Evidence of meeting #101 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agency.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Monica Gattinger  Professor, Chair of Positive Energy, Director of Institute for Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Judith Dwarkin  Chief Economist, RS Energy Group
Ian Nieboer  Director, RS Energy Group
Steve Lappin  President and Chief Operations Officer, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX
Greg Abbott  Vice-President, Market Operations, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

I'm going to have to stop you there. I'm sorry.

Mr. Tan, you have five minutes.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

Okay. Actually, I have just one question.

Your company generates and publishes data regularly, and your company also does data analysis, and perhaps provides a prediction about the market over the next few years. I believe other energy companies are doing the same regularly.

We heard from many witnesses about the need to build up a national energy information agency. Suppose that we have such an agency. How will it affect the operation or business of your data section? Does that mean there's less burden on your company because this data analysis, compiling, or prediction function has been taken out from your company and become a burden on the new agency, or does it mean there will be extra burden on your company because the newly created national data energy information system will require you to provide more frequent data so that they can do it in real time?

10:35 a.m.

Vice-President, Market Operations, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX

Greg Abbott

It probably would depend on what the requirements were. If there were a requirement for real-time data delivery to the new agency, then, yes, it would be a bit more onerous on us to provide that. As Steve mentioned earlier, you're immediately setting up a competitive quandary for us, in the sense that we sell real-time information and real-time data, so we could end up in that type of a situation.

In general, I really believe it would be a benefit to the market, to ourselves, and to our clients to find more information about the industry, but I'm not sure it would change too much what we do here. The need to generate price indices off of transactions that happen on the exchange, the ability to build a price settlement curve five years out for all of our positions so that we can margin our clients correctly, that would still exist. Potentially, we would be able to use these new tools to help with that, but in the end, I think the analysis that has to happen at NGX would still have to happen here. I don't really see that changing it too much.

10:35 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

Okay.

Your company is a Canadian company, but you belong to a bigger U.S. company. Again, this is a follow-up on my first question. When you submit data to our data information system, you also have an obligation to submit the data to your mother company, or even to the national energy data information system in the U.S. Will there be any difference in the requirement of a data submission or how it can affect your...? I'm not sure. I'm just asking you.

10:35 a.m.

Vice-President, Market Operations, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX

Greg Abbott

You know, with regard to requirements to submit, it's pretty light as to where we must submit data. As we mentioned at the beginning, we are a highly regulated entity, so our regulators have full access to view anything they need to. The CFTC in the United States and the ASC in Canada definitely have the right to get into our data.

As far as being forced to submit our data for publication or utilization by other groups, that's not really there. We choose to publish some data publicly for the betterment, I think, of the industry. As I mentioned, we do have our settlement curves for a rolling five days published on our website. We do publish an average of all the delivered gas in Alberta so that people can calculate royalties and have a more transparent window into how royalty calculations are handled in Alberta. Other than that, we don't really have the requirement to submit data in any other places. There may be aggregators or partners that we do submit data to for use from a commercial perspective, but from a governmental perspective, it's not really forced.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

If there is a discrepancy between the data provided by the U.S. system and the future—supposing we have one—national energy data system, how are you going to work on this discrepancy? Which data is more useful to you, supposing there is such an institution there?

10:40 a.m.

President and Chief Operations Officer, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX

Steve Lappin

I think it all comes back to simply...and you're right. You can have discrepancies in data and figures. It's not that one is wrong or right. You just have to appreciate that they are coming from different sources. As we say, there is surveying. Some are based on actual transactions. Then some are based on transactions as well, but are brought about in a different way, maybe through brokerage or bilateral versus screen-traded.

I'm not sure that we see an issue there to the extent that the source is disclosed. If it's simply “here's a source and here's how it's compiled and brought together”, it's really up to the users to determine which one they feel is more appropriate for their purposes. I think that's commonplace through the variety of sources, but I think it's just based on what the source is, and it's up to the user.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

Geng Tan Liberal Don Valley North, ON

Okay, I have another quick one. Am I done?

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

You're actually a little bit over your time.

I think we're going to stop for the day. The only thing I'm going to float is to ask the committee members to start thinking about topics for the future. Maybe that's something that we can talk about as early as Thursday of this week. I just want to plant the seed.

Richard, do you have a question?

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

I just want an update on what the timeline for this study is.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Hold on one second.

I should thank you, gentlemen, for coming here. You don't need to, nor do you want to, listen to this discussion. We're very grateful for your taking the time early in the morning to join us today. The information you provided was very helpful for our discussion. Thank you again, and enjoy the day in Calgary.

10:40 a.m.

President and Chief Operations Officer, Intercontinental Exchange - ICE NGX

Steve Lappin

Very good. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thanks for having us.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

We have witnesses scheduled for Thursday, including Statistics Canada, and then next week as well on June 14. It looks like we'll probably be done next Thursday, possibly Tuesday.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

You're saying that we're definitely meeting on Tuesday next week—

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

Yes.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

—but that maybe we won't be meeting on Thursday.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

No, I'm saying that we may be finished with the witnesses and then we can get into the discussion about the parameters of the report.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

Do you have any idea of when the minister will appear before us?

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

The invitation has been put out there. His schedule has been full.

10:40 a.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

I know he's not there next week.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

I'm following up again, but he hasn't been available during our meeting times so far. I will look into it again, and I'll report back on that as well.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON

You can't get anyone from the department ahead of time to—

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

I'll explore all options.

10:40 a.m.

Conservative

Jamie Schmale Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON

I don't know about the other members of this committee, but I'm prepared to meet at any time outside the regular meeting to ensure that we arrange the minister to attend this. I'm prepared to go on an evening, earlier in the morning, or whenever. I'm sure the minister has a hole in his schedule that he can make.

10:40 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal James Maloney

I will make him aware that we're very flexible.