Mr. Chairperson (Marcel Laurendeau): Will the Committee of Supply please come to order. This section of the Committee of Supply will be considering the Estimates for Sustainable Development Innovations Fund. Does the honourable minister responsible have an opening statement?
Hon. James McCrae (Minister of Environment): Mr. Chairman, I will be mercifully brief with the committee this afternoon. The Sustainable Development Innovations Fund Estimates are an opportunity for this House to review the activities of this fund.
As a side note, I would say to honourable members that sustainable development has moved in Manitoba from being a concept to being a reality. There is a far higher level of consciousness about the need to leave our economy and our environment in such a condition that future generations can enjoy the prospect of being able to make a living and to have a quality of life which has not been ruined by previous generations. So that very much is the nature of the work of the Sustainable Development Innovations Fund.
I just today met with the sustainable development committee of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce over the lunch hour, was able to share some thoughts, but also to engage in some dialogue with the members of that committee and answer a few questions. I was impressed by the attitude that I saw today and that I have seen since becoming Minister of Environment, the attitude of the business community and the industrial community with respect to sustainable development, their support for it, and the willingness to view the reality of sustainable development as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. It certainly is not an obstacle. It can be challenging, granted, at times, but this is the most positive thing that I could be reporting to this committee, that is, that there is a great deal of partnership with respect to sustaining our environment so that we can also sustain our economy for generations to come. Thank you.
Mr. Chairperson: I thank the minister for being merciful and brief.
Does the honourable critic for the official opposition, the honourable member for Selkirk, have an opening statement?
Mr. Gregory Dewar (Selkirk): As the minister has mentioned in his opening comments, this is very important for us as Manitobans to be diligent and to work hard to preserve and safeguard our natural assets in this province.
Concerning this particular fund, there have been recently some controversial issues surrounding how the fund has been proportioned or disproportionately funnelled to different constituencies throughout the province. It casts a bit of a shadow over the fund which was set up, had very worthwhile purposes. These were not just raised by members of the opposition, they were raised by the Provincial Auditor as to guidelines and criteria, the method of selection, advertising.
I suggest that some of these issues require a fundamental overhaul. Currently the Auditor is investigating the fund. Although we do not know what the outcome will be, I think it is a serious issue that the department of the Provincial Auditor is even looking into how the fund is managed and how grants are decided upon. We too on this side of the House have serious concerns. It was reported in the media, there was a bit of a media story over a year ago regarding that it appeared that most of the funds were going to communities and to projects that had a member of the Legislative Assembly representing the government side and that was, of course, a huge concern to members on this side of the House.
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Mr. Chair, the other thing is that we feel that perhaps the selection process should be changed in that the Round Table on Environment and Economy maybe should be used to make recommendations to the minister. I realize that a government ultimately has to make the decision, but they could make recommendations to the minister, and then the minister can from there decide which projects to fund. I think that would be a better system. It would take a more hands off policy than there currently is.
With those few issues I would like to get into some questions specific to the fund, please.
Mr. Chairperson: I thank the critic for his opening statements. At this time we will invite the minister's staff to enter the Chamber. Once the minister's staff is present, if the minister would so choose, he could introduce the staff present. You told them the wrong door. Come this way. The honourable minister, to introduce his staff.
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, I am introducing to you Mr. Brian Gray, Director of the Sustainable Development Unit; and Wendy Wolynec, also from the unit.
Mr. Dewar: I too would just like to welcome the officials from the department that have joined us here this afternoon. If the minister can just provide us some background in terms of this fund, what is the source of revenue that the fund receives and how much from each of those sources?
Mr. McCrae: On an annual basis, the amount directed to the fund is $3.2 million. That $3.2 million is derived from levies placed on paper diaper products and glass bottles. With respect to the breakdown of the amounts from each of those levies, if we do not have it today, we will make that information available to the honourable by letter.
Mr. Dewar: How does the application process work now if someone was interested in applying for a Sustainable Development Innovations Fund grant? What would be the process that someone would go through to be accepted?
Mr. McCrae: I am glad the honourable member asks this question because, in his opening statement, there were comments that really got the attention of the honourable member for Dauphin (Mr. Struthers) and me too because of the nature of what the honourable member was saying. The honourable member was somehow suggesting that Sustainable Development funds are somehow directed to certain areas or constituencies of the province not held by members of his party, or, for that matter, the Liberal Party. I sense some frustration in the honourable member's question. He seems to suggest that we would want to go out and sort of manufacture applications that could be processed applications from regions that we are not getting them from at the present time, which sounds to me not like an acceptable way or proceeding.
I believe that we can find information that would indicate precisely where the activities are taking place which are the result of Sustainable Development funding, but it certainly is not an appropriate thing to suggest that there are considerations of the kind he is implying in the granting of funds from the Sustainable Development unit. Applications come in to the unit, and the existence of the unit and the purpose of the unit and the purpose of the fund is something that is made known on the Internet. It is something that is made known in government offices throughout Manitoba and in the offices of nongovernment organizations throughout the province as well. I do not know how else to respond to the honourable member's question except to provide factual information.
