Natural Resources Committee on June 20th, 2006

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

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Paradis.

We'll now begin the fourth round and will adhere to just a few minutes for this fourth round, so that the presenters can be allowed a closing statement. That would be anybody from the Liberal ranks. I understand that Mr. Russell has questions, and then we'll turn to Monsieur Ouellet and Ms. Bell.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Very quickly, when you have a vision or strategy or something of that nature, with targets or objectives coming out of it, you can set those targets high. You can aim for the stars and reach the moon. Or you can set those targets very low, and you may reach them, but you'll never get to the stars by having those very low targets—the race to the bottom, as one would say.

Do you do any assessments of that type of approach? As an auditor you can say, well, they've aimed for this, but they hit here; they aimed so high and they hit the halfway mark. But if the target is down so low and they hit it, they will receive 100%, if you use those types of analogies. Do you do any assessment of that, whether the targets or objectives are meaningful?

[Johanne Gélinas]

We are always auditing the commitments that we believe are meaningful, in the sense that if those things don't happen, then forget about the rest. So we don't play at the margin.

Having said that, what you said is very true; you can achieve your objective if you set it very low. We have said many times that the strategies didn't stretch the departments at all, with the SDS being a compendium, as I said earlier, of business as usual. So if something was in the plan, it may not have been that difficult to achieve.

My message these days to the departments is really to push the envelope, to go one step further, to do something that is more meaningful, because we have so many environmental issues to deal with. If we continue to go at this pace, the government will never be able to cross the finish line—to close the loop with Mr. Paradis' quote of my last report. So country-wide, we will have to do more if we want to put this country on a sustainable path. We won't make it, the way they are structured as we speak.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Yes, and I just use this in the context of the Kyoto targets and international treaties and things like that. If you do away with the treaty, those targets might not be something you'd want to buy into.

How do you measure that type of approach?

[Johanne Gélinas]

But in that case it's different. The government set for itself a target and put in place measures to achieve that target. We will not discuss that, because that would mean we were crossing the policy line and discussing whether the target was good or bad. You can do that; we cannot.

What we will do, though, is report back to you on how well the government has done in achieving that quantitative objective.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

That wonderful objective, yes.

[Neil Maxwell]

If I might build on that last point, that really is where we, as auditors, need to turn things over to you as parliamentarians. It's really you who are in the best position to really ensure that departments have stretched themselves.

You may be interested to know that one of the things the commissioner did this year was to communicate to all the deputy heads the point she's just made, that she's expecting the next strategies to really involve some stretch, with the departments moving to some more important commitments in terms of sustainable development. One of the points we made was that we would be urging parliamentarians to ask that question of the departments once these new strategies were tabled.

We should have mentioned that point to you. The next round of strategies will be tabled at the end of this year, in December, and we believe that one of the important roles parliamentarians can play in the oversight and accountability process is to really ask this tough question of the department—of the deputy ministers and the ministers—how have you ensured that you really are stretching your commitments?

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

Thank you, Mr. Russell.

Monsieur Ouellet.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Concerning Mr. Russell's question, I believe that you will sooner or later have to renew your requirement criteria. It seems that we are heading towards a form of responsible development that in and of itself is meaningless. And yet, we had already been having problems ensuring sustainable development. The process was only getting under way; we had only begun engaging in sustainable development. The path we are taking will not allow us to conduct very broad analyses, because there is no recognition of sustainable development here. This is advertising, not a way of thinking or managing a government or an organization.

Earlier, you said that you wanted to produce bulletproof information. I believe that you definitely intend to do so, that is obvious.

I would like to hear Mr. Affleck's comments on the following. When I asked a question, which comes up often, with regard to ethanol, I had the impression that the issue was dealt with in relation to the environment, in other words, in relation to climate change, not to sustainable development. If the issue were tied to sustainable development, then we would deal with the effects on farming and food, which could have potential repercussions on poverty. We would also talk about the consequences of ethanol production, increased smog and reduction in carbon sinks. Therefore, when you deal with ethanol, you are talking about life cycles, because ethanol is part of the greater life cycle.

If you only use a single aspect to assess ethanol, then how can you assess nuclear energy? Assessing nuclear production solely in relation to climate change is obviously easy to do. There are no other consequences than those related to nuclear production when an assessment is made solely in relation to the environment. However, in my opinion, findings would not be the same were an evaluation made in relation to sustainable development.

