:
We'll call the meeting to order.
I want to welcome the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, under the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, to report to the standing committee.
This is our 34th meeting of the standing committee.
Commissioner, we welcome you and those with you. We look forward to your report and then to questions following your report.
If you would proceed, you have up to 10 minutes. Thank you.
:
Mr. Chair, thank you very much, and thank you for having us here.
I'm pleased to appear before the committee to present my spring 2012 report, which was tabled, as you know, in the House of Commons earlier this morning.
With me are Bruce Sloan and Kimberley Leach, as well as Trevor Shaw.
This is my final report under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. The government announced last December its withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol. However, as of today, the act remains in effect, and I'm thus required by law to report on the government's 2011 climate change plan.
[Translation]
We found that the government did not comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, primarily because the measures included in the plans will not ensure that Canada meets its Kyoto obligations, which is the purpose of the act.
[English]
Let me now turn to the government's current approach in meeting its target for greenhouse gas emission reductions of 17% by the year 2020.
The government intends to achieve that target through a sector-by-sector regulatory approach to lower greenhouse gas emissions. To date, two federal regulations are in place, with a projected reduction of between 11 million to 13 million tonnes by the end of this decade. Canada will need to reduce its emissions by more than 10 times that amount to meet its 2020 target.
[Translation]
Environment Canada's own forecast shows that in 2020, Canada's emissions will be 7% above the 2005 level, not 17% below it. Given the time it takes to develop, finalize, and implement regulations, and then to actually realize emission reductions, we do not believe that there is enough time to achieve the 2020 target.
We also found that the government's regulatory approach was not supported by an overall implementation plan that, for example, gives a detailed analysis of how different regulations will work together to meet the 2020 target.
[English]
The government said it was withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol because remaining in it would be too costly to the Canadian economy. We therefore expected that the government would have estimated how much it will cost to meet its target and identified the least costly options. We found that this has not yet been done.
Turning to our report on federal contaminated sites and their impacts, we found that the government has made progress in identifying some 22,000 contaminated sites across the country for which it has responsibility and has put in place good systems to classify sites and steps to manage them. To date, the government reports that nearly half the contaminated sites are closed.
We expect that dealing with the remaining 13,000 sites will prove to be a major challenge. The capacity to assess the remaining sites has been reduced, while there is a shortfall of $500 million to deal with those sites that have already been assessed for possible remediation. Of the billions of dollars available for contaminated sites, the majority of funding is now focused on four large, high-risk sites. It's therefore unclear how the thousands of other sites will be managed.
[Translation]
The government has reported its combined environmental liabilities at $7.7 billion. Many of these sites are buried and out of the public eye, but they will impose human health risks and environmental and financial burdens for generations to come. The government needs to assess the full impact of all federal contaminated sites on the public purse. It is mid-way through the program, and time for the government to take stock of how it intends to manage and pay for the remaining sites across the country.
This report also offers my perspective on the “jobs versus the environment” debate 20 years since the first Earth Summit in Rio.
[English]
Two decades ago, some feared that controlling pollution or protecting forests would stifle economic growth, cripple productivity, and suffocate innovation. But businesses are finding innovative ways to lower costs while meeting environmental targets.
[Translation]
As more and more businesses are mainstreaming environmental protection, I hope we can learn lessons from the past. Contaminated sites are a testament to poor planning, inadequate environmental assessment, and weak environmental regulations. These sites are an expensive reminder that future generations must live with mistakes we make today.
[English]
In closing, Mr. Chair, this committee may wish to follow up with officials from Environment Canada or other ministries mentioned in this report on specific steps they will be taking to address the issues raised in the chapters tabled today.
Mr. Chair, that concludes my comments. We're happy to take your questions.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the whole team that's here.
In light of what we heard at the press conference this morning from the environment commissioner and what we heard today in his brief about contaminated sites, I would like to give notice of motion. I have given a copy to translation so that hopefully they can translate along with me while I read it into the record. It states:
That the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development immediately commence a study regarding the subject matter of the sections of C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, which directly fall within the mandate of this Committee, namely Part 3, Division 1, Environmental Assessment, Enactment of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012; Part 3, Division 6, Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 1999; Part 3, Division 7, Species at Risk Act; Part 4, Division 9, Parks Canada Agency Act; Part 4, Division 38, Coasting Trade Act; Part 4, Division 40, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act; Part 4, Division 53, Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
That's my notice of motion. We'll distribute bilingual copies as soon as we can.