Mr. Dewar: Who decides which application receives funding?
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, each application is taken in by the unit, and then various departments are consulted with respect to their thoughts on the value of a given application in terms of the kinds of objectives we want to achieve, that is, to promote the concept and the reality of sustainable development. Then the departments make their views known to the Sustainable Development Committee of Cabinet, and, at that point, decisions are made about eligibility or about whether funding would flow. That basically is the process.
Mr. Dewar: Has the minister looked at our suggestion that perhaps the Round Table on Environment and Economy be used to review some of these applications and then make suggestions to the minister?
Mr. McCrae: You would have to take what the honourable member has said as a representation and respond to him that the Round Table on Sustainable Development, formerly the Round Table on Environment and Economy, is a body struck to provide broad policy advice. It is not set up or funded to be a granting agency. It was never intended that should be the case, but, as I say, I will take the honourable member's suggestion under advisement.
I assume that if we followed what the honourable member is saying that we would then not have a Sustainable Development Innovations Unit, and there is very good work that is done by that unit besides simply administering this fund. So more and more where the honourable member's suggestion leads us is to unload one valuable unit and load up another valuable unit and give the round table responsibilities that it was never set up to carry out.
Mr. Dewar: In 1996, the fund provided assistance to a number of government departments: Government Services, $100,000 for water conservation retrofits; the Department of Environment, $15,000 for a waste management report on the Capital Region; the Department of Urban Affairs, $160,000 to plant trees and shrubs on approaches to Winnipeg. Do you think it is an appropriate use of this fund that is funded by a levy on diapers, on glass bottles, that has a specific purpose, to fund innovative projects in Manitoba?
Here what it is doing is replacing government funding for their own programs in their own departments rather than to be used for a lot of the many important projects that it is used for. We appreciate that and we recognize that, but here what it is being used for is to replace normal government funding for Government Services, which should be provided by these services as opposed to their raiding this fund. Does the minister have a problem with that?
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Mr. McCrae: The vast majority of Sustainable Development funds do go for partnerships, are spent for partnerships who are involved in activities that either promote or make sustainable development the reality I spoke of earlier. In the cases the honourable member refers to, just going by what he has said, sounds like laudable sorts of activities. So I think the honourable member is agreeing that they are, but he does not seem to be thinking that the departments involved should be doing those projects with Sustainable Development dollars. I think that is what he is saying.
Again, I can only point out that the vast majority of Sustainable Development dollars are used to fund various partnerships working toward the goals set out in the mission of the Sustainable Development Unit.
Mr. Dewar: I was just reading the Activity Identification, and it does not state in here that they should be used to fund normal government programs--I mean, the Government Services department, $100,000 to retrofit. So you are suggesting that Government Services would not have retrofitted without this fund. I am just concerned about it, because I think there is ample proof--I know myself and other members around have had groups in their community make applications to the fund and were denied, for whatever reason.
To me, I think the government should be rethinking this. That is $275,000 that went to assist other government departments when many community groups and schools have important contributions to make and have made application but were denied. I think that is an inappropriate use of this fund to fund operations of government.
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, I understand the position the honourable member is taking, but again while some of the projects to which the honourable member has referred might have been turned down by the Sustainable Development Innovations Fund, that does not mean that in some respect or other, or in more than one respect, these are not valuable projects or very support-worthy projects. It is a question of where the support should come from.
This is the kind of thing that we could debate, I suppose. Each of the projects that is accepted or turned down is carefully reviewed by the unit, and input is asked for from various government departments to try to measure the merit of a particular project when weighed against the mandate of the Sustainable Development Innovations Fund. It is no slight on any project that it might be turned down by this particular fund. Very often I think that the unit might try to direct an applicant to some other source that might be more appropriate to be funded. It is not that anyone is making a negative comment about any particular project whatsoever; it is simply this fund is set up to do a certain job. Unfortunately, some projects are not accepted. That, as I have said, is done for the reason I have set out. The dollars that are available, we want to maximize the amount of sustainable development activity that is promoted and created by the dollars that are available.
Mr. Dewar: I just would like to conclude by asking the minister for a list of the grants that were approved in this fiscal year, please. That will be my questions on this fund. Thank you.
Mr. McCrae: Mr. Chairman, I understand the list for the fiscal year 1997-98 is in the process of being put together, and even if we have to pull something off the computer for the honourable member, we will make that information available to him.
Mr. Dewar: I thank the minister for that.
Mr. Chairperson: Resolution 26.2: RESOLVED that there be granted to Her Majesty a sum not exceeding $3,400,000 for Enabling Appropriations, Sustainable Development Innovations Fund, for the fiscal year ending the 31st day of March, 1999.
This concludes this area. I thank the staff and the minister for their time. We will now move on to the Department of Highways.