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Madam Chair, members of the committee, I'd like to thank you for inviting us here today. I would like to introduce you to a number of my colleagues who are here this afternoon to assist me in answering your questions. Let me introduce
[English]
Berny Latreille from Environment Canada; Elizabeth Hopkins from Public Works and Government Services Canada; Shirley Jen from Treasury Board Secretariat; and Anne Auger from Natural Resources Canada.
As the committee will recall, last week the Honourable Minister Fortier briefly presented some information concerning the greening of government operations, and certainly today we appreciate the opportunity to provide you with further details to support your study.
The federal government, as you're aware, is one of the biggest enterprises in Canada and, as such, leaves a significant environmental footprint or environmental impact. At the same time, as one of the largest buyers of goods and services and a substantial property owner and manager, the government is uniquely positioned to demonstrate leadership and, in fact, to strengthen markets for environmental goods and services.
To this end, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has long maintained that Canadians actually expect their government to manage their assets in a sustainable manner, and as the commissioner highlighted, it is important to have a federal lead undertaking such an initiative.
In 2005 the Office of Greening Government Operations was launched at Public Works and Government Services Canada to serve as this focal point and to work with other departments and agencies, particularly those you see around the table here today, to accelerate the greening of government operations.
Public Works and Government Services Canada, as the procurement arm and property manager for the Government of Canada, was deemed a good fit for this focal point for a couple of reasons. One, as a common service agency, it has the potential to leverage action and influence results across the government. Secondly, there is a core of expertise within the department dealing with operational environmental matters.
Because of the mandate and given the specialized nature and knowledge of the other departments represented around the table here today, they became key partners in this exercise. They obviously include Environment Canada, with its expertise on environmental impacts and aspects, which are really at the heart of the green procurement policy, and which I'll talk a little bit about later; Natural Resources Canada, with its expertise in energy, particularly concerning buildings and vehicles; and certainly Treasury Board Secretariat, with its control over many of the policies and directives that guide all departments.
For those of you who have the deck that was distributed earlier, you will see
[Translation]
this slide shows our operations in diagram form.
[English]
At the centre of the diagram, you will see there are associate deputy ministers from the three organizations who really provide direction to this initiative. The outer part of the circle represents the interdepartmental steering groups that are in place and who meet regularly to identify opportunities and issues. You'll see that once this is done, there's the possibility of developing policies or guidelines, etc. Then OGGO, the Office of Greening Government Operations, can also help develop tools and offer advice to assist government departments and agencies in their implementation efforts. Obviously as you go around the circle, one of the ultimate objectives is to measure progress and performance, to make changes, to improve and to start again, because there's always more room for improvement.
As the committee is aware, the Office of Greening Government Operations is a relatively new organization, and to date a significant portion of the effort we have put into this work has been directed towards laying a foundation for change, bringing departments together and developing policies, guidelines, tools, pilots, etc., that can integrate environmental considerations right into the way we do our business.
Probably one of the best examples of this is the policy on green procurement. In essence, the green procurement policy—which came into effect last April—aims to embed environmental performance considerations into the decision-making processes of all departments and agencies in the same way, so that when these decisions are made, price, quality, availability, and performance are all considered. So this is about making green procurement a matter of our day-to-day normal business, not only to improve government performance but obviously also to generate some market pull for these technologies and to stimulate a certain demand.
It's not an ad hoc approach. We're not trying to create a special basket of green goods or a list of green products that procurement officers can choose from. Rather, it's a very comprehensive policy that starts with the planning stage and moves right into acquisition, and then to use and, ultimately, to disposal. It really is a good example of how the greening of government operations initiative works, because here we have a Treasury Board-approved policy being managed by Public Works, with expertise and assistance provided by Environment Canada and Natural Resources, and implemented by all departments.
So as a facilitator, we've worked with our partners to develop tools and training. In fact, that training is a mandatory component of the certification of procurement officers in the federal government.
The OGGO, Treasury Board Secretariat, and Environment Canada have also worked to set direction by providing guidance to departments in relation to the sustainable development strategies recently tabled in the House in December. This guidance actually targeted vehicles, building energy, and green procurement as three targets on which federal departments could collectively make a concerted effort to make progress.
