Interim Supply Estimates
Ms Blakeman: Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. If the Minister of Environment is willing, I would like to combine our two 10 minutes into one 20-minute exchange. Is the minister willing to do that?
Mr. Renner: Well, Mr. Speaker, I’m more than willing to do anything that the member desires. However, I think I made it pretty clear that I don’t really know that there is an opportunity for exchange because of the nature of the business at hand. I don’t know that there are any questions that I can answer beyond those that I already have. If the member wishes to speak for 20 minutes, that’s fine with me. I don’t know that I have enough information to contribute to go back and forth for 20 minutes.
Ms Blakeman: Fair enough.
The Chair: Hon. member, do you want to take the 20 minutes?
Ms Blakeman: Yeah, I will. Definitely.
The Chair: All right.
Ms Blakeman: Thank you. If the minister signals that he’s interested in answering, we’ll let ’er rip.
I think that a number of my colleagues have already spoken of their frustration over the process, and I have certainly been on record a number of times over the years expressing my frustration. I mean, the government has complete and total control over how this House runs. They can call us in any time they want. They can add on night sittings if they want. With a 72-member majority they can pretty well have their way any way they want it. There’s not a lot we can do about it. [interjection] I can see that the Member for Calgary Nose Hill is excited about that thought.
The truth of the matter is that this budgeting process is up to the government, and they can do better. Any sort of feeble protestations that there have been a number of things that have stood in their way – well, they could have just decided to get around it. I remember once the Government House Leader getting up and saying: “Well, I mean, who says that we have to have a budget as of this date? You know, budgets can come in any time. They can come in all year.” True enough. But we have a fiscal year that starts on the 1st of April, and there’s an expectation that there is money to pay for things as of the 1st of April. The logical response that flows from that is that the budget would be passed prior to that. We need about a six week run, so you’re really looking at the need to have a budget come in by the middle of February.
What we’ve seen is that this very, very late budget – we’re now talking into April – has become the new norm. The result of that is that it makes it very difficult for groups that have to then perform their budget process to be fiscally responsible and have their planning completed as per the timelines that are placed on them. I’m talking about what used to be the RHAs but would now be the sort of local hospital boards, how they’re going to use their money. School boards are another group across the province that are expected to have plans in place that are reflecting the government’s, and they can’t do it because they don’t know how much money they’ve got coming. I mean, in starting this budget process at the beginning of April, it will be almost the end of May before we’re done. So that’s two full months into the fiscal year. At that point the school boards will know how much money.
We’ve got a number of previous school board trustees that are now elected members, and I’d be very interested in hearing what they have to say about, you know, their experience on a school board and how not getting your budget figures would affect you. The Member for Calgary-Mackay was on the school board. The Member for Edmonton-Decore was on the school board. Oh, yes, there’s the Member for Calgary-North Hill, who was on the school board. Bonnyville-Cold Lake was a school board trustee, I think. There are lots of people in here with direct experience of the effect of that. I never hear them say anything, and I’m sure that their former colleagues that are still on school boards would appreciate it if they would say something.
I want to move on and look directly at the interim supply budget for Environment. As I went through this, what I noticed is that the interim supply for the Ministry of Environment is substantially lower than most of the other supply amounts that have been requested for the other ministries. We’ve had a $63 million request for Environment and $1 million in non budgetary disbursements. I mean, aside from very small ministries like International and Intergovernmental Relations – we don’t mean to diminish in any way the importance of International and Intergovernmental Relations. It’s requesting, like, $10 million. Fair enough. Obviously, the Environment request for $64 million is higher than that, but in comparison to a number of the other ones – you’re looking at Education, which has a request of $1,143,000,000. Employment and Immigration is $255.8 million. Health and Wellness, of course, is huge; it’s asking for, you know, over $3 billion. Even Housing and Urban Affairs is asking for $133 million. Municipal Affairs, $588 million; Seniors, $640 million. Then you have Environment at $64 million.
One of the questions that I would like the minister to answer if he’s able to – this is a noticeable difference – is why the supply request from his department is so much smaller than the supply request from other departments that are of equal size in total budget and in many cases even of smaller size in total budget. They’ve actually requested more money. I know that sometimes ministries need upfront money. You know, they’ve got projects that happen during the summer, and they need to pay for those before they get there. Fair enough. But you’d think that there would be activity in the Environment department that was happening during the summer, yet it is still, I think, next to International and Intergovernmental Relations the smallest supply request that we’ve got here this year. I’m just wondering if the minister can comment on that.
