Evidence of meeting #82 for Natural Resources in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was electricity.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
They're forever.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
How long would it take to construct, for example, the Canadian portion of the Keystone XL pipeline?
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
All that's left right now? We only have about 500 K left. That's two seasons for us. A season lasts about nine weeks.
If he were to give us the permit today, we would have a summer season, once it dried up, of eight to nine weeks. We'd have a winter season once it froze up for another eight to nine weeks. We'd be done with the pipeline portion.
But it allows us to keep working up north.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
So in other words it would be much more beneficial for your workers if we were to upgrade a refinery as compared to building a pipeline.
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
No. We need the pipeline. We need—
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
I'm not saying you don't need the pipeline. What I'm saying is more jobs—
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
There are more man hours in refining and upgrading than there are in building pipelines.
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
Forever.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
There you go. That's what I wanted you to understand.
Mr. Burpee, in your opening remarks you said that we needed federal leadership in the energy field. Could you expand on that, please?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
With respect to electricity, it sometimes takes the federal government to help the provinces work together. That's basically what we're after in this case, at one level in terms of an energy strategy.
So every province in Canada took the approach that it had to be electricity self-sufficient. The first change to that is now Nova Scotia, and through the utility doing a deal with Nalcor and Newfoundland and Labrador. The federal government played a key role in that by providing a loan guarantee to support the infrastructure build, which allowed them to borrow at a lower rate, which is what made it work. That's to the benefit of all the electricity consumers, both in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Nova Scotia.
Beyond that it's really about standardization for a smart grid and for other improvements in the overall system so that we are able to harmonize the approaches. That's where we're looking for federal government leadership.
NDP
Claude Gravelle NDP Nickel Belt, ON
In northern Ontario we can produce electricity for about 2¢ per kilowatt hour, but we can't do anything with it because there's no grid. What would it take to build a grid that would transport electricity from coast to coast to coast?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
Actually, a lot of the grid does exist today, more than people recognize. Ontario has as much interconnection with Quebec as it does with New York or Michigan, which are the other two main interconnects.
The weakness in Ontario is the poor interconnection across Ontario. So if you look at the tie from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie, there's one. There is a plan under way to strengthen that tie now and upgrade it considerably. It's going through the regulatory process to actually select the group that will build it. That will start to tie in also, not only to strengthen that connection, but to open up where there are some other hydroelectric resources, such as Little Jackfish, north of Nipigon. There are a few places like that.
When you say it's 2¢ per kilowatt hour, that's not for anything new; that's for existing.... You can't build anything new at 2¢ per kilowatt hour.
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Leon Benoit
Thank you, Mr. Gravelle.
We now go to Mr. Trost for up to five minutes.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start with Mr. Telford. As we've been pointing out, we will only really get energy export diversification with a better labour force. Listening to the testimony I was thinking of this in relation to two things: one, the apprenticeship grants, which have been done for the last few years, etc., and the government's still rolling out of the education grants announced in the new budget.
Thinking first of the apprenticeship grants, do you have any commentary on how those have worked or not worked for apprentices coming in and for your membership?
Also, what advice would you give with this new education program being rolled out by the government or new job training grants that are coming out? Again, they're not fully formed. How would they help to meet the needs that you see? What advice would you give? I know we're not the human resources committee, but what is the basic advice you would give so that we can meet the needs that we've been talking about today?
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
I think you had two questions there.
First of all, the training grants that are out there are very important to us. You know, 15 or 20 years ago every apprentice who came to us was 18 years of age, right out of high school. We're having 27-, 28-, 30-year old apprentices now with a wife and two kids.He's already got the bills. It's a different lifestyle. Those grants are very important to those types of people. Anything that they can get to help pay some of their tuitions and things like that is all a help.
I think I've understood your second question. Where I see a little bit of waste is on teaching trades or skills that have no job at the end. One of the aspects of my trade is welding. If you can't get that person to be a certified welder, you're wasting your time. There are no jobs for uncertified people. The people—male, female, whatever they are—have got to be able to pass government-standard tests. To waste a lot of time on people who can't do the work is not productive for them or for the people who want to hire them.
I'm not so sure about some of the trades that they teach at the community colleges. I think they should look around and really see where the deficiencies are. Heavy crane operators have been in short supply in Canada for 10 years, yet you can't find a community college that would offer a crane operator course.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK
This is why I'm asking this question, because your guys are the boots on the ground.
What do you advise us to do with this new program to make that fit and work so that, as you said with the heavy crane operators, jobs like that get filled, so people who are not using their full potential can actually get involved in our natural resources sector? What would be your recommendations as to what Jim Flaherty and what Stephen Harper need to do with their new program to make it work?
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
Zero in on the specific trades—don't use the shotgun effect. They've got to zero in on where the shortages are. I would say that the most TFWs right now for such a small workforce are in heavy equipment operation. We need heavy equipment operators in this country, and you can turn out heavy equipment operators in a couple of semesters with some training at community college.
We need welders; we desperately need welders. I'm heading to Venezuela in about four weeks to look at welders. I don't want to bring in welders from Venezuela. I'm sorry, call me what you want, but I don't want to bring in welders from Venezuela. I want to teach young Canadians how to weld.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK
Can you expand on that that point? I was a geophysicist before I got into this, not from the trades, but I worked with guys who were in the trades. Could you explain again, because from what I understood, you're basically saying, or intimating, that we should have temporary foreign workers for things like journeymen so that we can then get more apprentices trained, and then we can phase out the journeymen as we get more people through—
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
You can phase out the temporary foreign workers.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK
You can phase out the temporary foreign worker because then you would have Canadian journeymen. I got that right.
Do you want to expand a little bit more on that?
Director of Canadian Affairs, United Association Canada, United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada
If you looked at jobs in Alberta right now, they're desperately in need of welders. We don't have any more in Canada; we're tapped. If we got five welders from the United States—and that's where we're going now—on a job site, two Canadian pipefitters are going to go to work for each welder. Those are ten Canadian pipefitters who are going to work. If ten Canadian pipefitters go to work, five apprentices go to work. So we get five TFWs and we put fifteen Canadians to work.
That's what happens in my trade. I don't know about the other trades, but those are the numbers in my trade.