THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 8, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, to which was referred Bill C-57, An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act, met this day at 8 a.m. to give consideration to the bill; and, in camera, to study the effects of transitioning to a low carbon economy (consideration of a draft report).
Senator Michael L. MacDonald (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Good morning and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. My name is Michael MacDonald. I am deputy chair of this committee, and I represent the province of Nova Scotia in the Senate.
I will now ask senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator Cordy: Good morning. Jane Cordy, Nova Scotia.
Senator McCallum: Mary Jane McCallum, Manitoba.
Senator Woo: Yuen Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Seidman: Judith Seidman, Montreal, Quebec.
[Translation]
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Neufeld: Richard Neufeld, British Columbia.
Senator Patterson: Denis Patterson, Nunavut.
[Translation]
Senator Mockler: Percy Mockler from New Brunswick.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Today we are continuing our study on Bill C-57, An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act. First, we welcome Brett Favaro, a member of the Sustainable Development Advisory Council; and, from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Stefan Jungcurt, Lead, Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge.
Thank you for joining us. I invite you each to proceed with your opening statements, after which we will go to a question and answer session.
Brett Favaro, Member, Sustainable Development Advisory Council: Good morning to all of you. My name is Dr. Brett Favaro and I am a conservation scientist based at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. I am also the Newfoundland and Labrador representative to the federal Sustainable Development Strategy’s Advisory Council. It’s a pleasure and honour to speak to you all today.
Before we get into the specifics of Bill C-57, I would like to state some scientific facts. I trust the committee understands the stakes that Canada faces with respect to climate change. As our planet warms, we face a wide variety of dangers that threaten our security, economy, and environment. The safest limit, as determined by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, is a warming of 1.5-degrees Celsius, a target Canada agreed we need to strive towards as part of the Paris Agreement.
What happens when we go above 1.5-degrees Celsius is bad, and it gets worse the warmer the planet gets. In my view as a scientist, it’s in our national interest to stay below that target.
What will this take? The numbers are simple but stark. The IPCC has determined that by 2030, humanity must achieve a series of milestones. We must reduce the amount of primary energy gleaned from oil by 37 per cent. We must use 78 per cent less coal over the same period, and even natural gas, often touted by as a lower emission alternative, must drop by 25 per cent. By 2050, humanity’s consumption of fossil fuels must have reduced almost 90 per cent, essentially eliminated from our mix of energy generation.
The IPCC was clear. No jurisdiction is exempt from this responsibility and none will be immune from the consequences of climate breakdown if we fail to meet it.
This brings me to the topic of today’s discussion, which is sustainable development. Much of Bill C-57 is straightforward and positive. The bill increases Indigenous representation on the Sustainable Development Strategy’s Advisory Council. That’s a great thing. The bill requires that delegates on the council are demographically representative. Again, a good idea. The bill introduces a new rule that targets under sustainable development strategies should be assessed based on being both measurable and that they include a time frame, which I certainly support.
There is one concept in Bill C-57 I would like to focus on which is the introduction of intergenerational equity. I believe this concept should be absolutely central, not just to this bill, but to the ethos of government as a whole.
The bill defines intergenerational equity as the principle that it is important to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
One of the most pernicious effects of climate change is how it will narrow the options available to our children and grandchildren. To illustrate this point, I am going to shift gears a little bit. So far, I have spoken to you as a scientist, as an advocate for evidence and as an advisory panel member to the sustainable development process. But I would also like to speak to you as a soon-to-be father. My wife Corina and I are having our first baby, a baby girl who is due on December 9. I want you to think about climate change in light of my daughter, to put it in the context of one single human experience. By 2030, or the year she graduates from elementary school, we will need to have reduced oil consumption by 37 per cent. In the year 2050, when we basically must have eliminated fossil fuels entirely from our energy mix, she will be 32, almost exactly the same age I am.
Think of the changes that will have to happen each and every day to get us to that point. It will take money, effort and resolve. But we do not have a choice, because with climate change, you always pay. You can pay now and invest in renewable energy, resilient infrastructure and a safe, sustainable future, or you can pay later, which means picking up the pieces.
Fighting climate change is not about contraction. It’s about expansion through smart, sustainable development which can position Canada as a leader in clean technology and renewable resources. If we focus, act with intent, and truly hold sustainable development as a guiding principle, then Canada can be positioned as a global leader in what may be the most important industrial transition in human history.
Bill C-57 represents an important step in bringing principles of sustainability to the forefront in the decisions made by our government. For that reason, I applaud it and challenge all the members here to imagine creative ways they can advance the decarbonization process and support Canadian leadership on this issue.
My daughter and I will thank you for it.
Stefan Jungcurt, Lead, Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge, International Institute for Sustainable Development: Thank you for the opportunity to share our views here. It’s an honour to speak to you today. Good morning everybody.
My name is Stefan Jungcurt. I am speaking on behalf of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, or IISD, and the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, or CCIC.
We welcome the standing committee’s study of Bill C-57 and the proposed changes to the Federal Sustainable Development Act. In particular, we are pleased that the act now includes environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable development.
We also welcome the inclusion of a broader set of principles, including intergenerational equity, openness and transparency, involvement of Aboriginal peoples and collaboration.
We believe that these amendments will allow the act to play an essential and integral role in Canada’s efforts to achieve sustainable development goals at home and abroad, something that the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development stated should be the central purpose of the act in 2016 report following the assessment of the Federal Sustainable Development Act.
In 2018, CCIC, in collaboration with IISD and other partners around the world, assessed the voluntarily national reviews that 42 countries submitted to the United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Voluntary national reviews are the principal means by which countries report on their efforts to implement SDGs, or sustainable development goals.
The report we produced helped to identify national best practices in implementing the SDGs and reporting on national progress. The recommendations we are making here today are informed by the findings of that report and will focus on the following points: linking the Federal Sustainable Development Act to the SDG framework; access to information; and reporting.
On the first point, we reiterate our previous recommendation that the committee consider making explicit reference to the SDGs and their implementation in the purpose of the act. This is in keeping with recommendation 6 of the report on the Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
The SDGs are intended as a universal framework for achieving sustainable development in all countries. Agenda 2030 does not impose direct obligations on countries other than to nationalize it. As such, it is instrumental to link the Federal Sustainable Development Act to the SDGs to ensure that Canada’s domestic targets are in line with the SDG framework, which also reflects targets regarding many other international agreements and obligations.
The 2030 Agenda further recognizes that sustainable development can only be realized if all SDGs are achieved simultaneously. To recognize this indivisibility, the revised act should also explicitly identify in its purpose that sustainable development is a whole-of-government objective encompassing a full spectrum of human and natural sustainability. This is in keeping with recommendation 2 of the report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
In this vein, we recommend that the schedule of the Financial Administration Act explicitly references the eight ministers as the lead departments responsible for implementing the SDGs in Canada. This would help ensure a strong focus within and across these departments, all three pillars of sustainable development and the SDGs. This integrated approach is a core principle of the 2030 Agenda and would help actively foster policy coherence for sustainable development.
Regarding our second point, access to data and information, we underline that such access is a precondition for accountability. We welcome the inclusion of principle 5(c), which states that the release of information should be encouraged to support accountability and public engagement. We note, however, that to ensure accountability, the release of information should be the norm and that restricting access to information should require justification. This is in keeping with Canada’s commitment to open government and its open-by-default policy.
