Natural Resources Committee on May 9th, 2006

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Cardin spoke about getting an idea of where the department stands on certain issues and then deciding on an agenda and timetable. Since all points have been dealt with, either by Mr. Trost, Mr. Cullen or Mr. Cardin, I will dispense with any further discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

Mr. Cullen again.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of things.

One, I think we need to hear from the department, but at some point I think it would be useful for either the minister or the parliamentary secretary to apprise the committee of what the plans and priorities are, because some of these decisions are political decisions as well, and what is the political agenda in terms of the natural resource sector.

Secondly, I don't know if I misunderstood you, Mr. Richardson, but I don't think I'm terribly prepared to have two months of briefings. I think we need to, maybe in the month of May, get up to speed on a bunch of issues. What I'd like to see in June is that we actually start tackling something.

There are some issues that are time sensitive, for instance, the softwood lumber deal. I know you probably have the same issues within your caucus. Who takes the lead on this? It's international trade. Yes, technically we know it's international trade, they're the negotiators, but whatever they negotiate impacts our natural resource economy and our forest products sector.

Maybe, Mr. Chair, there is an opportunity. I don't know. Is there a standing committee on international trade? I don't know if they will be looking at the softwood lumber proposal, because I think there are three to four months now before it's absolutely nailed down. Maybe we could do some joint work on it, but I don't want to wait until the fall to look at the softwood lumber deal, because it's going to be either a done deal or it's going to be not a done deal.

There is an issue there specifically around the anti-circumvention clause, which could mean that if it's not spelled out in detail.... I know the government is seized with this, but I think as parliamentarians it would be useful for us to have a look at the state of play there, because we know the reason for the anti-circumvention clause. It means to say that if governments, meaning provincial or federal, take retaliatory measures to compensate, let's say, for export taxes that click in.... But there are some on the U.S. side who, if the federal government, for example, decided to launch a program in terms of innovation in the forestry sector or skills development at the provincial level, whatever it is, would argue, sorry, that's breaching the softwood lumber deal.

I know the government is trying to thread the needle on this, but I think we should be a part of that threading of the needle and understanding of what it is. Maybe if there is a joint piece of work we could do with international trade, that would be good. I think it's useful to get all briefed up, but I don't see it being very useful if we spend May and June getting all briefed up. I think I'd like to see us getting briefed up, but then sometime, maybe at the end of May or thereabouts, saying okay, now is the time to zero in on the issues, particularly those that are time sensitive.

With respect to Mr. Ouellet and the other members, I agree with a lot of their ideas, but security of ports, in my judgment, would be outside the scope of this committee. I think we need to be careful about what we take on, but there is overlap. Natural resources overlaps with many issues, for instance, on climate change. We see that in the House every day, we know there is overlap. I think we need to be mindful of that, but not limited.

But when we start getting into national security issues, the only way I think we could look at that would be in respect of our interest in our natural resource economy infrastructure, maybe our natural resource assets, but it's something that's been looked at by public safety--our infrastructure assets.

My main point is let's get briefed up, but let's have a game plan, and let's deal with those issues that are time sensitive in a timely manner, like softwood lumber.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

My point is I really just want to get a consensus committee, so it's not driven from the chair. We want to establish our agenda as a committee, and sometimes it take a little longer that way.

Point well taken, and the committee will decide how soon we want to get into dealing with a specific issue.

Monsieur Cardin.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Cullen has just raised an important point. Take, for example, softwood lumber. Live trees are considered to be a natural resource. Lumber is an industry concern. Lumber exports are a foreign trade issue. Sustainable development is an environmental consideration. Some issues that fall within this committee's mandate involve several departments.

First of all, it's important to avoid any duplication. Some matters fall within the scope of our mandate. In my opinion, that includes resources and sustainable development. We've skirted the issue of climate change which, although within our committee's mandate, also falls within the purview of the environment committee. We need to safeguard our renewable resources for the future, with an eye to sustainable development. Finite oil and mineral resources, as we well know, are not renewable resources. It's important to ensure that we sustain our natural resources for as long as possible, in the spirit of sustainable development.

