:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. Good morning.
[Translation]
Good morning, everyone.
[English]
Mr. Chair, I will start by expressing my sincere appreciation to the committee for the invitation to appear here once again to discuss the supplementary estimates (C) for fiscal 2012-13 and the main estimates for 2013-14.
As you said, joining me at the table this morning are my deputy minister, the Deputy Minister of Environment Canada, Bob Hamilton; Alan Latourelle, the CEO of Parks Canada; and Elaine Feldman, President of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
[Translation]
As usual, I will begin with a brief statement and after that, I would be pleased to answer any questions that honourable members may have of me.
[English]
As you know, time has passed very quickly over the past couple of years since I took over my role as Canada's Minister of the Environment. During this time I have been privileged to see many of the proposals presented in these estimates come full circle as they develop into successful initiatives and grow into achievements for our environment and our economy.
Environment Canada's job, of course, is to help ensure Canadians have a clean, safe, and sustainable environment. The department achieves these goals largely through its collaborative work to develop, monitor, and enforce effective federal regulations and legislation. It is proceeding in a consistent, systematic, science-based manner, taking responsible actions across a range of issues, from climate change, to air and water quality, to the conservation of ecosystems, and to protecting Canadians from harmful chemicals.
The department delivers important services to Canadians 24 hours a day, every day. On average, the department issues 1.5 million public forecasts every year. It conducts more than 8,600 inspections and over 340 prosecutions for violations of environmental laws. It also publishes over 700 peer-reviewed scientific publications.
In terms of protected areas, Canada now protects almost 10% of our land mass, which means our nation is about 60% of the way to meeting the 2010 international target of protecting 17% of our land mass in protected areas. The Government of Canada is helping our nation to achieve this target. Environment Canada's collaborations with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and with other organizations have resulted in the protection of more than 338,000 hectares, including habitat for 126 species at risk. Since 2006, the Government of Canada has taken actions that will add almost 150,000 square kilometres to Parks Canada's network of protected areas, which is a 53% increase.
[Translation]
Working in collaboration with the United States, we enhanced and renewed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, reinforcing ongoing efforts to deal with harmful algae, toxic chemicals and discharges from vessels using the lakes. We also added new provisions addressing issues such as aquatic invasive species, habitat degradation and the effects of climate change.
[English]
Our action plan for clean water is enabling large-scale investments to ensure clean water for Canadians. Last year, we contributed $46.3 million toward the cleanup of Randle Reef in Hamilton Harbour and we launched the Great Lakes nutrient initiative, investing $16 million over four years to address the re-emergence of toxic and nuisance algae caused by excessive phosphorous discharges to Lake Erie.
On the international stage, we are focused on achieving a new, legally binding global agreement on climate change that covers all major emitters. We are honouring our United Nations commitments under the Copenhagen accord by implementing a domestic regulatory plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are also showing leadership, I believe, in the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to address short-lived climate pollutants.
[Translation]
We are advancing on our sector-by-sector regulatory approach at home, putting forward greenhouse gas regulations to significantly reduce emissions from cars and light trucks, heavy duty vehicles, and coal-fired electricity.
[English]
Our actions, combined with provincial, territorial, and business efforts, are projected to bring Canada halfway to achieving our Copenhagen target of a 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. Moving forward, we're working towards achieving additional reductions from other sectors of the economy, focusing now on the oil and gas sector.
Our work is not done by any means, but these achievements I believe make it clear that we are on the right track. These estimates before us today signal continued efforts to continue that progress. As the chair said, today we're discussing two sets of estimates: the supplementary estimates (C) for fiscal 2012-13 and the main estimates for fiscal 2013-14.
The 2012-13 supplementary estimates (C) are the last set of budget adjustments to Environment Canada's reference levels for fiscal 2012-13.
In these estimates, Environment Canada is requesting $24 million in funding for the Nature Conservancy of Canada to help the organization continue its important work to secure ecologically sensitive lands and to protect diverse ecosystems.
The department is also asking for $21.3 million for grants and contributions. This includes more than $21 million for the international climate change strategy 2012 fast-start financing. It includes a request for just over $511,000 to renew the Lake Simcoe initiative program, which sunset in March 2012. This funding will allow for continued progress on addressing Lake Simcoe water quality. The supplementary estimates also include a reduction of $12.5 million introduced in budget 2012 savings measures.