We recommend aligning principle 5(c) with the Canadian government’s directive on open government to read as follows:
The principle of openness and transparency, which is the principle to maximize the release of government information and data to support accountability and public engagement . . . .
I’m coming to our last point on reporting. Agenda 2030 places special emphasis on voluntary reporting. As civil society organizations we welcomed the opportunity to provide inputs to Canada’s first voluntary national review to the High-Level Political Forum in July 2018. We note, however, that the transparency and openness of the process, and especially the inclusion of non-state actors, must improve to ensure that the Canadian government is accountable and its voluntary national reviews are truly inclusive and national in scope. The reporting required under this act provides an opportunity to do so.
The reports on implementing the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy provide valuable insights on the efforts made by the federal government to achieve progress towards the SDGs. We recommend aligning the two reporting cycles so that reports on implementing the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy can be made available to the public six months before the Canadian government submits a voluntary national review.
We would also recommend aligning reporting formats so that information from reports under the act can be easily used in the voluntary national review reports. In doing so, the federal government would set an example of good practice that could be followed by provincial and territorial governments.
Finally, while this does not necessarily relate to changes in the act, looking forward we encourage this committee to ensure that the act and the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy remain closely aligned with and complementary to the national strategy for implementing the SDGs, which is being developed by Employment and Social Development Canada.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you both for your testimony. We’ll begin with questions.
Senator Woo: Thank you, witnesses, and to your daughter as well for her advance input.
I want to ask a question on the issue of aligning the sustainable development goals with this act. We heard from the minister recently and asked her that question, and I think the answer was that it would require too many changes to an act which was originally prepared before the sustainable development goals were put forward.
I wonder if you’ve had a chance to have those conversations with the department and are satisfied with that answer. Do you see a different way in which we can pursue our sustainable development goals outside of Bill C-57?
Mr. Jungcurt: Thank you. We haven’t had those conversations directly with the department, so I’m not sure what options have already been tried and may have been dismissed because they don’t work. As I stated, the intention is to make reference to the SDGs as a general framework and not necessarily as a legal document that has to be implemented in all its terms and each individual part of a resolution.
One of the great advantages of the SDG framework is that it’s all-encompassing, but it does not assume that every country has to follow up on each individual target under the SDGs. If there is a way to find language that recognizes that this is a checkpoint to see whether the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy is pursuing the general thrust of the SDG framework and supports Canada’s responsibility to assess its own situation and develop its own targets that can be measured and reported on. That would be a great step forward in intention of the 2030 Agenda to achieve that kind of alignment.
Of course, that situation exists in many other countries that have been working on sustainable development previously. It’s not unknown as a challenge and it’s certainly one that I think can be overcome.
If the purpose of the act is not the right place to do this, then maybe it can be introduced as a principle or dealt with under the section that lays out the framework for the sustainable development strategy. In that way it may become a little less obliging in terms of follow-up changes to either the legislation or the act itself.
Senator Woo: I agree with you that there is certainly a dissonance in the fact that this bill, which is ostensibly about sustainable development, makes no reference to Agenda 2030. Surely there’s a way to at least make a reference to it and create some connection. But as you point out, there may be other and better ways to pursue the goals more directly.
Mr. Favaro, on the issue of all countries having responsibility to achieve the climate change goals, I agree with you, but all countries are not acting with the same amount of determination and resolve. What is your view on the need for countries that are acting with determination and resolve to adjust for other countries’ actions that impact directly on our domestic economy and market? You know what I’m referring to: the idea of border adjustment taxes and other measures which can compensate not for protectionist reasons, but for the differential efforts towards mitigating carbon emissions.
Mr. Favaro: That’s a great question. I want to speak from the principle underlying this because my expertise on the advisory council isn’t so much about how I would craft any of these policies. We also provided input as to how you would set up this framework to do these sustainable development strategies and how they should be structured.
My opinion about leadership is that it’s not just us reducing our emissions; it’s also us serving as leaders so other countries can view our example, potentially buy our products that help promote the clean tech transition. It’s not just the absence of Canadian emissions. It’s about the introduction of Canadian leadership to help others achieve their goals as well. People often challenge an issue saying if China is the biggest emitter in the world, why should we do anything if they are emitting a lot? China does not emit for fun. They do it because we’re buying stuff from them. They’re polluting in service of doing that in terms of their economic activity. They are taking certain actions as well, in some cases phasing out coal. Although, there is some controversy about the extent to which they’re doing that.
My answer to you, from a broad principled perspective, is that it’s a win for us if we decarbonize. We get cheap energy. We get to be tech leaders. We get to sell these products and services to other countries. The downside is that if we don’t do it intelligently, then perhaps we pay a higher cost now than we would have to otherwise. But I think the principle is very sound.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you for being with us this morning.
Mr. Favaro, you attempted to sensitize us to the importance of meeting our goals, not only Canada but the world. The consequence to your daughter and to all of us is very dire. I buy that. I have no problem with that. How do you deal with what I perceive to be the reality? The reality is that even this week, the minister said to us that it is not a problem meeting our goals. But from everything I have read — and you’ve read the same thing — from the United Nations and the Auditor General of Canada, they are basically telling us we are not meeting our goals and we are really far behind. Even if we close our eyes and wish for a better 2030, we’re probably not going to meet our goals.
If you look at the international energy situation. If all the governments met their plans, we would be still 1.5, 2 degrees higher than what we’ve got to be. What do you do in that reality? The politicians will tell us that they’re doing everything they can, because it’s nice for them to dictate laws and rules. But you need to get the public on side and it probably doesn’t like change, resistance. What do you do with that issue?
Mr. Favaro: This is the million dollar question. Actually, it’s the multi-trillion-dollar question. There are two sides to the coin: mitigation and adaptation. If we fail to mitigate, we have to spend money to adapt. Sometimes those two are in alignment. For example, adaptation would be building sea walls so as the sea level rises, we are more resilient to that. Mitigation would be building out renewable energies so that we can pollute less.
If the world gets really scary, if we fail to meet these targets and the temperature starts to rise a lot, the countries who invested early in decarbonization will be better positioned economically. This is because, at some point, people will say that if the world is now 2.5 degrees Celsius hotter, maybe we should reduce fossil fuel pollution at this point. If our economy is based entirely on that thing that everyone has to stop doing, then we’re in a vulnerable economic position.
From a practical sense, if we have reduced our reliance on fuel imports because we have renewal energy, we’re not as vulnerable to the geopolitical challenges that will fall from climate change as well. That’s my answer. Whether humanity succeeds or fails, there’s a benefit to getting in on this early and trying to make a difference.
Senator Massicotte: I am not sure that I agree with you because most of these assets that we construct have a life of 30 or 50 years.
You talked about intergenerational equity, and I buy that. As a principle, we should not unload our responsibility onto future generations and the argument is very good. But you realize that it is a complicated argument. You should say the same thing relative to our accumulated debt. If you do a calculation, we’re probably passing on some liabilities, climate change responsibilities to another generation, and we’re passing on a significant amount of debt. But we are also passing on a lot of assets. The infrastructure assets in Canada far exceed our debt. Does it exceed any potential deficit on the climate change? I don’t know. But you can’t do this thing in compartments and say, “This has got to be assets equal to liabilities, no transfer of equity.” Then, oh, this one you do.
I appreciate all that, but the real life is more complicated. What do you do with that complicated calculation?
Mr. Favaro: When we’re talking about sustainable development, the way I’m viewing that is things we have yet to do, things that we’re building towards. I’m not picking on anyone industry when I say unsustainable development, but unsustainable development as a principle is, in a sense, stealing from the future to give to the present. If we’re not smart about the things that we’re building, then we’re stuck with assets that are potentially counterproductive in the future.
