Natural Resources Committee on May 16th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

We were going to wrap up this segment of the meeting by five o'clock and we're running a few minutes late, so I'm going to have to stop it now.

Mr. James, your time has evaporated. I'm sorry.

We're going to suspend the meeting to get set up for the next segment.

To the witnesses, thank you all for your excellent presentations and for answering all our questions today.

Mr. Reynish, thank you for coming back.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're going to resume now with our next witnesses.

Just so people understand, we have two more witnesses, which should take us to about 6:20, and then we have some committee business, which may take us a little past 6:30. I just want to make sure there are no objections.

Okay, I didn't see any objections. Let's move on.

We have two witnesses. We also have material from both of them in English only, for which I apologize. The French translation will be provided at a later date. With the consent of committee members, we will distribute the English-only versions.

Do I have everybody's consent? Yes?

Okay, thank you.

On that note, I'd like to welcome our next two witnesses. Professor Monica Gattinger is the chair of positive energy from the University of Ottawa, and Dr. Alika Lafontaine from the Indigenous Health Alliance will be joining us by way of video conference.

Thank you both for being here today. We're going to open the floor to both of you and then we're going to turn it over to the committee members for questions.

Professor Gattinger, you're smiling. I'm going to pick on you, so you can start us off.

[Prof. Monica Gattinger, Professor, Chair, Positive Energy, Director, Institute for Science and Policy, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you.

The presentation has been translated, and you can see it here.

My thanks to the committee for this kind invitation to come and speak with you today.

As you've just heard, I speak English and French, so if you have any questions you'd like to ask in French, feel free.

I'll be speaking with you very briefly today about the role of public confidence in unlocking Canada's energy potential. At the University of Ottawa we've been doing some research in this space for the last little while, and I'm going to be sharing with you some of the results of that research in speaking to this issue.

To begin with, I'm just going to very briefly lay out the context. I often think of energy, and the challenges and changes in the energy sector, as very much a brave new world of energy development, and I'll speak about that in a moment. I'll talk with you very briefly about the positive energy project, and then dive into public confidence and the important role of public confidence when it comes to energy development and unlocking Canada's energy potential.

It is very much a brave new world of energy development. I've been studying energy policy and regulation for 20-odd years now, and there's never been a time at which it's been so controversial and so frequently in the headlines in my experience up until this point. I often think of the policy and regulatory context, which has become increasingly complex, as governments, in essence, search for what I think of as a holy grail of energy policy and regulations. They are trying to identify the appropriate balance points between a number of key policy imperatives, many of which this committee is studying at the moment: market imperatives, looking at economic opportunities; environmental imperatives, notably climate change but obviously other areas of environmental impact of energy; and security imperatives, security of critical energy infrastructure and the like. The fourth imperative, which I will be focusing my remarks on, is how one goes about garnering social acceptance and support when it comes to finding the appropriate balance points between those three previous imperatives—market, environment, and security. I'm going to dive into that in a moment.

As I mentioned, the politics of energy are really becoming increasingly fierce and very polarized. We've seen a shift in energy politics over the last number of years from much more localized concerns around energy, neatly captured by the acronym NIMBY, “not in my backyard”, to what I refer to as much more principled opposition to energy development, particularly fossil fuel energy development. This is an opposition to the development of those energy resources in toto, again captured tongue in cheek by the acronym BANANA, which folks have probably heard of, “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”. It's a much different form of opposition, a much different kind of politics that policy-makers, regulators, and industry are facing. Clearly, as we've seen over the last number of years, this slows down project decisions, and it can slow down and even halt altogether project construction. The question becomes whether we can afford to go on this way. It's costly, in terms of money and time, going into projects, both on the proponent's side and on the opponent's side. There are many deteriorating relationships—and I'll speak about those in a moment—and, of considerable interest to this committee, there are lost economic opportunities, and the potential risk of capital flight as well.

