Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
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
320. What sort of role do you see your committee
might have in scrutinising the implementation of the government's
commitments?
(Mr Caccia) I do not know. We have not discussed it
yet as a committee as to what we will do. Keep in mind that our
committee receives legislation from the House and therefore our
timetable is pretty heavy. We look at bills and we do that quite
intensively, almost with religious fervour, and we send back those
bills sometimes with 120 or more amendments, to the chagrin of
the government. So when we have that type of time allocation we
have also to keep in mind this other item that will eventually
emerge, so maybe we will be able to answer your question in the
near future. Right now we have not reached the point.
321. Would it be possible for federal parliamentarians
to meet with the provincial parliamentarians to consider these
issues given that you were both represented at Johannesburg?
(Mr Caccia) Well, that would be the close definition
of a zoo and I do not know whether we want to go into that! But
on a private basis, each one of us knows the environment critic
in our respective provinces and so there is always some kind of
communication at a personal level but the geography of Canada
and the regional differences are such that it would be better
if each province or each legislature were to do its own assessment
and provide its own reply.
(Ms Gélinas) What we may say and we often say,
at least in my area, is first let us get the federal house in
order and then lead by example. We can try to embrace everything
but we may reach failure, so let us go step by step, making sure
that at the federal level all the pieces of the puzzle are there
and then if others, like at the provincial level, want to take
the lead they will be free to do so.
322. Just lastly, Mr Caccia, I wonder if any
other standing committees in parliament are looking at post-Johannesburg
outcomes?
(Mr Caccia) Well, this is a very fine initiative by
the Commissioner and, as she mentioned earlier, I believe, she
appeared already before the Fisheries Committee and definitely
the Commissioner, in order to make an impact on the system, including
the parliamentary sector, has to almost invite herself before
a committee and sometimes the chair is not receptive, in which
case you cannot force it, sometimes there is an enthusiastic chair
and then it happens and it becomes then an immense educational
process in order to bring parliamentarians up to speed on the
issues.
Mr Thomas
323. I would just like to follow up quickly
on one point on the provincial level, and I appreciate you are
all federal, are you not, so you may not be able to answer this
directly but when we as a committee were in Johannesburg we did
meet with the Environment Minister in the Gauteng province, Mary
Metcalf, and she told us of what was called the Gauteng declaration
and the network of regions for sustainable development and this
was an international network of regional and sub-federal government,
if you like, working for sustainable development. I just wondered
whether you were aware of the provinces in Canada being involved
in that sort of international coordination around regional governments
for sustainable development?
(Ms Gélinas) This is news to me.
324. I was just interested to see whether this
was being taken up at all.
(Mr Caccia) But that soon detracts from the value
of that type of initiative because very often the input from local
governments is actually in advance of the thinking at the federal
level for a number of good reasons.
325. It is on a website if you want to have
a look at it.[3]
www.earthsummit2002.org/subnational/Inserts%20-%20Declaration%20v3.pdf
(Mr Mills) Two points I might mention.
There is an Environment Minister's meeting from the provinces
with the Federal Minister, so there is that coordination, and
from the province that I represent they were in Johannesburg as
well and taking a very active role in particularly the climate
change aspects of that.
Mr Ainsworth
326. I think that some of us, Commissioner,
were surprised to see in your evidence the role being played by
the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom in moving forward
some of these international issues and I see that you are developing
a version of the auditor's guide to Johannesburg for international
application. Could you tell us a bit more about that, how it could
be made to work?
(Ms Gélinas) Let me say a few
words first about what is this international organisation and
then I will turn to John to give you the detail. He is leading
that. What we tried to accomplish through the working group on
environmental auditing is to exchange information and to advent
the audit practice specifically in the environmental field. We
have a work plan and what we are trying to do with 48 other countries
is to make sure that we are moving ahead in the same direction,
if we can, on sustainable development. As you probably know, sustainable
development is not a best seller. It is very hard to talk about
and we have to find ways to translate that into something concrete
and it is complex. When you look at the commitments that were
made in Johannesburg and so on it is very difficult for a non-expert
to figure out what it means. John was saying that just the vocabulary
on its own is difficult to understand. So what we are doing is
trying to translate that into concrete terms that an auditor will
be able to implement in some way. So we will tell you what we
have started to do to advance our thinking on how to audit.
327. So you have got 48 countries which are
sympathetic to this and are working with you?
(Ms Gélinas) Which are doing environmental
auditing on a regular basis.
