International Trade Committee on May 7th, 2021

[Trent Mell]

Thank you, and I'll be brief.

The answer, really, is no. With our mining sector, and the process experience we have in Sudbury, along with a lot of gold mills, we have the millwrights, the electricians, and the maintenance personnel that we need. We have a lot of the foundations there.

Now we're talking about a chemical process, and we're building to spec, right? We're building for a GM battery or a Tesla battery, and so understanding the flowsheet and getting that right is important. There are important hydrometallurgical skill sets. Fortunately, with our long history of mining and processing, the pool is there for us.

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

I appreciate that.

Matt, you talked about a smart grid. In my home riding of Sault Ste. Marie, the provincial government just green lit a smart grid. This will be the first of its kind, I'm told, in Canada, and the federal government is investing about $11.8 million.

I know there are jobs for construction maintenance, electricians, industrial electricians and whatnot, but is there very specific work being done on green apprenticeships, if you will, or anything like that, Matt? Please fill us in.

[Matt Wayland]

Certainly.

As I mentioned with regard to our electricians and construction maintenance, electricity and technology has changed over time. We've made investments in our training centres right across this country.

As Trent mentioned, there are electricians. Our members work in the Sudbury area and in Timiskaming. They not only build and maintain those factories, but they come in for training and upgrading of skills on a consistent basis.

As we bring new apprentices into the system, whether they are as a result of grants through the federal or provincial governments, or through employers, we work very closely with our employer partners, and actually train to meet the demand those employers require. Whether it's on the construction maintenance side or on the utilities side—which Ross can comment on—we are training workers not for the jobs of yesterday but to understand the technology from the past, and apply it as things change in ever-changing markets.

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

Thank you very much.

Ross, do you have anything to add?

[Ross Galbraith, International Representative, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers]

Yes, I would say that the electricity human resources council did a study recently looking at the needs in the electrical industry across Canada. One area of concern is that many people will be retiring from these types of occupations in the coming years. Whether they are power line technicians, line workers who are currently in the industry or other technical occupations, electrical instrumentation control technicians, power assistant technicians or information technology technicians, I think that when we look at the future, there's going to be an increased competition for these types of jobs. It won't just be the electrical industry competing for these people, but all sorts of high-tech industry, which is the direction we're headed in.

I think that an area of concern and of opportunity is to increase support for people who want to enter these occupations, who want to complete—not only the skilled trades, but also digital technology and other types of technology—and to ensure that these occupations are open to all people in Canada, no matter what gender they are or whether they're new Canadians or immigrants.

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

Thank you very much.

Judy, how much more time do I have?

I think the chair is on mute. I'll take advantage of this.

Back to Trent, we talked about the financial part. You talked about specific policies. Is there one policy in general that you think would really move the yardstick? If you had the ability to enact a policy, what would it be, Trent?

[Trent Mell]

When I originally thought of this joint program, we were looking at a loan guarantee. As a taxpayer, I said, “I don't need a handout; I'm happy to pay it back.” There wasn't an envelope. There wasn't a practice. The hardest thing for me was where do I go? In the government, everybody thought it was a great idea. How do you get there? That really ties to finance.

I guess it really is the permitting regime. It just takes so long to permit anything in Canada. It just feels like you're almost—I don't want to be controversial here in saying—guilty until proven innocent.

We all have the best of intentions. I think we've been very fortunate with the Province of Ontario, which has really fast-tracked our project and dedicated us to their one-window process, but with 20 years of experience in permitting—and it's not just Canada—that's always the big hurdle, when you have to wait a whole year before you can get your permits and even get going when the world is changing around you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to Monsieur Savard-Tremblay for six minutes, please.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses for their presentations.

I will be talking to Mr. Doucet of Pyrowave.

My colleague and whip, Claude DeBellefeuille, who is your member of Parliament, absolutely wanted to send her regards. She is very proud of the success you have experienced in her constituency.

People are talking about you, in part because of the number of partnerships you have formed. You are a link in a chain leading to innovation in the plastics industry. You are working with Michelin, and Japanese businessmen visited you recently, if I am not mistaken. So things are going well there.

Canada is aiming for the national goal of zero plastic waste in the short term.

Could that impact that export chain?

[Jocelyn Doucet]

Thank you for the question.