This is why I speak of opportunity. This is our opportunity now to make smart decisions that will leave future generations with assets that make their own path easier and that, to me, is the way to thread that needle.
Senator Massicotte: Any comments?
Mr. Jungcurt: IISD just released a report on something that might help address that question, it’s called Comprehensive Wealth. The argument is that a lot of decision-making is based on a single indicator that’s called GDP. However, GDP measures income but it doesn’t measure the underlying assets that you used to generate the income. As an example, if you have a million dollars in your bank account, GDP only measures the 5 per cent interest you are getting on that, but it doesn’t measure whether that million is actually staying with you or if you are losing it. We’re proposing in that report to develop the measure of comprehensive wealth as a measure of what matters in the long run, which will make it easier to take those questions into account. What are the implications of today decisions on our collective assets at the national level, including natural resources, human capital and many other components of comprehensive wealth.
Senator Massicotte: That’s a sensitive point for me because your argument, Mr. Favaro, is that any construction, seemingly of more reasonable energy producers, is good for us. So Canada can only win because it’s good and it’s a positive asset. You say, therefore, it’s good for economy. And when you look at the rationale, most people support that. They say, “Yes we built this plant and it contributed X amount to GDP.”
Any form of economic activity is always measured by GDP which is not always a very good measure. Because the increased GDP is positive, but if you’re spending $10 billion replacing an asset which gave you the same thing, except maybe it had some CO2 in it, you’re replacing a redundant asset. Yes, the GDP would be positive, but it’s like getting a crew of 10 people digging a hole and filling it with mud afterwards. It is the same net result, but GDP is way up. You take numbers that suit you, but in fact it doesn’t add to the quality of life of Canadians.
Mr. Favaro: We’re speaking hypothetically here, which I understand. But if we get more specific on certain types of projects, the numbers have evolved substantially over the last number of years, especially with things like renewal energy. If you look at batteries, I don’t want to get into a niche thing, but I want to give one example where perception doesn’t match the current state of affairs with technology. Of course with renewal energy, the wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining. If you want to use that as a major part of your electricity mix, you have to store that power somewhere. One way to do that is with batteries. A lot of technological innovation is on making batteries cheaper.
In the year 2010, one kilowatt hour of lithium ion battery storage was about $1,000 USD. Today it’s somewhere between $110 and $190. So in less than a decade, we have dropped almost an order of magnitude on the cost of that. A lot of our perception on what things cost and what the benefits are, we have to be careful that we actually do understand what the stake is now. I’ll point out that some academics, of which I am one, like to use peer-reviewed papers. And peer-reviewed papers, which take a while to publish, are often using figures that are a few years out of date. From the time they started writing it to the time it got published, the numbers have changed substantially.
What I think is important about the concept of sustainable development is being on the edge of the wave, the bleeding edge of the knife — or whatever metaphor you want to use — being on top of things and being sure that we understand what the economics actually are because oftentimes it works out better than you might think.
Senator Patterson: Mr. Favaro, you got my attention. You say we don’t have a choice; pay now or pay later. No jurisdiction should be exempt. I come from the largest jurisdiction in Canada. It’s 20 per cent of the land mass of Canada. It’s the longest coast, 25 often very small remote communities, no roads, no alternative energy. I’m not proud of this. There are a lot of communities in the Northern provinces that are like this as well. It is the coldest, darkest climate in the country with the highest cost of living. There is a reliance on hunting and fishing as an alternative to expensive, store-bought food and we have to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050, as you said.
My question is: How do I explain to a hunter how he or she can hunt or fish without a snowmobile or an outboard motor?
Mr. Favaro: As a nation, we must be mindful of these types of challenges. First, I wouldn’t tell them that. We can create emission space for activities we believe are important. For example, the hunter and trapper in Nunavut has a way of life which is very culturally and economically important. Those of us who do not need to be burning fossil fuels when driving cars because we could be using public transit or bicycling or electric vehicles, we have an obligation to create space for that to happen. For example, when people talk about the oil and gas industry, this will be one of the most challenging transitions, how to bring that into alignment with the IPCC objectives.
We don’t have to do everything at the same time. We must hit milestones. We can look at areas where we don’t need to be burning fossil fuels. For example, we can make significant changes in our transportation emissions footprint as a whole by decarbonizing aspects of that by electrifying transportation and supporting cycling strategies and infrastructure which will benefit people in that sense.
I would never tell that hunter to stop hunting. That would be entirely counterproductive. However, we do need to have a strategy to create the space for that person to do that in alignment with the needs to keep climate change in check so the species they are hunting are able to persist.
Senator Patterson: I’m glad I don’t have to tell the hunter in Nunavut that he must go back to dogs because I don’t know how feasible that is. The truth is that dogs need protein, and there would be a significant impact in some regions with threatened caribou herds if we went back to dogs.
I’m sure you would agree that pricing carbon is currently the best strategy to reduce reliance and fossil fuels. The current carbon pricing regime for Nunavut that’s scheduled to go into effect next year does not exempt gasoline or home heating fuel from carbon pricing. Now this is in a jurisdiction with the highest cost of living and the highest unemployment in the country.
Are you saying we can create emission space for activities which are important, like keeping a home warm in the coldest climate in the country? Are you saying that the carbon pricing regime in Nunavut should exempt gasoline —which is needed for harvesting healthy, country food — and fossil fuel which unfortunately we must still rely on to heat our homes in our small communities? In places like that, you can make a case that activities are important. We have communities of under 200 people who are maintaining sovereignty for Canada on Ellesmere Island and Grise Fiord. Should the carbon pricing regime in Nunavut exempt gasoline or home heating fuel from increased pricing?
Mr. Favaro: I want to be careful with that question because I’m not making the carbon pricing regime for Nunavut or any other jurisdiction. I’m speaking to you as a conservation scientist and member of this advisory council for the strategy. As somebody on that advisory council, I made recommendations to what the strategy should look like and some of the targets that should be on there. I put a lot of work into, for example, talking about policies which would promote electric vehicle adoptions or things like that.
You are correct that I would support carbon pricing in a general sense. There have been tonnes of economic analysis which says this is the most efficient way to achieve emissions reduction. Jurisdiction by jurisdiction must make decisions about how to implement that policy. You would be in a better position than I to say what that should like in a jurisdiction like Nunavut. I’m from the South,and I don’t share those experiences or that history. I would never want to state what I would want to impose or what should be considered important.
Senator Patterson: You said no jurisdiction should be exempt.
Mr. Favaro: Yes, but Canada is a country. What I mean by that is we are all in this together.
Here is an example Nunavut can look at, which I feel comfortable talking about; renewable energy projects. The costs are not borne just by the people from Nunavut. There is an opportunity to look at diesel generation, which is expensive and could be offset in some places with wind energy and battery storage as well. That pays for itself in a reasonable period simply because the cost of diesel is so high.
We need to get creative here and figure out where the opportunities are to improve people’s lives and opportunities for win-win for the economy and environment. That would be my suggestion.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
Senator Seidman: Thank you very much for your presentations.
Mr. Favaro, if I might ask you specifically about the Sustainable Development Advisory Council, I presume you represent Newfoundland, is that correct?
Mr. Favaro: Correct.
Senator Seidman: In this act, there is an amendment to the mandate of the council and that says the mandate of Sustainable Development Advisory Council is to advise the minister on any matter related to sustainable development that is referred to it by the minister.
