:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It's an honour to be with you.
I would remind you that we not only submitted extensive written testimony back in June, but we had two earlier opportunities to provide oral testimony. So we will confine our remarks today to enforcement, public participation, and appropriate tools, which we understand to be your particular concern today.
Most of our remarks will deal with public participation. Generally speaking, we've had a very positive experience with the CEPA public participation process with regard to the implementation, the risk management phase, and a relatively negative experience with public participation with regard to the risk assessment process. Unlike the risk management phase with stakeholder involvement, which invaluably improved the end product and facilitated implementation, the insularity of the assessment process and the agency's refusal to impose rigour on its scientific exercise impaired the result and set back the implementation. It was a distinct misstep.
For example, we were quite disturbed when Environment Canada publicized its findings before they went to the public participation process. They scheduled a news conference we were unable to effectively respond to at the last second and rebut some of the misinformation that was given out. The headlines across the country were all about the warnings that road salts were toxic; and this being a food, it was very unclear and confusing to the public. We think Environment Canada played on that as opposed to trying to understand that's what was going to happen.
The assessors proceeded to ignore that public outcry and went to the second phase, and at that point they understood they were in trouble with their communication with the public. When they announced the second phase they did not use the word “toxic”; they very studiously avoided it. They even counselled the media that they intended not to use it, and yet the headlines were that salt is toxic. Again, the press had been sold this, so they couldn't back off.
At about this time, Environment Canada was trying to tell the world that road salts were toxic, but at the same time they were rolling out the implementation process. So unlike the rather obscure public participation process of gazetting for the assessment, the implementation for the risk management phase was very public, very inclusive. A stakeholders group was set up, and a lot of constructive things were said. So instead of having the situation that under the assessment it was the largest public participation process under CEPA--I believe that's still the case--most of the comments came back negative to what Environment Canada had proposed. Instead of being able to condition the groups that were going to have to comply, which are the provincial and local government agencies that were the target of the assessment, it set us back in terms of mobilizing those people in a constructive way to solve the problem.
It bears mention that the risk management phase involved an entirely new team. The people who did the assessment were in one branch and the people who did the risk management were in another branch. There was no carry-over, and so a whole new set of people were getting up to speed. We're very pleased to report that in contrast to the public participation and risk assessment phase, our experience with public participation on the risk management process and in implementing an excellent code of practice for road salts management has been very positive. It was like night and day to us. Frankly, we'd give Environment Canada failing grades for public participation in the assessment process, but tell them to go to the head of the class in terms of the way they ran the risk management phase.
As is the case with most environmental initiatives, once people understand how to do things better and once they make necessary investments to achieve better environmental management, momentum is achieved by these incentives. In the case of road salts, the agencies now understand that proper management not only can protect the environment but can be accomplished consistent—
:
All right. My two-hour statement in 10 minutes, by the look of it.
In the case of road salts, the agencies understand that proper management not only conveys environmental benefits and can be done consistent with accomplishing the mission of keeping the roads safe, but it can also even save tax dollars by being able to put down road salts a little more conscientiously.
Designing a solution that allows society to derive the benefits of CEPA-managed materials is fundamental. We can't compromise the safety of the roads. We can't trade dead motorists for pine trees, we can't sacrifice workers' jobs for a park ranger's opinion that salt intoxicates birds, and we can't immunize governments against civil suits if they don't do their job of keeping the roads safe.
The bottom line is that we think the involvement of the stakeholders has achieved the momentum for implementation of the code of practice, which is getting the job done, which would not have been expected given the tenor of the assessment process.
Turning then, in my remaining time, to the issues of enforcement, why would we have enforcement? What we want really is the environmental result, so we want people to be encouraged, induced, to adopt the correct practices.
The Salt Institute has been engaged in teaching our customers sensible salting for about 40 years. We have sent out people to train the operators, because it's the operator in the cab who actually decides how much salt's going to go down. It's not the road agency itself, and it certainly isn't the salt company that, months before, sold them the salt. We really need to get training down to the operator level, and that's what we've been doing, in partnership with TAC and with the OGRA. And I think we have been quite successful, because we've been able to work cooperatively during the risk management phase with Environment Canada.