The plastics problem is a global issue. Three hundred million tons of plastic are consumed around the world each year, and that consumption is projected to triple by 2050. We see that as an opportunity. If global demand triples for all sorts of reasons, whether it's transportation, food storage, or all the uses of plastic we are familiar with, there will certainly be opportunities to use innovative technologies that produce plastics with a reduced carbon footprint.

The real problem with plastics comes at the end of their life. This is where we are positioning ourselves by offering a technological solution that allows people to reuse plastics in the same way. As to whether plastics are being properly used, we leave that question to the plastics industry. We provide a solution to the end-of-life issue for plastics, which is universal. Plastics are a problem worldwide, and we see it as an international opportunity.

Canada has developed a tremendous amount of technological expertise in circular economy businesses through the federal sustainable development strategy, as I mentioned, but also through all sorts of provincial programs. These technologies are now ready to be commercialized.

On the other hand, in my presentation, I did raise some of the factors that are making it difficult to adopt these technologies. People are starting to use these technologies, but only where policies on carbon pricing and recycled content are in place. That's what Canada should be looking at, and that's what I wanted to share with the committee this afternoon.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I have a question I really like to ask to get a sense of the global picture. You are starting to get a good sense of it yourself, with the partnerships that you have. Michelin has an agreement with you and Japanese businessmen are interested in you. The question is:

Are there other companies around the world in a similar niche?

It's always interesting for us to know how much of an actual niche our companies have internationally.

Are you going to tell me, for example, that a thousand other similar companies exist around the globe?

[Jocelyn Doucet]

We don't have much competition. The field is just defining itself and rolling out. As I was saying, about 15 years ago, Canada had the foresight early on to invest in new businesses similar to ours, saying that this was going to become an area of interest. So we don't have a lot of competition.

However, going back to my first point, we see that the competitors who do exist have access to inordinate amounts of capital. There are several examples in the United States. They have been fairly inactive for a while, but recently we've seen a number of transactions. Some competitors that are far less advanced in their innovation process than we are, or have technologies with very little innovative intellectual property, have access to hundreds of millions of dollars of capital. That may not mean that the best one will win. It will be the one with the most money.

That's why we need to develop a strategy at home to attract capital and partners, but also to provide access to networks that can penetrate those sources of capital, to give Canadian technology companies the means to achieve their ambitions.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

In other words, you have the innovation and the good ideas, but you need to have the means to achieve your ambitions. That takes money and the right programs.

Do you have a concrete suggestion?

Have you ever asked for help and not been able to get adequate support?

In other words, what can we do for you? What adjustments can we make?

What more can we do for innovative companies like yours, which certainly have something to contribute to the world, as you are demonstrating, and are often very unique?

[Jocelyn Doucet]

We can look at what's being done elsewhere, in Europe, Asia and the United States. I can give you some examples.

As Mr. Mell was saying earlier, it's not really about giving us grants. We don't mind at all getting help to leverage the funds loaned to us or invested in our business. That's what they do in Europe and the U.S. through municipal green bonds.

For example, one of our U.S. competitors received about $250 million in municipal green bonds, which allowed them to carry out an initial public offering for over $1.5 billion. So it's not necessarily a matter of giving money, but of knowing how to use it to create value and make the businesses attractive. When they have access to sufficient capital, they will be able to attract partners, and those partners will decide to invest in Pyrowave or in other companies that have the means to carry out their business plan. The key is to demonstrate that you can carry out your business plan. However ambitious it may be, you have to have the means to carry it out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Doucet.

We'll move on to Mr. Blaikie, for six minutes, please.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to all of our witnesses for taking time to testify here today.

I want to extend a special welcome to Mr. Galbraith and Mr. Wayland. They are fellow members of the IBEW, and I'm very happy to have them here at committee today.

I want to zero in on the question of how the transition to a lower-carbon economy can help workers across the country create opportunities for employment—particularly in Alberta, where they have faced significant job losses—and for transferring the skills and experience they have from the oil and gas sector to some of the new, emerging technologies that Canada ought to be a global leader in.

I wonder if you could talk, from a worker's perspective, about what investing in these clean technologies can look like, and the kinds of employment opportunities they can afford for those workers.

[Matt Wayland]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Blaikie.