Mr. Renner: Mr. Chairman, I will comment on that. I think that the member actually answered her own question. The reason is that because of the nature of the business that we have in Alberta Environment, we don’t have the degree of granting and that subsequent front-end loading that many other ministries have. The details of the budget will come out on budget day, when the budget document itself is tabled. I can assure the hon. member that there are more than adequate funds included in this appropriation so that we will not be out of business before the Legislative Assembly gets around to passing the budget.
Ms Blakeman: Okay. Thank you very much for responding to that question. We don’t know what the budget amount is at this point, so when I look at the request of me as a member of the Assembly to grant money to the government, my question is always: what for, and is there a way of sort of verifying that? Often that’s about having standards set, it’s about monitoring the work that’s going on, and it’s about enforcement of the work that’s going on. Obviously, we don’t have the budget, so I can’t ask some of those questions. I thought: well, what is a way that I can look at this and say, “Is it reasonable to grant this money?” Okay. It’s about performance. All righty-ho.
I went back and I looked at the Auditor General’s recommendations for the Environment ministry. These appear, by the way, in the October 2008 report, and specifically I’m looking at page 382. These are recommendations that have been raised in the past that have not been successfully met or implemented. Two of the ones that are raised here, in fact, have been raised multiples times. One of them originally was from the 1998-99 report, and that is about enhancing approval systems. Now, in ’98-99 there wasn’t a system of numbering or of grading and giving priority to certain Auditor General recommendations; they all sort of came out the same. So this doesn’t have a number on it, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t important. This is appearing on page 159 of the ’98-99 report under Environmental Protection. “It is recommended that the Department of Environment enhance the systems that support the Approvals process. Attention should be directed to issues of management information and data completeness.” Now, this recommendation was originally brought forward, as I said, in ’98-99. It was repeated in 2000-2001. It was repeated again in 2004-05. So three times the Auditor General has followed up and said that there has been unsatisfactory progress on implementing this.
It is specific to financial security for land disturbances because what this was talking about was the environment management system, that automated system that supports an approvals process. Staff have to rely on this environment management system, and the information has to be complete and accurate and timely. The work at the time suggested that there were a number of issues that had not been completely addressed around the timeliness of the approval process. There was no system, for example, to track how long it takes to process an approval, and some approvals cannot be reviewed on the EMS document viewer. That has yet to be accomplished. And I thought: “Well, okay. I’m being asked to approve money to a department to operate for a period of three months.” But when I go back and look at performance and I say, “Well, is there anything outstanding there that I should be bringing to attention and saying: you need to do this before I, you know, can support your request for additional money?” there’s an example of it.
Second example was in 2002-03. On page 103 was a recommendation. We’re now numbering the recommendations, so it’s recommendation 12 recommending “that the Ministry of Environment implement an integrated information system to track contaminated sites in Alberta.” Well, Mr. Chairman, what goes around comes around because I’m pretty sure – well, yes, it would be just yesterday that I asked a question in this House about contaminated sites and how taxpayers were now going to get the honour and the privilege of forking out $30 million more than they did the day before to help pay for contaminated sites that oil and gas companies had walked away from. So here was the beginning of this recommendation that has yet to be implemented to the satisfaction of the Auditor General and is turning up again in the October ’08 recommendations. That originally, as I said, came up in ’02-03, and the recommendation was made again in ’05-06.
Then there are a series of other ones that were brought forward in ’05-06, which tells me that there was a concentration on that department in that year, and most of these are around drinking water. I’m just guessing that this is probably following along on Walkerton and the one in Saskatchewan, wherever that was. On page 37 we’ve got recommendation 1 recommending
that the Department of Environment make its system to issue approvals and registrations more effective by:
• Strengthening supporting processes such as training, manuals, checklists, and quality control...
• Ensuring that applications are complete and legislatively compliant,
• Documenting important decisions in the application and registration processes,
• Processing applications and conversions promptly,
• Maintaining consistency in the wording of approvals and registrations across the province, and
• Following up short-term conditions in approvals.
Environment issues place-based drinking water approvals. Registered facilities follow a provincial code of practice. Mechanisms to promote consistency in approval writing.
Their findings were: training, support materials, and mentoring can improve; template not updated for five years; a quality assurance function would promote best practices in approval writing; resourcing issues have caused backlogs; not all applications were legislatively compliant or complete. It goes on for several pages. As I say, that recommendation has still not been dealt with to the satisfaction of the Auditor General. It continues to be noted in outstanding recommendations, which means that they’re outstanding; they haven’t been fulfilled.
