Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

We are ready to begin. Thank you for your patience.

I can see from the video camera that we have a full room. I apologize for not being there in person. This is a function of our lives outside of Parliament. We need to get home occasionally, or as frequently as possible.

Welcome to meeting number 35 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g) and the motion adopted by the committee on October 4, 2022, the committee is meeting today to study “Report 2, Greening Government Strategy”, of the 2022 reports 1 to 5 of the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

I'm going to welcome back our witnesses, who have all had a chance to make opening remarks.

I will be relying today particularly heavily on the clerk to help navigate questions, because I'm not able to see the floor as well as I would like. This is certainly a downside of having committees on Fridays. However, that is the Parliament we have been given, so we're going to try to make it work to the best of our abilities.

From the Office of the Auditor General, we have, returning again, Mr. Jerry DeMarco, commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, and Mr. Milan Duvnjak.

From the Department of National Defence, we have Mr. Bill Matthews, deputy minister; Nancy Tremblay, associate assistant deputy minister, materiel; and Saleem Sattar, director general, environment and sustainable management.

From the Department of Transport, we have Michael Keenan, deputy minister; and Ross Ezzeddin, director general, air, marine and environmental programs.

Finally, from the Treasury Board, we have Graham Flack, secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada; Jane Keenan, acting executive director, centre for greening government; and Malcolm Edwards, senior engineer, centre for greening government.

As I mentioned, they've all given their opening remarks.

I appreciate your coming back on relatively short notice to continue and then to conclude our examination into this Auditor General report from the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development.

We're going to start right away with questions. For the first round, we'll give each member six minutes.

I'm going to start with Mr. McCauley from the official opposition.

The floor is yours for six minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'm looking at Mr. Matthews and Mr. Matthews is looking at me.

We've had enough time to discuss things at OGGO, so I'm not going to go to you at all, Mr. Matthews. That's a shock, but it's all good.

I will start with Mr. DeMarco and Mr. Duvnjak.

As I asked the AG, how confident are you in the responses from the departments to your reports that we will actually see action and achieve our goals? Give me a zero to 10, zero being the usual and 10 being, good heavens, they're doing something.

[Jerry V. DeMarco, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General]

With the exception of the response to recommendation 63, we are satisfied with the full agreement from the Treasury Board and the two departments to all of the recommendations. We've also had a chance to look at their subsequent action plans that have been filed as well. Those responses, if acted upon, should go a long way toward getting them to the high number of eight or nine.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What is your confidence level that they'll be acted upon?

[Jerry V. DeMarco]

Well, that's difficult to say. It depends on the will and the resources that are brought to bear on the implementation.

I think that question is best directed to the departments, in terms of their intentions and whether they have the resources to implement the action plans.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks.

I'm going to switch to Treasury Board.

Mr. Flack, I want to get on the record who is ultimately responsible for this program. It is Treasury Board, but we have heard constantly through the years that Treasury Board sets rules and then steps away and says that's where their responsibility ends.

In my understanding, Treasury Board is responsible, and is responsible for following up with the departments to ensure that these goals are being met. Am I correct?

[Graham Flack, Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Departments are individually accountable for each of their actions. The Treasury Board sets guidance around those actions but, for example—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you have a role besides guidance? Does it end at setting the rules?

[Graham Flack]

It's more than that.

As indicated in the auditor's report, the department has provided tools that departments use to allow them to develop their plans. To analyze those plans, we developed the Open Government portal data reporting, which allows us to pull together all the data around those plans.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What I'm trying to get at is we're several years into this process, so why does it take an Auditor General report to get us to this table to say that this is not being done? How do we prevent this from happening again?

Again, I understand Treasury Board is responsible, but where does your responsibility end? Do you make the rules, set the goals and then walk away?

[Graham Flack]

No, I think in this case we can see there has been tremendous progress, including on the actual emissions themselves, where we are several years ahead of schedule—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry. Are you ahead of schedule?

[Graham Flack]

In terms of the reported emissions on the 1 and 2, for the area where we had a 40% target for 2025, those are reporting ahead. I don't think this is a case of no action having been taken.

