Madam Chair, members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, thank you for hearing from us today.
My name is Colleen Thorpe. I am the executive director of Équiterre, an environmental NGO with more than 150,000 members and supporters. We are involved in the sectors of agriculture, light and heavy-duty transportation, consumers, energy and climate change in general.
I will share my speaking time with my colleague Marc‑André Viau.
In his report of November 25, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development concluded that, “Canada has gone from being a climate leader to falling behind other developed countries despite recent efforts.” This finding surprised no one. Our greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing because we continue to exploit oil and gas as if there was no climate crisis.
I would like to present to you two potential solutions in response to the issues raised in lessons one and five of the report.
First, we propose that the entire public service be provided with training on the climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity. We think that a starting point for government consistency in terms of climate action goes through a common understanding of how urgent the situation is. That way, public servants will be able to use all their expertise in this “war effort”.
I remind you that, in 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notified us that, to limit global warming to 1.5°C, rapid, profound and unprecedented changes were necessary in all aspects of society.
Large scale training for public servants is an approach the government has used in the past to meet its commitments on reconciliation. An employee of the Department of Justice recently told me how much of an impact the training she attended on the rights of indigenous peoples had on her. One of the things she learned is that, in negotiations with indigenous peoples, it is customary to leave an empty seat at the table, representing a place for future generations.
Our recent experience with vaccination during the pandemic also emphasizes how important it is to seek the support of the public service to make broader changes to behaviour among the general public.
The second solution we are proposing concerns another part of the commissioner's report, according to which, “Internal government planning cycles also favour short-term thinking at the expense of long-term planning.”
That problem is particularly acute when it comes to ruling on the protection of natural environments. Weighting is based on the value attributed to that environment and, right now, the calculation is based on its extraction potential. So the value of the forest is equal to the amount of wood that can be extracted from it. However, we know that, for Canada and its huge territory, one of the most effective ways to fight climate change is by maintaining natural spaces, which are today referred to as natural infrastructure.
So it has become necessary for the government to create models that put a value on that infrastructure while taking into account its ecosystem services, such as air quality, water filtration, climate regulation, carbon storage and the maintenance of habitat. Those calculations are based on well-established methods, and the public service could develop tools with the support of renowned experts.
I now yield the floor to my colleague.