Certainly that is what needs to be first and foremost, namely, looking at a just transition. As technology changes and as we look at different sources of generation and decarbonizing, we need to make sure that workers aren't left behind. That is certainly near and dear to the heart of the IBEW and many of the other trade unions. It's around training and making sure that the conversations are happening now instead of as an afterthought.

I was part of the just transition task force for coal communities and coal workers. That transition happened in some places—like you've mentioned, in Alberta—almost overnight for changing from coal generation to natural gas. Before the task force basically started, workers who had been in the industry for a long time were being handed layoff slips. These are generations of workers who relied on a stable job, whether it's in the coal sector or oil and gas sector.

We need to have those conversations as a country to make sure supports are there for them. If they're close to retirement, can we bridge them to retirement? If they are my age or younger, how do we make sure they get the training that is needed to get them into the changing sector, like clean technology? Certainly within the building trades and the IBEW we have the training centres to bring these workers in. Outside of that, we train workers that are non-union as well, to ensure that they meet the highest standards for the industry.

As I said before, with the demand for what contractors or clients need, as technology changes we have to stay up-to-date and make sure we're competitive, so our members and workers in the industry have the opportunity to stay up with that technology and receive the first and foremost training to be on the cutting edge. We need to make sure that we're leading the pack and not following behind.

Supports for workers—whether at the community level, but also the federal and provincial level—really are key to making sure that they're not left behind, wondering what happened to them and then their families and those communities are suffering. We need to have a proactive and, really, a Canadian approach to make sure that everyone has an opportunity at these technology jobs in the clean tech sector.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

When we talk about a proactive Canadian approach, one thing we've heard at this committee many times in the context of many studies, including what Canada's global trade position can and should be coming out of the global pandemic, is that Canada, unlike many of our allies, has had a very hands-off or laissez-faire approach to economic planning. When you talk about industrial planning, that's where you get companies and unions—people who represent workers—at the table with government to come up with a plan for what kinds of public investments might be made and also how you coordinate training a workforce at the same time. It's the planning for how you look out for the interests of various communities and make sure that value-added work is being done in Canada and that Canadians are being compensated fairly for that work when they do it.

I think somebody earlier mentioned something about picking winners, in a positive way. Often, that's used as a pejorative term. I think what's really at the heart of the matter is good industrial planning. I wonder if you could speak to the importance of that as the world economy is in transition.

[Matt Wayland]

Certainly.

You did mention the earlier question for Mr. Mell on whether you have the workforce to be able to mine the cobalt. For Tim McMillan at CAPP, they're still going to need oil and gas workers. They're not shutting the taps off right now. We need to make sure there's that expertise keeping that oil and gas sector and that mining sector going, but also working towards these new technologies.

An industrial plan, like you said, has to include workers. It has to include training and not just assume that they have the knowledge to go from one to the other, but to be able to have a plan ahead of time and invest in training centres. Invest and make sure that these programs we offer, whether it's EV training on insulation of electrical vehicles.... In Joe Biden's address down in the United States, when he talked about EV's, he talked about jobs for IBEW members specifically because we are the first and foremost trusted brand when it comes to electricians.

It's going to those known commodities such as us and others that are able to provide a workforce, upskill that workforce and making sure that when start-ups need skilled workers—whether it's to build something or build, maintain and operate it—we have it there. They're not waiting, having built it, but then not having the workers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blaikie.

Welcome to our committee, Mrs. Stubbs. You have five minutes.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks, Chair. I appreciate that. I'm happy to be here.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for giving their time to us today. I certainly agree with a comment that Matt made earlier about Canada's economic advantage, really being invested in the diversity of energy, resources and mineral resources that we have in every province in the country. Certainly, I think governments should take a “both-and” approach rather than an either-or approach. The success of all of these industries is inextricably linked. That is perhaps no more the case when it comes to the oil and gas sector and innovation in clean tech.

Tim McMillan. I just wonder, first of all, if you want to sort of set the facts straight when it comes to so-called subsidies for the oil and gas sector in the Canadian context. Then also maybe you could expand on the reality, which is that of course among private sector investors in Canada, annually, consistently, the biggest investors are the oil and gas, oil sands and pipeline companies in Canada. Therefore, this is inextricably linked to ambition and aspiration.

[Tim McMillan]

Certainly.

