Industry Committee on April 17th, 2024

[Jérôme Pécresse]

I'm not sure we'd disclose market share. Today, if you look at the North American market, which is the most relevant market for the production of our Canadian aluminum, we are probably, under the control of my team, the largest producer, competing with imports primarily from the Middle East and competing with Alcoa, which is our partner on ELYSIS, and with a handful of other American producers.

Just for the benefit of the committee, I would note that if you look at the western world, in the last 20 years, 24 aluminum smelters have been closed. We are investing in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

We've heard about scale one and scale two. How many more phases will be involved before you feel you could be scaled up? How much would need to be invested as you go along?

[Jérôme Pécresse]

We probably have at least two more successive phases of piloting the technologies before we can think about industrial deployment.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Based on your experience now, what level of investment would be needed? Just give very broad numbers.

[Jérôme Pécresse]

In dollars, the order of magnitude will be in the many hundreds of millions. It's not many tens and it's not many billions.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

When we had the announcement in 2018, there was the indication that it would create 100 jobs directly and as many as 1,000 jobs by 2030, potentially increasing that to around 10,500 existing aluminum jobs in Canada. Are those estimates still accurate, in your mind?

[Jérôme Pécresse]

I think it was up to 1,000 jobs. I'm not sure what “up to” means, but I would qualify them as ballpark figures. Given that there are still so many unknowns about the deployment of this technology, I am reasonably uncomfortable about articulating exact numbers.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

We've talked about this AP60, which is part of your steps towards ELYSIS. Is it your intention to train the existing workforce with the new technology?

[Jérôme Pécresse]

I will tell you.

For your full information, AP60 will progressively take over production from the production line called “Arvida”, which has been in operation for close to 100 years. It will be progressively shut down. We are retraining the people from the Arvida line, most of them, on AP60.

It's our duty to the community to make sure our employees can transfer from the oldest technology line to the newest.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think we should be voting shortly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.

Mr. Pécresse, in addition to the requests from Mr. Simard and Mr. Masse, committee members would like to ask you a few questions in writing. Perhaps you could answer them by early May because we'll be hearing from the minister on this topic on May 8. We would appreciate that in view of the fact that this is a very important subject for us and certainly for the people of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, and Quebeckers generally.

Thank you for taking part in this exercise.

[Jérôme Pécresse]

The topic is extremely important for us as well. Our interests are basically aligned with yours in ensuring that the project is a success.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much, Mr. Pécresse.

We will suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Colleagues, we will resume. This part of the meeting should run until 8:00 p.m.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 24, 2023, the committee is resuming clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-27, An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts.

Once again, I would like to welcome Mark Schaan, senior assistant deputy minister, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector; Samir Chhabra, director general, Marketplace Framework Policy Branch; and Runa Angus, senior director, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector.

Thank you for being with us on this Wednesday evening.

If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Turnbull had a subamendment to NDP-2.

Mr. Turnbull, I'll yield the floor to you.

(On clause 2)

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you.

At the tail end of our last meeting, we took a very short suspension to huddle and talk over a compromise or a way forward in relation to the definition of “anonymize”. There was a proposal that we made. I believe it had unanimous consent, subject to Mr. Masse having a look at the wording. The wording has been drafted. I shared it with committee members as soon as I got it. I hope we can get this quickly passed unanimously and move forward.

This adds, “that there is no reasonably foreseeable risk in the circumstances that an individual”, and then it continues on with the sentence in the text of the bill.

I hope we can dispense with this fairly quickly, get to a vote and keep moving through the bill, subject to my colleagues' support.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

I would like to clarify a point of order to avoid any confusion.

The subamendment proposed by Mr. Turnbull is the one referenced 13024106, which you all received this afternoon through the clerk.

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to Mr. Turnbull for doing this. We're trying to work together, obviously. I have had confirmation that the Privacy Commissioner can work with this. That's very important to me, so I accept this. It's a friendly amendment, I believe.

That's where I stand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

I appreciate your comments. We'll still have to vote on it at some point, because there is no such thing as a friendly amendment, but we understand what you're saying.

Thank you.

Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I think “friendly amendment” is in Robert's Rules of Order or something—in another world. However, we're all friendly here.

Just so I understand, if we pass this, it goes into NDP-2, and G-2 is no longer necessary. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That's correct.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Schaan, for due diligence—since we haven't talked about G-2—could you explain to me what you think this subamendment or G-2 does, and what we're doing by modifying the definition of “anonymized” by adding this?

[Mark Schaan, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategy and Innovation Policy Sector, Department of Industry]

I want to thank the member for that question.

As we discussed at the meeting on Monday, amendment G-2 comprises two elements.

We had a long discussion about the first of those elements, which was the concept of “generally accepted best practices”. I understood from committee members that they did not see the value in that approach.

The second aspect was the notion of “reasonably foreseeable”, which allows for a standard approach found in many other parts of the law—as we discussed at the last meeting—and for the implementation to be a test, essentially, of whether or not the user of the personal information has a reasonable understanding of its potential for reidentification. I think that's the second construct that would now get inserted back into NDP-2.

Those were the two elements of G-2.

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

As there are no further comments, I am going to put the question on the subamendment to amendment NDP-2, the one with the reference number I just cited.

(Subamendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings]).

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Shall amendment NDP-2 carry?

(Subamendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings ]).

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

That brings us to amendment CPC-2.

CPC-2 is almost identical to NDP-3. If it is adopted, NDP-3 won't be moveable because of a line conflict.

On CPC-2, I'll recognize Mr. Généreux to move it, and then I'll see Mr. Turnbull.