Opening Statement to the Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development
1999 Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Brian Emmett, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development
Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be here to discuss my third Report to Parliament, which was tabled today. With me are my colleagues Wayne Cluskey and Richard Smith. After some brief introductory remarks, we will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Last year, as you may recall, we took an international perspective, looking at climate change, biodiversity and other agreements. In our Report, we focussed on the implementation gap – the gap between talk and action on the federal government’s international environmental and sustainable development agenda.
However, sustainable development is not simply a distant global problem. If you are in the fishing industry on the east or west coast, you know that unsustainable development affects you where you live and where you work. If you are an Aboriginal person living in the North who has to think twice about eating traditional foods, you know that unsustainable development affects you where you live and where you work. If you are a parent whose child’s asthma is aggravated by bouts of urban smog, you know that unsustainable development affects you where you live and where you work.
The phrase "sustainable development" might not be part of most Canadians’ vocabulary, but Canadians know intuitively what it means – it means taking care of people and, at the same time, the environment that supports them – and they know why it is important to take care of both.
So this year, we moved closer to home, and examined important domestic environmental and sustainable development issues. And the main message in my Report is this: there continues to be a substantial gap between talk and action on the federal government’s agenda. And the gap is a costly one: we pay the price in terms of our health, our environment, our standard of living and our legacy to our children and grandchildren.
If we step back for a moment, we can all see that the trend lines for environmental pressures are quite clear – growing population, growing consumption, growing resource use. We can safely predict that they will continue.
It can seem at times as if we are running up the down escalator; we know we have to work harder and smarter over a longer period of time just to stay in the same place. This makes our lack of action even more puzzling and troublesome.
Where we do move fast and efficiently, we can see some successes – the virtual disappearance of lead from Canadian air, the reduction and elimination of substances that destroy the ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere and so on.
But if we slow down or become complacent, problems grow and we move backward with predictable results – rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions, overuse of renewable resources, and toxic substances in our air and water.
And as I said earlier, these problems affect us where we live and where we work.
I remain convinced that we can do better, by applying sound management practices to our environmental and sustainable development objectives. As organizations around the world – in both the public and private sectors – have demonstrated, there are solutions, if not always quick ones. What we need is persistence – sustained and focussed effort.
Each of the chapters in my Report has important things to say about the federal government’s management of environmental and sustainable development issues, including consulting the public, international commitments to the Arctic and building environmental considerations into the government’s policies, programs and day-to-day operations.
Today, I will focus on three key parts of my Report: the management of toxic substances; federal-provincial environmental agreements; and departmental sustainable development strategies.
As the Committee knows, the federal government’s policy objective is to permit the safe and productive use of chemical substances while safeguarding Canadians and their environment from unacceptable risks. Our examination considered the federal government’s ability to detect and understand the effects of toxic substances on our health and our environment – in other words, can we do the science? We also looked at how the risks posed by toxic substances are being managed.
Although releases of many toxic substances have been reduced, we identified a number of cracks in the federal scientific infrastructure.
A partial list of our findings includes poor interdepartmental co-ordination of research efforts, incomplete monitoring networks, unfulfilled commitments, a lack of re-evaluation of pesticides against new health and environmental standards, and a growing gap between the demands placed upon departments and the availability of resources to meet those demands. This adds up to a serious problem.
Members of the Committee will be familiar with the key facts:
There are obstacles to effective management of risks and we conclude that the action being taken is insufficient.
The Toxic Substances Management Policy is the cornerstone federal policy, providing the basis for a preventative and precautionary approach to substances that could harm human health or the environment. But it is not being implemented as intended. Few departments have established the implementation plans required under the Policy, and risk management strategies for many toxic substances have not been developed.
We found that federal departments are deeply divided on many key issues. They do not share a common vision of how toxic substances should be managed. They disagree strongly on the degree of risk posed by some industrial chemicals, the interpretation of federal policy and the actions required to implement it, the relative merits of voluntary and regulatory controls, and the respective roles and responsibilities of departments.
The case of acrolein – the active ingredient in an aquatic herbicide – is an example presented in Exhibit 3.5 of Chapter 3. Since 1994 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency have been unable to agree on whether irrigation canals fall under the Fisheries Act, and thus whether the use of acrolein near them is a violation of the Act. The issue remains unresolved today, and the use of acrolein continues.
Exhibit 3.7 provides a second case study – the issue of mercury. Federal departments disagree about the relative contribution of natural versus human-made releases in the environment. As a result, Canada presents a divided opinion in international negotiations on mercury and heavy metals.
I can only conclude that the behaviour demonstrated by some departments is a major impediment to the effectiveness of federal programs. Conflicts have surpassed a healthy level of debate and have led to strained relations, indecision and inaction, inefficient use of federal resources and expertise and, in at least one case, Canada’s international embarrassment.
