Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2018

[Gérard Deltell]

You say that major efforts were made. How many individual bottles of water were purchased for the G7? I never buy water bottles. I may have bought three of them in my life, but that is because I am cheap and don't like wasting money. I don't see why I would pay for water when it is free. In addition, three-quarters of the bill cover transportation costs. I will stop my personal reflexion here, but let's be clear: everyone is for virtue, but everything has become suspect. By the way, that's fine.

I would like to come back to the relevant question asked by my colleague, Mr. Drouin, about assessing the environmental footprint of the vehicles you buy. Are you taking into account the fact that a vehicle manufactured in Asia must travel half the globe on a ship, one of the most polluting modes of transportation that currently exist? We could buy vehicles manufactured in Oshawa, a few kilometres from Toronto, the largest urban centre in Canada.

Do you assess the environmental footprint when you make that type of a purchase? Do you think about purchasing Canadian goods first, and then purchasing green goods?

[David Schwartz]

I will answer, if that's okay with you.

When it comes to green vehicles, I want to say that we are making real progress. We are in charge of vehicle purchases and the deployment of procurement vehicles. During the 2017-2018 fiscal year, 4.1% of new vehicles purchased for the federal fleet were green. Now, at the end of November, two-thirds of the way through the 2018-2019 fiscal year, that percentage is at 15.96%. Our purchases of green vehicles went from 4% during the last fiscal year to 16% two-thirds of the way through the current year. We see that behaviours are changing, and the trend is there. I would say that this is supported by—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Unfortunately, I have to interrupt now, Mr. Schwartz.

We'll go to Madam Murray, for five minutes, please.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

I want to congratulate the witnesses for all the work they've done and the progress they've made in such a very short time. It's been impressive. I think fundamentally the reason everybody here is supportive of what you're doing is that it's about protecting and restoring the fundamental earth systems on which life depends, and our atmosphere is a big part of that.

I'm interested in learning more about the data and reporting. That was a key thing that shifted from pre-2016, with the centre for greening government. Before that, I believe, there was much less data and reporting.

Nick, could you talk about the progress on that? What was it like? How is it working now? How do you interact with entities that are not yet required to reduce but will be reporting? How do you see that step-by-step expansion of the scope of both emissions and reporting entities working?

[Nick Xenos]

I think the number one thing is that we're disclosing it publicly now. Since the greening government strategy, we've disclosed emissions by department, by region and by fuel type publicly. It's all on Open Data on the website, so it's very clear how departments are doing and how we're doing overall.

That is available to see. We also annually request departments to report to us on their emissions and their fuel. We update that annually, which didn't exist before. Before we didn't have a good sense of where the emissions are publicly.

This is helpful, I think, for departments. The first thing is we make sure we track and measure everything we can so that we have a better sense of the metrics. We will also know where we should target our efforts. There are a few departments that have bigger footprints and so we can work more closely. One of the questions was as to how we work with departments. We can work bilaterally with those departments on their particular situation and their circumstances. The better numbers and metrics gives us focused interventions, if you will, so we know how much emissions are from electricity and heating, how much in each region, and how much by department so we can focus on the facilities and areas that we need to.

It also allows industry to better target their solutions. When industry.... I think you'll hear later from some of the Cleantech Alliance folks. They can look and say, “I have a certain solution. Which department should I be looking at? What region of the country should I be targeting?” It allows them to do a little bit more targeting of their products instead of just coming generally and understand how the government works across it.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Speaking of companies, can you give us examples of what the government is doing with this very, I think, organized and measurable approach to reducing emissions?

How is that affecting the broader economy of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as the innovation and the companies that are trying to get things into the market that will be solutions? How does it ripple out into the economy?

[Nick Xenos]

I think in several ways.

For example, I co-chair a community practice with the B.C. government, with all of the provinces and territories. We're learning from each other as well. Different jurisdictions are doing different things and we can learn from each other. Again, that sends a signal more broadly than just the federal government, but it's working with provincial governments and we're sharing and accelerating.