In addition, the Office of Greening Government Operations worked with others to produce PWGSC's sustainable development strategy. We were very conscious of having targets in place, so that when we implemented them in our own department, they would be there to help and facilitate the work of other departments in greening their operations.
In the area of green buildings, you may be aware that in 2005, the federal government did adopt the LEED, or leadership in energy and environmental design, gold standard for new office buildings and major renovations, etc. There have been quite a number of our buildings that we hope have made that particular standard at this time.
[Translation]
I am aware that Sustainable Development Technologies Canada will be appearing before this committee in the upcoming weeks and will provide additional information on the LEED.
[English]
In our sustainable development strategy in PWGSC we took the next step. So this LEED standard was for building buildings, renovations, etc. The next step we took was our commitment to adopt the Building Operators and Managers Association Go Green Plus process for improving how we operate and manage our buildings in a sustainable way. It's an industry-developed tool that we believe is going to provide us with good, consistent, reliable data that will help us more strategically manage those buildings and find cost-effective ways to improve our environmental performance.
So the object here is not to just improve the buildings we own and operate, but to also lay the foundation for other custodial departments to do the same. These commitments on buildings are being rolled into a comprehensive sustainable building strategy. It's not as far along as the green procurement policy, but it's the same idea. It's about putting systems in place to improve our environmental performance, and make thinking green a normal part of the way we do business.
I again thank the committee for the opportunity for us to be here today. We will be pleased to take your questions.
:
Thank you, Ms. Kenny. Thank you also to your colleagues who have come to see us to talk to us about greening.
I'll continue along the same lines as my colleague. I can understand what Public Works is trying to do with your directorate, but whether you like it or not, this needs to become part of the culture. People need to be motivated. It needs to be a top priority, they need to share these values.
Let's talk about the impact on our departments, for example, as far as procurement is concerned. I like the example of these 308 members. On Parliament Hill, in addition to the senators and the highly effective public servants, officials, and employees of the House of Commons, there is an army of people who use equipment. Members, both here and in their ridings, have belongings and buy things. In our riding, we pay for them; here, they're provided for us, but that's another story.
How do you ensure that we share these values with you, and how will you make sure, if indeed we don't share them, that we are accountable?
Accountability is extremely important, in my opinion. We have a program and we'll have measures to implement it, but after that, how are we going to ensure that people comply? I don't really like the idea of the carrot and the stick, but at the end of the day, if people don't comply, it will be disclosed, people will be aware and it will be one of the reasons why the program will not be the success we expected it to be.
It has been my pleasure to be here for almost three years and in all this time I have never received anything telling me I need to think about the environment. I do think about the environment but I've never been asked to help in making the environment here on Parliament Hill as green as possible. I have a number of tools at my disposal, such as the blue recycling bins, and so on, but they have been around for a long time.
How do you measure this? In other words, after providing the tools that are needed how do you determine there has been a change in culture, that people are using these tools, and at the end of the day, how do you hold these people to account?
:
One of the things that might be helpful, to speak to this point, is to talk about the various responsibilities of the custodial departments, because you're really talking about the whole of the government inventory in terms of its real property holdings. The Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act basically provides a minister with the authority to hold real property in order to support programs. The minister has a responsibility for administering that property.
As well, there's something at the Treasury Board called the real property management framework policy, which also vests with deputies of those departments the full authority and stewardship responsibilities for their particular suites of assets, which include real property and in some cases include other tangible assets, such as cars.
That's just to say that when it comes to questions about managing a particular portfolio of buildings in a particular department, that decision on whether to replace those windows, although it's certainly influenced by the types of initiatives that Margaret and her team have been undertaking in terms of the greening of government operations, is really a decision that is taken by the individual custodial department.
So in the case of Public Works, if it's a Public Works building, the decision would be taken by that department. Au contraire, if it was a Health Canada building—Health Canada owns many laboratories—it would be Health Canada that would be responsible for making that investment decision. There's a whole series of things that they would factor in to determine whether it was best value, the right priority, and the right stewardship decision for their department at that point in time.