When we look at page 43, we see a key recommendation, and that’s recommendation 2, that the department
improve its drinking water inspection processes by:
• Applying the same inspection frequency targets to all waterworks regulated by the Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act,
• Ensuring inspectors receive sufficient training in waterworks systems and operations,
• Revising documentation tools and practices, including making them more risk focused, and
• Informing operators promptly of inspection results, ensuring operators respond appropriately, and concluding on each inspection.
That’s a highlighted recommendation. So it’s a key recommendation, meaning very, very important and a high priority, coming from the Auditor General, and that is still outstanding.
We go to page 49 of the report of ’05-06. Again, recommendation 3, a numbered recommendation, that the department
update its strategies to deal with the Province’s needs for certified water treatment operators.
Going to page 52, a key recommendation, recommendation 4:
improve the information systems used to manage its drinking water...by:
• Updating EMS forms and improving reporting capacity,
Where have we heard that one before? That would be in ’98-99.
• Co-ordinating regional, district, and personal information systems to avoid overlap and encourage best practice, and
• Using data to improve program effectiveness and efficiency.
Moving on, we had recommendation 5, which is actually not leaping off the page at me here, page 48, recommending that the department
at the district level expand its communication with partners involved in drinking water matters.
Volume 2, page 84, recommendation 28, that the department
improve its system to regulate water well drilling by:
• Ensuring that drillers and drilling companies meet approval requirements;
• Implementing controls to ensure that water well drilling reports are:
• received on time,
• complete and accurate, and
• accurately entered into the Groundwater Information System.
There we had six unmet recommendations on drinking water, one on water well drilling and then on contaminated sites and financial security for land disturbances. So a fair number of things that are outstanding, and the requirements have not been met there.
I realize, Mr. Chairman, that my time is running out, and I will endeavour to negotiate with my colleagues to get back on the speaking list again because I think one of the great concerns that Albertans have identified to me and to other members and to the government is the issue of water: clean, safe, fresh drinking water for Albertans.
Then we look at a request from the government, “Please, give us more money in order to operate,” essentially unscrutinized at this point, because once we grant that interim money, they’re good to go until the end of June. They have enough operating money there. Yet this issue of largest concern to people, which is drinking water, fresh water for Albertans to use, Albertans first, there are a number of recommendations from the Auditor General that have not been met, nor could I find – and perhaps the minister can point it out to me – any reasoning from the department as to why those recommendations are still outstanding. This was as of October 2008, so it’s not as though I’m way out of date on this. Yes, some of the recommendations have been brought forward from past years, but they continue to be unmet as of October 2008. I think the concern that’s expressed to me is our capacity to…[Ms Blakeman’s speaking time expired] Shoot.
Thank you.
[…]
Ms Blakeman: Well, how lucky can you get? I get another chance at this. I would have thought there would be all those people that wanted to get up and speak about this budget.
Mr. Taylor: You were about to shoot something when the clock went off, weren’t you?
Ms Blakeman: Well, no. The “shoot” was an expression of my disappointment that I couldn’t keep going.
Okay. I’m going back again following on my concept that if I’m going to give somebody more money, I’m going to look at how well they’re doing with the money I gave them last time.
Going back to the October 2008 Auditor General’s report. Now, of course, you will remember that there was a very large report done in here on climate change, Alberta’s response to climate change. There were a number of recommendations that were made as a result of this. Let me be clear: I’m not finding fault with the Department of Energy for not having accomplished all of this because, frankly, they’ve had six months, and I wouldn’t require that of them. It does tell you the amount of work that needs to be done.
Let me just take a step back here. I think one of my concerns and one of the things that I would like to know is if the money that we’re allocating here today is going to go to a change in direction. Because what I’ve seen from this department is that it’s not about protecting the environment; it is about sort of getting out of the way of the Department of Energy and what the Department of Energy wishes to do. I think we need to change that.
We need to refocus so that our Department of Environment is about protecting the environment: first of all, for Albertans, the people; secondly, for our biosphere, literally the environment that we have here, our wetlands and our water, and allowing those particular bioenvironments to stay healthy; and third, for an economic development.
Don’t mistake me and don’t get all upset and go run around saying: oh, the Member for Edmonton-Centre got up and said, you know, that we should stop all oil and gas and nonrenewable natural resource development in the province. That’s not what I’m saying. But we do need to put a focus on protecting the environment while that development happens. In some cases maybe the development might have to take a step aside while we put some protections in place.
