Examination of Witnesses (Questions 308
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH 2003
MS JOHANNE
GÉLINAS, MR
JOHN REED,
MR CHARLES
CACCIA MP, MS
HÉLÈNE SCHERRER
MP, MR BOB
MILLS MP AND
MR JOE
COMARTIN MP
Chairman
308. Welcome back to you all. Could I formally welcome
you to the proceedings of the Committee. I am afraid there will
be a couple of votes fairly soon, which sadly means we have to
adjourn for 10 minutes per vote more or less. These two votes
may be immediately after each other, which may mean a twenty minute
break. I apologise for that. Yesterday evening we had four votes
in a row. I gather that is not going to occur again but there
will be two votes in a row fairly soon. When that happens I will
signal and we will close proceedings for 10 or 20 minutes. But
welcome again to all of you. We are delighted to have you here
for a couple of days and we are very privileged that you think
it is so important that you want to spend the time with us. Is
there anything you would like to say again, Johanne or Charles,
by way of a very brief introduction before we ask you questions?
(Ms Gélinas) Thank you very much,
Chairman, and good afternoon to the members. I would like to start
by thanking you for the invitation and I would like to make some
brief remarks and then I will be pleased to answer any of your
questions. I am joined at the table today by John Reed, the principal
responsible for the audit work in my office that we conduct on
sustainable development strategies and for our work related to
the Johannesburg Summit. I am also pleased today to be joined
by the delegation of Canadian parliamentarians, headed by the
chair of Canada's Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable
Development, Mr Charles Caccia, and also including Mr Comartin,
Mr Mills and Ms Scherrer. I realise of course that this Committee
is primarily focussed on the implementation of sustainable development
in the United Kingdom so you may well be wondering why a Canadian
is here to provide testimony. The simple answer is that I think
we share a common interest: to get action on sustainable development
and the Johannesburg Summit. And although the approaches taken
by our countries towards sustainable development differ in many
important ways I suspect that our governments face many common
challenges. With this in mind, I hope to learn from you and also
to share with you some of my perspective. Specifically, I would
like to leave you with some very simple messages. First, the Johannesburg
Summit is important for the world. Its noble ideas and commitments
represent a current global plan to protect our planet now and
for future generations. These hearings are evidence that this
Committee is already conscious of its importance. Secondly, the
successful implementation of Johannesburg requires a new and different
approach than the one used to implement the 1992 Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro. Rio, too, produced many noble ideas and commitments
but governments failed by and large to implement them. We cannot
make that mistake again. Thirdly, effective governance and accountability
must be a central part of the new approach. Governments need to
develop a concrete, prioritised and resourced action plan for
implementing Johannesburg. Progress against these plans must be
tracked and departments and their ministers must be held accountable
for that progress. Fourthly, national audit offices like my office,
the UK National Audit Office and similar institutions in 180 countries
around the world have an important role to play and can offer
leadership in promoting effective government performance and good
governance. Fifthly, parliamentary oversight is needed. In Canada
I am often referred to as the environmental watchdog. The label
is understandable from a public perspective but parliament is
the real watchdog of government. Lastly, the public must be engaged
in this process providing public oversight. Among other things,
there is a need to explain what Johannesburg means and why it
matters and to explain what governments and others are doing to
put commitments into action and to seek public input throughout.
Chairman, thank you for the opportunity and I will be pleased
to answer any questions. If I may, I will now turn to my colleague
Mr Caccia.
309. Mr Caccia, is there anything you would
like to add to that? Could I first of all thank you also for your
memorandum which you submitted, as well as the Commissioner's
memorandum. We are very glad to have both.
(Mr Caccia) It was your invitation which inspired
it. It is only a theoretical elaboration and I hope it might be
useful. We would like, as parliamentarians, to congratulate you
for your initiative, which we find far reaching and very enlightened
and it sends out a signal also to us in Canada, which we will
take seriously. We would like also to congratulate not only you
in this room but outside this room those in the Energy Department
of the UK who produced the White Paper in which the target of
2050 is elaborated for a reduction of greenhouse gases by 60%.
