Industry Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2016

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you. I'll correct myself. We haven't finished the manufacturing study; we're just landing the plane. We're just dealing with the recommendations right now, so thank you very much for those comments as we deliberate.

I guess the next question is—you're here, we're here—what can the federal government do in the short term, the long term, the medium term to help the Northwest Territories be successful?

[An hon. member]

We didn't say we were going to do it.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Robert R. McLeod]

This is something that we've been working at for a long time. At first the focus was on political and constitutional development.

As you may know, we have a different system of government in the Northwest Territories. We have a consensus system of government in which we have 19 members of the Legislative Assembly who run as independents. We form a government. Fifty per cent of our population is aboriginal, so there are seven aboriginal governments. We still haven't figured out exactly how everything is going to look once everything is negotiated and settled.

People say, “Why don't you become a province?” We've looked at the possibility of becoming a province, but the fact is that we don't have a lot of people to become a province. We recognize that in order to become a province these days, you have to have a majority, over 50% of five of the most populated provinces. Having said that, if we could even do that, we realize that the amount of funding we get from the federal government would decrease significantly. We would get about one-third of the funding that we get now.

We recognize that we've also achieved devolution, so we think we have the best of both worlds in the fact that the federal government has delegated or devolved almost all of the provincial-like powers that every province has. We manage the land, the resources, and everything a province does. Now, we pretty well have that authority.

The biggest problem we have is that we're a very large territory of almost 1.5 million square kilometres. We don't have a lot of infrastructure. We have a very large infrastructure deficit. Whenever we talk about infrastructure, we're faced with.... We don't like the term “per capita”. Because infrastructure funds are allocated per capita, we get very little funding, so we prefer “base-plus” funding.

If the federal government could develop all the infrastructure we need, we would be in a very good situation. Basically, we don't have a lot of housing. The funding from CMHC is supposed to disappear in 2028, I think it is. Our aboriginal population is the fastest growing part of our sector, but we're short a lot of houses. I think we're short a couple thousand houses.

We achieved devolution just when the economy took a real severe drop, so the resource revenues that we were counting on have also declined. With oil and gas pretty well shut down, who knows when or if it will come back? It could be 10 years. It could be 15 years. Some people are saying, “Donald Trump will turn it around tomorrow,” but I think that's a bit farfetched.

Basically, we're looking for investment in infrastructure. We're looking for help to develop some of our significant natural resources. We have some very large projects that have gone through the regulatory process and have been approved, but they haven't gone ahead because there's not enough. We can't get capital to build them.

We have the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, which would be an approximately $21-billion project. It took six years to go through regulatory approval. As soon as it was approved, the natural gas went down to under two dollars per thousand cubic feet. Now it has a seven-year extension to be built by 2022. We have three mines that have been approved: rare earth, Nechalacho, which costs $1.6 billion and hasn't been able to raise any capital; the NICO gold and lithium mine, which needs to raise $600 million; and we have the Canadian Zinc, which needs to raise about $300 million. All those projects have been approved, but they haven't been able to raise the capital to go into the next phase of construction and implementation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you. That takes us to the end of the hour.

We're extremely honoured to have you here today. What's really interesting for me is the perspective. A lot of us come from a mix of urban and rural, but when we talk rural, you guys are out there. It's given us a really unique perspective. We wish you the best of luck on your next committee.

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[Robert R. McLeod]

Thank you to the committee. We hope that you could add to our tourism numbers by coming to visit us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We'll take a couple of minutes just to get set up for in camera and then come back in two minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We're back.

Mr. Nuttall is going to give us a notice of motion, and then afterwards we'll go in camera and do our thing.

The floor is yours, Mr. Nuttall.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My motion reads as follows:

That the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Economic Development of the House of Commons invite the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, to appear before committee to speak about how the Green Energy Act has affected the manufacturing sector in Ontario.

I know this is just a notice of motion, but certainly if somebody wanted to change that to Mr. Thibeault coming to join us, we could do that as well. I know we'll debate that in future meetings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go in camera and get on with committee business.

Thank you very much.

[Proceedings continue in camera]