Government Operations Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2012

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us today.

I have a couple of questions. Could you elaborate on the monitoring and reporting mechanisms in place, and their frequency, to both Environment Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat, given their role in the federal sustainable development strategy?

[Caroline Weber]

Sure. I think we've provided the committee with the links to the federal sustainable development strategy. If you look at theme four when you get the opportunity to....

We didn't print it out in the interest of being green—it's about 85 pages. Instead we have given you the website, so you can look at it, or perhaps your researchers could help you.

If you look there, you'll see the targets are spelled out explicitly. We've tried to follow principles of SMART, so that the targets are clear and can be reported against. Departments are required to report what their own targets are, whether they're meeting the targets that have been agreed to government-wide, and then we can tell what their contribution to the government-wide target is. So they report what their targets are in the RPP, and then in the DPR they have to report again, in terms of what their achievement is.

The first year of reporting was last year, because it does take us about a year to collect the data in order to report all of this. People have reported just on what their targets were going to be last year. As the departmental performance reports are tabled this year, you will be seeing, in very explicit ways, how departments are achieving their own goals against those targets. Again, that will be refreshed every three years. So 2013 is another year for renewing the federal sustainable development strategy and resetting those targets. There will be constantly moving targets there.

I hope that's clear enough.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Is it fair to assume it's the same with carbon?

[Geoff Munro]

It is, although in the low carbon initiative within the department we are tracking the energy costs building by building. As I said earlier, we've diverted a copy of the energy bills from each and every facility to a central location so that we can track a correlation between the efforts we're making and the cost reductions we're achieving.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Given the considerable amount of inventory under your direction, PWGSC, how do you prioritize projects? For these buildings you say the average age is 43 years old. It's a monumental task. How do you prioritize which projects you're going to recommend for approval?

[John McBain]

Actually that's a great question. As I said earlier, the core of what we do is our real property management framework. It starts with inspections, condition rating of our assets, and identification of needs. Those then feed into something called the asset management plan, which takes into account the overall condition of the asset but also what is the long-term view for our use. If I have, for example, a program that is only scheduled to last another three years in the building, then I'm looking at investments that get me to that, and then we'll take a decision on whether to dispose of the asset or renew it or look for an alternate use. All of those feed into a set of priorities.

Within PWGSC, in our building management process, we have 18 qualifiers that describe the nature of the work. Those rank in priorities. The first priority is anything urgent in terms of health and safety or the integrity of the asset. The next set of priorities, the “B” categories, are categories that address stewardship, the FRAM oil filter. You can pay me now or you can pay me later; they're good investments that save the asset. Through that ranking process we determine what we call a banking day and how we use our money with those priorities to match.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's great. Thank you.

Again, with 31% of the federal inventory under your direction, in my opinion, that puts you in somewhat of a leadership role. Can you share with us how best practices are shared with other federal departments and how that is done?

[John McBain]

It's an interesting question. It never ceases to impress me when I look at our holdings literally coast to coast to coast. But ours is somewhat unique. We are office space. The act mandates that the minister is to provide office space for the federal accommodation. We are a mandatory service. The majority of the other 40-odd federal custodians have what we call “special purpose space”, so it's laboratories, warehouses, etc. The core of what I manage is unique to me. I'm the leader in terms of office space. I'm not necessarily an expert in, for example, weapons storage or in equipment for marine research.

We do try to influence, as we said earlier.... The low carbon initiative is a very interesting one that I'm really pleased to be collaborating with Geoff and his team on. Tenants in our buildings don't pay for energy, don't pay for the heat, the cooling. That's my accountability. How they behave as a tenant has a direct impact on me. In partnership with NRCan, if we can get people to turn off their computers at night, to shut off all that vampire power that we all know is being used when we see lights glowing in the dark, that saves us and saves the taxpayer money. That's leadership we're trying to bring in terms of federal occupancy and federal use.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Time is up, Costas, thank you very much.

Next, for the NDP, is Linda Duncan.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks.

We could have used each of you separately for the entire time, and we may need you back after we meet with the big energy users like Defence.

The question has come up about the FBI, which I think is really interesting. I'm well aware of those kinds of programs for private buildings.There are a lot of entrepreneurs, and certainly in Alberta there's a big energy efficiency sector.

In this plan that you're doing, the government professes that its priority is job creation. Energy retrofitting provides huge numbers of well-paying jobs to the energy efficiency sector. My question is if any of the strategy is also incorporating all of the employment that potentially can be created.

[John McBain]

Certainly from Public Works' perspective, I know that we've been very pleased by the government's recent initiatives, mostly recently the economic action plan and successive budgets, where PWGSC has received funds to address our infrastructure, understanding that it does two things: it benefits the economy—it does create jobs—and it allows us to address our inventory, to upgrade it and maintain it as good stewards.

[Carol Buckley]

Maybe I could just add to that.

With responsibility for helping Canadians in all sectors improve energy efficiency, we are very cognizant of the fact that encouraging energy efficiency upgrades across Canada in any sector is going to have an employment impact. The good thing about that employment impact is that it happens where people live.

So where you have the installation of retrofits in homes or buildings and in industrial concerns right across Canada, you'll be creating local jobs for installation as well as some Canadian jobs for manufacturing.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm glad you raised that, because that goes to my next question.

