AANR Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS, NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES AUTOCHTONES, DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DU GRAND NORD ET DES RESSOURCES NATURELLES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 5, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order.

Members, I want to take this opportunity to explain why there was a camera here. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation from Nunavut was just following me around doing a “day in the life of an MP” profile. They knew they couldn't film anything at the committee once we started.

Today being April 5, we have witnesses to talk about climate change. We have before us Mr. David Oulton, Shelagh Jane Woods, and Don Strange.

I'll give you your ten minutes and we'll take it from there for questioning.

Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton (Head, Climate Change Secretariat): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I believe the clerk has distributed the slide deck I'm going to use for the purpose of my comments.

[Translation]

I would like to begin by thanking the committee for inviting me here to report on the national climate change process. For the next few minutes, I will be giving you an overview of the work that has been accomplished thus far and tell you where we are heading in the coming months.

[English]

Our first page lists our topics. I'd like to cover off the following today: a sense of the challenge we have in terms of meeting the requirements of the Kyoto protocol; the response that has been put together with the provinces and territories and the federal government so far, or what we call “phase one”; a little more discussion of the federal initiatives to date; and a quick look at the way ahead. We've provided some further appendices as well.

[Translation]

Slide A.1 shows Canada's commitment under the Kyoto protocol to reduce emission levels by 6 per cent over 1990 levels between the years 2000 and 2012. This target is in line with that of our major trading partners.

If Canada were to maintain the status quo, it would need to cut its emissions by a further 25 per cent over emission levels assessed for 2010. This represents a difference of 189 megatonnes between emission levels that would have been recorded and the desired level. The measures to be taken by the various jurisdictions were announced at the same time as the federal government unveiled its First National Business Plan for 2000. Businesses must reduce the gap by approximately one third, or by 65 megatonnes. I will come back to this later on in my presentation.

I would also point out that Appendix I contains two tables showing greenhouse gas emissions by province and sector.

[English]

Slide B.1, entitled “What First Ministers Directed”, is just a reminder of the start of this exercise. It notes that following the agreement with Kyoto, which was negotiated at the beginning of December 1997, first ministers met. Climate change was one of the issues discussed at that first ministers meeting.

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Out of that first ministers meeting came an agreement between the federal government and the provinces that basically agreed that Canada indeed must be prepared to address the issue of global climate change, but in addressing it we should come up with policies and plans to ensure that no part of the country should bear an unreasonable burden as a result of measures taken.

As well, we should be setting up a process to examine the impacts, costs, and benefits of options for implementing the Kyoto protocol before ratification. Indeed, federal-provincial-territorial energy and environment ministers should jointly consider appropriate courses of actions.

Finally, the provinces and territories should fully participate with the federal government in the implementation of the protocol.

[Translation]

Pursuant to a decision reached at the joint meeting of energy and environment ministers in April 1998, a national process was adopted, as shown in slide B.2.

The primary vehicle for consultation was issue tables that worked with various experts and stakeholders. The aim of these issue tables was to draft reports setting out options for various sectors and for so-called horizontal issues. The purpose of the exercise was to achieve a consensus within the framework of the activities of each issue table or working group. Nevertheless, a full range of strategic options had to be presented and analyzed.

The Report on Options contained the following: realistic emission reduction projections; the principals risks or impediments to the implementation of corrective measures or recommendations; the costs and advantages of the various options to society, the economy, the environment and health.

The process resulted in increased knowledge and in a commitment on the part of the provinces, territories and industry and helped to increase the public' awareness of climate change issues.

If you go back to slide B.3, you will note that in October 2000, the federal, provincial and territorial environment and energy ministers agreed on a National Implementation Strategy for the emission reductions as set out in the National Business Plan and in the analytical and policy work program.

[English]

Slide B.4 addresses the national implementation strategy. You'll note that the committee has been given copies of the national implementation strategy approved last fall by federal-provincial-territorial energy and environment ministers.

In essence, this national strategy said that Canada must be committed to taking action. We must start taking action now. Indeed, in the first business plan, actions were laid out by the federal government and provinces and territories. We must do our homework on the policy options we would need to put in place if we were to ratify the Kyoto protocol. As well, we should be planning for making a decision on that ratification of the protocol, possibly as early as the 2002-03 time period.

Indeed, this graph demonstrates the concept that, in phase one, when we don't know the international rules, we nevertheless should be acting while still doing our homework.

Phase two represents the period where we know what the international rules are, there's been a decision on a protocol and an agreement, and we therefore are able to take measures with greater degrees of certainty and we've decided on the major policy instruments.

Phase three, if you were in the terms of the Kyoto protocol, is the period from 2008 to 2012, when you would be operating under the rules of the protocol and working your policies to achieve the effects that those rules require.

Slide B.5 covers the first national business plan. It also was approved last October by federal and provincial energy and environment ministers. This document, which has also been provided to the committee, contains about 300 federal-provincial-territorial measures from every province and territory in Canada. It focuses on a variety of things, largely the reduction of emissions but also work on further policy measures and the issue of understanding impacts and adaptation, particularly adaptation in areas where we feel we may be vulnerable, such as the north and the prairies.

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The concept of the business plan was simply that it would be a three-year rolling effort, so that every year ministers will meet, review the last business plan, assess the adequacy of what has been done to implement it, and decide on further measures that will be taken.

Indeed, ministers are going to be planning to meet again this coming fall to look and see how far we've gone in terms of implementation on what was decided last fall, and to assess what would be the major thrust and topics for a second business plan that we would look at putting out in 2002.

I've provided some examples of the measures below. I won't go into them, because they're covered well in the business plan. It was meant to give you a sense of the scope of the measures that are being taken both by provinces and territories, along with the federal government—some of them individually and some of them jointly, as joint efforts between provinces and the federal government or as a national effort.

The next slide talks about what we call the national work plan to 2002. When ministers met in October, they said we need to have a clear course of action for the next year or two ahead. What we want is for you to develop a process that will allow us to monitor the implementation of the first national business plan and report on measures. I would note, indeed, the actions that are taking place most recently. Both Manitoba and Saskatchewan have announced in their budgets further actions that they're taking in the area of climate change. Those will be part of our report in the fall.

Ministers also said we want you to start working on development of what would be the second national business plan for 2002. In particular, look at areas where there are gaps—where we need to take further action.

Finally, they said we would like you to ensure that you're looking at what are the policy instruments we would have to use, and what the implications of using those policy instruments would be in the event that we took a decision on ratification of the Kyoto protocol. Indeed, you should ensure that you are running a transparent process. So you should make sure that you're continuing to engage experts and stakeholders.

Slide B.7 gives a sense of the kind of analytical and policy work that the federal-provincial committee has engaged in—as well as the federal government. It talks about three main areas. They are the analysis of the impacts of any ratification decision, competitiveness in key sectors such as power generation, transportation, upstream oil and gas, and implementation in the context of a North American market and in the range of the kinds of international scenarios we might be looking at—in other words, how robust our policies would be in the face of changes internationally.

We also need to better understand what the implications are for all jurisdictions. Often we find that the data that we have for certain areas of the country, in particular for the north and the Atlantic provinces, is not disaggregated enough—is not of adequate quality to allow us to make good judgments about impacts. We should be working to improve that data.

The second major area is looking at options for allocation of a Canadian target. That's one of saying that in the event that we accept the target, are there ways in which we would allocate that target either by sector or by province and territory, and what would be the impacts of those allocations?

Finally, the other area is looking at options for the specific policy instruments, in particular domestic emissions trading, and the instruments that might accompany a domestic emissions trading system.

Looking at the next slide on participation of stakeholders and others in the process, the short message on this slide is simply to say that what we discovered in the first three years of the process that allowed us to have the first business plan and national strategy was that a transparent process—an engagement by both, what we would term, experts in the subject, as well as stakeholders who have an interest in the subject and the broader public is key to being able to develop a robust work plan that has some resilience and and a robust set of results. We plan to continue to do that over the course of the next two years in the work we're doing.

Turning to slide C.1, which is in the area of federal action, I would quickly note that last year the federal government announced in two tranches—one in the budget and the second in its fall action plan 2000—$1.1 billion of measures that would be spent over five years. They were focused in three main areas. One was reducing emissions—in particular in the context of sector strategies for key sectors—in government actions itself by doing things, such as purchasing green power and making its operations more efficient, and by building capacity to ensure that we're able to take advantage of any international emissions trading or credit system.

The second major area is increasing understanding. That's primarily doing work in the area of understanding climate system science, the impact of climate change on Canada, and the nature of the adaptation changes we might have to make to accommodate the implications of climate change for Canada, as well as doing the necessary policy work in looking at the measures we would have to take.

Finally, the last area is building the foundation for future action, which is doing work in the area of technology development—further analytical work—and further work in the area of public education.

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Those measures build on the roughly $850 million that the federal government had spent in the period since 1995.

If you look at the next slide, action plan 2000, which was introduced in the fall, you'll recognize that it's designed to get 65 million tonnes of reductions by the commitment period of 2008 to 2012. The percentage breakup in there is the percentage contribution of each of those sectors to that 65 million tonnes, based on the kinds of measures that we think we will be able to take using this money.

