Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 6th, 2012

[Mike Cleland]

Let me take it back to the premise of your question, which goes to carbon pricing. I am not going to comment on the government's respecting its obligations or not. On a personal basis, I think Kyoto was a vast overreach, and it didn't surprise me at all that we haven't been able to meet it. This is harder than anybody thought when we were doing this in the 1990s.

One thing is for certain, in my view and in the view of my colleagues at QUEST: if we are going to get at carbon, we need to get at all of the carbon in the economy, and we need to do it as efficiently as possible. The only way to do those two things is through pricing.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thanks.

I'd like to share my time with Mr. Julian.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead please, Mr. Julian. You have three and a half minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Liu.

I am going to share my time with Mr. Nicholls, so we're getting all our questions out.

Mr. Dutton, I just want to come briefly back to what you raised around the innovative pipeline strategy. This is a real issue. Pipeline safety in Canada is increasingly a matter of concern to a lot of Canadians right across the country. The whole issue of best practices and the lack of government regulation is something that comes to the fore.

Could you give us in a few words what you think the regulatory framework should be, so that all companies—and I'm thinking particularly of some of the bad apples that had spills that were caused through negligence—would have the same standard of safety applied and some of the good practices you're bringing would actually be current throughout the industry?

[Robert Dutton]

With respect to the current environment that regulates pipeline construction and installation, it's my opinion that what currently exists is absolutely adequate. What we've innovated is simply an installation technique that doesn't necessarily affect the final product, per se, but it does affect the installation. Where we have focused our intention is on minimizing our environmental footprint and making sure we have done as little harm as we possibly can in the installation of our pipelines.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

I certainly appreciate your message on that. The reality is the public would not share any statement that says the regulatory framework is adequate right now. There is increasing concern in the public right across the country because of the spills we've seen over the last few months.

Thank you for that, and if you have any specific suggestions to make to committee, if you could follow up in writing, it would be very helpful.

[Robert Dutton]

Certainly.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

I found your presentation very interesting.

I'm going to pass my turn to Mr. Nicholls.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Julian.

Going back to Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Cleland, I'm glad you mentioned the long game about energy, because it truly is a long game. Transition through renewables isn't going to happen tomorrow, obviously, but we have to start on that path.

One of the challenges to implementing renewables is the implementation of a smart grid. The sums involved in making that smart grid across Canada will be substantial and will require a vision that goes beyond the current electoral cycle. I'm happy that you mentioned that.

I'd like you to address that briefly and also this fact: Canada is not in the top 10 innovators, according to the World Economic Forum, but a lot of the countries that are in that top 10 have embraced renewables. These are countries like Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Could you address where Canada stands vis-à-vis those international partners and how we can improve? How can we get into that top 10?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Gilmour, go ahead.

[Brent Gilmour]

Thank you.

I'll start with the last question first. I think what we're seeing across Canada is it's a long game, but we're catching up. I think that's the underlying theme that you're hearing from all industry, and hopefully that has been presented to the committees. They're now starting to see the opportunities for their marketplace, but the way you create the marketplace is by investing in their adoption.

Therefore, the point for QUEST is that you have to have the policy framework. That's one of our key points that we've been talking about. If you don't have the policy environment, it doesn't matter what you throw at it: it's not going to stick. You have to have something that people want to invest in. I think that's what we're seeing now, both from the federal and the provincial direction. I think the committee's work in the past has helped to create that policy framework across Canada, and we want to encourage that.

I have one other point on your first question, and it really speaks to how you get the institutional knowledge across Canada about creating a smart energy community or a network or using any of these technologies: people have to understand what they are, and they also have to understand what to do with them.

A point that was raised earlier was what the federal government could continue to do. Colleges and universities are now starting to come up with programs for training, whether it be engineering or electrical. These are from photovoltaics to geothermal exchange systems to what have you. What we have not done, though, is engage HRSDC with mapping. What would be required to have a degree in this area? What does it mean to be a specialist in this area, to be ready to apply these technologies that are coming forward? I think that's something we should be looking at.

