Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2018

[Helen Ryan]

I can speak more specifically. There was a joint working group that was put in place with Natural Resources Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Finance Canada, some of the oil and gas industry and the provinces of Alberta, B.C and Saskatchewan. The purpose of that was to come together and do some collective analysis on what we think the competitiveness considerations are for the oil and gas sector.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

When will the outcome of that study be released? I personally think the competitiveness issues for the Canadian energy sector are blindingly obvious. Economists, experts and industry proponents have been raising the red alarm and blaring on about costs and new red tape, and that this what is driving energy investment out of Canada at catastrophic levels, which should concern every Canadian in every part of the country, given that the energy sector is the largest private sector investor in the Canadian economy.

When will the results of that study be released? I also find it somewhat alarming that what's actually being admitted here is that the policy is being imposed before the competitiveness analysis has actually been concluded. When will the NRCan competitiveness study and conclusions be released?

[Helen Ryan]

As I was saying, it is a joint working group with all of those players. The purpose of the—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Is there no timeline, then?

[Helen Ryan]

The purpose of the working group was to come together and do shared analysis—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I understand the purpose, but what is the timeline?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Why don't you let her answer the question?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I can't, because I have two other questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You're out of time, so I can cut her off now, or you can get an answer. It's up to you.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

What's the timeline?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

She was trying to answer and you interrupted her.

Ms. Ryan, if you can finish your answer very quickly, then we can move on.

[Helen Ryan]

The working group was to come together to do joint analysis and look at the competitiveness considerations. From that, industry has put forward specific recommendations to government around what it thinks the nature of the issue is and what the findings are. That's how the results of that work have come forward.

With respect to looking at overarching competitiveness considerations at large, outside the oil and gas sector, there is also another working group that involves industry that's looking at all of the considerations—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

What about the timeline?

Mr. Chair, we're just talking about the clock here.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

She's trying to answer the question.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

My question is very simple. It should be like—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We'll move on.

Mr. Cannings, the floor is yours.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—in the fourth quarter or May, or next week.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We gave you the chance to get the answer, and you didn't like it.

Mr. Cannings, the floor is yours.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

But that wasn't an answer. The question was, when will the conclusion of the study be released?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You didn't like the answer.

Mr. Cannings, the floor is yours.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

No, it's not a matter of me not liking the answer. It's a matter of everybody with a brain cell seeing it wasn't an answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're moving on.

Mr. Cannings.

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

Thank you for being here. I'm going to change direction perhaps dramatically.

We've had a couple of reports come out in recent days and months, one being the IPCC report. It pointed out that the world's efforts to meet the Paris Agreement targets have been inadequate. Canada's efforts have been classed as highly insufficient by other watchers. We also had the environment commissioner's report on the pan-Canadian framework that shed some concern about how things were going there.

First of all, I want to ask a very broad question. Again, you don't have to spend too much time on it, because my time is limited as well. Have you had any direction about stepping up our game? Our present targets are 30% below 2005. IPCC says we need 45% below 2010. That's 130 megatonnes we have find to somewhere. We were going to have a hard time meeting those 2030 targets.

Has there been any talk that we really have to be a lot bolder than we are to just meet those Paris targets going from 80% by 2050 to 100%?

Go ahead, Matt.

[Matt Jones]

This kind of comes back to the big picture of the impacts of climate change, the challenge in front of us.

I think that, from the federal perspective, we have our target, but we're very much aware that it is a step and that it's not the only step in terms of reducing emissions. The Paris Agreement has built into it a mechanism to require all parties that have signed on to it to continuously come forward on a regular cycle with more ambitious targets.

Our approach has really been to develop the policies, get the policies approved and implement the policies. Our focus right now is very much on implementing those policies quickly and effectively and on getting emissions reductions in the near term. However, all the while, we're very much aware that we can't just declare victory if and when we achieve our Paris target.

We have done some long-term visioning. I believe the mid-century strategy was mentioned. That looked at different scenarios and at the deeper reductions that are required to avoid the worst impacts.

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

Okay.

I just want to get down into more detailed things here. Somebody mentioned that the built environment is the most profitable way to jump in first, that this is where we could make the biggest impact.

One of the things that I talk a lot about in this committee and in the House, as people will know, is the eco-energy retrofit homes program. It seemed to be punted over to the provinces in the pan-Canadian framework, where I can say there have been mixed results at best with regard to the provinces taking it up. We've just seen Ontario drop its program.

I'm just wondering if there's any reason why the federal government can't just bring that back—put it on steroids, if need be—to get Canadians to retrofit their homes. Have it applied to commercial buildings, as well, somehow. We have to do something bold here. You just mentioned that this is where we can do it. It seemed to be a very efficient way. It leveraged four times the amount in private funding.

Perhaps, Ms. Levesque, you could comment on that. Why haven't we seen that brought back?