Government Operations Committee on April 8th, 2014

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Order, please. We are going to start our 19th meeting right away.

As today's agenda indicates, we will hear from two witnesses. The first is here in the room with us. Mr. Pineau is the Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Institute of Forestry. Also joining us today by videoconference is Mr. Mallett, who is the Chief Economist and Vice-President of Research with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

These two guests will of course be giving evidence in the context of our study on the government's open data practices.

As usual, each witness will have 10 minutes to give their presentation. The committee members will then be able to ask questions.

Mr. Pineau, you have the floor. You have 10 minutes.

Thank you for your presence.

[John Pineau, Chief Executive Officer , Canadian Institute of Forestry]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to start off by first thanking the committee for asking me to testify. I think this is my fifth testimony in eight years. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of our membership.

I'll start by telling you a little bit about the Canadian Institute of Forestry or l'Institut forestier du Canada. It's a national non-profit association of forest practitioners and professionals, but also very much natural resource and integrated land managers, people who are responsible ultimately for making sure that forestry and natural resource management is well done on the land base across Canada.

We have about 2,700 members—maybe closer to 2,800 members—in all provinces and territories. We're organized in 19 sections. We've been around for about 106 years.

The principal mandate of the institute is continuing education and professional development for our members, making sure that we keep forest professionals or practitioners competent and up to date on the latest science and research that comes out across Canada from many sources and from around the world. We're very much into knowledge exchange and extension work. We are constantly, across our 19 sections, holding various events—conferences, workshops, seminars, field tours, courses—all intended to help our members stay competent and be on top of things forestry-related and natural resources-related.

We are also responsible and very much cognizant of the need to speak out objectively, constructively, and with balance on forestry and natural resources management issues and challenges. That sets us apart, much of the time. It seems that every month or every few weeks we will speak out through a media release, an editorial, or an appropriate letter to government, industry, or academia that puts us in a position to comment positively and constructively on even the most difficult forestry-related issues and try to come up with and offer solutions to these issues and challenges.

It's not always easy, with a membership of 2,700 or 2,800, but somehow we manage to do it, and collectively we have been the voice of forest practitioners for many decades.

That, in essence, is the institute. We're growing and expanding our membership; we've developed programs that allow us to communicate well the outputs and results of good science and research through publications, through webinars and e-lectures, and through all sorts of national initiatives.

What interested me about testifying to this committee is that so much of what we do and so much of what we offer to our members and to our partners and affiliates as well is based on or has a foundation in having access to good quality data in every respect, whether it comes from university science and research or from government sources or from what in essence companies or industry collect by way of data. Very often it is cooperatives that collect data and store it, maintain it, and distribute it. I see more and more of that across Canada, and I think it's a very good model.

I just learned about a data cooperative in Alberta that looks at growth in yield—measurements in the forest to determine how well and how fast trees are growing. Everyone was doing their own thing until recently.

The groups there got together—the companies, the Government of Alberta, other interested parties—and were able in essence to pool their resources, their time, their effort to make something that was rather disparate and not all that cooperative work really well. The result saves money and time, and you have better data not only to manage the forest for timber and fibre, but also to manage the ecosystems and the ecology and maintain the social licence to do all those things—the biodiversity, the wildlife habitat.

I'm very keen on that sort of model and open sharing of data. I could give lots of examples from across the country and from other countries as well for which I've become familiar with how they handle these sorts of things and what they do.

I know that the mandate of this committee goes beyond natural resource and forestry types of data, but that sort of information and the groundwork that is there is the basis of much of the prosperity of this country in terms of making good business decisions—everything from where to place or build a mill or add a new line in a mill to the way we manage the forest for the sake of the water, the wildlife, the habitat, the biodiversity—all those sorts of things. It's essential to good forest management and to modern interdisciplinary forestry, which is far more than just extraction now.

It has evolved in the last few decades—in the last century, as a matter of fact—to be something that allows us, as the saying goes, to have our cake and eat it too. With good forestry, we can have economic prosperity, keep ecological processes maintained and sometimes enhanced, and have social stability. All is based on good data and the information you can derive from that data.

