Evidence of meeting #130 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was change.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Mr. Mazier, just hold on. I'm going to ask the clerk to just turn the volume up. I'm getting reports from people who can't hear online and in the room.
Mr. Mazier, you have three minutes remaining on the clock. Please go ahead.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
The documents that were shared with the auditor are documents that they shared. I didn't see those documents. I'm not the one who participated in the collection of the comments.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I don't. I came here for an audit on something different, and you're raising an issue about the net-zero accelerator, which I think should be answered by my colleagues.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
I'm glad you brought that up, because this is report number six that the commissioner did. In it, there's a whole host of different types of projects that are in place to reduce emissions in Canada. We're talking about one of these out of the whole list of them. There's a net-zero accelerator. It's right there. It's in this fund—$8 billion—and you don't know the target, the emissions reduction target for $8 billion.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I'm telling you that it is more appropriate for the Department of ISED to answer your questions about how they manage their programs, the objectives of their programs and the results they expect. They are accountable for this.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
You are the top official in Environment and Climate Change Canada and responsible for emissions reductions and you don't know the target.
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
I'm telling you that if they didn't—
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
—give the information, it's not for me to reveal the information, whatever it is. It's for them to do it.
Conservative
Dan Mazier Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Do you think that Canadians deserve a right to know?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
No comment. I'm not even part of those discussions. I think it's more appropriate to ask our friends at ISED to answer that question.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
All right.
Ms. Bradford, you have the floor for six minutes, please.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being with us today.
Mr. DeMarco, did the Government of Canada provide all the requested information to CESD?
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
Are we back to the net-zero act or are we still on the net-zero accelerator?
Liberal
Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General
I'll ask Ms. Leach, the principal responsible for this audit, to return to the table and assist with this.
Ms. Leach is the principal responsible for the net-zero act report.
Kimberley Leach Principal, Office of the Auditor General
There is a section in our act that deals with the provision of information, and there were some instances where we did talk about the lack of available information.
There were a couple of instances there where we ran into some trouble. One was with regard to some information that we were looking for on an integrated climate lens. We were looking for this information because it had the economic modelling, together with the climate change greenhouse gas modelling.
We were looking to see whether these decisions were policy coherent as a result of that, but some of that information was not available to us and is not publicly available due to cabinet confidence and budget information reasons.
We did make a recommendation on that to PCO and Environment and Climate Change Canada, which they agreed to, so some of that information will be shared in the future in summary form, which has been mentioned.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Tremblay, are there issues with Canada's emissions modelling? If so, what is being done to improve the modelling?
Deputy Minister, Department of the Environment
There's not an issue with modelling. Modelling is something that is always in progress. When we do modelling, it's something that, as the commissioner asked of us, we work on to make sure that it's actually as good and accurate as possible. We have sent five biannual reports to the United Nations using our modelling. Five times it has been reviewed by international experts and it passed the test.
We do work with modellers, experts, to try to improve the modelling. Modelling is a complex thing. It is complex work, but it is something that we're continuously doing and continuously reviewing. For example, our modellers are having a meeting today or this week with external modellers, as was suggested by the commissioner, to precisely compare modelling expertise and compare how they arrive at their own results.
We don't pretend that we're perfect at modelling, but the modelling we're doing is internationally recognized as actually good.
Liberal
Valerie Bradford Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Are there efforts being made to improve the speed with which the NIR is reported?