Evidence of meeting #12 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sector.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
You have five minutes, but if you can do better than five, I'd be very grateful.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
I don't know; it's too exciting to have five.
Mr. McTeague, in your opening statement you talked about something I found really interesting. We're talking about subsidies at committee, but you talked about the $6.5 billion a year to subsidize electricity rates in Ontario right now, which, among other things, is probably a product of the disastrous fee and tariff program that was brought in in Ontario. When we talk about this transition, this is what we're talking about, an actual energy transition from hydrocarbons, and in many cases we're talking about electricity. There's an RBC report that talks about the cost to build zero-emission vehicle infrastructure across Canada. The report says it would be $25 billion a year if we're going to meet these zero-emission vehicle targets of 100% by 2035.
Can you speculate on what that would do to the cost of electricity in Ontario? Would that $6.5 billion increase dramatically as a result of the much larger draws on the electric grid across Ontario?
President, Canadians for Affordable Energy
I'm not an electricity expert. My family is from Whitby, Ontario, and I know just enough to be dangerous, but if you're going to dig up every line in this country, in this city, in this province, and replace it with the green transformer boxes to accommodate the much larger number of EVs on the road, you're going to have to change transmission lines and perhaps build another five or six nuclear reactors, another three or four Site C dams and another two or three Muskrat Falls dams. You get the idea that, while we have this concept that we can make that transition, that we can do it within an eight-year, 10-year or 20-year period, there comes a question of who is going to pay for this and how it is going to be paid for.
For RBC to be making this point, I think it's interesting, because the first question they and bondholders—Moody's, Fitch, Standard & Poor's—will be asking is how the credit rating of your country is going. Notwithstanding all of the ESG and disinvestment moves by woke capitalists, the reality is that it will come down to consumers and to the Canadian public having to pay for this.
I don't disagree that we should go in that direction, but I think we have to do so methodically, as the science and technology permits. Trying to get trendy and virtue signal and involve yourself in political demagoguery doesn't achieve anything more than to frustrate the very people you want to have on board.
My guess is that we're going to be with oil and gas for a very long time. Whether Canada produces it or not is a question for you as politicians. Would you prefer that Venezuela, Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia produce it, or can the Canadian government be involved as a partner with continuing down this road of demonstrating that it's getting its act together with respect to substantial decreases in emissions of all types, not just carbon. Let's talk about other emissions as well. New technologies, DEF and other things.... We have to be responsible, not just to ourselves and to our consumers, but also to the rest of the world, which wants a whole lot more Canadian oil and gas, like it or not, despite the narrative.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Thanks.
Dr. Hoicka, you talk a lot about electricity and how these are some of the answers. Again, we're talking about transitions. Vaclav Smil writes about energy transitions. He says if you're going to transition, for example, from a natural gas electric generating station, for example, to solar or wind, it would often take up a hundred or even a thousand times more land mass to match that production. When you talk about these transitions to electrification, do you look at those as part of your equations?
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Yes. That's what my Canada research chair, which was approved by external reviewers, is based on.
Conservative
Kyle Seeback Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Where is the land mass going to come from? Do you look at the effects on agriculture? Will that displace agricultural land? I'm sure we're not going to take down 10 square blocks in the city of Ottawa in order to do this. We would probably be looking at these things generating somewhere close by, because you don't want the transmission lines to be too long.
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Not necessarily. My research is looking at.... I just published a paper in which we analyzed 47 of the most ambitious city renewable energy plans. We found that in a lot of places there is a reliance on rural areas. There's a lot of regional partnership between large municipalities and smaller municipalities. This is creating new forms of local economic development, where the regional communities around cities are offered the opportunity to have local economic development from renewable energy.
It really depends on how it's done. For example, if you offer it—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
We'll go now, finally, last but not least, to Ms. Taylor Roy for five minutes.
That's what I have on the list, unless there's somebody else.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
It's nice that it came back around to me.
Ms. Hoicka, I'd like to start with you. You were talking about clustering or putting renewables together in areas in clusters. Why is that so important? Is that currently being done anywhere?
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
It is being done. I've published research papers on it. In our dataset, which was quite small, we found projects that were doing that.
I have a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study the emergence of these clusters globally. It was given to me by peer reviewers because it's such an important topic and emerging area.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
If this is a critical thing for reliability in this renewable sector, how can the government help support this initiative?
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
A really big starting point would be to look at the various ways in which they're emerging, and to look at our policy instrument mixes.
The methodology right now is to look at the range of policy instruments that are supporting different technologies, and how they're emerging. Part of this is to look at the relative policy instruments for these different technologies that are emerging. It's an established methodology. I'm writing several papers on that right now. That would be one way.
Another way is to study the emergence of these clusters to see how they're being governed and how they're happening. Again, in the European Union, Horizon 2020 is funding a range of projects that are helping the set-up and start-up of these types of clusters and studying the ones that already exist.
These clusters are everywhere. They're in South America, India and all over the world. They're emerging, and this is the way we will transition to a renewable energy future.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you. That's very encouraging.
I'll go back to my earlier line of questioning, which was about how we can transition and deploy the resources, the skilled people and the jobs that we currently have in the oil and gas sector into renewables or other kinds of energy.
What do you see as the most promising new energy or technology, infrastructure and companies we could use to make that transition?
Canada Research Chair in Urban Planning for Climate Change, Associate Professor in Geography and Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, As an Individual
For one thing, we know that this is not going to be an easy transition. It requires re-skilling and upskilling for different things. For example, my understanding is that an organization of oil and gas workers called Iron and Earth is requesting support to transition to renewable energy skills and jobs. My understanding is that, for example, oil and gas workers can already immediately move to geothermal.
There's also another range of jobs. In my Ph.D., I interviewed home energy advisers. A lot of home energy advisers actually transition out of oil and gas into home energy advising.
Understanding the energy sector means you can apply a lot of the same principles in different ways with new skills training. I think we need to have a very carefully thought-out plan in terms of how to transition some of these regions. Again, a lot of this work has been done in different parts of the world. There's a just transition for coal communities plan that Canada put out in 2018.
Liberal
Leah Taylor Roy Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you very much.
I want to share my time and give my last question to Mr. Maloney.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thanks, Chair, and thanks, Ms. Taylor Roy.
Very quickly, my question is for Mr. McTeague.
Sir, thank you for being here today. I watch you avidly on CP24.
I was interested to hear what you had to say today. One could easily interpret it, though, as sounding like you don't think the government should be doing anything in taking steps to move forward with advancing clean technology. I'm not sure you're saying that, so I just want to make sure I didn't misunderstand you.
Liberal
President, Canadians for Affordable Energy
I think clean energy is definitely important and it is being undertaken. As I mentioned earlier, my riding developed something like that over 50 years ago. We've had the Adam Beck down the road, from which a lot of your constituents receive hydroelectricity.
I think we're going to get there, but I think we also have to be mindful of the steps that are going to be required. Whether we accept it or not—and it seems that many of us don't, and we are in denial of it—carbon, natural gas and oil are going to be around for a very long time—dare I say, well after you and I are having this discussion.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
There's no doubt about that. I just wanted to prevent the opposition from using your name in question period today.
Thank you.
President, Canadians for Affordable Energy
Let them do it. I think you know my record.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Well, thank you, and we'll see what question period brings today.
Thank you to the witnesses for a very stimulating discussion. I'm already looking forward to the committee report.
Colleagues, we won't be having a full meeting on Thursday; we'll be having a steering committee meeting instead, in this time slot. I'll see some of you at 11 a.m. on Thursday.
Thank you again to the witnesses and to the members for their questions, and we'll see each other soon.
This meeting is adjourned.