Public Accounts committee  I'm going to turn to Malcolm in a minute because he's the expert, as the engineer. Scope 3 is more challenging than the other emissions because you often need to develop methodologies to be able to assess them. The easiest one for us to do is travel and we've been reporting that since 2018, I think.

Public Accounts committee  I'll turn to Malcolm. I think we report emissions, the total emissions, from flights. I don't think we break it down to an individual flight by an individual person. Malcolm, maybe you could help.

Public Accounts committee  As you mentioned, Parliament created Crown corporations, which are unlike other federal institutions and sometimes have boards of directors that are different. Treasury Board rules usually don't apply to Crown corporations.

Public Accounts committee  That's the model used most of the time. It stems from Parliament's decision to create Crown corporations that are independent and, as such, are closer to an organization you would find in the private sector. In budget 2020‑21, the Minister of Finance indicated that Crown corporations should follow the model recommended by the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.

Public Accounts committee  Sure. I'll start, and then Malcolm can complete. We have an approach. It's an approach used by our colleagues, the General Services Administration in the U.S., NASA and Harvard. It's an approach that looks, for example, at the energy retrofit area where you take a building at the front end, you cost in a detailed way the upgrades, and the savings that are going to emerge from those upgrades through a life-cycle cost analysis.

Public Accounts committee  No, I think in this case we can see there has been tremendous progress, including on the actual emissions themselves, where we are several years ahead of schedule—

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the reported emissions on the 1 and 2, for the area where we had a 40% target for 2025, those are reporting ahead. I don't think this is a case of no action having been taken. The first plan was 2017. The subsequent plan was 2020. With each subsequent plan, we increased the level of reporting.

Public Accounts committee  I believe we're on a trajectory to get where we had planned to get, and each subsequent plan is getting us closer. If I look at the first and second levels of emissions, on those we have good reporting. As planned, we will move to complete that in the third report. Yes, this is a journey.

Public Accounts committee  Because of the complexity in reporting. In the original plans, the first and second plans, the aim was to capture the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which are relatively direct and easier to report. Scope 3 emissions are much more complicated to develop. They need methodologies around them.

Public Accounts committee  No, we are on track. Indeed, some of the levels of the scope 3 emissions, the travel emissions, have been reported for several years. We completed international work with some international partners. Since February, another huge piece of that, the procurement piece, has now been reported.

Public Accounts committee  I'll turn to Malcolm, who's really the expert around this. I think there's been good progress across departments in how we proceed, but I should highlight that the COVID context has, for many companies and governments as well, reduced emissions as a result of reduced activity.

Public Accounts committee  Departments are individually accountable for each of their actions. The Treasury Board sets guidance around those actions but, for example—

Public Accounts committee  It's more than that. As indicated in the auditor's report, the department has provided tools that departments use to allow them to develop their plans. To analyze those plans, we developed the Open Government portal data reporting, which allows us to pull together all the data around those plans.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the members of the committee. I am really happy to be here and to have the opportunity to address you on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. Let me first thank the commissioner for his report. We appreciate the work that has been done, and the observations from the report will enable the government to more effectively continue on its path to net-zero emissions.