Finance Committee on Oct. 19th, 2009

[Allan Earle]

I believe there were 67 projects approved.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Have any of those been started?

[Allan Earle]

Yes, they have.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

There are shovels in the ground?

[Allan Earle]

The shovels are in the ground.

[Fred Clipsham]

It needs to be said that the provincial government, here in Saskatchewan, was a great partner for municipalities in moving this forward, so there weren't the issues in coming to a federal-provincial agreement that there were in other provinces.

One of the things I would suggest is that we are elected, just as you are. We are honest people, just as you are. We have in our municipalities tendering procedures that require us to spend taxpayers' dollars in an open and efficient way. We don't need the Auditor General to hold things up. One of the big problems with this whole thing is that delays have occurred.

As I said, in Saskatchewan we have had a good partner to move things along, but there are other provinces where they haven't--

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

That's why I was asking for a Saskatchewan point of view, because some provinces have had ease in getting the money out and some have just come to a standstill.

I have one minute left.

Ms. Doig, in your presentation, in recommendation 2, you are asking for accelerated capital costs for hardware costs related to health information technologies. Who would benefit from that? It wouldn't be the hospitals because the hospitals would be non-profit. Who would benefit from accelerated capital costs?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Just briefly, Ms. Doig, please.

[Dr. Anne Doig]

Absolutely.

The main benefit would be to individual physicians and those others who own facilities that are providing health care. It is not only physicians but anyone who is self-employed. In this province, well over 90% of physicians are not in fact supported in their infrastructure costs by either the hospital or any other--

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

They still have the ability to write it off; they'll have the ability to write it off, offset it against their income. Is that right?

[Dr. Anne Doig]

Yes.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Ms. Doig. Thank you, Mr. Pacetti.

We should also ensure that Mr. Pacetti gets copies of pictures of shovels in the ground, because he's keeping a scrapbook across Canada of all the good work that's going on.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I simply don't believe it, that's all. The scrapbook is--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

It was very full after Edmonton.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I stopped waiting for those pictures.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Monsieur Laforest, encore.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I would like to ask Mr. Watson a question.

In terms of broadband service, you said that telecommunications companies should have access to funding or a national program for regions where they cannot achieve acceptable results. I am from a rural area in Quebec where this is a big problem. You are talking about the federal government investing in a core program that seeks to set up and maintain infrastructure.

Do you have a sense of how much private companies would have to contribute to the installation program, the first program, and to the second, in order to have cutting-edge technology and maintain the network?

[Robert Watson]

Thank you very much for the question.

There are a couple of things I'd like to start off with. In Saskatchewan, we were the first province in Canada to eliminate party lines. In other words, every person in the province got to have their own single line, and we were the first province in Canada to do that. We have now come up with a program to guarantee 100% high-speed connection to 100% of the population, and that's at a minimum of 1.5 megs of traffic. Most of the population will get 5 megs, and that's a program we're doing in cooperation with the provincial government.

The one ask we have of the federal government, every time we see them, is out of that 29 first nations communities in the southern part of the province that are part of that program.... However, we are looking for funding from the feds on behalf of those first nations. Interestingly enough, a couple of years ago there was a program that...actually, the first nations in the north, aboriginal communities of the north, are served quite well in this province; the ones in the south aren't. So within three years, 100% of this population will have high speed, at minimum 1.5 megs.

That program--and I'm getting to your answer because it was important to set that up--was put together on looking at what our normal return on investments are, as a corporation, and like everybody else, we look for a return on our investment. Over and above that, we look for provincial contributions. When we looked at the urban centres, they're served quite well, frankly, in the province. It's the rural and deep rural that are not presently served, and the difficulty is getting there. As much as 50% of the capital cost for those areas has to come with some sort of upfront grant and contribution. The problem is the ongoing upkeep and development of those networks, because if we give everybody their 1.5 megs now and then go away for five years, in five years from now that's not going to be enough for them to keep up their economic development in those areas. You have to have a sustainable, ongoing fund to help you do that.

Right now, there is the $225 million broadband initiative that the federal government announced for federal broadband initiatives. First of all, that is certainly not enough money for rural broadband in this province--nowhere near it--nor does it deal with any of the ongoing sustainability of the network.

All we're simply saying is that history has this mechanism that was put in place to serve rural Canada for a local line, essential services, and in fact there's a hearing in front of the CRTC coming up where the big companies are trying to eliminate that. We in Saskatchewan don't think it should be eliminated. If it's eliminated, rural rates could go up as much as $10 a month.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Watson.

I now have a question for Mr. Marsh, from EnCana Corporation.

You mentioned that Canada has a natural gas supply that should last around 100 years. Is that estimate based on the current level of natural gas use by people and businesses from across the country?

Given the projects you are working on to generate electricity using natural gas so that an increasing number of vehicles are equipped with a natural gas system, I would imagine that the supply would not last 100 years. Do you have an idea of how long it would last if you are able to make as much progress as you hope?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Marsh, please be as brief as possible.

[Eric Marsh]

Thank you.

First of all, thank you for your questions. I'll try to answer the three parts quickly.

The resource estimate I referred to of 100 years is at the current production rate. It's really 100 years in North America. We in Canada are very much in the same position as the United States in beginning to develop these large shale plays. So the 100-year estimate is probably a conservative one at current production rates. We believe that here in Canada we can grow our production by approximately seven to eight billion cubic feet per day, incremental to where we're at today. When you look at the quantity of natural gas we propose here, if we were to capture 25% of the market share we would use less than one billion cubic feet.

So to answer your question, Canada has plenty of resources to run anywhere from 25% to 100% of our vehicles on natural gas.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Wallace, please.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us this morning.

As a quick note, my great-grandfather was a homesteader about an hour south of here, so the Wallaces have been in Saskatchewan for many years. I'm from Ontario and have been here a couple of times. Another little tidbit is that my great-grandmother had eight daughters and sons, and all of them were in uniform in World War II, although we lost two of them. They were all proud Saskatchewan folks, and I'm happy to be here today.

I used to be a municipal councillor in the City of Burlington. Can a municipal government run a deficit in Saskatchewan? No. So you have to be careful about one-time expenditures over program expenditures--both rural and urban.

What is the threshold for an urban municipality over a rural municipality in Saskatchewan? There are two organizations here, so I assume there's some sort of cut-off.

[Fred Clipsham]

I think the answer is a very bureaucratic one. It's incorporated and unincorporated. Outside of Regina we have a very large development called Emerald City. It's the largest unincorporated municipality in Saskatchewan. It's entirely within the RM, which means they have no local council and they depend on the rural council to make decisions. But it's much bigger than some towns.