Natural Resources Committee on June 7th, 2018

[Greg Peterson]

I think that is the direction in which official statistics have to go, period. If you talk to anybody from a national statistical office around the world, I think they would give you the same answer.

For instance, if I wanted the most timely available information on the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve, the EIA does not produce the most timely estimate. The most timely estimate comes out of a private sector outfit called, I think, Orbital Insight, which models the petroleum reserve based on the interpretation of good-quality resolution satellite data.

That's the direction in which we are trying to go. In our agricultural statistics program, for instance, we produce a weekly crop conditions assessment program based on coarse-resolution satellite data, from which we have estimates available a day or so after the end of the reference week. There's no question that's the direction that we need to go.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

As an organization, you also carry a very big stick in compelling organizations to provide information. Do you exercise that authority regularly?

[Greg Peterson]

We tend to work co-operatively with our respondents. To my knowledge, on the energy side, we've never had to exercise the stick.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I know that as a small business owner it seems that we're always getting Statistics Canada requests, and somebody has to burn up some time completing them. They're a pain in the butt. I understand the necessity for them, but it's just that if there are ways that your organization can make them more efficient or...?

[Greg Peterson]

I really appreciate that comment. That reflects the direction in which I think official statistics have to go, such that doing surveys becomes an instrument of last resort. At our very first crack, we have to take a look at the existing administrative and other data that exist out there.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's right. In my industry, for example, we're providing data on all kinds of different measurements. I'm in the aggregate industry in one of my businesses, so we provide information by the cubic metre to some government jurisdictions. Others want it by the tonne, still others by the imperial ton, and then others by the cubic yard. There's a real mismatch. If I could encourage you to work with other jurisdictions to standardize reporting of units of measurement, not only in my industry but in all industries, that would be very helpful.

[Greg Peterson]

If I can pile on that comment for a second, this again goes to the importance of taking advantage of every player within an information ecosystem. In the telecommunications space, we work closely with the CRTC so that only a single instrument goes out to broadcasters and telecommunications companies. That contains information that they're after and information that we're after, so we're only hitting on somebody once. We're sharing the data and collaborating on ensuring that what we're releasing is going out. There are models of doing this.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's good.

I'll go to the environment department. I think the last time you were here, we talked about how you calculate greenhouse gas emissions or carbon emissions. I asked whether you considered the various emission standards in production vehicles, including off-road equipment, which I'm very familiar with, when you do your calculations. Can you expand on that a bit?

[Dominique Blain, Director, Pollutant Inventories and Reporting, Department of the Environment]

Good morning.

The short answer to this question is that we do. We have a detailed database of both off-road equipment and on-road vehicles that we use to analyze the entire fleet of vehicles and equipment in Canada. We update that database annually.

We use it as a bottom-up tool to estimate the fuel combustion by different categories of vehicles based on years, on vintages. We acquire vehicle identification numbers from provinces and update them annually so that we have a good representation of what the Canadian fleet is made up of in regard to types of vehicles and how that evolves over time. That enables us to use more effectively the information on fuel consumption and attribute it to the different categories of vehicles.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Good. I appreciate hearing that.

Have you been asked to provide any data to the Minister of Environment on how much this carbon tax they're proposing will actually reduce emissions? Have you done any of those calculations?

[Derek Hermanutz, Director General, Economic Analysis Directorate, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment]

I think I mentioned the last time we were here that the government would be releasing a report with that information. That report has been shared with the chair of the committee. The analysis shows that under the existing provincial programs, along with an assumption that the provinces that don't have a program in place will use the federal backstop, it will lead to an estimated 80 to 90 megatonnes of reductions.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

We'll go over to you, Mr. Cannings.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for coming back here.

I'll start with StatsCan and talk about the big picture in terms of what I think we're trying to get a handle on in this study: what a new energy information system, or whatever you would call it in Canada.... I don't want to call it an agency, an administration, or anything like that, because I don't want to design it. However, it's clear that we need some sort of coordination across federal government departments, provinces, and the private sector with some sort of agency or group that will set standards, have the muscle to promote timeliness, and then produce an access point where people can relatively easily access the important bits of information.

I know I've floated the idea of some sort of secretariat that would be kind of at arm's length, and other witnesses have downplayed that, thinking that it wouldn't be independent enough.

I'm just wondering if perhaps you could both comment on what kind of federal-provincial arrangements—let's start there—would have to be put in place to get that on the road. We have federal-provincial agreements on all sorts of things, as I think you mentioned, with regard to statistics. However, if we could get something like that going, I think we'd be on the road. Could you just comment on what we would need to do in that agreement, and on how possible it is in the short term? That's a small question.

