Operational work just beginning on ‘greening’ government, 18 years later

More than 18 years after the Green Plan was introduced, and more than 12 years after the federal government's own much-ballyhooed greening government initiative, very little has been accomplished, say Senators who are investigating the government's sustainability practices. But if Wal-Mart can do it, so can the Government of Canada, says Independent Manitoba Senator Mira Spivak who is questioning why, more than a decade later, so little has been accomplished on the federal government's much greening government plan, called A Guide to Green Government, introduced in 1995. Then-environment minister Lucien Bouchard announced Canada's Green Plan on Dec. 11, 1990. At a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources on May 13, Sen. Spivak's views resonated throughout the meeting room, where Senators generally expressed skepticism about the government's greening government initiative. After the committee Ms. Spivak talked about the need for political leadership on this issue, as the greening of government operations has been on the table, under different names, since 1990 "My take is, regardless of the stripe of government, it takes a great deal of political will to address the very seriousness of the problems that we are encountering and ... I think it requires a whole change of mindset," said Ms. Spivak. "Given the fact that in 1990, that that's 18 years ago, almost 19 years ago! They put in something in process, which is never used, what would the ordinary person think of that? And they are worried, they are fearful! I think the problem is that the bureaucracy is a little too removed, they should go out and work in the fields for two months every year! I'm kidding, what I mean is: they need to come close to the very seriousness of the question." Among the witnesses was Ellen Burack, the director general of the Office of Greening Government Operations (OGGO), and Ron Thompson, the former interim Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, from the Office of the Auditor General. The OGGO is a relatively young office, which launched three years ago and has started implementing its green procurement policy over the past year. Though there are some developments, it lacks clear direction and leadership, and observers outside the federal government and the public service say they have heard this story before. For instance, to this day the government does not have a federal strategy on recycling. In a phone interview with The Hill Times, Ms. Burack said her office is "starting the process with the planning and the acquisition" for green government, but that "use and disposal are definitively part of what we need to consider and in a lot of the green standing offers we are already looking at that, we are looking at packaging waste and things like that, but I think some of the issues of use and disposal are, we haven't gotten there yet." "It's in some way, sort of a continuation of a long story around this stuff which ... has been going on since 1995, when the Guide to Green Government was first adopted and when the Commissioner's Office was first created. And the basic story seems to be that this office was created but the fundamental problem came with all this stuff. Its function at this time is fundamentally advisory, it can provide guidance, but it doesn't have any actual operational functions, and so it's ability to actually get other departments to do things is very limited," said Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental science at York University. "They were indicating there is some progress through green procurement, but it's relatively slow, and generally, the overall performance was unsatisfactory and familiar set of stories. Really the turnaround is environmental issues inside the federal government: that basically the sort of leadership and direction that's needed from the top to make these things happen just isn't there. It rests with mid-level officials who are very well-meaning, very dedicated. I would not in the least want to denigrate their efforts ... "They are more than well-meaning, they are very dedicated. But fundamentally, without stronger leadership from the top, both bureaucratically and politically, there are fundamental limits to what they can achieve and this has been an endemic problem. It's also a problem that has been present with the sustainable development strategies as well for some time, so it just repeats problems that have been there, and on one hand, creating the office did respond to certain recommendations. The Commissioner's Office has made efforts over the years to try and sort out internally the environmental management practices and activities within the federal government, but the institutional sort of weight to do it just isn't there, and the back up in terms of political policy directions from the very top, just isn't there enough to make it work." The 2008 March Status Report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development dealt with greening government operations in one of its chapters, and although the report praised the progress made in the commodity management approach to procurement, it noted that there aren't "integrated comprehensive commodity management plans" and their absence makes it impossible to "demonstrate whether it is achieving the optimal balance between greening and the other factors that must be considered in procurement, such as fairness to suppliers and cost savings." Generally, the report was critical of the progress made by the government, stating its progress is unsatisfactory in "providing departments preparing sustainable development strategies with guidance on greening their operations"; the reports reiterated previous objectives, were open to interpretation and the departments weren't required to act on them. Public Works and Government Services Canada responded that it is taking actions to address the concerns raised in the commissioner's report. The policy on green procurement, developed by the OGGO, came into effect on April 1 of this year, and applies to all departments under schedule two of the Financial Administration Act, which includes 19 departments and agencies, including Canada Border Agency, the Canada Revenue Agency and the Parks Canada Agency. The policy says that because the federal government is a significant purchaser in Canada and its activities impact the national economy, greening its operations could have a considerable effect on the environment. "Specifically with respect to green procurement, it depends on the type of purchase. There are a number of ways to buy things within the government and they can be purchased under a standing offer, and many of those standing offers are mandatory, the green standing offers are mandatory. So, for purchases in the area of imaging services, furniture, fuels and lubricants, passenger vehicles, office supplies or IT hardware, those are the areas where we have mandatory standing offers on green procurement. Departments must use those standing offers for their purchases," Ms. Burack said. "In other areas, we can't control their purchases. Purchases are decentralized. Individual ministers and deputy ministers have delegated responsibility for their purchasing, even though in some cases the contracts actually go through public works, the decisions are made in those departments and so we are developing tools, training, we are helping them revise their systems, helping them develop specific targets in their own departments to enable them to also green their purchases that don't flow through us anyhow." Ms. Burack also said that in the past three years her office—which has a staff of 24—has also been concentrating on working on building energy and a vehicle fleet. The idea behind green buildings is to have all new constructions meet the Green Building Council's gold standard for sustainable building and that all major renovations meet the silver standard. The office also assesses the environmental performance of Crown-owned buildings in their possession and also use these tools to understand the buildings with which they are considering signing leases. The vehicle fleet relates to a green standing offer relating to passenger vehicles across government, as well as the executive fleet, which requires all new passenger vehicles to be either alternative fuel, hybrid or high-efficiency. "We are virtually at the stage of starting to operationalize some of this, 15 years after we said we were getting serious about it initially. So, even by Ottawa bureaucratic standards, this is slow. Even by the pace at which the wheels are not allowed to grind, and at the same time, we also know that the public service is perfectly capable of moving at lightning speed when the direction to do something is there from the political and the senior bureaucratic levels and, I mean, this has been the story all the way through," said Prof. Winfield. Now that the implementation stage of the policy on green procurement has begun, the OGGO is starting to consider on which areas the office will focus next, as there is a wide range of issues they still need to address, such as disposal and recycling. Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell talked about the government of Canada's lack of environmental leadership. "We have to change the frame of reference and the way we look at this and realize that not only can we do it for the good of the environment, but if we miss it, we will miss the next industrial revolution." cmunster@hilltimes.com The Hill Times

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Operational work just beginning on ‘greening’ government, 18 years later

Federal government does not have a national strategy on recycling in its buildings.

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