[Shannon Miedema, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all the witnesses today. It's really wonderful to hear from you.

I want to start by talking for a minute about targets and responsibility for targets, because we've had this conversation for multiple sessions now where it's the Liberals who are responsible for failing at a target.

A federal target is the roll-up of all of the emissions that happen inside our country. Seventy per cent of them, actually, have been within city boundaries. Lots are under the control of provincial governments, territorial governments, local governments and the private sector and industry. The federal government has a very important role to play in setting the requirements and coming up with the policy levers, the mechanisms and the strategies, but at the end of the day, it's not them cranking out all of these emissions. The liability is actually spread across everybody in Canada for getting these targets hit.

I worked in Halifax for 15 years and was driving forward an implementation plan for a very ambitious climate strategy we had in trying to achieve net zero by 2050. We are not on track in Halifax. We are not on track across provinces and territories. We are not on track as a country—or as a globe—on these things. That doesn't mean that we don't set targets that are science-based and ambitious. Then the question is, how do we really drive our action and scale our action?

I've been to a couple of COPs. I've had these conversations with all kinds of experts, and nobody really knows, exactly. The solutions are really complicated. You can't reduce it to blaming. You can't reduce it to simple black and white. There's no silver bullet.

I'm really curious, from both Mr. DeMarco's role and Mr. Cosbey's role, about what you can say to us in terms of what the federal government can do to better drive the implementation and better drive the scaling, from a policy, funding or whatever perspective. I'm particularly interested in comments around the upcoming climate competitiveness strategy the federal government is working on and what you think would be really important in that.

We could start with Mr. DeMarco.

Thank you.

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

I think your question is in part getting at the concept of co-operative federalism. As I indicated in my previous testimony, it's a shared jurisdiction. It's a challenge that affects all of us, from the individual to the community to the municipal government to territorial, provincial, federal and even international bodies. Ultimately, Canada made this commitment through initially signing the climate convention in 1992 and then adopting the more specific agreements under it, the most recent one being Paris. Just because Canada is a federal state, it can't wash its hands of the responsibility it has as a federal government to lead on the file. The two key levers that it has, regulation and pricing, have great effect. Both of those have been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, as I indicated earlier.

The federal government is not unable to act in this case. It's not the same shared jurisdiction where it has only, for example, a fiscal tool to use. It does have a regulatory tool under the criminal law power for CEPA and under the national concern power for carbon pricing. It could do more at the federal level if it were seeing that it was not getting co-operation from other levels of jurisdiction. Sure, a few years ago, we had the pan-Canadian framework, and there was more of a consensus on the need for climate action. That's preferable in a federal state like Canada, but when there isn't consensus, then the federal government does have quite a bit of room to take the lead on it. It isn't just a case that its work is at the mercy of other levels of government.

[Shannon Miedema, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Cosbey, go ahead, please.

[Aaron Cosbey]

Thanks. This is an excellent question.

I have two thoughts. First, if we dissect the failure of the consumer carbon price in Canada, the lesson is clearly that in order to implement environmental policies and climate change policies, you need a political constituency. You need to communicate the policy well. You need to communicate the need for the policy. If that constituency doesn't exist, the policy is subject to failure.

If we're thinking about what the upcoming climate competitiveness strategy looks like, the framing sounds good. It needs to be married with environmental objectives—

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mr. Cosbey. I'm sorry. The time is up.

Mr. Bonin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cosbey, did you make any recommendations regarding the climate competitiveness strategy the federal government announced?

If so, could you share them with us in writing?

[Aaron Cosbey]

We have not made a formal submission to the government with recommendations on the climate competitiveness strategy. All of our work goes to that strategy more broadly. In the context of creating this particular upcoming strategy, we have not made recommendations.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

As part of this study, could you share some recommendations with the committee?

[Aaron Cosbey]

Yes. I would be delighted to do that.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you.

We've seen that Alberta and Saskatchewan would have weakened, or at least no longer complied with, the federal carbon pricing equivalent.

What are your thoughts on that?

Should the federal government intervene to force Alberta to strengthen its carbon pricing?

Do you think the current system is equivalent to Quebec's cap-and-trade system? Would Alberta have an advantage over Quebec, which would explain why its system is less restrictive?

[Aaron Cosbey]

One of the reasons I say that the industrial carbon pricing regimes in Canada are in crisis is precisely because we don't have a particularly strong and effective regime of assuring the kind of equivalence that you're concerned about here. Certainly, Saskatchewan's failure to implement industrial carbon pricing and the most recent changes in Alberta to its TIER system are causes for concern. Most commentators would agree that both of those changes significantly weaken industrial carbon pricing in those provinces, relative to the federal benchmark.

Obviously, it's not my place to pronounce on equivalence, but in the upcoming carbon pricing review, it has to be front and centre. There's a need for strong and in-depth criteria to determine that equivalence and to ensure that all provinces are at the same level of stringency. Quebec is a particularly good example of that stringency.

[The Chair, Liberal, Angelo Iacono]

Thank you, Mr. Bonin.

Mr. Ross, the floor is yours for five minutes.