As Mr. Cullen was saying earlier, we could discuss softwood lumber at considerable length, but that's also a topic that the industry and foreign trade committees will be taking up. As for the briefing session, I agree with him that it shouldn't take six months. We need to take stock of the situation, then identify departmental plans and urgent questions. Then we can turn our attention without further delay to the priorities that we have identified.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I agree. I'm certainly getting it that the committee is anxious to get at it. We want to move along a little more quickly. That's certainly fair.

I'm thinking that we should try to get the department in sooner rather than later. I don't know if we could do it this week--that's pretty tight--but am I getting the sense that we want to have the minister come, or department officials? How do you want to handle that?

Mr. McGuinty, you're next on the list.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Perhaps I can pick up on something else first and then come back to that.

Of course, everything is interconnected. Mr. Cardin has just shown that by going around the table once, each member was able to propose some important topics for discussion. As a rule, the various topics of discussion proposed are tied to our interests or responsibilities. However, do they constitute a sound basis for a working agenda for the committee?

With respect to going forward on the briefings, I agree with your view, Mr. Chairman, that it's important for us to get to a certain level of understanding before we dive into details about specific challenges. I'd like to see the department officials not only come and talk to us about the mandate of the department, with which we presumably are most centrally preoccupied, but also just remind us very quickly about the constitutional division of responsibilities and powers with respect to natural resources. I'd like to see them speak to the sustainable development aspects of their responsibilities, as they cut across all the natural resource sectors.

I like the idea of the Energy Dialogue Group, but the challenge with the Energy Dialogue Group in isolation is that it is a purely industrial grouping. It does not bring in either consumer views or environmental views. I think we can buttress that and get a more wholesome view.

I'd like to see us start with the department and perhaps put the question to the department officials--as well as the minister, in due course--and anybody who would appear before us as witnesses on what are the salient questions they believe we should be addressing in this committee. What do they believe? These are full-time actors in the natural resource sector. They are the ones who probably know best. Is it a fiscal issue from a mining perspective. Is it a technological and scientific issue from an oil and gas perspective? Is it a regulatory issue from an environmental perspective, or ecological integrity?

I would rather see us flip it a little bit on its head, Mr. Chairman, and ask those who are appearing before us if they can help us think through what the salient questions might be. Of course, we'll ultimately go to the minister and ask the minister what his plans are and what his government's plans are in this regard. Is there some meat and potato that can be dropped on the table here?

Perhaps as soon as this Thursday we could have the departmental officials here to give us what I know already exists inside that large department. The work has been done. I'm sure it's been done for transition. I'm sure it's been done for the government and so on. I don't see why they couldn't come on Thursday and bring us up to speed just generally on questions. How big is this? What part of the GDP is it? Who's responsible for what under the Constitution?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I think that's a very good question, and at this point it's really only a question of time. My understanding is that the department might prefer to come next week. But I think we can get them to come Thursday. I'm not sure of the minister's schedule, but we don't need to have the minister to get into the kinds of points Mr. McGuinty has just talked about. That is generally the mandate of the natural resources department. I think these constitutional questions are a very interesting point with regard to jurisdictions, the federal-provincial issues as they relate to natural resources.

If there is a consensus, let's try to get the department in here on Thursday. I know they can give us a limited version. As you say, they've had to brief a new minister and a change of government. If we can get the minister to lead that off, we will, but in any event, we will try to get the department here on Thursday. Is that generally agreeable to everyone? That's how we start out?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'd also like to continue the other notion of seeking your suggestions as to groups, topics that we may want to be briefed on over the course of the next few weeks. I think Mr. Cullen's suggestion seems to be accepted by people, that we maybe move this agenda up a little in terms of getting further briefings; we may get that done in May and then start into June with a specific topic. Fair enough.

But I'd like to hear from everybody on Thursday too, even at the start of the meeting, or we could have a brief in camera session at the end of the meeting, to seek your input as to who else we might want to be briefed by. We'll start on Thursday, if at all possible, with the department. There are some obvious ones that come up with regard to the larger industries--mining, oil and gas, and that sort of thing, because they have industry associations. Those would be useful. I want to hear everybody's thoughts on who else they might want to have--if there are NGOs, if there are private sector groups or others that have an interest, such as water, for example, or sustainable development. Let's get your ideas, specific or general.

