Hon. Tommy Banks:

Honourable senators, this bill seeks to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act. For several years now, since mid-1995, federal government departments have been obliged, by the previous government and by this government, to have a sustainable development plan of some kind and to report on it annually as to its success and its efficacy in promoting and operating in a sustainable way. That policy was based upon the reasonable premise that if the government were to ask Canadians — Canadian businesses and enterprises — to observe the principles of proper sustainable development, it must first do so itself; it must take care of its own backyard. In fact, for some time, the government's policy was referred to as the Federal House in Order Initiative.

Since it was instituted, that policy has been observed, to put it kindly, spottily across the various departments of government. Some have done well and reported great successes, and have reported candidly and fully, but other government departments have observed the policy more in the breach than in the observance.

The unevenness of the application of this policy among government departments has been reported on in this place and called to Parliament's and to successive governments' attention by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and by the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, several times.

The reaction to these alarms that we have raised has not been heart warming. However, in the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act, we now have not merely policy but legislation that is enforceable. It has been given the weight and the teeth of statute.

The Honourable John Godfrey was, during his service in the other place, a indefatigable champion of the environment and environmental responsibility. He devised the then Bill C-474. It was passed in the other place during the last Parliament and sent here for our concurrence.

The object of Bill C-474 was so admirable, needed and necessary that last June your committee recommended to this place its prompt passage notwithstanding deficiencies found in the bill. We were coming down to the end of the session. Mr. Godfrey, who had been a wonderful public servant, was retiring. We did not want to return an amended bill to the other place in case it might be lost. We agreed that despite its deficiencies — I see the deputy chair of that committee nodding now — we would report the bill to the Senate and urge its passage without amendment. In other words, we did not want to let the perfect stand in the way of the good. We did that and this place passed the bill; it is now law.

However, your committee's report recommending its passage included significant observations. This is a law that requires fixing, and that is our job here. We are the quality control department of Parliament. The bill before honourable senators is for that specific purpose.

There are two rectifications included in this bill of amendment. The first has to do with the place of the Senate in the proper conduct of the business of Parliament. Under the Federal Sustainable Development Act, there are various reporting procedures required of ministers of the Crown and of the Commissioner of the Environment and Substantial Development on behalf of the Auditor General. These reports all end up in Parliament. However, according to the act as it is presently written, they are tabled only in the House of Commons. The act requires that the various reports be referred for study to the respective committees only of the House of Commons. The reports are not to be tabled in the Senate. They are not to be referred to committees of the Senate.

I will quote in respect of that issue from the observations that accompanied your committee's recommendation on Bill C-474. It said:

Until and unless the Constitution is amended, Parliament consists of the Crown, the Senate of Canada, and the House of Commons. No proposed legislation of this order would ever leave the Senate of Canada without provisions for the participation in the bill's various functions by the House of Commons. Regrettably that practicality, not to say courtesy, is absent in the present bill.

Honourable senators, in the short time I have been here, we, in various committees and on the floor of this place, have caught several such omissions of this place from the business of Parliament. Many of them have been inadvertent. Many have been accidental and many have been fixed very quickly with apologies.

I must tell honourable senators that Bill C-474, as originally presented in the other place by Mr. Godfrey, both houses of Parliament — including this one — were included in those reporting procedures and in the committees to which the reports were to be sent for study.

However, the references to the Senate of Canada were removed in the committee process in the other place. This was not accidental oversight; this was deliberate omission. It weakens the act. It undermines the attempt to make environmental decision making more transparent, and it is an affront to this place. This bill of amendment now before us fixes that shortcoming.

The second part of the present bill seeks to amend the Auditor Generals Act. It is a very simple and practical amendment. As the Federal Sustainable Development Act is presently written, it requires that reports on it by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development be made in his annual report to Parliament. However, that is only once a year according to that act, and the commissioner may find something necessary to report to Parliament with a certain amount of urgency without letting a year pass before his report is due.

Bill S-216 says that a report may be made by the commissioner during the course of his report to Parliament as prescribed in the act that creates the office or during other times of the year during which the Auditor General may report to Canada. The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development is a function of the Office of the Auditor General.

Honourable senators, we need to fix this bill in both those ways to make it work properly and to maintain the proper place of the Senate in the business of the Parliament of Canada. I hope that we will move this bill with alacrity to, I presume, the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament for study and recommendation back to us.

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