In terms of what we want to do, we don't really want to regulate something that is going to be so variable, because the weather, the topography, the service demands are set by locally elected officials. Those are all going to vary storm by storm, not only region by region. We need to give enough flexibility so that a regulation that is written can be applied in a real life situation, which is a life and death situation on the highways in the middle of a winter storm.
We do think that promoting compliance is going to be best done with a voluntary arrangement, such as a code of practice.
That moves us into the final point of appropriate tools. Right now, we have a code of practice, of course. Also, we have tools of the pollution prevention plans, where there's a regulatory arrangement. And we are engaged with Environment Canada in negotiating an environmental performance agreement for the salt industry to do its part in terms of producing the product and storing the product properly. But we don't see any need to move into a regulatory environment if you can get the voluntary situation to work, because, in our case anyway, there's a great deal of local variability in terms of what proper management is.
We believe the statutory process should encourage Environment Canada to promote risk management much sooner and focus resources earlier on doing a better job with environmental management. Where regulations may be required, the focus of the debate should be on the context of the substance that's creating the problem in the first place, as opposed to the name of the substance, which creates the stigma that we've testified about earlier.
Once again, with this approach we'll achieve a better environmental outcome. We thank you for your attention.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this round table.
In my presentation I will be focusing on one topic, the question of tools for CEPA, and I'll really only be talking about one tool, industry responsibility programs. This is something that I think isn't used as much as it deserves to be used.
Last May when I appeared before you and discussed our CEPA review submission, we suggested that CEPA should explore differentiating between good and poor environmental performers more than it does, and using the act to support the use of what we called industry responsibility programs in order to recognize and encourage good-performing companies. We think those companies should be treated differently and more favourably than poorer performers. Guidelines and, in particular, pollution prevention planning requirements in the legislation could provide a means to do that, but that isn't being done nearly as much as it should be today. There may be other means as well, but those are the ones we'd like to focus on.
Criteria for using what we're going to call industry responsibility programs and the principles governing their design have already been well established, with broad acceptance by industry and NGOs. In the late 1990s, the New Directions Group put together a paper, “Criteria and Principles for the Use of Voluntary or Non-regulatory Initiatives (VNRI) to Achieve Environmental Policy Objectives”, which addressed and, I think, very successfully resolved a lot of these issues.
There's very broad consensus about going ahead on this approach between industry, government, and environmental groups. In fact, the federal government essentially adopted the New Directions Group principles in its Policy Framework for Environmental Performance Agreements, which it put out in 2001. In CCPA's view, that was a very good framework, but unfortunately we don't feel it's been applied as broadly or as often as it deserves to be.
There has been a number of successful examples of industry responsibility programs. From a chemical industry perspective, our Responsible Care initiative that I have previously described to committee members, I think quite a bit, we believe is a leading example. It applies to the chemical industry, and not broadly, but other sectors also have similar programs that they try to model after it.
Our Responsible Care program has also been the underpinnings of a memorandum of understanding or agreement the CCPA has had for about 10 years that involves the federal government, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and there are also public interest group representatives on it as well. The performance results of Responsible Care and what we look at through our memorandum of understanding are set out in the attachment that I've provided to the committee. I think it's been given to you.
I'll not go through this in any kind of detail. I'll leave that to you.
The first chart is an overview of our performance, both for the listed air pollutants in Bill and greenhouse gases. Looking at the percentage changes, both since we started tracking in 1992 and more recently last year, I'm sure you'll agree our performance is good. Similarly, I've talked about our climate change performance before this committee in the past and I think it's also good. There's more detail provided in the accompanying charts that back up those figures, and it also shows that generally our record is that we exceed our projections.
As I said, industry responsibility programs have also been used beyond the chemical industry. Probably the best broad example of a successful program is ARET, the accelerated reduction/elimination of toxics initiative, which concluded in the late 1990s. More recently, Ontario and Alberta have tried to develop programs along these lines: in Ontario, the environmental leaders program; and in Alberta, their EnviroVista program.
Problems with these types of programs to date have arisen when, in an effort to ensure that only the true leaders participate, sometimes overly restrictive and burdensome bureaucratic entry criteria are imposed by government. That makes it unattractive for companies to participate, and it would actually penalize and certainly not reward high-performing companies.
It might be worth paying some of this extra price if there were true benefits from these programs, but often there's only very vague recognition rather than any real benefit, such as a better permitting procedure or something like that. Ontario and Alberta are currently struggling in trying to address these issues in their respective programs, trying to create meaningful differentiation and real rewards for high-performing companies.
