Opening Statement to the Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development

Chapter 22 - Federal Contaminated Sites - Management Information On Environmental Costs And Liabilities (November 1996 Report of the Auditor General)

Brian Emmett, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development

Contaminated sites are a potentially serious environmental problem: they can lead to contamination of ground water, take valuable land out of more productive use, and threaten human health and the environment. Also, they can lead to potentially significant financial liabilities for the government.

The federal government owns thousands of contaminated sites that pose potential risks to public health, safety and the environment. Before the government can assess the environmental and health risks, it has to identify its contaminated sites. Only then can it develop an action plan, including a timetable to monitor and at least contain the risks or to fully remediate a site.

But the federal government, the largest landholder in Canada, does not have a complete picture of the potential risks to health, safety and the environment associated with its about 5,000 contaminated federal sites. Nor does it have an accurate picture of the related liabilities. As a result, it is unable to assure Parliament and the people of Canada that it can address these risks.

The situation is not entirely bleak. Individual departments have made some headway in beginning to inventory and assess their portfolios of contaminated sites. The 1996 chapter describes some of the progress made by three large departments with significant landholdings. However, based on the current rate of progress overall in the 12 departments we reviewed, it could take them at least another 10 years to complete the job of identifying, assessing and remediating their contaminated sites - 10 more years of potentially serious health and safety risks.

What I find personally disturbing is the way the government has chosen to manage its portfolio of more than 5,000 contaminated sites. Every other organization we visited that managed a large portfolio of contaminated sites took a holistic approach to identifying its highest-risk sites and dealt with them first. However, the federal government has chosen to take a fragmented approach that raises questions about whether its approach is the right one. The government is essentially captive to each department's individual level of interest in dealing with its own contaminated sites.

As a result of this institutional approach, there is no common timetable for the identification, assessment and ultimate remediation of federal contaminated sites, particularly the high-risk sites. Nor is there a common, consistent and coherent federal approach to ensuring that the government exercises the due diligence expected of a major landholder, whether in the public sector or the private sector. One department may be remediating a lower-risk site while another still has to remediate all of its high-risk sites.

The Treasury Board Secretariat has prepared a draft policy on accounting for costs and liabilities related to contaminated sites. The proposed implementation date is April 1, 1998 with the first reporting in the government's financial statements by March 31, 1999. A key issue is the readiness of individual departments. Our concern is that given the government's fragmented approach, individual departments may not have complete estimates of their departmental liabilities by March 31, 1999. The unresolved challenge is how to ensure, without a common timetable for the identification and assessment of all federal contaminated sites, that parliamentarians and Canadians will know the cost of mitigating the risks to health and safety.

The government continues to disagree with us over the need for a government-wide action plan and timetable to complete the identification, assessment and remediation of all federal contaminated sites. It emphasizes that each federal department is responsible for its own clean-up.

Canadians are questioning the credibility of our institutions. The federal government risks a loss of credibility because of its inability to put its house in order when it comes to monitoring and managing the legacy of hazardous waste on government lands. Erosion of credibility can also affect the government's ability to regulate or influence the environmental practices of others.

The question remains: what are the potential health and environmental costs of not taking timely action?

Thank you Mr. Chairman.