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Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources

Issue 2 - Evidence - November 29, 2007

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OTTAWA, Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 8:33 a.m. to examine and report on emerging issues related to its mandate.

[English]

Senator Tommy Banks (Chair) in the chair.

The Chair: Good morning. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. I am Senator Tommy Banks, from Alberta, and I have the honour of being the chair of this committee.

Before we begin, I would like to introduce the members of the committee. We have Senator Trenholme Counsell from New Brunswick, Senator Campbell from British Columbia, Senator Brown from Alberta, Senator Adams from Nunavut, Senator Cochrane from Newfoundland and Labrador, and Senator Spivak representing Manitoba.

Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming the Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Mr. Ronald Thompson. He is accompanied by Mr. Andrew Ferguson and Mr. Richard Arsenault, both principals in the Office of the Auditor General.

On October 30 of last year, pursuant to the Auditor General Act, the commissioner tabled his annual report in the Senate to the Speaker pro tempore. This report is divided into two chapters. The first deals with sustainable development on the part of government, and the second deals with environmental petitions on the part of the Office of the Auditor General.

Mr. Thompson, you have the floor.

Ronald Thompson, FCA, Interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: We are pleased to be here to respond to your questions. We are delighted to be here to discuss our 2007 annual report that was tabled in Parliament on October 30. The two issues the report covers are fundamental to the mandate Parliament gave the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development about 12 years ago. As Senator Banks mentioned, they are sustainable development strategies and environmental petitions.

[Translation]

The sustainable development strategies deal with issues that interest all Canadians — environmental protection, economic prosperity and social issues such as health.

These issues are interdependent. For instance, we are becoming increasingly aware that Canada's economic health depends on the health of the environment.

About ten years ago, Parliament asked the departments to prepare sustainable development strategies to encourage them to adopt policies and programs that take the environment into account.

The departments were to consider not only the economic and social aspects but also environmental protection in developing policies and managing their activities and programs.

[English]

We have been monitoring sustainable development strategies for more than a decade. Unfortunately, the ambition and momentum that existed in the early stages of sustainable development strategies have faded. The strategies, in our view, are a major disappointment.

We found little evidence in our audit this year that the strategies have improved or that they have encouraged departments to integrate in a substantive or meaningful way the protection of the environment with economic and social issues. This year, I call on the government to carry out a thorough review of what needs to be fixed. The review should result in a concrete action plan to ensure that the government delivers results that will meet Parliament's expectations.

I am very pleased that the government has agreed with our recommendation. The government has agreed to carry out a review and has made a commitment to complete it by October of next year. I certainly hope that this committee will take an active interest in this review. I believe that a separate hearing with Environment Canada, who will lead the review, to discuss the objectives, approach and work plan could be quite beneficial and helpful to the process.

There has really never been a better time to carry out a review like this. Canadians are highly interested in environmental issues and there is time for the government to adjust its approach before the next round of strategies is tabled in 2009.

[Translation]

The second chapter of my report, which deals with the environmental petitions, shows much more satisfactory results.

The petitions are letters sent to the Auditor General by Canadians who want to ask questions and voice their concerns to the federal departments.

The ministers are obliged to answer the letters in writing within 120 days. The commissioner is managing this process on behalf of the Auditor General.

Our retrospective study of the petitions shows that the petitioners appreciate this process, which provides them with a forum to express their concerns and ensures that they obtain a formal answer.

According to the petitioners and government officials, the petitions have had an impact on the way the government is managing certain environmental and sustainable development issues.

[English]

We also identified opportunities to improve the process, which include making Canadians much more aware of it. Environmental petitions, in our view, are a unique feature of our democracy. They contribute to public engagement, transparency and government accountability in environmental matters that are of concern to Canadians.

I would like to conclude my remarks this morning with a word or two about future work. In February of next year, we are planning to provide to Parliament with a status report that will include some 14 chapters that focus on whether the government has made satisfactory progress on issues that we have audited in the past, such as toxic substances, species at risk, contaminated sites and strategic environmental assessments.

It has been our experience that many parliamentarians find it useful when we provide them with a status report because it clearly points to areas where there has been insufficient progress since our original audits. If some of these chapters next February turn out to be of interest to this committee, we would be absolutely delighted to appear before the committee to discuss them.

Looking further ahead, we have audits just beginning that deal with issues such as air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, severe weather forecasting and water quality.

The Chair: Thank you. We have many questions for you.

[Translation]

Senator Nolin: Mr. Interim Commissioner, according to the numerous previous reports, you stated that the sustainable development strategies were a major disappointment. I do not know if you raised this point in your introductory remarks before I arrived. In your opinion, is there a glimmer of hope, or are we dealing with bureaucrats who are going to come up with all kinds of methods and arguments to shirk their responsibilities?

[English]

Mr. Thompson: I have always been accused of being an optimist, and I will continue to be one. There is considerable hope, more hope than we have seen in some time, for the sustainable energy process. Sustainable development strategies were introduced a decade ago. Talking about putting a new process into play in government perhaps was not well received. We were dealing with deficits and other matters at that time. That is behind us. Currently, the Canadian people are very concerned and aware of environmental issues. We can detect a bit of momentum in the government to address this. The government has agreed to re-examine the sustainable development strategy process to see if it cannot be made to work as originally intended. We have the interest of committees such as this one and they are riding herd on the government to ensure that this review is done properly. There is considerable room for hope; I am optimistic that we will see this process re-jigged and put back into shape.

Senator Nolin: I am sure there are examples to be followed by other administrations. Is there a model that we can follow should we want to isolate the good news and point the finger at those who exceed the expectations?

What are we doing about those who are definitely not respecting their responsibilities?

Mr. Thompson: That is a good question. We have been looking at sustainable development strategies on a department-by-department basis for nearly a decade. We have been comparing one with another and have seen that they have not improved as a result of that exercise. It is time for a more fundamental look at the whole process under which the strategies are developed and published every three years. Some elements currently missing in the process should be included in it.

For example, the Government of Canada does not have an overarching government-wide strategy for sustainable development. Yet, when you think of it, sustainable development is a government-wide issue and is not a department- by-department issue. We are hopeful that this review will examine whether the government could put in place an overall strategy. With such a strategy in place, the next step would be to back it up into individual departments. In that way, they would have something concrete to contribute to. Right now, they are working alone, in an uncoordinated, stovepipe fashion, which is not very wise. It is no wonder that individual departments pay no attention to these strategies: they do not know where they fit in terms of managing government. An overarching government-wide strategy will clarify where they fit and encourage departments to do them well.

There is another matter that we have mentioned to others over the last couple of years. Once government puts in place a better sustainable development strategy process with an overarching strategy, at least in part to start, it will be important to add to that process awards for good behaviour and strategies, as well as sanctions for those that are not so good. We are calling for the government to have a look at that when they do this review. How will this whole process work? How can it work? It needs to work with rewards and sanctions.

Senator Nolin: We understand that there are no sanctions.

Mr. Thompson: We have looked at a number of departments to determine whether we can find agreements between the minister and the deputy minister or between the deputy minister and the assistant deputy minister. We found that there are very few, if any, dealing with sustainable development strategies. They are a bit of an orphan process, and, in today's world where environment is such a huge issue, they should not be that.