At our last community practice meeting we had the folks from the City of Vancouver present some of the things they're doing. Of course, with any federal facilities in Vancouver we want to partner with the city and the province.

There is industry, as well. We're talking to industry associations about the cases in which the federal government's asking for something, for example, the Canada Green Building Council, which is the LEED certification guys. We're working with them. They now have a zero carbon standard so you can be LEED gold in your building, but you can also be following their zero carbon standard.

They're interested, of course, in working with the federal government and understanding where we want to go and how we can work together, etc.

What I've seen in a lot of conferences and meetings is that industry is quite innovative and doing a lot of neat stuff. Really it's just us being clear on what we're requiring.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. McCauley, you have five minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks for your comments, Ms. Blain.

The PSPC's goal is 40% green purchasing. Has the government done a study on what added potential cost there would be to taxpayers to achieve such a goal?

[Carolyne Blain]

I'm not aware of any specific study that has been done.

What we actually do is look at assessing the full life cycle of some of our procurements so that, in fact.... I think Nick mentioned the example earlier about LED lighting—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's fair, but I'm just saying, for example, a Rogue versus a Prius. A Prius is more expensive, so we're going to do this. Have we done such a look? I guess not.

[Carolyne Blain]

No.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Xenos, there was the comment about if you can't measure it, you can't approve it, etc. I go back to the department [Inaudible—Editor] You say it's published, but it's not published on your DPRs and it's not in the departmental plans either.

Will we see a time when these goals are actually put in writing in the departmental plans for each department and they will actually show up in the departmental plan results?

PSPC, your department, Natural Resources, not one of you has a comment in your departmental plans or results that just came out about what we've achieved for the greening efforts. I'm not saying that you're not making the efforts, but it's not being published in your departmental plans.

I'm curious about how we get to—and I've brought this up before—a point where you have someone in charge, whether it's yourself saying this DPR is not acceptable, you have not put in your result....

[Nick Xenos]

Currently, they report their departmental sustainable development strategy, because goal two is a low-carbon government, and so the DSDS, the departmental sustainable development strategy, is attached to the DPR. But I take your point that I think we can re-examine that, and I do—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The written portions talk about greening government, so the ad talks about it, but there are no hard numbers. It makes me question. Work is being done, but we're not actually seeing what's being achieved. This is supposed to tie into the estimates and what Canadian taxpayers are paying for, but we're not actually seeing what you're expecting to achieve from that.

Are any financial incentives for DMs or ADMs—bonuses or whatever you wish to call them—tied into greening government throughout the departments or your own departments that you're affiliated with?

[Nick Xenos]

There are no financial bonuses tied to it at this time. There's the management accountability framework, which is senior management. The government's management accountability framework looks at various areas of management, and departments and deputies are looked at.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We pay out a fair number of bonuses to our public servants, and I'm not saying they're not deserved, but we pay out a fair number of bonuses based on what they're achieving. Again, it goes back to not being able to measure it, or if you're not measuring it, you're not achieving it. Should we actually be tying such things to their incentives, so we actually have results?

[Nick Xenos]

In the management accountability framework, that would be a good vehicle where we're looking at embedding the greening government strategy, whether a department's delivering on the greening government strategy. That's the vehicle we're looking at, because that's management's accountability. I'm happy to take advice and comments, of course.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I have a last quick question about the power that we purchase for government buildings. Obviously, it's a lot easier in Quebec to get that, and I understand Alberta is a priority. What percentage of our buildings have access to renewable, such as in B.C., New Brunswick and Quebec, and how many are more carbon heavy—obviously everything in Alberta, but—

[Nick Xenos]

Over 80% of our electricity grid is low carbon.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How much is that? Because 80% might be in Quebec and Ontario where there's easy access.

[Nick Xenos]

The emissions, we can tell you that—and again, this is on the website—about 70% of our electricity emissions are from Alberta and Nova Scotia—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

[Nick Xenos]

—and then the remainder is from New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We have a sense that that's where your focus is. That's what I was trying to get in the answer.