Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2015

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates meeting number 47. We are assembled today to continue our study on the Standards Council of Canada.

We can welcome today two witnesses, one by video conference, and one present with us in the room.

First of all, by video conference, we have Mr. Jean Rousseau.

You are very welcome, Mr. Rousseau. We apologize for having you attend the committee last week when we were called away for votes in the House of Commons and were unable to accept your testimony. Thank you very much for making the time to be with us here again today.

Also, we are joined by Mr. Graham Rae Dulmage, the director of the standards department, government relations, of the Underwriters Laboratories of Canada, who will make a submission in person to us today.

We are going to proceed in the order that we have in our agenda. We will invite Mr. Dulmage to make a brief opening comment, and then we'll ask Mr. Rousseau and go to questions following both of the submissions.

Mr. Dulmage, you have the floor for opening remarks, please.

[Graham Rae Dulmage, Director, Standards Department, Government Relations Office and External Affairs, ULC Standards and Underwriters Laboratories of Canada]

I have been involved in standards for about 30 years, moving from a family that owned a certification body to working for the standards council for three years as the manager of their standards group, and then crossing the table to become the head of ULC Standards. Over those years, there have been a lot of changes in the standards system, and one of them, as you know, is that we have added four more SDOs, standards development organizations, to the system in Canada.

Over the years we've had a number of issues with capacity and delivery of standards. ULC, for example, has 216 standards, increasing at the pace of about four a year, but other parts of the system have declining numbers.

I will stop at that, other than to stay that I have worked with CGSB for the last 15 years. I have some colleagues who work there, and I also have a lot of colleagues, of course, at the Standards Council of Canada.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Dulmage, for taking the time to be with us here today. I am sure committee members will have many questions for you.

Now we will invite Mr. Rousseau to please make his opening remarks.

[Jean Rousseau, Senior Director, Bureau de normalisation du Québec]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, my name is Jean Rousseau. I am the senior director of the Bureau de normalisation du Québec. I am pleased to appear before the members of this committee. I would like to share with you my knowledge about the area of standardization. I hope that my answers to your questions will be able to help you with your thoughts and your inquiries.

My presence here today comes from the fact that the organization I represent is involved in the same area as the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) in terms of the services we provide. The Bureau de normalisation du Québec is also governmental in nature. So let me introduce you to the BNQ.

The BNQ was established by the Government of Quebec in 1961. So the BNQ is a little younger than the CGSB. Since 1990, the BNQ has been an operational branch of the Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec, which reports to Quebec's ministère de l'Économie, de l'Innovation et des Exportations. The Government of Quebec recognizes the BNQ as the central organization in matters of standardization, certification and the provision of information about standards, and as Quebec’s voice at the Canadian General Standards Board, or any other standardization body.

The initial reason for its creation was to give Quebec an organization that could draw up specifications for all procurements bought by the Government of Quebec. Since then, those needs have changed; the mission of the BNQ today is to act as a partner in business, industrial, social and governmental matters by providing solutions for their needs through the development of standards and certification programs.

The BNQ is a member organization of the Canadian General Standards Board, which is affiliated to the International Standards Organization, the ISO. It conducts its activities in the following areas: developing standards, certifying products, processes and services, and evaluating the competencies of testing and analytical laboratories.

The various accreditations, such as the Standards Council of Canada accreditation that the BNQ holds, guarantees clients that the mandates they entrust to us are conducted according to international criteria that embody best practices in standardization, certification and registration of management systems.

In conclusion, the BNQ conducts its activities in a large number of sectors, including construction, the environment, sustainable development, forestry and public works, health and safety, agriculture and agri-food. Our team has a little more than 50 employees and can call on a large network of subcontractors. In addition, the BNQ is supported by about 700 members of various committees, all of them volunteer.

There you have the organization. I have been working in the standardization area for about 30 years and I will be pleased to answer all your questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rousseau.

It seems both of you have roughly 30 years' background in this field. I think you'll both make a great contribution to the study we have undertaken here today.

We'll go to questions.

For the official opposition, the NDP, Mr. Ravignat, go ahead for five minutes.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, both of you, for coming here. It's great to have two people who are so experienced in standards.

My questions, to start with, will be a little bit more general, just to get a sense of.... The whole standards in Canada picture, from beginning to end, is complex. It functions, but there are questions related to whether the complexity is an issue and whether things could be simplified, what improvements could be made to the system as a whole, and how all the different actors communicate with each other.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Graham Rae Dulmage]

There's a fairly lengthy answer. I'll try to give a short one.

If you compare Canada's standards system to those of other countries, we and the U.S.A. are a little different, because we have independent or private standards development systems. Most other countries, such as those in Europe or Australia, have a state-owned or a state-related member body, such as the SCC, which is the member body for ISO. One of the complexities in our system is that we don't have, compared to our peers, a huge number of standards. I think that's because historically, due to our constitution and the way the country is set up, standards are used more to promote or relate to regulatory matters and less for industrial needs, so you see a lower number. Someone might say they have 30,000 standards. A lot of those 30,000 standards might be used by industry. Are they audited? Probably not. So there's a variation in that.

The other complexity we have in the way we develop our system is that as SDOs, we often run into the case where province A or regulator A refers to four editions back of our standard, but all the rest, or half of them, refer to the latest edition. For us that creates some maintenance headaches and a lot of phone calls from somebody who's trying to figure out which one they should certify to.