For supplementary estimates (C) 2012-13, Parks Canada is requesting $3.9 million in funding for two items. This includes $2.1 million for the development of the Rouge National Urban Park and $1.8 million in funding for Canada's fast-start financing commitments under the Copenhagen Accord. These spending requests are offset by savings that Parks Canada identified in budget 2012.
Now let's move forward to the main estimates for Environment Canada for fiscal 2013-14. The net amount for the 2013-14 main estimates works out to $959.4 million, which is 1.4% or $13.3 million less when compared to last year's main estimates.
[Translation]
The major changes reflected in these estimates are proposed savings of $31.5 million that follow up on savings measures announced in Budget 2012 and the sunsetting of $1.6 million for the Renewable Fuels Regulations.
[English]
The estimates also request $20.8 million in renewal funding for three programs: $12.5 million to renew the Species at Risk Act program; $4.2 million to renew the Lake Winnipeg Basin initiative; and $4.1 million to go towards implementation of the Great Lakes nutrient Initiative.
For Parks Canada, its 2013-14 main estimates total $597 million, which is a $51.2-million decrease from last fiscal year's main estimates. Parks Canada identified $19.7 million in savings as part of budget 2012. This difference also includes a $15-million reduction from last year due to work that has been completed on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park.
The 2013-14 main estimates for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency total $31 million, which is $14 million more than the $17 million in its main estimates last fiscal. The difference reflects funding that was originally slated to sunset but was renewed under budget 2012, which is as follows: $7.4 million to enable efficient and effective regulatory reviews of major resource projects and advance government-wide efforts to modernize the regulatory system for major resource projects, as well as $6.6 million to support consultations with aboriginal peoples during environmental assessments of major development projects.
Mr. Chair, this highlights some of the objectives that these estimates will support in the portfolio's work to provide Canadians with a clean, safe, and sustainable environment.
I would like to thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome to the chair of this committee.
I'd be happy to take questions at this time.
Thank you, Minister. It's always a pleasure to have you join us and to talk about our main estimates and supplementary estimates.
I wanted to highlight this a little bit initially to make sure we have this clear for me in my own mind, but I think it's also good for the discussion as we go forward here to understand the process on main estimates and supplementary estimates, etc.
I know the federal process works quite differently from the provincial process, which some of us may be used to. The provincial process has a system where your budget, your estimates of revenue, and your estimates of expenditure essentially all come out at the same time each and every year, so it's very fair to compare from year to year your estimates of expenditures from one document to another.
By federal law, the federal government has to have its expenditures put out by March 1. They have to be shown for the following fiscal year. Quite often, as is the case this year, that is before a budget is actually tabled.
From my understanding, we cannot have anything in main estimates that may come in a future budget but is not in a budget as of today. We have to be looking at estimates based on essentially the previous year's budget that came out. That can make some real challenges for us as we try to compare a main estimate from one year to a main estimate from another year. In fact to a large degree I would say we're trying to compare an apple and an orange lots of times, which gets us in a lot of hot water. I think it's good to set that out.
In fact the savings identified, for example, in budget 2012 cannot be reflected at all in these particular main estimates, because those are things that were brought forward afterward. There are changes and adjustments constantly being made. Again I think it's worth reiterating the fact that it's basically fundamentally flawed to compare main estimate to main estimate, because you have not taken into account your supplementaries, your changes, and your new upcoming budget that will have a major effect typically on the main estimates that have come out at this point today.
Again I think that's the parameter we really want to approach this from and make sure we're not trying to compare an apple and an orange, but compare what's really happening in programs and what the estimates reflect as of today with the knowledge that there are going to be changes.
We know we're dealing with supplementaries (C) here, which are asking for more funding on several fronts. Two examples are $24 million for the Nature Conservancy and $21.1 million for the international climate change strategy 2012. These are items that did come forward in 2012 that wouldn't have shown in estimates 2012. I think it's important we have that context as we go forward in these discussions.
Maybe you could comment on that, and let me know if I am on the right track in my understanding of that.
