Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 10th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Dupont, could you get that information for the committee and send it to us?

[Serge Dupont]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thanks very much. It is a rather small amount in terms of the budget we're working with.

Mr. Hiebert, go ahead.

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

But Mr. Chair, every dollar is a dollar that needs to be scrutinized by the government.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

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

We're not going to let taxpayers down in terms of our investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

And that's exactly why we will get the answer for you, Mr. Hiebert.

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

Thank you.

There's another on page 4, at the bottom. It's among the notes, “Voted Appropriations”. It says $267,000, “Funding to meet existing demands and forecasted increases in regulatory workload associated with industry growth”. It's under the National Energy Board subtitle.

I'm wondering if you have any information that you can provide to the committee on that expenditure.

[Cassie Doyle]

Yes, I could, thank you.

In the supplementary estimates (B) we're requesting, it's essentially a reprofile of $260,000, which was received late in fiscal year 2007-08. So $267,000 is allocated for information management renewal at the National Energy Board. The additional funds were required as there was insufficient time available to complete the project prior to year end, so we're asking that these funds be reprofiled from last fiscal year to be allocated in this fiscal year to complete work for which there was insufficient time in the last fiscal year.

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

I see.

Mr. Allen, you can have the balance of my time.

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

How much do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You have two minutes, Mr. Allen.

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

All right. This will take up that two minutes, I'm sure.

In the minister's statement, on page 7, she said “As for the NRU reactor itself and ensuring our supply of medical isotopes....” and “...Canada brought the key international players together at a global forum in Paris last month....” and “I am pleased that all participants agreed to collaborate in fostering the development of contingency plans....” Can we say when this process started, or has it started, and what are the time targets for finishing those contingency plans?

[Serge Dupont]

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to answer the question. It's a good question. This will involve a lot of work by a lot of different organizations, in fact, and different parties.

What has emerged in the meeting hosted by the Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris is a necessity for different parts of this industry or sector to collaborate on contingency planning. That includes the reactor owners, for example, who have already, including AECL, now been collaborating more closely in a group with European reactors to try to coordinate reactor schedules. That has already started. They need to further that work and ensure that indeed they are properly coordinated with respect to planned outages.

It also concerns the medical community itself, which through the nuclear medicine societies in Canada and internationally is now agreed on the need to come together, share best practices on how to address shortages, how to ensure that there's proper triage and priorities, and so forth. This is going to continue. Indeed, they have a meeting of the international association in Toronto in June, where this is going to be on the agenda.

One that is continuing as well and that is important in the mix is the private industry group of players who are in the middle here, who are distributors. More work needs to be done with that industry to ensure that in a situation of shortage the isotopes are shipped efficiently. This work includes the regulators as well who have to work on this—nuclear regulators, but also transport regulators, for example. What was agreed in Paris as well is that there would be a working group convened under the auspices of the NEA to try to coordinate all this. This working group, we expect, will be struck at a meeting in late April.

I cannot give you a specific timeline to arrive at a final product, but these are some of the timelines, and certainly the working group will be important in trying to bring this all together.

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

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

We go now to the NDP, to Mr. Cullen, possibly splitting the time with Mr. Bruce Hyer.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question. Are we in negotiations to sign on to IRENA, the Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Agency? This is an initiative out of the federal German government. Canada was noted for its absence at the recent signing ceremonies in Germany. Is there any process that Natural Resources Canada is being involved in with IRENA?

[Cassie Doyle]

I don't believe we are involved. I would add that we belong to a number of international bodies on renewable energy. I can get you the details of those.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I assume you folks read the quotation from Mr. Vaughan's recent report. In it, the environment commissioner notes “a claim of expected results even though it is very unlikely that it will be able to report real, measurable, and verifiable results.”

Mr. Vaughan, in auditing your government's work on climate change and other pollutants, notes that you're not measuring results. The predecessor to Minister Raitt was involved in the issue of the bus transit pass subsidy. The reports coming in now are showing that the government is spending about $6,000 per tonne of greenhouse gas savings. This is extraordinarily expensive, considering that carbon is trading at about $30 on the world market. Is there anything being done in your department to start measuring better and accounting for money spent and the choices you have going into the future?

[Cassie Doyle]

Thank you for the question. Just to clarify, the tax credit you're referring to is not part of my department's mandate. It comes under Environment Canada.

But I will say that in terms of measurement we do have processes in place for measuring the impacts of the programs we are funding and investing in. In fact, GHG emissions is something we are tracking in all of the ecoENERGY investments we're making under the department.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You were talking about choices earlier in terms of which to fund. The government is funding carbon capture as one sort of showpiece item. Is the department going to make public, or at least available to this committee, the criteria that are used to choose between energy options, the certain amount of savings or job creation potential that exists with this expenditure of public money versus another? We have a difficult time sorting through what the government is choosing and what criteria it is based on. Is it tonnes, is it how many tonnes per dollar, is it how many jobs per dollar invested? Will you be making any of those criteria available to us?

[Cassie Doyle]

I think it's a fair question. As I mentioned, we're in the process right now of just defining the parameters around this clean energy fund and the investments we've received in the budget. We could certainly come back, once those decisions are made, to discuss that with the committee.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

That would be very helpful.

I'll pass the rest of my time to Mr. Hyer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Bruce Hyer.

[Bruce Hyer, NDP, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, NRCan staff.

I am a new member from Thunder Bay. I'm a forester, among other things, and I'm interested in the ways we can help forestry across Canada, in northwestern Ontario, in Thunder Bay, and in our small towns that are, as I'm sure you know, in big trouble.

I was surprised to see the money in the budget and the estimates for public relations in forestry in foreign markets. I wasn't aware that the problem in forestry today was public relations. I'm not quite sure why we're spending money there, when what we really need are ways to reduce energy costs and improve energy efficiency in the forest industry, and achieve value-added, which we've all been talking about for decades and don't seem to get. The biggest issue of all is that our companies and mills across Canada are undercapitalized, and they are having problems with access to credit.

On another day or in another venue I'll ask about the innovation funds, which fascinate me, but is there really a public relations problem in our present or potential export markets? What is that problem, and why do we need to spend money on it?

The second one is much bigger. When the minister was here she opened the question of the budgets. Are you aware--or could you direct me to a different agency--if there is any funding available within NRCan for innovation; for value-added new initiatives and really moving that forward; for energy efficiency in outdated mills in the forest industry across Canada; and for credit supports, which is the really big one?

On page 81, the budget mentions a business credit availability program of about $5 billion. Do you know if any of that is available to forest companies across northwestern Ontario--like Thunder Bay Fine Papers, which is undercapitalized; and Longlac Wood Industries, which needs a facelift, etc.--to save those jobs?