Environment Committee on June 18th, 2024

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

—serve Canadians, and I also understand that these trips are expensive.

You know, I haven't spent my entire life lecturing everyone on environment, but the committee feels this approach is very much about greenwashing. You travel, but you clear your conscience by buying credits. Is that correct?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

People do need to be made aware of their actions.

With respect to the UN conference, a lot of the effort to address climate change is also happening outside Canada. If we don't play an active role in that conference, we won't necessarily be able to influence the decisions that will be made there.

Here's an interesting fact as well: At COP28, the delegations included many more people, particularly those from the provinces. I'm thinking in particular of Alberta and Saskatchewan, which had a strong presence at COP28.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'd be happy to talk to them if I were in Alberta, but I'm in Ottawa, and I have the deputy minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada in front of me.

Can you tell me how many people went to Dubai and how much the department paid Treasury Board for greenwashing after it attended COP28?

[Jean-François Tremblay]

I don't know how many people were sent by the various departments. I can tell you that Environment and Climate Change Canada sent 44 people to COP28. It was the same number of people, give or take one or two people, maybe, as it sent to COP27.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

If I understand correctly, your greenwashing policy applies only to air travel. It doesn't apply to the week you spend in air-conditioned hotels in the middle of the desert.

[Jean-François Tremblay]

You're absolutely right. It's for the carbon deficit, not necessarily for hotels.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Chair, I will use the rest of my time to move the following motion, of which we gave notice on Friday, June 14.

Given the large workload the committee has on the docket, the committee instructs the chair to book five meetings in between July 8, 2024, and September 13, 2024, while the House is adjourned, to deal with unfinished business, such as the $8 billion Net Zero Accelerator fund waste and other pressing matters as they emerge.

It's imperative that Canadians see us working. As we all know very well, the summer period is not a vacation period. We're all in our ridings, meeting with Canadians and listening to them, and touring. Obviously, it depends on our political party's commitments. However, just because we're listening to Canadians doesn't mean that we can't be here in Ottawa doing our job as lawmakers.

We've been inviting the minister to testify for two months, but he hasn't had the opportunity to do so. Perhaps he'll find the time to come and testify before the committee during those five meetings. We're dealing with a number of very important issues that relate to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

The motion states that we want to deal with the Net Zero Accelerator fund and other pressing matters. That's one part of the $8 billion.

In addition, there's a lot of debate on the impact of the carbon tax. We feel that the government didn't disclose and was hiding it. If the minister had been here today, we could have gotten to the bottom of things, but he decided not to come and testify, which is unfortunate.

We could also talk about climate change. We see the effects of it on a daily basis. Just because it's summer doesn't mean we can't meet on parliamentary business.

Of course, there's also the infamous green fund. Today, following a question from our colleague during question period, we learned that the Minister of the Environment had shares in a business directly involved in this scandal. That's quite significant.

We have a number of questions, and we have to debate a number of issues. We could do that at those five committee meetings.

Let's be clear: We have about three months to do this. It's not rocket science. We're all able to find time to meet during the summer. All the members around this table care about being accountable to taxpayers. That's true of the government and the opposition parties, who must do their work diligently.

We feel that it's not too much to ask that we meet five times during the summer. The government must be accountable for its poor management of public funds, particularly at the Department of the Environment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Mazier.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

Thank you to my colleague for bringing out these important points. We have a lot of work to do here. We've done a lot of studies. We've been doing this water study here for, I don't know, 15 or more meetings. Is that right?

There's a lot of good information, and we have a lot of work to clean up before we head into the fall session, never mind all the other things we're finding out in this committee, such as the $8-billion net-zero accelerator fund, for which over 70% of the projects have given no commitment to reduce emissions, when the fund was supposed to reduce emissions.

We're now finding out that this carbon tax is going to cost Canadians $30 billion a year, or $2,000 per family. It's ridiculous. We need to be talking about this, because this is all because of the carbon tax. This is a government-made problem by our minister that this committee was supposed to report on. The fact that he's not here today spells it out very clearly. Hopefully, he will see wisdom and the error of his ways, and he will get here this summer when we have these committee meetings.

I don't think anybody realizes just how serious this is. There is a massive amount of money leaking out of this government every day—

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Pardon me, Adam.

I guess you have trouble defending yourself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We can't have cross-party conversations.

Mr. Mazier, please go ahead.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Anyway, to the other members of this committee, the Bloc and NDP members—obviously, the Liberals won't want to step up—as MPs we have a responsibility to the Canadian taxpayer. Please, give this some consideration.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. van Koeverden.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start by reiterating that the Minister of Environment has appeared at committee nine times. He came most recently on May 22. He was here on March 19 of this year and on December 14, 2023. The minister comes here frequently and regularly. We appreciate his attendance.

Mr. Chair, the suggestion from the Conservatives that everything Canadians are facing right now, from an affordability crisis to a housing crisis, is all a result of pricing pollution is something that has been soundly refuted by 300 economists across Canada, as well as William Nordhaus, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on carbon pricing. There isn't one reputable Canadian economist or international economist who agrees with their version of reality.

For that reason, Mr. Chair, I would move to adjourn debate on this motion so that we can get back to our work. As the member very rightly pointed out, we have work to do. We have experts here. We have these officials here. They have come to this committee to answer our questions. I'd like to get to those questions.

I move to adjourn debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That's a dilatory motion. There's no debate.