I would say that right now we're in the process of developing those programs in consultations with stakeholders and with provinces and territories. Our intention is to be able to announce the specific programs over the course of the next three to six months.

I would note that in slide three what I've attempted to do is give you a sense in two sectors—the first one being the transportation sector—of what our objectives are and the kinds of measures that are being developed right now and hopefully will be implemented in the course of the coming months.

In the transportation sector the focus is on improving fuel efficiency and, in particular, working with the automobile industry in a North American context to look at developing new fuel efficiency targets for 2010. It is also on looking at further developing new fuels, such as ethanol produced from biomass and developing the refuelling infrastructure that's going to be necessary for things such as fuel cell vehicles. The focus is also on working with all the elements of the freight transportation industry, particularly in terms of developing information on best practices and dissemination of that information to improve efficiencies in that area. And finally, it is focused in the area of urban transportation on looking to see what we could be doing to improve the application of technology to the use of energy in a more efficient fashion.

The second area that I would highlight out of the seven or eight that are covered off by the plan is buildings. The objectives there are to improve the efficiency of existing houses and buildings and to encourage the most efficient level when you're putting in new buildings and new construction. There the focus is on four main areas: commercial retrofits and encouraging high-efficiency commercial and institutional retrofits; residential buildings—that's building on current programs such as EnerGuide for houses—and the purchase of R-2000 houses; broadening the coverage of energy efficiency standards for appliances beyond those that are already touched; and in the energy code upgrading the model national energy code for houses.

Slide C.5 talks about the measures that were taken in budget 2000. It's really just an aide-mémoire, and I won't go through each of these in detail. Virtually all of these are in the process of being implemented, ranging all the way from the green municipalities enabling investment funds, which is very advanced in terms of its implementation, through to the climate change development fund through CIDA, which is an additional $100 million of ODA, which is also in advanced stages of implementation.

All of these plans under the three areas of reducing emissions, increasing understanding, and building foundation are in the process of being implemented. In essence, they're in their first year of being implemented. And as you are aware, the sustainable technology fund is currently in the process of going through the legislative process. I won't touch more on those and can deal with them in questions.

Finally, Madam Chair, in terms of the way ahead, we're in a sense gearing up for the period 2002 and 2003. It's assumed that if negotiations internationally are successful, then what we would be looking at is possibly having to put Canada in a position where it could make a decision one way or another on ratification of a protocol.

We would be working to get out our second national business plan in the course of 2002, and overall we have a substantial policy and analytical work agenda to put ourselves in a position to take both next steps, as well as to make next policy decisions next year.

The final thing I will note, Madam Chair, and then I will turn it over to questions, is that my area of expertise, as you might have judged from the slide deck, and my area of responsibility is working on our domestic implementation plans. My focus tends not to be on climate system science. There are scientists over at Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada who know that area, and I take their advice rather than contribute in any creative way to that advice. Similarly, on the international side, the international area is covered off by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Environment Canada. Again it's very relevant for the way we work our policy, and certainly I'll try to answer whatever the committee has in that area, but it's not an area where I have a responsibility or primary strength.

Thank you very much.

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The Chair: I'll turn it over to Mr. Chatters for questions.

Mr. David Chatters (Athabasca, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm not quite sure where to start on the issue, because this plan has been in the development stages for a number of years now, and even after your presentation this morning I have no better sense of where you're taking us or what it's going to cost Canadians than I did two or three years ago.

Certainly the action plan 2000 and the business plan, under the best-case scenario, appear to be taking us only a third of the way toward the Kyoto commitment, and even that I think is being very optimistic in assuming a lot of things that may or may not happen.

If we see a spike in natural gas prices as we did last winter, and we see electrical generators and commercial greenhouses going back to coal the way they did as a result of that, it doesn't appear to me you have much hope of even getting that one-third of the way.

Certainly with George W. Bush announcing that they're pulling out of the Kyoto accord, and considering our relationship to the U.S., with the combination of those things, it would appear to be pretty foolish of us to continue to be committed to ratifying the Kyoto accord or to even impose upon Canada a plan to reach the Kyoto accord commitment.

So I think in spite of a lot of rhetoric, a lot of talk and a fair commitment of dollars, Canadians out there don't have any better idea of what kind of commitment the Government of Canada is imposing upon them than they did three years ago. I think there's a real need for some clarity here and a lot less rhetoric, a lot less of the kind of thing we've seen over the period, and a little more honesty and being more upfront with Canadians on exactly what's going to be required. We talk about developing that plan and disseminating information, yet it never seems to happen.

I don't know if there's a question there, but I have real concerns that we're just going around in circles. We're talking and spending a fair bit of money, and we're not getting anywhere near the commitment we made in Kyoto. And it doesn't look like we're going to.

I guess I'd just ask you to comment on those things.

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I think it's fair to say the approach we've chosen—this is we, the federal government, working with provinces and territories, because we've chosen a collaborative approach—purposely said that we recognize Kyoto is a challenge from the Canadian perspective; we must do our homework on it. It's why we don't have a quick answer in terms of saying, this is the policy we're going to have right now and we're going to implement it immediately.

What we said was we were going to go at it in a phased approach. We were going to take first steps. The measures that were proposed in the fall federal-provincial plan and the 65 million tonnes coming out of the $500 million plus the other money around it were our best estimate. We think frankly there are opportunities to improve on that if we're able to work well with the provinces and with the private sector. And we have an awful lot of engagement with the private sector on it.

So in one sense, if you will, our approach to the strategy, which is a phased approach, which is not saying we understand all of the things we're going to have to do, is because we've accepted the fact that this is a challenge from Canada's perspective. We must do our homework. We're going to make progressive work over the period of time, and we've taken our first steps on it.

We're reasonably confident that 65 million tonnes is a good measure for what those initial steps will give us. What we realize is that to go the remaining two-thirds of the way is going to take some further fairly robust policy measures. We've agreed we're going to work with the provinces and territories on what those will be.

It's not a silver bullet. We're looking at issues such as emissions trading as one possible measure and we can discuss more of that. We haven't finished our work on it. But the track we're trying to set out for Canadians is one of saying we're trying to approach this thing in a sensible fashion, a pragmatic fashion that takes action, because our information from the science is that this is a problem.

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The science now, three years after I started it, is more impressive in terms of saying that this is an issue we're going to have to deal with and it's an issue with real impacts on Canada. Therefore, we have to take action. We think we've taken sensible first steps, and we think we've built a foundation so that we're going to do our homework and be able to take a sensible second and third step.

What is not clear and what remains under discussion—I suspect because it's not just difficult for Canada, but it's a challenge worldwide—is the international context. That is proving to be a very challenging set of negotiations.

Our view is that we signed the protocol in good faith. By signing it we said were committed to negotiating this protocol in good faith. And we're committing to see if we can't make that happen, because the science tells us the only way you can deal with the issue is if you're dealing with it globally. What makes sense is a global solution to which everybody has to contribute.

The advantage of Kyoto was that it provided the basis, the starting point, for that. It's not a solution. The scientists will tell you it is itself a modest first step, but it's a start. For that reason, we're committed to trying to follow through on the negotiations and see whether we can make it happen with other countries.

The U.S. judgment to step outside, as many have said, was in a sense dismaying, and it wasn't anticipated. We knew they had issues with it, just as we have issues with it. But the next step, which we're hoping they'll take and which they've said they're going to do, is to undertake a policy review. They started it in the last week or so. We hope they're going to be able to continue it with a fair amount of alacrity over the course of the coming months. That will then not just have them pull out of the protocol, but it will put on the table what their vision is for a successful international context within which everyone can work.

I think from Canada's point of view it's clear that we're going to have to work between what we want in the Kyoto protocol and where we see the Americans coming out. I think it's going to be a very challenging year ahead, but from what I've heard from the U.S. side, including the statements of the administration, is that they're committed to dealing with the issue. They have problems with the protocol, but our hope is that means they're going to come back and indicate what steps they're going to be able to take, what makes sense for them in terms of moving forward. Once they do that, we'll be able to have a conversation with them and with the Europeans.

In the meantime, the Kyoto protocol is the vehicle that's on the table, and we've said in good faith we're going to continue negotiating it to determine whether we're going to be in a position to ratify.

Mr. David Chatters: It just seems to me that the government, particularly the ministers and the rhetoric you keep hearing, is not being particularly honest with Canadians. Obviously, your first step is a very timid one, and while it may be building a foundation, if the first step is as timid as it is, considering the timelines we're looking at—2008 and 2012—if you're really intending to meet the Kyoto commitment, the process is going to have to speed up dramatically in the next couple of years compared to what you've done in the years up to it.

The United States, which in fact has moved further down the road of emissions reduction than we have in Canada, says they're not going to meet the Kyoto commitment. Yet our ministers continue to say we're going to meet the Kyoto commitment. I think there's great confusion out there in the public and there needs to be some clarification.

If the Kyoto commitment is unattainable, then let's be honest enough to say that it is and that we're going to continue going down that road and at some point dramatically begin to reduce our emissions because of the foundation we're building, but that to get there by 2008, 2012 is unachievable, and we will not be committing ourselves to do that. That at least would be honest, and Canadians would have a better sense of what's expected of them than they have now.

The Chair: Mr. Oulton, we're after seven minutes, so I will say keep it very brief.

