Government Operations Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Mallett, regarding the notion of the competitive impact of exposing information broadly and widely from a business point of view, there are obviously, clearly, great merits in your membership having access to a dataset to be able to make informed decisions.

The converse is also true, that would-be competitors with, say, your membership would also have access to the data. Is that a concern that CFIB might have? Would you like to articulate if you have any concerns on the reverse side of the argument?

[Ted Mallett]

It's always valuable to consider that side of things. Marketplaces work far better wherever there is better access to information; there are fewer mistakes made. I think that generally competition has good impacts on the economic structure, because successful businesses generally develop successful follow-on businesses up and down the value chain. We think the benefits of the provision of information far outweigh the potential downsides of providing a wide swath of information.

Especially if we're talking about broad-level public information that's collected by government and so on, there is no reason that it should be hoarded or kept only for a particular, small group of businesses. It may be different, of course, from the information that the business collects by themselves about their customers concerning how they react to price or product differentials and so on; that's what they decide to hold on to. The degree to which they want to share it with their suppliers or customers or businesses within a specific sector would be up to them. But in general, we think more information is better for a sound economy than less.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

I'll direct a question now to Mr. Pineau.

Mr. Pineau, is there anything in particular that you find frustrating or aggravating concerning access to information or data—say, for example, from the point of view that it costs money for those within your organization to access it—that you'd like to see the government change so as to have it available on the portal?

[John Pineau]

It goes back to my earlier response. At the risk of repeating myself, it's the idea that it's a cost rather than an investment. That's an enormous frustration for many of us.

There are many individual top-quality datasets out there that individual scientists, researchers, or groups have produced over the years. Not enough of it is digitized and made available digitally. There are still huge and very valuable treasure troves, as I call them, of data that is all on paper still.

I can give one really good example, and they're actually doing something really good about it; there is a lot of scanning and digitizing of this data. The Petawawa Research Forest, just up the valley here from Ottawa, is an amazing storage facility full of great data collected over the better part of a century. It is starting just now to be digitized and made available.

I think that's a great investment. Those sorts of datasets can really give us the history and help us understand the past and better understand and project a model of where we're going in the future. Investment in these sorts of endeavours to get data digitized—and there are other stories and places like Petawawa Research Forest—is a great investment.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Mallett, was there anything in particular that you would like to add, in terms of frustration or of a bugbear that you'd like to air?

[Ted Mallett]

I don't have frustrations. I think we've seen some progress. We're very happy to see that CANSIM and many of the micro-data series have been freed up by StatsCan. We would like to see more micro-data provided, because it provides very informative sets of information for small firms, and not tabular data, because it tends to be very rigid and specific to a far more macro view of things.

I'd like to see more progress. I think that's really what we're looking forward to. We're happy to provide as much insight and information as we can. When you start getting more specific on particular avenues of information or particular types of information, I'm sure we can provide some additional insight. But because we're starting off at a fairly high level, I'm giving you the broad perspective at this point.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I now turn the floor over to Mr. Trottier, for five minutes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, guests, for being here.

One of the things we decided when we wanted to figure out what kind of witnesses would be relevant for this study was to determine who the customers were. Any time you're doing a business analysis, that's always the best place to start. One approach could have been to talk about what the different government departments are doing, but we thought we'd ask different customers of data, customers of the government, if you will, what kinds of information and what formats for that information they need. That's why we decided to take a cross-section of important sectors of the economy such as forestry, for example, and fishing and farming, small businesses and mining, and so on. So it's really valuable that you're intervening and giving us some guidance in terms of the government's direction with respect to open data.

I appreciate your comments, Mr. Mallett, about the local area data being very relevant for small business. It's a big challenge. I know in consumer packaged goods, for example, that large grocery chains will buy datasets from companies like Nielsen, Spectra, and IRI and they'll get very local information with respect to demand for categories of products. For example, they can get some insight into sales of basmati rice versus traditional long-grain rice versus arborio rice then they can start making certain business decisions based on that. They can look at gluten-free products, what's happening in that category, and then they can make some responses.

There's a real barrier for small businesses when it comes to buying that data because it's expensive. Now, these are companies that are in the business of providing that kind of information. I know that CFIB represents a very broad cross-section of businesses, but in areas like this is there something where the government can provide that information? It's information that the government collects, and it would be provided to small businesses...they can make certain investment decisions and business decisions. Can you think of examples of the kind of information that might be out there? And again, thinking across all of the different departments of government—immigration, health, natural resources; there's so much out there—what would small businesses be looking for?

[Ted Mallett]

The one issue, the one item that I've been chatting with StatsCan about for many years has been how to help small businesses plan their businesses better. We understand they probably can't find good data on basmati rice consumption within Arnprior, Ontario. It's just not available, that kind of level of information. But the kind of information that they're looking for that would be helpful—and we've actually tried to develop a product along these lines and it's still in the back of my mind as well—has to do with helping them with their costs. Do they have a good sense of what the particular wage rates or market are like within their area? There's tremendous variation in wages by skill set, by industry type, by location, and so on, but for a small greengrocer in a downtown neighbourhood, can that grocer find the right information about what is a typical wage rate or what the range is between the 25th and 75th percentile for wage rates for people with these particular skills, this amount of experience, and so on, so then they can see whether they are paying sufficiently in the marketplace, are they over the market wage, or what?

So we think those kinds of products would be helpful. You may have to splice together a number of databases to be able to get to that kind of information and it may be imputed to some degree. It may not be direct information but it may be when you put two curves together then you're able to infer what it may look like. You may know that a particular town is x per cent above or below the provincial average but you also know that this industry is x per cent above or below the provincial average, or this particular skill set or amount of experience is above or below.