Although the choice of 2050 is a very bold initiative it forces
us to think into the future more than we usually do and that 60%
reduction is a stunning item. Some of us had the privilege of
meeting the author in Ottawa last week, Bob Wright, and to hear
more on that document. Thirdly, we would like to congratulate
you on your good choice in inviting the Commissioner because that
gave us also an excuse to come with her! The post-Johannesburg
agenda that you are proposing, and I will conclude with that,
is certainly impressive as it reads. Particularly interesting
is your intent to examine how the commitments made at the Summit
could or should reshape existing UK policies or strategies or
act as a catalyst for new initiatives and of course we were wondering
what that exactly means. Probably you are thinking of reshaping
your taxation policies or your energy policies, which you are
already doing actually, policies related to water quality and
water supply, policies related to the disappearing fish resources
or the forest resources as well, whether you are thinking also
to do further work in pollution prevention. The overall concept
that you are putting forward of examining existing UK policies
in connection with the Summit is a very clever one and we want
to congratulate you.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Mr Caccia,
and like you we hope we will concentrate effectively on the follow
up to Johannesburg by the means at our disposal just as you will
with the means at your disposal. Thank you for your very charming
remarks.
Mr Thomas
310. I would like to start with the World Summit,
if I may, and put a question to both the Commissioner and yourself,
Mr Caccia, perhaps. Commissioner, in giving your presentation
you outlined by saying that Johannesburg was important for the
world. How important was Johannesburg for Canada and how seriously
are Canadians and Canadian institutions taking sustainable development
and the implications of Johannesburg at the moment?
(Ms Gélinas) First of all, I should
say that Canada really reacted in concrete terms to Rio. That
was the beginning of this effort to move towards sustainable development
by first of all creating my position but putting also a legislative
requirement for departments, 25 departments plus five agencies
at the federal level to develop a sustainable development strategy.
So we have 28 sustainable development strategies which have to
be revisited every three years. We have gone through two generations
and now we are entering the third one. Strategies should be tabled
to parliament by the end of this calendar year. This is the way
by which Canada has decided to move towards sustainable development.
One of the things I have said is that in reference with what is
going on in the UK, we have decided to go with a bottom-up approach.
It is not because you have 28 strategies that you have a federal
strategy or a national strategy and we have reached what I call
a plateau and now we have as a country to figure out what we want
to achieve, what is the vision of what a sustainable Canada should
be twenty years from now. So it is work in progress. The Federal
Government has done a lot so far. Now what we are asking is what
will be done differently now that we have as a country reaffirmed
our commitment in Johannesburg? Because what we see is that Johannesburg
is no different than Rio. It is just a reaffirmation of what we
have said 10 years ago. What we are saying now is that Canada
has to walk the talk. We were very good at producing documents,
paper guidelines, and so on, but now we have to see real action
on the ground and this is where I am at. As an auditor, I am looking
for results and I will report to parliament year after year on
progress towards the commitment that was made in Johannesburg.
So there is some progress but we still have a long way to go.
(Mr Caccia) Initially, to answer your question, there
was a public hesitancy or even indifference because of the slowness
in the selection of the Secretary-General. Maurice Strong, who
was the Secretary-General in 1972 and in 1992, declined to do
it again and the choice that was eventually made was considered
by those who are familiar with that process as a very weak one,
as a compromise, a last minute choice that did not have the kind
of inspiration and vision or the articulation that Maurice Strong
used to bring. But eventually they did approach various organisations
and environmental NGOs became involved and somehow we managed
to get there and while the content of the Summit cannot compete
with the content of the two preceding ones, namely Stockholm and
Rio, there is no way that it can come close to that even with
the best of intentions, at least considering the times and the
political will, so to speak, it is the best that could be expected
under the circumstances, I would say. The only serious flaw of
that outcome is that the implementation of the Summit—and
this is something that I would like very much to register as forcefully
as I can—was left again to the UN committee on sustainable
development and the experience, not only the Canadian experience,
with that outfit is not a very happy one. It is a weak body. It
preaches to the converted. It has not managed to fulfil its mandate.
It reports to a UNESCO agency and its reports fall on deaf ears.
Therefore, there was a very urgent necessity to redefine or at
least discuss, debate and possibly come up with an alternative
to the UN committee on sustainable development. That, however,
did not happen and a bunch of us met in Johannesburg when we realised
that, parliamentarians from Europe and North America, and eventually
by December we collected enough signatures for a letter to the
Secretary-General of the UN expressing these thoughts and putting
forward an alternative action. If you are interested, of course,
we will be glad to submit the text of that letter[2],
which has not yet been replied to for reasons related to other
events in the world.
