Natural Resources Committee on April 28th, 2009

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Since you're doing most of it anyway, it really doesn't cost much; a couple of summer students and you're done.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[John Cockburn]

Yes.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

I won't hold you to that one specifically.

All I will say is that I'm glad to know that I can stockpile all my light bulbs in the basement for the future.

[Carol Buckley]

We won't come looking for you.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Only when I set up my dealership at the back of my yard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Trost, you weren't suggesting that the committee travel to Mexico to study this, were you?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Actually, Mr. Chair, I would suggest that you could go to Mexico and I'll go to California.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay.

Mr. Allen, you had another question.

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

I would just like to follow up on one of John's comments.

If there are five provinces with these standards that we have, is it a possibility that on the interprovincial side, the province could use this as an interprovincial trade barrier to prevent things from crossing from one to another, if one takes a higher standard than another?

[John Cockburn]

I can't see how they would use the federal law as an interprovincial trade barrier. They might conceivably use their own standards. They govern their own markets, so if they wanted to restrict access to their markets, and they had a firm that produced highly efficient products, it would be within their domain to execute the desire through that legislation. Presumably, they would then enter into a discussion about interprovincial barriers.

I think it would be quite separate, then, from what the federal legislation might bring up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I think the last questioner is Mr. Anderson....

Oh, Mr. Hiebert, go ahead.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be here and to hear more about this particular bill.

My attention has been drawn to clause 5 in the bill. It would amend paragraph 20(1)(a) in the act, and reads as follows:

prescribing as an energy-using product any manufactured product, or class of manufactured products, that is designed to operate using electricity, oil, natural gas or any other form or source of energy or that affects or controls energy consumption;

That is a very broad definition--anything that “affects or controls energy consumption”.

There's a company very close to my constituency that's called Entech. They sell a very sophisticated paint product that has an R-24 rating. It's basically like insulation that lasts three to five times as long as paint. It's used by NASA.

This paint would affect or control energy consumption. Does this bill have an impact on their product?

[John Cockburn]

Well, let's see; it would have to be shipped across an interprovincial border, and it would have to be a product that is for sale--

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

It is.

[John Cockburn]

--and that affects energy use.

[Carol Buckley]

We'd have to write a standard against it, but the amendment would bring it into the scope of the Energy Efficiency Act should we determine that there were material savings and there was enough variation in that kind of product in the marketplace to warrant bringing a standard into effect.

Just because the amended act would allow such a product to be in its scope doesn't mean it would be worth our while to get into the marketplace. If all the products like that were similar, we wouldn't need to address it.

But could we get in and regulate that people use that paint instead of other paints?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That would be one of my questions.

[Carol Buckley]

Theoretically, I think, it means we could.

[John Cockburn]

Theoretically, they could. It would be subject to a regulatory process in which the scientific claims and the cost-benefit analysis and the energy savings would all be subject to an open and public consultation and analysis.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

As far as I know, they're the only ones that produce this particular product. So if you were to pass regulations, they would have a monopoly on paint, with such an R rating.

[Carol Buckley]

But that would be part of our market analysis in terms of what the regulation would do to the marketplace. Were we to say that only this paint makes it in Canada and there are no other suppliers of it, that would be an enormous part of our market assessment, if you're creating a monopoly for a company.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

How many employees are you going to need to actually evaluate all the different products out there, to regulate, based on this bill?

[Carol Buckley]

The bill doesn't tell us that we have to regulate everything that falls into our scope. We're two years into a four-year program cycle right now. What John does, as we head into a cycle, is evaluate the marketplace and look at the most material energy savings from products that fall into the scope of the act, and by doing a technical, an economic, and a marketplace assessment, we'll then propose which products we propose go forward for improved stringency of regulation or brand-new regulation.

Right now, paint is nowhere near the top of the list that we're currently working on. We're working on a current list now as part of this four-year cycle, and John is already thinking about the next list. It's a long list, but you're only going to carve off the ones near the top of it because we only have a budget to do 30 regulations in this four-year period.