Madam Speaker, there are a lot of other flaws in the departmental plan. My favourite is a table that reads, “Canadian communities economies and ecosystems are more resilient”, and that presents departmental results indicators that include the “Number of individuals, businesses, and governments accessing climate services and using that information to inform decision making”. It notes that the targets involve an “Increase from [the] baseline”.
What is the baseline? There is a little mark that says that the baseline will be established when the Canadian Centre for Climate Services has been functioning for a full year, and that it is expected it will become operational next year. Therefore, the baseline will be set two years from now.
Here are the departmental goals we are trying to achieve this year, and we will not even know what the government is saying is our target, because we will not set a baseline for two more years. We are expected to accept a plan from the government that has been rightly ridiculed by the commissioner. The government is telling us that it will not know what results we are trying to achieve for two years, but that we should accept the plan today for results and give it the money to spend now, with no planned outcomes.