The Chair: Mr. Thompson, you can correct me if I am wrong on the following: I recall that during the Mulroney government, there was a process in which no initiative that came forward could continue unless it had been vetted in the environmental sense, as has always been the case with the Treasury Board, for example. Do you recall such a thing? Would that not be the most effective measure to bring about what you are talking about?

Mr. Thompson: I do not recall that. If I may, I will ask Mr. Arsenault or Mr. Ferguson to answer.

Richard Arseneault, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: Mr. Chair, you are referring to the Green Plan, under which the government developed new institutional tools. One of those was a strategic environmental assessment in 1990, whereby any planned proposal made to cabinet had to undergo an environmental assessment. Senators will likely recall that we audited the Green Plan in 2004 for these cabinet directives and found that where there was top level — deputy minister — leadership, departments were getting results because they were conforming with the cabinet directives. Obviously, this calls for a systematic process, because proposals to cabinet arise all the time. Therefore, you need to have a process in place to assure that you will do these things. Assessing the environmental impact of a policy is not easy to do. Sometimes you need to do research.

In 2004, we found that the performance was not very good. We are following up on this and will be reporting our findings in the February 2008 status report. Interestingly, this is an institutional tool similar to another tool that was put in place— sustainable development strategies. Neither tool is working well.

Mr. Thompson: We do not want to speak today to what we will report next February. Looking back, 2004 was not so good.

In direct answer to your question, these two processes are not mutually exclusive. They can and should work together. At least, going into the exercise, I do not think it would be wise to say that we can get rid of the sustainable development strategy process if we made the other process more vibrant. They can and should work together, because they do different things.

Mr. Arseneault: Another thing put in place back then was an environmental stewardship initiative under the Green Plan where departments had to prepare action plans indicating what they would do better to protect the environment. That was superseded by the new process in place in 1995 on sustainable development strategies. You can see evolution over time in the process aspect of it. We have been monitoring these things over the years, and we have pointed to major deficiencies. We have made recommendations to improve things and we have received good responses. The government has said that they will do a federal sustainable development strategy. They have promised that a number of times. Where is it? It is not done yet.

The Chair: It is there in form, but, as Senator Nolin pointed out, if there is no hammer, it is less likely to happen.

Senator Cochrane: I know your approach is that we should have a sustainable development strategy. How do we put this strategy into action?

Mr. Thompson: We would put the sustainable development strategy for the government as a whole into action to a large extent through these individual departmental sustainable development strategies. They would provide a reporting vehicle and a focus for departments to say that of the total strategy for the government as a whole, this is my part; this is what I can contribute to. Then the individual departments would set out their own strategies to do that, to contribute to the overall goals, depending on what their basic activity set would be. Then the sustainable development strategies on a department-by-department basis would come out every three years and would indicate how that department is doing in terms of contributing to what the government as a whole is trying to do. That is something concrete, focused, results-based and something that this committee or other committees could have the departmental officials here to talk about: ``You said you were going to do this; you have done more or done less; let us talk about why.'' That is how it would all fit together, as we see it.

Senator Cochrane: Back in 1998, the commissioner's report indicated that almost all departments failed to set clear targets, and again in 1999 corporate responsibility for strategy implementation was assigned, but still no clear targets. This went on and on. We are wondering when it will all end. We need clear targets. Let us get it done.

Since so little has been done, are there obstacles that prevent departments from acting? What are they? Is there anything we parliamentarians can do to help remove any obstacles?

Mr. Thompson: There are two main obstacles. One is the absolute absence of an overarching government-wide strategy. When you think of it, if an individual department is to take action in a meaningful way and come up with a meaningful sustainable development strategy for itself, it must do so under a bit of a sense of urgency, that it is doing something meaningful to contribute to what the government of the day is trying to do overall. The absence of an overarching strategy is one major reason these strategies are not very good.

Second, maybe there have not been very good documents, but there has not been much interest from parliamentarians. One can understand that. However, looking ahead, if parliamentarians expressed an interest, and if the strategies could be made better — and I think they can be — and if parliamentarians with a better product could bring departments forward to discuss what they are doing in this crucial area of protecting the environment, as well as other areas, then there would be not only a demand for them but a push to have them created and created well.

To my way of thinking, and I have been in the audit office for over 30 years, real action happens when parliamentarians take an interest in something. If they do not, there are many other initiatives and crises around that busy bureaucrats will work on. However, when a parliamentarian says that we would like to have you at our committee and discuss whatever it is — your sustainable development strategy or your financial statements — believe you me, we come and we come prepared.

Andrew Ferguson, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: These sustainable development strategies were intended to catalyze a fundamental shift in the way environment and sustainable development is treated by government. Up until about 1995 or so, when these new strategies were put in place, we had environment departments created to play a more defensive role on the environment. Their job was to protect the environment, while most other departments' role was to do other things, such as enhance economic prosperity, deliver health care and education, and so on. With the new strategies, the idea was to make every department responsible for protecting the environment while delivering on its programs. They were supposed to understand the implications of their programs for the environment in general and to put in place strategies that would accentuate the positive elements of their programs and mitigate the negative.

It was a fundamental shift away from one department playing a defensive role to all departments trying to understand how their policies and programs, which create incentives in the economy, would create the right incentives for the protection of the environment. This has not happened through these strategies and that is what needs to happen. The shift needs to be pushed hard so that all departments are taking an active role in considering how their policies and programs drive environmental degradation or protection.

Senator Trenholme Counsell: That was a most interesting presentation. This is a wake-up. If we needed a wake-up this morning, we are now awake.

You said many things that woke me up. The thing I noted first and have looked at most often while you have been speaking and since is that the momentum has faded. I could hardly believe that: the momentum has faded.

You mentioned many other things. You called it the orphan process and said it needed to rejigged. You said also that there was not much interest from parliamentarians. When I happen to see Question Period, and I do not know if you rate that as substantial evidence of anything, or read the national media, there seems to be a lot of interest on the part of parliamentarians. I am wondering if that statement, ``not much interest from parliamentarians,'' basically reflects perhaps a lack of interest in the actual processes of government and a greater interest in the overall environmental and international issues.

I wanted to follow up as part of this question whether there is a national or a federal government that could serve as a model, since we seem to need better examples to follow.

Mr. Thompson: Let me preface what I will say with another comment.

People talk about legislative audit as being a backward-looking, historical, kill-the-wounded kind of exercise. I do not believe that. We have been critical of this process because we think it is so important that it work well and we do not think it is working well.

With this audit, we are trying to look ahead and see if there is some way that this process, which we think is critically important, can be revived, rejigged and made to do what it was designed to do. Although we have audited the past, our focus really is ahead. That is where the recommendation comes into play in the review we are calling for. We are hoping good things will come of this, and frankly, senator, I am optimistic that good things will come with goodwill all around.

The momentum really has faded. I remember when A Guide to Green Government came out and the sustainable development strategy process was introduced as part of it. There was a lot of interest in the country. The guide was put into play in departments and agencies, and then for some reason, perhaps other issues of the day taking precedence, it simply went away.

Up until today, the sustainable development strategy process that was put in place with great hope a decade ago has just languished. Most departments and agencies spend very little time on these things, because frankly they do not see the strategy process as fitting in with their main line of business. That is the problem, I think, and it can be fixed. I am hoping that it will be fixed.

