Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

At the risk of sounding partisan, Natural Resources Canada's response, in my reading of it, falls rather short in terms of meeting your recommendation. I'm wondering if you could comment on your level of approval or disapproval of NRCan's response to your recommendation, because NRCan has less than three months to comply with the recommendation.

[Johanne Gélinas]

There is no timeframe to respond to our recommendation, first of all.

If I may put what you have just referred to in context, the paragraph before was referring to some type of commitment from the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Gary Lunn, when he testified before the committee saying that the department was in the process of developing an energy framework or strategy. It's not clear which word sums up what they were working on, but it was some sort of energy document.

What we have said, and that's what the recommendation referred to, is that the government should be clear in terms of what it intends to achieve in that sector and on what the overall game plan is in Canada with respect to energy--how the government will reconcile energy development, economic growth in this country, and greenhouse gas reduction.

With respect to the response, you're right to say that it's vague, to say the least. This is why I have said that when the government plan or approach becomes publicly known it will be important, especially for you, because I will not follow up on those recommendations in the near future, but it will be extremely important for the committee to ask the government how it has factored in my recommendations in their plan. My understanding is that the government has said they will come back and explain exactly how that was taken into account.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you, Mr. St. Amand.

Mr. Ouellet.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I want to say that I think the role of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, and of her assistants, is an important one, and we are very pleased to have them here before the Committee. We encourage them to continue their work, which we see as absolutely fundamental.

Now I have a question for you, Ms. Gélinas. In your 2006 report, you again emphasize the importance of leadership; we discussed this earlier. You suggest that the government should develop a clear sustainable development strategy.

To your knowledge, has the Department of Natural Resources begun to outline a federal strategy on sustainable development?

[Johanne Gélinas]

You are talking about sustainable development?

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

Yes.

[Johanne Gélinas]

Okay.

I will turn it over to my colleague to give you additional details.

However, I do want to remind Committee members that every department has an obligation to produce a sustainable development strategy, which has to be reviewed and amended every three years. In a few weeks--in two or three months at the most--departments will be tabling their new strategies in Parliament.

We know that over the years, the Department of Natural Resources had made a lot of progress in terms of commitments, which could make a difference, and meeting those commitments.

As the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, I would say that you can always do more. However, if I compare sustainable development strategies overall, I'd say that the Department of Natural Resources has generally done some very good work.

My colleague may want to add something; he is the expert on strategies.

[Neil Maxwell, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

I can certainly add something to that. However, I hope you don't mind if I make my comments in English.

This is a wonderful opportunity to bring to the committee's attention one of our ongoing concerns, which is, as the commissioner has talked about, this particular department responsible for strategy and what it has done, and the fact that the federal government still hasn't produced an overall strategy for sustainable development. That's been a concern that we've raised in reports for a number of years now. It's a commitment that Canada made going back to 1992. It was a commitment that was made most recently by the government to produce by mid-2006, and we're still waiting for that long-awaited strategy.

Merci.

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

You say this in your report:

Energy production and consumption represent a major challenge for sustainable development because these activities account for more than 80% of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Natural Resources Canada (RNCan) is the federal department with primary responsibility for the energy sector.

The following commitments under the Sustainable Development Strategy are only a small sample of departmental programs in this area.

Because I'm relatively new, could you tell me what strategies are currently in place? You say that new strategies are needed, but what strategies are currently there? Were you able to assess the sustainable development strategies that are currently being implemented, since you speak well of them?

[Johanne Gélinas]

My mandate is to report every year on sustainable development strategies. There are more than 30 of them and, just to give you an order of magnitude, all across the federal public service, there are more than 2,500 commitments.

I'm sure you can understand that is impossible for me to verify all of them. As a result, this is what we do: every year, we select a certain number of departments and a certain number of their commitments, and we audit those and report on progress.

This year, we tried to look more at climate change, in order to focus more on that in the report. As a result, I can't give you a general answer with respect to the progress made in terms of strategies, but I can say that these strategies--and it's really too bad--have not received the attention they deserve.

If the Standing Committee on Natural Resources decides subsequently that it wants to know about the Department of Natural Resources's game plan for sustainable development, I would suggest that starting in January, you hold a Committee meeting to look at its strategies and question it in that regard. You'll see for yourselves that there is something for everyone.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you.

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

Could I ask another question?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

A very short question, Mr. Ouellet.

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

Earlier we talked quite a bit about EnerGuide. I note that you also refer to it in your document. As well, you were saying that you can't make an assessment from the outside.

You surely know--and I want to take this opportunity to mention it--that $500 million was set aside for social housing. However, no one ever had any work done, even though a little earlier, someone at this table said that people would have had that work done anyway, even if they had been unable to receive assistance from Canada.