328. Are you trying to set up a common standard
of boxes to tick, so to speak?
(Ms Gélinas) Methodology to audit.
329. An international methodology?
(Ms Gélinas) Should we say an international
methodology? Probably not. It is an approach. It will be more
accurate to say an approach.
(Mr Reed) I think it would be hard to go that far.
Let me just say two other words about the members, because it
is important for what we are doing. There are actually 180 auditors
general in the world and 45 on this committee but there is quite
a range of the mandates that those Offices have. In some ways
we are at one end of the continuum because not only do we have
a mandate to do performance audits, effectiveness and efficiency
in government, but we have a very explicit reference to environment
in our legislation. So although we may be at one end of the continuum
we have a large number of Offices who have a performance audit
mandate, which allows them to look at, among other things, environmental
issues. But you also have some Offices who do not even have a
performance mandate. They are strictly still doing financial audits
for the government. So as a working group we need to bring that
whole group together at the same time. So sometimes our approach
is to provide high level guidance in a way that each office can
adapt within their mandate. One of the ways we have done that
as a working group is always starting with the production of papers,
descriptive papers about what we want to look at. The very first
one that group produced was simply `how to do an environmental
audit' because it was new for many members. We have done a paper
on water now that was authored by the institution in the Netherlands.
Countries have already done over 300 audits on the topic of water
alone. We have a second guidance paper which has been developed
on waste management and that is being authored now and will be
approved very shortly and that is intended to give guidance on
how to audit waste. The National Audit Office in the UK has authored
a paper on sustainable development. That one is in draft form
now and eventually will be finalised. So that is a paper that
is basically trying to give awareness on what SD is and how our
Offices could audit it. Then behind that—this is where the
audit guide comes in—we will take those ideas which are
in the plan of implementation, turn them into plain language so
that people can understand them and then identify audit criteria
on how offices like ours could assess performance. But it will
not be prescriptive and INTOSAI is not a prescriptive organisation,
it is guidance.
330. Are you able to share with us any of the
content of the UK National Audit Office draft, because we have
not seen it?
(Mr Reed) Well, you would not have seen it because
it has not been officially released by the working group yet,
but I think we could easily share a copy. It was initially authored
by the UK. Of course it gets reviewed and vetted by the entire
body within an approvals process, so I think that is something
that could be made available.[4]
331. This may be a very difficult question for
you to answer but I would be very interested in your perspective
on it. Do you think that this Committee should be seeking reports
on the whole implementation of the Johannesburg issue from our
National Audit Office in the UK in the way the relationship seems
to be working in Canada? Would you recommend it to us?
(Mr Caccia) You have an excellent Commission
actually on sustainable development and probably you have already
invited them to appear before you and I cannot think of a more
powerful alliance than the one between your Committee and the
Commission, the National Audit Office and DEFRA. You have a tremendous
amount of intellectual capital that you have invested in this
issue and you have to bring it to bear in a coherent manner through
your Committee's work.
332. Thank you for that advice. One slightly
more technical question, if I may, to do with these type 2 outcomes,
the partnership arrangements. I think some concern has been expressed
that they do not involve any formal relationship with ministers
or politicians. Is that something which needs to be addressed
and if so, how do you think it should be? I think I am now talking
to the Commissioner.
(Ms Gélinas) What we have said is that partnership
is probably now the way to go and that was part of Johannesburg,
that partnership will be the way to implement some of the commitments
that were made. What we have said as auditor is we have to be
careful because things are moving in a way that it is becoming
more difficult to audit government because part of the task is
given to partners and we cannot get to the partners to figure
out if they are doing what they were supposed to do. So we need
some good governance, a new type of arrangement, so that no matter
what the partnership model is that will be put in place we can
still hold government accountable for the results. We have thought
of that for a while now and it becomes more and more difficult
to report back on what the government is doing because in many
cases they will have partners who are doing the job and we cannot
get there. So part of the challenge is to make sure that there
are clear arrangements, that the role and responsibilities are
clear, the arrangements are well known, there is transparency,
as we should expect, in the government. All these elements should
be put in place so that no matter what is the partnership programme
that will be put in place we will be able, if the Federal Government
is involved, to report back.