Mr. David Oulton: I will be brief, Madam Chair.

I agree with the comments that we need to step up our work. That's very clear and it's clear in the context of the work we're doing with the provinces and territories. If we are going to be making a major decision on the next steps, which will be significant ones, we have a lot of work to do over the next couple of years to put ourselves in a position to take it.

The work we're doing is designed to help us appreciate the costs and the doability. Nothing we have seen yet says that you cannot do this. It says there are different costs for doing it, depending upon the policies you use. So there are choices for us to make.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin (Sherbrooke, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, Mr. Chatters, I have to say that you almost took the words right out of my mouth. You mentioned virtually every major concern I have. Perhaps I should give the floor to Mr. St- Julien. No? Fine then.

Clearly, the fact remains that climate change is everyone's responsibility, and by that I mean the responsibility of every country in the world. And while many countries seem disinclined to meet the Kyoto targets, we still have a responsibility to try and match them.

It would appear that since the summit, our efforts, actions and technical commitments to reduce GHG emissions and achieve our climate change targets have not proven successful. Therefore, we will need to double or triple our efforts if we hope to meet these emission reduction targets.

When I look at policy directives and major emission reduction targets that we are setting, even though we are still a long way from the Kyoto targets, I find myself somewhat skeptical. I have to wonder if we have any real chance of meeting them. Although we want to meet the Kyoto targets, our targets represent only one third of the Kyoto targets. Does the political will to act truly exist?

On looking at your tables, even without going into detail, we note that transportation and fossil fuels are the biggest contributor to GHG emissions. Yet, reduction targets are not necessarily the largest in these sectors.

We know, however, that fairly large businesses are primarily responsible for high emission levels related to transportation and fossil fuels. These businesses earn billions in revenues, and pay six or seven billion in various taxes to the federal government. Under the circumstances, we have to wonder if the political will to reduce GHG emissions truly exists.

The first step would be to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and to turn to cleaner energy sources. However, it seems we are going around in circles. It begs the questions: Can we achieve our targets, even though they are not as high as they should be?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Frankly, the events we've seen in our work.... And remember, what we tend to look at is there are really two sides to the equation: one is the technology you use when you consume energy and emit carbon—it's not only energy, but primarily; and the other is the technology you have to deal with the problem.

There are some very striking examples where you do have technology solutions, and while they start off being costly, the work is indeed rapidly advancing, just as you have on computers and other things they quickly reduce their cost.

The example that's clearest, and I'll use western Canada because I think it's one of the areas where we clearly.... There is no doubt the western Canadian energy industry isn't going to stop in its tracks as part of Canada's climate change solution. So what you do is look at technology for ways in which you can produce energy and move energy by pipeline much more effectively and efficiently. And there, if you look in the record of what companies put into our voluntary challenge registry, VCR, you'll find that most energy companies on the producing side have made tremendous strides in terms of the reduced amount of energy they have to use per unit of product they produce. So simply by introducing new technologies and introducing new practices, they've made tremendous strides in being able to reduce the energy and the hydrocarbons they emit when they produce oil and gas.

Secondly, what's happening is they're growing so rapidly that they're almost outstripping their ability to apply this new technology on efficiency. The other solution they're looking at and that works for things like coal power generation plants, but could also work for upstream oil and gas, is whether you can do carbon dioxide sequestration, whether you can take carbon dioxide and put it back in the ground and whether it will stay.

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One of the projects in one of the slides I was noting is a joint project that has the International Energy Agency, the federal government, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and a whole number of commercial partners looking at whether we can put carbon dioxide we produce from our coal stations in producing power, or from our oil and gas production, and re-inject it safely into the ground where it will stay and not come up in the future and perhaps produce more oil, or perhaps stay inert in a reservoir.

So there are technology solutions that are on the horizon. I just choose that because it's one of the areas that is most pressing. Another one closer to home here is ethanol. We're working with companies to look to see if we can produce ethanol from biomass. To use a local Ottawa area example, Iogen Corporation is a company that indeed is working with the federal government and a number of players to determine if they can produce further ethanol at a cheaper rate that's going to basically ultimately be competitive with gasoline.

The third factor I would note, one that relates to my former background, which was very much in energy markets, is you can't predict oil and gas prices very well, but certainly the trajectory recently has been upward. Frankly, in a world where you're looking at energy costs becoming increasing costs to producers, anybody who uses energy, as well as to consumers, the creativity that's implied in terms of technology—and the second factor is behavioural change, getting the technology into the market—is remarkable. You just have to go back to the period of the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties, when we had an “oil crisis”, which raised prices tremendously, and you had a tremendous response in the transportation area, which is one of the more challenging areas, right through to energy-using appliances.

So while I wouldn't want to trivialize the challenge, an awful lot of the technologies that we need in order to achieve our objective, and from the U.S. perspective their objective, are technologies that are here today. They need to be worked on to make them more cost-effective and they need to have some barriers and other things removed so they will penetrate the markets more quickly. But you can see solutions there.

It's why even though I would agree that we need to work harder, we need to work faster, we need to make the changes that are necessary to get those technologies in the market—so there's a lot of work to do—I do not feel we have targets we're not able to manage.

The Chair: All right.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: Do I have any time remaining, Madam Chair?

[English]

The Chair: Unfortunately, no.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: We'll move on to Mr. Keddy.

Mr. Gerald Keddy (South Shore, PC): Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you folks for coming.

To Mr. Oulton, maybe I'm becoming a pessimist over climate change, and I think probably a lot of us around the table are becoming pessimists about climate change, but certainly the announcement from the United States that they're going to withdraw is a very serious blow to any type of Kyoto protocol ever being implemented.

You said it was challenging. I think it's to the point that it's almost a disaster. We can't get Germany to agree with the United States. They both want to look at emissions trading. We can't get the industrialized nations of the world to understand the fact that the non-industrialized countries need a leg up or an opportunity to get out of the position they're in. That means they may need to be above emissions standards for a while instead of at par or below them.

Is there another way to do this? Is this a situation in which Canada is simply going to say “Listen, we've agreed to this accord in good judgment and we intend to implement it as far as possible. If the rest of the world is lagging behind, that doesn't mean that we don't go ahead on our own.”?

Or do we look at it from another angle and say “This is possible, this is doable. This part of the accord we're going to implement now. We're going to stop talking about it. If the United States doesn't come along or industrialized Europe doesn't come along, we can't do anything about that. This is our plan. This is what we're doing.”

I know that's a difficult question to answer as a bureaucrat, but it's almost to that point.

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

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Mr. David Oulton: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think you always have to be prepared for alternate plans. You cannot predict how the international negotiations are going to go. Frankly, when we put out this strategy and business plan, it was predicated on the fact that we didn't know what was going to turn out. This was prior to the U.S. decisions recently, but it said the foundation in this is that Canada has a stake in managing and dealing with this issue. Regardless of what happens, we need to be taking action. So it was meant to be—we've used this term, but it's probably a bit tired now—an all-weather plan that said that regardless of where the international discussion was going, regardless of what the decision process might be in the U.S., we need to take action and we need to move on it. And we need to be prepared.

Frankly, from our perspective, Kyoto is what we undertook to negotiate. We're committed in good faith to pursue those negotiations to see if we can have a ratifiable protocol, not just for us, but for all the other players. That remains. It's the game that's on right now.

If a new game is declared and the U.S. comes in and eventually states a position—and I guess my hope would be that they have to, because you can't work on this global issue without a global framework—so that ultimately they will come and say here is what we would be prepared to work on, then we, with the rest of the international community, will have to make a decision on whether we are better off working with Kyoto and bringing that to conclusion in the hope that the U.S. will eventually come in in its own good time. And it does that. The U.S. has its way of doing things like that. Or do we sit back and say let's see if we can interpolate between the U.S. position and the Kyoto position?

I think the answer to your question is “yes”, we should be ready for anything. We know we're going to have to deal with the issue, but frankly we should not take our eye off the ball. The ball now is Kyoto, and we should continue to work at seeing whether we can make a success of that.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: All that is understood, and I appreciate your answer. But I think there are some huge, gigantic goals there we're seeking and I'm not sure if we're going about it the right way. There's a lot of noise made about alternative energy sources, ethanol production, ethanol gasoline cars that would use either/or. But you can't buy an ethanol-run car in Canada; you have to get them from the U.S. I don't know if there are a dozen places in the country where you could fill one up. We're talking about it, but it's just not there yet.

To some extent, that leads to a false sense of security among Canadians, saying yes, we're doing something about this issue. Sixty-five million tonnes of carbon emission sounds like a lot, but in the big scale it's a pretty modest goal. That leads to where my question is headed: have we even attained our lowest, our most modest goals? They're still down the road.

Mr. David Oulton: If I were being very candid with you—

Mr. Gerald Keddy: Yes, of course, I appreciate that.

Mr. David Oulton: —I would say the first goal was under the convention, and that was a voluntary goal, that we, along with everybody else in the OECD, would stabilize by the year 2000. We didn't do that.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: No.

Mr. David Oulton: Our last measure of 1998 said we were 13% above, and I suspect we'll be a little higher than that by the time we get the 2000 measurement in. So, no, we didn't meet that one. And the argument was neither we nor the U.S., nor frankly anyone in the broad committee of countries that are making reductions, made this target. Frankly, it was because we didn't have the appropriate international regime to do it.