Programs like SSHRC and others that are encouraging research and development in these areas have been focused on this, but it's not coordinated, and I think that's what we really want to be talking about: how to coordinate investment in training and education programs across Canada. We're at that stage now; it's time to take a really solid look at that, and that will help to build the road and the framework for smart energy communities across Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Nicholls and Mr. Gilmour.

Mr. Trost, you have up to five minutes.

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

We have four minutes left in committee, Mr. Chair.

Really quickly, could we have 10-, 15-, or 20-second summaries to answer Mr. Calkins's questions from those of you who still remember them, if you want to.

Mr. Gora, he'd asked about the price point. Do you have any comments about that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Go ahead, please, Mr. Gora.

[Christopher Gora]

Thank you.

In answering that question, I think it's very important to point out that the tidal and river business is where wind was in its first year, so we're really talking right now about a pre-commercial industry. We certainly have some initial prices, but those aren't the ones we're shooting for. I would say we're still multiples of where wind is, but that is just the function of where we're at.

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

You're still a few years out there. Not to cut you off too quickly, but—

[Christopher Gora]

That's right.

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

—the other gentleman who got Mr. Calkins's questions—

[Mike Cleland]

Mr. Chairman, I will give a brief.... You talked about the barriers, and I think you touched on a number of them, as did Brent in his comment.

To take it back to the basics, and I thought Mr. Dutton captured it very well in his initial presentation, it's not so much that they're new technologies as it's doing things we haven't been doing, but doing them differently.

You have to start there, and that's where we think a network like QUEST adds real value, because it helps people take that step back, and then you can get at the more specific barriers. You really have to get over that initial leap that the way we've been doing it for 100 years isn't necessarily the way we should be doing it.

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

Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Dutton, do you have any remarks to clean up what Mr. Calkins asked?

[Robert Dutton]

I have nothing further to add.

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

The other week I was reading about the shale industry and how it's developed in North America, and that other places in the world may not be able to take advantage of the technology because they're not set up for it. They have state-owned enterprises, and shale fracking was mostly driven by smaller companies.

Mr. Cleland, because of your background on various things, how can we take advantage not just of innovations in our country, but take that raw science, those raw innovations from around the world, and apply them here?

I know you're going to go back to your basic principles, but it's a little different from taking the technology from its inception. We want to sponge off the rest of the technology in the rest of the world. Do we do anything differently than we would if we were trying to get it from the initial light bulb?

There are many places where you can take technology, and in the shale gas industry a lot of countries are going to lose that opportunity because they can't take advantage of a technology developed in Canada and the United States.

[Mike Cleland]

That's a tough question. I'm not sure that I have a very good answer for you, but let me make just one observation.

What this really goes to—and again, it's a little bit related to my last point—is skills, business models, and understanding how you actually get it done. The way you do that is by free exchange, which includes an open investment environment. To the extent that our investors are working in other parts of the world, and vice versa, we're going to get those sorts of exchanges. I think that's probably the most critical variable.

[Brent Gilmour]

Just to follow up on that, there are opportunities, and I think this is what the committee would like to hear about.

There are organizations like BRE from England. We've heard Mr. Gora refer to England quite a bit. They are interested in coming over to Canada and setting up an innovation park. That park would be targeting, though, those groups in Canada that are manufacturers and producers of products for energy efficiency or integrated community solutions and systems. What they would like to do is showcase that and allow people to come and visit and tour. You have to touch, feel, and engage with this stuff to understand how you can actually draw on it and use it in your community.

I think these are the kinds of activities and directions that, in terms of time and effort, we would like to see further investment in. I think that would actually lead you to allow that kind of opportunity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Mr. Trost.

I'd like to thank all of you for your presentations today and for your answers to the questions. We had an abbreviated meeting, and you've delivered a lot of information that will be helpful to the committee as we put together the report. Thank you very much.

Thanks to all the members of the committee. We'll see you on Tuesday.

The meeting is adjourned.