I was a little stunned to hear that you were only employing nine firms. Are those firms all here in Ottawa?

Even in my own riding, a few blocks from me is an energy efficient lighting manufacturing plant that is struggling. There is an energy efficiency lighting company right above my office that has been retrofitting university facilities.

In the plan for both of your entities, and across government, are you aware of whether there is encouragement that there be employment locally of the energy efficiency firms, or are they all one big centralized company?

[Carol Buckley]

Let me clarify my earlier response. The nine firms I mentioned were nine firms that operate nationally. They are specialists in not only implementing energy efficiency upgrades in buildings, but they have the capacity to finance them as well. They're a special entity known as an energy performance contractor.

I certainly didn't mean to indicate that we only work with those nine firms. Those nine firms can take on a large building retrofit—the financing, the planning, the implementation, the verification—but there are hundreds if not thousands of other firms across Canada that have the ability to manufacture, implement, repair, monitor, and study energy efficiency.

Certainly the Government of Canada works with scores of those companies, but there's only this very, very special class of company, called an energy performance contractor or an energy service company, who we qualify to finance the upgrades.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Can you provide more information on that? I would like to receive the list of these nine companies—

[Carol Buckley]

Certainly.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

—who purportedly are the only ones who can do that. I know there are companies in Alberta and British Columbia who finance retrofits, so I'd be interested to see if they're being included.

Mr. McBain, one of the things you mentioned is that it's very hard to do retrofits in some buildings because you have to move everybody out. But in fact if you're simply retrofitting the lighting or putting in low-flush toilets, you don't have to move people out, right? And those are huge energy savings.

[John McBain]

No, I certainly agree. Those are what I consider to be some of the low-hanging fruit, if I can use that term. When you can easily do things to save.... Even going to waterless urinals, or, as you say, the low-flush—those are very easy things to do. In fact we did a number of initiatives under the economic action plan to address exactly that kind of thing.

If I could, I would like to respond to your earlier question.

Real estate is, of course, local. As part of NAFTA, when we tender, we tender on the government's electronic tendering process, MERX, so in fact it goes international. But by the nature of what we do, obviously a firm in Moncton has an advantage on something in New Brunswick. We tend to be very regional and local in terms of how we do things.

So in terms of your earlier question, on whether there are only nine firms, it's very much distributed across the country.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Well, maybe both departments could provide more detail to us on that, because I'm still left confused. You mentioned the nine firms, and then you say you're going locally. I would appreciate receiving information on all of the firms that are being given these contracts.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Ms. Duncan, I'm afraid your time is up.

Perhaps the witnesses would comply with that request.

Kelly Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to welcome our guests. Thank you for being here today.

This has been an extremely informative and, I must admit, slightly overwhelming presentation in terms of the various strategies and programs that we have in place when it comes to meeting the targets we've set for 2020.

Mr. McBain, in your opening comments you spoke about the Office of Greening Government Operations, and that its focal point is to serve, in its efforts directed at managing federal operations, in a more sustainable manner, and to work with other government departments to accelerate the greening of government operations as a whole.

I know that throughout the Qs and As here, many comments have been made in terms of the role you play in providing leadership as well as sharing best practices.

Ms. Buckley, I think you mentioned that your client base is made up of the various departments, and that one of the things you do is provide options to the various levels of decision-makers. Often they may have a particular interest in a particular technology.

I guess where I'm going is that I wonder if you would speak to the human resources aspect, and also to whether or not there is an educational or training component in the mandate of the Office of Greening Government Operations or in the work that you do.

[Caroline Weber]

We don't have a training responsibility. However, if you look at the targets that have been set, in some instances training is part of that or an option for departments in terms of achieving their goals. For example, in the area of greening procurement, where there is a policy on green procurement, departments in the current federal sustainable development strategy were asked to identify three areas where they want to green their procurement activities, because we think of things in terms of commodities, services, etc., and we organize and differentiate that way.

In order to achieve their goals in those three areas that they identify, one of the things they might undertake would be training for their own procurement officers, in order to achieve those objectives. There are training targets embedded within some of the targets or options to use training as a way of getting to achievement of a target. Again, in general, we've tried to create high-level objectives and then allow departments and deputy heads to exercise their own authority and judgment in terms of how best to get to that target. We don't have responsibility for human resources, though.

[Carol Buckley]

If I might pick that up, as a service organization we offer training on energy management to the entire Canadian economy. We have a training program called Dollars to $ents, and we have six different titles on finding opportunities, measurement and verification, financing, and so forth. We have had 25,000 Canadian participants go through the training, and roughly 2,000 of those participants have been federal employees. So we market to the federal government just as we're marketing to industry and commercial and institutional representatives across Canada. This gives people the technical wherewithal if they want to plan an energy management study, if they want to finance one, or if they need to know how to measure it.

The other training we offer is for the occupants of buildings. As my colleague mentioned earlier, the occupants of a building have an impact on energy use. We offer training to help organizations train their own occupants to use and waste less energy. That's a service NRCan offers to the economy as well as to our federal government colleagues.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Thank you.

I have one follow-up question, and then I will have finished asking questions.

Would you be able to comment on how the public service is reacting to new energy efficiency initiatives and the opportunity for that type of training?