Good morning. Thank you for inviting us to address you.
My comments today are organized in response to the five questions posed by the committee. As will quickly become apparent, I will be speaking to you from the perspective of someone who is daily battling in the trenches with the data, attempting to squeeze out analytical insights and usable information.
My colleague, Ian Nieboer, will follow with some advice to you on some more aspirational goals with respect to establishing a national energy data bank for Canada.
What are the benefits of national energy data? Obviously, good decisions are built on good data, be this in the public or the private realm. Good data are accurate, timely, consistent, and comprehensive, and they come in a user-friendly format. A lack of data, or unreliable data, undermines good analysis and understanding and, therefore, good decision-making. It also impedes informed debate.
Who uses national energy data, and are their needs being met? Analysts in the public and private sectors use energy data to research energy supply, demand, logistics, price, market behaviour, and environmental issues. Decision-makers rely on this research, or at least they ought to, to make good policy and commercial choices. Canadian citizens use these data to try to gain understanding about issues in and about the energy sector.
In our view, Canada at present lacks a comprehensive, consistent, timely, and easily accessible source of national energy data. The default entails seeking out multiple, often conflicting, incompatible, incomplete data from other entities, including provincial agencies, industry organizations, and commercial data providers.
You asked if there are gaps in the national energy data that are currently available. From our perspective, there are gaps in what's currently available, and the vision has been already put to you for a Canadian energy information agency. These gaps relate to the data coverage, it's timeliness and frequency of reporting, the degree of granularity in the data, serious continuity, consistency in definitions across databases, and ease of access and use.
What are our recommendations with regard to best practices for managing, acquiring, and sharing energy data? We would reiterate the recommendation made to you by the expert panel a year ago: that a new Canadian energy information agency be created. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is the obvious model to follow in this particular effort. This agency is regarded as an authoritative, non-partisan, and trustworthy source of data, in part because it's been doing it for a long time, but also because it's relatively transparent about how it collects and compiles the data it publishes. It also is fairly quick to supplement the information it provides in response to emerging issues in the sector.
The NEB's initiative, Canadian energy data links, is a step in the right direction toward a one-stop shop for basic national energy data, but much more needs to be done in terms of collecting, curating, and collating Canadian energy data and disseminating them in a consistent and accessible format.
Our fundamental recommendation to you is to provide the National Energy Board with the resources it needs to develop the Canadian energy data links portal into the Canadian version of the U.S. EIA data service. This effort should include canvassing data users in the public and private domains for their specific data requirements in terms of coverage, frequency, and formatting.
Some consultation with the EIA itself would be essential in planning Canada's energy data system, which would benefit from this agency's experience, and it would start the Canadian version off on a solid footing.
Lastly, since using both Canadian and U.S. data sources together is often beneficial, making Canada's system as compatible as possible with the U.S. version would be a worthwhile goal.