Finance Committee on Oct. 29th, 2014

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Good. Thank you very much.

My last question is for Ms. Seaborn. It is about your request for the government to measure internships, particularly unpaid internships, when it collects data on the labour market. I agree with the Prime Minister when he says you can't manage what you don't measure. I think that's a very good credo to follow.

When you've talked to the government or when you've written to the government, has Statistics Canada or the Minister of Industry or one of the other ministers responded to your suggestion? How has StatsCan responded? How has the minister responded so far?

[Claire Seaborn]

At this point we haven't received a direct response from Statistics Canada despite numerous efforts to contact them. So that's another important reason why we're here today.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you. How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

One minute.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I'll go back to Mr. Gill.

I had a question about your study predicting local labour market conditions and you said five years out. It just seems to me that there are certain sectors where that's easier to do than in others. There are certain sectors where, for example, it depends a lot on provincial policy. Then there are certain sectors, for example, the oil and gas industry, where there's some sensitivity to global market conditions, which at certain times can fluctuate a lot. I'm just worried about the accuracy of trying to forecast five years out. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what confidence students and their families could have when they see these sorts of results that you published.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Just a brief response please.

[Patrick Gill]

We're very confident with the results that we published in collaboration with United Way Toronto and the region's five colleges. The data is based on the 2011 National Household Survey. I would just point out that half of those half a million jobs are from retirements and those are pretty predictable based on our demographic population.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hsu.

We'll go to Mr. Allen, please, for seven minutes.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I'd like to start with Ms. Annesley. One of the comments you made that I picked up on when you were talking about the temporary foreign worker program was you appreciated the stronger enforcement—and I think we want to try to get these jobs to Canadians first—but you commented on the difficulty in accessing the program. I'd just like to get clarification on that because I'm expecting, I'm assuming—and maybe you should never assume anything—that the majority of the jobs in your sector would be beyond the medium wage rates that are in the provinces. What are the accessing issues that you're running into in the temporary foreign worker program?

[Janet Annesley]

The accessing issues are specifically around the 10-day turnaround and that this is not a reality for our members; they are just not experiencing the kind of turnaround on applications in practice that the changes have intended.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Have they given you any signal as to what that issue is related to specifically or is it just volume as they transition to a 10-day?

[Janet Annesley]

It's volume and I think, if you will, there's a sense of confusion and trepidation among the people who are managing the program that if there are any errors made or that permits are not given absolutely a thorough review that takes longer than 10 days there will be consequences. Again, our members support the enforcement. They support the public, sort of, blacklisting of companies that, whether they are in our sector or others, abuse the program and have given certain instructions to their contractors and others about the need for absolute compliance. But in terms of maintenance turnarounds when plant operations can be unpredictable and demands need to be met, meeting those timelines and resourcing the bureaucracies so they can meet those timelines and give it the thorough review that's deserved is needed.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much. That's helpful.

To both you and Mr. Egan, with respect to the shortage of labour and getting skilled labour, one of the things that Minister Kenney has talked about going forward is the idea, as part of the negotiation of the major transfers, of making sure in regard to post-secondary that we get more reporting back to the federal government on exactly how those dollars are being spent and whether we are being successful and that for the students, whether it be community colleges or universities, we want some—my colleague will probably laugh at me—metrics with respect to just exactly how successful we are in spending this $12 billion a year.

Do you support us being a little bit more aggressive with the provinces on that?

[Janet Annesley]

Indeed, we support that the performance measurement and accountability are crucial measures that need to be undertaken both with respect to the jobs grants and as well the LMDAs. And in fact our submission highlights that the LMDAs do not contain the kinds of reporting and accountability provisions that the LMAs themselves require. The LMA evaluation provides a useful reference for identifying those kinds of KPIs and benchmarks, including the kinds of credentials that are received as a result of funding, changes for example in average weekly earnings, types of positions filled by sector, number of hours worked, and employment and training success rates. That's all broken down at regional, provincial, and national levels, and that kind of data and tracking is extremely important.