(Mr Reed) Just very quickly, I think there are many
types of partnerships. Some are directly implementing public policy,
in effect they are displacing work that traditionally has been
done by government, and those are the ones that we are especially
interested in. If there is anything that we all collectively will
need to find out as our governments announce these partnerships,
I think it is to know which ones are actually displacing traditional
roles of government because those are the ones you have to pay
attention to, because that is where accountability in governments
comes in. It is not always going to be easy to make that determination
because sometimes they are announced as just good things to do
and it would be difficult to know whether that partnership is
actually replacing a regulation which might have been written.
So I think that is the key thing that you need to try and determine,
is that partnership something which is displacing a traditional
government role, and if it is then you ought to be interested
or we as an audit Office would be interested from an accountability
in government standpoint.
Joan Walley
333. Just to pick up on that point, I think
when we were asked in Johannesburg—and not just then but
at other times as well—we are particularly concerned about
that whole agenda and the WTO and the way in which the whole trade
agenda is progressing and the need for accountability and transparency
there. I think that in view of the latest trade talks which are
now under way and setting the agenda for the WTO, we would be
very interested in any thoughts you have about where these partnership
arrangements, which are the outcomes of Johannesburg, fit into
this separate issue which is also a governance issue as well.
(Mr Comartin) I suppose, Chairman, at
least the people sitting here at the table, who are politicians,
would have a widely divergent view on that particular issue. My
guess would be that mine would be fairly close to Miss Walley's
but Bob's would probably be significantly different.
Mr Ainsworth: We will allow that to rest, I
think!
Gregory Barker
334. I wanted to pick up with the Commissioner
the point about communicating a vision of political leadership
which she alludes to in her annual report and it is something
obviously that we are very aware of here where we have a government
which is very keen on the environment, unless of course it costs
money or conflicts with any other priorities or requires legislative
action. In particular, in point 41 you talk about the need to
have a small number of key priorities and specific objectives
for the next 10 years and to couch that in language which ordinary
Canadians can understand. How has that been received and how effective
do you perceive the Canadian political parties to be at the moment
in actually implementing that?
(Ms Gélinas) The problem we are
facing in Canada—and I will not get into the politics of
it, I will leave that to Mr Caccia—what we are seeing at
the moment is that we have different strategies. The Department
of Industry had its own strategy, the Department of Environment,
International Affairs, and so on, and we are wondering how we
can move forward in the future if we do not know what is the big
picture. John has used a metaphor to illustrate that it is like
asking the partners to do a puzzle without the picture on the
box. So we do not know as a country what are the priorities, what
we would like our country to look like and we need something,
a destination somewhere to make sure that all the strategies are
moving in the same direction. They may not go at the same speed,
they may not choose the same mode of transportation but at least
we would like to know where they are going and if there is some
contradiction in their path. So what we need is a vision. We do
not have, as we speak, in Canada a priority. If you ask anybody
what are the environmental and SD priorities of the government
you will be lucky if you can find an answer. You may find many
answers but they will not be the same and what we have asked was
for the central agency like the Privy Council, Treasury Board,
to help the departments shaping that vision so that each of the
departments will be able to follow a path that will bring us to
the same place. So we need that. We are at that stage when I am
talking about a plateau. This is where we are at the moment. We
need that vision. Politicians are involved in building that vision,
Canadians are involved, we are all involved in creating that vision,
but the political will has to be there and we are asking who is
the pilot in the plane.
(Mr Caccia) Usually political parties, as you know,
and governments think from one election to the next. That is the
pattern of democracy. Sustainable development poses the unique
challenge of having to think beyond the next election and that
is where your challenge is for politicians. We are not accustomed
to doing that. All our efforts are usually aiming at winning the
next election and then once that goal has been achieved then the
next one. So in the case of sustainable development the political
problem, if you like, is no longer four years or a variation to
it, it is 20, 40, 60 years, beginning to think in terms of a century.
This is why your report on the reduction by 60% of greenhouse
gas emissions by 2050 is so remarkable because it sets a benchmark
which has emerged for the first time, as far as I know at least,
within the government. The White Paper I am referring to. Therefore
you can imagine then the difficulty that the Commissioner faces
when the Commissioner has to convince parliament to think beyond
the next election while their masters are focussed on the next
election and in avoiding embarrassment for the next election.
Therefore, you do not want to close down the fisheries, you do
not want to reduce cuts in the forest, you do not want to deny
water permits to those who want to export water because it is
good for a certain region, you name it, there are many resolutions
that are short term and the Commissioner for Sustainable Development
instead is swimming in long-term waters.
