Environment committee  It has been mentioned, Ms. Gélinas, that the previous government wanted to invest close to $6 billion in climate change activities. $1.6 billion was actually spent, which means that there is still $4.5 billion floating around somewhere. Actually, I am not sure I understand

Environment committee  My colleague was saying earlier that we will revisit the smog issue for next year's report. We have looked here and there at some air quality issues, but not as we did for climate change, with one focus and covering the broader aspects of it. But as Richard is involved

Environment committee  I appreciate that. Could we pass on, then, to the climate change issue? I just wanted a general answer. But that is coming.

Environment committee   at seriously, I will probably be here again five years from now and have an almost cut-and-paste copy of this section. I also would like to remind you that in 1998 we looked at climate change and almost said the same thing. So things have not evolved that much in terms of good governance

Environment committee   to know is that even though Treasury Board now is working on this framework--and you will remember that Treasury Board came here and talked about the RMAF, the framework for the pilot on climate change, to develop this framework on horizontal issues. The reality is still that even

Environment committee  There was some economic analysis, but it was not detailed. We couldn't find any social, environmental, and risk analysis linked to this. Climate change is not only about the environment, it's also about sustainable development; it's about our way of living, because it's linked

Environment committee   there was a situation that needed to be better controlled, and they decided to pilot this. With respect to climate change and horizontal issues involving a number of departments, they wanted to put a system in place so that we could capture this kind of information, so they piloted--

Environment committee   are not coded the right way, and what is climate change and what is something else--sometimes it's not obvious. They call things different things. But we were still able to get to the amount of money spent on those programs.

Environment committee  I'm trying to understand this--and I asked you this question during the last committee hearing. Who is in charge? What minister was in charge of climate change in Canada?

Environment committee  Do you think this tool would still be advantageous for Canada and that it should be taken into consideration in the future climate change mitigation plan?

Environment committee  Yes. The National Climate Change Secretariat produced a report in 2003, if I'm not mistaken, the latest one. Their function was one of coordination amongst the departments.

Environment committee  Okay. My other question deals with pages 26 and 27 of Chapter 1 of your report. They deal with emissions trading. From what I understand, you do not consider this system a panacea, but instead an interesting climate change mitigation policy tool. Moreover, I am very happy

Environment committee  I don't know. The only thing I can say at this stage is that it will be interesting to get answers from the departments. On the basis of what we have seen on the climate change file, many times decisions were made without sound analyses and good analyses. So in this case

Environment committee   to what you were proposing. Would it be useful if every year the Minister of the Environment had to come up with a climate change plan that would report, as you have asked, on such things as what measures have been taken to meet our obligations under Kyoto concerning emission limits

Environment committee  That's great to hear, because tomorrow night we're going to be voting on such an idea, Bill C-288, proposed by my friend, Pablo Rodriguez, to ensure we meet our global climate change obligations under Kyoto. If the bill passes, we'll be debating it here, but it's good to hear