I think the federal government had the lead in this about five or six years ago, but I think it has been overtaken by the provinces now.
Encouraging industry responsibility programs through CEPA would, I think, also be very consistent with the 2004 Smart Regulation report. The report stated:
The federal government should develop a framework to guide the design and use of instruments and ensure that instrument decisions are appropriately challenged throughout the policy development cycle. The government should accelerate efforts to make the regulatory community more aware of the various instruments. Legislative constraints in creating mixes of policy instruments and using performance-based regulations should be eliminated.
I think we have an example of the legislative constraint in CEPA that I'll talk about later.
The Smart Regulation report described the challenge the federal government faces in being innovative in the use of instruments related to regulation. They noted the many benefits of choosing the most efficient instrument to accomplish legislative objectives, and they also noted the federal government has a strong tendency to choose only traditional instruments such as regulation, as opposed to a combination of instruments that would involve regulation, but also involve other approaches such as economic incentives, information, and challenge programs--the types of things we're referring to as industry responsibility programs.
A few of the more interesting recommendations in the Smart Regulation report were recommendations 22 and 23. These outline a need for the federal government to develop guidance and a framework on the use of various instruments and when they might be most effective, and the need to develop better understanding in the public service of the range of instruments available to respond to policy issues.
Over the years, we've had many discussions at CCPA about our success in Responsible Care. The question often emerges, why doesn't government do more to recognize this type of good initiative? That's a question that I think MPs and this committee should address in your CEPA review report. We would be very interested in the answer.
CCPA believes the reason that government doesn't recognize programs like Responsible Care, and its record is that often agencies like to simplify the world into what we would see as the false dichotomy of so-called voluntary versus regulatory programs. They dismiss anything that is not a standard regulatory approach because it is only voluntary: do it if you like. But Responsible Care is far from that. It's a program that goes beyond what is required. Our actions under Responsible Care are mandatory among our members. They involve reporting and verification, including independent verifiers. We think Responsible Care is the kind of initiative that can be considered in developing regulatory frameworks and linked to CEPA in various ways, such as pollution prevention planning.
Since the Smart Regulation report, has anything changed? We don't think so. We see no improvement in the administration of CEPA towards the kind of innovation the report recommended. The Clean Air Act and the notice of intent are probably the most recent examples. These do not look for innovative approaches beyond traditional regulation, and miss opportunities to use different tools that might be more effective. They do not provide in any way for recognizing high performers.
The government is proceeding to work with sectors like ours as if Responsible Care were irrelevant. This type of approach undermines the ability of our association to expand the application of Responsible Care to other companies. This is an example of the government missing an opportunity to reinforce high performers.
With CEPA under review, it would be useful, I think, to determine if the act has built in appropriate guidance and flexibility for the government to work with the full range of instruments, including industry responsibility programs.
In terms of guidance, we think the act could be improved here. We would urge the committee to recommend that the government consider adding some specific sections to the act that promote considering the use of industry responsibility programs but within the overall regulatory context of CEPA.
In terms of flexibility in the legislation, we think that is actually there but it's not being used. Pollution prevention planning is a tool in CEPA that could be used more, and more effectively, to support and promote industry responsibility programs. Environmental objectives could be set for our sector as factors to be considered in developing pollution prevention plans. What companies are already doing, such as under Responsible Care and our MOU and under provincial regimes, could be recognized under the pollution prevention plans.
We believe that for sectors like ours this would work very well. If the approach fails to work, or sectors don't have the kind of infrastructure and performance record that Responsible Care has given ours, perhaps regulatory approaches would also be warranted where necessary. But the government has not used its pollution prevention powers in the fashion that I've described. We're not sure if the powers in the act are the problem--we don't think so, because we think they're there to be used as I've described--or if it's a question of political will. I think that's where the real problem lies, and I think that's also what the Smart Regulation report was reporting to.
To conclude, CCPA urges that the committee recommend that CEPA be used to differentiate between good and poor environmental performers, and use the act to support the use of industry responsibility programs, such as Responsible Care, to recognize and encourage good-performing companies.