You're absolutely correct. It is what it is. The budget process and the supplementary estimates process are significantly different from many provincial budget processes. The mains are not a budget, and sometimes there is some confusion about the provision for programs that have sunsetted and that may or may not be reconsidered for renewal in the budget, which is still some weeks ahead of us.
The main estimates do have three main parts, though. I won't go too deeply into this, but they provide, as you said, the overview for federal spending and summarize the relationship of the key elements of the main estimates. They directly support the Appropriation Acts, again, these estimates having been tabled by the President of the Treasury Board. Part III is, as you have said and as I've outlined, departmental expenditure plans divided into reports on plans and priorities, which are about to come up; individual expenditure plans for each department and agency excluding our crown corporations, of course; and departmental performance reports, which are individual department and agency accounts of results achieved against the planned performance expectation sent out in the RPPs.
Then again in addition to and after the budget, the department has the opportunity through the year with the supplementary estimates to revise spending levels, which allows us to seek authority for spending levels as the year goes on and at different stages in the year. Second they allow us to report to Parliament with information on changes in estimated expenditures and to come to committee to discuss these changes, as I'm always glad to do.
I would reinforce again that a misunderstanding that often occurs is that this is the budget, but in fact it is not. Some of the questions I'm sure that will be posed here today will have to wait until the budget to be appropriately answered.
:
Thank you. Those are all questions that are taken into consideration as we move through the sector-by-sector regulatory process.
With regard to transportation, I can't remind Canadians often enough that the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada is the transportation sector, which produces fully 25% of our annual GHGs.
After addressing cars and light trucks with regulations, first from 2011 to 2016, and recently 2017 to 2025, we brought in heavy-duty regulations for full-sized pickup trucks, heavy vehicles, tractor-trailer units, and what are called “vocational trucks”, that is, garbage trucks and a variety of heavy-duty service vehicles. I was delighted that these regulations were welcomed by the trucking industry a week ago when we made the announcement. They achieve significant reductions in our GHG reduction targets, and we estimate that between model years 2014 and 2018 we will reduce GHG emissions from this heavy-truck category by fully 50%. At the same time, fuel consumption will be reduced by 50% and the operators of these heavy-duty tractor vehicles will see savings to the tune of about $8,000 a year.
As we publish these regulations, going sector-by-sector in the regulatory impact analysis statements, we always recognize there are some costs. But in every sector that we have regulated so far, the benefits have outweighed the costs by billions of dollars, on the order of 4:1 to 6:1.
I should come back and say that GHG reduction from the heavy-truck sector is 23% but the fuel savings are almost 50%.
There has been some comment from some quarters asking why our heavy-truck regulations, which are aligned with those of the Americans, came in two years after the American announcement. The answer to that is we have very different regulatory circumstances in Canada. We have to work with the provinces and address climate and road differences in the vast expanses of Canada, and we wanted to make sure that we got it right. We are now aligned, and I was delighted that the industry issued its support for the regs.
I thank the minister and his officials for being with us this morning.
First, I have some questions about Parks Canada, more specifically regarding the $51.2 million cuts you announced. An amount of $19.7 million had already been announced in Budget 2012. These cuts have had some rather catastrophic repercussions on the number of visitors to parks.
There have been some direct impacts on services to the population for this winter alone, among them the maintenance of ski and snowshoe trails. They are not being maintained at all and are left to the care of volunteers who have agreements in principle with Parks Canada.
That is the case in several places, among them Point Pelee National Park, in Ontario, Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba, Elk Island National Park in Alberta, and the Forillon National Park in Quebec. Fewer trails are being maintained in these parks, and in some cases, there is no service at all anymore. The parks are open to the population but there are no longer any trails. Certain skating rinks have been closed in Manitoba. There was a staff reduction and the staff has been replaced by volunteers.
Service varies from one park to another. At the Riding Mountain National Park, friends of the park estimate that for this winter alone, there has been a 40% decline in the number of park users. And yet, public appreciation and understanding are a part of Parks Canada's core mandate.
Do you agree with that mandate?
Again, the Nature Conservancy of Canada is a wonderful partner in terms of protecting increasing thousands of hectares of nature, of land, while still allowing, as you say, the working landscape. In some parts of Canada and British Columbia, for example, some forestry operations are still allowed within a protected landscape, while at the same time other industrial operations, mining for example, will not be allowed. It also allows visitation more in the sense of a rugged adventure in pristine natural areas as opposed to visiting some of our traditional national parks, although it's still possible to have a great adventure in the Nahanni, the Nááts'ihch'oh, and Torngat parks.