The first plan was 2017. The subsequent plan was 2020. With each subsequent plan, we increased the level of reporting. We've been following that plan. For example, the reason we had not planned to do—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. I'm just going to say Treasury Board “is responsible for leading and reporting on the Government of Canada’s efforts toward low-carbon, green, and climate-resilient government operations. It is mandated to lead and coordinate, integrate knowledge, and track and disclose performance information.”

Do you believe Treasury Board has been successful?

[Graham Flack]

I believe we're on a trajectory to get where we had planned to get, and each subsequent plan is getting us closer.

If I look at the first and second levels of emissions, on those we have good reporting. As planned, we will move to complete that in the third report. Yes, this is a journey. It was always designed to be a journey, as laid out in the original plans in terms of what we're doing. I don't want you to leave with the impression that had there not been an Auditor General's report, many of the things that were in here were already—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I appreciate that. I appreciate what you're leaving us with. I just want to express concern that every single time we have departments in front of us in this meeting, goals are not achieved, but we're always told it's a journey. We heard horrific stories from Veterans Affairs with their failures seven years in, missing goals, but it's a journey. I want to ensure that this is not another example of saying, We're not going to achieve goals because it's a journey.”

One of the comments from the AG was that they found the Treasury Board did not report some sources of federal greenhouse gas emissions. Why not?

[Graham Flack]

Because of the complexity in reporting.

In the original plans, the first and second plans, the aim was to capture the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are relatively direct and easier to report. Scope 3 emissions are much more complicated to develop. They need methodologies around them. For example—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Let me interrupt as I understand that. Do we have the mechanisms set up, then, or is this an impossible goal to achieve, and we need to reset and publicize that this is not going to happen?

[Graham Flack]

No, we are on track. Indeed, some of the levels of the scope 3 emissions, the travel emissions, have been reported for several years. We completed international work with some international partners. Since February, another huge piece of that, the procurement piece, has now been reported. We're working now on a third piece to that, which is commuting emissions. In a very methodical way, we've been building on those. We think it is achievable.

As committee members would know, on scope 3 emissions, where one draws the line at how far one goes is quite far, but if I contrast to the private sector, Bloomberg did a survey of 13,000 companies, and only 20% have—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm short of time. I'm going to go to the last couple of questions.

There is the issue about Crown corporations—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, you only have time for a quick statement. You're really out of time, so I'm going to cut you off there.

We'll turn now to Ms. Yip.

You have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you to so many witnesses for coming today on this important report. I think that climate change does not wait for anyone, so it's great to see all of you here today.

Mr. Flack, it's been indicated that the government is ahead of its targets in its greening efforts, which is always wonderful. What did the government do to exceed its previous targets on emission reductions?

[Graham Flack]

I'll turn to Malcolm, who's really the expert around this.

I think there's been good progress across departments in how we proceed, but I should highlight that the COVID context has, for many companies and governments as well, reduced emissions as a result of reduced activity. This is part of the improvement in the last two years, but there was steady improvement before.

Malcolm, as you're the expert in the area, maybe you want to comment on the progress that's been made and your confidence that we're tracking to stay above the 40% target by 2025.

[Malcolm Edwards, Senior Engineer, Centre for Greening Government, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Pre-COVID emissions from real property and conventional fleets were reduced by 34.6%. After the first year of the pandemic, they were reduced by 40.6%, so we did see a significant reduction due to COVID. We expect this year's emissions to lie between those two numbers.

Those emissions savings were achieved by retrofitting real property, procuring clean electricity, building zero-carbon buildings, and procuring zero-emission vehicles. We also have a commitment in the strategy to procure 100% clean electricity by 2025, so we're close to the 40% reduction. With the procurement of clean electricity, we feel quite comfortable that we'll meet the 2025 target we've established.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

One other recommendation stated that Treasury Board should develop an approach to track costs and savings to provide decision-makers, parliamentarians, and Canadians with sufficient information about the estimated costs and savings to achieve the 2050 net-zero target. It appears that Treasury Board disagreed.

Can you elaborate on why Treasury Board disagreed?