In the context of this, the positive energy project, which I chair, really does two key things. The first is to use the convening power of the university to bring key energy players together to grapple with this issue of how one can strengthen public confidence in energy development. Here we're not referring exclusively to fossil fuels. As we know, it's not just fossil fuel projects that run into social opposition. It can be hydro. It can be wind farms, and the like.

But we do more than convening. We do what I think of as convening plus. We also undertake solution-oriented applied research to try to inform dialogue and action, so I'll be sharing with you some of the results of that research today.

What drives public confidence? What impacts or influences the level of confidence that individual citizens and communities have in energy development? There are really three key factors that affect public confidence. Clearly, government—policies and regulations that governments put in place—has an impact on the levels of public confidence in energy. Next is society: NGO activities, local communities' views, individual neighbours' views. These also have an impact on attitudes, opinions, and levels of public confidence in energy. Of course, there is also industry. Industry performance has an impact on public confidence.

Why, then, do we see the level of controversy around energy and what many are thinking of as a declining public confidence in energy development? Why now? What has changed in the context over the last number of years that creates this?

There are a variety of different factors. There is no single factor that drives public confidence. I'm not going to speak to all these factors. I'll be speaking to social and value change over the last number of decades. There are a number of areas of public policy where we see gaps in policy movement on a number of key areas that are leading to declines in public confidence. Other factors are regulatory responses, notably, to those policy gaps, and project proponent practices. As I said, I'm going to focus in on the social and value change, and the policy gaps. I'd be happy to get into the other topics in the discussion session if that's of interest.

Social and value change is not to be underestimated. We are not in the same world of energy development as we were in the 1950s. The last time we had this level of controversy over pipeline development in this country, you would have to go back to the 1950s. It's a very different context now than it was some almost 60 or 70 years ago.

We see a number of key changes in society that are actually driving, or making it much more challenging to develop public confidence in energy. I have listed a few of these here, but I won't speak to any of them in great levels of detail. They're things that we can all, quite readily, experience in our own daily lives.

First is a decline of trust, public trust in institutions, public and private, and that's writ large. We're not just focusing here on energy. There is also a decline in deference to authority and expertise. We're not in a rational, comprehensive, technocratic, expert-driven, approach to policy-making or to governance, as we might have been in the 1950s.

Second is a desire for greater public involvement in decision-making. People want to be involved in decisions that are going to be affecting them.

Third, there is a shift from communitarian to individual values. The line of sight of interest is often much more at the local level—local and individual impacts—than it is at the national level. I often think of this when you hear that phrase, “Who speaks for Canada?” Where is the national interest in some of these discussions? What we're trying to point out here with our research is that some of these social and value changes make it much more difficult to appeal to those kinds of values.

Fourth is a rise of what we think of as anti-corporate, anti-big business, or even anti-fossil fuel values, and much more of a preference when it comes to project developments for smaller-scale, locally owned kinds of developments with a decline in risk tolerance as well. As Beck pointed out, we live in a risk society, but we also live in one in which the trust that folks have in the capacity for governments and industry to mitigate risk and to manage risk if things go wrong has declined as well. That's social and value change.

I'll go through the policy gaps very quickly. I don't think I'm saying anything here that folks wouldn't have already given some thought to.

In terms of climate change, it's the extent to which there has been a real or perceived lesser movement and lesser availability of forums to address climate change in a meaningful fashion over the last number of decades, and I'm not just referring to the previous government, but governments prior to that as well.

On indigenous issues and reconciliation, which was referred to in the testimony of the previous witnesses, it's the need to address, in a meaningful fashion, some of the key issues that indigenous communities are concerned about. Again, this goes beyond energy. It can be about clean drinking water. It can be about housing. It can be about murdered and missing indigenous women, a whole host of issues that go far beyond energy on its own.

These policy gaps, the concern that there hasn't been as much movement on these issues as there might have been, can also be exacerbated by siloization within governments, whether it's at the federal level or between governments federally, provincially, and to some extent, even municipally as well.