What has the advisory council been advising on to date? What do you see those changes now to be based on an amendment to the mandate?
Mr. Favaro: I can speak about our activities on that.
I was invited to do this a few years ago. The chief activity was to advise on the sustainable development strategy itself, so we were presented with a draft document. I don’t recall the specific date. The draft document was aspirational, it had few targets and they weren’t quantitative.
There were teleconferences, all remote work, and as a council, we got together essentially on the teleconferences and talked about different aspects of this draft plan.
Over the course of a few meetings and then some independent work, we put together written recommendations and they were submitted. To be honest, that was the last I heard of it. We sent in our recommendations, and then a while later a plan came out.
I was not privy to seeing how they took our recommendations and put them in the plan. I saw a lot of what people submitted, and there were things reflected in the final document that were not in the draft. It was generally being more quantitative about things because there were targets in the plan out now and there has been follow-up reports. I don’t remember everything in all of them, but in a general sense, that was our chief activity. I can’t speak to what anyone else on the panel has done. That was my own experience with it.
Senator Seidman: You say there were things reflected in terms of receiving your advice?
Mr. Favaro: Yes.
Senator Seidman: But you and the other members of the advisory council had no feedback loop, so it was not that you gave advice and there were discussions and then you were involved in actively reworking the plan?
Mr. Favaro: I was not. I don’t want to say for certain nobody was. I never picked up a pen and actually changed the plan itself. I submitted feedback and we talked about it online, but I never wrote any part of the strategy.
Senator Seidman: How does the council actually work? Do you meet?
Mr. Favaro: It’s electronic. We never actually met face-to-face. It was all teleconferences and electronic meetings.
Senator Seidman: With the minister?
Mr. Favaro: The minister was present on one call for a very short period of time. She was supposed to meet with us remotely but I think she had a meeting come up. Primarily, it was with the staff involved in the council who corralled and got us to do the work.
Senator Seidman: How do you expect your role to change with this amendment? Has that been discussed on the council?
Mr. Favaro: I have never been advised in any way as to how my role may or may not change as a result of this bill.
Senator Seidman: So, in fact, now it says:
. . . to advise the Minister on any matter related to sustainable development that is referred to it by the Minister.
In the past, you don’t know if what you discussed or what you were asked to advise on was referred to you by the minister?
Mr. Favaro: That’s right. We never had any direct contact in that way. That seems to be an expansion of the role of the advisory council, at least relative to my understanding.
Senator Seidman: Do you have some expectation about the kind of advice you will be asked to give in the future?
Mr. Favaro: I have no expectation whatsoever. I’m here to serve. If I am asked a question, I will do my best to either answer it myself or find out who would be best positioned to do that.
Senator Seidman: Do you have a period of service? Is there a contract? How does this work? How do you get selected?
Mr. Favaro: I believe my Member of Parliament put my name forward for it. I don’t know exactly how the selection process was done. I recall I had to send in a CV. This is a few years ago, so I’m trying to remember exactly what happened. I believe I sent in a CV and then I was appointed. I don’t know what the process was behind the scenes about how I got to that.
Senator Seidman: You have no terms of reference or term limits or anything like that?
Mr. Favaro: The terms of reference were that we would be providing feedback on the sustainable development strategy itself. That is what I was told we were going to be doing. As far as how long that appointment was, it might have been in the fine print somewhere, but I don’t recall what it said.
Senator Seidman: Do you have some sense that your advice should be made public? As an advisory council, if you give advice to the minister, should that be made public?
Mr. Favaro: I would be comfortable with that, absolutely.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentations.
I’m glad we’re having this dialogue. I know we don’t have a choice and that climate change is here. I know that salmon have gotten into the Arctic area and that’s not their normal breeding ground, so their breeding grounds have changed. Change is going on in the world and we don’t have a choice; human beings created this mess. We have a responsibility to look at how we bring change. The sustainability of life and the ecosystem of this planet has been under discussion for many years. It goes back 20 or 30 years.
How do you think this act can accomplish the rapid progress that is now required? The economy plays a big part and it seems that economic development is driving this. I asked the commissioner when enough will be enough, because there is so much pollution from economic activity, and the world is already scary. I come from a community where only diesel fuel is used because it’s isolated. There is no electricity there, and this conversation has not reached many of the populations.
How do you think that we can work with you to make this change happen?
Mr. Favaro: Your point about time is a really good one. Time is ticking. The basic chemistry of climate change has been understood since about 1850. Every president since John F. Kennedy has made a statement about climate change and the concern it has caused, so this has been around for awhile.
Had action been taken in the 1970s and 1980s when people started to understand the scope of the challenge, we would have had a nice, smooth transition from one type of economy to another. What we face now is a double black diamond ski hill where we are careening down an emissions curve while trying to achieve targets. Maybe we will meet them and maybe we won’t, but I hope we do.
I would like to frame economic development as a tool. How can this act promote sustainable development? The most important thing is how it is implemented. It is really taking seriously this concept that sustainable development is an incredibly important tool for our country. We need to grow and push through this and build industries and approaches to electricity generation and electrification that will allow us to have a prosperous future. If we don’t have an intact economy, then we are going to have trouble decarbonizing as well.
My response to those who hold this office and some power in this country is to figure out what levers you can pull to promote these types of things. It is all there. The tools are out there to make the transition but it’s a matter of figuring out how to do it in a way that reflects the urgency of the matter.
When we decide to do something, it can be done quite quickly. The northernmost wind farm in the world is at 70 degrees north in Norway. It is right on the coast and was built in 2002. It took six months to build it and it is 20 megawatts in size, which is what you would need to power Iqaluit, for example. This has been done, we have learned lessons from it and Canadian leadership can play a role in making this happen.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. I appreciate it. It’s good to hear your contributions and I hope that we can put some of it to good use.
I think we all understand that we need to do something, but as Senator Massicotte said, there are a lot of bumps on that black diamond hill before starting down the hill and we figure out how to do it.
When you talked about acceptable release of greenhouse gases to continue our lifestyle, would you consider the creation of LNG in British Columbia to actually replace the coal that Asian countries mostly use to generate electricity? I know they are changing a little bit, but it is such a little bit compared to their population that it’s almost nothing. They use a huge amount of coal. Would that be an acceptable thing?
And why would we be penalized as a country to help someone get away from using coal for the generation of electricity?
Mr. Favaro: I’m not sure I see us being penalized unless, for example, you are referring to us not building an LNG plant, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Would I support LNG? As a member advising the Sustainable Development Advisory Council, I don’t want to say that one industry or another should be favoured. That is a decision that politicians will have to make, as governments will have to decide.
Senator Neufeld: I’m just looking for your advice. I’m not asking you to write the plan or say this is what we have to do. I’m asking for advice, because that’s what you do.
Mr. Favaro: By 2050, natural gas consumption has to be reduced by 74 per cent, according to the IPCC. It is better than coal and those are the facts that are simply on the table. How we can bridge that gap, I think, is a political decision.
Senator Neufeld: Okay. Something else that has bothered me for a long time, long before I got here, because I’ve worked on these kinds of things for a good part of my life. I travelled across Canada with people from our committee and visited a number of universities across Canada: UNBC in Prince George, McGill in Montreal, Dalhousie in Halifax, McMaster in Hamilton and a college in New Brunswick. Some pretty significant universities.