[Greg Peterson]

A small question.... Let me try to answer.

I'm most qualified to answer that question from the perspective of the environment that I'm working in. In the environment that I'm working in, we already have a legislated ability to share information—to have both incoming and outgoing sharing of information—with the provinces.

From the point of view of Statistics Canada, we have a federal-provincial-territorial consultative council on statistics, with representation from all the provinces and territories, that deals with the coordination of statistical matters. In addition to that, we have a number of federal-provincial-territorial tables dealing with specific subject matter areas.

The degree of coordination, governance, or control really varies from subject matter area to subject matter area. In the case of agriculture statistics, it's a relatively informal group. Well, it's formal enough that we meet, have agendas, and keep minutes, but there is no formal governance over the statistical system itself.

By contrast, where we're dealing with areas of stronger provincial jurisdiction, such as education or justice, I believe that in the case of justice, we have meetings at the deputy minister level to coordinate the justice statistics program.

In any case, the mechanism is in place in order to make this happen in the statistical world.

[Jacqueline Gonçalves]

From a technical data-gathering perspective, we have, over the last couple of years, been reinforcing our relationships with the provinces and territories. Policy work around the pan-Canadian framework has driven a lot of discussion on how we can better harmonize nationally with regard to gathering data and identifying strengths and weaknesses in terms of our methods, and with regard to sharing information.

At the moment, we're working within the framework of the Council of Ministers of the Environment and the technical working groups underneath that body to work through some of these issues. We certainly have noticed that the relationship is strengthening.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

It strikes me that to get where we want to go, at a minimum we'd need some kind of office, or whatever you want to call it, that coordinates all this, that gets all the players in shape and has a set of rules that is agreed on by the provinces and the federal government, and hopefully some agreements with the private sector. Then it can enforce those and make sure that things are timely and consistent.

I'll move back to StatsCan. We had a witness from Bloomberg in the previous hour who had a healthy skepticism of forecasting and modelling. How much of that does StatsCan do? I know the NEB does it all the time to some level of success, or not. I just wonder how much you do, and what you might say about the usefulness of modelling 10, 20, or 30 years into the future.

[Greg Peterson]

We're willing to do any work that's consistent with our mandate and doesn't threaten the credibility of the organization. For instance, we'd feel uncomfortable if there was a risk of being perceived to influence our current estimates based on forecasts that we make of the data. We don't operate in that space.

That said, we already do some modelling and impact analysis. There are various programs within the agency that do that. If we were to do that in a case like this, we'd be after complete transparency, including being very clear in terms of our sources of data and assumptions that go into a model.

For instance, if you were to take a look at our cannabis portal, cannabis not yet being legal, there is still a requirement for us to identify what's going on out there, and we're attempting to model it on how it would fit into GDP. We've modelled our estimates of cannabis's contribution to GDP. We make this information publicly available and we make our assumptions publicly available, and on our information portal we, in fact, allow users to change the assumptions if they don't believe our assumptions, so that they can see how the estimates would change. That's the kind of transparency we're after.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

In my perfect world, I'd like that kind of thing. I'd like to be able to move my assumptions around to see how that would affect the outcome. I should check to see what your cannabis GDP estimates are for my riding.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Why don't we stop there?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I was just getting going.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We'll stop on a high note and move over to Ms. Ng.

Ms. Ng, we're over to you.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you so very much for coming back. It was great for both organizations to set us on the course, and now that we've heard from many witnesses, we will do do some subsequent probing, if you will.

We've heard from a range of individuals. I would be interested in understanding something a bit better from Statistics Canada. There is the FPT relationship, but then you hear about the datasets that are gathered through utilities. Some of the utilities are within our jurisdiction, while others are private, etc., Then witnesses who came earlier, such as IEEE, talked to us about having a big dataset or datasets that are already being gathered and compiled for a whole range of other uses that could come into a use should the federal government want it or need it, but what they're looking for is that framework bridge, a set of standards by which the datasets can speak to one another.

Is that something you think Statistics Canada could do, or should be doing? They already probably do.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Just let me interrupt. The bells are ringing. We need unanimous consent to continue if there's a desire to do so, or we could just finish the question and get the answer in.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Can I move for unanimous consent to extend the meeting no more than 10 minutes to continue Mary's question and get our round in?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're at 28 minutes now. Is everybody agreeable to that?