So I accept your point about the challenge. My view is that I think we have all sorts of opportunities. We have to be flexible. If the international framework starts to change, then we have to be prepared to change with it. But the bottom line is we've set in place a policy that says we're seized with this issue, and we're going to keep working at it. I agree with the earlier comments: what we've done to date is too modest. We need to do more and we are going to step up our policy work on it.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: And I'm not questioning for a moment that the entire process is not well-intended. It's for all the correct reasons, without question. But I wonder if another part of the problem is the fact that we have become too dependent upon technology.

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I'm not a Luddite—don't get me wrong. But we have, I think, a pretty general agreement among the industrialized countries of the world that we've got a forty- or perhaps fifty-year supply of oil and gas out there, if we continue to use it at the rate we're using it—the known reserves and potential reserves. If we reduce it dramatically and find new technologies that allow us to reduce it dramatically.... You get all kinds of people who argue with that, but I think 40 or 50 years is probably pretty accurate. People have a tendency to say that before we run out of oil and gas, we will develop another technology, whether that's the Ballard fuel cell or something else, that's cleaner, that's more energy efficient, that works better.

We're concerned about climate change, the polar ice caps melting, the climate getting warmer, the oceans rising. But it's really not up to my doorstep yet, and I don't know how you change people's opinions to make them understand really the incredible importance of this entire issue.

Mr. David Oulton: I'll go to the heart of an earlier comment as well. I will admit that's an area where I don't think we have met the challenge, despite the fact that we are trying to put resources out on what we call public education, outreach. You can't say it doesn't have any impact. You focus on youth, you focus on children, you focus on the usual targets.

Mr. Gerald Keddy: A twenty-year plan.

Mr. David Oulton: It takes a long time for that to change. The experience we had before, when we went through the first round of energy conservation in the seventies and eighties, was that until people understood very clearly from their own personal perspective why it mattered to them, they didn't make their own changes. You're right. You can take the existing technology and just alter how you use the car, alter the way you drive your car, alter the way you heat your house—there's an awful lot you can do through behavioural change.

It's not an area we've been successful yet in tapping into. It may be easier to tap into if you've got energy pricing helping to reinforce it, but that's always difficult, because energy prices go up and they go down, and people's behaviour tends to move around according to the market, which is what economics would tell you they should do. It's a faux ami in a way. We can't depend upon it to be a reliable underpinner of our public education effort.

We're going to have to do more there, that's all I can say. We have not solved that issue. It is not a top-of-the-mind issue yet. It's rising. People understand. If you talk to the farmers on the prairies, they understand the concern about where the climate may be going. In the north there's an increasing sensitivity to what it means to lifestyles and impact on habitats. But it's still very focused on very narrow populations, who are close to the land, close to the weather, but not living in cities. We haven't succeeded in tapping into that broader population.

Sorry, Madam Chairman. My answer was too long.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien (Abitibi—James-Bay—Nunavik, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a number of questions for the witness about the process of climate change and how it impacts Canada's north.

As we know, the Territories, Nunavut and Nunavik are extremely vulnerable and the process of climate change in the North will have physical, ecological, sociological and economic ramifications.

The repercussions of climate change will affect communities, the ice and the sea. Climate change will affect permafrost conditions and Arctic wildlife. Some measures have been taken and the problem is being addressed by a research network on climate and by nine groups of researchers from twelve Canadian universities.

Have you sought the collaboration of research groups in Nunavut and Nunavik? Are you working in specific locations in these vast regions?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Yes, although we're just at the beginning of that. We have been working quite hard trying to ensure we've got networks that work not only in Nunavut, but also with the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

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It's something we've really just started to develop fully over about the last year. Nunavut was the last one, and it's just a case of them having the capacity to engage. They're putting together a new government, and providing the focal point is something they've been able to start working with us on over the last half a dozen months. It's early days yet. My own view is that it's only in the last 12 months that we've really started to appreciate what we're going to have to tap into to understand what's going on in Nunavut and to tap into not only the science, but the population, the people who are living there, making observations about what the impacts are on them.

So, yes, we are tapping in. Are we satisfied with how far we've got? No. We're just at the beginning, particularly in Nunavut. We're a little more advanced in working with the Northwest Territories and Yukon, because they started a little earlier, they had the infrastructure. But we do have a work program that we're developing with them over the coming two years, so we will be improving it.

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you, Madam Chair.

You're forgetting that according to your action plan, you will be working with the Inuit in these three territories. I'm delighted to hear that. A federally supported research centre operates in Kuujjuaq in Nunavik.

You haven't mentioned Nunavik. Yet, it's a vast territory. The province of Quebec covers an area of 1.5 million square kilometres. My riding alone covers 802,000 square kilometres. I'd like to know if you are co-operating with this research centre in Kuujjuak.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: This is something I'd like to get back to you on. They should be, but I couldn't tell you for sure whether they are. I believe that through Quebec and the work we've been doing with Quebec, they may be, but I would like to be able to come back to you and give you a more specific answer on how we're working with them, or if we are.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

Mr. Guy St-Julien: That is precisely why I would like you to contact officials in Kuujjuak, Nunavik and the President of Makivik, Pita Aatami. His telephone number is 819-964-2925. This research facility was recently expanded.

I have often asked myself another question since I've been traveling around my riding in recent years and meeting with members of the Inuit community. People have talked to me about changes in the wildlife that inhabits these regions in Nunavik. Let me read to you an excerpt from an article.

Although global warning will probably lead to an increase in the number of species, their distribution patterns are likely to change. Major wetlands could disappear, which would undoubtedly affect the duck population and other species of wildlife. As the amount of sea ice decreases, seals, walrus, polar bears and other species that depend on this ice for their survival will suffer.

The Inuit are currently reporting to us that they have seen changes in the wildlife population. Some Inuit living in Kangirsuk and Salluit have even told me that climate change is responsible for changing the sex of polar bears.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: As a general comment, first, we will undertake to get back to the committee with that question that I wasn't able to answer with regard to the research centre.

Second, we are just starting in our work—it's been really in the last year—trying to pick up observations based on people on the land in the north, to get a better sense. You typically have used your science observations, and those you understand from a certain perspective, but we've also been trying to make the observations more robust by picking up anecdotal observations based on the communities that are up there. That is helping to fill in a stronger impression along the lines you've been describing with regard to impacts in the north, and that is very valuable. In some senses it's more valuable and more precise than the general science information we're basing some of our observations on.

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It's anecdotal information, frankly, from recent conferences that have been taking place in the north, for example, where people have been talking about the impacts on, if you will, traditional lifestyles or about their observations of wildlife and fish. It has much more impact in terms of us understanding what's really going on and what it means in terms of local residents. We are really just starting to collect the information.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. David Oulton: What we have seen so far is impressive.

The Chair: Mr. Chatters.

I would like to remind everyone that we're now in our three-minute round.

Mr. David Chatters: I'd like to switch directions a little and go back somewhat to the whole science of this. It would appear to me, and I've had the comment made to me by a number of other people, that the government itself doesn't really believe the rhetoric out there about the catastrophic effect of climate change. Simply, that's demonstrated by the slowness with which governments around the world are moving.

There even seems to be a shift in the scientific rhetoric, the editorial type of rhetoric. In fact, the climate is changing. There's no question about it. That's a given. We have all kinds of evidence, but there seems to be a shifting of opinion on how much impact man's activities and carbon dioxide are having on that. There seems to be a feeling that we should shift our efforts to adapting to climate change, which is inevitable. Climate change has happened a number of times in history.

On the weekend I was in my riding, where we were looking at tropical plants and animals that have been exposed in the tar sands operations and which clearly indicate that the area was tropical at one time. That had nothing to do with man's activities. The scientific evidence seems to be moving that way, and it would appear that perhaps even the government is accepting that and rejecting the catastrophic effect man is having on his own environment. Maybe you could comment on that.

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: I should in a sense take the fifth on the science, since I'm not a scientist and the committee might have the opportunity to get an expert presentation on the science. I take advice, if you will, from the science community. We have two communities that we broadly draw on, in a sense. One is the internal federal science community, which is quite articulate with regard to climate change, and the second one is international, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which people are aware of and which is producing a series of three reports that are achieving some notice in the press.

As I understand those reports, what they say is that if you look at the evidence of the last century, there was a predominant effect of man beyond what you would expect from your analysis of natural trends. There may be some dispute about how predominant that is, but it's fairly clear that man has left a signature in terms of the overall trend in emissions.

In extrapolating that—and this is where I think there is still an element of discussion in the international science community—over the period of the next century, you're looking at a fairly broad risk of temperature change, above and beyond what we've already had, of somewhere in the order of close to two degrees to as much as five degrees. This they do attribute to having a fairly substantial impact because of man-made changes, anthropogenic changes.

In my own view, there is more consensus in the science community on an interpretation of what these temperature changes mean. That's always been one of the contentious areas. You can establish the science that produces the temperature changes, but the question is what it means in terms of specific regions of Canada, or specific regions of the world, for that matter. That area is still being filled in.

