Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

October 2001 Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development

Thank you Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to appear again before this Committee to discuss my Report to Parliament, which was tabled earlier today. With me are my colleagues Neil Maxwell, John Reed, and Dan Rubenstein. After some brief introductory remarks, I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

This morning I would like to present a relatively brief yet significant presentation.

• First, I will discuss the follow-up we did on the 1998 chapter on climate change.
• Then, I will talk about our audit of the federal government’s management of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin. As you can imagine, our findings go beyond the geographic region we focussed on.
• Finally, I will report on the progress of departments and agencies toward sustainable development and on a study on the social dimension of sustainable development.

As I mentioned last June, I also have a chapter on the environmental petitions process. It contains a five-year progress report, and presents the process and its use in simple terms. Without getting into details, I find the petitions process extremely useful and one that I intend to promote.

As a way to introduce my first Report, I have a chapter that shares my point of view and some of my concerns. I also go back some 15 years to better understand how sustainable development applies to Canadians today, how it applied yesterday, and how it will apply tomorrow. Using this year’s audits, I examine whether the government is on the right track to attain the goals it has set.

PROGRESS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Mr. Chairman, I would like to turn to climate change. This year we followed up on an audit we did three years ago concerning how the federal government was addressing its climate change commitments. And what we found was that while there has been some important progress by the government, action is still at an early stage. Meanwhile, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise significantly, on a path that is far from sustainable. The gap between Canada's emissions and the Kyoto target continues to grow, while the time remaining to act shrinks. Canada is already 15 percent above 1990 levels.

What needs to change? On the management side, improvements are needed. For example, the government's Action Plan 2000, which outlines measures for the energy, transportation, and other sectors, lacks clear targets showing how each measure will meet the Plan's goal of taking Canada one third of the way toward its Kyoto target. As well, the information provided in sustainable development strategies and other documents tabled in Parliament on departmental action is fragmented and piecemeal. This makes it difficult to get a clear picture of the overall federal response to climate change.

Responsibility for deciding whether to meet the Kyoto commitments rests with the government. The government has said that climate change requires action now, and that it remains committed to meeting its Kyoto target, with the majority of emission reductions being achieved at home. Clearly, a great deal remains to be done if this commitment is to be met. The government has played an important role to date, but efforts are still at the stage of setting national action in motion. For example, the sectoral or regional sharing of the full Kyoto target remains to be considered.

This raises a critical question: At the current pace of action, can these commitments be met?

THE GREAT LAKES AND ST. LAWRENCE RIVER BASIN

Next, I’d like to talk about our work on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin. This audit was conducted for many reasons:

• First, the basin is a critical environmental resource for the world. We have an obligation to manage it well.
• Second, 16 million Canadians depend on the basin for clean air and drinking water, and for personal health, employment, and recreation.
• Third, the basin is in a way a sustainable development laboratory, testing the government’s ability to achieve its goals of economic prosperity, social well-being, and environmental health.

The audit focussed on four main subject areas—water, agriculture, species and spaces at risk, and fisheries—and looked at dozens of issues in those subject areas. It also examined the government’s management of its regional ecosystem initiatives and its relationship with the International Joint Commission, a critical institution for Canada. Our audit set out to answer three seemingly simple questions:

• What is the state of the basin?
• What is the federal government’s role and performance in these subject areas?
• How can the government improve its performance?

In terms of specifics, I’d like to present just a sample of the key findings:

• Unstable and declining funding to departments has impaired their ability to meet mandated responsibilities.
• Federal plans to restore environmentally degraded sites are incomplete and unclear.
• The government does not know if the water Canadians drink in the basin meets the national guidelines it helped develop. Canada does not have nationally enforceable standards for drinking water.
• The problem of how to safely manage manure from livestock operations is getting worse. Yet the government has no action plan to meet its objectives to control the problem.
• Almost half of the endangered and threatened species in the basin, under the federal government’s jurisdiction, do not have recovery plans. Only 10 percent of these species have stable or improving populations.
• Despite its constitutional and legal responsibilities for protecting fisheries in the basin, the government is unclear about its role relative to that of the provinces.
• Invasive aquatic species, such as zebra mussels, are a serious and growing threat to the basin. The government relies largely on voluntary guidelines and U.S. regulations to control them.

Over the past few decades, there have been some remarkable environmental successes and improvements. My report credits the federal government for its role in contributing to these improvements.

And yet, despite these successes, today’s best science describes the overall state of the lakes and rivers as being “mixed.” While some aspects of the basin are improving, others are deteriorating right before our eyes.

As we look ahead a generation, the Canadian population of the basin is projected to grow by three million people, and GDP is expected to be 60 percent higher. This growth will increase the demand on the basin’s waters, land, fish, agricultural products, sewage treatment, parks and wilderness areas, housing, energy, and more.