Our institute is very much involved in that sort of endeavour. Our members individually in their jobs are involved in it. We as an organization promote as much as possible and where possible the open sharing of data. We like the idea of portals.

There are always proprietary issues. Scientists and researchers who want to publish based on data they've collected might want to keep it under wraps for a while until they get to the point that they publish it, and they need some security. Certainly privacy issues and that sort of thing come into play, and often it's an issue that depends on who has paid for it or who has been involved in its development and production. But in general, as much as possible we like to see natural resources and forestry data openly shared. It's for the betterment of forest management.

I don't really have much else to say in my opening statement, but that sums up what we're about, what we do, and what we believe.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Pineau.

Without further ado, I will give the floor to Mr. Ted Mallett, Chief Economist and Vice-President of Research with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, who is joining us from Toronto.

Mr. Mallett, you have 10 minutes for your presentation. The committee members will then be able to ask you questions.

Thank you for being here this morning. You have the floor.

[Ted Mallett, Vice-President and Chief Economist, Canadian Federation of Independent Business]

It's a pleasure to speak with you here today.

This is something that has been close to me for quite some time. I've spent, really, my entire career in the information field, from the standpoint of an analyst seeking macro information to understand the top-down workings of the economy and society, creating micro information on the behaviours of individuals and businesses as they work through, and also, from a bottom-up perspective with CFIB, representing the interests of small-business owners who are looking for relevant information on how to bolster their chances of growth and success, and so on.

Incidentally, my first job after graduation in the early eighties was working for a third party database company reselling StatCan databases and other forms of databases. Part of my job was teaching people how to access this information and use it within their business context.

I also have a long history working with StatCan. I was part of their working group on small-area data in the early nineties, and that was how they could publish information right down to very specific areas geographically that would be useful for small businesses. I worked with them on small-business connectedness issues—that is, the people who were beginning to access the Internet, develop their own interconnected techniques, and so on. Again, it was a big issue back in the mid-nineties.

I've certainly lobbied government for decades to remove the paywall that StatCan had around CANSIM and many of the other databases and information products it had, especially where the marginal cost of providing that information had fallen to zero. The information was already there; therefore, there was very little cost to making it available to people, and we knew that our members were not using the information on a per-database or a per-data series point of view.

I was also very pleased in the past couple of years that StatCan has made this available now for free, and I'm sure I'd be very interested to see what their usage numbers have been as a result of that. I think there has probably been a tremendous increase in utilization of this important resource.

Partway through my discussions with them in the past, starting as an analyst looking at information about small firms, I really recommended that they start looking at getting information for small firms. They have a different set of needs that are out there. We're hoping that information can be available to them that makes the most sense for their particular context.

Most currently, I'm also a member of the business to business committee at the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association of Canada, working with them to develop products and services to help businesses understand other businesses. Not all firms deal in the consumer space, but they do need to understand not just their consumer marketplace but also the products, the businesses, their competitors, and so on.

My perspective on this issue is that Canada has long lagged behind other countries, particularly the U.S., in publishing free or low-cost information that could help in aiding businesses and their understanding of the economy. We've really raised here a couple of generations of business owners who have been, effectively, trained not to look for this kind of information. They've never known that it was available. They haven't worked it into their own business strategies and understandings and so on. It's going to take some time for them to realize.

There has been some progress in the past couple of years, and I'm happy to see that. But I think it's still taking time for that kind of realization to sink in. We're hoping that successive products and perhaps some third party businesses will better help to bring this information into the marketplace.

We certainly know that the cost puts custom data from private sources really out of the reach of small firms. Most of the custom business-to-business data services by the private industry are really working towards the big business sector, and small firms don't typically get that information. The information is costly to get. But you really don't understand its value. You can't judge its value until after you've acquired it and then tried it within your own business. That can be a long process, and it really provides a large wall in front of any firm that's looking for information to try to make the business better.

