Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. McGuinty. Your time is up.

Mr. Anderson, go ahead up to five minutes, please.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you gentlemen for being here today. It's a great day, and you've given some very interesting testimony.

Mr. Morrison, I'm wondering how the machine is powered. How do you power it?

[Keith Morrison]

It doesn't require a lot of power. Really, almost nine-volt batteries is all it requires.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

And it will do that kind of work with a small amount of power like that? It sounds incredible actually.

Mr. Kolebaba, you talked about infrastructure and the need for viable infrastructure. Have you done any work on or given any consideration to whether a type of a P3 project would actually work in an area like that? I think there has been some discussion in Saskatchewan about opening up the north there as well and perhaps having private and government involvement in that. Have you talked about that or is that part of your presentation?

[Mark Kolebaba]

When you say P3, you're talking—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Private-public partnerships. You bring it—

[Mark Kolebaba]

Yes. I'll put it this way. There are a number of deposits across the north that are not economical based on one company building a single road. But if you have enough of these deposits along a path, then it starts to become economical if the companies kick in a portion of that road, and if, say, the government pulls in the part that--even if there are no deposits--is needed to get you to that port or to the railhead.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

So overlapping claims and jurisdictions would come into play, I guess, to some extent, wouldn't they?

[Mark Kolebaba]

Yes, for sure.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Gingerich, you were talking about LNG being a good option. The reality is, with bringing in greenhouse gas emissions regulations and that kind of thing, that clearly the cost of our electricity will be going up, whether it's coal-generated or LNG. Have you given consideration to that?

The second part of the question is this: have you given any consideration at all to talking about small nuclear plants? We've had some presentations here about them as well, in the last Parliament.

Then I'll pass this off to Mr. Trost. I think he has a couple of questions too.

[John Gingerich]

Clearly, I think small nuclear has potential. I worked for Eldorado Nuclear at one time in my career. Obviously it can suffer a setback, given the issues that happened in Japan. It is a long-term solution. I don't think it's near-term enough. With LNG obviously we're seeing a vast supply and it doesn't have the same environmental risks. It has some improvements. Any combustible fuel will have an environmental impact.

The thing I learned a long time ago in my career is there is no such thing as a free lunch, whether we go nuclear, go with LNG, or stick with diesel. There is an environmental price to be paid, and there is a potential other downstream risk whichever path you take.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Trost, you have about two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess my question is more about regulatory aspects. We had a witness the other day who talked about his experiences with Greenland and Newfoundland, where they had single individuals in charge for the entire regulatory process to speed things through and to help people navigate through the system.

Have any of you gentlemen worked with or experienced a system similar to that? If you have, do you have any comments? If you haven't, what do you think are the things that could be done, other than some of the land claim issues, which have been addressed, to speed up the regulations in the north so that people can get in and out in the rather sunlight- and weather-limited exploration seasons?

[Mark Kolebaba]

I can answer part of that. In places like Newfoundland, it might be one person, but there is a series of criteria that have to be met.

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

Newfoundland is going to this system, apparently. They aren't quite there yet.

[Mark Kolebaba]

If you can meet these certain criteria, then it's a very easy decision for somebody to make at the end, whereas what we have in the territories is that every project is looked at in its own light. A lot of the information is quite repetitive; that can be the streamlined part of it.

[John Gingerich]

Yes. There's actually a program in place called CanNor, which is trying to set up a similar process for the north, and it really is important. No one is saying to go and cut corners, but it is a nightmare of coordinating and logistics for people to actually get their jobs done. The water test.... We do numerous studies.

So it's a streamlining of the process to help navigate the problem. As it is now, you can essentially get dragged into multiple, multiple years in just simply the inefficiency of the system, not because there's necessarily an impediment or somebody opposing it. It's just a problem.

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

Do you think we should wait for the CanNor process to work its way out because it seems to be in the way...? Or do you recommend other changes or just an acceleration of the process?

[John Gingerich]

As I said, the one problem currently that we recognize is the capacity issue. There needs to be funding to support and train. I know that in places INAC has stepped in paces to try to help fill the gap. There are not enough experienced people to sit on all the boards and committees and to review all the projects. This is another bottleneck that's occurring and that's hurting projects. The CanNor process will streamline policy, but right now there's a system that can't be implemented, period, because of the lack of capacity in Nunavut within its current administration.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Trost.

Mr. Lizon.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentations.

The first question I have is to Mr. Morrison. You mentioned that you can map with this wonderful device down to 10 kilometres, correct?

[Keith Morrison]

That's correct.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I have a question. Just on the practical side of it, why would you...? Ten kilometres? Nobody would mine anything at all that is 10 kilometres down at the present time.

[Keith Morrison]

The deeper applications are in support of petroleum exploration and identifying gross characteristics of the sedimentary base and where the oil traps are contained. In many situations, basement structures that affect how the sediments are deposited have an important impact on where the traps are and the types of traps. That information is predominantly used by the petroleum industry.

Mining data would be from the surface down to probably a kilometre in terms of application, and groundwater would be obviously very near the surface.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

After you are done with mapping the area and you've come up with the final product, which is the maps, how accurate are they on the actual geology that's in the area?