There are no easy answers to the problems we identify. Some arise because of conflicts between departmental constituencies and between legislation. Many are the result of departments just not working well together. Mechanisms are put in place, but when departments reach an impasse there is no one to resolve it.
Taken together, these problems threaten the federal government’s ability to detect, understand and prevent the harmful effects of toxic substances on the health of Canadians and their environment.
We have made 27 recommendations to rectify this situation. For example, departments need to:
I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss these issues in more detail with the Committee. The departments’ response to our recommendations is included in Chapter 4.
In the Committee’s December 1997 report on harmonization and environmental protection, you asked us to evaluate the federal government’s performance under existing bilateral agreements.
In response, we examined seven agreements under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and under the Fisheries Act in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan – the four provinces with which the federal government has concluded agreements.
We concluded that, in general, federal-provincial agreements do offer potential for increased protection of the environment and for streamlining administrative and regulatory activities between the two levels of government. However, we found that these specific agreements are not working as intended.
First, there are significant weaknesses in their design. The links to improved environmental performance are not made, and there are no audit provisions to verify information, no accounting of federal funds transferred, no requirement to report evaluation results and only limited guidelines for annual reporting.
Second, before entering into these agreements, the federal government did not formally analyze or document the associated risks, including whether both parties could do what they agreed to do.
Third, we found that many key features of the agreements have simply not been implemented. In some cases, federal-provincial committees designed to manage the agreements were never established. There is no ongoing analysis of the impact of the agreements on environmental performance or on industries affected by the agreements.
And finally, the federal government does not have a documented plan should a province be unable to carry out its assigned responsibilities or should an agreement be terminated.
As members know, the federal government is planning to enter into more bilateral agreements under the recent Canada-Wide Accord on Environmental Harmonization. Through our 14 recommendations, we want the important lessons learned to be incorporated into them.
I am sure that the Committee shares that perspective. In my view, to strengthen the agreements, Environment Canada needs to:
involve stakeholders fully in the design of new agreements;
improve the design of new agreements, for example with provisions for audit, performance standards, clear and measurable objectives and specific reporting requirements;
evaluate the agreements to see if they are working properly, report the results of these evaluations and incorporate the lessons learned into any new agreements;
review the capacity of both parties to deliver on their responsibilities;
develop a plan that would indicate how the federal government would reassume its responsibilities should a province be unable to carry out its assigned responsibilities or should it or a province decide to terminate an agreement; and
gather information on the administration of the agreements and report annually to Parliament on the results being achieved by the agreements.
I would be pleased to discuss these issues further with the Committee.
The departmental sustainable development strategies and annual progress reports are a new tool for improving the federal government’s management of sustainable development issues. While departments are now mid-way through their first three-year strategy cycle, when we conducted our audit they were still in the early stages of implementing their strategies.
Although departments report that they are implementing their strategies, in my view the information being provided to parliamentarians and the public is inadequate to judge whether the strategies as a whole are on track or whether corrective action is required.
Departments are also just beginning to establish practices to support implementation of their strategies. Exhibit 1.6 in Chapter 1 provides an interesting perspective on the "implementation gap" that I have talked about in this and previous reports.
Using the ISO 14001 standard as our benchmark, we found that departments have established about one third of the relevant management practices necessary to provide assurance that the strategies will be reliably implemented. Management practices are relatively stronger at the front end of the management cycle – planning – and become progressively weaker at the implementation, monitoring and corrective action stages.
We make two recommendations.
The Treasury Board Secretariat has provided departments with useful guidelines for reporting on their sustainable development strategies. Departments should make better use of it.
They also need to accelerate their plans to put appropriate management systems in place, paying particular attention to training, periodic self-assessments and management review.
Departments are required to update their strategies every three years, with the first update due by December 2000. Later this year, I plan to issue a special report setting out my expectations for the strategy update. Before doing so, I would like to talk with Committee members to ensure that their views are incorporated.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the Committee for its ongoing interest and support.
The main message in my Report is that there continues to be a substantial gap between talk and action on the federal government’s environmental and sustainable development agenda. And we are paying the price in terms of our health, our environment, our standard of living and our legacy to our children and grandchildren.
In 1997 at the United Nations, Canada joined the international community in reaffirming its commitment to sustainable development, and to making measurable progress toward it by 2002. Mr. Chairman, there are just three years to go.
Organizations around the world have shown how their environmental performance can be improved by strengthening basic management practices. Canada’s federal government needs to do the same.
As I said last year, the work of this Committee is vital to Canada's success in meeting its environmental and sustainable development goals. I look forward to a continuing productive relationship.
We will be pleased to answer any questions you might have.