Chairman
335. Just following that up, Mr Caccia, could
I ask whether you are pessimistic about the importance or the
perception of the environment worldwide? Do you think we are going
through a phase now where the environment is becoming regarded
as less important or more important in the eyes of government
and public opinion?
(Mr Caccia) I will quote for you from
page 5, item 12, of the paper that is before you, what the Commissioner
has written, namely, "a new kind of deficit: not a financial
one but an environment and sustainable development deficit—a
growing environmental health and economic burden that our children
will have to bear. We reached this conclusion based on 10 years
of audit findings as well as analysis of key trends over the past
decades." So this is the message that our Commissioner is
giving you and us and I think that comes as close as I can come
to your question.
(Mr Mills) All I wanted to add is that I think it
is a communication thing. As an example, I just had a professional
poll done on my riding this past Sunday, "What is the number
one issue for you as a Canadian?" and the result is that
40% of the people identified health as their biggest concern,
15% were taxes, and so it went, and 2% were concerned about the
environment. So the key is to tie the environment to what they
are most concerned about, and that is health. So as soon as you
now start talking about the environment affecting your health
you now have tied it in. They do care about the environment but
when you tie it to health now they really care about the environment.
So that is the critical thing for all of us who care about the
environment, to tie everything to what the public's number one
issue is and that is their security and health.
(Mr Caccia) Yes, that is fine and that is desirable
and it is as Mr Mills put it, but you also have to tie the environment
to the long term economy because then people will start to listen
to you carefully. Most of governmental decisions are based on
economic considerations and when you are talking about the economy
as it will be affected by declining quality, declining trends
and all other elements that you have established by the Commissioner
and other sources then you can develop a pretty strong economic
argument as well parallel to the health argument.
Mr Ainsworth
336. I hear what you say about the lack of public
interest and yet the Commission's pronouncements, particularly
the annual report, I think I am right in saying, gets quite a
lot of publicity. So is there something different about the media
in Canada to what we have got here, because here it is very, very
hard to get environmental stories anywhere near the front page
of any newspaper? The specialist journalists have their bit but
turning those stories into news stories is incredibly difficult
to do. Is there something you do that we are not doing that you
could share with us?
(Ms Gélinas) I can speak for my
work. We have found over time that to have an impact we have to
talk about things that affect people. I will give you an example
of one of the audits we did last year. We have looked at federal
contaminated sites. It concerns every region of Canada. First,
that is something important because we may have an impact across
the country. Then we have linked our analysis with some health
issues and then to get attention of another sub-section of the
audience we have linked that also with economic consequences.
So it is easier now the way that we shape our audit with the three
pillars of what is sustainable development to avoid using the
word because it is very abstract, but we also bring that to a
reality for Canadians, what does that mean. This is one of the
challenges we have with Johannesburg. We have to translate that
event and what it means into concrete terms for everyone and that
is one of the challenges we have. I have to say that overall we
have very few specialised journalists in environmental, I would
say probably less than five, but nevertheless the environmental
group find their way to get attention and industry also are involved
in some environmental issues. I would say that probably every
week we have good stories dealing with the environment, from different
perspectives but still the environment. Even if it is not that
high when you look at the polls, on the other hand it is on the
agenda. We talk about the environment. Maybe not as much as we
would like to, but still.
(Ms Scherrer) Maybe for those of you who have worked
at the municipal level, for example, we do not use maybe the broad
term "sustainable development" or "environment"
and if we do some polls and ask the people what are their priorities
they will come up with pieces of environment, such as waste, or
they will come up with pesticides and they will come up with the
quality of water, which now is for us something that we talk about
in the press. So maybe because we are so used to using the broad
term "environment" people do not really know what it
means in the day to day living but if you come up with pieces
of environment, such as the quality of water, for example, it
is one priority. But for the people, if you ask them, the quality
of water maybe does not go under the broad umbrella of environment
but if you talk about concrete actions, concrete subjects such
as waste management, for example, it is a priority. It seems that
when you come up at the provincial level and the federal level
environment is just something like a cloud going around and you
cannot touch it really and maybe the challenge that we have working
for sustainable development, working under the environment, would
be to make sure that it is concrete in the day to day living and
that every citizen has his responsibility. Once we have done that
maybe the people will get into sustainable development.
(Mr Caccia) Establish a yearly award by this Committee
for the best environmental writer in the UK and the first year
you will have problems in finding one but once the word goes around
that there will be recognition for a good environmental writer
they will begin to pay attention.
337. Chairman, I think that is an extremely
good idea.