[Johanne Gélinas]

Mr. Chairman, if you don't mind, I'd like to make a distinction. We do not evaluate the value of ethanol. In this specific case, we evaluated a program that was put in place by NRCan, and we will be reporting on the progress made in implementing it. It is more for you, as parliamentarians, to assess the relevance or lack there thereof of a program or to assess the relevance of ethanol as a way to reduce greenhouse gases. We will provide you with the information.

Now, you have given me the opportunity to repeat a point made by Neil Maxwell earlier and that you may not be familiar with. It's called strategic environmental assessment. Its purpose is to enable the government, in this case NRCan, to see the program as more than a program, i.e., as a way of considering the social, economic and environmental consequences. He was saying that strategic environmental assessment had never really been implemented in the federal government, even tough it was a directive coming from the highest level of the Privies.

So there are tools to enable departments to make better choices. One of your colleagues was saying a bit earlier that he wished to be informed of the decision-making. I hope we will contribute to making things clearer for the government and the departments through our audit work. However, there are other tools: auditing, strategic environmental assessment, and strategies. It's all there. I have often said that the federal government did not lack tools, but did not necessarily use all of the tools in the tool box.

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

Mr. Arseneault.

[Richard Arseneault]

The life cycle of ethanol is a more scientific and technical question. There is a lot of literature on that, and various opinions are expressed. It is not an issue we deal with. We examine the implementation of programs and decisions made by the government in that respect.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Bell.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Thank you.

I have a question regarding forest policy and any work done around that, because forests are important to the climate of Canada, especially the boreal forest, a very large forest. I'm wondering if you've done any audits on forest policy, or an objective of how we use our forests. I want to know if they're being well managed, environmentally appropriately. And does the management meet the sustainable development objectives set by the government? If something has been done in the past, maybe you can point me in the right direction to access that.

[Johanne Gélinas]

I don't think we have done an audit related to forestry. I remember we looked at that a couple of years ago and there was no federal hook we could see so we could audit. We are the auditor of the federal government, and it's a shared jurisdiction, mostly in the domain of the provinces. So we haven't done anything.

Am I right in saying that? Okay.

[Richard Arseneault]

We haven't done anything, but there are areas the federal government is involved in, in terms of research. NRCan is doing research. They're doing research on forests and forestry in model forests across the country, but we've never audited that.

[Johanne Gélinas]

That gives me the opportunity to let you know we're there to serve you. There may be areas where you would like us to do some auditing in future, and without making any promises, this is something we will seriously consider as long as there is a federal mandate with respect to any issues you would like to bring to our attention.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

I guess I still have lots of time.

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

Not that it has to be used, but you have a couple of minutes.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

In your opening remarks, you talked about some of the ongoing audits. I know the climate change one is going to be reported soon. Is there anything ongoing you can talk about, that you're auditing next?

[Johanne Gélinas]

John, would you like to say a word about the next report, the 2007?

[John Reed]

Yes, right now our audit is under way for 2007. We've approached 2007 differently from any other reports in the past. In a nutshell, we've taken a decision that we are going to treat 2007 as a decade in review. It's an idea that fell from something Mr. Tonks raised many years ago in one of the environment House committee meetings, which I think he was looking for at that time: What's the big picture? We get audit after audit after audit, but what's the big picture?

So this year we decided to take a large number of issues, a suite of issues, for 2007 and answer some very focused questions about those issues. So in effect, you can expect to see us speaking to a range of issues, everything from contaminated sites, water management, biodiversity, abandoned mines, etc., all kinds of work we've done in the past, to be summarized at a very high level. So we're going to go in and, for each of those topics, pick some very high-level past commitments and tell a story about progress over a decade.

That's our plan right through that report. In addition, for both the sustainable development strategies and for the petitions process, we'll be telling a story about how those two initiatives have evolved over the 10 years, what results have been achieved, and how the processes, we think, can be improved.

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

Thank you, Mr. Reed.

Thank you, Ms. Bell.

I know at different times the witnesses or presenters were cut off. I don't want to turn this into an open mike session--absolutely not--but if there's anything one of the five of you wishes to say for a minute or so, you're welcome to do so.

[Johanne Gélinas]

Let me be the spokesperson for my colleagues.

I just want to thank you for this opportunity. Some of you are quick learners, obviously. I hope that a year from now we'll not be a well-kept secret for this committee. I'm hoping that we will have many opportunities in the future to have exchanges of information and that I can bring to you some of the key findings that came out of our audit work. So I hope it's just the beginning of a very strong relationship between my group and your committee.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.