Now, in terms of members of Parliament not being interested, my comment related to the sustainable development strategy process period, not environmental interest. Obviously there is tremendous interest in the environment these days, and growing interest, I suspect.

If the sustainable development strategy process were rejuvenated through, among other tools, putting in place an overarching government-wide strategy to which departments and agencies could contribute, the various individual initiatives — and there are many good underway in departments and agencies now to try to protect the environment — could be coordinated better. They could be brought together and focused. It would be easier to prioritize what the various departments are doing and decide when to do what and when to move forward. That would be very positive, looking ahead, which is why we are so concerned about it.

Consider the books that come out every three years; they look good, interesting, on glossy paper; they look like nice reads, but how do they fit? What is their significance? Do they actually contribute to making the Canadian environment better? We are not so sure, but we think they could.

The lack of interest is really in this process. We are pushing the process because we have great faith that if it can be rejigged it can lead to better government in this country.

Two other countries have an overarching strategy. This is a fairly new exercise, frankly. Sweden is always around when we are talking about environmental issues. They have an overarching strategy on environmental issues. They have top-level goals that are filtered down into individual departments that will contribute. Sweden is just starting this process, but it is something we could look at. We hope this review will look at it. The U.K. has done something similar. They have overarching goals that they are just now developing and trying to filter down into individual departments.

The Province of Quebec also put in place a sustainable development strategy for the whole province. They too are trying to filter that overall strategy down into the individual departments to allow the departments to contribute to something real.

There are people around that we hope that the Environment Canada people who are leading this review will talk to and learn from.

Mr. Arseneault: I would like to add that other countries have also put in place national or federal strategies, central government strategies other than the ones mentioned so far. For example, Germany did the same with a long list of objectives and targets. The issue there, as is in Canada, is measuring progress. Often, that is where governments will fall short. They do not establish mechanisms to measure properly whether or not they are progressing in meeting their targets. That is a key issue, and we hope that the review of the federal system here will think hard about monitoring, measuring and reporting progress to Canadians.

The Chair: Obviously, without a measurement system, all of the best expressed hopes in the world will not amount to anything if you cannot say whether you have succeeded.

Mr. Arseneault: As you know, in the past we have looked at specific strategies. We looked at Finance Canada strategies from 2004. They had made tremendous commitments there. However, we started asking what they really meant by those commitments, and we found out that they did not mean what we thought they meant. Then we suggested that they had an opportunity to review the tax system and look at whether there were elements there that were having an impact on the environment, and we recommended that maybe they could put some corrective measures in place. They essentially rejected that. They wanted to continue doing what they were doing, and they did not want to do more.

The Chair: Our committee and others in the Senate are not entirely unfamiliar with lots of words and no action on the part of successive governments of all colours.

Mr. Arseneault: Yes. The point here is that they had good commitments on paper, but when you look at their following strategies, those commitments that we audited were diluted.

Senator Adams: Thank you for coming, Mr. Thompson. You are not a stranger to Nunavut, and I can ask some questions concerning Nunavut.

You mentioned that sometime next February you have 14 chapters that you are concerned about. I met with a couple from Nunavut yesterday who are concerned about the settlement of the land claim with NTI. I think you understand the agreement with Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated.

We have an agreement with the Government of Canada. We have about 21 sites in the Nunavut area, right from Ellesmere Island up to some of the islands in James Bay, especially where there are birds migrating. We have an agreement with the government. NTI has been negotiating that agreement for the money with the Treasury Board for four years. They have been writing to the Minister of the Environment from the time of the Liberal government and have never received a response. It is very interesting.

We are getting a little bit tired that every year scientists go up there counting polar bears and whales, and we have one right now at Clyde River. We have humpback whales up there that migrate every year. The Inuit there are monitoring the whales because they want to see what the numbers are every year. They need money to do it and they need to hire some people to do it. The agreement was $8.3 million for seven years for monitoring the mammals in their environment, and nothing has happened yet.

Those who live up there are doing something that is not easy to do. We want to train some of the people to do it up there in Nunavut. Could you help us a little bit more to get going and help the people who are monitoring the mammals in the territory?

Mr. Thompson: We have at least one chapter of the 14 in February that looks at that issue, not necessarily just at Nunavut but across Canada. There are probably two, actually, that would deal in one way or another with the issue you raise. That is something which might be of interest when it comes out.

When we put audit chapters out, they are the kind of chapters that would say, now this is what you agreed to do some years ago and this is how we find progress, good or bad, today. They are good chapters in that sense for an accountability exercise to take place, where a committee could invite a department that we have audited to sit in, and we could sit in with them, and the department could be questioned as to why they have not done better if in fact they have not done as well as they might. I suggest that is coming and might be of some interest to you.

I am trying to get up to the North with a colleague of mine, Ronnie Campbell, who is an Assistant Auditor General responsible for a number of departments, including Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, and also Andrew Lennox, who is responsible for the work that Mrs. Fraser does in the North. We are having trouble getting the dates set out, I guess. I would like to go up as commissioner and listen to people who have environmental concerns. I would like to understand what they are and see if we can put together a plan of action going forward so that we might address some of those concerns.

We have put a line in the sand in our commissioner's work plan for the next three or four years where we have said we want to do something in the North in the next two or three years, but it is just a line in the sand. We have not fleshed it out yet. We are trying now to flesh it out. That is coming up. I would think we would make this trip probably in January or February, and we might, if you would not mind, talk to you to see whom we might be put in touch with to have a good chat. We have to learn about these things. Sitting in Ottawa is not good enough. You have to go out and talk to the people who have the worries and understand the worries, and then see whether or not we can do audit work related to those.

Senator Milne: I would suggest you should also talk to Senator Sibbeston about going to the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Thompson: Yes, indeed.

Senator Adams: We also want to promote tourism, because many people like bird watching and whale watching. We are really pushing for that.

Mr. Thompson: Yes, ecotourism is very important.

Senator Campbell: There is a reason why Prime Minister Mulroney has been named the greenest Prime Minister. What I heard here just confirms that he was way ahead of his time when it came to the environment. You say that governments after that were dealing with a deficit, but the deficit and the environment are not mutually exclusive things. That is something we need to deal with.

The two questions I have are why did these strategies fade and how do we jump start them? I get a sense here that while politicians are the masters, the deputies are the drivers. It will come as no surprise that I am aware that bureaucrats will outwait the government. They just wait for the next election to see who is coming in, and you basically restart the clock every single time instead of having an ongoing process where it does not matter who is the government. What matters is that there are a policy and a responsibility in place.

I would suggest that we should be looking at making deputies responsible. There was a good article in the paper about this. When deputies are successful, they get rewarded. When they are not successful, there is a price to be paid. The consequences might be in bonuses, or it might be an individual should be an assistant deputy minister rather than a deputy.

Why did these strategies fade? Is it the bureaucratic process that leads to these silos? How do we jump start them again? How do we make the bureaucrats recognize that this is critical and that everything we do should be viewed through an environmental lens because it is good for business, good for government, and, most of all, good for the citizens?

Mr. Thompson: I do not know why they have faded. I could speculate, as I have a little bit earlier today, but I am just not sure. I do think the jump start will come with this review. It will start with members of Parliament saying this will be a good review. We will ensure it is a good review. We will hold the people doing it to account for making it a good review. In a year's time, we should have a set of proposals on the table to look at through this review, and, with members of Parliament, that will jump start this process and get it doing what it should always have been doing. We have started down that road, and that is why I am optimistic, senator, that this will work. It will work if we all work at it together. It will not work if it is just one of those little reviews that are done all the time to which nobody pays any attention and which gather dust on a shelf.