[Timothy Egan]

Just to add, I'd say that in principle we do agree that the labour issues are not the same in the downstream side of the oil and gas sector as they are in the upstream side.

We are not a significant employer in our own right. The economic benefit we deliver on employment is through delivering affordable energy to others who can then hire. So we're watching at a distance, if you will.

But we're supportive of enhanced data collection, certainly.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Egan, I'd like to go to you and ask you a couple of questions.

Number one, you brought up the accelerated capital cost allowances for LNG facilities. I did note in your brief that you were talking about the disadvantaged position you're in, in Canada, with respect to the number of projects that have been proposed but at the same time will not be built because of the disadvantage to the U.S., for example. So you've proposed a little higher accelerated capital cost allowance. That has also been proposed by manufacturers and others as part of these committee hearings.

Do you have a specific approach to that? How would you compare your accelerated capital cost so that we're comparing apples to apples with the U.S.?

[Timothy Egan]

Again our focus is on smaller LNG facilities, those that would be operated by utilities similar to the peak shaving plants that are in operation today. I can leave it to my colleague from CAPP to talk about their facilities.

Our proposal is to change the rate to make it consistent with that for other manufactured goods sectors, the argument being that in effect LNG is a manufactured good. We're looking for consistency across the board with other Canadian sectors.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Ms. Annesley, do you have a comment on that?

[Janet Annesley]

We would apply that same logic, that it's a manufacturing facility. Again, if that kind of treatment as a manufacturing facility extends to smaller LNG facilities, that neutrality of the tax system in treating horizontal activities fairly should be applied.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Egan, in your response to Mr. Keddy you talked about getting this gas into rural areas and the way the partnerships can develop on some of this. I certainly understand some of the areas where the federal government is responsible for some of the heating, like heavy bunker oil that's being burned in the north. It makes a lot of sense to replace it with some other type of structure where the federal government's responsible.

However, when you talk about build-out—one of your proposals talks about $250 million of reallocation of the infrastructure fund—how does a government justify doing a build-out for a commercial or a residential build-out, if you will, as opposed to the ones that are federal government responsibility?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Just a brief response please.

[Timothy Egan]

You're obviously having to balance a variety of public policy objectives when you're looking at the allocation of infrastructure money. One of those objectives is the return to the taxpayer. In the case of communities where it is currently not economic under the economic formula that a regulator sets for utilities to extend natural gas infrastructure to those communities, that's where the federal government can see merit in stepping in. It may be meeting cost reduction public policy objectives—you have consumers in that region. It may be meeting environmental or industrial development objectives, or if there are particular mining sector activities you'd like to see go forward that would turn on the availability of affordable energy.

It's a question of which combination of public policy objectives you bring to the table when you're looking at the allocation of infrastructure moneys that you have set aside.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

We'll move to five-minute rounds, colleagues.

Mr. Rankin.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

My first question's for Ms. Annesley of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In your brief you spent some time on the need for reform of the aboriginal consultation process and talked about the confusion and frustration, which I share. You ask that the federal government implement Doug Eyford's report. I know him well and I think he has done an excellent report. He was extremely critical of the federal government's rolling out of their crown responsibilities. He said it was inadequate and made a number of recommendations. Minister Oliver said, we're going to engage and follow up. I haven't seen a lot of action.

What is your take on where things are going now, post-Eyford?

[Janet Annesley]

We are disappointed with the uptake of the Eyford report. We believe that the aboriginal consultation issues and the need to resolve and reconcile in certain situations the interests of aboriginal Canadians with non-aboriginal Canadians and with industry such as ours is one of the pieces that is introducing a lot of risk into our business, a lot of risk into the regulatory sphere.

If we have an opportunity to use resource projects that are planned, to work and try to bring some of these reconciliation opportunities to light and into reality, we think that should happen.