Thank you for the question.
The management of energy resources in Canada is indeed a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments.
The provincial governments are the owners of resources within their provincial boundaries. They have the primary responsibility for regulating their development, including the exploration, production, gathering, and transmission of energy within their borders, as well as the downstream use of that energy within their market: the local distribution, storage, and marketing, as well as energy prices within provincial boundaries.
For the most part provincial governments have followed market-based approaches to establishing energy prices within their jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have chosen to regulate markets in some manner, including Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Manitoba, and B.C. The methods in which they do this vary across jurisdictions.
In terms of the federal role, with respect to energy resource development, the Government of Canada regulates the interprovincial and international movement of energy through the National Energy Board, regulating movement across provincial borders or across international borders. The federal government also has specific responsibilities for energy development in Canada's frontier areas, in the north, or Canada's offshore. In Atlantic Canada we share the management of oil and gas development with our provincial colleagues in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia.
Outside of a national emergency the federal government has no responsibility or ability to intervene in energy markets. The provincial governments have this responsibility. In the event of a severe energy supply disruption, the federal government does have emergency powers in place where it could, following the request of a province, intervene directly in energy markets and implement these emergency powers to direct the movement of energy.
In the case of propane markets last winter we saw—and experiences were localized—temporary disruptions in energy markets. At the federal level we never received a formal request from provincial governments to directly intervene in energy markets. At the federal level we continued to monitor energy markets very closely. We work with our colleagues at the Competition Bureau and at the National Energy Board, as well as within provincial governments and within industry, to monitor very closely developments that were happening so that we had the best advice and information available to inform policy discussions in terms of any appropriate steps that may have been needed.