The third policy gap is around a lack of mechanisms to address cumulative effects or to plan in a regional fashion when it comes to the cumulative impact of a number of different energy projects.

What are the impacts of these policy gaps? One of the things we see is that they have increasingly been cascading onto the regulatory process and onto individual regulatory processes for individual energy projects. Unresolved policy issues are being played out in regulatory processes, as are concerns about climate change, about lack of movement on reconciliation, about lack of mechanisms for cumulative impacts or regional planning, and then people turn to the forums that exist. The forums that often exist in that context are regulatory processes for individual projects, which are not necessarily well suited to address those kinds of concerns, and that can exacerbate this issue and lead to reduced public confidence as well.

What to do? First and foremost, one of the things that our research has suggested is that it's very important to accept that the horse has left the barn on some of these issues. It is not the 1950s anymore. Sometimes in conversations—and we've probably all had these conversations—there is a desire to move back to the golden age when governments could act in a more unilateral fashion, when the public did have greater levels of trust in government, in expert opinion, and the like. We're not in that kind of an environment anymore so it means rethinking the way we do energy, for lack of a better term.

Second, address these policy gaps. This is one area where I'm cautiously optimistic. Certainly a number of governments here at the federal level, but also provincially, are beginning to move in a more meaningful fashion around issues like climate, reconciliation, and trying to address cumulative and regional impacts of individual energy projects.

Addressing the policy gaps is part of the solution, but it's not the only piece. It's also important to strengthen confidence in decision-making, and that's not just the substance of energy decisions; it's also the process of those decisions.

We're doing some work right now in communities that's pointing to the importance of the process when it comes to energy project decision-making. Communities want to have access to those decision-making processes, to relevant information related to an individual energy project. In many instances as well, our research is pointing to the important role of building capacity at the local level, particularly in municipal governments but in other sectors as well to engage in energy decision-making.

On the substance side of things, one of the themes that's coming through very close.... I'm saying “close” because he's saying I have two minutes left.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have much less than that.

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

Okay, this is the last slide.

One of the things that's coming through in our research in terms of themes is this sense that there is not enough fairness when it comes to the distribution of benefits and costs of energy development. We'll need to grapple with this in a meaningful and evidence-based fashion.

The fourth thing I will point to is to beware of the literacy trap. The reason I say that is it's not uncommon, faced with challenges around public confidence, that the response—whether it's from industry or policy and regulatory decision-makers—is to say if only the public understood what we're grappling with here, they would be more supportive and confidence would be heightened. There are real limits to that literacy thesis. A lot of very interesting research is coming out right now that's demonstrating those limits, and I'd be happy to speak to them in the discussion session.

There is an opportunity for Canada to move from the bleeding edge to the leading edge on this issue. We have the largest petroleum resource base of any industrialized democracy in the world, so we are grappling with these issues on an ongoing basis and there is an opportunity here for us to move to the leading edge of that challenge.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Professor, thank you very much.

Dr. Lafontaine, I'm going to turn the floor over to you.

[Dr. Alika Lafontaine, Project Chair, Indigenous Health Alliance]

Thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. I'll let go some of the comments that the previous presenter shared. In particular, I will unpack some of the issues around indigenous reconciliation, and I hope that my comments will help inform the committee.

My name is Alika Lafontaine. I am an Ojibwe anesthesiologist, alignment consultant, and current project chair for the Indigenous Health Alliance.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional territory of Treaty 8, from which I am teleconferencing, as well as the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin people on whose territory these hearings are being held.

The Indigenous Health Alliance is a project that arose in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action for health. It has a mission to eliminate the differences in quality of care between indigenous and non-indigenous patients. Most important, it is through a process led by indigenous peoples.

Our members and supporters include the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the College of Family Physicians Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, the Assembly of First Nations, and the national Indian Residential School Survivor Society, as well as many other first nations and territorial organizations. We are building a strategy to eliminate health quality differences that is led by indigenous people. Additional information about the Indigenous Health Alliance has been forwarded to your committee.

