Public Accounts Committee on May 1st, 2008

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay.

Commissioner, the other part of the problem here.... The first one was that the wording was so non-specific, but the other aspect you zeroed in on was the horizontal approach.

You referenced the U.K. model. They have a similar Westminster structure to ours and they have quite a different approach. It's a top-down approach, a directive clearly from the Prime Minister's office. It shows clear intent, seriousness of intent, and if targets aren't met, people—ministers, I understand—are called on the rug.

Yet what's being proposed here is a horizontal approach, which we've seen hasn't functioned well in the past here. Perhaps it will be fixed somewhat, but we have a clear example of an approach that is working.

Would you like to comment on this, and on why we would not use a success as an example of how to go about achieving targets?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Chairman, we haven't audited the U.K. experience. We've certainly looked at it, and what we see, at least on the surface, is quite appealing. Here is the chart, for example, that comes out of that exercise, which shows which departments are doing well and which are doing poorly against the various top-down targets that have been set for greening.

It's an approach. I'm not so sure our colleagues within the government are ruling it out, looking ahead. Perhaps they would be best equipped to speak to that, but it's one of the issues I understood them to say they were taking a look at, the approaches that are being taken in other jurisdictions such as the U.S. and the U.K.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Ms. Meredith, do you have any comments?

[Daphne Meredith]

Well, of course, we are interested in what other jurisdictions are doing and we're open to taking on good suggestions. I think we have, in fact, and Ellen has spent some time in conversation with counterparts in the U.K.

Their system is outlined briefly in the commissioner's report. It's based in part on reporting on progress, in the same way that ours is based on reporting on progress, but perhaps a bit differently. It's done on an annual basis, and ours is right now annual in terms of our DPRs, but done every three years in terms of sustainable development strategies. So there are certain common elements.

I think there are also certain common challenges. That was the nature of our discussion with the U.K., that even with the top-down approach there are problems of compliance. They're struggling with those in the same way we're struggling with ours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj and Ms. Meredith.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Just as a quick point of order, could we have the chart that was referenced tabled with our committee?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Thompson, is it available in both official languages?

[Ron Thompson]

Mr. Chairman, this one from the U.K. is only in English, I'm afraid.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We'll get it translated.

Mr. Lake, you have seven minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

My first question would be for Ms. Meredith. I'm looking at paragraph 10.2 of the report. It says:

The government stated in its 1995 A Guide to Green Government that it wanted to play a leadership role in turning sustainable development thinking into action.

It goes on, a little later in the report, to talk about one of the five objectives being ”greening government operations”. That was in 1995. Then later it says:

After a number of other initiatives, the government created the Office of Greening Government Operations (OGGO) in April 2005

—ten years later.

I'm wondering whether you can explain to me why it would have taken ten years to get to that point. What actual progress was made in the interim?

[Daphne Meredith]

Between 1995 and 2005, departments were doing their sustainable development strategies. They were doing them independently, I suppose, perhaps more independently than is productive. There was certainly a will to green operations and to green other aspects of their activity.

My only suggestion is that over time it was recognized that perhaps it would be helpful to have a focal point, an office that was expert in these areas and that could help departments craft meaningful strategies and deal with measurement and other issues in a more constructive way. For that reason, our department, because it was a nucleus of expertise, internally reallocated resources to provide that focal point.

We're learning as we're going. I would have to say we're trying to find the right mechanisms to make a difference.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Going back to the 1995 Guide to Green Government, one of the included objectives being the greening of government operations, obviously if that was an objective there must have been some measurement criteria that we could measure against—targets set, and all of that.

Can you speak to what the targets were and how the government of the day measured up over the next ten years in reaching out and meeting those targets?

[Daphne Meredith]

I'm not prepared today to talk chapter and verse about the progress made by individual departments during that period. My focus, Mr. Chair, is really on the commissioner's more recent report and responding to his comments there.

I would be happy to help in follow-up to answer that question.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Perhaps when Mr. McGuinty gets his next time, he can use it to explain what happened during those ten years. It would be rather interesting to hear.

Mr. Thompson says in his opening statement, in paragraph 12, and Mr. Wrzesnewskyj alluded to it:

We point out that other countries have adopted quite a different approach. For example, in the United Kingdom and the United States, top-down direction on greening is given to government departments from the highest levels.

You spoke a little bit to the approaches taken by the U.K. and the U.S., and I was going to ask you about that, but I want to ask a bit about this top-down direction.

Is the top-down approach always better? For example, I think about a directive that would say everyone has to buy a specific type of environmentally friendly paper. Are there situations on the ground where a policy like that might actually hurt the environment, maybe because of shipping requirements that might incur higher emissions to get the paper to where it's needed?

[Daphne Meredith]

I think that is the essence of the issue as we see it and why we think there are some drawbacks to having a one-size-fits-all, top-down-driven approach: that you're in danger of being insensitive to individual circumstances.