Canada spent exactly $1,456 for every household involved in the program. You and the industry as a whole are saying that this resulted in energy savings of 27%. That means that homeowners in Quebec and Manitoba saved about $500. In the rest of Canada, the average is $750. That is a two- to three-year return on Canada's investment. You can't do any better than that when it comes to energy efficiency. It's amazing!

[Johanne Gélinas]

I'd like to be able to do the arithmetic as quickly as you can. I'll leave you these figures.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Madam Commissioner, we'll have to take that as an observation that is made. You may want to weave that into a future answer, but we're out of time on that one.

We'll go to Mr. Allen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, everybody, for being here. I'm going to focus my questions on the governance side and the accountability side.

Page 1 of chapter 1 of the report talks about responding to climate change, management across multiple departments, and the challenge of that. It also talks about levers, resources, and expertise to manage this adequately.

When we then go further into the report, on page 10 it talks in paragraph 1.15 about the 1998 report, saying we had sporadic performance. In paragraph 1.16 it refers to where the 2005 Standing Committee on the Environment reported, and again there was no leadership of this structure.

I want to point to paragraph 1.21, which says Environment Canada currently has the leading responsibility, and then there are other statements that say Treasury Board Secretariat should take the lead in these programs that go across. We then have the Climate Change Secretariat, which was phased out in 2004 and which had a leadership role. How can you help me reconcile all these people who were in charge, and what are your thoughts on that?

[Johanne Gélinas]

It's a challenge, and it has been a problem that we have faced for a while. Richard would be better positioned than I am to give you the details and reconcile what the status is as we speak.

[Richard Arseneault]

Yes, climate change obviously is a horizontal issue touching a number of departments and central agencies. Leadership was given at different times to Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada on this. There was a secretariat that was reporting to the deputy ministers of both departments at one point. It was serving a purpose of federal coordination with the other departments, along with facilitation, as well as reporting. Since they've disappeared from the horizon, no one has replaced them.

Treasury Board got involved at one point. The central agencies decided to get involved when the decision was made to ratify Kyoto and all that. They decided to take more of a leadership role in terms of trying to put in place the structure that was needed. They decided to produce what's called an RMAF, a big plan, a map of all the federal programs, just to find out what exactly is going on in all these departments. Once you have this map, you then can come up and do a program review, and that's what they were trying to do.

What they also tried to do was put a system in place to capture the information that was needed in order to do proper management of the file. They wanted to know how much money has been spent on these programs overall, and what results have been achieved.

There was a program review. The results have not yet been transmitted to Parliament or to Canadians, but there's certainly a lot of information there. That was the logical sequence in which to do it, but they came in very late in the process. A number of programs were in place, but they were not talking to one another; they were not connected. They might have caused some duplication in some cases, but no one knows. The program review was the way to do this.

When we looked at this, we saw transitions going on as well—transitions between governments and the transitioning of key people in the civil service who deal with this issue. This transition of people also caused some more delays, so essentially the situation was not a clean one.

Now, when we were looking at making recommendations to the government, we wanted to make certain we were going to be addressing the recommendations to the right bodies of the government, so we were going to go to central agencies. Those central agencies told us they are not responsible for this, they are there to assist departments and ministers. Therefore, they said Environment Canada has the leadership.

That's why we have this story that is kind of complicated in the chapter.

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

Do you believe the program review has taken into account this road map, if you will?

[Richard Arseneault]

Yes, the program review has looked at the road map, but Treasury Board has said there are things missing from this big road map. One of them is the governance piece, and another one is the performance management piece.

In 2004-05 things were starting to get in motion in a positive sense, but they were never completed, as far as we can see.

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

That leads me to my next question then.

We've talked a lot about some departments being stronger in their management systems and reporting systems than others, and it shows in the results in those departments. Given the firm commitment by the government that we're going to put the governance in place, then in your estimation, how far away are we from setting up the management systems and information systems to collect this data?

[Richard Arseneault]

The Treasury Board has been working on an electronic system to capture information, but this information obviously comes from departments and departments have different definitions of what they are doing.

Treasury Board was trying to facilitate a process where everyone would work from the same page. I think it has made progress in terms of doing that. The idea was that once the program review was completed and decisions made, the information in the system would be updated.

They also made a commitment to make it transparent and available on a website, which has not happened yet, and we don't know how far away we are.

[Johanne Gélinas]

Perhaps I may give you some timeframes. The government structure....Treasury Board hasn't committed to any date with respect to the performance framework, but it should be available by mid-2007.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Alan Tonks]

Thank you.

We'll now go to our third round. Mr. Russell, Mr. Trost, and Mr. Cullen.