We also understand that the smaller the business, the less relevant that aggregate macro-data gets. It doesn't make sense for a small firm to understand more detailed information, say, on gross domestic product, aggregate employment levels by province, or whatever. The smaller the firm, the more details begin to matter, really granular information by very small sector, city, town, or neighbourhood, trying to understand their marketplace. Their focus tends to be on very limited geographic areas, and those are the kinds of data that would make most sense for small firms. Really, what they're looking for is information on their customers, products, and competitors.

In putting some notes together for this presentation, I've put a few thoughts into what the keys to success are in this. I've looked at data.gc.ca; I'm very happy to see that. I also see that the publishing dataset goals are helpful, but the value will come from how often they're used, and I'm hoping you'll be able to work through the monitoring of the usage of the access of this information as one of your metrics in this particular project.

Data that helps people or businesses link publicly available data with their own privately held information is also crucial. I think the geo-spatial information is going to be pretty important here. Boundary files are not generally available easily, depending on what kind of software you're using, of course. But we need to see publicly available geo-spatial boundary files, not just at the census metropolitan area, but at almost every level of geographic disaggregation, including federal ridings and definitely down to the city, town, and neighbourhood levels.

We also think forward-looking data is much more important than backward-looking data. History is important, but looking at much of the economy depends on identifying trends that deviate from history. That's where small firms are perhaps of real benefit to the economy; they identify these kinds of trends first. So if the information can be put up that.... It's hard to predict this, but that's really the kind of source information they're looking for, something that provides them with an insight that hasn't been available to others.

In terms of the emergence of information value adders—and this can be with many small firms as well—that provide the value-added information to these databases and then distribute to customers who they understand much better, I think the government can do a great deal in terms of getting the word out about this information and what's available. But getting it into the marketplace, especially the business marketplace, is going to need the help of some intermediaries. We think that encouraging them to take part and develop products along those lines is very helpful.

We've learned lessons in terms of how macro people look at the world and information versus how micro people look at it. A good example is an initiative by CFIB called Small Business Saturday. We asked our members if they wanted to offer particular deals or promotions in their businesses for a particular Saturday in October, and then we would publish that information on a website. Customers would be able to go to that website and search by neighbourhood or type of business what they're looking for. We structured it by industry type, and that was the way we always tended to look at the information. But what we learned very quickly was that customers tend not to look at it by industry. They're not trained to look at it by nix codes and so on. They look at things by product. They're interested in buying shoes or in looking for lawn mowers; they don't tend to look at it by type of store, but they really go right down to their need of what products they're looking for.

So that helped us in structuring information in the way that the consumer was most interested in receiving it.

Certainly quality also matters. CFIB has had some semi-bad experience with the federal riding and postal code data because there were numerous errors within that database that Statistics Canada provides. Therefore boundary files would be a welcome improvement on that. It would really help in dealing with those kinds of issues.

Also getting more to what CFIB is looking for, drawing more levels of government into this process would be very helpful. Standardization on governance and financial information is pretty critical. We've noted that the Alberta government did a major departure from standard budget accounting that makes it very difficult to look at their province's fiscal performance over a number of years and very difficult to compare with other provinces as a result. Municipalities are all over the map in the way that they present their financial information.

We also know that pre-built two-dimensional or three-dimensional tables don't always work terribly well with providing information. Therefore we think micro-data is the way to go as much as possible, as long as privacy and confidentiality is maintained within this sort of database. Micro-data allows the customer to be able to cut or aggregate information along the lines that they're really looking for.

We're also missing relevant data that would really assist policy-makers. Tax incidence studies are all but impossible because Statistics Canada just has been unable to clean their corporate dataset sufficiently to be able to get back other information. Property tax policy is a mess because of the lack of standardized information collected from the local levels.

So I think there's an awful lot of progress being made and we're very happy to see this initiative, but we also know that there's a great deal of opportunity for future work. We're happy to help out along those lines.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I'm going to have to interrupt you, since you are out of time.

We will now go to questions from committee members, beginning with Mr. Martin, who has five minutes.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much, Mr. Pineau and Mr. Mallett.