This approach would assist industry to be partners with the government when companies show leadership and high performance. From CCPA's perspective, our member companies, with their commitment to Responsible Care and their performance record, provide an example of the type of companies where such recognition would have been earned. Such an example would also encourage more companies and sectors to adopt initiatives similar to Responsible Care. We think that would be a significant environmental improvement in itself.
Thank you. I look forward to the discussions.
:
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to address you this afternoon on these issues of public participation and enforcement.
I will be dealing with two matters that no one else, as far as I know, has dealt with in these hearings. The first is the environmental protection action that is found in part 2 of the act; and the second is the offences and penalties section, and in particular, I'll be recommending a provision like the Fisheries Act fine splitting provision.
Our interest at Sierra is that we are considered a watchdog on the environment. We deal only with legal matters. We have offices in Toronto and in Vancouver, and soon to be in Ottawa. We look at the legal aspects to these environmental issues.
My background is 20 years of commercial litigation in private practice in Toronto, so I've seen both sides of the fence. I've spent in the last six years in public interest litigation.
There has been a lot of talk, as there should be, about voluntary programs. Mr. Lloyd talked about them. We think those are great, but we also think you have to balance that with enforcement.
I submitted a written brief, which I understand some or most of you have. In that, I highlighted these two issues of public participation.
The public participation section of the act really deals with five things. It has an environmental registry; an application for investigation; the environmental protection provision, which is the action I've been talking about; an injunction you can bring if harm is going to occur; and last, the civil action in section 20. So it talks about harm before it occurs, with the injunction; and it talks about it after it occurs, with the environmental protection action or with the civil action for damages.
As far as the environmental protection action goes, it's modelled after the provision in the Ontario Environmental Bill of Rights. It has a reasonableness standard, and one has to show significant harm. There is a limitation period of two years, and the onus is the balance of probabilities as opposed to the criminal onus.
So one would hope, or think, that this would have been used in the past. It has not. It has been used only once or twice. It has not met the need of the public to participate through this environmental protection action. I mentioned the other possibilities, one of which, outside the act, is private prosecution. Another is acting under other statutes such as the Fisheries Act. It's very clear that this environmental protection action is not working.
Why is it not working? I suggest that there are a couple of reasons, but frankly, I don't have the answer. I think that requires more study. However, I would note that even the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario has commented on this provision and on the fact that it has not been used. In fact, the Ontario provision has not been used often either. Part of the reason is the cost, the potential of costs that can be put on a person using the environmental protection action. There's no environmental protection action if the defendant engages in any kind of mitigation. There's no emergency provision in the environmental protection action.
I'd like to read out just the government's own conclusions on the environmental protection action and the public participation, which are contained in a document at tab A of our material. It's called the Formative Evaluation of CEPA 1999, and in that, at paragraph 2.2, the expected outcome of this action was that Canadians would have “the opportunity to initiate investigations of alleged offences, recover personal damage and economic loss, make personal claims and file citizens' suits”.
Well, it hasn't happened. As they note, “The public participation provisions have not yet been triggered, as no relevant public applications for investigation or public environmental protection actions have been received (One environmental protection action was initiated under a Section 22 request, but this was dismissed by the Minister)”.
Under their issues and challenges, the government itself commented again that very few public applications for investigations have been made. It talks about the barriers to increased public participation and their not having been formally examined.
Again, I said I don't have all the answers. I think I would have some of the answers because we engage in activities under the Fisheries Act, i.e., private prosecutions. We've never done it under CEPA. If we haven't done it, it's unlikely that anyone else will do it, because we're one of the few organizations in the country that do this sort of thing.
To conclude, this is reading from the government document again: “The expected outcome related to Canadians initiating investigations of alleged offences, recovery of personal damages and economic losses, making personal claims and filing citizens' suits is unlikely to be achieved without further actions by the Department. Work needs to be done to identify and address barriers before the opportunity provided through the public action provisions of the Act can be fully realized”.
We make a few suggestions in our document. We laid it out by showing the CEPA provision. We've laid out suggested amendments and we had a comment column as to why that was necessary. There are provisions in numerous U.S. statutes that provide for citizen actions. We feel we can do a better job.
We've also included a section on enforcement. We suggest there should be a Fisheries Act-like provision. The Fisheries Act is the main pollution prevention provision that we use--the federal one, in any event. It is not CEPA. CEPA is anemic regarding individuals beginning and constituting actions for harm to the environment.
