QUESTION PERIOD — Environment and Climate Change
Procurement Process
December 14, 2023
My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, the Council of Canadian Academies has identified procurement as the most effective strategy for helping Canada to achieve its 2030 climate objectives.
Despite the Treasury Board’s Policy on Green Procurement, in October the department responsible for leading Canada’s national sustainability strategies, Environment and Climate Change Canada, ignored sustainability criteria and only assessed the lowest cost in an $8 million purchase of laptops.
Sustainability criteria appear to be absent from procurement across all departments with another example including pharmaceutical refrigerators at National Defence.
The carbon tax is intended to alter consumer behaviour, yet the government does not seem to be doing its part in employing procurement as a tool to reduce carbon emissions throughout its supply chain. Why is the lead department responsible in our national sustainability goals failing to set an example by not including sustainability criteria in the procurement process?
Thank you for your question. The government believes that it is important and that the government plays a critical role not only in setting an ambitious emissions-reduction target, but by taking the steps to live up to those goals. Those steps include all of the measures with which we are familiar, including the most recent announcements with regard to capping emissions.
I am not able to speak to the specific case that you raised, but I can say to you and to this chamber — and I have been advised as follows — that all departments are directed to:
Buy environmentally preferable goods and services where value for money is demonstrated (i.e. appropriate balance of many factors, such as cost, performance, availability, quality, and environmental performance) and meet green procurement targets . . . .
I am a proponent of the carbon tax, but, in the recent Bill C-234 debate, this government argued that the consistent application of the carbon tax is crucial to Canada achieving its climate goals. Does not prioritizing procurement bring forth a “do as I say, not as I do” risk in undermining our use of the carbon tax and other measures?
Thank you for your question. Again, the government is doing things within their procurement process. The government has committed to modernizing its fleets with zero-emission hybrid vehicles and those that use alternative fuels. The government is committed to building zero-carbon buildings and maximizing energy efficiencies in existing ones, and committed to using nature-based solutions to protect assets through funding and through green procurement, to which I already referred.
