Finance Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Melissa Mbarki]

I think government needs to include the leaders of these communities. That's the simple answer.

Until you reach out to them, and until you get their ideas on what they would need economically, we'll never know.

Part of reconciliation is actually reaching out to your local indigenous communities and seeing what they need, because each of us is different. Your communities in Ontario are going to be different from what I see in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and each has differing responsibilities and needs.

I would say, reach out to them, ask them what they need, and then go from there.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much. I certainly intend to do that, and do speak with them on a regular basis. It's wonderful advice, thank you.

Mr. Chair, I think I might have a minute or so left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have about a minute and a half.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you so much.

Ms. Potter, you've been in front of our committee before. You've talked about the challenges that a number of your members are having. I heard you mention to my colleague the rules and restrictions and how those are having an effect.

The rest of the world is starting to figure out how to live with COVID on a long-term basis. We are the only G7 country, as you mentioned, that has a PCR test on arrival. If we don't have a clear path to figuring out how we are going to live with this virus, will your members survive? How long can some of them survive continuing in the current state?

[Beth Potter]

Thank you for the question.

I will tell you, our industry is half of what it was pre pandemic. I have examples every day from tourism operators who are going deeper and deeper into debt trying to maintain payroll, trying to maintain their premises, whether it's rent or mortgages.

I was talking to one the other day. He runs a day boat excursion. Payroll came around again, and because he's a seasonal business he wasn't eligible for any of the subsidies, and he is another $80,000 out of his own pocket. He's maxed out and very well could be closing his doors in the imminent future.

These are the stories I'm hearing every day from operators from coast to coast to coast.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Potter.

I believe that's my time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Chambers and Ms. Potter.

We are moving now to the Liberals.

MP Baker, you're up for five minutes.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask my questions of Mr. Lambe and Mr. McClinchey from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. I'll let you gentlemen decide which of you wants to answer the question.

I want to start by saying that one of our colleagues, Vance Badawey, has done a tremendous amount of work on your behalf. He's not the only one, but certainly he's spoken to me about this issue on a number of occasions. I wanted to share that with you.

As you noted, the Great Lakes are a source of thousands of jobs in tourism and commerce. They provide clean drinking water for approximately 50 million people. They're an ecological trust. Could you share what would happen, what the consequences would be, if we were not to provide the funding you have requested?

I'm asking not so much about the process or programs, although that's important, but really what the impact would be on the Great Lakes. If we were explaining to my constituents in Etobicoke Centre what the impact would be, I think they'd be most concerned about what would be the impact on the Great Lakes. Could you articulate that for us?

[Robert Lambe]

Go ahead, Greg.

[Gregory McClinchey]

Just to allude to some of the comments I made in my opening remarks, you don't have to take our word for it; all you have to do is look back to fairly recent history. In the early part of the 1900s, for a series of reasons, there really wasn't effective control and effective regulation of the Great Lakes. We saw, in the simplest of terms, the near collapse of the fishery.

I grew up on Lake Huron. Our cottage looks out onto the lake. That was the place where we fished and canoed and camped and did all those things. Imagine that without fish. Sea lamprey really enjoy fish at the top of the food chain, the same kind of things that humans seem to value most from a sport fishing or commercial fishing perspective. Imagine those things gone. We target about 7.5 million sea lamprey [Technical difficulty—Editor] numbers. The estimates say that we could lose approximately 13.9 million kilograms of fish, or $389 million worth of economic value, if we were to have those particular larvae mature and begin to do what they do best.

We're really talking about devastation on a large scale and then everything that goes with it. If you take the fish out of the Great Lakes, you're not going to have anglers coming. It's going to have an impact on tourism. It's going to have an impact on local communities, on the people who sell boats or sell fuel to people passing through, and on the restaurants. All of those kind of peripheral industries that make up our Great Lakes communities would be impacted. They were 100 years ago, 80 years ago, and that would all come full circle today.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That's really helpful.