Starting with the subsidies question, over the last several years I think there has been a lot of good work done on it, and there's been a lot of very questionable work done as well. We have seen a large aggregation of related and unrelated costs grouped together, which is called a “subsidy”. I think there are very legitimate fossil fuel subsidies in countries where they're subsidizing consumption. In Venezuela, for example, gasoline is subsidized by the government for its citizens.

In Canada, traditionally, we have contributed about $16 billion to $20 billion dollars a year to all levels of government, and the arguments in Canada have ranged from the taxation policy to the royalty policy. I've even seen studies that calculate the cost of road building and maintenance as a subsidy for the energy industry.

Historically, we have a very strong track record. That said, some of the policies that are currently being put forward would position all industries very differently from what we're seeing in competitive jurisdictions. We've seen in some of our climate policies, energy-intensive, trade-exposed protections, but if we look at this most recent budget, there is some very deliberate funding in there and tax credits for carbon capture and storage. That is something that isn't going to happen in Venezuela, Nigeria or Saudi Arabia. It's only going to happen in Canada.

To put the Canadian industry on a level playing field with the other eight—I'm not going to include the U.S., because they're an evolving jurisdiction—there needs to be either an acknowledgement that we're going to import our oil and natural gas from jurisdictions like Nigeria and Saudi Arabia or that we're going to level the playing field through federal stimulus and innovation dollars.

I guess there are really two sides to that coin. We are large contributors to the national economy and to the governments. On the subsidy question, we're contributors, not takers. That said, where government policy now positions Canada very differently than the global market, we are seeing and will need to see substantial federal balancing.

On the investment side, yes, we are usually, traditionally, the largest investor in the Canadian economy. From $80 billion a year to $27 billion this year has largely been the range over the last several decades. That amount, we think, should be ramping up dramatically as global demand is rising fairly substantially, but whether that investment comes to Canada or goes somewhere else is what I think we need to be focused on as a nation.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I'm probably close to being out of time, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, you are. Thank you. I'm sorry, Ms. Stubbs.

We're on to Mr. Arya for five minutes, please.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The trillion-dollar transportation sector is going towards battery-operated electric vehicles. I'm so glad Mr. Trent Mell is here. The cost of batteries has been coming down. I think in 2010 it was around $1,100 per kilowatt hour, which came down to about $137, if I'm not wrong, in 2020. In another two years it will be about $100 per kilowatt hour. With that, the cost of electric vehicles will be very comparable with gasoline-operated vehicles. This trend is irreversible. It is happening very fast elsewhere in the world—in China and Europe. Canada and the U.S. have lagged behind; however, we have woken up now.

Madam Chair, you may not know that the U.S. Department of Commerce held a closed-door meeting of miners and battery manufacturers about six or eight weeks back to discuss ways to boost boosting Canadian production of EV materials. I hope Mr. Trent Mell was part of this very critical meeting.

It's also a national security issue. About 13 of the 35 minerals deemed critical for national defence are in Canada—13 of 35 critical minerals. Recently, Canada and the U.S. have agreed to sign a joint action plan on critical mineral collaboration. In the budget we have investments to create a critical battery minerals centre of excellence at National Resources Canada, and we have also funded the research and development of mineral processing and refining expertise.

Mr. Mell, I'm so glad you're here. I know cobalt is very important for batteries. I know a lot of research and innovation is going toward batteries to eliminate cobalt because of the high cost. Lithium ion batteries without cobalt are being tried and developed. Of course, the solid-state batteries are coming in. Even with all that, we know that cobalt is a critical element: 70% of the cobalt is manufactured in Congo, and we need North American producers like First Cobalt. We're the only refiners on the continent that are very active.

Mr. Mell, I completely agree with you on the need for partnering with the industry, picking the winners and acting now. For some time, I have been calling for a very comprehensive strategy so that we can look at mineral and technological development for the manufacturing of batteries, everything as a pan-Canadian approach jointly on that.

You rightly pointed out, although you did not emphasize more, the critical nature of the permit regime now. I think it has to change. I think we have to approach these issues of battery manufacturing. It is an emergency. If North America has to take care of its energy storage and its transportation security, I think we have to approach this as an emergency issue in developing the minerals to the chemicals, to the manufacturing of batteries.

Mr. Mell, can you tell me what kinds of things the federal government or the provincial government should do first to reduce the time required for developers like you, from the conceptualization stage to the actual operating stage?