The sense is that it's not so much the catastrophic effects of it but the effects over time, which you see the models producing. Drier prairies is one example. Whether or not you conjure up images of the 1930s dust bowl or whatever, which is where you get to the catastrophic concept, models show certainly a drier southern prairie area. That would cause you to want to shift your agriculture or you would need an awful lot more irrigation in order to continue to farm there.

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The west and the north are the two areas where we are getting the most current information, and similarly in the north there are impacts that over time have the potential to make the traditional lifestyle of many of the inhabitants there extraordinarily difficult, whether or not we call it catastrophic. They may call it catastrophic in terms of how they see it and in terms of their ability to live the way they have lived in the past.

I agree it may not be the right word—

Mr. David Chatters: I'm going to run out of time, so—

Mr. David Oulton: I'm sorry.

The Chair: Both of you are out of time.

I'll let Mr. Bagnell have his chance.

Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): I agree somewhat with the point Mr. Chatters made. I spoke at a conference recently and said that regardless of whether this is man-made change or the natural change we always have, we also have to put efforts into preparing for these dramatic changes over and above continuing our aggressive efforts to prevent them.

In the election I was trying to get people to ask us about this, because you have this plan. As my colleagues have said, it doesn't solve the problem, but at least it's working in the right direction. I was delighted when people asked about it. It was great. Few people were talking about it, but when they did we could bring up this plan.

Part of the war is already won in regard to the direction. It was the same with the financial war when the country had a big deficit; it seemed to be the thing to do. The fact that we turned it around and Canadians agreed we were no longer going to spend more than we were bringing in was a major change, regardless of what the figures were. There has been been a major victory here, in that people are realizing that we can't just keep doing this and that we're working in the right direction.

I was glad you said that for the Yukon and the Maritimes the figures weren't there because of disaggregation. That has been a problem for us for decades, a real irritant in regard to Statistics Canada and parts of government often leaving out the north because there are not enough statistical samples. I'm sure our chair can agree with this. We're not included in the studies because they can't isolate us and then we can't decide on any solutions or take any action.

As people have said, I think there are even more dramatic changes in the north. At Dawson there are people who live on the other side of the river and cross on an ice bridge every year. This year they couldn't get home for several months because it didn't freeze. It often used to be minus 50 degrees or minus 60 degrees in the Yukon. I can't remember it being much lower than minus 30 degrees in recent years.

It is dramatic for the people too. The Porcupine caribou herd is always migrating, and where it goes depends on how much snow there is. There are 17 fixed first nation Gwich'in villages that depend on those caribou for survival, so if the pattern changes it will have a dramatic impact on their lives.

My quick question is related to the municipal infrastructure fund. As you said, that was an advanced green fund. Is it running well? If it is, will it run out of money, and will you give more to it?

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: It is one of the funds announced in the year 2000 budget. It was one of the funds that got up and running very quickly.

As of last fall and through to the winter, it has, I think, gone through its first or second phase in terms of providing grants. The fund is not at risk in terms of expending all of its money over the course of the next year or two, so it's not as if there's an imminent risk of loss of money.

It is clear that we haven't had enough time yet to be able to evaluate it. Ideally that would be based on about two years of performance. You would do an evaluation then and ask if it has worked out well. If it has, you would ask if this in an area in which you would try to get further reductions.

Frankly, it looks very prospective. Working with the municipalities and with the provincial governments when they can work with municipalities and ourselves is one of the areas on which I was commenting earlier. One of our Achilles heels is being able to deal with issues of change in regard to how people use energy and other things, particularly in urban settings for transportation. There is a lot of fixed infrastructure. The municipal government people in the place really know how to do those things well, not us. Therefore, what you really want to do is use that fund to see whether they are going to be able to make those kinds of changes.

Based on what I've seen in the applications—they haven't been paid out yet—there is a really great range of applications and uses, a wide variety of uses all across Canada in a whole range of municipalities, both urban and rural. We're quite hopeful that it is going to turn out to be very prospective.

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Obviously the Minister of Finance and policy ministers will have to sit down and make a decision on whether they are going to top it up and go further, but frankly, based on less than a year of just getting out the door, things are looking good. It seems to be one of the areas where we can really work very positively with municipalities.

So I am hopeful that in two or three years' time, when we do the evaluation, we'll have the basis for saying yes, this is an area where we should be doing more work, and if more funding is needed, then we should be looking at going to bat for them.

The Chair: All right. Thank you.

Mr. Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: Thank you, Madam Chair.

There is a saying that goes like this: the grass is always greener on the other side. However, that is not always true. According to the emission figures for each provinces, levels have increased by 7% in Quebec. I consider these levels to be too high.

However, compared to other provinces, the increase in Quebec is much smaller. I was wondering if perhaps Mr. St-Julien might be responsible for this increase in emission levels, given that he is so close to the people of his vast riding and visits them so frequently.

I have a question concerning international credits. I was wondering if you might clarify this matter for me. Could people or businesses bank these credits in order to carry out activities that further pollute?

[English]

Mr. David Oulton: Again, because I participate to a certain extent in international discussions, I have some background on that, although probably not as much as you might like.

Internationally, they're looking at something called a “clean development” mechanism, which would provide credits whereby a so-called annex one country—that really means a largely OECD country—who invested in a Third World country would be able to put in a project, and that project would be certified in terms of reducing emissions in that country.

To give you an example, let's say somebody came in and provided a new technology, such as clean coal technology, for a country that was predominantly coal-burning. You would be reducing their emissions through that technical assistance. Out of that would come some credits that would probably be shared, some for the project proponents and some for the project sponsors in the country itself. Those credits would be usable, in the international currency, to count against your emission obligations.

So if you did a project and you got a one-tonne credit out of it, that credit could be purchased by a company in Canada. If it had an obligation for reduction in Canada, it could use that one tonne as part of its portfolio of how it was going about meeting its obligations.

The short answer, to come down to your question of whether that means, therefore, there's a transfer as to where the reductions could take place, is “yes”. It's meant to make the system more efficient. If it's less costly to make a reduction in China, to use an example, through application of that technology, than it might be through application of technology in the United States, for example, the atmosphere doesn't care where the reduction comes from. You go where it's most efficient.

But it does mean that you take the reduction somewhere else. The credit you get for that means that you can apply that credit to an obligation you would have under the protocol in Canada, or the U.S., or Germany, or anywhere else.

The Chair: Thank you. I'll move on to Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

This has been most interesting. I must thank my colleagues for the questions they've asked, because they certainly are right on. Mr. Chatters, I think, put his finger on the thing that's bothering most of us.

I have three short questions, I hope, Mr. Oulton. First, I'm looking back at “The Challenge” on A.1, and I want to make sure I understand it. That line from 1990 up to 2010, which you've called “Business-as-Usual”, has an asterisk explaining that this “factors in an estimated 60 MT”, 60 megatons. Does that mean “million” tons?

Thank you. Somebody said “metric”, but it's not. There is a million in each mega.

Now, it continues with “from current voluntary measures”. Am I right in saying that if we didn't have those voluntary measures this line would be steeper from 1995 up?

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Mr. David Oulton: Yes, that's correct. It would be steeper by 60 million tonnes.

Mr. John Finlay: Okay. If we then go to page C.2, it says “Federal Measures designed to obtain 65 Mt/year during 2008-2012 commitment period—taking Canada 1/3 of way”. That would mean, if I go back to this first graph and subtract those numbers, there's a difference of 189 million tonnes between the Kyoto target and where we are. That would bring us about a third of the way down.

That still wouldn't bring us level, would it? In other words, we're still going the wrong way.

Mr. David Oulton: We would not have achieved stabilization, if that's what you're asking.

Mr. John Finlay: All right. I just wanted to make very sure that this is what I was seeing.

Mr. David Oulton: That's correct.

Mr. John Finlay: I also find the terminology used on page C.2 interesting. You have, “Buildings 10%”, “Energy (electricity, oil and gas) 20%”, and then “International 25%”.

What does that mean? Don't all the other countries in the world have houses and building and agriculture and forestry and so on?

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

That's a good question. It actually goes back to the question just asked with regard to international credits. What we are trying to do with the resources in that area is put in place a clean development mechanism office, in Canada and abroad, that will allow Canadian companies to be able to put together proposals that would allow them to participate in projects for clean development mechanism credits.

What we're doing is investing, in a sense, in terms of ensuring that Canadian companies are aware of the opportunities and that where opportunities occur in countries where we have embassies, they are able to find out about them and connect up, if you will, with the companies that are possible players in the reductions back in Canada.

So it's an investment, if you will, assuming that the international agreement will result in some form of international crediting perhaps along the lines of the clean development mechanism that's currently being discussed, wanting to make sure that Canadian companies, as well as those in Europe or in the U.S., will be in a good position to take advantage of them. Our estimate is that there are a lot of opportunities internationally to be able to get credits in both Third World countries and other areas. Indeed, if we provide Canadian companies with the right information and opportunities, they should be able to get a fair number of credits.

The only thing I would add to that, though, as a reminder, is that our policy has said that the Canadian overall approach to meeting an obligation, whether it be Kyoto or any other reduction obligation internationally, is to get the majority of our reductions in Canada. So these international credits would be add-ons, but we think they're important add-ons to make sure that Canadian companies have an opportunity to be as efficient as those in other countries in terms of reducing their costs of carbon emissions.

Mr. John Finlay: Madam Chair, have I time to ask my last little question?