I asked what universities are doing to replace natural gas or fossil fuels in total because they are the building blocks for many things. You talk about electric cars, well, let me tell you, there is a huge amount of natural gas and fossil fuels go into the construction of electric care: plastics, steel, all of those things. It’s a building block. The clothes you are wearing are probably no different from the ones I’m wearing. If you didn’t have natural gas, you may not have that type of clothing. It is a building block for thousands of products we use every day.
When I asked that question — because we would meet first with the professors and then with students to find out their thoughts — no university was doing that. No university in Canada that I visited, which are significant universities that are trying to figure out batteries — I mean, it’s nice you talk about batteries and wind energy. The building blocks of that is mostly fossil fuel. When do we start doing that? All those universities talked about, well, we want to advance how you build wind energy and solar energy and solar panels. I appreciate that; that’s good. But the building blocks that are needed for all of those things, not a single university that I visited or a single professor told me they actually have programs that are doing that.
As a young person, I’m going to depend on you. I’m getting to the age where I’m going to depend on you to look after me on those things. What can we do to change that, other than to say sustainable development?
Mr. Favaro: There are about 29 threads to that question. We will have to have you to Memorial. I didn’t hear you mention Memorial University as part of the universities you visited.
Senator Neufeld: I would go there too, and would probably get the same answer I got in the other places.
Mr. Favaro: I’m based at a university and am keenly aware of what you are talking about because, as a fisheries scientist, we do research at sea, and that consumes fossil fuels in the boats we take to sea. One of the articles I wrote in 2014 called for a carbon code of conduct for science. If we are asking others to conserve their carbon footprint, we, as a discipline, should be trying to lead in that as a well. I’m certainly on board with that idea.
As for fossil fuels being a building block, that’s a great point. I think we should be cherishing our fossil fuels and using them where they need to be. Building plastics is a thing we need to use fossil fuels for. Burning them in gas tanks. Well, the technology exists today to stop doing that.
There are loads of life cycle analyses on things like electric cars where it has been shown repeatedly that even if you are using relatively polluting electricity, these things, over their lifespan, produce fewer emissions. It’s a good technology and something we can work towards.
I agree with you that universities should be leading more, and this is an opportunity to put into your study, to have some sort of mandate that universities receiving federal funding participate in this in a meaningful way, getting programs going to train the next generation.
One of my favourite NGOs is called Iron & Earth. It’s a group that is built for oil sands workers to train them on how to enter the renewable energy space. It is an NGO based in Alberta, and they have an East Coast branch in Newfoundland and Labrador, getting people on board with this and building these industries of the future that will be essential to leading this transition.
We do have a very well-trained workforce that could switch into this, and that’s a huge opportunity there.
Senator Neufeld: Thank you.
Senator Cordy: Thank you very much to both of you for very engaging conversations. I would like to go back to Senator McCallum’s comment that this conversation about climate change has not reached all populations, and your comment, Mr. Favaro, that this conversation should have been taken 30 or 40 years ago, then it would have been a much smoother transition. Our generations are now looking at making changes fairly quickly.
Because it’s happening so quickly, the data we are looking at is often outdated six months or a year later let alone after it has been peer reviewed and published. We’re getting data that is two or three years old and relying on that when it is outdated.
I live in Nova Scotia, and those of us on the east, west and north coasts, when you are living by the water, you see the effects dramatically. We see our shorelines decreasing, we see the Isthmus of Chignecto, connecting Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, eroding. Nova Scotia could become an island if it continues eroding.
We used to hear from Senator Watt, who lives in the North now. Years ago he was talking about changes he was seeing and the increasing warmer period and the herds moving to places they had not moved before.
The younger generation is certainly more involved and interested in climate change. I’m speaking generally, but how do we broaden the connections, going back to Senator McCallum’s point? We all have to be engaged and connected to understand the intergenerational aspect of this, the equity, what we are leaving to future generations. Its quasi-related to the bill, I know, but it’s an important question.
Mr. Jungcurt: As maybe an answer to several aspects of the questions asked, I would like to encourage the committee to look at targets a little differently, as to the way they are in the SDGs and the way they are supposed to be integrated into the federal sustainable development strategies. We often think about targets as something that I must do and I can’t achieve because, when I look at the trajectory that I am on now, there is no way I can bridge that gap.
But I encourage them to be looked at more as a challenge. Internationally we have a document that describes the world we want coming out of the Rio+20 discussions. A recommendation from the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development recommended that we do the same exercise in Canada asking, “What is the Canada we want?”
In the Canada we want in 2030 — and I will take a slightly different example than climate change — but do we want food insecurity to still be a problem? Or do we want to achieve a Canada with zero hunger? If the answer to that is, yes, we do want to achieve zero hunger, immediately we will start looking at Northern communities because we have the data, and we know that is where there are problems with food insecurity.
If that becomes the target, what is our interim step in 2025? Do we want to go halfway, a third of the way, or do we say let’s do everything so that by 2025 we have already addressed this problem? When you set a target like that, it is easy to say let’s look at the costs for a moment, and we see that the costs might be prohibitively high at this point. But with that knowledge we can engage universities and other actors with knowledge about this problem. Can you help us bring costs down because we’ve agreed that we want to solve this? We have ended the discussion on whether or not we want to do this. We have agreed to do this.
That’s the power of the bottom-up principle in the SDG framework and the Agenda 2030. The momentum, once it is there, creates space to think creatively about new solutions and brings to the forefront technologies that already exist. Getting to a fossil fuel-free energy provision in Northern communities might be a question of scaling up the right technologies to a point where they become affordable. And “affordable,” of course that is not on the open market, but it is in the context that those communities depend, in a lot of areas, on support and a way of balancing the conditions of life they are facing so that their solutions might actually become possible.
Once they are there, within Canada, it might be a small percentage of the population that is affected, but globally access to electricity and clean energy is a massive problem; so once there is a proof of concept that it works in Canada, Canada can take the lead in bringing those solutions to the rest of the world.
Mr. Favaro: On that point, I recommend looking at what we did for the Caninfra Challenge, a very recent competition for pitches for infrastructure projects that would be transformational for the country.
Our pitch, called IceGrid, was on that exact topic and we ended up winning the challenge. Not everything has to cost money. For example, Quebec has a rule that every new house has to have a 240-volt outlet in the garage. It only cost a couple of dollars to put in and allows you to charge an electric vehicle in a reasonable amount of time. We don’t have to get everyone on board for everything; some things are just smart regulation. For car dealerships, if you’re selling electric vehicles, you should have an electric vehicle in your showrooms so that someone can actually buy it. If you go to a Chevy dealership, they won’t always be carrying the Bolt, which is their EV. Regulations that not everyone is on board for can have a big impact.
Mr. Jungcurt: One encouraging piece of advice. Last month, 8 per cent of Canadian new car sales were electric. Canada was second after Norway, which has ridiculously high subsidies for doing that. This is happening when there is a high price premium on electric cars. We know that battery costs will come down and in two or three years, they will be on par. Things are happening and solutions are coming; there is space to act and make progress.
Senator Mockler: Looking at the global capital plug-in EVs, Norway has more EVs per capita than any other country. In absolute numbers, Norway’s population of 5 million represents 1 per cent of Europe’s population, has the largest stock of EVs in Europe and is fourth in the world after China, the United States and Japan.
What should we do to promote more EVs in Canada? I like some of your ideas; others I question. Tell me what you think of the likelihood of — Canada is a leader in it and Atlantic Canada is leading the charge — small nuclear plants. And I’d like to have both of your opinions on that, please.