You may be asking why I am talking to you today. I hope I can shed some light on that as we talk about the similarities that exist between indigenous health and resource development.

I would like to acknowledge the technical assistance of Indigemetrics consulting in preparing my remarks, and the direction and advice of indigenous community members and leadership. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Senator Ted Quewezance from the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations. He has been very helpful in understanding the history of resource development in my own traditional territory of Treaty 4.

I would like to emphasize that my remarks should not be misinterpreted as speaking for indigenous peoples. Our indigenous communities have their own internal decision-making processes, priorities, and leadership, and I encourage the committee to reach out to those territorial and local first nations at a regional and community level.

The challenges and issues before you today—the future of Canada's oil and gas, mining, and nuclear sectors—have interesting similarities in health. I would like to unpack a couple of points briefly.

The first point is one raised repeatedly by Justice Murray Sinclair, who states that the intent of colonialism was to extinguish the rights of indigenous peoples to land and resources. When we speak of colonial systems in health, for example, we can recognize these systems based on their outcomes—to extinguish the rights of indigenous peoples to land and resources. Consider that, for indigenous patients living on reserve to access the full benefits of the Canadian medical system, all they need to do is leave their traditional territory and disengage from their treaty rights to health. Quite literally, by giving up their rights to land and resources, they become like every other Canadian.

There are many layers to the situation, but to put it simply, indigenous peoples are not engaged in defining the problems, the solutions, or the implementation strategies concerning their health problems, and this is done by design. Health problems, solutions, and implementation strategies are predetermined. The system, once again by design, excludes indigenous patients in communities from playing a meaningful role. This is contrary to the transformation occurring in the mainstream Canadian health care system, where communities, families, and patients form the centre of everything we do. We are actually redesigning our Canadian health care system to ensure this.

It is also important to note that while the mainstream Canadian health system continues to have better outcomes, indigenous health outcomes are moving in the opposite direction. There is obvious correlation between health system design and patient outcomes. The indigenous health approach is obviously not working, as disparities widen. Quite literally, the colonial health system encourages extinguishment of indigenous rights to land and resources.

Now let me connect this with resource development in the oil and gas, mining, and nuclear sectors. Framing engagement of indigenous peoples as a social licence is a misconception that has to be addressed in any future framework. In 2013, indigenous communities had already won more than 150 court cases across the Canadian resource sector, and this number has likely grown since then. As indigenous communities have asserted their treaty rights to land and resources, the duty to consult and accommodate impacts the outcome of resource development in a very real way. Indigenous peoples do not provide a social licence to resource projects; they provide a literal licence. That licence is protected by a legal framework that continues to evolve.

Indigenous peoples must be engaged at a level that respects and supports their treaty rights to land and resources. Corporations have a legal duty to engage indigenous peoples for resource development that occurs on their respective traditional territory. It is a legal duty that corporations have yet to fully embrace. There is still an ongoing effort to reframe these legal rights as social rights. Each has a very different trust obligation.

By comparing the indigenous health consultation process, and the consultation process for resource development in the oil, gas, mining, and nuclear sectors, I observed the same colonial system. For example, the National Energy Board process is designed to engage indigenous peoples after a plan has been made. That means identifying the problems, solutions, and implementation strategies for resource development have largely been predetermined.

The NEB process then becomes more of an exercise of selling the plan, instead of having indigenous peoples involved in creating the plan. Inevitably conflict emerges from this process with strong efforts to minimize or eliminate the treaty rights to land and resources held by indigenous peoples within the territory in an effort to ensure the resource development proceeds.

Consultation varies widely among resource development projects. In a project around the Swift Current area of Saskatchewan in Treaty 4 territory, the indigenous consultation involved picking up a single hitchhiker with whom the persons consulting discussed the project over coffee. This is not hyperbole. This literally happened. I am not suggesting this is the norm for consultation, but evaluating processes cannot ignore such obvious deficiencies.