I’ve already identified water as a key concern of Albertans. It has been something where the department has not met the requirements and met the recommendations. That’s about an attest auditing. That’s about recording what you’ve done and how you’ve spent the money. As we start to move into systems audit, it is about: did you get value for money? Did you accomplish for the money you had what you said you were trying to do? It’s a much more complicated way of looking at it, but ultimately it gives us tools as legislators to be better able to answer the questions of our constituents as to: did we get what we thought we were paying for? Did we get it? Did we get healthier babies and fewer low-weight babies? Did we get that? Well, you might have to do a number of things to achieve that. Did we get, you know, clean drinking water for every Albertan? That may be harder to achieve than it sounds at the first go.
We did have a systems audit done on Alberta’s response to climate change. I would have to say that the biggest thing that comes out of this is that we don’t know because we are not keeping track of things well enough and monitoring things well enough to be able to give ourselves a benchmark from which to measure that.
Some recommendations were set out by the Auditor General, in this case recommendation 9. Again, it’s a numbered recommendation, so that’s a serious recommendation. It recommends some areas of improvement for the department.
• establishing overall criteria for selecting climate-change actions.
• creating and maintaining a master implementation plan for the actions necessary to meet the emissions-intensity target for 2020 and the emissions-reduction target for 2050.
• corroborating – through modelling and other analysis – that the actions chosen by the ministry [actually] result in Alberta being on track for achieving its targets for 2020 and 2050.
So what we’re learning here is that we actually can’t tell how well we’re doing in moving forward on climate change.
The government did not consistently consider cost-effectiveness when it decided to establish climate change programs to fulfill the 2002 Plan.
I’m looking at the bottom of page 98 in the October 2008 AG report.
It did consider cost-effectiveness for the energy retrofit program and for the Specified Gas Emitters program . . . [but the cost] of Me First! and the Bioenergy programs were known at the planning stages, but the amount of emissions reductions expected at the planning stage . . . was not documented.
So we have no way of knowing.
We’ve started implementation plans, but we don’t know how we’re progressing along with that. We don’t have the overall criteria for selecting the projects to fulfill the 2002 plan and haven’t developed overall criteria for selecting projects to fulfill the 2008 strategy. Well, that’s gone.
The ministry does not know the best route to achieve reductions. The actions will achieve target, but we can’t corroborate them. Major actions were not modelled, and where they did model action, it wasn’t included in the plan.
We have an additional numbered recommendation 10, that “for each major action in the 2008 Climate Change Strategy, the Ministry of Environment evaluate the action’s effect in achieving Alberta’s climate change goals.”
Recommendation 11 is that the ministry “improve the reliability, comparability and relevance of its public reporting on Alberta’s success and costs incurred in meeting climate-change targets.”
If I could recommend this to anybody that’s trying to track along, you can download this from the Auditor General’s site and read it yourself. It’s a good way of understanding where we’re at and gives us some standards to measure the progress of the department.
Here we have a department that is requesting $63 million plus a million dollars in nonbudgetary disbursements. We’ve been told by the minister, in response to one of my questions earlier today, that there’s no front-end loading on this, that most of their projects just roll through, and that this $64 million plus a million dollars is going to be enough to take them through. But we have no sense of this and, as a number of my colleagues have noted, no details to understand what exactly is going to be done in those first three months. Actually, by the time the budget will be approved, now by the end of May, two full months will have passed in which we did not know what the government was going to be doing.
The reaction I usually get about this point from members of the government is: well, hang on; we have a three-year process here, so you can tell what’s going on if you go back and look at the three year budgeting process. Yes, she said cautiously, but every time I look at that, it has shifted so much that you really cannot compare year to year. One of the ways of watching that is the performance measurements, which, again, absolutely disappear. You look and there’s a whole new series of performance measurements which all say that there is no benchmark because they’re developing it. The idea of this three-year rolling budget is one that we should be attempting, but we’ve got to try a little harder to get closer to actually sticking to it.
Of course, we’ve now had a huge change in our finances. Part of what I’m trying to dig out from everything I can read about the department’s plans is: will this change in the economy, will the change in the price per barrel of oil affect what the Department of Environment is going to be doing to protect our environment? How are they going to end up moving forward? Will there be cuts in what the department is going to be doing during this fiscal year?
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
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