Mr. Jungcurt: On the adoption of EVs, I think the approach that has been shown to be most effective is to make people try electric cars. It’s called the “butts in seats” approach. I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to drive a fully electric car, but my experience was once you’ve driven an electric car for a couple of hours, you don’t want to go back to anything else. It changes the experience so much that your priorities also change. You see that there’s a lot more to gain from this transformation than just a reduction in emissions.
On the nuclear question, coming back to what I said earlier about the targets, my preference is to be !“technology agnostic” when in search of solutions. The problem is that it’s hard, sometimes, to estimate all risks associated with new technology. Nuclear energy has a long history of discussion on what the risks are and how we address the residual risk that sometimes major catastrophes do happen. There’s a frightening statistic — I don’t know who came up with this but somebody said — there’s one major accident for every 4,000 reactor years or so. But when you divide that by the number of nuclear power plants in the world, you come up with the number 25. And that is exactly the time difference between Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl.
So there is a concern about how you address residual risk. If you compare it to the risks of climate change and air pollution, a lot more people are affected by pollution from coal-fired power plants. You can put it in perspective, but it is a very difficult question to address and it should not be forgotten.
I’m not pro or against that kind of solution and I’d encourage continued research into that. I’d also like to face and look at what the reality is regarding development of renewal energy and batteries. We may, with the same amount of money on research, make a lot more advances in getting renewal energies suitable for all situations than getting the downsized nuclear power plants to a position where they can scale up that they will actually make a dent in the problem.
Mr. Favaro: I have nothing to add on the nuclear question. I think you did a great job summarizing that.
I do want to offer to give you a ride in my 2012 Chevrolet Bolt, which is a plug-in, hybrid electric vehicle. We own it in one of the most hostile provinces in Canada to own an electric vehicle: St. John’s, Newfoundland. If you go to plugshare.com and look up the plug stations, there are almost none in our province. It is a real shame. What can we do to promote adoption? Let me illustrate a scenario.
If I wanted to have a pure electric car, not a plug-in hybrid, that allows me to drive across the island of Newfoundland, I would have to buy a Tesla 100-kilowatt-hour car, which is about $130,000. However, if there were level 3 fast charging stations every 200 kilometres along the road, which would cost the government a couple hundred thousand dollars to do, we could buy a Chevy Bolt that is $45,000. More important than subsidizing people to buy electric cars — because I recognize there are issues with that — is to spend a small amount of targeted money building out the charging infrastructure for the cars. That does more to make it cheap and easy for a person to adopt the vehicle than to subsidize the car itself.
I’m happy to give you a ride if you ever come to St. John’s. I am also happy to give any of the senators here the data on my car, because we have a tracker that records every single kilometre we have driven. We know how much of it is electric versus gas with the temperature. We drive around in St. John’s where there is a foot of snow sometimes, and you can see how much it costs to operate it. You’ll see it is a really positive technology and there is a lot of market research that shows once people go in that direction — I would never buy another car I couldn’t plug in.
The Deputy Chair: We want to thank you for your testimony and taking our questions.
We are continuing our study of Bill C-57. For the second segment, I am pleased to welcome, from the Office of the Auditor General, Julie Gelfand, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development; Andrew Hayes, Senior General Counsel; and Heather Miller, Principal.
[Translation]
Julie Gelfand, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Mr. Deputy Chair, it’s a pleasure for us to be here today to share our views on Bill C-57, an Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act. I’m joined by Andrew Hayes, Senior General Counsel, and Heather Miller, Principal Director, who are senior colleagues from the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.
As Canada’s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, I feel a special responsibility to support the committee’s review of the bill. My remarks are informed by our office’s 20 years of audit work on sustainable development. First, let me state that we’re pleased to see that the purpose of the proposed amendments is to provide a federal sustainable development strategy that makes decision making related to sustainable development more transparent and subject to accountability. In the past, the act referred to decision making as it related to the environment only. However, sustainable development is about decision making that integrates economic, social and environmental considerations.
I would expect the federal sustainable development strategy and departmental sustainable development strategies to focus on implementing the United Nations’ sustainable development goals until 2030. Canada has made a commitment to implement the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and the federal sustainable development strategy is one of the best tools available to the federal government to help it achieve that goal.
Our office was happy to see that changes were made to the proposed bill that would authorize the Treasury Board to establish policies and issue directives relating to the sustainable development impact of government operations. We had recommended these changes to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development in December 2017.
We recommend that the committee consider whether an amendment can be made to the new subsection 10(3) of the act, to authorize the referral of the federal sustainable development strategy to any relevant standing committees. We’re making this recommendation because sustainable development covers social, economic and environmental issues. It concerns a wide variety of committees, and not only the committee that normally considers environment and sustainable development matters.
[English]
Our office supports the proposed amendments that will require significantly more federal organizations to prepare, implement and report each year on their sustainable development strategies. We see this as a positive step toward the integration of sustainable development considerations across the entire government.
We were also pleased to see that organizations would be required to contribute to drafting the federal sustainable development strategy and developing the federal government’s progress report. We also support the proposed amendment to require each target within the strategy to be measurable and include a time frame. This addresses a concern that we had raised in previous reports on this topic.
The proposed purpose and additional principles outlined in the new section 5 of the bill would provide tools for my auditors to use in their work to hold organizations accountable for their sustainable development responsibilities.
With these proposed amendments, I will continue to fulfil my statutory role of monitoring sustainable development strategies. However, at this time it is not clear how many organizations we will have to audit. We know the number could increase significantly. We expect that it could change from the current 27 to possibly over a hundred. The committee should be aware that this change would have resource implications for the office.
We also have some concerns that important consequential amendments to the Auditor General Act have not been considered and our legal counsel will be happy to answer any questions on this issue because I can’t. I’m not the lawyer.
As auditors, we support the idea of strengthening accountability for results. One way to achieve this would be for the bill to specifically require deputy heads or ministers to acknowledge their accountability by signing off on the completeness and accuracy of their progress reports on sustainable development activities.
Another way, which was discussed at length during the House of Commons committee’s study of the bill, would be to incorporate accountability for sustainable development results in the performance agreements of deputy heads. We note that the section on performance-based contracts in the current bill would be repealed with the proposed changes. This would result in a lost opportunity to hold deputy heads accountable through their performance pay.
[Translation]
Mr. Deputy Chair, I commend the committee for its work and I hope that it will find my suggestions helpful.
This concludes my opening remarks. We would be happy to answer the committee members’ questions. Thank you.
[English]
Senator Woo: Thank you, commissioner. It is nice to see you again. To your colleagues, thank you for your presence at our hearing. You made the connection between the bill and its contribution to Canada’s commitments under Agenda 2030, and you spoke favourably about how this bill will support our efforts. But we’ve had some discussion in previous hearings, and also with the minister a few days ago, about whether the Agenda 2030, the SDGs, are sufficiently reflected in the bill itself as a principle, an opening framework, or even more explicitly as a set of targets so the link between what’s in the bill and the SDGs is more organic and closely connected.
Could you comment on that issue and whether you think the bill is sufficiently fleshed out to be a useful tool for Canada to work towards its Agenda 2030 targets?
Ms. Gelfand: You can look at this two ways. You can include the SDGs within the bill if you want, but the SDGs go to 2030. At some point, you would have to remove them. The way the bill is written now, it seems to me it’s quite clear the areas of meeting international obligations is there. It’s clear to me I can hold the departments accountable for implementing the SDGs within the context.