Mr. Allen.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I have a couple of points that concern me. One, we're going to have no choice around this, but on departmental policy, and I would assume departmental estimates and private members' bills, we're going to have to handle those as a matter of course. The other thing is that every time you break yourself into a department or a committee or something, you create a silo, and that concerns me a little, because when we talk about our energy future, it links so much with the environment, it links with agriculture, and it links with forestry.

Being relatively new to this committee process--or completely new to this committee process--I'd just like to understand how we stay integrated with all those other committees and don't get ourselves in a mess. I see in the past we haven't necessarily integrated our energy and our environmental policy very well. I think in the future we're going to have to have a big focus on that.

So that's a concern I have, and I'm hopeful we'll be able to address how we integrate with other committees as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Cullen, you can start the wrap-up.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

On that point, I think I agree with you, Mike, that we need to stay focused in terms of our primary mission. But there's so much overlap in natural resources.

With respect to Mr. Cardin, if you look at, let's say, forestry, there's the growing of trees, there's the processing of trees, and then there are trade agreements. If we apply that so rigidly, I think we wouldn't be fulfilling our responsibilities. I think if you look at softwood lumber, whatever is done there will heavily impact the natural resource economy.

So if we could use as a guiding principle any issue or any policy matter that can impact on the natural resource sector, or that the natural resource sector is driving, it should be of interest to this committee. Then it's a question of do we do it jointly? Is another committee working on it? I think we'd be remiss in just applying a very limited parameter to that.

I think having the department here on Thursday is good. They do have a whole deck, believe me, and they can do that on Thursday, I'm sure. Then at some point I think the minister will come for the estimates, or is it the priorities and plans? I'm not sure of the timing or sequencing of all that, but at least we should get the minister here at some point.

In the interim, I wonder if we could ask the parliamentary secretary to feed into this committee what the general sense of the program of the government is that could take up some time of the committee. That would be helpful.

I think we should get the minister here. When would the minister be called, for example, for the estimates? What's the timing on that?

[The Clerk]

The committee has to report back by November 10.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

On November 10.

[The Clerk]

We have to wait on the reports on plans and priorities that we anticipate at some point.

[The Clerk]

That's--

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

When will they be tabled? There's nothing in the spring, before the House recesses for the summer, that would cause the minister to be called to the committee for estimates or the reports on plans and priorities or anything like that, is that right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

No, not yet. I've spoken to the minister and he's quite amenable to come to the committee earlier on; it's just a question of working out the schedule. We have a representative of the department here, but we haven't got the schedule yet.

I think we can safely presume that we're going to hear from the department on Thursday. We'll start at 11 o'clock with a briefing from the department, with essentially their mandate and perhaps constitutional jurisdictions, whatever, but essentially their mandate, from the department's perspective, what it is this department does specifically. Then we'll get into how it relates to Environment and other departments, International Trade, whatever.

Let's start at 11 o'clock on Thursday with the department officials. Perhaps we should ask them for an hour and a half of their time. We may have some questions, but I think generally we'll probably go for the first hour with an information session and then allow some questions. But my sense is that most of the questions would probably relate to seeking further clarifications of matters, or written responses, rather than things they had been asked.

Let's have an open dialogue. We'll have them start off with maybe 40 minutes of briefing on Thursday and then have an open dialogue with the committee, if that's amenable to people. We'll wrap that up within the first 90 minutes so we would have 30 minutes at the end of that meeting to perhaps continue a general discussion of agenda setting and priorities. If it's agreeable to the committee, I suggest that maybe that last 30 minutes on Thursday be in camera, wherein we can decide what we want to do with the future committee meetings.

Is that agreeable to everybody?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Then let's start off on the right foot and get done early.

Is there any further business before we adjourn for today?

Great. Thank you very much. We'll see you Thursday at 11 o'clock.

This meeting is adjourned.