The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources

has the honour to table its

NINTH REPORT

Your Committee, which was authorized by the Senate on Thursday, November 15, 2007, to examine and report on emerging issues related to its mandate, now tables a report entitled “Sustainable Development: A Report Card”.

Respectfully submitted,

TOMMY BANKS
Chair

Sustainable Development: A Report Card

Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources

June 2008

What we found in 2005

After having heard from key Ministers, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the Clerk of the Privy Council, and a number of other expert witnesses, your Committee issued a report in June 2005 entitled Sustainable Development: It’s Time to Walk the Talk.[1]

In that report the Committee argued it was time for Canada to embark on a determined path to sustainable development with the federal government leading the way. 

Since the early 1990s, Canadians have heard great promises about sustainable development from government leaders of all stripes.  Unfortunately, your Committee found that progress towards sustainability has been slow and policies uneven.  Broad initiatives and lofty plans relating to sustainable development have not given rise to concrete and continued action.  Despite the rhetoric, sustainable development has rarely been at the front and centre of any government’s agenda.

In this age of rising energy and food prices and global climate change, it is more important than ever for the federal government to take a leadership role and make sustainable development a priority.  It is time to “walk the talk”.

What the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development told us

Since 1995, federal departments have been required by law to prepare Sustainable Development Strategies and to update these strategies at least every three years.  It has consistently been government policy that it is mainly through these strategies that federal sustainable development goals and priorities should be expressed.

Successive Commissioners of the Environment and Sustainable Development have voiced their concerns to your Committee that there is “little evidence that they [Sustainable Development Strategies] have encouraged departments to integrate environmental protection objectives with economic and social policy objectives in a substantive or meaningful way.”[2]

In his October 2007 Report, the Commissioner found that successive federal governments have, since 1995, been consistent in articulating their commitments to turning sustainable development thinking into practice across departments.  Yet some 12 years and four sets of Sustainable Development Strategies later, the approach they have established to turn sustainable development talk into action has yet to fulfill that commitment.  Furthermore, no government has yet developed an overarching federal Sustainable Development Strategy that would help clarify its priorities and provide clear expectations of, and goals for, departmental efforts.

The Commissioner further noted that “the ambition and momentum that existed in the early stages of the government’s sustainable development initiative have faded and that the development of the [departmental sustainable development] strategies has become little more than a mechanical exercise, focused on satisfying statutory requirements.”[3]

The strategies, the Commissioner concluded, “are a major disappointment.”[4]

This is not merely disappointing, it is troubling in the extreme.

The Commissioner’s October 2007 Report, much like your Committee’s June 2005 Report, urged that the government develop a clear federal Sustainable Development Strategy.  Such a strategy would reaffirm the government’s commitment to sustainable development, would help all federal departments in the preparation of their own sustainable development strategies, and perhaps most importantly, offer a common vision for a sustainable future.

For some time now, your Committee has heard that such a strategy was being developed and would be ready “next year.” 

The first “next year” was 2006.  It is now 2008.  We have yet to see it. 

We are concerned that in the absence of such a strategy, and the absence of a clear commitment to sustainable development from the Prime Minister, sustainable development principles are unlikely to be fully integrated in policy development and decision making.  The absence of such a policy operates to the detriment of Canadians and our environment. 

That is why, in 2005, we also recommended that a Sustainable Development Secretariat be established within the Privy Council Office to ensure that proposals brought to Cabinet are consistent with the government’s sustainable development objectives. 

We are of the view that it will continue to be “business as usual” in government unless there is a “choke point” at the centre of government to make certain that every proposal is substantially reviewed through the lens of sustainable development before it is presented to Cabinet.

Business as usual will not get the job done.

A review is under way

Further to the Commissioner’s recommendation that the government perform a review of its current approach to the preparation and use of Sustainable Development Strategies, the government agreed to perform a review “that will identify means to improve the government’s approach to Sustainable Development Strategies.”  Environment Canada, in collaboration with other key departments, is leading this review.  The review we are told is to be completed by October 2008.

More lip service?

Your Committee looks forward to seeing the results of the review of the government’s approach to Sustainable Development Strategies.  Once the review is completed in the fall we intend to (once again) invite senior officials from Environment Canada, the Privy Council Office and other relevant departments to discuss the results of the review and to find out how the government’s approach to sustainable development has evolved.

We hope that the current review will lead to results.  But we are concerned that it may, once again, amount to little more than a bureaucratic exercise.  Your Committee remains worried that sustainable development is still a long way from becoming an ingrained, fundamental principle of the Government of Canada.  This, in our opinion, will only happen with strong direction from the Prime Minister.

Your Committee will continue to keep a close watch on this file.