(Mr Comartin) I am trying to figure out why he did
not tell us that!
Mr Savidge
338. From your annual report carbon dioxide
emissions are actually still going up rather than coming down
towards Kyoto levels. I wonder to what extent Canada feels constrained
from taking more decisive action in areas like energy production
by your very close economic links to the United States? Coming
back to the issue of public attitudes as well, when we were visiting
Canada we had a very graphic illustration of the problem when
we were visiting the Ontario authorities. They did not bother
showing us a slide or anything, they asked us to look outside
the window and you could see—I think your phrase was "a
cloud going around that one could almost touch." Well, it
was a cloud going around that you definitely did feel you could
touch. It was this great block of air pollution coming from the
south side of the lake. I just wondered how far that creates difficulties
for you at present?
(Ms Gélinas) But not in terms
of auditing. Certainly that helps us in a way that people want
to know more about what is going on and will bring some very factual
information that will help. Maybe one thing that we can take a
few minutes to talk about is, two years ago we decided to do a
report dealing with a geographical area, which is the Great Lakes,
and we have looked at five different issues there and we have
a report back on the environmental and SD situation in this area.
John was responsible for that, so maybe that can illustrate the
kind of issues that we are dealing with and how people react to
that report. We get a lot of buy-in into our report because we
were able to illustrate all the linkages between air pollution,
water quality, agriculture and other aspects.
(Mr Reed) The Great Lakes, as you know, border Canada
and the US so clearly it is the equivalent of the air situation,
that is if the US does not take action anything Canada does could
more or less be moot in any event because they have a much greater
concentration of industry and influence, and so on. In part of
the framework of this audit we very much wanted to look at it
from an ecosystem perspective and that is why, as Johanne says,
we looked at issues of water but also issues of fisheries, agriculture,
habitat, endangered species, as components of that ecosystem.
There were more but we could not have done those. We also looked
at the overall governance framework that existed in that region.
There is a binational institution that oversees an agreement there.
We had many, many lessons out of that piece of work but with respect
to the binational component it really did drum home for Canadians,
first of all if we expect the US to do their fair share, we have
to do our fair share and the reality was we were not meeting our
basic commitments under our binational agreement. So it becomes
pretty hard to try to convince another country to take action
when they have not taken it themselves. Secondly, we determined
that the key institution that protects Canadian interests, the
International Joint Commission, was being undermined by reduced
budgets and loss of scientific personnel and loss of scientific
data. So it was a very different kind of audit. I am not sure
that is getting to your question around the influence of the US,
but it was clearly learning for us.
(Mr Caccia) Going back to your experience in Toronto,
it is easy to blame the Americans for this dark cloud that you
mentioned but the fact is that in Toronto, where I come from,
there is a very large power plant using coal and the pollution
that we have is mostly generated on our side of the lakes rather
than the American side of the lakes. Having said that, going now
on CO2, it is—for Canada—going to be a major task
to reduce by 6% by the year 2012 based on 1990 because what happened
between 1990 and now is a sharp increase in emissions and therefore
we have to reduce by 23, not 25, 26 percentage points. So we are
engaged in a major effort here, but it can be done. We are an
energy waster. We have not yet learned how to conserve, how to
innovate in energy efficiency and we have a plan now, which is
quite elaborate. It was produced in October and it is also unique
because it reaches out to the public. It invites the individual
Canadian to do his or her share in the reduction of tonnage per
year, in addition to what it is asking various sectors. So we
have a long way to go but we have a reasonably imaginative and
good plan and we will get there. But there is no blaming the Americans
here, this is our responsibility and the fact that it is a difficult
task is because of our making.
(Mr Mills) I blame the Americans! I could talk a long
time about Kyoto. Some of you might check the record on that one
but two things regarding the Americans. First of all, Canada has
exempted the automobile industry in terms of manufacture. However,
because automobiles are a major polluter, the reason why we will
achieve our goals on automobiles of a 25% reduction is because
California will. Thirty-nine states will in fact probably achieve
Kyoto targets. So this concept that the Americans are doing nothing
is just totally not correct because they are probably going to
be the guys selling fuel cells to all of us and they are developing
new windmills and all kinds of things. They are really quite into
this. The other thing to remember is that where I come from we
have oil deposits that are twice as large as Iraq's. Just to put
that into perspective, people say, "Well, the Americans are
going to war because of oil," we have twice as much oil in
the Tarsands as there is in Iraq, proven reserves, so it would
be much easier to develop those reserves than to spend $100 billion,
or whatever, in Iraq. That is another issue, but still the point
is that those reserves are going to be developed and right now
it takes a lot of energy to do that and right now it is natural
gas that is producing that energy to produce the steam to get
that oil out of the ground. Each year it is a 100,000 more barrels
that come out of there. What it is going to result in because
of Kyoto, I think, is we are going to go to nuclear and we will
develop nuclear plants which will provide the energy to get that
oil out of the ground. Is that what we wanted to achieve? From
a public perspective, I think it is going to be a hard sell but
if you want to sell that oil, that huge reserve, you have got
to have energy to get it out of the ground and where are you going
to get it from? Well, either you are going to put more CO2 into
the air or you are going to use nuclear.
