Natural Resources Committee on March 27th, 2012

[Serge Dupont]

No, it does not. I can bring a colleague of mine to the table to elaborate.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

No, it's okay. I just needed to know. It doesn't exist anymore, does it?

[Serge Dupont]

I want to check and get you the best answer.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

All I need is a quick yes or no. Can a small business applying for support to make its installations more energy efficient get any funding from the federal government right now? Can they get online? Can I tell my constituents where to go to apply with that money?

[Carol Buckley, Director General, Office of Energy Efficiency, Department of Natural Resources]

Thank you for the question.

The grant provisions under the small and medium ecoENERGY program no longer exist. They were offered for four years, but your constituents can still go to our website and call our staff in order to get other services, such as benchmarking services, installation guides, technical information, financial information, training, and a whole range of services to assist them with energy efficiency recommendations, but not financial assistance.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

There's no financial support. So that's gone too. Okay.

Let's talk about SDTC. In 2001 our government sold Petro-Canada. We took $550 million. We put it into an SDTC fund. It has funded 228 demonstration projects, many of which are now preparing to go public. It was set up because at the time we were trying to prepare Canada to compete in the Clean Tech Competition globally, the Clean Tech Competition that President Obama referred to front and centre in his last big speech. It was set up to fill a void in our venture capital markets.

Right now, as of March 31, several days away, if a Canadian start-up wants to apply to SDTC, is there any money available for the Canadian start-up?

[Serge Dupont]

Mr. Chair, I think the best people to answer the question would be Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Sustainable Development Technology Canada still has a fund. The fund has accrued interest. Sustainable Development Technology Canada has to, with its current essentially cash position, determine how many projects it can still fund while continuing to operate for the time that it will require to manage the existing projects.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Dupont, it was on the front page—

[Serge Dupont]

There may be a time—

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Dupont, they were on the front page of the “Report on Business” two days ago. Vicky Sharpe gave an interview and informed Canadians that there is no more money and that the fund will run out as of this fiscal year.

Unless we see a replenishment in this budget, SDTC will also be gone. Is that true?

[Serge Dupont]

Again, Mr. Chair, I think one would have to ask Vicky Sharpe about the resources that are currently with the entity.

I mention as well that there is the NextGen biofuels fund, which is another fund SDTC administers. Again, one will have to see in the budget or in subsequent financial decisions of the Government of Canada whether and to what extent SDTC may have additional resources.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

How's my time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

You have about 10 seconds, time for a very short question and a very short answer.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I have a very short comment.

For Canadians, the ecoENERGY program is gone for their homes. For small businesses, the commercial buildings retrofit program is gone for their businesses, and for large companies that are trying to start up in the clean tech sector, according to the president of SDTC, that fund will be gone as of March 31 as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. McGuinty.

We go finally to Mr. Trost for about five minutes. Then we go to the votes on the main estimates.

Go ahead, Mr. Trost.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't know if you'll have any information on this. I just saw a small note about funding for SaskPower and Maritime Electric Company of $1.2 million. Since I come from Saskatchewan, that piqued my interest, so out of sheer curiosity, what was that for?

[Serge Dupont]

It was way before my time, I guess. About 10 years ago there was a commitment of $17 million. If memory serves, about $12.5 million was to Maritime Electric and about $4.5 million was to SaskPower. It was to fund in those two jurisdictions acquisition by the federal government of renewable power, wind power basically.

It served as a guaranteed customer for 10 years for those two utilities to sell and deliver wind power. They have obviously established the capacity to do that. That capacity being established, the support is no longer required. Essentially the government has eliminated the subsidy.

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

So this was $17 million over 10 years.

[Serge Dupont]

That's correct. It was over 10 years.

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

So it was really small potatoes in the overall scheme of things. Okay. I was just curious.

Turning to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, AECL, having been on this committee, I do understand that even if you're in the public and you think it's been completely privatized, there are still going to be some expenses to go forward.

I was wondering if you might break down a little bit what money is going to be spent on AECL, and in particular what's going to be spent on ongoing finishing up, shall we say, of commercial obligations, commercial contracts, and if we can divide that away as much as possible from the costs from the more, how shall we say, public policy initiatives that it has done. If you could briefly go through that, I would appreciate it.

[Serge Dupont]

Sure. I appreciate doing so.

What you have in the main estimates are two components. You have $102 million, which is essentially for the nuclear laboratories, because that is now what is basically left of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. The $102 million is roughly the annual appropriation that Atomic Energy of Canada has had over a number of years. Of course, they've had other additions of funding, but that has always been the base. That is renewed again in the main estimates.

The second portion that's in the main estimates is the contractual obligations, essentially, that are related to the former CANDU reactor division as that division is completing the projects at Point Lepreau and at Bruce Power. Also, eventually, if the Government of Quebec and Hydro-Québec decide to move forward with Gentilly-2, there's also a contract there that we have to honour. Those essentially were contracts that turned out, quite unfortunately, as the committee knows, to be non-lucrative contracts for Atomic Energy of Canada, and therefore would not simply be bought lock, stock, and barrel by the private sector.

So we basically are subcontracting to SNC-Lavalin to complete those projects. That is essentially the number you see here. That is a number that will go down as these projects are completed and get off the books. When SNC-Lavalin develops its new projects, such as, for example, the project in Argentina now, which is a refurbishment, or the projects in Ontario that are refurbishments and then may be new builds, then there will be no funding line in the federal budget related to that, because it's going to be on the books of a private sector....

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

Over how many years is the estimate right now? I realize that there can always be engineering delays and that things of that nature can happen. But what is the timeline we're looking at for that line in the expenditures to be eliminated? In how many years will I not be asking this question?

[Serge Dupont]

We're quite optimistic with regard to Point Lepreau, of course. Actually, the regulator now has allowed the reactor at Point Lepreau to be refuelled, which is really quite a step, and of course we've had a first start-up—unsuccessful, but that's normal—at Bruce, so those two projects are pretty well completed now. The Wolsong project in Korea is back on. That also, of course, was a deficit-making kind of project, but it's back on and basically supplying power to the grid in Korea, so that's good.

So really, the outstanding one will be Gentilly-2, and there we're a bit dependent on some decisions by Hydro-Québec as to when and whether that project will go ahead. But obviously AECL has done some work on that, and there may be more.

I would say that we are basically seeing the tail now. It's coming down, and within a matter of two or three years there should be no further line in the mains or supplementaries for those items.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

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

Thank you very much to both of you for being here and for staying for the second hour. Monsieur Dupont is, of course, the Deputy Minister of the Department of Natural Resources, and Mr. Merklinger—who I don't think we introduced properly before, so I will now—is the assistant deputy minister and chief financial officer of the corporate management and services sector.

Thanks very much to both of you, gentlemen.

We will now go to the votes.

Do you have a point of order, Monsieur Gravelle?

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Yes. I just want to clarify something. I asked Mr. Dupont about the oil and gas tax breaks. Is he going to supply those numbers to this committee?