As tempted as I am to build right off from Mr. Mallett's statements, I would like to begin with Mr. Pineau briefly.

Mr. Pineau, from a forest industry point of view, let me start by saying you have an absolute right to know any research that your government has been doing on behalf of the Canadian public. It's one of the fundamental cornerstones of our democracy that the public has a right to know. Freedom of information is an important principle that I don't think we spend enough time on.

My concern is that you're only getting access to the data that the government chooses to share with you in terms of research documents, etc. I know that your organization probably makes good use of data.gc.ca or at least other sources of research and information.

With the pattern that we've seen develop, a worrisome pattern of the muzzling of scientists and of the hoarding of information if it may be potentially embarrassing to the government—or if it's not completely in keeping with a policy that they're trying to promote or develop—what assurance do you have that you're getting access to all of the research information that the government is doing? And has your organization been frustrated or stymied in trying to get access to documentation and research that you'd be interested in?

[John Pineau]

That's a very good question. I don't think at the federal level our members would say they've been that frustrated. We work with the Great Lakes Forestry Centre, for instance; the Atlantic Forestry Centre, the Pacific Forestry Centre; the Northern Forestry Centre; and the Canadian Wood Fibre Centre. Our institute has a lot of connections to some very excellent government departments in the Canadian Forest Service. FPInnovations is a government-run company.

I think what happens, in general, at the federal level is the science and research there is published, and that's great. What maybe tends to be problematic is when there are partnerships or cooperative research undertakings where data is produced, and some of the organizations have paid some money or membership dues to produce that work, that data, the outputs, and results of that research, and it tends to be restricted a lot of the time to the members who have paid. That's where there's a little bit of a problem.

And I can understand that to some degree. If you're in a cooperative arrangement where it's government, industry, academia—quite a few players—and some of those players are paying money up front to get the science and research done, they might have a proprietary right. I'm not saying it's definite or absolute, but at least it's to get it first or to receive what they paid for. That's where there are some problems, but, in general, with the federal government and the Forest Service, and these other organizations I've named, it's been a pretty good relationship, and there's a really good sharing of information there.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thanks for that, Mr. Pineau.

Mr. Mallett, I have very little time, so I'm going to shift directly over to you.

I was interested in what you were saying about the need for free access to information, or easy access to information. I'm concerned about two things. Have your membership found that the information put forward on data.gc.ca is in a user-friendly format or a standardized format to the degree that it's accessible to your members?

I'll ask you to comment on a second thing as well. Do you believe that the cancellation of the long form census had a bearing on the quality or reliability of information that your membership needs in their long-range planning, etc., for the small-business community? Has that had a bearing or effect? Does your organization have any formal opinion on the difference, now that we have cancelled the long form census, or the obligation to fill out the long form census?

[Ted Mallett]

Why don't I start with the last question first?

We did come out very strongly at the time of the cancellation. We supported the original long form census. We disagreed with the idea that it should be moved without a careful look at the data quality that could come out of it. We don't think it's a huge issue for the small-business owners, in particular, because a lot of that is trend information.

I think there's tremendous information still within the national household survey. There are some identified weak spots. I think they're pretty well known at this point, but there's still a lot of valuable information. The biggest problem is, to what degree are you able to see trend information from previous census runs, and so on? While we would have preferred to see a continuation of the approach of the long form census, we don't think it is a huge detriment to small firms moving forward, because they want a perspective that looks forward as opposed to one that looks back.

On your first question, it's difficult to say. We haven't had any direct contact with our members about data.gc.ca. I found it....I understand. I've put together website structures and data structures before. I know how challenging it is to present information to a wide audience that has very different needs and interests. It's very difficult to organize that kind of data. We think it's a good start, but the government will have to look at ways of seeing which datasets are used, and also look at it from the perspective of the customer. We think it probably could be improved in the future, but I can't give you any concrete suggestions at this point because a lot of this is trial and error.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you for your answers.

