OTTAWA - The House of Commons Environment Committee says the government ought to make the environment commissioner an independent agent of Parliament, free of the control of the auditor general.
The recommendation, adopted by the committee late Monday afternoon, comes less than a month after Auditor General Sheila Fraser fired Johanne Gelinas, who had been Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development for six years. Neither Fraser nor Gelinas have disclosed the reason for the firing but both women have hinted they were at an impasse over defining the role of the environment commissioner.
Gelinas had favoured a role that would have made her more of an advocate for "best practices" when it comes to issues of environmental stewardship. But Fraser believed in a more restrictive role, simply auditing existing federal government environment programs to determine if Ottawa was getting value for the money it spent.
In recommending that the environment commissioner be freed of the auditor general's control and report directly to Parliament, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) is essentially siding with Gelinas.
The motion to make the CESD an independent agent of Parliament, introduced by Liberal environment critic David McGuinty, was passed with all Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and NDP committee members voting in favour. The five Conservative MPs on the committee all abstained.
It's not clear if the government will act on the committee's recommendation. Some Conservatives, like Quebec MP and environment committee member Luc Harvey, say they don't see the need for a change. Others, including Environment Minister John Baird, have not yet made a decision but praised the work that Gelinas did.
When the Liberal government of Jean Chretien created the job of environment commissioner in 1995, the office was placed within the department of the auditor general, despite a promise in their 1993 campaign literature that the Liberals would make it an independent officer of Parliament, like the auditor general.
Indeed, Gelinas submitted a brief to the committee Monday supporting that initiative.
"If Canada wants the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) to exercise his or her role fully, he or she must be independent of the Office of the Auditor General ... because the two mandates are incompatible," Gelinas wrote. "I think that Canadians, parliamentarians and civil servants would be better served if the CESD stopped being a ward of the Office of the Auditor General and fully assumed his or her autonomy as an Officer of Parliament."
Committee member Mark Warawa, the Conservative MP from Langley and the parliamentary secretary to Baird, said he was concerned about McGuinty's motives in making the motion and said it was unclear to him how any legislation creating an independent CESD would define how the office could be an advocate.