Mr Thomas: Yes, that would be interesting.
Joan Walley
311. Could I just follow up that particular
point because what I am interested in, in terms of how the United
Nations takes this agenda further, is whether or not that is then
down to the different governments or what role parliamentarians
have in the work of the United Nations or what work the different
existing structures of the United Nations have. I notice, for
example, on our all party web, which is the weekly information
sheet which we as MPs in the UK have, there was a vacancy for
somebody to serve on the United Nations in respect of sustainable
development. You talked about new structures which you think might
need to be defined and I just wonder whether or not you feel that
it should be committees of parliament like our own that should
be taking the lead in the work that is needing to be ongoing in
the United Nations or whether or not it should be done by individual
parliamentarians? I am very interested to explore your vision
of how the UN could be pursuing this further with us in the small
amount of time that we have.
(Mr Caccia) There are two avenues open
to us as parliamentarians. One of course is, as you just defined,
the work of committees like yours and ours in various parliaments.
Definitely that is a very badly needed one, particularly when
it is able to make presentations to the respective governments
in relation to what the governments say at the UN. So the work
of parliamentarians is increasing in relevance and in impact.
Secondly, the UN has to sort itself out and examine its own effectiveness
and here if you look at the family of UN agencies you can see
well established agencies in charge of health, like WHO, UNDP
in charge of development, etcetera, but here UNEP is often called
a unit which still does not have the status of an agency. It is
still in the minor league, so to speak, and on top of that relegated
to the Siberian plains of Kenya. So it is very marginal in location
and in impact. One proposal that the UN Secretary-General hopefully
will look at is, first of all to elevate the unit to the status
of an agency so that it has also the necessary means and impact
within the UN system, and secondly to give it the role of implementing
the findings of the Summit because then, as in the case of the
health agency in Geneva, you give the assignment of sustainable
development and environment protection to the agency that has
been created by the UN itself for that purpose. So that would
be one formula that would be followed. But coming back to your
basic question, definitely the UN can by only as strong as its
member nations are and the member nations can only be as strong
as their parliamentarians and governments are within their own
respective systems. So we always come back to us in a way and
the public.
312. If I could just respond to that by saying
that I think therefore the joint work that your committee and
our committee can do in the joint pursuit of that agenda is something
which I think we need to look carefully at.
(Mr Caccia) Yes, and you will find some very like-minded
characters like us in Brussels on the Environment Committee and
the committee that deals with Kyoto, and so on. We have some very
good allies over there.
Sue Doughty
313. I was particularly interested in your preparations
for the Earth Summit and for us certainly I think going as a group
and having many, many meetings and many, many fora and really
trying to determine how we could best understand the proceedings
of the Summit in order to come back and audit our own government
afterwards. I was particularly interested in your planning, the
approach you took and also possibly some of the things that you
found particularly useful that you attended and some of those
things that you really found a big disappointment because I think
for us there were some things we found a lot of joy in and other
things we found were hugely frustrating because it was almost
as if people did not want these things to be on the agenda.
(Mr Comartin) Charles said, "You
answer this," because he does not want to attack his own
government! I think I am speaking generally on behalf of the Environment
Committee. We were disappointed that we did not do sufficient
preparation as a country. We have played major roles in UNEP.
Our environment minister is the head of UNEP, or was at the time
of the Summit. We as a committee only got two briefings—as
Charles has said, one worse than the other. The second one was
in February, five or six months before. We felt that the government
was not ready for the Summit and had not done the background work
that was necessary. I think that was reflected on the role or
lack of such that we played at the Summit as a country. I think
we could have done a lot more. I think there were parts of the
globe that were looking to us to do more because of the historical
role we have played and some of the responsibilities we have.
I remember the second briefing in particular. Charles was his
usual self, attacking the presentation as being woefully inadequate
and it did reflect where the government was at at that point.
They did do some more work before Johannesburg but it was not
enough and our role suffered as a result. What we are worried
about, if I can carry it a bit beyond that into the future, is
that we do not move into the implementation stage as rapidly as
we did. What I want to say about the Summit is that one of the
things that it did do was focus the attention in Canada on Kyoto.
