Evidence of meeting #30 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was targets.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Thompson, Ms. Meredith indicated that it's understandable that there would be different criteria. She used Corrections Canada as one of the departments because of the age of their buildings.
Would you agree that there is a need for that flexibility? I'm going to assume that you agree that there should be some flexibility, so I'm going to couple that with another question: how flexible? And how do we assess it?
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, through you to Mr. Comartin, certainly I agree with Ms. Meredith that there's a need for flexibility from time to time, but there's a great difference between having some flexibility to respond to particular circumstances of departments and having what I'd call a “rubber yardstick” to measure their progress.
If there is a need for flexibility, I think that should be taken into account in setting a realistic and aggressive target for greening in a particular area, with the department being held to account for achieving that target.
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
We're not there yet, in my opinion, Mr. Comartin, but I think we could be relatively soon, hopefully.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Are we talking the same 18-month period that Ms. Meredith referred to?
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, through you to Mr. Comartin, I am very hopeful, frankly, that the government officials here, working over the next 18 months, will put in place a system that we think will work; that will have a clear driver, somebody who will make the greening of government operations happen; that will have clear expectations, realistic right enough but also clear, both for the government overall and for individual government departments to contribute to; that will have an accounting back, with an accountability process put in place to report back on whether or not the government overall and individual departments are meeting their objectives and expectations; and that will have some reasonable reporting to members of Parliament, and through Parliament to Canadians, on how progress is being made on the greening of government operations.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Let me just pursue the reporting part, because it's a concern that I have. Mr. Jean or Ms. Meredith may want to comment on this as well.
This not an aspersion on the public service, but we can juggle the figures. Is there anything being proposed so that when those reports come back there is some kind of double-checking—other than by your department, the commissioner's office—or a spot check perhaps, that in fact the reporting is accurate as being presented to Parliament?
Associate Secretary, Senior Associate Secretary's Office, Treasury Board Secretariat
Certainly what we would like to do through both the RPP and the DPR, as we work on sustainable strategies with Environment or we work on greening government operations with Public Works, is to make sure that the commitments made by the departments, how they're going to measure success, and what they've actually achieved are put in a transparent fashion. That's the whole principle behind the RPP and the DPR.
These documents are public. They're transparent. They're tabled with Parliament. The commissioner—
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Jean, how do we know--how can we feel confident--that in fact the reporting is...? Fine, it's transparent and it's given to us, but how do we know that there's somebody looking over their shoulder to say, yes, it is in fact accurate, as opposed to being a puffed-up report?
Associate Secretary, Senior Associate Secretary's Office, Treasury Board Secretariat
If the reporting were not accurate, I think the commissioner would make a point of putting that out in his report.
NDP
Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chairman, through you to Mr. Comartin, yes, we could go in and have a look at not so much the RPPs but the DPRs, where performance would be reported. But I think another layer of audit is internal audit within government departments and agencies. I would hope that internal audit would take some responsibility for the integrity of the information shown annually in the DPRs.
But yes, in direct answer to your question, we could go in and look at some of that.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Mr. Chairman, if it would be helpful to the committee, I would add that the nature of the measures will vary across the operation. For example, on the renewal of the government fleet, I think there is relatively little we could do, even if we wanted to, to fudge the numbers. We would be reporting to the Treasury Board, as the commissioner has indicated, through internal audit and then through whatever external audits occur to provide the data about what the expenditures have been in fleet renewal and what the compliance has been with the standard across government for fuel efficiency, for example.
In other areas, I suspect we're going to have to provide considerable guidance from environment from other places about what are appropriate measures. In some cases, environmental measurement is a work in progress, and it would be more difficult. So I think there will in fact be a range of integrity of what the measures are, or objectivity in the measures, depending on what area we're talking about.
Liberal
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Shugart, it seems the federal house in order initiative for greenhouse gas emissions was tracking to be a rare success story among government green initiatives. At the end of March 2007, the government wound it up. You've stated that was a ministerial decision.
Which minister would it have been who made that decision?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
That decision really was no different from any other government program where every year the government's estimates--
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Sure, but which minister made the decision to wind up this initiative?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
My colleague reminds me that it was an NRCan program.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
Well, the Minister of Natural Resources Canada is Mr. Lunn, but those decisions--
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you.
And who would have been the minister who signed off on this new initiative of a horizontal bureaucratic approach at setting our new targets?
Associate Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
I'm sorry, I'm stuck on the federal house in order program--
Associate Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
--and I would make the point that it was a sunsetted program, so the decision was, to begin with, that it would be for five years. I just wanted to clarify that, based on Mr. Shugart's previous testimony.
In terms of the approach we're taking now, with the leadership that we are providing now, that's very much an initiative, in terms of funding, for the Office of Greening Government Operations. That's something we have done at Public Works with our minister's concurrence. Our leadership, as I mentioned, was acknowledged at the deputy minister level.