So you could probably impute something down to a very specific level to help a business understand wage levels and price changes, as well as rates of inflation, products, and so on. We think there's an opportunity to impute more information that would probably be very helpful to small firms in that respect.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Mallett.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I am going to have to interrupt you, as we have only five seconds left.

I now give the floor to Ms. Day, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to come back to Mr. Pineau, because the forestry sector is very interesting.

We know that forestry has had a taste of this over the past few years. The decrease in forestry exports and all the consequences that go along with that are one of Canada's economic problems. Access to information is extremely important. We also know that access to information requests take a very long time to be processed. There is a lot of chatting, and the response is sometimes “restricted”.

In a field where people should have access to universal data, for example on data transparency and the use of open data, would you not agree that there needs to be better coordination between departments in order to provide data?

We know very well that if you decide to harvest a forest, for example, you have to take environmental data into account, such as the caribou that live there. Should there not be better coordination between departments in order to ensure more comprehensive data for users?

[John Pineau]

That's a very good point. Definitely there's always a need for better coordination and more cooperation between not just government departments but government and industry, industry and industry, any of the players that have an interest in what goes on with the land base.

It's the case now where when I speak of forest management and ultimately the data and the information that enables that in a sustainable way, I'm not just speaking about forest management. It's integrated land management; it's natural resources management. It's a very complex and interdisciplinary focus. Just maintaining the social licence, having people agree that it's okay what we're doing on the land and they basically support it, as well as making customers of Canadian forest products happy and confident that they are coming from sustainably managed forests, if we had better data integration, better data-sharing, cooperation from the very start when we're collecting the data to how we handle it, manage it, distribute it, then we'd be doing Canada and Canadian business a favour in terms of informing customers and the public in general of the sustainability of forest management.

People are far more likely and confident in purchasing forest products from Canada when they know that our data is good and that the decisions we're making on how we're deciding to manage the forests are informed by good data and information.

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

My next question is for Mr. Pineau and Mr. Mallett.

Were either you or your partners consulted or asked to take part in this kind of data collection and distribution of shared data? Apart from being invited to this committee meeting, were you consulted in any way?

[Ted Mallett]

No, I received the invitation to appear before the committee. I've worked with, as I said, various parts of government over the past couple of decades, but specifically on the data.gc.ca, I hadn't been in discussions with that.

My role isn't necessarily on the legislative side. Perhaps our Ottawa office was consulted and so on. But for me personally, this is my first direct presentation today on this issue.

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

As part of the Institute of Forestry, did you take part in any huge, extensive consultation?

[John Pineau]

No, this is the first time I've heard about this. It's good that we were asked to testify, but I'm kind of keen to learn more. I gave the website a good look and did a little bit of research in advance of the testimony, but that's about it. It's a good initiative and I'm happy that we were invited, but that's about it right now.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Ms. Day, but you are out of time.

I now give the floor to Mr. O'Connor, for five minutes.

[Gordon O'Connor, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC]

Gentlemen, we're basically talking about government data that's in various departments. It would seem to me that if I was a representative of some part of industry, I would make a list of the kinds of information that I need, my customers need, and I'd provide it to the government to see if they could do it. Have you thought of anything like that?

I'll start with Mr. Mallett.

[Ted Mallett]

I think the information that we wanted to collect has been largely along the lines of specific wage and price information. Actually, getting back to some of the information that we've been very happy with in the past, and that we recommended other members go see, is information pulled by Industry Canada from StatsCan on small-business benchmarking. It has very specific industry level financial indicators that help businesses understand what are typical financial ratios and relationships within their particular sector. Also, they're able to put some of their own financials in there to see if they are running above or below the general performance of businesses within their particular sector. So we strongly support those kinds of roles and so on.

Part of our challenge, and yours as well, is that we're dealing with such a wide variety of businesses, some of which are very forward-looking and probably have more information than we even know that they have, and they're using it very well, and others that really have no idea that this information is out there, and perhaps could help them in that respect. We've got such a wide variance that we want to support and so on. We're just trying to find a good average level of information that would help them.

In general, I think to the degree that we can find, again, the geographic detail....

Maybe one example that we've noted is that if you're looking for business register information, and that is what types of businesses are around in specific geographic regions, you can purchase that information from StatsCan for the national level. If you want the provincial level then it costs a little more. If you want the detailed municipal level, it costs a lot. But when you're buying the municipal level, you have to buy all of it for the entire country. Small firms are only looking for their particular region, whether it's Arnprior or Renfrew or perhaps some of those other areas. To a large degree, you cannot purchase the information or get the information for one specific area. You may have to get the entire country at that specific point. So to the degree that you can get that information....

Thank you.

[Gordon O'Connor]

Okay.

I'd like Mr. Pineau to answer.

[John Pineau]

I think what happens a lot of the time is so much of the data that's required in the forest sector comes as a result of the relationships between, say, industry and the provincial governments. I think there's generally a pretty good dialogue there, and identification of what the needs are and what needs to be worked on, particularly with things like forest inventory, or base-map data, what will tell you what's on the land, what the terrain is.

In terms of the federal level, I think there are some really good cooperative models that I alluded to earlier, like FPInnovations, Canadian Wood Fibre Centre, Canadian Forest Service, where partners from industry, from the provincial governments, from academia, work within those organizations to identify what's needed and what would help the sector in general. Again, the only issue there is some folks who don't directly pay dues or get directly involved or put some money on the table might be excluded, and that could include the entrepreneurs. In general, there's a good, from the bottom-up, feeding of the needs of data and information to these greater organizations.

[Gordon O'Connor]

Do I still have time or not?

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thirty seconds.