One of the advantages of the Fisheries Act is that it has a fine splitting provision. It's been around a long time. It has not opened the floodgates to these kinds of private prosecutions. It is very useful. It takes some of the sting out of the bringing of private prosecution under the Fisheries Act, because you can recover half the fine if you initiate a private prosecution.
Our main recommendation in that regard is there's nothing comparable at the moment in CEPA. As I said, in the other main pollution prevention statute, the Fisheries Act, we have one. So why not have one in CEPA? I throw that challenge out to you.
To conclude, I think you have an opportunity here to really give valid and real public participation, as was intended by the act. Pretty well every poll out there shows the environment is near the top or at the top of concerns of Canadians. You have an opportunity here to bring laggards into line. Mr. Lloyd was talking about good performers, high performers. They're doing the job, and others are not. This would be a good club to bring them into line. I think any socially responsible corporation would concur with the suggestions made under both our headings of public participation with the protection action in the fine splitting provision of the Fisheries Act.
Finally, this is an opportunity to put CEPA on level with the Fisheries Act. Why not? Why shouldn't we protect our citizens as well as we protect our fish?
Thank you very much.
Thank you to the committee for having me, once again, testify.
The Canadian public's interest in environmental stewardship pulls relatively high on voter priority lists, but it's rarely reflected by way of broad participation and CEPA consultation. Committed environmental groups such as Great Lakes United will continue to consult under various provisions of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, but I think we'll nonetheless be left wondering what to do in terms of engaging the public at large.
Two backgrounders were prepared by Great Lakes United under the auspices of the CEPA Review Advisory Committee, and I've tabled those with the clerk for your review.
For the purposes of analysis, GLU's following comments are loosely grouped as access and outreach, the mechanics of consultation, and the absence of departmental champions.
On public access and outreach, comprehensive state of the environment reporting, I think, would be very beneficial for attracting public interest in CEPA. To date, as it stands now, it's the National Pollutant Release Inventory, more commonly known as the NPRI, that's the primary tool through which the public engages or gets information on pollution data for Canada.
Progress on the NPRI has largely stalled since 2002, and as of August 2006, I believe, PCBs, thallium, beryllium, barium, and radionuclides were still not included in the inventory, despite years of having been tabled for discussion. Likewise, recommendations to reduce reporting thresholds have gone unheeded, revisions to mining exemptions have not been addressed, and the credibility of NPRI data is undermined by a lack of auditing polluter reports.
Other CEPA databases should be tightened to report on actual pollution levels rather than on volume of pollution permitted. I'm referring here to ocean dumping requirements. The use of other statutes in pollution reporting mechanisms--for example, greenhouse gases--that fall outside of CEPA further undermine efforts to draw public attention to CEPA as a one-stop shop for pollution information.
State of the environment reporting has been poor and insufficient for promoting the act and government efforts on pollution control generally. State of the environment reporting needs to be enhanced and should include reporting on specific CEPA provisions, including efforts to meet international agreements impacted by the act. I'm referring here to international emissions into air, land, and water.
With no public profile for the act, a lack of ministerial reporting, and precious few cuts to pollution to report, the value of the CEPA registry is challenged not by the website architecture, but rather by what I would describe as ministerial disinterest in reporting on progress and insufficient interest in the promotion of public participation. For those reasons, a concerted promotional campaign for highlighting CEPA as Canada's cornerstone pollution statute and for the release of the state of the environment report would be beneficial, and I think actually might be needed.
Under the heading of mechanics for consultation, Environment Canada has a well-established history of public consultation and is supported, in part, by the delegate selection processes of the Canadian Environmental Network, whose members nominate NGO representatives on various issues. Environment Canada does a much better job than most federal departments, including, notably, Health Canada, at ensuring stakeholder balance in consultations and at avoiding undue influence in the selection of NGO representatives.
That said, treatment of first nation representatives has been inconsistent under CEPA. At times they fall under the rubric of civil society and effectively displace an environmental representative on that point. My point here is that a first nation delegate typically will focus interest on issues of governance, representation, and treaty rights rather than on broad issues of civic interest and operationalization of the act. It's therefore unfair to dilute representation of non-governmental organizations with representation from Canada's first nations, and it's equally unfair to characterize first nations as stakeholders on par with environmental groups and private industry. Inasmuch as they represent governments or ambitions of self-governance, first nations must be consulted outside of CEPA's delicate stakeholder balance between industry and the NGO sector.
