OTTAWA — Environment Canada has spent at least $331,389 to develop long-awaited oil and gas regulations that are still under development, said Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq in a newly-released document tabled in Parliament.
The spending includes about $187,000 in payments for consultants that helped the department purchase oil and gas industry information, technological support as well as advice on how to proceed with the regulations that don’t yet exist.
The firms consulted include Navius Research Inc., a Vancouver-based firm that focuses on climate change policies and has done extensive research into options for putting a price on carbon pollution such as a carbon tax.
Environment Canada said it also consulted three other firms, Systematic Solutions Inc., Baker and O’Brien Incorporated, Kimacal Energy Strategies Limited as well as Benoit Laplante, an environmental economist and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]The spending also includes about $135,680 in travel costs, $4,772 for room rentals and related hospitality, and $3,643 for overtime wages, Aglukkaq said in the document, prepared in response to questions raised by Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan, a scientist who contributed to reviews of scientific literature by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Successive Conservative environment ministers in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government have pledged to deliver a plan to crack down on pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activity, but all have failed to meet their own deadlines to introduce a plan for the oil and gas sector.
On the international stage, after being criticized in 2012 for announcing it would withdraw from a legally-binding climate change treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the government’s then-climate change ambassador, Guy Saint-Jacques, said Canada was doing its part to reduce the heat trapping emissions contributing to global warming by “working towards draft regulations for 2013” for oil and gas companies.
An Environment Canada report on its plans and priorities for 2012-13 said it would be able to finalize some of the oil and gas regulations in 2012, estimating it would spend $17.8 million between 2011 to 2016 on the rules for this sector, including $6.24 million in 2012-13.
The department was not able to confirm Wednesday whether it had spent all of this money as planned in 2012-13.
Environment Canada has created a joint committee with the Alberta government and oil and gas industry representatives to develop the new regulations, and had proposed several options to move forward.
Aglukkaq said earlier this month that she wasn’t “ready” to release the regulations, and wanted more time to ensure she could get them “right” for Canada.
Liberal environment critic John McKay suggested Aglukkaq’s own numbers were low, confirming that the regulations aren’t a government priority.
“This is a pathetic sum of money to spend on arguably the most important regulatory initiative that this government will spend in its entire mandate,” said McKay. “It speaks to the absence of activity on this file, and that those who are complaining about the government not being serious about greenhouse gas regulations are absolutely right.”
He noted that the absence of oil and gas regulations is also threatening industrial growth for Canadian companies that are counting on expanded pipeline routes for new market access, while fighting against climate change policies that could limit their markets in jurisdictions such as California and Europe.
He suggested that the government could help speed up the regulatory process by spending some resources to hire experienced negotiators to counter resistance from industry to new rules.