This should be a major initiative. It does not need to be terribly costly, although it will cost some money, but it needs to be a major initiative that Michael Horgan, the Deputy Minister of Environment Canada, has on his plate and is accountable for delivering; and all the people who are affected by it and who are actually depending on the results of the review to make this process work should be behind him. I am optimistic that this will work. That is the way I would jump start it.

Regarding the deputy ministers being the drivers, I absolutely agree with you. They really do drive the government. I suspect they probably have to.

The Chair: This is not very telling, sir.

Mr. Thompson: It is a big government with many complicated areas, and they do a pretty good job, by and large, but they need to be motivated, too. You got at the point of motivating them. Is it something that is in their contract? They each have a contract with the minister that lists a number of priorities they are to address. The question I would ask any of these folks is whether the sustainable strategy for their department is part of their contract with the minister.

Looking ahead for the next year, I would be interested in determining if this review is a significant part of the contract the Deputy Minister of Environment Canada has with his minister. I quite agree that if protection of the environment, and we are talking today about sustainable development strategy process, does not get into the contract, there is very little chance it will get much action.

Senator Campbell: I do not know how many reviews I have seen, but it seems like we have a review every year, and the difficulty is that we could have a new government by the time this is finished, or we could have a different government or different minister.

The deputy ministers come and go. One day you are Deputy Minister of Finance, the next day not. The deputy ministers need this as one of their points of contact no matter where they are and no matter what their ministry is so that they have this lens to look through every time they do something.

Do you actually have a sense that this review will mean something? Of course, we will have you back in October 2008, so be careful what you say because we will feed it back to you.

Mr. Thompson: I hope you do.

Senator Campbell: I would like to come away from here with a sense from you that there is real hope that this review will do something, not just be a piece of paper from a government of no matter what stripe just saying, ``Oh, well, we are doing that, or we want to do that.''

The Chair: Before Mr. Thompson answers that, the person we will want to talk to in October 2008 will be the Minister of the Environment who will be doing the review. I presume that you also will be equally interested in that review.

Mr. Thompson: Certainly, senator.

Senator Campbell: I have never seen a minister appear before us, no matter what government we have, that does not tell us how successful they are.

The Chair: That is certainly true.

Mr. Thompson: Let me talk a little bit about hope. I do have real hope, senator. We have taken great pains to craft a recommendation in this audit report that we think is sensible. We realized right up front that the sustainable development strategy process is a government-wide process. It is not a department-by-department process. As a consequence, the recommendation really should be to the government and not to any particular department.

We do not like doing that, because when you make a recommendation to a government, it is a recommendation to somebody and nobody at the same time, but we had to do it because that is where the issue resides.

We then talked to many people about who should lead this review, and it obviously had to be a government decision. I had chats with Privy Council Office and Environment Canada, about eight other deputy ministers around town and four retired deputies. Afterwards, I wrote to Kevin Lynch, the Clerk of the Privy Council, to ask if he would respond to this recommendation in our chapter on behalf of the government or suggest someone who would respond on behalf of the government.

Mr. Lynch wrote back and said that after quite a bit of thought, they would like Environment Canada to lead this review. In responding to our recommendation, that department said that they will do this review in concert with Public Works and Government Services Canada and with Treasury Board Secretariat — and my sense is that the PCO will not be out of it either. One department is leading it, but we have interest on the part of two or three other fairly powerful central agencies that are involved in the process too.

I think that is an important foundation. People have thought about the need to have a review. They have agreed that a review needs to take place, and they have thought about who should lead it and who should be involved.

We have the recommendation and we have the government's commitment to do the review. From here on, it can either succeed or fail, depending on the interest shown. We can push it, and we will, as often as we can; but the people who will make it succeed or fail are members of Parliament. If they say we have got to get this process rejigged, and the review that is being started is the way to do it, it will get done. It is as simple as that.

Having hearings like this — and we have had two other hearings over the last week or so on this same issue — leaves me enthused because parliamentarians do care. You care, and the other people we have spoken with care. With that spirit in the room, this can work.

Mr. Arseneault: I would like to add to this conversation. Before joining the Office of the Auditor General six years ago, I worked in government departments for 21 years. I worked for Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. I know what happens in government.

If central agencies are not monitoring or are not interested, it does not happen. Civil servants who are trying to achieve something will find barriers in the organizations when the central agencies are not there to support and monitor.

When you think about things like strategic environmental assessment, which is a cabinet directive, you would expect a central agency to be monitoring what is happening, but none is. We could not find anyone.

Mr. Thompson: Back in 2004, we could not find it.

Mr. Arseneault: In 2004, we could not find that when we did the audit. We asked agencies, and they were pointing at one another. That is very important, because now we have Environment Canada — which is a line department that does not have many friends around town — leading an exercise that will influence everyone. You really need central agency support to get it going; and probably having parliamentary support, committee support, would be great.

The Chair: And scrutiny, perhaps.

Mr. Ferguson: Mr. Thompson referred a few minutes ago to overarching objectives and publicly available performance measures and so forth. I think the people doing the review will have to ask what mechanisms transcend any one government. They have various levers they can use — spending, taxing, making laws, et cetera — and they will have to ask which of those levers will be most effective for ensuring that the process put in place does transcend the next government and the one after that.

Senator Campbell: I would like to thank you for coming today. Your report makes great reading — finally, a government report where there is truth and there are also solutions.

The Chair: As the vice-chair has said, it is not a government report. It is an Auditor General's report, which is a very different thing.

Senator Nolin: There is a slight difference.

Senator Spivak: I have a couple of question, but first I will make a little preamble. It seems to me that the term ``sustainable development'' was originally conceived through the Brundtland report in a much more innocent time, where protection of the environment was felt to be the primary goal. However, we now have a much more serious issue; we have a global challenge.

It would be great if each department changed its light bulbs and used eco-efficiency cars; but I am wondering, in terms of sustainable development, if you see your role as broader than that. Of course, it has really been ``sustained development'' since the Brundtland report. Do you see your role not just as reviewing government policies, but perhaps suggesting what might be better?

I will give you some examples. On the tax system, almost every noted tax expert and banker has said that we need a carbon tax, and environmental assessment is very ginger because the provinces set up barriers. Then there is Bill C-30, which was the government's own bill; all the people amended it and there were wonderful things in that bill for toxins and so on. Other examples are water and the ethanol policy, which is probably going to be a disaster, in my opinion and in the opinion of many other people.

How do you see your role in a broader sense? Do you think you have the mandate to say to the government, very diplomatically, that you think that this would be better, given the context today? It is not just protecting the environment.

Mr. Thompson: I think we have a mandate that is quite appropriate to the task at hand. Let me talk a bit about policy advice. We have drawn that line in the sand a number of times, and we will continue to do it: we are auditors in the commissioner's group, and, as auditors, we should not be giving policy advice. The reason is that if we advise on policy and later come back and audit the implementation of policy, someone would say you are obviously biased because you helped create what you later audited. We do not like to get involved in policy advice for that reason. When we come to a committee like this with an audit report, we want to be sure that you will believe the factual basis upon which it is crafted and that we do not have an axe to grind in terms of any particular policy slant. That is where we would draw the line with policy.