:
I was just going to add that there are groups who meet to determine the criteria for these commodities as they will be hitting the marketplace. They will determine product by product what are the ideal specifications for those.
For instance, coming back to paper, which was an example Margaret used earlier, most of us think that in the world of paper the higher the recycle content the better, and that's what you need to consider. In fact, for paper, if it has chlorine, that's something you'd like to get rid of. And is the fibre from sustainably managed forests, and is there recycled content? This can be quite complicated, and those are considered product group by product group.
In some cases it's a mixture of a lot of things. In the case of printers, for instance, when they're considering the kinds of printers we should be buying, or the kinds of specifications we need to consider for printers, there are certainly some things we could do today to be buying printers that are slightly greener than what we have traditionally purchased. But the real leap forward is in how we manage what comes out of the printers--perhaps having more of the new multi-function devices that consume less energy and better manage your printing.
So there are things you can do in the short term in the commodity, but we're always thinking in the long term about what we can do over the life cycle of the use of that product.
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Yes, 75%, but on condition that it be efficient and feasible.
With your permission, I will continue in English.
[English]
Presently the number of vehicles in the federal fleet, as you heard before, is
[Translation]
approximately 27,000 vehicles.
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Of the 27,000 vehicles, we have roughly 2,000, or 7%, operating on ethanol--that's E85 ethanol--and about 200, or 1%, on propane or natural gas. As well, we have another 2%, or 600 vehicles, that are hybrid vehicles. Those are not technically vehicles that are running on alternative fuels, but the end result is the same: you're trying to invest in vehicles that operate on non-petroleum-based fuels and that therefore emit fewer pollutants.
Totally, then, that's roughly 10% of the federal fleet.
Actually, we have some statistics on this. Since 1997, when you look at the total number of vehicles purchased by the federal government in any one year and the number that were deemed operationally feasible and cost-effective to purchase because they ran on alternative fuel, in every single year since we've tracked this--1997-98 up to 2005-06--we have met or exceeded the target.
You may do the math and ask, why is she telling us we've exceeded our target of 75%, when 75% of 27,000 is...? She only said 10%; it's not 75%. The reason is that if you look at any given year.... Let's give an example.
In 2004-05 the federal government, grosso modo, purchased 3,700 vehicles. The total number of vehicles in that year estimated to meet the test of being cost-effective and operationally feasible was 34 vehicles. If you look at 75% of those 34 vehicles, it meant that we had to purchase 26 vehicles that ran on alternative fuels. In actual fact, that year we didn't buy just 26 vehicles that ran on alternative fuels; we bought 394.
That gives you a bit of a sense for setting targets, which I think some of you have mentioned, in terms of improving performance on something very tangible. Then we are actually measuring the results and trying to trend it. I think it illustrates that when people see these types of data, it actually is quite interesting, because I think it's actually generating a certain groundswell, and people are more enthusiastic about it.
In fact, my colleague provided one statistic to me just before coming here that I thought was quite significant. It relates to the executive fleet, which is basically the fleet provided to ministers and deputies and equivalents. It's roughly 85 vehicles. Over the last 16 months alone, there has been an increase of about 40% in terms of this fleet's usage of alternative fuels, so the executive fleet of the ministers and deputies is actually a pretty good example of the leadership and showing by example that some people mentioned. I think it's a very good illustration.
I'd like to thank each of you who have come today.
We often like to take credit for the work that happens, and we know it's the civil service that does so much of this. We'd like to thank you for your leadership in this area. Obviously with the movement towards the greening of the country, never mind government, you are on the forefront.
Of course you're going to have no end of suggestions. Here we go with my continued list.
One of my pet projects in the last while has been this whole idea of net metering, the average individual putting a solar panel on their house and having the opportunity to buy energy when they need it and being able to supply energy when they have an excess within their home. The biggest problem with this of course has been the issue of the transmission and power companies and who will buy it.
The Province of Alberta has actually led the country on a number of these fronts; it has gone completely green in its energy consumption. As well, they're actually speaking about being the purchasers of this energy that's produced by the private individuals--this non-commercialized energy.
I'm wondering if the federal government has ever looked at this particular initiative, or the possibility of this.