I am not sure you are aware but the Prime Minister did announce
in Johannesburg that we in fact were going to ratify Kyoto before
the end of 2002. So from that vantage point the Summit was a major
plus for us and I have to say the environmental NGOs of some of
the other opposition parties had been using the upcoming Summit
to keep the pressure on the government to ratify Kyoto. So from
that perspective it performed a good function. In any event, to
carry on, the role of looking where we are going, are we in fact
going to be serious about implementing Kyoto as opposed to Rio?
I do not think that determination has been completed. I want to
say in that regard that the work the Commission does, the work
that our committee does has certainly drawn to our attention that
if we are going to implement we need the tools to do it. When
I say "we" I mean Canada as opposed to other countries.
I get the sense from some of the conversations, because we had
dinner last night, that you are struggling as well. Do we have
the tools to properly audit, to properly see that the implementation
is occurring? We are finding some frustration that we are not
at a stage where we can say accurately, "Yes, we have done
the audit, we have reviewed the programme and in fact it is being
implemented." That is an ongoing struggle for us.
(Mr Mills) Chairman, if I could just go back to the
last question about the UN. I attended the UNEP annual meeting
of ministers in Nairobi whenever it was, last month or so, and
I sat there tentatively for the entire conference and listened
to 130 countries make presentations on what the key environmental
issues were and about the implementation plan from Johannesburg
and I guess what I was most impressed with was how hugely different
everybody's perspective was in terms of how you would implement
what was said, and of course for some it was strictly a matter
of, "Well, we have too much population and poverty is the
reason why we cannot implement anything and poverty puts more
pressure on the environment than if we had things so what are
you going to give us so we can then improve the environment?"
So for this one block it was a matter of, "Well, the developed
world must give us so that we can then care about the environment."
But you got the impression that the strategy has to involve all
of those issues and the one thing that not one person ever said
in that whole thing was, "Well, we have got to deal with
the population question," and I was just so impressed with
the fact that nobody said that population in fact was one of the
biggest factors in terms of sustainable development. It was very
interesting to see the huge range that existed within 130 countries
who all made presentations there and at the end nobody could agree
on any strategy for implementation. The end document was so watered
down and had been re-worked and they worked through the night,
as they always do at these things, and ended up a document that
really did not please anybody. There was not one member there
who would have said this accomplished something. That is the frustration
of the whole UN process. I do not have a solution, I just identify
the problem that you all probably know already. It is a huge problem.
Chairman
314. I think you put it very graphically. Commissioner,
you wanted to add something?
(Ms Gélinas) John and I were in
Johannesburg and when we came back we were wondering if we should
audit the process to figuring out what really happened, how the
government was prepared to go to Johannesburg. Both of us came
to the conclusion that what was more important was where do we
go from now to look forward, to look into the future. So I waited
until I was back from Johannesburg to write the last part of my
chapter zero, which is my opinion on things that are going on.
We have come up with some very specific recommendations to the
government and John can say a few words about that, but moreover
we were following the process as it was going before Johannesburg
and we can give you a little bit of information about the preparation
itself if you want to.
(Mr Reed) I think you were asking a little bit about
the process of preparation in Canada and the consultation, and
so on. There were quite a few processes put in place to prepare
Canada but I think the backdrop for a lot of that was a great
deal of scepticism in the public community, in the NGO community,
as to whether this was a serious Summit or not. The consultations
probably started two years in advance of the Summit and there
was a cross-Canada tour trying to get the views of people as to
what priorities they wanted the government to bring into Johannesburg.
There was a great deal of frustration because the message was
continually, "This Summit is not going to be about new ideas
and new agendas and new priorities, it is going to be about fixing
the problems of the past." For a lot of people that was enormously
frustrating because new events had happened, new issues had arisen
and so there was not a great deal of faith in whether the Summit
would lead to something meaningful and there were a lot of jokes
at the time that the Summit was in search of an agenda. People
really did not know what was going to be on the agenda. So there
was that aspect of, I guess, trepidation of the public going into
it. I think you know all countries were asked to prepare a national
report and submit that prior to the Summit and that also was an
area of great controversy in Canada because the Federal Government
started a process that was intended to lead to an honest and frank
portrayal of the strengths and weaknesses against all of the Rio
commitments and they assembled a blue ribbon panel of experts
to compile this report and a process of checks and balances to
make sure that it was in fact honest and frank. At the very end
of the process the document was taken over by the government and
edited substantially to the point where this blue ribbon panel
refused to have their names associated with the report. So that,
too, really fed this notion of whether this was a real summit
or not. But as the Commissioner said, from an auditor's perspective
it was not really important to us what the Summit said because
that is policy. What is important to us is implementation and
that is why, as the Commissioner said, when we came back the first
job was, "Whether you like it or not, it is the Summit. Let's
get on with the job of implementing it and develop very clear
and concrete commitments. Take that kind of treatise and fuzzy
language that you see in the plan of implementation and make it
something concrete and real." So that is the process that
has been started in Canada.
