Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2018

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Then you'd be looking to match up the departmental expenditures with what your budget is understood to be. How do you guys account for the work you're doing and what you're asking departments to do?

[Nick Xenos]

The key thing is to embed it in the capital plan of departments and how they move forward. There isn't, per se, a separate tagged green amount in the sense that you embed it in a portfolio plan as your capital plan over the next 30 years and every action you take includes a carbon lens. Instead, what you often see is only a little bit more capital, but it's a savings over the life cycle of the building.

Usually it's a question of how you manage the capital budget versus the ongoing maintenance budget. We're also looking at particular challenges. As technology evolves and as solutions appear, then you could tackle different components, but we're finding the first step is to do an overall plan. You'll see some initiatives like putting in LED lighting where the payback is just two to three years, so it's a no-brainer.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Even if you don't have a financial planning document, do you guys report out on the greening government strategy? For example, in the 2018-19 expenditures of the departments working toward the greening government strategy, would you report their projected marginal increase in capital costs against what you think the ongoing operating savings will be over the life cycle of the assets acquired as part of the plan? Do you guys do that kind of accounting as part of the greening government strategy, or is it a policy strategy only, without its own financial—

[Nick Xenos]

I think it's hard to separate the amount, because, for example, if you're renovating your house and it's time to replace your furnace, let's say, with a more efficient furnace, what we're looking to departments to do is if they just bought a furnace five years ago, not to replace it right away. They should replace it when the life cycle of the furnace is done. When they then buy the super efficient furnace versus the efficient furnace, let's say there's a 5% difference there in the capital spend, but they'll make it up in the O and M. So we're tagging then not that 5% capital but the savings in the O and M as green, if you will.

It would be a relatively exhaustive exercise to do that across all of the capital plans of departments. We are, however, working with partners to look at what is the difference in greener buildings. We're working with folks like the Green Building Council and other partners, but the delta depends—there are different climate zones in Canada, different types of buildings. The retrofit of the St. Clair office tower in Toronto, for example, over a 25-year life cycle is about 4% more capital, but you make it up. If you look at a 40-year life cycle, you break even or get close to breaking even over a 25-year life cycle.

There are individual examples we've seen that aren't actually.... Usually it's more capital and there are also productivity benefits. A better building could mean better productivity from workers, lower absenteeism rates, etc. There are different studies out there on that as well.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Part of my interest as a parliamentarian is in being able to understand what the benefits are over time. That's where it's helpful if there is a document that kind of tracks some of that financial information, as opposed to having everybody trying to recreate that in their office, to the extent that they're interested. I would think there would be value also for other governments, whether they're provincial or municipal governments or other governments internationally in looking at what Canada is doing and that they would want to be able to get a sense of the relative costs and benefits of the Canadian strategy. I guess that's an emerging suggestion, you might say, or a suggestion emerging from my comments.

[Nick Xenos]

Yes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I do have a question about the electronic procurement process. I apologize if it seems a little eccentric, but in MPs' offices there is a financial portal. It's electronic. You're supposed to submit everything electronically, and then you have to file everything by paper anyway.

That hasn't done a lot for the environment. I suppose there are internal reasons as to why it's convenient for the financial folks to have it electronically in terms of numbers manipulation. They don't have to do the data entry. We do it out of our office and then they have the benefit of that, but we still file on paper.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

That's a great question. I think we're going to have to wait for our next intervenor to get an answer, should they wish to pursue that line of questioning.

Monsieur Drouin, you're up for seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses. Some of you are back at this committee after being here not very long ago.

I want to start with you, Ms. Blain, with regard to greening procurement, but specifically with regard to those who submit bids and how the types of practices you're working on and the conversations you or your colleagues are having with them. How are you bringing in that particular sector to say, “This is our objective. How do we bring you on board?” What is that going to look like in the near future?

[Carolyne Blain]

In terms of working with bidders—and I'll ask my colleague David to also join in—what we have changed in the past year is that we now actually accept electronic bid submissions, the system for which wasn't in place before. That has actually had a very positive impact on our suppliers and bidders for government contracts, because it actually has reduced the amount of paper and the burden associated with that.

We used to receive boxes and boxes of paper associated with their bid proposals. Now that is being done away with, so it's a saving for both the bidders and us in terms of the data entry. It makes it much simpler and easier to do business with government.