It’s really a question of whether you want it in the bill and then at some point you’ll have to take it out, and based on what I see in the text of the bill, I believe that I can hold government departments responsible for how they will be implementing the SDGs within the context of the bill as it is currently written. I’m satisfied I can do that work.
Senator Woo: That’s very clear. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Mockler: Thank you, Ms. Gelfand, for your presentation and for the professionalism that you and your team have demonstrated.
[English]
When we look at the framework and the pathway to get there in government, can you explain to us what kind of recommendations we can make to have deputy heads accountable?
Ms. Gelfand: In my opening statement, I gave two potential options. One is that you could require deputy heads to sign off on the completeness and accuracy of their progress reports. In the case of our performance audits, we ask the deputy heads to sign off that they’ve provided us all the information and that what is in the audit is factually correct. We already do that in our audits. You could put that right in the act.
The second way would be to tie the deputy heads’ performance pay, or their contracts with the clerk, to their sustainable development activities. My understanding is the Honourable John Godfrey actually pushed for this and it was in the original act. But the government interpreted this to be focused almost only on procurement activities and not on all of their activities.
I believe Mr. Godfrey felt that it should be part of the performance pay contract that each deputy minister negotiates with the clerk at the beginning of each year. That is a second way that we have recommended.
Senator Mockler: We’re looking at procurement, I understand that, but it’s not there anymore. What are the other factors? Can you be more precise as to the other factors that government should consider for their deputy heads?
Ms. Gelfand: What other factors?
Senator Mockler: Yes.
Ms. Gelfand: That’s difficult for me to comment on. What I’m commenting on is that one of the factors that should be considered in the deputies’ performance agreement with the clerk is their contribution to and achievement of the sustainable development goals that they’ve put into their departmental sustainable development strategies.
Senator Mockler: Then I want to go to another aspect of Bill C-57 and the monitoring of it when you look at the objectives that we want to give ourselves. I’m going to talk a bit to remind us about the Montreal Protocol, the first global environmental issue with potentially disastrous consequences that Canada has addressed. Canada has been a leader in it and, as a matter of fact, the Prime Minister of the day, Brian Mulroney, who was there to sign has been labelled as the greenest Prime Minister in the world for Canada.
Canada played both a scientific and a geopolitical role in successfully addressing the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer with the Montreal protocol, signed in 1987. Canada established a technology panel and determined whether there was a real pathway to eliminate the CFCcausing the problem. I have to admit that at that time, First Nations were at the table with other stakeholders. In the program, Canada did not put a tax on deodorants. It used regulations and incentives and it worked. The United Nations said it worked and they copied Canada.
Do you have any comments when we look at a carbon tax in Canada?
Ms. Gelfand: Unfortunately, I’m not prepared to talk about the carbon tax at this point. We will be auditing the implementation of the carbon tax. It is a federal government commitment to implement it and we will be looking at it from an audit perspective, but that hasn’t been done at this point. I really can’t make any comment on that issue.
Senator Mockler: So today we’re in the present. Do you think we can meet our objectives of 2030?
Ms. Gelfand: I have said consistently, over the whole time that I’ve been commissioner, that every audit we’ve done shows Canada will have a lot of work to do in order to meet the 2030 target. We also did a collaborative audit with the provinces and territories. We found that many of the provinces and territories did not have a 2030 target. It will be difficult for Canada to meet that target but will continue to audit whether Canada is going to achieve that target.
Senator Mockler: I agree and I think you should do that. You mentioned that “we have a lot of work to do.” Can you expand on what that means?
Ms. Gelfand: Canada has produced a Pan-Canadian Framework. If you look at the numbers in the pan-Canadian framework and its own estimates, it still shows a delta. If everything in the Pan-Canadian Framework is implemented, there’s a gap between where we have to achieve the 2030 target and where that Pan-Canadian Framework will get us to.
My understanding is the government will be implementing other measures that are not in the Pan-Canadian Framework, such as the Greening Government Strategy, on which I just appeared in front of another committee. I understand that, through some of their other activities, their plan is to reach the 2030 target. My job is to tell you whether they will or not, and up to now in all of our audits we are concerned about whether the government will be able to do that.
Senator Mockler: Thank you. I’m looking at a graph here that is from the documents of Environment and Climate Change Canada, and it shows Canada’s emissions of greenhouse gases from 1990 to 2016. The graph tells me that it really started to dip down from 2006, 2007 and 2008, and it’s really coming down from 2014 to 2018. Is that accurate?
Ms. Gelfand: The last time I audited climate change mitigation and whether we were reducing our greenhouse gases was in 2017, so I can’t make any comment as we have not reviewed that information.
Senator Mockler: Thank you.
Senator Patterson: Thank you for being here with us again.
I’d like to ask about section 10.1 of the act, which says:
The Treasury Board may establish policies or issue directives applicable to one or more of the designated entities in relation to the sustainable development impact of their operations.
I asked the minister the other day about the question of consequences for departments not fulfilling their obligations under this bill. She talked about shining the light of transparency and about your important role in providing independent appraisal. You told us the other day, on another matter, that government departments are not always fulfilling their obligations.
Could tell us about your views of the Treasury Board’s powers in this act? Do you have confidence that Treasury Board is going to work with you to police non-performing departments?
And these policies or directives, how would they work? Could you give an example of how a Treasury Board policy or directive could impact a department?
Ms. Gelfand: Yes. We actually support the inclusion of this within the act, primarily because Treasury Board is a gatekeeper. Everybody has to go through Treasury Board. Every policy commitment and action related to money has to go through the Treasury Board, and the Treasury Board, therefore, has capacity to force departments to perform or fill out certain criteria, such as doing the strategic environmental assessment, for example. They can set out how departments have to provide that information to the cabinet. We actually do support this. We think it will provide an extra layer.
I would say it’s better in Treasury Board and in a central agency than it is in Environment and Climate Change Canada because they don’t have the same sway. I don’t want to call it power, but it’s almost a power over the other departments that a central agency has. We do think this is an improvement and it’s better to be in Treasury Board. They can set directives that the departments have to fulfil or they reject the submission. So I believe it’s good that it’s in Treasury Board.
In the area of policing, yes, we will continue to do our work of auditing the departmental sustainable development strategies. We have indicated that there will be many more of them. We are looking now at 27 of them. The deputy minister told you a day or two ago there would be 90 departments, and there could be even more depending on what cabinet decides. That will have resource implications, but we will be continuing to audit them. And we made the suggestions that you include or consider that the deputy head has to perhaps sign-off on the accuracy of their sustainable development progress report or that you tie their performance pay with the clerk to their sustainable development activities and their performance.
Those are all ways that we can try to ensure that the departments achieve their goals that they set out in their sustainable development strategies.
Senator Patterson: That sounds good, tying salaries to performance. Is that in this bill before us? Are you recommending it should be in the bill?
Ms. Gelfand: It is not in the bill, and we are recommending that it should be in or that you consider it. There was something in the former bill around this issue, but the government interpreted it as being only around procurement activities. So the Honourable John Godfrey did promote this idea of it being part of the performance agreements.
Andrew Hayes, Senior General Counsel, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: When the Honourable John Godfrey appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development of the House of Commons in 2016 talking about the very same act, when asked about performance-based contracts with the Government of Canada as mentioned in section 12 of the current act, he said that in English what that means is civil servants above a certain rank will have annual performance reviewed. In Part 1 of the considerations, it will be how much they adhere to targets in the Federal Sustainable Development Act. I note that when he said “civil servants above a certain rank,” he was not limiting that to the deputy minister. It could also have been senior officials, assistant deputy ministers for example, but this is clearly not how section 12 has been interpreted.