There are, though, institutions in the government, one of them being the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, NRTEE, whose job it is to get into the policy area. I have had two meetings with its new president, David McLaughlin, and then the three of us had breakfast with the whole round table about a week ago. There are many new members on NRTEE, and we explained to them what we do and they explained what they do.

I would think that between the two of us, we can serve Parliament quite well. The round table, if it gets reinvigorated and is back in business, can give good policy analysis and policy advice to the government. We can give sound audit advice.

We are coming together a little bit on Bill C-288. This is the bill under which the government put forward a climate change plan at the end of August. NRTEE has been required to take a look at the measures in that bill to see whether they are attainable. In late September, they put out quite a good report in which they were very critical of the numbers in the government's plan. They said that there are a number of challenges in putting numbers together for a plan on an initiative-by-initiative basis, and we think the government should look at those challenges and try to deal with them before they do this again.

For our part, under Bill C-288, we will come back in two years and audit the take-up and the implementation of that plan — a results-based audit looking back. We have had some talks with the round table about what they do, which is quite different from what we do, and we both will be talking to Environment Canada about the next round of this reporting to see if it cannot be better.

As a direct answer to your question, we do not think we should be doing policy advice.

Senator Spivak: Sustainable development means that you should leave the earth in the same place, at least now. Mind you, it is getting worse and worse. I do not know if we want to leave it now.

Are you an accountant?

Mr. Thompson: For my sins I am, yes.

Senator Spivak: How about value accounting? Never mind giving policy advice; how do you view looking at what the government is doing to see whether we are getting value for our money?

Mr. Thompson: That is where we can really do some work.

Senator Spivak: In terms of leaving the earth the way it should be left, are we getting value for our money?

Mr. Thompson: We can play a very important role there. When the government puts a policy or program into place, senators and all Canadians want to be sure that it is managed carefully and wisely and that the stated desired results are achieved. That is where our audit comes in. We audit these programs to see whether they are being managed well. We audit to see whether the department responsible for the program has procedures in place to know whether it is working, whether the results are being achieved. If they do not have any measurement processes in place, we will scream bloody murder and will be back to talk to you. If they have put a measurement system in place that is not very good, we will scream bloody murder and be back to talk to you as well. That is the area in which we can make the most contribution.

Senator Spivak: It is a herculean task.

Mr. Ferguson: It is important for the country to know what the federal government is trying to achieve in sustainable development and to have performance measures in place that can give us an objective basis to assess progress.

Senator Spivak: With respect to the review, it seems to me that the environment department needs to be reviewed. I do not know how much credibility an internal review has. I would have been happier if Don Drummond and Jack Mintz had done a review. Never mind the Sierra Club; we do not talk about them.

I hope that the review will come out well, but initially the auspices under which it is undertaken do not give me much hope, because I have been here since 1986. I was here when the original cabinet memo came out that said that every policy of government must be looked at for its environmental consequences.

How do you justify an internal review?

Mr. Thompson: We believe strongly, as a result of the work we have done, that the whole sustainable development process should be re-examined. It is time to reflect and figure out how to fix it, because it is broken.

Having come to that conclusion, we felt that we had to leave it up to the government to decide how to do the review. I may not be as concerned as others about Environment Canada's doing it. If they decide to do a good review and involve good people, both within and outside of government, if they travel to the U.K. and Sweden, go across the river to Quebec to find out what is taking place there and perhaps go to Germany to get a sense of what is possible today in terms of an overarching sustainable development strategy and how to back that down into individual departments in a reasonable way, we could have a good product.

Mr. Arseneault: When preparing this chapter and our recommendation, we met with officials at Environment Canada. They have been thinking about it. There are remarkable people there, as there are across the federal service. They want to do a good job. There are probably systemic issues getting in the way.

Senator Spivak: I agree that there are wonderful people in Environment Canada, but there is tension between the bureaucrats and the ministers.

The Chair: That was a comment, not a question, Mr. Thompson.

Senator Milne: Speaking of sustainable development, I was attending a lecture on how to deal with tailings in the tar sands in Alberta. Unfortunately, I had to leave before we heard about the newest advancement in how they will deal with that.

I have read your excellent report, Mr. Thompson, and I congratulate you on it. I am concerned about several things. Various departments are not doing anything. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada is doing absolutely nothing. Of course, you have no stick to beat them with.

The Department of Health Canada has not yet developed new guidelines for the safety assessment of novel foods derived from livestock, animals and fish, which is one of their three objectives. Health Canada's third objective is to establish the legal requirements for the wording that will appear on the labels of raw ground meat and raw ground poultry, but the regulations are not yet in place. These things affect the everyday health of Canadians, and the department is not coming through with the goals they have set for themselves. What can we do about that?

Mr. Thompson: We have a Commissioner of the Environment and an Auditor General precisely because things like that happen. We are there to look at what is working well and what is not working well. In this case, as you said, things are not working well.

The second point is to close the accountability loop somehow. Government officials take it seriously when they are summoned before a parliamentary committee to discuss an audit finding. I do not mean to be unkind, but if their feet are held to the fire, change can happen.

In terms of these particular examples, if this committee or other committees of the House or the Senate that are involved in these subject areas saw fit to have a hearing and ask the department officials responsible for these programs why this happened and what they will do to fix it, that would have quite a salutary effect.

Senator Milne: In other words, this committee should write to other committees and suggest that they do studies on these matters.

You have now been in the position of Interim Commissioner for some time. Would you have more clout if you were an officer of Parliament reporting directly to Parliament? Would that give your report more visibility?

Mr. Thompson: There has been much talk about where the commissioner's function should be; whether it should remain with the Auditor General's office or be split off. At the end of the day, that is something that parliamentarians would decide. To make a change would mean changing the Auditor General Act, and that is up to Parliament to decide.

I have been in the Office of the Auditor General for a little over 30 years, and I know the constructive clout that office has; I know the technical expertise that the office has in terms of doing legislative audit, be it environmental, financial or any other kind of audit. Having the commissioner's function within that broader office allows that function to take advantage of all of that expertise and, frankly, all of that clout. Over the last many years, with the exception of last year, when Ms. Gélinas's excellent report on climate change, which was the right report at the right time, received a lot of attention, to a large extent there has not been as much attention paid to other reports as there has been to Auditors General reports.

What we put out three weeks ago has received a lot of attention, and we are delighted by that. Mrs. Fraser and I met the press together, and we conducted parliamentary in camera briefings. At the end of the day, even though my report was tabled at the same time as her report, we thought that, on an issue that is not particularly glamorous, that being the process of sustainable development strategies, we got a lot of attention. We received a lot of attention in the media. As well, we have had three parliamentary committee meetings on that issue, which is pretty good.

We can gain more clout by being within the Office of the Auditor General than by being without. We have looked at other officers of Parliament, such as the Commissioner of Official Languages and the Privacy Commissioner. I recall Mr. Desautels, former Auditor General of Canada, telling me about his conversation with the head of an agency who said to him that they envied how much attention is given to the words spoken by an officer of Parliament. He said that it was difficult for them to receive that much attention on issues that they found to be fundamentally important.

In other words, I do not think that the positioning of the commissioner's group within the Office of the Auditor General is a problem, and I would be hesitant to fix something that is not broken.