We are constantly à l'écoute of our supplier community. We have a departmental supplier advisory committee that provides us advice and really good collaboration and opportunity to dialogue around some of the hot issues that preoccupy the supplier community and information on how we can address those and improve through our processes or policies or practices on an ongoing basis. That has been quite effective.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

What about the will of Public Services and Procurement Canada? If I take the example of vehicle purchases, is the way they are produced something we are starting to talk about with bidders? Do we tell them, while obviously respecting our international obligations, that this now a priority for our government?

[Carolyne Blain]

Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Schwartz can tell you more about that.

[David Schwartz, Director General, Commercial and Alternative Acquisitions Management Sector, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

We are constantly learning about the industry through the tendering process and information requests. We just completed one of them. We are trying to figure out what is already available on the market and what the trends are. That also gives us an opportunity to signal our intentions. We are looking for more green products for construction, office equipment or vehicles. So, every year, we emphasize the use of as many electric vehicles as possible.

I would say that our intentions are very well-known and we communicate them mainly through our technical requirements. We are increasingly valuing the environmental aspect.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Xenos, with regard to the centre for greening government, how are we measuring that? Let's say PSPC is doing this initiative and Natural Resources is doing this other initiative. Are they all reporting through Treasury Board now?

[Nick Xenos]

Yes. The ultimate outcome is how much we've reduced our carbon emissions by department.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes.

[Nick Xenos]

That's all on the web. The government's progress is on the web. Progress by department is indicated publicly. All the data is on Open Data. It's emissions by department, by province, by fuel type, across the country. Annually, we issue a call letter and we collect the data across departments on how they're doing. Then we post it annually.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

So there are departments that are doing extremely well versus those departments that are not doing as well as they should be, or that perhaps just didn't have the same resources. Does Treasury Board have a type of working group to work with those particular departments that may not have been as successful as others?

[Nick Xenos]

Yes. For example, there are 23 departments that have real property, that have buildings. We convene an interdepartmental group at a senior level of all departments that are greening. Just at the last meeting, for example, Defence presented on their energy environment strategy and what they're doing in their initiatives.

We convene all the departments. We also have sub-working groups, if you will, tackling particular areas. With fleet managers, we have all the fleet managers together and then we can deal with fleet issues. It's the same thing with real property.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You have collaboration happening at that level.

[Nick Xenos]

Exactly. The technical expert departments in different areas can present there on what they can assist in and how they can help, on what services and expertise they have. Then different departments can present on the different projects they're doing.

Again, it's a best practices and learning environment so that folks are supported.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That's great.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll now go to our five-minute round of questioning, starting with Monsieur Deltell.

[Gérard Deltell, Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to your House of Commons.

Ms. Blain, I would like to come back to the G7 Summit. I am a member from the Quebec City region, not too far from the event's location. We are very happy that order and discipline were maintained during the event. Of course, there was a lot of security, which is understandable. But security means executive vehicles. I'm raising this issue because you said earlier that you asked that, as of last April 1, every government expenditure respect a green philosophy or, at the very least, be considered from an environmental perspective.

As my colleague Mr. McCauley explained at a previous meeting, a lot of vehicles were purchased—about 600 of them, 157 of which were Chevrolet Suburbans, according to the figures I have seen. Those vehicles consume 16 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres and they have a large 5.3-litre V8 engine. We may wonder about that, but that is not my comment, although it is very tempting. However, the corollary follows.

How come that new measure was implemented on April 1—we obviously know that the decision was not made on April 1 at 8:29 a.m.—but in the three months leading up to the G7 Summit in June, the government purchased a number of gas guzzlers, which are the antithesis of its own philosophy and directly contradict measures it had implemented three months earlier that expressly prohibited those types of expenditures?

[Carolyne Blain]

I will answer you, and then my colleague could add his comments.

In reality, all sorts of procurement expenditures went into the planning of the G7, the preparation for which started well before the three months leading up to the summit's opening. The entry into effect of our new procurement policy actually coincided with the end of those preparations.

I think the department did manage, as part of this event, to make very good decisions in the area of green procurement. Emphasis was placed on the summit's environmental performance, and some actions were beneficial. We maintain our practices with our client departments to meet the expectations and requirements of the policies in effect.