We will go straight to the vote on whether to adjourn debate on the motion.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

We'll go to Mr. Longfield for six minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To our eight witnesses who are here to answer our questions, thank you for being here and for your dedication to the work that has to be done in the climate crisis.

I want to focus my question around the cap on emissions, something we've been talking about over the last few meetings with both the bank executives and the oil and gas executives. Our emissions, according to our latest estimates, have dropped since 2005.

To your understanding, are the proposed emissions levels in the cap we're working on consistent with the commitments we've already made with oil and gas companies? Could you maybe share with us how things are moving along in terms of the emissions cap? They are continuing to increase production at a rate that is faster than they're decreasing their emissions density. Those emissions are now 30% of the overall emissions that our economy is facing. Where are we with all of this in terms of our estimates and the work you're doing as a department on capping emissions?

[John Moffet, Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Protection Branch, Department of the Environment]

I can try to answer that question.

I'll start with the context that you refer to, which is that in our most recent national inventory report, we indicated that Canada's total emissions in 2022 were significantly below the highest level prepandemic, the 2019 level. Our total emissions are coming down and trending down towards our 2030 target.

However, we have one sector that is relatively flat, and that's transportation, hence the need for some more measures in transportation. There's only one sector whose emissions continue to actually increase—the oil and gas production sector. That's the rationale for the government to have made its announcement that it would cap emissions. It's in that context that the government has announced a cap.

Just to reiterate, the intention is to cap and reduce emissions in a predictable, accountable manner without affecting production decisions. In order to do that, of course, we're engaging with the sector and with provinces to identify what is the maximum technically achievable. It's not what they will actually do, but what is achievable over a certain period of time. We'll put in place a cap to ensure that, at a minimum, that level of emission reductions occurs.

We've been engaged in discussions for over a year on this, and as I think the minister has stated publicly to this committee and in other places, the intention is to provide a draft regulation early this fall.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

You mentioned provinces. We always come across the jurisdictional questions, with provinces being responsible for setting limits on the production of product that's coming out of the ground in the province of jurisdiction.

I'm trying to think of how I can phrase this in terms of our estimates. There's the work we're putting into getting the density down faster and working with the companies involved, because we don't want to put them out of business with unrealistic targets. We'd like to work with them in terms of the net-zero emissions goals that they have and the technology that needs to be employed for them to get to net zero faster.

How do you work with ISED or with other departments in terms of the innovations that need to happen faster?

[John Moffet]

That's a very important question and issue for the Government of Canada.

I'll start where you started with some of the critiques about the cap. I'll reiterate that the intended focus of the measure is on emissions. It is our intention, as you will see in the draft regulations, that the focus is on constraining emissions and not on dictating where oil and gas gets produced or, indeed, how it gets produced, so long as the sector is able to reduce emissions over time.

As is the case with the government's overall approach to decarbonizing the economy and moving towards net zero, the government's approach to decarbonizing the oil and gas sector involves a suite of measures. At its foundation, of course, is carbon pricing, and then in some cases there are additional regulatory measures established, primarily either where pricing won't send the right signal or where it won't send the signal adequately because of the trajectory of the sector.

In addition to regulatory measures for which Environment and Climate Change Canada is the lead, the government deploys, as you mentioned, a number of other measures, including investment tax credits and direct financial contributions from the net-zero accelerator, etc.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you. I have to stop you there, but you'll have other opportunities to speak on the issue.

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you very much for coming, and so many of you as well.

I'll start by asking Ms. Raffoul and Ms. Brady a question about the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

In your departmental plan for 2024-25, it says:

Work will be done, in collaboration with other federal departments, to capitalize on efficiencies so major projects, in particular projects that support clean growth, advance more quickly.

However, we learned that Impact Assessment Agency staff had been assigned to a working group alongside representatives from the oil and gas industry. It provides advice to a central government committee called the “main table”. At this main table, there are representatives from the Department of Natural Resources and others from the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. They were supposed to meet with various industry figures who are members of the well-known Pathways Alliance. Issues like indigenous engagement, regulatory coordination, economic inclusion, emissions accounting and project development and funding are to be discussed.

So we have this table, all the lobbying done by the Pathways Alliance and all the opacity surrounding certain information. All these elements correspond, in a somewhat worrisome way, to the demands of the so-called Pathways Alliance. That's what it was asking for in the spring. So we seem to have given it every single thing it was asking for.

Are you going to allow the regulatory relief the oil and gas industry is requesting, particularly by not subjecting some of its projects to the Impact Assessment Act?

[Patricia Brady, Vice-President, Strategic Policy and Programs, Impact Assessment Agency of Canada]

I will try to answer your question.

The projects that are subject to the Impact Assessment Act are set out in Governor in Council regulations. They set out the types of projects, including certain oil and gas projects and their size, that are subject to the law. It's not a result of lobbying efforts or otherwise that a project would or would not be subject to the act. There is provision in the act as well for the minister to use discretionary authority to subject a project to impact assessment.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I will stop you there, because I'd like you to tell me about emissions control, since you're going to work with the oil and gas companies to calculate emissions.

According to a study by Environment and Climate Change Canada and a university—I can't recall which one—the oil and gas industry is not reporting all of its emissions. Its emissions are actually much higher.

So you're going to sit down with people from the industry to calculate emissions.

What are you going to base your calculations on?

[Patricia Brady]

I'm not familiar with that study or the Impact Assessment Agency's being involved in it.