And this brings us to the main findings of the audit and to why I am so concerned: The future of the basin is at risk. Federal efforts have lost momentum. The leadership, innovation, science, and diligence that served the basin in the past has diminished. There is an overwhelming sense of complacency and resignation, instead of urgency and inspiration.

Our overall conclusions emphasize four major themes:

• First, important matters are being left to drift. Key domestic and international commitments are not being met. Priorities and commitments and the resources allocated to them are out of sync. For example, many of Canada’s international commitments under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement have not been implemented.
• Second, long-term, basin-wide strategies for key threats are missing. On key issues there is no coordinated and consistent federal voice in the two regions.
• Third, scientific research monitoring and measurement systems are impaired. There are major gaps in the information needed to make quality decisions in areas like wetlands, soils, and fish habitat.
• Fourth, the federal role is changing, and waning. The government seems afraid to tackle the tough issues. It is not using the authorities and tools it has at its disposal. It relies, increasingly, on partnerships to meet its objectives. The audit has raised fundamental questions about the government’s role in overseeing the actions of its partners and in providing assurance that federal and national objectives are being met.

None of these bode well for the future. I believe that the federal government is simply not ready to confront the many challenges of the 21st century. This is especially true in the area of water, where I believe there is an opportunity for parliamentarians to play a leading role in dealing with this crucial environmental, social, and political issue.

There are two other points I would like to make about this audit.

• First, although we focussed on a specific geographic region, there are national implications. Many of the issues and federal programs examined are national in scope. Managing the quality and quantity of Canada’s freshwater, achieving sustainable agriculture, protecting species and spaces at risk, ensuring vibrant fisheries, and effectively governing regional ecosystems are challenges that affect the entire country.
• Second, while departments agreed with our recommendations, my views on their responses is decidedly qualified.

The Great Lakes audit clearly shows that the federal government has yet to adopt sustainable development. The path we are following is not sustainable.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

The third part of my report focusses on managing for sustainable development, especially with respect to the government’s sustainable development strategies.

We recently completed a three-year audit of the first generation of sustainable development strategies. Once again we audited sustainable development management systems and the information reported on sustainable development. We also looked at how some departments had assessed their first strategy. And, like my predecessor, we studied the social dimension of sustainable development.

Our findings for the sustainable development management systems and the information reported on sustainable development are as follows.

Best practices have taught us that having a management system in place does not necessarily guarantee success; however, the absence of a working system increases the chances of commitments not being met. In my opinion, a management system is a meaningful indication of a department’s capacity and intent to honour the commitments it has made in its sustainable development strategy.

The audit highlights the characteristics that separate leading departments (like Natural Resources Canada and Industry Canada) from the others. For example

• senior management commitment;
• recognizing that the process is ongoing;
• allocating resources; and
• including the basic components in a management system.

We noticed a link between the level of interest shown by senior management, the quality and timeliness of performance reports submitted to management, and the quality of the management system.

Of those departments that ranked the lowest, I am concerned to find the Department of Finance and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada in this group. Especially since they play a significant role in the government’s sustainable development program.

Some say that everything departments do is considered sustainable development because their mandates are to ensure the well-being of Canadians; however, their claims must be accompagnied by concrete action.

Departments and agencies report on their progress toward sustainable development. This information allows Parliament to gauge whether the departmental strategy objectives are on track. I am concerned about the relevance of the performance information reported to Parliament because, based on our audit, few departments and agencies adhere to the Treasury Board Secretariat’s guidelines. Only 25 percent of departments strictly apply these guidelines. Since 1998 the federal government has made progress toward its sustainable development goals at a rate of about 12 percent per year. We have not, however, audited this assessment.

These audits and our previous audits indicate that some departments take the central agencies’ guidance and directives more seriously than others.

This raises a few questions:

• What is the incentive for departments to do more and do better? Do any coercive measures exist?
• Are the central agencies showing leadership when dealing with this government priority?

These questions are crucial because sustainable development strategies are an important means of ensuring that departments pay more attention to sustainable development. And this leads me to one final question—a question on many minds, As the government prepares to report on its progress toward sustainable development at the Johannesburg Earth Summit next year, will it be able to show convincing progress?

CONCLUSION

My mandate is to measure progress and to report to you on sustainable development systems; however, each and every one of us shares the challenge of guiding Canada down the road to sustainable development.

In this regard, I see your Committee as a continuation of my reports — a place where debate and questions will take place.

Mr. Chairman, in June you asked me if there was anything specific that I needed to fully carry out my responsibilities. After much thought, I feel that what is most important, is the support and involvement of your Committee in the issues I report. Working together, I see great opportunities to advance the federal sustainable development agenda. Committee hearings and reports on selected chapters would greatly help me in my work. Your Committee could also assist me by asking departments for clearer commitments to address the deficiencies I report, and for updates on the action they have taken.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. I look forward to your questions and to continuing our dialogue.