Senator Patterson: Section 12 in the previous act has been repealed.
Ms. Gelfand: That’s correct.
Senator Patterson: By Bill C-57.
Mr. Hayes: If passed the way it is now, yes, it will be repealed.
Senator Patterson: Are you recommending an amendment?
Mr. Hayes: We are recommending consideration for whether this is an accountability tool that would be useful to have in the act, to have it remain in the act.
Ms. Gelfand: We made two recommendations around accountability. One is that you could put this back into the act, make sure the government does not read it as related to only procurement activities but that performance pay be linked to the achieving of sustainable development goals. The second idea we have proposed is that you consider enforcing the deputy ministers to sign-off that their sustainable development strategy progress reports are accurate, complete, et cetera. Those are two different accountability mechanisms that you could consider.
Senator Patterson: Okay, because frankly — I’ll just make a comment — in my experience in government, Treasury Boards are very good and effective when departments come asking for money or perhaps approval for policy changes. But they don’t have a reputation, generally, for having the capacity to follow up and see how those policies have been implemented.
I have a closing question for you. A number of departments and agencies are expanding two or three times. Do you have the resources to do the work?
Ms. Gelfand: We are concerned about the issue of resources. It will increase the amount of work we have to do in this area. The Auditor General has made a request to get additional resources, but I believe he’ll be bringing this forward through the Public Accounts Committee.
Senator Patterson: Thank you.
Senator McCallum: Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to follow up on Senator Mockler’s and Senator Patterson’s questions about making the deputy heads accountable. I have worked in the government for 30 years and there are so many employees that are underneath the deputy minister, deputy heads, and a lot of them don’t understand what needs to be done. I’ll use health as an example. They don’t practice what the deputy minister tells them. They are looking at cost containment versus culturally appropriate health care. So it seems like you’re penalizing the deputy heads, but you are not doing anything to make all those employees accountable as well, and is that possible to do? Because they continue to remain; they’ll say well we did this or we didn’t do it, and they are still working there, and the same thing is happening. I think that’s what you were trying to get at. So what recommendations would you make to take that into account?
Ms. Gelfand: When we talk about making the deputy head responsible, what the Honourable John Godfrey was suggesting was making civil servants at a certain level and above accountable. For example, it could be the director general, the assistant deputy minister. It doesn’t just hold for the deputy minister. You could bring that down to a lower level; directors and up, for example, could all be held accountable for those. That’s one way of doing it.
Senator McCallum: I’m talking about the employees, the clerks that are working at the ground level. There are many of them and they actually dictate what happens, they are not held accountable and there is no sanctioning power to say, “you are not following protocol so you’re gone.”
Ms. Gelfand: I would say that’s quite difficult within the federal civil service.
Mr. Hayes: I would say that performance management is a way that we could achieve that kind of accountability. That would have to be tied to prioritization of the sustainable development aspects of FSDA, for example, and create motivation for leadership to set the frame for all of their employees and hold them accountable through performance management.
Senator McCallum: Has that worked?
Ms. Gelfand: In the area of sustainable development, no, it has not worked. To be honest, these organizations are huge. Federal government organizations have thousands of employees but, for example, I believe the clerk put a focus on mental health issues and that got into each deputy minister. Every deputy head had something related to dealing with mental health issues, and that can infiltrate the rest of organization.
They often talk about tone at the top and whatever the top person is held accountable for, they spread that down through the organization. It doesn’t guarantee that the front line clerk will do the right thing at the right time, but I don’t know of any other mechanism except performance management.
Senator McCallum: If they are the ones driving the system it seems like you are penalizing the top people, and they can’t do it themselves; it’s the clerks.
Ms. Gelfand: But they can demand that the next in line achieve those goals, and then the next in line can demand and it can go all the way down. For example, in the area of mental health, you can get it right down to the clerk where their performance agreement with their boss includes that. It can. I don’t know if it works. I’m not an expert on that. We don’t have that person around the table here to tell you that.
The Deputy Chair: I want to give the table notice that we are going to have a shorter meeting today because we will go to an in camera meeting at quarter to ten. There will only be a couple more questions. However, I have a question for you.
It is regarding section 5 of the act. It addresses the principles that must be considered in developing sustainable development strategies. This was substantially amended to include a list of specific values for consideration, including the principle of sustainable development, which is a continually evolving concept that the internalization of costs and intergenerational equity must be considered.
Can you give the table an example of how intergenerational equity will be measured in developing federal sustainable development strategies? How much weight will be given to this, in light of this and other competing factors?
Ms. Gelfand: I can speak to these principles generally in the sense that these principles will be turned into “audit speak” — turned into criteria under which we can then hold the departments accountable. We will be looking at the various definitions of intergenerational equity. It’s defined here — it’s about meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs — and we will be turning those into criteria against which we will audit the departmental sustainable development strategy progress reports and the FSDS.
There are the precautionary principles and a whole series of principles. I didn’t grow up in the audit world, but my audit people know how to take these words and develop specific criteria against which we can measure. That’s the job of the audit office.
We were pleased to see quite a big suite of principles we can use as audit criteria when we audit this area.
Senator Cordy: Thank you for being here again. It’s always helpful to hear your opinions.
I’m going back to the comment about being more specific as to the committee that should be doing the five-year review. I don’t have the bill; I just have the legislative summary before me. It says:
The bill adds a new provision requiring review of the act by a parliamentary committee, House of Commons or Senate, or a joint committee of the House of Commons and Senate.
It’s not specific; it just says “relating to sustainable development.” Did you want it to be more specific than that? To me, that’s pretty broad. In fact, when I questioned the minister, I thought it might be a little too broad.
Ms. Gelfand: The way it’s written in there, I must say is quite broad. In our opening statement, we were proposing that we be quite specific — potentially more specific — and refer the sustainable development strategy to more than just one committee. Typically, sustainable development is put in with the environment committee, but sustainable development is about integrating social, economic and environmental. It is our understanding that the sustainable development strategy should actually go to the Public Accounts Committee, and perhaps the Industry and the Social Committees. A much wider group of committees should be looking at the federal sustainable development strategy.
The idea is to integrate everything and not put it into a one column that is just the environment. It’s not just the environment; it’s about industry, economy, the social side of things and environmental things.
We actually think we should be more specific and refer the federal sustainable development strategy to more committees, not just to one.
Senator Cordy: But it isn’t just to one. It says “relating to sustainable development.” I guess we are arguing about what the definition of a committee that would deal with sustainable development. I like the broader aspect of it that you are saying, but should that be an amendment to the bill or in an observation where you talk about the definition? Might it be in the regulations?
Ms. Gelfand: It would be my advice that it be an amendment to the bill; that we list more specifically what committees the federal sustainable development strategy should be referred to. It should include the Public Accounts Committee and committees dealing with economic, social and environmental, of both the House and the Senate. That would be the best.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I think we’re out of time for a second round. I want to thank all three of you for your testimony this morning. I appreciate you coming. We will suspend for a few minutes to move to go in camera.
Ms. Gelfand: One last comment: We really need people to have a look at the consequential amendments to the Auditor General Act. The FSDA is linked to that act, and there are no consequential amendments. We need some of the lawmakers to worry about that.
The Deputy Chair: Noted, and thank you.
(The committee continued in camera.)