Senator Milne: You are talking to a senator, here, so thank you for that.

Senator Brown: In your opening remarks, you referred to rewards and penalties. I would like to know what kind of each you were thinking about.

Mr. Thompson: I mentioned rewards and penalties as something that anyone who works in a large organization will have. For example, I have an understanding with Mrs. Fraser that I will do certain things over the next year, and if I do them well, I will keep my job and might even get the odd bonus. If I do not do them well, I will hear about it. That is just the way organizations work.

In my performance accord are the elements that are important to the function that I carry out and to the office within which I work, and the same applies to deputies. If the sustainable development strategy process will be reinvigorated, I would suggest that somehow it must find its way onto the agenda of the deputy ministers around town as something that they should worry about and do well. Currently, we do not see it there, at least not very much. If it were in place as one of the elements of their actions over the coming year that they must pay attention to and succeed at, then we would find quickly that the sustainable development strategy process will begin to work. If for whatever reason they did not do well and they put out bad strategies that did not contribute to any kind of resolution of any issue, then their performance at the end of the year presumably would be based, at least in part, on a failure to do well in the area of sustainable development strategies.

I suggest that should be in place, and we have not been able to find any evidence that it actually is in place.

Senator Brown: I was not thinking of rewards and penalties for the people who work in your or any other department. Rather, I was thinking about rewards and penalties for the way in which we take this to the environment and make it better. I assume that wherever business intersects with the environment — air, water or soil — we would try to force some change in that area. There has been a great deal of talk about carbon tax and other kinds of regulatory methods. Would your department take an interest in pushing the research and innovation side of rewards and penalties? Before anything can be fundamentally changed in any process, whether air, soil or water, there must be applied research. Someone must find a better way to do something. Businesses struggle with that to a point. If there were some kind of punishment or penalty for a business for not doing as much as needed, then I would suggest that the penalty be to invest in a broad, overarching research and development fund. That fund would have the capacity to research any business area that is causing problems for the environment, whether carbon dioxide emissions, contaminated water problems or reclamation of mining areas. Instead of being penalty-taxed, if those businesses could have a requirement to invest a certain amount from their industry in a fund every year, that could have an effect pretty much immediately, not three to five years down the road, on the necessary research as well as indicating how it can be applied to work in the environment.

Mr. Thompson: Certainly, I agree that there is a need to be creative in addressing these fundamentally difficult issues of how to protect the environment and how to move forward. I will say up front that with regards to choosing one policy over another or whether the government should set up a fund or use some other instrument, the commissioner's office would not want to get involved because that would touch on policy.

Some departments are looking down the road, and I hope that this review will be discussed with them. In their sustainable development strategy process, Finance Canada said that they are looking at the tax system to determine how it might contribute to protecting the environment better. Now, there is a unique area of interest. Certainly, it has a huge affect on corporate behaviour in this country and can draw out good behaviour or bad behaviour.

The sustainable development strategy process, as Mr. Ferguson said earlier, was designed to get government departments to look ahead to try to solve new environmental problems that may arise. More important, it is to try to identify opportunities to protect the environment better, to do a certain number of other things, and to exploit those opportunities. Senator Baker has suggested ideas, and I would hope that government departments might be as creative in developing policy proposals and programs to put into play.

It might be helpful to talk to Finance Canada about what they are doing in respect of the tax system. Also, I would suggest asking Industry Canada, for example, what they are doing in looking ahead, what success they have had in the past, and what the future looks like.

Senator Brown: I was hoping that you would use your credibility as Interim Commissioner of the Environment in much the same way that the Auditor General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, used her clout to make quite an impression across the country. Perhaps you could look at forcing more research and innovation into your area with your own credibility. I would not suggest that you start a fund, but, as we move forward, more people will say that it is not useful to penalize because many industries can afford to pay the penalties. By imposing such penalties, we would be taking money out of the economy that the company simply will factor into the charge for its product. However, if the money were taken for a specific use, such as research or improvement of the processes used in the areas of air, water and soil, then we would stand a better chance of having a real impact on the environment.

The Chair: Senator Brown, this report and the things our guests are talking about deal with the sustainable development strategies of government departments and do not go to business operations.

Mr. Arseneault: An overarching sustainable development strategy could be a driver for research and innovation in certain areas. Industry Canada came up with an innovation strategy. It is not reflected well in their current sustainable development strategy, and why is a good question.

You were talking about issues related to enforcement, such as regulations and enforcement of industry. Some of that is happening in the federal government as well as at the provincial level. In the past we have not looked much at the area of enforcement, but we know there are issues there as well.

The current government has announced an ambitious regulatory agenda for protecting air quality and on greenhouse gas emissions, which it is working on now. The agenda is not yet in place, but once it is we will audit and report back what we find.

We will be doing a follow-up on our climate change report of 2006. That is planned for early 2010. We will be looking at what the government has been doing since we reported in 2006 and what the government has done with our recommendations.

All of this is linked in some ways. Climate change is truly a sustainable development issue for our country and for the entire world. Why are the sustainable development strategies not a good reflection of what the government is doing on this? There are disconnects.

Senator Brown: I am not really looking at regulation, but rather for a way to change from more complex regulations and more bureaucracy to requiring these businesses, wherever they are, to put money into searching for a solution. If business can find a way to do something cheaper and do less damage in their own interests, they will do it, without our needing to regulate them.

Mr. Arseneault: We know that government departments are doing research. Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are knowledge organizations. They are regulatory and policy organizations, but they are also knowledge departments. They are doing research, monitoring and providing knowledge for decision makers to make informed decisions.

Senator Brown: I am just recruiting here.

Mr. Ferguson: You have hit on a very important point. These strategies were intended to get each of the line departments of government to consult with their various constituencies and stakeholders on exactly the types of things you are talking about. The goal is to work effectively to ensure that the policies of our department, for example, are sending the right signals — not necessarily regulating but perhaps innovating and providing the right incentives to the line, economic and social interests regarding protection of the environment. Research funds would be highly possible within the strategies of any one of the line departments. That is exactly what the strategies are intended to achieve, but they are not working.

The Chair: With respect to Senator Brown's point, would that be achieved simply by setting an example that we hope would be followed, or would there be some incentive from government to industry to follow along those lines and be innovative and therefore more profitable?

Mr. Thompson: I hope that would come, but that again is in the area of policy. If sufficient thought is given by government departments to how to look to the future and anticipate and exploit opportunities, and if that could be made public to members of Parliament through, for example, the sustainable development strategies, I think the dialogue would become much crisper and there would be more interest in this. What you are suggesting is absolutely right. It must be done.

[Translation]

Senator Nolin: You have sparked the enthusiasm of my colleagues and definitely mine. Many of the Canadians who hear us and see us feel, once again, that these issues are too important to be left at the mercy of partisanship. There are certainly people at this table who will tell you that, if we can set partisanship aside to focus on an issue, we can be much more effective.

I wonder about the follow-up, because you are holding us to account as committee members and Parliamentarians. I would like to know how we can help you and work in tandem. I understand that Environment Canada will be conducting the review. I think you said that you were not very pleased with the idea of a line department having that responsibility and that you would like the central agencies to get involved in the development of this review and overall policy. How can we help you? Do we challenge certain departments while waiting for the final review? Do we ask the central agencies if they think they will be playing a leadership role in the development? What do you expect from us? We are eager to pitch in, and Canadians want action. Everyone agrees with what you said. What can we do to help each other?