Again, I'm thinking about the folks at home from my constituency and from other constituencies who are watching this. From an ecological perspective, could you talk a little bit more about the impact there? For those of us who haven't maybe spent a lot of time.... I spent some time up at a cottage when I was a kid, but I didn't do a lot of fishing, because there wasn't a lot of fishing there.

Help us to understand from an ecological perspective what the impact would be. How would this affect the food chain? How would this affect our environment, etc.?

[Robert Lambe]

Part of what we saw back in the early 1950s, when sea lamprey destroyed the top of the food chain, primarily lake trout, was that the fish on which the top predators feed grew out of control. They couldn't feed either, and the population just exploded. They started to die off. They got washed up on beaches.

If you go back and look at the history of why so many people intervened with both the U.S. and Canadian governments back in those days, a lot of them were cottagers. They weren't necessarily fishers, but they couldn't go to the cottages anymore with tonnes of fish rotting and decaying on beaches. The cottagers couldn't enjoy the beaches just because of the stench. When you interrupt the ecosystem, it has tremendous effects throughout the whole basin.

If I have time, I'll just say as well that a lot of the research we do in support of fisheries goes to identifying habitat that needs to be controlled and rehabilitated and whatnot. The benefits of that are not just for fish, of course. You get into wetland restoration, which has a real economic value. Look at how much a wetland does in terms of removing things from the environment. If they weren't there, you would have to put in sewer management systems and so on.

The impacts are pretty incredible when you look at it from a broad ecosystem perspective.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Economic costs, costs to our quality of life, and costs to the environment—that's what I'm hearing.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Baker.

I'm just looking at the time and trying to divide what we have left. To conclude this round, we will go with five minutes, five minutes, two and a half minutes and two and a half minutes.

We will start with the Conservatives.

MP Lawrence, you have five minutes.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'll start with you, Ms. Mbarki. I'm very blessed to have in my riding people from two first nations, Hiawatha First Nation and the Alderville First Nation. When I talk to the indigenous leaders, they use words like autonomy, independence and empowerment. They often share skepticism of the federal government. Quite frankly, I share that skepticism, given the mistreatment of indigenous peoples by the federal government and also government interventions in the economy and the failures that the government has had with that.

With that, Ms. Mbarki, I'm hoping that maybe you could talk a little bit about the potential empowerment of indigenous people if in fact we were able to deregulate and open up and take full advantage of our natural resources.

[Melissa Mbarki]

One example that I can give you quite specifically is here in Alberta. The Ermineskin Cree Nation wanted to open a coal mine. They didn't want to use coal as an energy source but to convert this coal to steel and help in steel production. This project was rejected. I believe it was due to lack of support from the public.

In instances like this, they went through the regulatory process, they went through the environmental assessment and they went through community, working with the operators to come to a consensus. A lot of times this work takes years, if not decades. To undermine this community and their decision puts a lot more mistrust in the government than it does trust.

This is where autonomy comes into play. If we can give indigenous communities a little bit more decision-making in what they want to do, this would bring not only prosperity to first nations; it would bring different ideas on how we can address things like climate change.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much, Ms. Mbarki. That was an excellent answer. I really appreciate it.

I'm going to switch gears and go to Dr. Cochrane. I'd like to talk about something a little bit off the subject but something I have significant interest in.

I believe it was last year that the finance committee studied tax evasion and the Panama papers. One of the revelations that came out of that committee was the fact that no one at that point had been prosecuted in Canada as a result of the Panama papers. I'm wondering if you could comment or if you know whether or not anyone from the Panama papers in Canada has been prosecuted.

[Dr. D.T. Cochrane]

No. So far, no one has been prosecuted. From questions posed to the CRA, the answer that has come back is that they're continuing to investigate. We wonder why other countries have been able to successfully prosecute.

