Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Government Operations is pleased to present its Report on the Review of the 2017 Report of the Auditor General on Climate Change in the Northwest Territories.
The Auditor General's report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on October 18, 2017. The Standing Committee on Government Operations held its public review of this performance audit report on January 17, 2018.
Committee members thank the Auditor General and officials from his office for preparing the report, for travelling to Yellowknife when the report was tabled and again when it was reviewed, and for assisting the committee during the public review.
The committee also thanks the deputy minister of Environment and Natural Resources, the deputy minister of Infrastructure, and officials from their respective departments, for their appearances before the committee.
Mr. Speaker, although the government is a small emitter of greenhouse gases, the Northwest Territories is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change which threaten the livelihood of our residents and their way of life, particularly in remote, Indigenous NWT communities. The impacts wrought by climate change include warming, increased variation in precipitation, and extreme weather events.
For these reasons, the Auditor General's report points out that responding to the impacts of climate change is a shared responsibility, requiring partnerships within and across governments and with non-governmental organizations, industry and the public.
The Role of the Departments
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources is the lead department for climate change for the Northwest Territories, with the responsibility to:
• Lead the development of strategies to address greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts;
• Lead the sharing of climate change information to support government departments and the public in their adaptation efforts;
• Promote the use of scientific research, traditional knowledge, and public education to understand climate change in the Northwest Territories; and
• Represent the territorial government in national climate change initiatives.
The department is also responsible to maintain, conserve, and protect the condition, quality, diversity, and abundance of the environment, including water, air, wildlife, habitat, and forests in the Northwest Territories.
The Department of Infrastructure is responsible for promoting energy efficiency in the management of GNWT assets and adapting them to the impacts of climate change. It is also responsible for adapting the Northwest Territories' transportation infrastructure to the impacts of climate change.
Audit Findings
Overall, the Auditor General found that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources did not:
• Fulfill its leadership role and meet its commitments on climate change;
• Address long-standing deficiencies affecting its leadership on climate change; or
• Asses what authorities and resources it required to fulfill its leadership role.
For example, the department committed to put a climate change network in place in 2007, to share information and promote climate change action and collaboration. The Auditor General found that "the department did not establish this network, despite two attempts, and was unable to explain why."
The audit further found that the department did not identify the risks to the Northwest Territories posed by climate change, or provide departments and communities with easy access to the information needed to take action on climate change. Despite a commitment to do so almost ten years ago, the department failed to establish a territorial strategy to adapt to climate change.
This lack of leadership led to a piecemeal approach, as departments and communities pursued their own adaptation efforts. This left ENR without the ability to know what the NWT was doing to adapt to climate change, whether it was doing enough to mitigate the greatest risks, or whether individual adaptation actions negatively affected one another.
Additionally, the audit found that, while ENR focused its climate change efforts on developing greenhouse gas strategies, it did not set meaningful emission targets or focus on the greatest emitters. As a result, the 2011-2015 territorial greenhouse gas strategy did not have a significant impact on reducing emissions levels.
Finally, with respect to adapting to climate change impacts, the audit found that while the department did set out protections for some vulnerable wildlife species, it had no overall adaptation plan to better protect wildlife and ensure that areas of greatest risk were being addressed.
Department of Infrastructure
With respect to adapting to climate change impacts, the audit found that the Department of Infrastructure identified specific adaptation actions to protect public roads and buildings from the risks posed by climate change, but these were only routinely carried out for roads.
The department assessed the climate change risks for public buildings, such as health centres and hospitals, and determined the two greatest risks to be permafrost degradation affecting foundations, and snow loads affecting roof stability. The audit found that the department did not develop a formal climate change adaptation plan for public buildings, and often did not follow its own practices for the operations and maintenance of public buildings. For example, 63 per cent of the buildings reviewed by the Auditor General did not undergo required annual roof inspections, and snow removal occurred on only 50 per cent of the buildings examined.
The audit found that the Department of Infrastructure developed a climate change plan for transportation infrastructure in 2013. This plan identified all-weather and winter roads as the greatest areas of risk and committed to a range of adaptive actions to manage these risks, including:
• Testing and using new technologies to manage the impacts of permafrost degradation and changing ice conditions;
• Conducting research on the viability of winter roads; and
• Changing operations and maintenance practices to better protect roads from impacts such as melting ice.
The audit found that the department did not regularly conduct required inspections of all-weather roads, to identify necessary maintenance and rehabilitation. While the department inspected 90 per cent of large culverts, approximately 50 per cent of the small culverts the department should have inspected were not inspected.
Despite these issues, the Auditor General found that Infrastructure did take some positive steps to manage the impacts of climate change. The audit found that the department worked with various partners to undertake research and test new technologies for climate change adaptation.
The committee takes this opportunity to acknowledge the Department of Infrastructure for this work.
Audit Recommendations
The report of the Auditor General contains a total of eight recommendations. For Department of Environment and Natural Resources, five recommendations are related to its leadership role for climate change and one is related to wildlife management actions to adequately adapt to climate change. The final two recommendations of the Auditor General are directed toward the Department of Infrastructure's work relating to adapting to climate change impacts.
The standing committee endorses all of the recommendations made by the Office of the Auditor General and recommends that the departments ensure these are implemented in a timely manner.
Committee Observations and Recommendations
Although compliance audits are backwards-looking, the value of such an exercise lies in assessing past performance shortfalls with a view to improving future performance. In this vein, the standing committee's observations and recommendations are intended to provide the departments with additional insight to assist them in implementing actions that will ultimately help fulfill the recommendations made by the Auditor General.