We know that departments have different circumstances. For example, Correctional Services Canada has a very old set of buildings to deal with. To expect them to meet the same energy efficiency standards or GHG emission targets as others would be unrealistic, given their building stock right now. Others may have a different configuration of buildings or fleets. That will all make a difference to what they can achieve in the short term rather than the long term.

So there is a danger in dictating the same for everyone, for sure.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Okay.

This again has been talked about a little bit, but in paragraph 10.36 of the report, the last sentence says:

We found that seven of these organizations had included all of the government-wide targets and the others had partially included them.

But it doesn't really give much feedback on what “partially” means. To what extent have the other governments included them?

[Daphne Meredith]

Do you mean the other government departments? In the case of ours—

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

It talks about the 28 departmental sustainable development strategies. It talks about seven having included all of the government-wide targets, but the others—I guess it would be 21—only partially included them.

[Daphne Meredith]

That would mean they might adopt a building target we had or the fleet target, but not the greening of procurement target, so they would be fine in some ways and not in others.

If I speak to my own department as an example, we put as a target in that guidance that a department should have 100% of their procurement people trained in green procurement, and that was part of the guidance going out to all departments.

In our case, we have over 1,700 procurement officers, and there is a lot of rotation within that staff. So we actually set our target slightly lower than 100%, and we felt we had realistic and practical reasons for doing so.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

This is my last question, because I'm running to the end of my time.

Of course, in every statement from the Auditor General's office, and from this office as well, there's a sentence saying, “The committee may wish to ask...”. I'm going to “wish to ask” departmental officials about the progress they're making in clarifying leadership and responsibility issues. If we can talk a little about the progress, that would be good to finish.

[Daphne Meredith]

Thank you for the question.

We feel we've crossed a hurdle by just having acknowledgement of our leadership among departments. That wasn't the case during the commissioner's review. That's one important bridge crossed.

That then gives us the leverage to be more assertive in calling meetings, in challenging departments to adopt best practices that we see elsewhere in government, and to aspire to do better, I suppose.

I must say, it's not a huge stretch. I know, having worked in many departments, that there is general enthusiasm within departments, especially among younger employees, to green their operation.

So it's tapping into the enthusiasm with them, using our expertise to get the targets or the goals set at the right level.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Before we go to the second round, I have a few questions myself.

I've been at this end of table listening to every question. As has been indicated, this has been going on, I guess, for 13 years since the first strategy was implemented by government. Since then, we've had a lot of studies and reports. About every second year the environment and sustainable development commissioner goes in and does an audit, and recommendations are agreed to, and audits are usually not satisfactory.

Another office was opened up in 2005. Every year there have been more commitments and undertakings. But it doesn't seem that anything at all ever gets done in the whole thing. This is 13 years later, and we're here now; another audit comes in, and it's unsatisfactory, and the recommendations are agreed to.

I know it's a horizontal issue and it goes across departments, but there seems to be a total vacuum in leadership. I'm trying to point to some individual in government to say that this person or that office or organization is responsible. To me, it's just a big conceptual mess out there. I'm not following at all as to who is responsible.

I don't have a warm, fuzzy feeling that if we come back in April 2010 we're going to be one step further ahead, because I don't see the person identifying himself or herself as being in charge of this file on a pan-government basis and saying it's going to get done. I don't hear that out there.

Mr. Thompson, my question is to you. You've been on this for a while; you've done your audit. Is there anyone out there in government who really cares about this particular issue, in your opinion?

[Ron Thompson]

Thank you for that question.

A direct answer is yes, I think a lot of people do care quite a bit about this issue. I think the colleagues here at the table care very deeply about trying to have the government green its operations. Today, having them here to discuss what they're doing in getting ready for the next round of SDSs and the interest of this committee on that issue is all good stuff, and very encouraging to me.

But I couldn't agree more with you that no one seems yet to be driving this, and I think somebody has to be driving it. It needn't necessarily be just one office, but somebody has to drive the greening of government operations, make it happen, and be accountable for it happening. I haven't seen that emerge yet in the discussion this morning or this afternoon and in what we've been auditing to date.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Leadership shared is leadership shirked. I am still looking for that answer.

I'm going to ask a broad question to anyone at that end of the table. Do any of you know of any person or organization in government prepared to take a leadership role on this issue and prepared to come back before this committee 24 months down the road to say that the recommendations set out in this report have been completed and the government has either accomplished or is very well on its way to greening its operations?

Does anyone have an answer to that question? It has to be a very specific answer. I don't want five minutes about having aspirational goals or “we're pioneering an issue”. I'd like a very succinct answer to that very clear question.

[Daphne Meredith]

I think the answer is that departments report annually on their performance, and they report on the achievement of their sustainable development strategies as well. That is an accountable system.