[English]

Mr. Thompson: I am glad you asked that question. One thing that could help greatly is to have the Deputy Minister of the Environment, Michael Horgan, attend a public hearing early in the game, before they even get into crafting this study, to talk about the kind of study he envisages. That would allow you to exert some influence on Environment Canada to ensure that the study is as broad as it needs to be, has a good work plan and a good consultation process, and has well-thought-out deliverables and a clear time line to fix this process that is not working. If you would like us to come along at the same time, we would be delighted to do so.

I would not meet once and then wait for the study to be done. It might be helpful to do a mid-point consultation with Environment Canada. Perhaps a meeting at the start to review with the department how they will go about the study and to influence that, and then get a status report in five or six months on how they are doing, what they are finding and what is emerging. You would obviously have a hearing when the report is final and give encouragement to the government of the day to implement the recommendations. That would be very helpful.

[Translation]

Mr. Arseneault: You will notice that, in our recommendation, we clearly indicate that this response was developed in consultation with the Privy Council Office, a central agency that is very important to the government; the Treasury Board Secretariat, another central agency that is very important to the government; and a key department, certainly regarding the federal government matter of putting the house in order, the Department of Public Works. Inviting representatives from these departments might be an idea, in addition to Environment Canada, to discuss the review's direction and action plan and, as Mr. Thompson mentioned, to find out where they are at, where they are going and, in the end, when the report has been tabled, it would be interesting to know what is going on.

With your questions and your knowledge, you can influence some of the approaches they will be taking.

Senator Nolin: I support your proposals and I imagine that we will have a chance to discuss them. However, I find the process lengthy. I imagine that we have to start pushing certain departments because I have a feeling that they want Canadians to take an interest in their planning. That is why I think that we can offer them this type of forum.

You said a few times that no one was in bad faith throughout this process and that we just needed to implement mechanisms that are not too ponderous which would allow this good will to come through.

How could we push departments that are not managing to deliver the goods despite the good relationships and good intentions? Do you think that we would be creating unnecessary obstacles to a process that seems to want to emerge?

I am asking you because the Senate committee does not meet with all the departments annually regarding public finance. Instead, it identifies four or five departments and reviews their finances from every angle.

I imagine that we could develop a similar process regarding environmental matters. You say that you are working with about 30 departments and agencies. Maybe, through a multi-year process, we could use your reviews to challenge these departments and find out where they are in the process.

It is just that I think that three years is a long time. I would like to hear your comments on this subject.

[English]

Mr. Thompson: Having a multi-year plan would be wonderful, and if the committee wants to do it, so would having individual departments involved in the sustainable development strategies come forward and talk about what the strategies contain. That would be excellent. For the next year, though, there is a focus on this review. I believe that the most helpful thing this committee can do now is to get behind that review and be sure it is carried out. As Mr. Arseneault said, Treasury Board Secretariat will be involved, as they should. Have them sit down with your committee and Environment Canada and talk about how they will collaborate. Probably the Department of Finance Canada should be there, too, although I am not sure; they have a role to play in terms of tax policy. At least get the review rolling and get behind it and be sure that the people doing it realize you care and that you are expecting results to fix this problem.

Senator Nolin: I hope. To ask a line department to do it is the way to not be in charge of the failure.

Mr. Thompson: I hope so, too, senator, but I am optimistic.

Senator Nolin: I may be too blunt, but we have seen that in the past.

Mr. Thompson: In fairness, we have heard comments like that over the last little while as well. However, the fact is that they have been tasked with doing it. They are good people.

Senator Nolin: I am not questioning the quality, effort and professionalism of Environment Canada. I am probably too blunt expressing my feeling about central agencies dumping on a line department.

Mr. Thompson: That is why you may have noticed today I referenced a number of central agencies throughout this testimony. Treasury Board Secretariat certainly is involved. That is in the response from Environment Canada. They will have to be involved in this review. The Privy Council Office somehow or other would want to be involved.

I agree with you. It would be a good thing to have them at the table with Environment Canada to ask, ``How are we going to work together to do this review?'', and for you to get some comfort that in fact it will happen.

[Translation]

Mr. Arseneault: The status report in February will probably have examples of a line department and a central agency working together to make progress. It might be interesting for the Senate to look at this model. There are other models, but you will definitely be interested in seeing what the report will reveal.

[English]

The Chair: You have called that February report a status report. We refer to them here colloquially as report cards. You are right; they are very effective. This committee has said in the past that it will follow up on recommendations it has made for specifically that purpose. We have not been assiduous in pursuing those things. We should be more so. We can have a longitudinal approach, which will suggest to the folks who are charged with these things that they will be obliged to come and tell us how it is going, and thereby public attention, to which politicians are sometimes susceptible, can be called and focused on it.

Senator Trenholme Counsell: You have stimulated a great amount of thought in all of us. I was sitting here thinking about the statement you made that the people who will make it happen or not will be the members of Parliament. In a sense, that is a great compliment to an elected member.

I think I know what you meant by this. I do not want to be political at all in what I am saying now, but it seems to me that it is the person at the top who makes things happen. I will go back before I make the comment that I am moving towards and think of how we slew the deficit: every department must have been told that that had to happen and that there was no question from the top that that was the mandate in the 1990s.

We often hear that we have a great deficit now. We have a deficit of action and a deficit of commitment, and I think a deficit that is as harmful, if not more so, to the ultimate story of Canada and the world than the deficit in our financial status in the 1990s.

Whether it is this Prime Minister or the last Prime Minister or the one who will be next, whether it is the same or someone different, it has to come from the top. I do not think to use the word ``aspiration'' is strong enough. We have heard that word very recently. We need to say that we will do it; it will be done — however it is phrased.

I have been in government. I was in government for ten years in New Brunswick. In government, if you are told that this is one of the top three priorities, if not the top, then you will do it. Of course, then you must be held accountable.

As a nation, are we truly making this the priority that this committee, you, sir, and many Canadians wish it to be? Indeed, do we have to have that great vision totally from the top?

Mr. Thompson: I would not disagree with that at all, senator. Obviously, things get done when the corner office says it will happen.

My sense is that the Canadian people are as concerned today and maybe more than they ever were about the environment. That has to have an effect on all of us, on members of Parliament and on leaders.

I see it happening in my own family. I am a grandfather for the first time. I carry my grandson's picture around in my pocket because I love the little guy, but also because he is one of the reasons I care so much about auditing the integrity of environmental programs put in place by the government, because they matter to us in a very real way.

There is much concern throughout the land, and in the House and in the Senate, about this issue. I am optimistic that things will be better. There has never been a better time to pause and reflect and say, now, how can we as a country or within the country as a federal government get involved in something, for example, like better environmental protection? There has never been a better time to do that and I am very optimistic that it will happen.

Mr. Arseneault has just sent a note over to me on the environmental petitions. We have not talked about that this morning but we can if you wish a little later. That is a little program where Canadians can express concerns on the environment within the context of sustainable development. They can correspond essentially through us directly with ministers and get an answer from ministers. We have seen an increasing use of that vehicle in the last few years. I suspect that will increase in the future, too.

