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ONTARIO ROUND TABLE ON ENVIRONMENT AND ECONOMY II Draft Submission to Standing Committee Bill 26 -- An Act respecting Environmental Rights in Ontario Prepared by David McRobert for ORTEE August 1993
Outline 1. Why We Are Here 2. General Comments on Bill 26 3. ORTEE’s Proposal for a Provincial Commissioner of Sustainability 4. Consensus-Building in the Legislation-Making Process 5. Summary of Recommendations to the Standing Committee Appendix A -- List of Round Table Members (not attached) Appendix B -- Extracts from Restructuring for Sustainability Appendix C -- Report on Consensus Decision-Making Produced By Canadian Round Tables (Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Guiding Principles, May 1993) 1. Why We Are Here Good afternoon, my name is Jon Grant and I am Chairman of the Ontario Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (ORTEE). With me, is Drew Blackwell and David McRobert, staff of ORTEE. On behalf of the Round Table, I am pleased to be able to make this presentation to you on Bill 26 -- An Act respecting Environmental Rights in Ontario. The Ontario Round is a multi-sectoral advisory body appointed by the Premier of Ontario to advise the Ontario government on how to build a social and political consensus about the changes needed to attain an environmentally sustainable economy. The members of ORTEE represent a broad cross-section of Ontario society, including leaders from the business, labour, environmental, educational, government, and aboriginal communities and sectors in the province. The 22 current members of ORTEE and their affiliations are listed in Appendix A attached to the written submission prepared by ORTEE for the Committee. These members were appointed in February 1993 when the Ontario government renewed the mandate of ORTEE. One of the main reasons why we are here today is that ORTEE has a strong interest in improving the quality of private, public and individual decision-making and policy-making on the environment and the economy. In its Challenge Paper issued in July 1990, the Ontario Round Table established six principles that have defined its subsequent work: 1. Anticipating and preventing problems is better than trying to react to them and fix them after they occur. 2. Accounting must reflect all long-term environmental and economic costs, not just those of the current market economy. 3. The best decisions are those based on sound, accurate, and up-to-date information. 4. We must live off the “interest” our environment provides and not destroy its capital base. 5. The quality of social and economic development must take precedence over quantity. 6. We must respect nature and the rights of future generations.
These principles informed the work of ORTEE between August 1990 and the summer of 1992, during which time six Task Forces produced reports on encouraging sustainability in various sectors of Ontario’s economy. These reports then provided the basis for preparation of a final report titled Restructuring for Sustainability, which was released in September of 1992. (Extracts of the report are reproduced in Appendix B attached to this submission.) ORTEE was unable to make a submission to the Ontario government on the report of Task Force on the Environmental Bill of Rights during the formal comment period in the fall of 1992 because a decision had not been made on whether its mandate would be renewed. At its first meeting in February 1993, the Round Table agreed that its new mandate in the second phase of its work would be: 1) to promote, catalyze and review sectoral responses to the 33 recommendations made in Restructuring for Sustainability; and 2) to encourage multi-sectoral community initiatives to promote sustainability in Ontario. Since many of the recommendations in Restructuring for Sustainability deal with government accountability and decision-making, ORTEE wanted to offer some recommendations on how to improve certain provisions in Bill 26 related to this area. 2. General Comments on Bill 26 The members of Ontario’s Round Table believe that Bill 26 is an important piece of legislation that will enhance decision-making on the environment and the economy in Ontario. For example, we appreciate the fact that the explicit purposes of the proposed Act, as outlined in sub-section 2(1), are “to protect and conserve the environment”, “to provide sustainability of the environment”, and “to protect the right to a healthful environment”. These are important principles to incorporate into legislation and we think that this sets an important precedent for the legislation-making process in Ontario. We also feel that the provisions outlined in sub-section 2(3) requiring that the Ontario government improve public participation in policy-making and decision-making on the environment and the economy are essential steps toward implementing sustainability in Ontario. We believe that these provisions will increase the accountability of private and public sector decision-makers in a manner consistent with the recommendations on accountability made by ORTEE in Restructuring for Sustainability (see Appendix B). Another positive feature of Bill 26 is the requirement in section 7 that ministries designated under a proposed draft regulation develop a “Statement of Environmental Values”. ORTEE strongly supports the spirit of this approach and we look forward to reviewing the draft ministries statements as they are released for public comment. One of the key ideas in Restructuring for Sustainability that is missing from Bill 26 is the principle that decisions on the environment and the economy are intimately linked. The crucial lesson from the past two decades of research on and experience with environmental problems in Ontario and other parts of the world is that decisions that are made about economic activities often have profound impacts on local, regional, national and global ecosystems. In its design, Bill 26 recognizes that environmental and economic issues are intertwined. Thus, many of the ministries involved with economic development are required to develop Statements of Environmental Values. What the proposed legislation and the proposed draft regulation do not seem to recognize is that all government ministries and agencies have a role to play in encouraging development of a more sustainable society in Ontario. Thus, we believe that, at a minimum, the preamble of Bill 26 should be amended so that more explicit recognition is given to the fact that the environment and the economy are fundamentally linked together. One of the ministries that is not now listed in draft regulation as having to comply with some of the provisions of Bill 26 is the Ministry of Education and Training. ORTEE believes that education, both formal and informal, is crucial to the transformation that our economy and society must undergo in the next decade. At a minimum, we urge that the Ministry of Education and Training be required to develop a Statement of Environmental Values. In summary, ORTEE believes that Bill 26 is a good first step towards integrating environmental considerations into decision-making and support the principles articulated in it. We are recommending some minor changes to the preamble the proposed draft regulation which would improve the legislation. 