(Mr Comartin) I cannot let that go by! You can imagine
we have had this debate once or twice, several thousand times!
Bob does make a good point and we do agree on this, that it is
really the Bush administration, not the American public and certainly
not the state governments. The state governments in fact, as Bob
says, in most cases the majority of the state governments are
going to meet what would be their Kyoto requirements by 2010-15,
which is very positive. But the problem with the cross-border
air pollution is a major problem. I come from Windsor and I am
right across from Detroit. I get all of the air pollution which
comes up from the Mid-West in the United States, which is the
industrial heartland of the United States still. So it is a major
problem and it is one where—we go back to why we are here—the
effect it is having on us is one that we are seeking some relief
from the Federal Government, much as you did when you were on
the receiving end when you were damaging the forestries in Norway
in the 60s and 70s because of the amount of coal and the sulphur
in fact that you were sending across, the whole acid rain problem.
We have begun to work on that with the Americans at the Federal
level. Unfortunately, the Chancy Report on the use of energy in
fact encourages the operation of coal-fired energy plants. So
that situation is going to be a real deterioration. It is one
again where we go to what we are here about, that Commissioner
will in fact, I would think, be documenting that on an ongoing
basis. Bob has the same problem on the western end of the country
with plants being built in the American side that are going to
increase not only CO2 but we are going to be getting benzine and
mercury and some of the other really toxic material moving across
because of prevailing winds.
339. I applaud the way that all of you have
avoided the lure of the easy jingoism as far as the US is concerned,
but really taking up the point you made that the Bush administration
is really more the problem than individual state administrations,
do you have any dialogue of the sort you are having with us with
committees in Congress? Similarly, taking up the point you were
making that the individual states very often are considerably
more forward looking than perhaps the Federal administration,
is there a significant amount of dialogue between parliamentarians
at the state and provincial legislative level? Are you doing that
at present or is that something you think might be an easy thing
to do?
(Mr Comartin) I personally am having some involvement
because there is this issue of the way the wind blows through
the area you are at. We do have those coal-fired plants on our
state. The State of New York has initiated law suits in the past
and has one going on right now that we have actually participated
in, both the provincial government, Ontario, and the Federal Government
participated in that action and it was resolved and then the Bush
administration just before the holidays, before the turn of the
year, changed the regulation and in fact opted not to enforce.
So the State of New York has now opened up a new law suit, so
I am having some direct contact with the Attorney-General of that
state. So we have those kind of contacts. Some of the other members
of this committee were in Washington last January when we met
with parliamentarians from Europe, both the Senate and Congressional
Committees, and our committee was in Washington. That was mostly
around climate change.
(Mr Mills) I can add too that on the western half
of things, just to put it into perspective for distance, from
where I live I am one hour from Seattle, two and a half hours
from Los Angeles and four and a half hours from Ottawa. So obviously
we have quite a close connection to the south, sometimes more
than to the east, but we do talk to them quite frequently and
do communicate on issues, particularly environmental ones.
Mr Chaytor
3 The Gauteng Declaration-please see: Back
4
Not printed here. Please see documents on the INTOSAI website
at:
http://www.environmental-auditing.org/intosai/wgea.nsf/viewEsearch/3DEE046BA2075CD185256CDF00568EC8
http://www.environmental-auditing.org/intosai/wgea.nsf/viewEsearch/1D115A594AED998985256CEC006A3FE0
http://www.environmental-auditing.org/intosai/wgea.nsf/viewEsearch/30C46FAA21F73F0285256CDF005693F9
http://www.environmental-auditing.org/intosai/wgea.nsf/viewEsearch/45EF4C7B0501489585256CDF00568722 Back
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