Ms. Ablonczy, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

And thank you both for appearing. Mr. Mallett, I notice you have a very fancy desk there.... Is the CFIB on a cost-cutting spree here?

As you know, part of our study is examining how Canadian businesses can better obtain and utilize high-value information with strong economic potential. Today we're looking at this part of the study.

Mr. Mallett said forward-looking data is more important. I think it's fair to say that most government data is not only looking back, it looks back over some time gap. It takes a while to get these things posted. Mr. Pineau mentioned the need for good data.

I want to drill down on those two comments and ask both of you what you as an end-user need to see in terms of quality from government, and the degree to which you think there's a gap, and how you as an end-user would recommend that gap be bridged.

Maybe you could begin, Mr. Mallett.

[Ted Mallett]

Sure. Those are all good questions. It's very difficult to provide forward-looking information because you don't know the future. You don't have data on the future of course.

But what we heard from members, particularly on StatsCan industry survey information and so on, is that timeliness tends to be an issue. They are getting information about a sector that's now two or three years old. Are they getting a whole lot of information out of that? This is the difficulty with any sort of data collector, and we have had long discussions with StatsCan on this to find solutions.

We thank them for taking this very seriously. But the good information about industries and sectors can only come from industries or businesses, and people filling out these surveys. The difficulty level can be quite high, and the burden can be quite high.

To a large degree and as much as it is able, StatsCan is getting administrative data from other sources—CRA and so on—and trying to keep the load as light as possible on the smallest businesses, particularly those in smaller economic areas, whether it's smaller provinces, the territories, and so on.

If you want more complete information about a sector, you actually have to go survey them, and that puts more of a burden on collecting information. This is one of the reasons why we really pushed for getting free information back to the businesses because if they were providing this information for free to government, then at least they should be getting this information back as quickly as possible and without cost as well. They are the ones providing much of the data that is then being repackaged, and developed, and so on.

So yes, we understand. I did say forward-looking but....

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Sorry to interrupt you, I just want to give some time for Mr. Pineau before the chairman cuts us off.

[John Pineau]

It's a really good question. I'll give my personal perspective on it.

I've worked both in industry and government in several provinces prior to my position with the Canadian Institute of Forestry. The one thing that always seemed to dominate was the cost of getting good data. Really it's an investment. We have to get our mindset changed to that.

It was often a hot potato as a result of that mindset that it is a cost only. Something liked a forest inventory, which is the basis, is a snapshot of what the forest looks like right now, but moving forward you project, you model, you determine what it's going to look like in the future, what you can sustainably harvest, and how you can maintain the ecosystems, and all that. It is an investment in understanding your business moving forward.

That hot potato bounces back and forth. Sometimes it's the industry responsible for gathering that data and producing the inventories and the datasets. Sometimes it's the government. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but it's because it's seen as a cost rather than an investment.

If I could make a perfect world in the forest sector and enable the development of things like sustainable biomass or bioenergy and all of the new products we're looking at, and the whole rejigging of the forest sector that's coming down the pipe, I would somehow make it so that data could be produced, it would be seen as an investment cooperatively, and it would be openly available to entrepreneurs, companies, and people who hold tenure, as well as the government regulators and the staff who are trying to help manage and monitor what's going on.

I hope that's relevant, but that's how I see it.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you.

Ms. Day, you also have five minutes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wish to thank the witnesses for joining us for today's meeting. Your evidence will definitely enlighten us.

I would like to revisit a few points that were raised.

We know, for example, that the G8 Open Data Charter calls for open data by default, that the data be high quality and of a certain quantity, and that they be usable by all.

Mr. Mallett, one of the things you emphasized was the importance of interaction between the government and data users, even suggesting that those users could add data to the portals.

What form should the interaction between open data portals managers and their users, between the government and your members, take?

[Ted Mallett]

It's tough to generalize. We represent such a wide variety of businesses in the country.

I think there is an opportunity for businesses to specialize—and we've known of businesses that specialize—in transferring government information to a form that their specific customers are most interested in. It would be difficult for government to fully package information to be usable by every particular business out there; we think that the intermediary approach works.

