Natural Resources Committee on June 20th, 2006

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

So after September, we will have full flow on these departments?

[Johanne Gélinas]

And we will be happy, Mr. Chair, to help.

Neil didn't say this, but he is responsible for parliamentary liaison at the level of the clerk and the researchers. You can always call us to see if there's any more information in the public domain that we can share with you, so that you may have a better understanding of what this is all about.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd St. Amand]

I'm endeavouring to be as even-handed as possible with respect to our time, and I would just let the government members know there are a couple of minutes left in your time. If you don't wish to use it, that's fine; I'll revert then to Mr. Cullen. But I would just let you know there are a couple of minutes left.

Mr. Trost.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I had one final follow-up question, if I can get back to where I was before.

You always measure things against government departments and legislation, etc. When the natural resources committee was merged with the industry committee, we had reports on smart regulations, etc. So I am wondering if there is any place, when you do audits and reviews, where you actually look at the efficiency of the government's regulatory policy, etc.—not just the implementation, as it is written in the act, but the actual efficiency.

Again, I go back to my point about the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in rural Saskatchewan requiring environmental assessments of fish in dried-out creek beds that haven't had water in 20 or 25 years. I've worked as a mining geophysicist and I've seen tonnes of regulatory hoopla that really doesn't do anything.

So is there any measurement as far as regulatory efficiency is concerned, when you do audits, or is that completely outside your jurisdiction or your assessment process?

[Neil Maxwell]

I could speak to that, and perhaps my colleagues would want to add something on it.

We talked about one aspect of what we do in our audit work, which is this idea of seeing if commitments have been met, but there are a number of other important aspects in the Auditor General Act, under which we work, including a mandate to examine issues of efficiency and economy, and questions of how well the government is measuring its effectiveness. So we have a very broad-ranging mandate.

Now, in terms of the particular question of regulatory efficiency, I don't believe we've done anything recently—certainly not within the commissioner's work. I don't have the list of all the work we've done throughout the Office of the Auditor General, but I can't recall our looking in recent years at the issue of regulatory efficiency. But certainly the question of how well those things are coordinated is something we could conceivably look at.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd St. Amand]

Thank you, Mr. Trost.

For the benefit of Ms. Bell and Monsieur Ouellet and Monsieur Cardin, we're in round three. As prearranged at the committee's structuring some weeks ago, the order of speakers is Liberal, Conservative, Liberal, Conservative. Round four will include you.

So I'll go back, then, to Mr. Cullen.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm not trying to use the available time because it's available, but you've caused me to ask some questions. This will be my last go at it, so don't worry.

One of you mentioned—maybe Mr. Affleck—the tax expenditures directed to the oil and gas sector. I don't know if you've done some work in that area. You made an allusion to it. There's been a lot of discussion lately—but “a lot” may be an exaggeration—or some discussion lately about tax shifting and moving from non-renewables to renewables, and on actually focusing tax expenditures on recycling, carbon sequestration, etc. Have you done any work in that area? If you have, what did you conclude?

[John Affleck]

We haven't done any work yet. I could point out, though, that we did receive a petition related directly to the subsidies to the oil and gas industry and the federal efforts to address climate change. This petition came from the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, Mr. Caccia, Friends of the Earth, and the Pembina Institute. They actually had a press conference in the fall of 2005 to announce they had filed this petition. Again, we're still awaiting to finalize the responses back from the department, but in the petition, the petitioners allege that the subsidies promote greenhouse gas emission and, in fact, undermine government spending and the regulations aimed at complying with the Kyoto Protocol.

This is a very recent petition. It will be referenced in the petitions chapter. Whether or not we will do further audit work on that is yet to be seen.

[Johanne Gélinas]

If I may say so, this work in 2000 which related to that was mentioned in my opening statement, so that's probably where you took it from.

[Neil Maxwell]

Briefly, the work we did in 2000 was a bit different from what we normally do. Normally we do what we call audits. This was actually a study, which is a bit more broad-ranging and exploratory.