Our system has a parallel system called the code system. You have the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, which I sit on as the representative for SDOs. It writes the codes. It is not formally part of the standards system, but it is a key element. We try to coordinate and work on it very much. We've developed a guideline for coordination between the SDOs. Our biggest challenge is getting members. We're all getting older. The industry in the country is not as strong as it used to be. We don't like to have a representative from a branch plant; we'd rather have an expert.

We carry our weight very heavily at the international level, at ISO and IEC, but I see coming down the pipe the need to really get down to harmonizing cross-country. As a country, and in terms of standards systems, we have to deal with the case that the Europeans and the Chinese are increasingly influencing what we have to write and what we have to measure to. We have to get together as a group and do that.

The SCC has, therefore, changed its way of working. When I was there it was very much inward looking. It's looking out to see how it can drive the system through innovation. To me, the key to our system is that we have to move away from writing standards through regulation to writing standards to create innovation, so that people will want to locate their factories and their research centres in this country and build out from there.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Mr. Rousseau, would you care to comment on Mr. Ravignat's question?

[Jean Rousseau]

Certainly.

Is it possible to simplify the Canadian system? I would say that the Canadian system works in more or less the same way as other countries in the world. The exception is that, in Canada, activities are controlled by an organization, the Standards Council of Canada. That council accredits organizations in, among other areas, “developing standards”. That is the context in which organizations like Normes ULC, the Bureau de normalisation du Québec, the CGSB or the CSA work to develop standards.

The mandatory aspect is another point. Often the mandatory aspect of standards is brought up. I feel that we must make a small distinction. In some cases, standards become mandatory when they are referenced in regulations. But many standards are voluntary in nature. That is a major tool in the economic development of companies and organizations that want to adopt methods on which there is consensus when evaluating products or services.

To conclude, I would add that, when a standards development organization wants to develop a new one, it has the obligation to check whether, anywhere in the world, a standard already exists that has been published by a standardization organization and whether, in Canada, a standard has already been recognized as national. That checking has to be done before establishing a new standard and setting things in motion.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rousseau. That's very helpful.

I'm going to go to the Conservatives. I'm pleased to see Mr. Greg Kerr first, as he's expressed a particular interest in this study on national standards. I will remind questioners and people answering that the rounds are five minutes. We try to keep them short so that we can get as many people speaking as we possibly can.

Mr. Kerr, you have five minutes.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Welcome to both of you. I could almost continue with Mr. Ravignat's line of questioning, because this remains a bit confusing to us who are the lay folk in the process.

I'll start by going back to both of you to follow up. If we were to start over, if we were to start today and design a process—I know efficiency and simplicity are important—it seems to me that this would be confusing to those who use the services insofar as where they go, what they get, and so on go. It seems to me the more international we are in our trade, and the more international we are in our relationships, the clearer we should be about what the roles are.

If we were to readjust or make suggestions on some readjustments, what do you see as the first things that could be done or the priorities that could be tackled that would help make this system a little less complex than it is today?

That question is to both of you, so whoever wants to can start.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Go ahead, Mr. Dulmage.

[Graham Rae Dulmage]

If we could set the clock back, I think we'd start off with our own internal system and restructure how we handle the use of standards within the provinces and territories, so we would have one set and one common agreement. That goes back to how the agreement on internal trade needs to be pulled into the newer system.

At the international level, we need to be involved, but we need to remember it's for our benefit. You could spend a lot of money going out internationally and get nowhere nationally. If we cannot solve the national issues of coordination, collaboration, and harmonization, I think we will be beaten down by the European bloc and the Chinese bloc. To me, that issue is critical and we have to solve that.

We also have to recognize that the Europeans tend to want to take over ISO now. Whereas before we had quite a lot of influence, it's going to decline. Therefore, North America has to get together and have some common form of standards system. We also have to find ways to be very innovative. That's my answer.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you. It's interesting.

Mr. Rousseau, would you care to address Mr. Kerr's question?

[Jean Rousseau]

Yes, of course, Mr. Chair.

Actually, I would add that it in Canada’s interest to have a national system of standards that is quite prominent on the world stage and would also be harmonized inside the country.

There has been some recent action on the matter I raised previously from the Standards Council of Canada. Prior to establishing a standard, actually, you absolutely have to see what is being done internationally in order to really get in line with international requirements, given that we were just talking about external trade. At the same time, before developing international standards, we must use our status as Canadians to have some influence on their content in order to properly position our companies, industries and organizations.

That is what I wanted to mention about this. We must be in a position to exert our influence on the world stage and so we must be harmonized and coherent in Canada.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mr. Rousseau.

Mr. Kerr, you still have a minute and a half left.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

I'm way too efficient, Pat.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You are efficient, sir.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

One reason I raise this is that we always find that Canada is the greatest and sometimes the most confusing country, depending on what you're dealing with. I know we've had a lot of debate interprovincially about how you break down the borders so you can trade better. Whether it's a wine issue, or whatever it may be, we sometimes tend to be our own worst enemies when it comes to clarifying what the processes should be.

I think what I'm hearing is that we have two tasks. One is the international that we obviously can clarify, but do we also have to do more interprovincially to reach a more simplistic approach to dealing with standards?

[Graham Rae Dulmage]

Yes.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's the kind of answer we like.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Okay. I got that one.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Mr. Rousseau.

[Jean Rousseau]

That exercise really has to be done; it is important. We were just talking about discussions between the provinces. Provisions on the environment and on health, for example, may well be different in Canada. Using the international standard as a starting point, these aspects have to be specified and made cohesive. It is the same in the provinces. At that point, our system would be quite harmonized, which is what we want.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Next up for the NDP is Mr. Tarik Brahmi, please.

You have five minutes, Tarik.