I'd like to hand over the rest of my time to my colleague, Madam Quach.
The Chair: Madam Quach.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank all of you for coming and for your report.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy has shown that climate change will cost Canadians $21 billion to $43 billion annually by 2015. We are talking today about Kyoto and what it means for Canada and internationally.
The most vulnerable countries understand that 2015 is already too late. The 2°C stabilization target will likely be missed. Some developed countries remain insensitive to their predicament. Some islands will likely become submerged, and their hopes for enhanced global support aiding their efforts have continually been disappointed.
I believe that the government needs to demonstrate moral and intergenerational responsibility on climate change.
My question is this. Did the government demonstrate legal responsibility in complying with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act?
I think your work today has confirmed what we've known for a long time, namely, that the government is not on track to achieve its 2020 emissions target. The Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act significantly strengthened transparency on federal climate policy. Previously the national round table had been recommending that the act continue until 2020.
Environment Commissioner, you have highlighted the perils of trying to meet a target without a clear plan and clear management structures in place. Instead of amending the act, the government has chosen to eliminate it. I wonder if you could comment on what's going to be there to hold the government to account, and comment on transparency going forward.
I would also like to thank the witnesses for joining us.
I have a great deal to say about your report. First, let me thank you for a job well done. Unfortunately, our withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol under Bill is revolting, and you have put it so well in your report. We invested $9 billion and we don't know what we got out of it. The government said that it wanted to withdraw from Kyoto because it was too costly, but we have no numbers on the actual costs for 2020.
I know that you have read the national inventory. You are being told that the figures in your report are wrong. Does that make you change your mind in terms of your doubting that the 2020 target can be reached? Is there something concrete that is going to make you change your mind?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Vaughan and your team, for being with us today.
I wanted to follow up on the discussion about contaminated sites. I think you've acknowledged here in your remarks that we started with about 22,000 contaminated sites, and as I understand it, about 42% of these have already been cleared as of February 2012.
This is a 15-year federal plan to clean up the plants and we're only at the halfway point. That would be my point. We're saying that maybe there are 13,000 sites remaining, and of course, we are concerned about that. But it seems to me that if we've already cleared a substantial number of those, that we are making progress, and therefore, comments about leaving this to future generations fail to recognize the fact that we've already taken measures in the short time that this plan has been under way to clean up a lot of those sites.
Would you not agree with that?
:
Yes, so now we're working through a process of looking at new technologies. I think we'd have to agree around this table that technology is actually increasing at a pace unprecedented in human history. Things that were monumental problems are becoming much easier to manage.
A case in point would be many of these...and I raised this in our meeting earlier in camera.
A voice: In camera?
Mr. James Lunney: Oh, I didn't mention that, did I?
Let me say that I had this brainwave.
Okay, the question I wanted to raise was simply about new technologies that actually make it possible to clean up sites where there are hydrocarbons. For example, using biotechnology, micro-organisms that consume hydrocarbons, can actually take a site.... Instead of hauling all that soil out of there, and trucking it, and trying to dispose of it some expensive way through incineration or some other problematic way, we actually have new technologies that are making it much more possible to clean these sites up in situ.
Would you agree with that?
:
Yes. We didn't examine those in great detail, but we did pick up information that indicated that there is responsiveness, using new technologies, going forward. You mentioned one there.
I must say, I'm not a scientist or a biological expert. I'm an accountant by training, but when I see these things, it's actually indeed quite encouraging and we do pick up.... Environment Canada is considering these things as they advance the program as well, in fact trying to support the new technologies.
Some of the processes include: ex situ soil washing, removal of uranium and radium-226 from leachate using reverse osmosis, and various forms of bioremediation. Bioremediation is a type of clean-up that uses living organisms such as fungi plants and bacteria. That may take a longer time. They are, in fact, themselves more environmentally friendly, and certainly we would encourage the use and support of those as much as possible.
To say again, my predecessors have gone back from 10 years ago, and it was really a mess. The government didn't know how many sites there were, or what the risks of those sites were. Some were since 2005 and it's particularly accelerated in recent years.
The government has prepared a national inventory. It has identified 22,000 sites. It put in a system to classify the risks to that site, so you could say if it was a class 1 or not a risk at all.
The government set out 10 steps to manage a site, whether it goes from initial assessment to full remediation to closure. It has closed 9,000 sites. So that's the progress to date and I think it's considerable.