The Auditor General's key finding in the 2017 Report on Climate Change in the Northwest Territories is that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources failed, in a very fundamental way, and over an extended period of time, to fulfill the leadership role that is necessary for the Northwest Territories to plan for, mitigate, and adapt to climate change and the dramatic consequences it holds for the Northwest Territories. This is a very concerning finding that should be met with serious consideration.
The committee notes that, of the five recommendations of the Office of the Auditor General related to the department's failure to show leadership, all five responses point to the department's Climate Change Strategic Framework as the answer to this failure. This suggests to the committee that the department, on a very foundational level, fails to appreciate the gravity of the Auditor General's finding. ENR also does not recognize that improvement will take a concerted effort, on a number of fronts, and will not be achieved solely through the delivery of a strategic framework, something that the department has repeatedly failed to do in the past decade.
The committee has heard both the deputy minister, during the public hearing, and the Minister, in this Legislative Assembly, make the point that the audit period did not address the department's work on the Climate Change Strategic Framework, with the inference being that the utility of the audit was, therefore, limited.
The committee is disappointed with this dismissive response, which attempts to minimize the Auditor General's findings. The committee would have preferred to hear some acknowledgement that the audit findings point to deep-rooted, systemic problems that have persisted over a decade or more. For these problems to be adequately addressed, they must first be acknowledged.
The committee encourages the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, his Cabinet colleagues, and the department's senior management to do some soul-searching, reflect on past mistakes and ensure those mistakes are not repeated.
The committee takes this opportunity to recognize, with sincerity, the effort, dedication and hard work of the employees of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The committee's observations should not be construed, in any way, as criticism of the department's hard-working public servants, but rather as a critique of poor management decisions which resulted in the department's hard work being less effective than it might have been.
Conclusion
According to the Auditor General, the measures taken by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Infrastructure were not adequate to fulfill the government's climate change commitments to reduce territorial greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts in the Northwest Territories.
While the committee is encouraged that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources accepted the Auditor General's recommendations, the responses to some of these recommendations were so vague as to leave the standing committee with little assurance that appropriate steps will be taken by the department to meet the challenge of fulfilling its leadership role.
The standing committee makes the following eleven recommendations. Further detail specific to each recommendation is contained in the body of the report. As previously noted, these recommendations are largely designed to help the departments meet the recommendations made by the Auditor General and to assist the department to address the deficiencies found by the audit.
Recommendation 1
The Standing Committee on Government Operations endorses the eight recommendations made by the Office of the Auditor General in its report and recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Infrastructure take the steps necessary to ensure that all recommendations are fully implemented in a timely manner.
Recommendation 2
The Standing Committee on Government Operations again recommends that, in future, any GNWT department being audited provide the Standing Committee on Government Operations with a copy of its action or implementation plan at the earliest possible opportunity and no later than three business days prior to the public review on the Auditor General's Report, consistent with the Process Convention on Communications between Cabinet Ministers, Standing Committees and Regular Members.
Recommendation 3
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that, in future, any GNWT department selected for an audit provide the Standing Committee on Government Operations with a copy of its action or implementation plan in draft format and, further, that the document not be finalized until the department has had an opportunity to consider the recommendations made as a result of the standing committee's review.
Recommendation 4
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources acknowledge and reference the Auditor General's Report and recommendations in the Climate Change Strategic Framework.
Recommendation 5
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources bring forward a draft Climate Change Strategic Framework Action Plan for the consideration of the standing committee, no later than May 11, 2018, which identifies specific activities to be undertaken by the department in support of the Climate Change Strategic Framework and in response to the recommendations of the Auditor General.
Recommendation 6
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources bring forward a draft Knowledge Agenda Action Plan for the consideration of the standing committee, no later than May 11, 2018, which identifies specific activities to be undertaken by the department in support of the Climate Change Strategic Framework and in response to the recommendations of the Auditor General.
Recommendation 7
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources report annually on progress being made to meet the greenhouse gas emissions targets, established in the Climate Change Strategic Framework, and remain open to the possibility of making target adjustments, as required, to meet the overall emissions reduction target by 2030.
Recommendation 8
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, with Cabinet endorsement and participation, hold a Ministerial round table on climate change in the Northwest Territories as a method for seeking industry input into the Climate Change Strategic Framework and to secure commitments, at the political level, that industry will work to meet the targets set in the CCSF.
Recommendation 9
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources give consideration to the development of the following procedural authoritative instruments:
• A territorial Climate Change Act;
• A formal GNWT Climate Change Policy;
• Memoranda of understanding identifying ministerial and departmental responsibilities for climate change initiatives; and
• An assessment exercise designed to identify and provide the department with sufficient capacity to fulfill its leadership role.
The standing committee further recommends that ENR report back to the Committee on its consideration of these recommendations, identifying those procedural authoritative instruments it will adopt, together with reasons for any decision to not proceed with these instruments.
Recommendation 10
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources identify, in its Climate Change Strategic Framework Action Plan, specific measures that will be undertaken, with associated timelines, to fulfill the wildlife management actions recommended by the Auditor General, including the development of an inventory of commitments already identified as important to addressing climate change impacts on wildlife, with a view to ensuring those commitments are met.
Recommendation 11
The Standing Committee on Government Operations recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide a response to this report within 120 days.
I will conclude, Mr. Speaker, by noting that the standing committee will be monitoring the departments' progress on this work and looks forward to receiving substantive progress reports. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I now move, seconded by the honourable Member for Hay River North, that committee report 6-18(3) be deemed read and printed in Hansard in its entirety. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.