How can Canada properly consult indigenous peoples in a way that acknowledges and respects their treaty rights to land and resources? The current process must embrace having communities involved in defining the problems, solutions, and implementation strategies of any resource development project at the earliest reasonable opportunity. Outcomes cannot be predetermined.

The process must also acknowledge that problems cannot be identified as a single issue; for example, how to get a pipeline from point A to point B.

Integrated with the issues of resource development are those of education, health, economic development, and environment, among others. If a consultation process does not acknowledge and address these issues in a clear manner, the solutions will not address the real problems. Implementation strategies will then be more likely to fail.

When stakeholders in the Indigenous Health Alliance identified that these issues would arise, we adopted a community-based process with a charting and prioritization tool kit. I will share some of our highest priorities issues, and you may recognize some overlap with ongoing issues within the oil, gas, mining, and nuclear sectors from previous presenters.

These priorities include recognizing that in order to achieve this outcome, we need to address the lack of a community-based model of decision-making, where communities decide the problem, decide the solution, and decide on the strategy for implementation.

First nations often have internally competing visions, and competing visions with non-community stakeholders and with other regional first nations. This leads to difficulties articulating how to own and control models to optimize outcomes through cross-jurisdictional collaboration and integration of federal and provincially funded processes as anticipated by self-government.

Often decisions about problems, solutions, and implementation strategies are already decided before the community is even engaged. “Engagement” becomes selling communities on a predetermined strategy, instead of truly engaging the community and proceeding with community-based priorities controlled by community decision-making processes.

Indigenous historical trauma leads to a community not trusting outsiders to facilitate this engagement, and the engagement must have leadership in the community that it has confidence in.

Communities are insistent on the involvement of elders through the process and the decision-making process. Elders must be recognized as a stakeholder group that needs to be part of the decision-making and not just as influencers on the decision-making process. They need to be directly involved in setting the agenda as they want to integrate project components and processes. This is often expressed in the activity as being holistic.

Government processes use a one-issue process. They don't want to address all the issues in a coordinated strategy. Without transparency and a good communication strategy the design of the process will fail.

Lack of trust of government is intensified in indigenous communities and is exacerbated with communities who do not understand how government structures work. The result is that both sides feel they are not being heard.

The current process adopted by government to move forward resource development projects does not engage communities because it is not designed to engage communities. It is a colonial process.

Indigenous peoples are pragmatic. Indigenous peoples are reasonable. Indigenous peoples have our own priorities and we are heterogeneous. If a process that truly addresses our community-based issues supports the building of a community-based decision-making structure and clearly identifies issues in a context beyond a one-sided consultation, indigenous peoples are pragmatic and reasonable about resource development.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I look forward to further discussion.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you both very much.

I'm now going to open the floor to questions and turn it over to Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both witnesses for your great presentation.

I know you addressed some of these elements in both of your presentations, but I'd like to get a bit more detail.

In your opinion, does taking the time to properly review projects for their impacts on the environment and affected communities build upon the trust in large resource development projects? Can you comment on our government's interim principles announced in January and how they will help to build public confidence in major projects?

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

That is a very important question. I would say it's a necessary first step but an insufficient condition.

In the absence of addressing some of the broader policy gaps that were mentioned, one of the things I hope came through in the presentation was the issues around public confidence. They are multi-faceted. There is no single source. There are a variety of challenges. It's a multi-faceted challenge, so it needs to be addressed on a variety of different levels.

Regulation and strengthening regulatory processes and public confidence in those processes is absolutely essential. There's no question that needs to be done and needs to be seen to be done.

To assume that changes to the regulatory processes are sufficient without dealing with some of the broader public policy gaps I mentioned, whether that's reconciliation, climate change, or cumulative effects, we will be addressing one component of the problem or the challenge but not all of it.

It's a very good first step, but it's so important to be addressing these issues in a holistic way.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Lafontaine.

[Dr. Alika Lafontaine]

To add to that, the enhancement of the regulatory processes is positive, but once again, you're getting into a single issue, which is the environment.

