Yes, of course.
Evidence of meeting #15 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #15 for Natural Resources in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Yes, of course.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Catherine Bell NDP Vancouver Island North, BC
Thank you, and I would also like to thank Madame Gélinas for her presentation and this excellent report.
I have just a couple of quick questions. EnerGuide and the WPPI seem to be the favourite topics today. You've said that the EnerGuide program may not have had clear targets but that it was not poorly managed and was on its way to meeting its 2010 goals, whatever those were. But now it's gone. It has been cut.
The Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Lunn, said last spring that it was inefficient and that 50% of the costs for that were administration costs. I'm just looking at the tables in chapter 3, on page 6 and page 10. On page 10, where you have program administrative costs and it says “24.5”, is that a percentage, or is that millions of dollars? I'm not quite sure how to interpret it.
4:50 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, I will let my colleague David just walk you through those numbers so that you will understand what this is all about.
October 5th, 2006 / 4:50 p.m.
Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The figures in this table do refer to millions of dollars. As you walk from left to right, there is the authorized funding that our department received. Next is the actual payments that they have made in the form of grants or contributions. Then comes payments for what they record as operating expenses, but we broke it out into two parts. Because they've issued contracts directly from their operating expenses to energy evaluators, it shows up as an operating expense or potentially interpreted as an administrative expense, but in fact those are contracts to enable the home inspections to take place.
The actual program administrative costs that we're accustomed to talking about, such as staff, facilities, running data systems, and that sort of thing, represent $24.5 million, or roughly 25% of the cost of the program averaged over the period of time covered here.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I have a couple of questions.
Your work here, Madame Gélinas, is going to guide us in some degree in the future.
You talk about the ethanol program and you say that the 10% gasoline compares to about 4% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This is a low figure. Are you confident with that figure? Has that figure undergone some rigorous analysis?
4:55 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
That figure doesn't come from us. I think there's a direct correlation between the production of ethanol and blended gasoline and what we can expect in terms of greenhouse gas reduction. Here again, David can give you the details on that.
4:55 p.m.
Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The basis for that 4% comes from a modelling program developed by Natural Resources Canada, and they can explain how they developed it and who they brought in to assist them with it. Basically it is....
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Okay.
The second question.... Going back to carbon storage, you didn't analyze this and lay it out as you did the other three programs, but clearly when you look at the results of this program, we don't see the money entered into the system, but the results coming out are very poor. Is that an indication of the ability of this program to produce results, or is it simply that the program was poorly initiated? We have results in this carbon dioxide storage initiative that are worse than any of the other programs in here. Could I have a comment on that?
4:55 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The answer is very simple, Mr. Chair. We haven't looked at this program in detail. We have very few comments to make on it.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
But it's certainly going forward in the oil and gas industry. This has been touted as one of the most important parts of their greenhouse gas reduction strategy, and you've got a report here that shows very poor results from the test programs you have in place.
The last question I had was on wind. Did you analyze the success of the wind program based on other wind programs, such as those in the United States, where the subsidy for wind energy is somewhat double what this Canadian program is?
4:55 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
The answer is no, but I can say that when we interviewed people in that business in the course of the audit, we were told this program has had a lot of support and has also stimulated investment in this area.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Alan Tonks
Okay, thank you, Mr. Bevington. We are out of time.
Now, Mr. Harris, please.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madame Gélinas, I thank you for your presentation.
There are a lot of interesting questions for you today. You made a comment earlier in your responses that to get something done you should have measurements, measurements where you have achievable benchmarks set so you can do your checks and balances throughout the process or throughout the implementation of any program.
It appears to me that in your report--although I have to be honest, I haven't read it cover to cover, but I have had briefings on it--you're quite clear in your assessment that the environmental and sustainable development approaches by the previous government had a profound lack of benchmarks and a way of checking the progress, a way of ongoing cost-benefit analysis of the money being spent versus the results that were being achieved. That's what I get from your report, although you may not use such strong terms as that. Am I understanding the gist of your report and some of your comments correctly?
5 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
You're right with respect to some programs. If you want to measure, you need a target to measure against, right? In some cases, those targets were unclear. We mentioned this, at least for the programs we looked at.
In many other areas, the measures were never implemented, so it was very difficult for us to report on progress. The best examples are the LFE system and the emission trading system. We don't know how those two tools would perform, because they are still under construction. In such cases, it's very hard to comment on how good the measures would have been. We just don't know.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Dick Harris Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I appreciate that you're unable to make that assessment. I remember, going back to the early days of Kyoto, that there seemed to be a lot of difficulty in getting the government of the day's plan for what Kyoto was, the targets they had set, and how they were going to get there. Nor was it easy to find out what it was going to cost the government over the next ten or twenty years to achieve their targets. Quite frankly, I think Canadian taxpayers would have a hard time determining whether they were getting any value for the tax dollars that were spent.
I support your demand for encouragement and direction. The current government and governments to come should have solid benchmarks and assessment means—not just in the beginning, but throughout the progress of any environmental plans we make.
I know that the current government has set an ethanol target: 5% of gasoline should consist of ethanol by the year 2010. Do you think this is an achievable target that can be measured along the way, between now and 2010, so that we'll know whether they're on the right track?
5 p.m.
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I cannot tell. Let me remind everybody that we have also said that there are some good foundations to build on. I'm sure we'll all agree that it's not too late to do better. We have to make sure that whatever targets the government establishes, we have a system in place to measure and report.
As I mentioned in my report, it is public knowledge that there was no strong foundation for the “6% below 1990”. So let's make sure that in the future, whatever the new targets, we have sound analysis to explain where the targets came from and how we're going to achieve them. I'm hopeful that the new plan will address this point, as part of my recommendations.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Alan Tonks
Thank you.
That completes the round. We have a little bit of time, and I'd like to take some direction from the committee on whether we could go in the order of parties. If there's an additional three minutes, that would take us through. Is that okay?
5:05 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Roy Cullen Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to come back to the EnerGuide. The Deputy Minister of Natural Resources was here and said that 12¢ out of every dollar was administrative, and 38¢ was the pre- and post-audit, which any reasonable person would say was required.
I think the fundamental question is whether that program was getting bang for the overall buck, and that would be in comparison with alternatives. So if the new government comes in and replaces this program, I'd be very curious to see what kinds of evaluative tools they've used to model the fact that a new program will get better results. We know that most of the homes were getting a 30% increase in energy efficiency. I think it is a valid question. Is that a good performance in relation to the inputs that go into that program?
Madame Commissioner, I'd like it if you could comment on a couple of things. Frankly, we hear from the other party notions like, “We don't really need to be worried about greenhouse gases, because Canada is a bit player. What we should be doing is focusing on clean air.” Clean air, as you know, is a different scenario from greenhouse gases. They are interconnected somewhat, but they're totally different concepts.
We also hear that maybe there are some sectors that have to contribute more. We've heard a lot about the automotive sector, about the transportation sector. Frankly, and I'm not getting into a partisan statement--well, I guess I am--I haven't yet heard the Minister of the Environment talk about the contribution of the oil and gas sector.
It seems to me if we're going to deal with greenhouse gases in a real way we're going to have to get a contribution from the large emitters--the oil and gas sector, the manufacturing sector, the transportation sector--and citizens as a whole are going to have to try to change behaviour.
I wonder if you would comment on some of those points. I'd be interested in your perspective.