The Chair: Unfortunately, we're at four and a half minutes already.

Mr. John Finlay: Okay.

The Chair: Mr. Chatters.

Mr. David Chatters: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to continue in the direction in which I was going before. I think we have all kinds of evidence—I read a scientific paper on it just the other day—and all kinds of examples of where climate change has actually wiped out civilizations. That's a given, whether it was the drought that destroyed aboriginal cultures or the climate change that caused some of the Central and South American cultures to essentially disappear.

Given that, and given the evidence of the impact that's already being felt in Canada's north and among Canada's northern people, then it seems to me that if the government accepts that this phenomenon is due to man's activities on this globe and we are in fact facing a catastrophic situation for those people, this requires serious and immediate big action, not little steps but serious action.

If you're looking at the destruction of a culture, of a people of the north, the Inuit people, I would suggest that's as serious a situation as, for example, the impact of the Second World War on the world. We should be taking giant steps, and yet the government seems to be moving very timidly. Again, it suggests to me that the government does not recognize this impact as a man-made one in which it can actually control what's happening and reverse it. In fact, it accepts this as inevitable and that we have to start helping these people to adapt to a different climate, so they do survive the change.

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The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Thank you for the opportunity to come back to the discussion. I have not fully answered your earlier comments.

I certainly agree that adaptation, to use the common term, needs to be an increasing part of our policy. Frankly, we have just begun to start working on developing adaptation strategies. Part of the new funding, that $1.1 billion, is indeed to start developing the basis for what would be an adaptation strategy.

This very much needs to be done regionally, because an awful lot of this knowledge is not inside the beltway in Ottawa, it's knowledge that is up in the local communities in the provinces and territories. It's going to be very localized; it's going to deal with prairie farmers, it's going to deal with traditional northern lifestyles.

Mind you, as far as we can see, the climate change issue will progressively affect us over time, though we have been surprised, because it seems to be affecting us earlier than we would have thought, if you'd asked us three years ago in this committee. It's probably advancing more quickly than we had thought it would.

We agree that we need to work on adaptation. We are further behind there, if you will. If you were criticizing on the basis of how far we're going in mitigation, we've got even further to go, more work to do, I beleive, in adaptation. We are going to put increasing resources into this area.

Scientists are advising the government that this is a serious phenomenon against which we need to be taking measures. The mitigation measures are being made in gradual steps, because we've agreed to work with provinces and territories and industry to try to develop a national consensus on this. It does take time in Canada to develop the proper basis for moving forward.

So if we're going to act properly on this, it's not just the federal government that needs to act. We need to show leadership, obviously, increasing amounts of leadership, if you will, on it. But we must also make sure we're bringing along the provinces, territories, and the other players, because they make a great deal of difference in helping to make our policies more robust.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Carignan.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Guy Carignan (Québec-Est, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Oulton, regarding the US position on the Kyoto protocol, I heard someone who seemed to be well-informed say last week during an open-line program that Canada was a nation that polluted a great deal and was among those doing the least to prevent the greenhouse effect and pollution.

On the other hand, we generally hear say that Canada ranks first in conducting different types of socio-economic activities aimed at preventing pollution and achieving emission targets.

Where in fact does Canada stand internationally in terms of the efforts undertaken and the results achieved?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: I wish I could say there was a really good quantitative way, an independent, international assessment, of who's doing what and where you rank, but there isn't, to the best of my knowledge.

Frankly, there are countries who are further ahead by virtue of having made some of the big policy choices already, like implementing a kind of tax—call it an energy tax—and emissions trading. The U.K. is an example in this regard.

Some of the northern European countries are also further ahead, saying “We think we know enough about our country to know what kinds of policies to put in place”. The Danes and the Dutch, and two or three others, are right at the front end of having made some of the bigger policy decisions, of having decided that they're prepared to do this, without being sure what the international framework has done.

Frankly, I would put us in the middle of the pack, with the Australians and many of the Europeans. We're still doing our homework on things like emissions trading, on what incentive policy makes sense, on where you bet your money when you're looking at research and development and technology.

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We think we've taken good first steps. I can accept that they're modest in the context of the objective, but we think we've taken good first steps. We think we're not behind the pack, but we're certainly not at the front. There are countries that have made larger framework decisions than we have so far. We've said we're prepared to be more cautious on this issue. Part of it is because we do work in a North American context, and that matters in terms of how we set sensible policy in place. So we work in a context that says, make sure we understand our industry; make sure we understand how their competitiveness is affected by the relationships with the U.S. That should reflect on the kind of policy we put in, in terms of wanting to be able to leverage off what the U.S. is doing.

So, yes, we're taking our time doing our homework. That means we're not at the front end, but it does mean we're doing the homework that's necessary to be able to take, we think, the decisions at the right time, which is going to be when we know what the international framework is, hopefully within the next couple of years.

The Chair: A very short one.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Guy Carignan: Although I believe we need the will and desire to act, I would like to focus for a moment on page B.1 of your presentation, that is on the directives issued by first ministers in 1997. You begin by saying that Canada must do its part, but that no region of the country should bear an unreasonable burden.

However, it is a known fact that over the past decade, when the government wanted to restore some order to its finances, it did what it had to do and put in the effort that was required. If, for example, a major effort were required to clean up the environment, to counter the greenhouse effect and to overcome the effects of climate change, how would you interpret this directive that no region should bear an unreasonable burden, given the concerns over the effort that is required?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: It certainly is given a great deal of priority in the federal-provincial discussion, which I co-chair along with a colleague from the provinces. It's recognized that there are.... We're using the term to say, if you're going to deal with this issue, there are going to be some changes that you're going to be making. In that, you can use the term “burden” to describe some of the changes that are going to be made if you're going beyond voluntary action. The assumption is that you will need to go beyond voluntary action in order to make the changes needed.

What we're doing now is actually—and, again, this is being discussed with provinces and territories over the course of the next year—trying to define what we mean by fair burden sharing. Does it mean that those that have the greatest challenge and the greatest increases should be making the greatest efforts, and therefore you should be looking at it proportionally? Does it mean that those that have the lowest costs and best opportunities should be making the greatest efforts?

There are different definitions. What we've said to ministers is, you don't find that it's easy to come down to one common definition, but we should at least lay out for you the options so that when we're coming forward with a policy that says, for example, we think emissions trading is what we should be implementing, we should be showing you what the impacts are on different regions of the country in different sectors, and how that meets the criteria of being reasonable in terms of burden sharing. So how we're trying to apply it is by looking at our policy instruments and seeing how they meet the different criteria that we're trying to develop for assessing fairness.

We haven't completed that work. That's part of the work that we're doing over the course of the next two years. So when we come to ministers and say, here's the menu of policy options that we think we're going to need to follow through on a ratification decision, they can also say, well, if you implement these, what does it mean in terms of our ability to keep to this concept of fair burden sharing? It's getting a great deal of attention in our discussions.

There are a lot of priorities, but certainly one of the priority issues is seeing how we can manage that and manage it in a way that basically has, if you will, a general agreement that we've struck the right balance.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to come back to the question of credits. Realistically, we might one day see an international quota market for polluters.

Supposing this were to happen, could some people earn additional rights or credits by carrying out so-called “green” actions? A wealthy individual—because we all know that money slows the clean-up effort—could declare or purchase the right to pollute by going out and planting trees to fight the greenhouse effect. The right to pollute is something that could possibly be negotiated.

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This means that I might choose to reduce pollution levels in my country by moving my business elsewhere and promising to take action in that country. At the same time, I could pollute here because I had acquired certain rights.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: In essence, the international rules for what I refer to as the clean-development mechanism or the system that would provide credits haven't yet been agreed to. They're in the process of being negotiated. According to the original timetable they were to have been agreed to and actually implemented as of 2002. They've not been, because the negotiations have turned out to be more difficult.

So there isn't actually an answer to all of your questions. It is still on the table for negotiation. But to take one of your examples and pursue it a little further, to give you a sense of what's being argued or discussed, there is the issue of whether you would be able to invest in forest sinks if, for example, a power company in Canada or the U.S.—and perhaps people will have read about this in the newspapers—were to invest in saving a tropical rain forest in Central or South America.

Indeed, there are companies doing that and actually having it registered, speculating that when this credit system is set up those kinds of actions will be recognized. They're doing it speculatively, because the rules have not yet been set. In fact, that's one of the areas where there's a great debate on the whole issue of sinks and what their role would be in the international protocol.

So the straightforward answer is that a lot of what you suggested in terms of what could be there are things that are indeed on the table. Many of them are still contentious and the rules haven't been set, so the game is still open as to what will be included.

The thrust of Canada has been to say we want a mechanism that is going to be useful without too many rules. If you put too much bureaucracy around it, it isn't going to be a useful and commercially viable mechanism. We want a mechanism that's clear in terms of its criteria, and we want a mechanism that covers all of the elements covered by the convention, which would include things such as sinks, in a way that's credible. It has to be measurable, verifiable, and credible, and it has to meet those criteria. We are looking for a mechanism that in the end would be negotiated, that would be a useful mechanism not only to us, but to the broad range of countries in terms of trying to find efficient alternatives for getting reductions.

The Chair: I'm sorry, Mr. Cardin, we'll come back to you.