The third point I want to address is the lack of a departmental champion for the environment. Stakeholder balance alone is insufficient to guarantee credible outputs from consultation. Exactly how and the extent to which participants engage largely determine the final recommendations coming out of consultation. Whereas departmental participation is necessary and encouraged, it is not at the moment balanced, inasmuch as no department champions the environment per se. By way of example, at consultations, Natural Resources Canada is routinely able to identify with recommendations that reflect mining and forestry interests, and Health Canada ensures that its pharmaceutical clients are not undermined by proposed action.
Environment Canada seems steadfastly focused on consultation process rather than on promotion of environmental protection. Rarely at consultations does Environment Canada table its recommendations for discussion or provide critiques to consultants' reports. More routinely, as recently reported to GLU from CCME meetings, there is stakeholder review of discussion documents prepared by third-party consulting firms without the benefit of a critique or an indication of what the department plans to do with the report. The public is more frequently consulted on consultants' reports than on any proposed policy direction intended to realize CEPA objectives.
Environment Canada needs to step beyond the current role of coordinating input toward one that also shows leadership in environmental protection in a way that identifies the recommendations the department is tabling. At consultations, stakeholders should be reacting to draft recommendations, not to the recommendations of private consulting firms.
In the view of Great Lakes United, dedication to state of the environment reporting, an enhanced NPRI, improved stakeholder balance, and a special track for consulting with first nations, along with departmental leadership and championing of environmental protection, will all improve the act's capacity to engage the public.
I'm sorry, but the timelines didn't allow for specific clause-by-clause proposals in this text. I'll be submitting those later this month.
I'd like to ask a question, if I could, of Mr. Lloyd.
Thank you very much for attending, ladies and gentlemen, this afternoon.
Mr. Lloyd, if I can, I want to cut right to the chase, because we've worked together in the past on different issues. I want to go to your brief. In the conclusion you say that CEPA ought to be used to differentiate between good and poor environmental performers, and that this act should be used to support the use of industry responsibility programs to recognize and encourage good-performing companies. The reader and the viewer is left hanging with a question of just how it is we should do this.
In fact, our government worked hard with you and so many other stakeholder groups for years to, for example, devise eco-efficiency indicators that would allow for meaningful comparison between not only companies in your Responsible Care program but for companies that hail from other sectors, like pulp and paper, for example. I want to put this to you. First, if you could, could you help us understand, for example, whether eco-efficiency indicators could be used and ought they to be reflected in the act? And secondly, ecological fiscal reform is, most western democracies now realize, the way forward. We need to find the way in which we're going to have a meaningful intersection of fiscal policy and environmental policy. Can you tell us, for example, how that might be used to achieve your objective, which is to have government recognize and reward good performers over bad performers?
This is a very interesting discussion, but it's hard to really get a handle on it. For example, I think it was Mr. Lloyd, or someone else, who said that we need to look at context, that if we're going to take action on certain chemicals, we need to look at context. Then other witnesses talked to us about risk management. It seems to me that risk management is all about a study of context. So it's very hard to understand that context isn't taken into account. That's one question. Anyone can take a stab at that one.
The second issue that is still unclear to me is the issue of the salt regulations or voluntary management program.
Mr. Hanneman, you seemed to suggest that you were okay with CEPA the way it is, but that the government's actions were not as appropriate or effective as they could have been. Does that mean you are okay with the fact that salt is considered CEPA-toxic?
Ms. Wright, you started with a mea culpa, or it seemed to be anyway, at the beginning. But you weren't specific. What went wrong there?
First of all, are you fine, Mr. Hanneman, with the idea that salt is CEPA-toxic? What really went wrong? If you could name one or two specific things that didn't go well in this case, I'd like to know what they are.
:
In the early days before regulation is passed, we begin what we call compliance promotion with industry. We do workshop training with them to explain what their obligations are, how they're going to have to measure or report whatever is relevant. There are extensive training workshops, written material, etc. Dry cleaning was translated into numerous languages, mail-outs, as well as sessions. We often work through industry associations to reach the regulatees and do everything we can to get out to the regulatee before the regulation comes into effect.