But it is going to be very entrepreneurial, in that sense. If the information is available and the intermediary understands what information is there and also understands that there is a marketplace for value-added information, they add information to it, perhaps add their own insight, and so on, and then resell it to other businesses within their particular sphere. That's how it would work.

What we're trying to say is that this sort of relationship should be encouraged. We can't tell specifically what form it always should take, but there should be an understanding that information will pass through a number of layers of value adders before it gets out to the people who need it most.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

You also said that the value of the database will depend on how it is used. According to the data available, it was used most often in February 2014, when there were 613 downloads related to Natural Resources Canada.

Do you have the figures on usage in relation to forestry, for instance? Do entrepreneurs use the information provided? How could we make it more visible and more transparent for users?

[John Pineau]

That's a really good question. I would say that we don't have a lot of data readily available or open to business development or the entrepreneurial side of business. I think there's an opportunity, with Canada and all these jurisdictions—the provinces and so on—through a body such as the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, if they could be given the mandate and the support, to promote and encourage data sharing and standardization and make it available through the portal to potential entrepreneurs.

I see some frustration among people who want to develop something in the forest sector. It's not always based on data; sometimes it's tenure, a question of who holds the licence for using public land. Very often there's that sort of restriction or impediment to seeing this kind of development or that kind of opportunity happen. There are other issues at play besides the open availability of data.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Ms. Day.

We will now go to Mr. Aspin, who has five minutes.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for providing time to share your ideas on our study.

I have two questions, one for each of you. First I'll go to Mr. Mallet.

Mr. Mallet, you made the statement that in Canada we have long lagged behind the U.S. in this field. I'd like to get your thoughts on how we could possibly catch up.

In line with that, what data is most likely to encourage the growth of SMEs?

[Ted Mallett]

I think where we've seen a lot of information available in the States is getting down to very small geographic levels, neighbourhood levels, so that businesses can perhaps better identify location preferences, where they should be investing their funds and equipment, where there are opportunities for underserved sectors, and so on. To the degree that we can get information about very specific neighbourhood-level detail, and this can be census information, this can be household survey information to a large degree, that would help businesses make smarter decisions.

To grow they need to invest, but are they making the best investments? Tough to determine, because there are many different types of small firms out there. Some of them deal with business to business, others deal with the consumer sector, so all their needs and their data needs are going to be quite different in that respect. But to the degree that we can get very specific data to people, both on a granular industry level, as well as on a granular geographic level, that would be a good start.

Then let's see where the demand takes us, because I think it will be those third party or the intermediary providers that then start asking if we can please parse this information this way or that; and that'll take you in the direction that you should probably move.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Pineau, I'm quite familiar with the Canadian Institute of Forestry, it's in my riding, and the good work that you do, John.

I was wondering if you could paint us a picture of the types of data that you foresee as a result of this initiative, particularly in the raw forestry line.

[John Pineau]

Again, thanks, Jay, and thanks for your comments on the institute. It's great for our national office to be located in your riding

. We've worked on some things before with the biomass and bioenergy side of things, so I use that as an example. But even coarse-level data that tells interested parties or entrepreneurs what's possible, what's available in biomass, for instance, in a forest and what can be sustainably harvested, we've got lots of metrics on that, lots of good understanding on sustainability and what we can take and what we can leave to ensure ecosystem process and that sort of thing.

But even at a coarse level, if that were available for entrepreneurs, say, through a national forest inventory, and I know the Canadian Forest Service has worked on that for many years maintaining and keeping that up to date, that would help. They might get an idea, and of course, you'd have to temper it or look at it in the context of what else is there and that would probably be some socio-economic data, what mills are there, what population base, and that sort of thing, what is possible in terms of biomass harvesting. New York state, for instance, has a very open data policy on that type of availability.

I think it was a biomass session at Queen's University that I attended a few years ago that encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit and at least the planning of the examination of what was possible in biomass harvest and getting the bioeconomy up and running.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Aspin.

I now give the floor to Mr. Byrne, for five minutes.