When you have an indigenous community member or indigenous first nations leadership looking at the issue of say a pipeline coming through their community, there is the thought about pipelines contaminating water, using up water. There is talk about how it's going to influence medicinal plant growth. Then there's also the economic development and jobs. There are also the thought that, if we are unhealthy, even if we have jobs, what's the point?

What you often get—and I'll say this in particular with the environmental lobbies—is environmentalists being very effective at appropriating the voice of indigenous nations. They come into indigenous nations, and they strengthen the decision-making processes and the feeling of the nations toward their treaty rights to land and resource development.

I'll say firmly, if environmentalists were strictly the only ones opposing resource development in Canada, we would have a pipeline built by now. The reason why we don't have these resource development projects moving forward is because of the very real licence that indigenous peoples have to give to research development projects going through their territories.

How far that goes is up for debate and that's evolving within the law. When we talk about the environment, however, we have to separate the needs of the indigenous community from the needs of environmentalists or any other single-issue lobby group.

With the regulatory process, it is positive, but if all it does is respond to the single issue of the environment, it will not be successful.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Dr. Gattinger, you mentioned that the five principles are a good first step. We know we've had a previous majority government, and that government wasn't able to get pipelines built, any pipelines to tidewater during that period. You were saying these principles don't go far enough. We've heard from other groups saying they have gone too far.

Can you give us more specific examples on what you believe we could be doing to help the process of getting pipelines going?

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

That's a tough question.

Again, to go back to the presentation, it's a multi-faceted challenge here, and those principles are a very important first step.

Having said that, one of the things that I think we will need to sort through is what exactly the balance is between policy and regulation on the pipeline projects, and also on energy writ large, but your question pertains to pipeline projects specifically.

If we have regulatory processes that by their design historically are intended to be evidence-based, neutral, independent, third-party assessments, but we also put on top of that at some level a set of principles, for some of which it's not entirely clear how they will be operationalized and at what level they'll be operationalized, and if we have an individual pipeline project move its way through the regulatory system, what does it mean, then, subsequent to that, that cabinet will consider the climate change impacts of that project? It's not clear to me what the balance then is between policy and regulation in the system.

I think another area that's going to be really essential—and I'd be curious to hear my counterpart witnesses' thoughts on this—is the integration of traditional knowledge into regulatory processes. In principle, and I think a very important principle, and again, a very important step, how one actually operationalizes that is a really important question. Some of this, from my perspective, really remains to be seen.

One of the things that governments can do at the level of policy and politics is set the tone. It has been a really significant shift that we've seen from the previous government to the current government. Another thing that governments can do—again, at the policy level, not the regulatory level—is consider the impact and the collective impact of projects overall.

Regulatory processes are meant to be responding to individual proponent applications for specific projects. That's how they function. One thing that governments can do at that policy level is step above that and say, okay, given the suite, as it were, of proposed projects that we have in front of us, how can we collectively or cumulatively evaluate those projects? What—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut you off.

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We have to move on to our next questioner, who I understand is Mr. Barlow.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of our witnesses for being here today.

Alika, I appreciate your being here. I'm sure that things in Grand Prairie are very busy right now as you help people from Fort McMurray, so I appreciate your fitting us in today, especially with your role in the Indigenous Health Alliance.

I want to start with you, Monica. You might be able to finish answering some of your questions.

I read an article in the Vancouver Sun that you co-authored. It may have been in other places. I wanted to quote this:

When power projects that are needed for system efficiency and stability are delayed or cancelled, the power system on which we rely is put at risk. When export-oriented projects are subjected to years of regulatory processes, market opportunities pass us by.

Today we're talking about additional regulations, an additional review process, and additional consultations. I think one of the messages we have to get from this is that we will never reach consensus and that, sooner or later, someone is going to have to step up and take a leadership role. Someone is going to have to step up and say that a project has gone through the regulatory regime, it has gone through the review processes that are in place, and we can no longer consult, so either this is good for Canada or it's not good for Canada. We have to make a decision.

