Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 4th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Dupont. Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Eyking, for up to seven minutes.

Welcome to our committee, by the way.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

While it's great to be here, there's a little bit of friction and not a lot of love in the room here. Hopefully we can simmer down before the minister gets here.

[Serge Dupont]

Can I just clarifying something?

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Go ahead. My time hasn't started yet.

[Serge Dupont]

Perhaps I could clarify one point for the honourable member in his prior question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, please, Mr. Dupont.

[Serge Dupont]

If I may, sir, just to clarify, of the original funding in the clean energy fund—so I apologize for that—$205 million of the original $1-billion clean energy fund was transferred subsequently for the home retrofit program. That was in the earlier phase of the home retrofit program. It was not part of the last round of funding of the home retrofit program that came from budget 2011.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you for clarifying that.

Mr. Eyking, we'll start your time now. Go ahead, please.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In Cape Breton we had Devco coal mines. Ten years ago, Natural Resources, or the government.... The coal mines were closed, and a fund was set up to remediate the sites where all the coal mines were. I think it was over $150 million.

Overall, I think, over the last 10 years they've been doing well in cleaning up all these coal sites. I think the disappointing thing for the community is how the money was transferred over to ACOA and then used for purposes other than cleaning up the sites.

My question for the department is, first of all, why did they do this? They were doing a good job, so why didn't Natural Resources just finish it up themselves? Second, how did you book this? Was it booked under Natural Resources or was it booked through ACOA?

Those are my first two questions.

[Serge Dupont]

Mr. Chair, that would have been quite before my time. I'm afraid I just don't have those facts at my disposal.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

But wouldn't it be booked right now? Wouldn't it be booked somewhere in your expenses right now?

[Serge Dupont]

Not in the current flows of ins and outs that you would have in supplementary estimates (B), or indeed in the main estimates.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

You have nobody here from your department who could give an answer?

[Serge Dupont]

Not right now. I'd be happy to undertake to give you an answer, but I just don't have that with me right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Anderson, on a point of order.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

On Mr. Eyking's reference to love in room, we actually did come here to do supplementary estimates (B), and if the opposition members are not prepared to do that, they can look through the document, but there's nothing to do with what he's asking about in this document.

The department is not prepared to come and deal with that, obviously, because it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about today.

[An hon. member]

A point of order.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Is this my time?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

If we could ask them to stick to the content of what we've come for, I think they'd probably be happier with the answers.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Excuse me, Mr. Julian.

Yes, Mr. Eyking, make sure you stick to the supplementary estimates (B) and the issues surrounding them. And yes, we did stop the clock, to answer your question.

Mr. Julian, on a point of order.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Chair, I am really appalled at how the Conservatives are acting today. I would appreciate it if they would stop interrupting opposition members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Julian, if we're going to have effective committee meetings, it's important that we stick to the issues that we're actually dealing with at the committee meeting. It's important to respect the relevance, when it comes to questioning and making comments, to the issue that we are dealing with.

We're dealing with supplementary estimates (B) today. It's important that members of the committee stick to questions that are related to supplementary estimates (B). It's a matter of having an effective committee. We have had to date, and I hope this continues into the future.

Go ahead, please, Mr. Eyking. You still have five and a half minutes left.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I would just like to state that Mr. Anderson and I came here at the same time, and he was in opposition in those days. When staff would come from the departments, any questions could come forward. He asked lots of questions that weren't pertaining to the point at hand. How soon we forget, Mr. Anderson, the days of old.

I would like to go back to the question regarding the big cuts to the energy efficiency program. My numbers here are that it's $47 million this year. It's going to go up to $49 million or $50 million by 2014-15.

From what I know from back home in my riding, it was a very good program for individuals and companies. We have a company in my riding that produces high-efficiency windows, and their sales have gone pretty well flat because of the changes to this program.

From the department's point of view, and I know you guys are all into numbers, is there any number you have for what they spent? How much money was generated with that money that was available in those years? When you talk about $47 million or $48 million being spent, how much did it generate in the local economies? What is backfilling that? What programs or money do you have that will backfill what that program used to do?

[Serge Dupont]

Number one, the program did fund 640,000 Canadian households which benefited from $934 million in total program spending between 2007 and 2012. That clearly has had some significant economic impact, and also an impact in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There continues to be in the department a range of energy efficiency undertakings that we are pursuing. There is funding that was provided in budget 2011 of $195 million over five years with respect to energy efficiency efforts in homes, in work, in the road, but there is no longer the same program of direct subsidy to households.