It would be good to know one way or the other if the CRA can move forward with prosecutions. If they cannot, we need to figure out why not, because it offends the senses of so many that this happened. The failure to prosecute is really a failure that exists in our legal system.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much. I thought you'd have an excellent answer, and indeed you did.

In my whirlwind tour, I'm going to continue on with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. I also had the opportunity to talk to you wonderful gentlemen before, and with almost the exact same request. It seems like it may be falling on deaf ears. What can I do, and what can other members of the committee do—it seems like we're all resolute that you need the support you're asking for—to awaken the PMO to this need?

[Gregory McClinchey]

If I could, Mr. Chair, I think we've been very blessed over the last number of months in having positive conversations with members of the House and Senate representing all parties. Certainly, we would hope to see this committee endorse our recommendation again, as it did in the last pre-budget consultation and the one before that. I think it's important to get that on the record, to let those who are making decisions in the next budget know that this is something that's important, and then certainly to speak with the ministers involved, with the Prime Minister, with the finance minister, just to let them know.

I think part of the challenge we have faced historically in bringing our funding up to a level is that the urgent will often swallow the important. What we're really talking about here is an $8.84-million ask, which often gets lost in a much larger shuffle of government priorities. Certainly, appearing here today is very much appreciated. The attention that you, sir, as well as others have been giving this issue over the last number of months is very much appreciated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Thank you, MP Lawrence. That's the time.

We are moving to the Liberals and Madame Chatel for five minutes.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses.

My questions will be mainly for Mr. Breton.

Mr. Breton, in your pre‑budget recommendations, which I was reading earlier, you talk about electrification in rural areas. I represent a rural riding myself.

Can you tell us a little bit about how that's going to be done and what particular challenges rural communities will face?

[Daniel Breton]

I live in a rural community, too. I'm in Saint‑Ignace‑de‑Loyola, in the Berthier Islands, so I'm very familiar with that reality.

Rural communities across Canada have very different levels of transportation electrification infrastructure. In British Columbia and Quebec, things are going well. You can get around quite easily in rural areas throughout Quebec. Where it gets more complicated is in northern communities, for example, where electricity generation is less stable and the supply of electricity comes from sources such as diesel or oil. There, you have to think about alternatives. This is one of the things we want the government to focus on.

Moreover, across Quebec and Canada, charging infrastructure is often designed around major roads, such as highways. This is where we're seeing more and more interesting infrastructure. As I mentioned earlier, it's quite easy to travel by electric car from Montreal to Toronto in 2022. However, it's more complicated when you leave the major highways. Everywhere, whether in Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Quebec, but especially in provinces that are less well equipped with transportation electrification infrastructure, there has to be a plan for the development of fast charging infrastructure, that is, level 3 stations, or direct current charging stations, to help people get off the major highways. Level 2 terminals are also needed in rural areas.

We're working with Natural Resources Canada to help it design programs so that large Canadian companies aren't the only ones receiving a lot of money to create a lot of infrastructure and so that smaller communities can install charging infrastructure in more remote locations.

[Sophie Chatel, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you very much.

You also talked about smart mobility. Can you tell us more about that?

[Daniel Breton]

It's something we often tend to underestimate.

Earlier, we were talking about the future demand for electricity, given that there will be more and more electric vehicles on the market. Gradually, we'll arrive at what we call smart mobility and smart energy management.

Be it in Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec or elsewhere, there are peak periods of energy use, often between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and between 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. To avoid increasing the burden of electricity generation or demand at peak hours, especially when it's cold, electric vehicles can be programmed to only start charging after a peak period. This is called smart electricity management.

In addition, we are gradually moving towards systems where electric vehicles themselves will be part of the grid and will be able to feed the electricity grid, in any region, during peak periods. This will reduce the need to import electricity or to have electricity generation infrastructure. This is another aspect of smart electricity management.

Obviously, we'll also have smart and self‑driving vehicles. As a result, fewer and fewer people will need to own vehicles. Mobility will have to become a service, especially in urban areas. That's something we're moving towards.