Mr. St-Julien, and then Mr. Cuzner.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you, Madam Chair. Here is the first of my two questions: A number of groups in large cities in Quebec are considering calling for a ban on the burning of wood. Have you heard anything about his?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: I have heard of it. I don't know very much about it. It's hard for us to comment. This is often an area of municipal jurisdiction, because it not only reflects the issue of emissions of carbon dioxide, but it also reflects emissions of other atmospheric pollutants.

I guess from my perspective that's an area where it's less a matter of climate change policy—although you're right, it's carbon that's been burned and it's carbon dioxide that's being emitted—and more an issue probably of urban air quality that should decide what's permitted to be burned within a municipal jurisdiction. Some of it was permitted and has been permitted by cities simply to allow for more flexibility.

Sometimes modern technology breaks down and people have redundant systems, so you have Heatilator wood fireplaces that actually heat your house if it turns out that the electricity is interrupted, and that may not be a bad thing. There are probably sensible municipal regulations in that area, and I would bow to the municipal judgment.

The Chair: Mr. St-Julien.

[Translation]

Mr. Guy St-Julien: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let's get back to Action Plan 2000.

Northern and aboriginal communities, especially in remote areas, face some of the highest energy costs in Canada. Specific initiatives to support the research in the Arctic [...]

and in Nunavik and Nunavut as well,

include:

Examine the opportunities for energy efficiency and early application of renewable-energy technology in remote communities that are not connected to Canada's electricity distribution network.

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Work with northern and aboriginal communities and businesses to develop specific opportunities for economic development in the energy sector [...]

Fill critical gaps in our monitoring networks.

And one final point which will be the focus of my question:

Provide climate change information and training to communities, community planners, leaders and elders.

As I see it, the most important initiative for the northern regions of Nunavut and Nunavik is to create jobs and train people. In turn, these individuals will share their knowledge with other Inuit and aboriginal communities. We need to train them, not bring in people from the south who only turn around later and leave.

What kind of budget do you have to help them understand the process of climate change? Usually, all they get in the way of training is someone who travels from the south to their community for a day or two, buys a Pepsi and a bag of chips, and then turns around and heads home.

[English]

The Chair: A very brief answer, please.

Mr. David Oulton: As part of the climate change action fund, we do have an element for public education and outreach. There are $20 million for that over the next three years and it's open for application. So if there are good project proposals that come from northern communities—and you're right, they know how to do the training and formation better than people in the south, who won't have the same understanding of the local community dynamics—there are resources there and the fund is open for application once we manage to get through all our internal government processes. Hopefully it will be available by the summer.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Cuzner.

Mr. Rodger Cuzner (Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, Lib.): I spoke with my wife last night, and she's shovelling out about 30 centimetres of snow, so she's looking forward to some climate change in Cape Breton.

That being said, you indicated that a fair degree of our success is going to depend greatly on the relationships and commitment of the individual provinces, and to that end, we certainly recognize that on other issues of the environment the province of Nova Scotia really hasn't been the standard bearer. I'm wondering if you'd be comfortable commenting on how they've addressed the issue of climate change and whether you are seeing some initiative on the part of the province of Nova Scotia, especially in light of the fact that probably well over half of our power is coal generated, and our coal has a fairly high sulphur content. What are you seeing at the provincial level there?

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: We have had actually a very high level of engagement from Nova Scotia throughout the last three years of the process. It's very interesting, and I think it's in part because it's very strategic from their perspective, from the point you were addressing. They have traditionally used coal as a large source of supply. On the other hand they have opportunities with gas coming in from offshore. So they've been quite interested in the development and generation of policy.

In terms of provinces coming up with ideas for action plans, they have been one of the ones that have been more engaged. I've had the opportunity to talk to some of the citizens groups and Nova Scotia government people in Nova Scotia, and while budget has been an issue—and you know that in Nova Scotia—they have been very active in talking to their ministers and cabinet fairly recently about prospective next steps they would take.

One area in which they've been cooperating fairly closely with the federal government is public education outreach, because they feel this is, as per some of the earlier comments, an area where in order for them to take more action they are going to need to have better-informed public opinion about the nature of the issue and the kinds of actions people themselves can change.

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The second area we've been developing with them is wind energy and whether there are opportunities, because in terms of geographical positioning, there are some opportunities there. So we're looking at whether this should be the next step, in addition to what has already gone on in Alberta, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and a couple of others. This is another area where we would have a node for developing that as a possible energy source.

Nova Scotia is actually one of the provinces that has been very active in policy discussions on this issue, I think because they have seen it as a strategic issue in light of their power industry, and their opportunities with natural gas in particular.

The Chair: Mr. Bagnell.

Mr. Larry Bagnell: Mr. St-Julien has raised a couple of points on which I want to comment, on the information for the northerners.

Just a few weeks ago Minister Goodale and I opened this northern energy solutions climate change centre. I think it's the first one in the country. We also opened the same day a big conference on northern climate change. I think because, as Mr. Chatters has said, it has such a great impact on us up there, we were delighted to have that centre. It will be educating all the businesses and people, first nations and all Yukoners, on how to implement some of these things. So I think that's a great model for people to look at.

In relation to the wood-burning, you're right, it's municipally regulated, and it's very important to us in the Yukon. We have to have wood-burning stoves. In the city of Whitehorse, in the rare times that you get temperature inversion, they actually ban it because the smoke can't get out and then the pollution rate is higher than in any big city.

But my understanding from the environmental or the energy people I've talked to—and you might comment on this—is that stopping the burning of wood doesn't help our carbon situation any in the long run, because the wood lies in the forest and rots, and it still emits carbon dioxide, whereas if you're burning oil, for instance, it's in the ground and wouldn't be emitting carbon dioxide.

The other thing I'd like you to comment on is the good point that Mr. Cardin raised about Quebec's emissions increase being dramatically lower than the other provinces. Do you have any comment on why that is and any lessons we might learn?

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Certainly.

On the first point, you're very right, eventually a tree emits carbon dioxide when it rots out over a lengthy period of time or if it's burned. It's a question of timing.

What matters from our perspective, if you have an obligation in 2008 to 2012, is that if you had a massive move to burning wood—which is not very likely—it would make a difference if you were moving off clean power. That's not the case, really, so I think your point is well taken that over an extended period of time it's just a matter of when that is going to be released to the atmosphere. It matters in terms of our emissions in a particular year, but I think it's a minor point.

With regard to Quebec and the comment that was made earlier—just to comment a little bit because of the question of Nova Scotia—Quebec has been very proactively engaged in the climate change issue consistently over the last few years. When we published this first national climate change business plan, there was also a Quebec strategy put out at the same time, which focused on taking initiatives in a number of areas.

They start from a base of power that is largely hydro-electric. The only other part of the country that comes close is Manitoba in terms of pure contribution from hydro. They have very little electricity contribution from other sources. So with an awful lot of the power supply, both for residential and commercial industrial purposes, they're starting off from a very low base. Where they have a challenge is frankly in the transportation sector.

Relative to a carbon-burning province such as in western Canada, you might say that Quebec is advantaged. The dilemma Quebec has, though, is that if you're looking at having to make reductions, they have to make reductions in areas that are much more challenging in some respects.

The transportation area is one of the more challenging areas because it usually involves long-lived infrastructure, infrastructure that you don't change overnight. But they're doing some interesting things in terms of looking at transportation in the Montreal urban community area in the future, and of course technology, which is usually technology that comes in from outside. You yourself don't make the technology; it's often imported, because it's produced as part of the North American automobile industry.

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So they have an advantage in the sense that they start from a lower base, and in the sense that they have opportunities. In particular, if they have new industries, those industries are not going to burn coal, as might be the case in Alberta; they're going to burn electricity in order to produce their product. That's a very clear advantage in having economic growth but not large incremental emissions.

Where they have a challenge, though, in terms of trying to made reductions, is that they have some very tough areas. Where they have to make reductions, those are in some areas that are really challenging.

In the power industry, it's a question of economics. The technology is often there; it's a question of when you're prepared to do it and how you're going to work it into the rate base of your consumers. If you're sitting in Saskatchewan and Alberta, that's a really important question, given the rates now. If you're sitting in Quebec, it's not an issue that's going to be first and foremost.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Chatters.

Mr. David Chatters: I want to go in a different direction, but I'd like to make a short point first.

Certainly on Rodger's point about Nova Scotia, there seems to me to be a huge potential for tidal energy in Nova Scotia with 60-foot tides in the Bay of Fundy. I've never heard that issue being raised. I know there has been some scientific work done on the area, so I would like you to comment on that.

But the area I want to go to is the emissions trading credits, and I suspect my concerns are the same as those of a lot of other people, which is why it is moving as slowly as it is.

It's the potential economic impact on Canada when you have the opportunity to invest in lower cost improvements in third-world countries instead of doing those things at home. That has the potential to move huge amounts of investment and development out of Canada into the third world and have a huge impact on employment and development in this country.

I really have to caution the government to move very carefully on that issue, because we need that investment and development in Canada, and we need those jobs in Canada, rather than moving that investment into the third world in order to justify what's going on here at home. That certainly has always been a concern of mine.