I would like you to expand a little on that and the risks that we may be taking on some of these key projects if we continue to delay.

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

I have a couple of thoughts on that.

The increasing desire for public involvement in decision-making brings up tensions between participatory democracy and representative democracy. At the end of the day—you're the representatives—somebody must decide. Our research is demonstrating that it's so important to increase the level of public confidence in the processes that get to that decision that ultimately needs to be made, whether it's by an elected official or by a regulatory agency. One of the things to your point about delay, it used to be—this is why I say Canada has got an opportunity here—that being a democracy was a substantial competitive advantage when it came to foreign direct investment. We have stability, we have rule of law, and we have stable regimes. I've begun to hear companies talk about democratic risk. Some people think that's an unpalatable thing to say, but it is absolutely the case. In a democracy, there are many more veto points. There's no question that we've had changes in society, changes in the legal context, changes in a variety of frameworks that mean in a democracy you're much more likely to get traction.

Canada, in terms of our petroleum resources, has the largest resource base on the planet of any western industrialized democracy. We're on the bleeding edge of this issue. That would be my take on it.

To move from bleeding to leading edge is going to really take trying to build the public confidence in those processes. But as you say, at the end of the day, decisions have to get made. It's finding that balance between participatory and representative democracy in ways that garner public confidence.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I appreciate that. I was going to ask you what you mean by “bleeding edge” and “leading edge”, but you answered that.

We're talking about public consultation and reaching some sort of balance between when is enough and when we have to make that decision. You talked a little bit about some of the things that you see as gaps that we have. I think it's important that we fill some of those gaps.

What I found interesting in some of the materials you had is that nothing in there says that either our industry or government is doing anything wrong when it comes to environmental stewardship. In terms of the policies and how we actually extract our natural resources, we're on a leading edge globally. People come from around the world to see what we're doing here right now.

Is one of the key things a matter of changing the narrative?

I seems like, as Canadians, we're always apologizing. I think sometimes, now, we need to be a champion for our natural resources and say that we should be very proud of what we have here in Canada, it's the economic driver of our country. The industry and the men and women who work in that industry are very proud of what they do, and as Canadians we should be very proud. But it seems government and industry don't take that approach. Is that a big part of it, in terms of changing that message and being proud of what we have as a Canadian industry rather than always apologizing for it?

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

There's no question that more could be done to share some of the tremendous advances that have been made, whether it's in terms of reducing the GHG emissions profile in the oil sands or in other sectors.

That said, on communications—and this goes to my point about the literacy trap—thinking that if only we do better on the communications front, if only we share more of the positive story, thinking that is a necessary and sufficient condition, I'd be a little skeptical that it will—

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

It can't be the be-all and end-all, but I think it's a part of it.

[Prof. Monica Gattinger]

It's potentially a part of it. Although we've seen a number of initiatives that have tried to take messaging in that direction, and I don't know how successful we've seen them be. Again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it, but what's more important—back to my response to the first question—is the change of tone around taking some of these policy gap issues and taking them seriously.

That could help to let some of the pressure out of the bubble that currently is the regulatory process.

[Dr. Alika Lafontaine]

To add to that answer, and talking about the narrative, just around Fort McMurray, I don't know if you guys have been reading lots about the news, but I talked to colleagues who were there and were seeing the oil companies open up their doors, shut down their projects, and just let anyone in who needed safety and security from the wildfires. That community is not going to forget that, and neither will the first nations around the area who received millions of dollars in supplies from these companies.

When you're talking about narrative, we have to look at what literally is happening. Indigenous peoples, when you come down to an individual level, don't feel the benefits of resource development, but they definitely feel the negatives. When Attawapiskat got flooded with sewage when the mine work camp flooded that area, they felt that, but they didn't see the money filter down. That's not to say that money is not being transferred, but when we're looking at single-issue processes versus taking everything including housing, water, all these other social determinants of health into consideration, I think you have to recognize that a lot of these people who are protesting, they feel the negatives not the benefits.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, over to you.