As I've remarked here, the allocation under the supplementaries (C) is the final spending under a five-year program that the government funded with the Nature Conservancy of Canada. But if I could just caution against any reaction of dismay at the end of this program, when programs are created for a set period of time with a fixed budget, it is intended that, at the end of that term, the program be evaluated to see if it achieved its outcomes. Worthy programs tend to be renewed, others may not. I would just suggest here that for an answer one must wait for the budget.
:
I thought you said only had two minutes.
The Chair: No, I said we'll go one more round.
Mr. James Lunney: Bonus.
Since 2006 we've seen a tremendous expansion in parklands available. I remember an announcement about the Nahanni National Park being expanded, and the Great Bear Rainforest on the west coast, which is kind of iconic out in our side of the world. There's, on the eastern side of the Great Slave Lake, Ramparts River, and there's the Gwaii Haanas National Park, which is huge, on the west coast. There's the Rouge National Urban Park, the first urban park here. And in your remarks you mentioned, collectively,150,000 square kilometres added to the parks system. And again there's what was just mentioned with the Nature Conservancy, about 338,000 hectares of working landscape being recovered.
These project, we're pretty excited about. I think committee members are very interested in this. Recently our committee's been looking at urban parks, and we're hearing a lot about nature deficit disorder, about the disconnect between urban dwellers.... Increasingly about 80% of our population lives in cities. The experiences with nature are diminishing as kids are more into electronic gadgets and so on. One of the projects that we heard about is Parks Canada experimented with providing passes for kids in grade 8, I think.
But I'm wondering, if we're looking ahead to the national conservation plan, are we looking at strategies of how we can encourage young people in particular, who particularly may be coming from our immigrant communities, to have positive experiences with nature? Because we certainly understand that there are tremendous benefits to all of us, as Canadians, personally and in terms health benefits, when we appreciate nature by interacting with it positively.
:
Yes, I think it's a very reasonable question, and in fact it's one we address every day. In any environment you have to ask yourself about your priorities and whether you're doing the best you can as an organization to deliver on the mandate you've been provided with the resources you have. Obviously, as the resources get smaller you have to do an even better job of trying to find ways to make sure you're delivering on your core mandate in the most efficient way possible.
Frankly, Environment Canada has gone through that process over the last couple of years. There was budget 2012, certainly, but there were other forces that caused us to have a look at the resources we had available, what we were doing, and how we could best focus on the activities that were most productive in ensuring our mandate of a clean, safe, sustainable environment for Canadians.
We talked earlier about some of the administrative efficiencies we've seen. I would argue that the consolidation of the emergency centre is a good example of these. We've seen others. The minister referenced early some things we're looking at on the enforcement and other sides whereby we can, through combining either with Parks Canada or with other partners, find ways to do frankly a better job than we were doing, and in some cases with fewer resources.
Resource reduction forces you in some cases to make some hard choices, but that's what running this department is about, and these are the kinds of choices we have to make with the support of the government, when policy issues are at play.
It's an important question.
:
I've been in this job about six months, and I have to say I'm quite impressed with the science capacity of our department—and it's not just me looking at it, but it's the impression when you talk to others.
We talked about oil sands monitoring. I think the recognition of what Environment Canada scientists bring to that table is impressive. We've talked in the past about the number of publications our scientists have.
They are definitely a core group that we are proud of, and they feed into pretty much every aspect of what we do at Environment Canada. When we're designing a regulation, the science is very important for us, to try to make sure we get it right. When we're looking at what to do about cleaning up lakes, which we talked about earlier, that science is very important.
But we know we can't do it ourselves, and I think the core of your point is that we need to make sure we're working effectively with other science departments around government, whether NRCan, Fisheries and Oceans, or what have you, but also with academic institutions.
I've been across the country and have seen how some of our science labs are operating and where we've done some effective joint partnerships with universities, and it has been very impressive. The science capacity we have levers the amount of work we can do to look at some fairly sophisticated things. I think the science is not only about creating an attraction for great scientists within Environment Canada, but also making sure that we can work effectively with other organizations.