The petition is a follow‑up to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat’s response to Petition 500. The petition references the 2022–26 Federal Sustainable Development Strategy, which states that one of the federal government’s targets is to achieve net‑zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in the procurement of goods and services. The petition claims that procurement accounts for 67% of the federal government’s annual carbon footprint and can be divided into multiple categories, including energy, construction, information technology, transportation vehicles, and other goods and services.
In this follow‑up petition, the petitioner requests the following:
- anticipated reductions in the carbon footprints in each procurement category in relation to various measures, including the Low‑Carbon Fuel Procurement Program, Greening Government Fund, and coalitions with major public buyers
- whether the federal government would consider participating in the Net‑Zero Challenge and posting a public annual report
According to the petition, several carbon accounting approaches could eliminate or reduce product carbon footprints, including the government leasing and renting products instead of purchasing them and the government purchasing carbon offset credits. The petition asks whether the federal government would consider implementing any of these approaches.
The petition states that Scope 1, Scope 2, and transportation-related Scope 3 emissions across the different tiers in a supplier’s supply chain contribute to the products’ carbon footprints. The petition notes that a robust net‑zero procurement system would incentivize suppliers of all sizes to reduce their emissions, because the current Standard on the Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Setting of Reduction Targets applies only to major suppliers despite small- and medium-sized enterprises being responsible for 42% of Canada’s emissions. The petition asks whether the federal government would consider deploying such a procurement system across all levels of government in Canada. The petition references the Net‑Zero Ambition Assessment Tool, which scores how suppliers involved in final assembly and sales could reduce their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions to net zero by 2050. The petition asks whether the federal government would consider deploying and using this tool with
all its suppliers.