3. ORTEE’s Proposal for A Provincial Commissioner of Sustainability As noted above, many of the recommendations in ORTEE’s report dealt with the need to increase the accountability of provincial decision-makers. One of the proposals made in Restructuring for Sustainability that has attracted considerable attention since the report was released is a recommendation for a Commissioner Of Sustainability. The text of the recommendation reads as follows: 4.1 Commissioner of Sustainability The Round Table recommends that the Government of Ontario establish an office of Commissioner of Sustainability, equivalent in stature to the Provincial Auditor. Based on a set of appropriate indicators, the commissioner would report on Ontario’s efforts to achieve sustainable development, including the initiatives in this strategy. A commissioner should be appointed by the provincial legislature by 1994 and begin making annual reports to it in 1995. The reports should be timely, thorough, understandable, and authoritative. They should include, among other things, the measurable costs of inaction. In summary, the idea behind the Commissioner of Sustainability concept is that the provincial government must not only improve the quality of its decision-making but also must provide a clear indication to the public of the cost of not acting in a manner that is consistent with the goal of promoting sustainability. We believe that by measuring the performance of sectors of the economy against appropriate indicators of sustainability, we can better assess and then evaluate the effectiveness of government regulation, community actions, individual and corporate behavior and other activities to encourage the transformation of Ontario into a sustainable society. The Round Table has reviewed the proposed mandate of the Environmental Commissioner as outlined in Bill 26. Our understanding is that the focus of the Environmental Commissioner, as proposed in the Bill, is on ensuring that ministries comply with the requirements under the Act to provide information to the public and register projects and activities that impact on the environment in the proposed electronic Environmental Registry to ensure that government accountability to the public, industry and other stakeholders is enhanced. We believe that, at this stage, it would be a difficult “force-fit” to integrate the mandate of the Environmental Commissioner and the proposed Commissioner of Sustainability through amendment of Bill 26. At the same time, ORTEE believes that the Ontario government should still act to develop the type of monitoring and evaluation capacity contemplated in the design of the Commissioner of Sustainability. Moreover, it is conceivable that the best place to locate a Commissioner of Sustainability would be in the Environmental Commissioner’s office. However, there may be good reasons to locate the monitoring capacity in other parts of the Ontario government. The Round Table’s Secretariat have already undertaken preliminary meetings with staff in several Ontario government ministries related to the issue of sustainability reporting. ORTEE believes that a firm basis for further work on this important issue has been established. Therefore, we recommend that the Ontario government enter into discussions with the Round Table, affected Ontario government ministries and agencies and other stakeholders to further consider how to ensure that an appropriate capacity to perform the functions outlined in ORTEE’s original recommendation for a Commissioner of Sustainability is developed in the Ontario government within existing fiscal and institutional constraints. We believe that ongoing monitoring and thoughtful evaluation of the environment, the economy and the health of Ontario communities, especially as it relates to the performance of Ontario government ministries and agencies, is one of the most important activities that the Ontario government can provide to assist in the pursuit of the goal of sustainability. 4. Consensus-Building in the Legislation-Making Process One of the principles that the Ontario Round Table has relied on, to the greatest extent possible in developing its recommendations, is consensus decision-making. In our view, the consensus decision-making process is one of the most important features of the work of round tables. To this end, we would like to bring to your attention a document prepared by representatives of Canadian round tables in May 1993. The document titled Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Guiding Principles: Report on Consensus Decision-Making Produced By Canadian Round Tables was released in July 1993. We have included a copy of the report in Appendix C attached to our submission to you. We have raised this matter because the Round Table would like to praise the Ontario government for having established a unique process, the Task Force on the Environmental Bill of Rights, to develop the draft legislation that formed the basis for Bill 26. While representation on the Task Force may not have been as broad and diverse as ORTEE itself, the principle that a multi-sectoral advisory body should work through difficult issues and then make recommendations to government on how to implement solutions is one we heartily endorse. Our understanding is that this model has been employed by the Ontario government on several occasions and has tended to produce good results. Thus, the Ontario Round Table recommends that the principle of consensus decision-making be integrated into the drafting process for development of other new legislation. 5. Summary of Recommendations to the Standing Committee The Round Table believes that Bill 26 could be improved if certain changes were made to the legislation. The following recommendations are intended to indicate the kinds of changes that ORTEE would like to see incorporated into the Bill in the Clause-by-Clause amendment process. Recommendation 1 The Round Table recommends that the preamble of Bill 26 be amended so that more explicit recognition is given to the fact that the environment and the economy are fundamentally linked together. Recommendation 2 The Round Table recommends that the Ontario government enter into discussions with the Round Table on further consideration of how to ensure that an appropriate capacity to perform the functions outlined in ORTEE’s original recommendation for a Commissioner of Sustainability is developed in the Ontario government within existing fiscal and institutional constraints. Recommendation 3 The Round Table believes that education, both formal and informal, is crucial to the transformation that our economy and society must undergo in the next decade. We urge that the proposed Draft Regulation under Bill 26 be altered so that the Ministry of Education and Training is required to develop an Statement of Environmental Values. Recommendation 4 The Round Table recommends that the principle of consensus decision-making be integrated into the drafting process for development of new legislation. Appendix A -- List of Round Table Members Appendix B -- Extracts from Restructuring for Sustainability Appendix C -- Report on Consensus Decision-Making Produced By Canadian Round Tables (Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Guiding Principles, May1993) |