I believe it is a good time to get at this, to shine a light on the need to protect the environment better, and I sense a mood throughout the federal government to try to do just that.

The Chair: With respect to the replies that the ministers give to the questions asked in the environmental petitions, I think everybody agrees that that connection is a very good one, and it is great that the reply is mandated and must be given in a specific time. However, regardless of the what colour the government is, many of us around this table are used to seeing written answers from ministers, often arriving at the very last minute, that conform to the letter of the requirement but that are not in any way substantive. The letters say, ``We are continuing to examine and we will continue to work with our stakeholders to blah blah blah,'' but there is no meat and potatoes in them.

Do you find that the answers given by ministers in response to questions asked by Canadians in petitions through your office are substantive?

Mr. Thompson: Senator, we have found have them to be getting more vague and less precise in the last little while, and we are not quite sure why.

The Chair: Your language is kinder than mine.

Mr. Thompson: However, we want to find out what is going wrong. They need not be that way, but they seem to have become that in the last few years. We want to strengthen the guidance that we give on the one hand to the Canadian people regarding how they might craft a petition and on the other to government departments on how they might craft a response for a minister. We think our guidance could be stronger and clearer; hopefully, if we do that well, maybe the sharpness of the replies coming back from the ministers will be a bit better. It is an issue we are worried about, and we point it out in the chapter.

The Chair: Would your mandate permit you to comment substantially on the lack of substance in such replies?

Mr. Thompson: We had a good look at that as we were doing these petitions retrospectively, actually. There are limits, but the direct answer to your question is yes, we can and we have.

For example, a petitioner may not like an answer from a minister. The reaction from the minister might not be what the petitioner was looking for, but as long as the question is answered that is fair ball. There is nothing we would want to do about that. However, if a question is asked and not replied to, that is a different story. We have had such cases, and we have reported their occurrence publicly through the annual petitions report. We need not necessarily be silent about that, because it should not happen.

Nor are we just a postbox in the commissioner's group, because we do audit these petitions. We look at all the petitions coming in to see whether there are emerging issues that we should audit, and we also audit some of the responses to the petitions.

It is a good little process. You are right, the responses are not as crisp as they should be or as we think they could be, and we will take some action ourselves to make them better.

Mr. Arseneault: It is important as well that we have done a study to understand the view of petitioners and the view of the departmental officials who prepare the responses for ministers. Clearly, petitioners believe that the petition process is a valuable tool and serves a purpose. They may not get the answer that they want, but petitioners do receive information that is in many cases valuable.

Further, the departmental representatives we interviewed and surveyed during our study — it is not an audit but a study, and there is a technical difference there — have told us that they believe that petitions have been driving some changes in government. We have examples of that. It is difficult to pinpoint that a petition was the sole source of a change, but it put some pressure on the system to make things happen. We see that in briefing notes to ministers. When we do audits, we see the commissioner report on a petition. We received a petition and we see that the bureaucrats are using that to put pressure on the system, so it is positive.

The Chair: Good. I would draw the attention of Canadians to this report and encourage them to use that system.

Senator Cochrane: I am glad that the petitions are having some effect. I did not know about that. Thank you for that information.

I want to go back to the sustainable strategy again. You mentioned in your address this morning that in February you will provide Parliament with the progress report on issues that we have audited in the past. Do you give this sustainable development strategy a time frame?

Another question has come to me as a result of Senator Nolin's question. You were saying that we probably should have follow-ups in the middle of the work on the final report or the final strategy being developed. Commissioner, is there any way that your office could do the same thing before the final strategy is developed? Maybe you could check on that to see how far the departments are coming. That probably would put more pressure on them.

Mr. Thompson: The sustainable development strategy chapter, which has clear recommendations, is a major audit chapter for us. We certainly will follow up through a status report in future years. There is no question of that. I would think we could do that fairly frequently and quickly.

We will be meeting with Environment Canada and monitoring behind the scenes how the review is unfolding. We have quite an interest in that. We would not be auditing it as it is unfolding though. We would wait until the government has done a review and then we would see. However, if midway through the review we thought it was getting off track or becoming something other than a substantive piece of work, we would certainly say something. I think we could influence a bit the review process, but certainly we would not try to audit the review in real time as it was unfolding. We would want to give the government a chance to do it, and then we would have a look at its implementation.

Senator Milne: I have three questions. First, when you audited Natural Resources Canada, you did it on the national strategy for forest invasive alien species. While you were doing that, did you take a side look at forest invasive native species, such as the mountain pine beetle out West? Whatever they are doing, they are getting less-than-effective results.

Second, in relation to my own pet project, I see that in its 2001 sustainable development strategy, Natural Resources Canada committed to generating a national groundwater database by 2003. In 2004 they reiterated the commitment but extended the date to 2006; apparently, they hope to have about 20 per cent mapped in 2006. Where are they with that, and are you looking at it?

Third, how do you pick the specific target on which you will audit a department?

Mr. Thompson: I will get Mr. Ferguson to jump in on that second question.

In terms of the pine beetle issue, I will say only that one of our 14 chapters in February deals with invasive species. It might be a good idea to have a look at what we found there in terms of recommendations we made in the past to Natural Resources Canada and others to address issues like that.

Mr. Ferguson: I can comment on how we select commitments from the strategies.

Senator Milne: Yes, but come back to aquifers then.

Mr. Ferguson: The groundwater was not part of our sustainable development strategies audit. We have not covered that. Domestic pests were not part of our current audit either. Our audit of invasive species coming in February covers aquatic invasive species, which is what we looked at in 2002.

Senator Milne: Then it covers basically the Great Lakes.

Mr. Ferguson: No, it does include the coast; it is national.

Mr. Thompson: Mr. Ferguson is responsible for the work we do annually on sustainable development strategies, so he is well equipped to talk about how we select these 10 or 11 commitments each year.

Mr. Ferguson: There are 32 strategies now being tabled once every three years. When they are tabled, we look at all of the strategies and develop a program for the ensuing three years.

Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done there. Each one of the 32 strategies contains approximately 100 commitments. We have to be careful how we allocate our human and financial resources across those strategies.

We try to cover off all strategies during the course of the three-year period. To do that, we take a slice of about 10 each year. Within each strategy, we look at the significance of the commitments. We consult with the department to understand from their perspective which commitments are the most significant in advancing their agenda.

We also look at whether these things are auditable. In many cases, we have found that there is no objective means by which we can assess progress.

Senator Milne: You do not have a baseline to work from.

Mr. Ferguson: Yes; and the commitments are often stated in fairly vague terms as well.

We take a number of factors into account — significance, auditability and, of course, our own human and financial resource constraints. Over the course of three years, we try to get to at least a few commitments from each one of the 32 strategies.

Mr. Arseneault: As part of the Office of the Auditor General, we have access to a larger workforce than just the commissioner's group. Our colleagues from the rest of the office help us monitor the commitments made by departments in the sustainable development strategies that they table in Parliament. We are able to cover more ground with the whole office behind us and working with us. That is very important.

The Chair: Thank you, senators, and thank you to our guests. You have been most forthcoming and candid, and you can be certain that we will be asking you to come speak to us again. Perhaps you can help us informally, aside from hearings, to devise the means by which we can work together to apply some of the glaring scrutiny and the levers that might be helpful in making this sustainable development strategy actually work.

The committee adjourned.

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