Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you to discuss the March 2008 report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development on greening government operations. The audit addressed two separate but related aspe

Public Accounts committee  It spends about $20 billion on goods and services in total.

Public Accounts committee  On procurement, sir?

Public Accounts committee  That's a good question. It would include many purchases related to maintaining buildings.

Public Accounts committee  I think that number would not include leasing real estate, sir. We have some numbers here—thanks, Ellen. The way we break it down, real property would be included. It's actually more like $21.5 billion, the total number I'm working from, and from that there are real property ex

Public Accounts committee  The general thinking was that for a certain amount of the money we spend on goods and services, there could be a lot to be gained by using our volume to influence the market and the choices available, yes--not for, I would say, the $21.5 billion, but to figure out, through analys

Public Accounts committee  That's right.

Public Accounts committee  I would say we have significant scope to make progress with the tools we have now. I'm quite happy to talk to the commissioner's report. We recognized his comment that we hadn't made satisfactory progress in some areas, and I think we are convinced that we can make more progress

Public Accounts committee  NRCan, or that department, is the repository of a lot of expertise in the area of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. They are our best experts in the federal government in that area. We rely in large part on their expertise to advise us on what can be achieved across

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. We have the guidance that we issued in 2006, prior to the departments and agencies developing their sustainable development strategies. It was somewhat specific in the case of their treatment of buildings and treatment of fleets. In regar

Public Accounts committee  Those were two quite definite targets. We did not have definite targets in the case of greening procurement. It was more aspirational towards departments to green their purchases of goods and services, working on it with PWGSC as we were working with suppliers to determine what

Public Accounts committee  I couldn't agree with the member more. We need to provide that transparency to Parliament. We need to, first of all, ensure that there is progress and that it is reported in a meaningful and understandable way. The challenge is considerable in this area. There are problems of m

Public Accounts committee  What that achieved was that they acknowledge our leadership, the role of Public Works. They can expect, therefore, that we will be after them to engage on their strategies and their plans, their targets. They would acknowledge, of course, Treasury Board and Environment Canada and

Public Accounts committee  This is the beginning of an engagement strategy that would result in their sustainable development strategies for the period 2009 to 2012. The way we see it, we have a window of perhaps 18 months to work with those deputy ministers. It was a group of deputy ministers that acknowl

Public Accounts committee  Yes, they have signed on to our leadership. That was one of our commitments in our management response to the audit, and we got their approval just last month.