Thank you, Mr. Chair and MPs on this committee, for the opportunity to provide some ideas and recommendations for budget 2019.
My name is Patrick DeRochie. I am climate and energy program manager for Environmental Defence Canada. We work to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities. My comments today will focus on recommendations from our plastics, toxics, and climate and energy program areas.
Regarding climate change, energy and clean growth, my recommendations will focus on how to best position Canada to capitalize on the massive economic opportunity arising from the global shift to a low-carbon economy.
Last month's report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate found that global efforts to accelerate climate action represent a $26-trillion opportunity. Canada can't afford to fall behind in this clean-growth opportunity.
Environmental Defence's recommendations include fulfilling the government's long-standing commitments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels in Canada, starting with the disclosure of all federal direct spending and the value of all annual tax deductions claimed for the exploration and production of oil and gas, and legislating a timeline for the phase-out of these fiscal supports.
In particular, the federal government can save upwards of $9 billion by ending its push to build the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline. The Prime Minister himself acknowledged that the project would be dead without public dollars to prop it up. The government should not be in the business of buying and building a fatally flawed oil sands export pipeline that nobody in the private sector wanted, and that cannot be reconciled with indigenous rights and Canada's international and domestic climate commitments.
The federal government must also play a role in supporting climate action in provinces that are not in compliance with the pan-Canadian framework. We would urge the government to link some of the revenues collected by the federal government pricing backstop to programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Here in Ontario, we will see that revenue amounts to $2 billion next year, in 2019, rising to $5 billion in 2022.
There are a couple of things in particular that we would like to see that money spent on. One is the renewal of a residential home energy rebate program, through NRCan, that issues rebate cheques for home energy efficiency retrofits, including solar panels, home batteries, high-efficiency furnaces, heat pumps, insulation and other measures to reduce energy use.
Second is partnering directly with municipalities that are taking action on climate change, including support for cycling infrastructure, mass public transit, microtransit projects, electrifying municipal bus and truck fleets, district energy systems, and energy retrofits from municipal buildings, schools and social housing.
The federal government must also enhance regulatory certainty and attract investment in large energy and industrial projects by fine-tuning and passing Bill C-69. The legislation has had notable improvements over the 2012 omnibus bill that gutted Canada's environmental laws. Bill C-69 strikes a balance between economic developments and environmental protection that helps restore public trust in the project review process.
Some of the $1 billion announced in last year's budget should begin implementing this legislation, increasing scientific capacity across federal departments and enabling greater indigenous and public participation.
In the area of reducing plastic pollution and developing a circular economy, although Canada has made international investments and commitments to reduce microplastics and marine debris in the Great Lakes and our oceans, it has not matched the efforts of the European Union or other jurisdictions through investment in infrastructure, research, extended producer responsibility programs, or modernized waste management programs and policies that support a movement towards a circular economy. Now is the time for a national waste reduction strategy that harmonizes performance standards, measurement protocols and definitions from coast to coast to coast.
To accelerate the efforts to create a national plastics and waste strategy, Environmental Defence recommends that the government provide new five-year funding of $86 million per year to Environment and Climate Change Canada in collaboration with other federal agencies and levels of government. That includes $1 million per year for policy development, including on extended producer responsibility; $50 million per year in research that supports innovative product design and increases knowledge and understanding of the impacts that plastics have on the environment and human health; and $35 million per year in modernized waste diversion infrastructure to support the developments of a circular economy.
In the area of toxic pollution, Environmental Defence recommends that budget 2019 tackles exposure of Canadians to toxic chemicals and harmful pesticides and the presence of these toxics in the environment. Providing sufficient resources to regulatory departments to meet the current legislative requirements under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Pest Control Products Act for managing toxic chemicals and addressing the risks of pesticides is necessary to ensuring the protection of Canadians' health, our communities and the environment.
We recommend that the upcoming budget renew funding for Canada's chemical management plan to ensure ongoing chemical assessments, research, monitoring and actions to protect people from toxics, and to provide funding to Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada to implement needed legislative changes to modernize the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the country's two-decades old toxics law. Specifically nearly half of the regulations under the law have received little to no enforcement activity, underscoring the need to increase the resources of relevant departments to better enforce pollution prevention regulation. Finally, we recommend providing funding for Health Canada to fulfill its obligations under the country's pesticide law to assess risks and enhance compliance enforcement. Funding is also needed to upgrade monitoring by reviving and expanding a national pesticide monitoring framework.
Finally, as Canada's leading environmental action organization, Environmental Defence Canada recommends changes in budget 2019 to free charities to fully participate in an equal playing field in public policy development in Canada. Specifically, that means amending the Income Tax Act, as promised, to remove prohibitions on public policy involvement by charities, clarifying and renewing CRA direction on partisan political activity to ensure that clear definitions of direct and indirect partisan activity are developed and applied, and undertaking consultations with the charitable sector to address overall sector modernization and development of a modern, enabling and encouraging legal framework for the charities sector.
I'd be happy to take your questions. I really appreciate your having me before you to speak today. I would note that I am a subject matter expert on our climate, energy and clean growth priorities, but less so on our plastics and toxics priorities. I'll do my best to answer those questions, but I'll pass them along to my colleagues in Toronto if I'm unable to myself.
Thank you.