Who initiates the actions? Once the regulation is in effect, we have an inspection plan. That inspection plan is based on our knowledge of the degree of compliance we think is already in place when the regulation comes into effect. Usually the compliance level pretty close when the regulation comes into effect. We have a history on companies and generally have some fairly good information on who has a tendency to comply. Based on that, we'll do an inspection across the country, looking at where we expect violators.
Enforcement officers will go in and conduct inspections, and then based on that information they can use a number of different enforcement tools. Usually in first level, particularly if the industry is showing a high degree of willingness to comply, we have what's called a warning letter that writes out very clearly what the expectation is, and then we follow up on that.
If after we follow up on the warning letter there are still some violations, and if they're not of a serious nature, we have another step we can use. That is the inspector's directive, which is really like it sounds, spelling out exactly what we expect to have done and by when.
We can then go into a number of actual enforcement tools that can lead to penalties. That environmental compliance order we were talking about earlier allows us to ensure there's a stoppage of whatever the violation is.
If a charge is laid and an industry shows a high degree of willingness to comply, there's something called the environmental protection alternative measure, which is essentially a dispute resolution to avoid the costly court proceedings. If they agree to what they're going to do, we write that down and then we don't go through a court, but we follow up.
Ultimately, there are court proceedings, and the fines under CEPA are quite severe. They can go up to $1 million a day for the time a violation exists. Mr. Wright is suggesting the fines we collect be shared if there's a civil prosecution. To date, the federal government has prosecuted. We're encouraging judges to assign those fines to something called the environmental damages fund. Industry pays into that fund, and we can use the money to rehabilitate the environment, do community engagement programs, or do something related to the violation to ensure the environment is improved.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Can I go back to this discussion of the spectrum of possibilities under CEPA? At one end, there is pure volunteerism; at the other end, command and control regulation. If you stopped any Canadian coming off any bus in any city in Canada, they would understand it isn't as simple as two extremes. They understand when they purchase a vehicle that's a hybrid vehicle or an alternative-fuel vehicle that in Ontario, for example, they get a $1,000 provincial sales tax rebate. They'll understand if they live in Ontario, my home province, that they must have their vehicles tested for emissions on a certain-number-of-years basis. If the car isn't meeting the emissions test, it has to go back for retrofit. So most Canadians understand that CEPA should not be, and is not simply, a conglomeration of two extremes--regulation in command and control versus pure volunteerism.
Everybody understands that in 40 years of environmental practice in the western world, there's a full spectrum of possibilities. That's what our smart regulation panel tried to achieve in the past government, which is to say, let's be intelligent about this, let's be cost-effective about this, and let's work hand in glove like a mature democracy, business and government together.
The question I want to put to you is this. I've heard no one at this panel speak about two or three other weapons in our arsenal between these two extremes. One is the use of fiscal instruments.
A more specific question to Ms. Wright is, how many people inside Environment Canada today are working on environmental and economic linkages and measures that can help us achieve CEPA objectives? I would guess there are fewer than 10 full-time employees working at Environment Canada in that area.
Mr. Lloyd, you mentioned the notion of accelerated capital cost allowance. The finance department doesn't like to toy with capital cost allowance. It's been reluctant to do so for 20 years. How many people at Finance Canada are busy delivering options for consideration by the Canadian people to achieve environmental objectives using economic measures?
Finally, the most important example we've seen of using an economic instrument has been the Kyoto Protocol, which was like that old Sesame Street riddle, “One of these things is not like the others”. The Kyoto Protocol, for the first time in human history, was going to reflect two things: first, that we have one atmosphere; and second, that we're going to monetize carbon by internalizing the price of carbon in economic decision-making. I would dare say the salt industry would be weighing its approach to salt differently if cumulative environmental impacts were costed. If a dollar figure were placed on damage to a river or damage to a lake, and a company went back to its shareholders to account for it, it might be different.
I want to put two things to the panel: measurement and money. No government can tell one company over another company, whether it's part of Responsible Care or the Forest Products Association of Canada's pulp and paper standards, or any other industrial conglomeration, no government can say, “Company X, you're going to be rewarded this way, and Company Y, you will not be rewarded this way”, unless it can actually measure it. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. No one has talked about eco-efficiency indicators and how you're actually going to measure apples and apples and apples and oranges, and secondly, how we can use the economic system, fiscal and tax spending for example, to achieve environmental impacts.