In that study in 2000--and we'd be happy to give you the references--we looked at how level the playing field was in the energy sector. One of our conclusions was that one of the places in which it was distorted was with respect to federal government support for oil sands. Again, we'd be happy to give you details.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

So it's the petition process, but it sounds as if it's an iterative thing with the department. It's not just that you get the petition and then send it over to the department with a little cover note. I know you've mentioned that you follow what they say, and that if it's not very meaty you have a way of coming back to it later through an audit. So there is dialogue in terms of how to respond to the petition.

[John Affleck]

The commissioner handles the petitions on behalf of the Auditor General of Canada, so the petitions actually go to the Auditor General. We have 15 days to process the petition, during which time we have to ascertain the departments involved and then send out the petition.

As the commissioner mentioned, if we feel that it doesn't comply with the guidelines on our Internet site or it's not robust enough, we will have a dialogue with the petitioner, but that rarely happens. The departments are then obligated to get back to us and the petitioner within 15 days to say that they have in fact received it, and then the minister is obligated to respond within 120 days.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Okay. I'm going to have to move on.

The energy framework, or energy policy, or energy policy framework, or whatever you want to call it--everyone is sort of waiting with bated breath for this to come out. I have to admit our government sat on it for a bit as well. Is that something that you would be seized with? How can you have a sustainable policy or a sustainable strategy if you haven't actually articulated a sustainable energy strategy framework or whatever?

Is that something you've looked at or you'd be concerned about?

[Johanne Gélinas]

We will have something to say about that.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Okay. Good.

Finally--and I'm not trying to get terribly dogmatic about this-- if a department, for example, came out with their annual report on sustainable development and, instead of calling it their strategy for sustainable development, they called it a strategy for responsible development, would that be of concern to you? I'm not trying to be picky about this, but it seems to me that there's a difference between the terminology of responsible development and sustainable development. If you're responsible, hopefully you would then be concerned about being sustainable. It seems to me that there's a difference in the terminology.

Could you comment on that? I know you won't comment on a hypothetical question, but I'm struggling with whether there is actually any difference between the phrase “sustainable development” and the phrase “responsible development”. What would you say to that?

[Johanne Gélinas]

I'm not sure whether we will pay a lot of attention to that.

What interests us more are results and how the commitments have been implemented. If the department remains in the area of sustainable development and moves along a sustainable path, based on the criteria and the objectives against which we will audit the department, we won't get into that kind of long discussion on the wording. That's a first thought.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd St. Amand]

Mr. Paradis, go ahead, please.

[John Affleck]

I was just going to add a supplemental point for Mr. Cullen.

If you're interested in that petition on the subsidies to the oil and gas industry, it is Petition No. 158, and it is available through searching on our Internet site.

[Johanne Gélinas]

We can send you a copy.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I'd like to come back to the issue of climate change.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Lloyd St. Amand]

Mr. Paradis, go ahead, please.

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I'd like to come back to the National Post article you referred to this morning, on climate change and data released by bureaucrats, so to speak.

First, in your previous studies on how to reach the Kyoto Protocol objectives and after auditing, was it necessary to purchase overseas offsetting credits for greenhouse gas reduction?

Second, in preparing your 2005 report, were you aware of that data? We know that this was announced to the general public this morning, but were you aware of that?

[Johanne Gélinas]

Mr. Chairman, I haven't read the article. I don't believe we referred to it this morning. The information and data that we are provided with are produced by the departments. We audit the validity of that. I don't know what data you are referring to.

In the course of our auditing, we paid particular attention to the data generated by the departments, in order to determine what progress had or had not been made. We use that information. We do not generate any information. If the information was known six months or one year ago, we surely had access to it when we audited.

[Richard Arseneault]

I'd like to add that climate change is not strictly a Canadian problem. It is a global problem that affects all countries. The previous government had decided to use tools that would enable it to act in other countries. That is a government decision, and we have nothing to do with that. We may eventually audit the results, if need be. The system is in place, but not for purchases, emissions, credits, etc.