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: On the first point, about tidal power in the Bay of Fundy, this is really testing my memory. The last time I recall it being looked at seriously was back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were studies done on that, and I suspect they have been gathering a lot of dust since then.

The dilemma has been that, indeed, it is technically doable. There are some environmental and other issues that might be more difficult now, frankly, than if you were doing this back in the 1970s and 1980s, things that I suspect you'd have to dust off and think about, because an awful lot of that area is fairly delicate—in terms of the Bay of Fundy area, in any event.

The other part of it is that prices have always kept it out of the market. It's there, but it is fairly high cost compared to the cost of coal-generated power in the Atlantic area, therefore if you just left it to natural market forces, it wouldn't come into play. It would have needed something to offset those incremental costs either because it was experimental or an infant industry, or whatever the usual arguments would have been that would have allowed it to test out and then perhaps be integrated into the power system at full cost over a very extended period of time.

So they're there, but I'm not sure. Maybe with higher prices now, if they were sustained, that is something that would be dusted off and you'd find some entrepreneurs and others looking at it.

On the question of emissions trading and investment and where it's directed, there is a healthy debate—and it's still a debate, I don't think there's any decision on this—over whether, if you're serious about climate change, do you not want to get most of the benefits of doing it inside the country?

When you do deal mostly with carbon dioxide emissions inside Canada, you usually get collateral benefits. You deal with urban air quality, for example, when you do it. Or often, if you're dealing with climate change and you're moving towards more zero till or low till in the case of agriculture, there are some other benefits to doing that as well.

So in one sense, there's a drive that says that you should try to do as much as you can in reductions in Canada, because there are benefits to that, as well as the benefit of the investment being made here. That certainly is an important consideration. It's certainly one of the things that underlie a policy that says we think we should be taking most of our reductions within the country.

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The other side of the coin is that if you look at the global issue in the long term, you know you're going to have to bring in countries outside the OECD area as part of the answer. If you look at the forecasts, they're the major energy consumers of the future, when you get to 2050 and beyond. Therefore, what you really need to be doing as part of first world policy, if that's the right way to put it, is ensuring that your technology is really leapfrogging. What you're trying to do is ensure that when they're building power, they're using the most advanced technology possible, so they, if you will, skip a phase or two of what we went through in Canada or the U.S. There is some motivation in respect of overall management of the issue globally to try to encourage a partnership between OECD countries and non-OECD countries, and that's going to be crucial in actually making whatever agreement there is work.

So there are those two sides to the equation for which you try to find a balance, and it is still an argument.

The Chair: Mr. Finlay.

Mr. John Finlay: Thanks, Madam Chair.

Again, this is very interesting. I've got two comments. Mr. Cuzner said that if we went by this winter, we wouldn't think climate change was happening at all. So we have to be cautious on that.

Mr. Bagnell mentioned, you'll remember, that in London, England, they used to get maybe 110 sunny days a year, and the London county council simply went in and said no more wood, no more coal-burning fireplaces, it's either gas or electric, take your choice. At no cost to the homeowner, they were all changed. They now have well over 250 or 260 sunny days a year. So there are health effects here, and there are other considerations.

I'm on page C.5, and I've got two niggling little questions. I don't know what ODA is under “Canada Climate Change Development Fund”, and I wonder why it says “Green power in Saskatchewan and P.E.I.”. Does that mean no one else should be involved with green power? Or does it mean that's where we're testing wind and something else?

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Thank you, Madam Chair.

ODA is official development assistance. That new $100 million CIDA's had the responsibility for is being dealt with under the rubric of official development assistance.

Mr. John Finlay: CIDA.

Mr. David Oulton: That's through CIDA, yes.

With regard to green power in Saskatchewan, the federal government started working a couple of years ago with Alberta in developing green power purchases. The federal government said for it's own installations it would be prepared to pay a premium if it could buy green power from windmill installations in Alberta. We decided that seemed to be reasonably successful and we would work with the Government of Saskatchewan, and I think Prince Edward Island is the other one, if my memory is correct, to start expanding the program into those two provinces. Obviously the hope is we would be able to expand it, as we have resources, for other provinces that are interested as we went along. Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island are the next two provinces where we're interested and ready to go in expanding that program.

Mr. John Finlay: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Finlay, you have a little time left.

Mr. John Finlay: No, that's fine, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Mr. Cardin.

[Translation]

Mr. Serge Cardin: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Despite the government's laudable Action Plan, I am somewhat skeptical, and maybe even a little pessimistic, about the kind of results we are likely to see. As long as governments and large companies make it a priority of theirs to always turn a profit as easily as possible - and we know that even if environmental policies are brought in to deal with the greenhouse effect or climate change, there will always be problems. At some point, we will have to revert to the carrot and stick approach. Perhaps a little of both is needed to ensure that steady progress is made.

I'd like to come back to the subject of international rights which are probably negotiable. Since I would imagine considerable sums of money are involved, have you been approached within the context of the Summit of the Americas and the FTAA negotiations to initiate some discussions at the Summit on environmental and climate change issues? If so, what exactly were you asked to do?

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[English]

The Chair: Mr. Oulton.

Mr. David Oulton: Remember, emissions trading is largely a technique used internationally to do two things. First, it's to try to find the most efficient reductions you can. It's this concept that the atmosphere is indifferent. Whether your reductions come from Africa or from North America, what you really are looking for is ensuring that you're emitting less carbon in whatever operation you're doing. And what it's trying to do is say that if you have a trading system, the trading system will allow people who have obligations—it only works if you have an obligation to reduce.... But if Canada has an obligation to reduce, because we've signed a protocol, and if within Canada provinces, territories, or individual companies have obligations to reduce, then it gives them the benefit of being able to say, let's find the most efficient reductions in Canada, if we have our own trading system, in the first instance, and second, internationally, if there's an international trading system.

My sense of it is that having that international system, and probably, ultimately, having a Canadian or North American trading system, is going to be pretty important to making any international agreement work. It is going to be important in ensuring that you have cost-effectiveness and that you're giving companies, who are ultimately going to have obligations, options for how they can meet their obligations in a cost-effective way. It's one of the ways of trying to deal with your pessimism that ultimately you're going to have arrangements that require people to do things they would not otherwise do, you're going to regulate.

That may indeed be the case, regulate or tax, but if you provide an emissions trading system, then it's a way of trying to ensure that if you're using regulation, or a form of regulation and tax, you're allowing companies options for trying to minimize the impact on them. So I think, potentially, it would be an important ingredient of an effective domestic or international policy.

The Chair: Thank you so much. This brings us to the close of our session this morning. I would like to thank the witnesses for appearing before us.

I have a few information items I want to pass on to you. We talked at the last meeting about giving a letter to Veterans Affairs. That has now been done, asking if they would like to address the issue from the Aboriginal Veterans Association. We still have, also, a video on climate change in the north that will be available.

That brings me to April 24 and 26. We haven't really discussed, even at the steering committee level, what we would like to cover on those two days, when we come back from the break. I will be travelling, so I won't be here in Ottawa for the 24th and 26th, but Mr. Godfrey will be sitting in for me. So we have a couple of choices. We could take one of those days and watch the video on climate change. It deals also with Banks Island in the Northwest Territories. We talked a lot about the anecdotal or traditional knowledge, and this would incorporate the two aspects, science and traditional knowledge, being used in a project. So we have that.

Letters have been sent out to the Ministers of Natural Resources and Indian Affairs to come before the committee to talk about the estimates, part III. We are waiting for confirmation as to when they can come, so that's pretty difficult right now to know. We still have a letter from the Cree-Naskapi Commission, which is a federally appointed commission that presents its reports to this committee, aboriginal affairs. We'll have to slot them in at some time before June.

So I leave all that information with you. You may have suggestions on how we could fill in some of the slots in the coming spring. I know there was a request that we deal with the North America energy policy. We have been notified that the minister can come, but he can't speak on this issue until after the free trade negotiations.

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I'm not sure exactly how to deal with the session after Easter break. If you have any suggestions, we're certainly open to them.

Mr. Larry Bagnell: Is there any legislation we're supposed to be doing?

The Chair: There isn't any before us at this particular moment. Of course that could change after the Easter break. That's what makes it difficult to do the agenda. It may look like we have some free briefing sessions, and then all of a sudden we don't.

As one suggestion, if you want to have the Cree-Naskapi Commission appear before us with their committee, they are obligated to present their report to the committee.

Mr. David Chatters: A report on what, Madam Chair?

The Chair: There's a letter from March 2 from the Cree-Naskapi Commission, which has been sent to all the committee members. They're requesting an opportunity to present the 2000 report.

Mr. David Chatters: That's fine with me.

The ministers, of course, are the priority, if they're coming on the estimates. But if they're not available, certainly either the video or the presentation by the committee would be fine.

The Chair: Okay. Maybe we'll separate those two into those two days.

Mr. Carignan.

[Translation]

Mr. Jean-Guy Carignan: Madam Chair, you've just proposed an interesting program for the period after Easter and up until the summer. You mentioned many things. Would it be possible to have all of this down on paper? All I want is a list of the different items you proposed so that we can give notice. While I listened closely to you, I would like to have this list on paper to get a clear picture in my mind.

[English]

The Chair: Okay. We'll send that off. Maybe we'll do it in a questionnaire mode, so that we can get these responses and deal with them that way.

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.