Mr Thomas
315. Specifically why was there a panel assembled
to do that? Why did the Commissioner not do that anyway, because
if you are auditing what the Canadian Government has done since
Rio in order to present to Johannesburg is that not a job for
the Commissioner? Why would it take a separate panel to do that?
(Mr Reed) There is a couple of reasons.
One, I guess, is that it was intended to be a national report
as opposed to a federal report, so we would have a limited ability
to comment on anything happening in provinces, in industry and
civil society. Second, I think they wanted to get a very well
rounded spectrum of people and positions and I think they just
felt this was the way to get a lot of neutrality and expert testimony.
It was all public. All the transcripts, the memoranda, all of
that was made public and I think that was all the more reason
why there was disappointment with the final product.
(Ms Gélinas) What we have learned through this
process is that for the next time we are starting now our homework.
So for the next time as an independent organisation we will have
our own track record of what has been done.
Mr Challen
316. Could I just ask the Commissioner, with
that background in mind and the general agreement that the plan
of implementation from Johannesburg was rather short on specific
targets and time scales, has the government now got a more concrete
plan itself to implement the commitments and is it making any
progress towards them?
(Ms Gélinas) As we speak, we do
not have this to offer you. You will have to invite us next year
so we will be able to talk to you about that! We have made it
clear on our side what we were expecting from the government in
the coming year and we are expecting for sure a plan of implementation.
At the moment we have an intention from the government to have
one but we have not seen any and this is why we are trying to
move ahead in the future with the help and the support of our
committee to get some answers about what is going on. Three weeks
ago I was in front of the committee and I raised myself a couple
of questions that I would like to get answers for and next week
in fact the committee will hear some of the central agencies and
the department responsible to answer those questions in front
of them, so we may have a little bit more clarification of what
is the government plan.
317. Have you seen any evidence that they have
kicked off the process with interdepartmental meetings or coordination
at that level?
(Ms Gélinas) We do not have evidence. We have
heard things but we never report back on rumours, so I have to
stop there, unfortunately, on my answer.
(Mr Reed) To be fair to the government, we know the
process has started. We know the discussions are occurring interdepartmentally
and I think they are in a way trying to do the same kind of thing
that we heard DEFRA is doing, that is identifying key priority
areas. That is the dialogue that is going on within the departments
right now, of all the commitments in the plan of implementation
which are the ones that really matter. But as the Commissioner
says, evidence, no. Nothing has been produced yet, nothing has
been circulated, but we know there are discussions going on.
318. That sounds like quite a difficult job
just working with the Federal Government but there must be an
added layer of complexity dealing with the issue of monitoring
how the provinces are doing. Do you have any comment on that?
Could I just ask as well whether or not they were represented
at the Summit, whether the provinces did attend?
(Mr Reed) Yes.
319. What coordination took place between the
representatives of the federal and provincial representatives?
I do not know if this is a question that Mr Caccia might be able
to answer?
(Mr Caccia) The Canadian delegation was, what, 130
people, so it included every sector and segment of society including
levels of government, including the municipal sector as well.
So the representation was very broad, no doubt, and then NGOs
and whatever, you name it. The presence was quite good on the
whole but on the speed of the government in implementing the Summit
there is generally a tendency of leaving things to the last moment
and the advantage of having a Commissioner is that this time things
will not be left to the last moment. This time the government
departments will move into action almost certainly before the
first year will expire, namely before next August there will be
some action and therefore by the time we reach two or three years
past Johannesburg the performance of the government will be there,
there will be something to look at. But I do not think that would
happen had it not been for the fact that pressure was exerted
by the Commissioner on the system, particularly the centre of
the system, with the Privy Council office.
2 Letter is reproduced as a supplementary memo, please
see Ev 150-152 Back
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