Evidence of meeting #12 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 going.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Project Chair, Indigenous Health Alliance
I think it ends up being legislated. If two people controlled by government can't get along, then you legislate it.
Liberal
Conservative
Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB
I just want to underline your point that many of the advocacy groups that are mischaracterizing our track record of energy development are, in fact, foreign-funded, often funded out of the U.S., which is, as you know, increasingly moving from being our single largest customer to being our biggest competitor through their unlocking of unconventional resource development and their lifting of the export ban. We can see the gap between their words and what's actually happening when we acknowledge that in fact in 2014 they imported a record level of Canadian crude, more than ever before in their country's history. In 2015 that increased by 10%. That's exactly the same product that they mischaracterized and used, for example, driven by domestic politics, to veto Keystone—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Thank you both for coming to join us today. Your presentations were excellent, and we appreciate your taking the time to be here.
I'm going to give the witnesses a few minutes to excuse themselves, and then we can deal with committee business.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Let's get going on committee business here.
Where things stand right now, we have a meeting scheduled for this coming Wednesday. We have two witnesses, the Alberta Federation of Labour and the B.C. Ministry of Natural Gas Development. If recent Wednesdays are any indication, they probably won't be coming, but we'll see how it goes on Wednesday.
May 30 is our last day, and right now we have the NEB and the In Situ Oil Sands Alliance coming. If something happens with Wednesday, we'll have to try to get those witnesses to come in on May 30.
I've been advised by the analysts that they can start working on the draft report during the week of May 23, and have a preliminary draft report done sometime before we return on May 30. Then after we hear the witnesses on May 30, they will incorporate that evidence into the report with a view to having something ready for us to review, possibly on June 1, but that's probably pushing it. More realistic is June 6, and it has been suggested to me that we might then take the meetings on June 6, June 8, and even June 13, to consider the report.
That's the time frame we're looking at. That being the case, and assuming the draft report is not ready for June 1, which I think is unrealistic because we have witnesses on May 30, there will be no meeting on June 1, or at least there's nothing scheduled for that day. That would potentially leave that day and whatever Wednesdays and Mondays we have left in June, while we're sitting, to deal with.
First, is everybody content with the schedule I've just outlined?
Second, does anybody have any suggestions in terms of how we deal with, or whether we want to deal with the remaining days for the balance of June? We can deal with that.
Then I understand for the third part, the parliamentary secretary has a proposal for us as well. Perhaps we should hear from her first, before we answer questions one and two.
Liberal
Kim Rudd Liberal Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON
I'm going to pass out gifts for everyone. No bow today.
There has been some thought given, a suggestion made, that because clean technology is really the bedrock of so much of what we're talking about and where we see we're going, that we undertake a study specifically on clean tech. What you're getting right now is sort of the broad strokes of what that might look like.
I'm just going to go through a couple of points and then I'll talk about the idea of the format of this.
It says, engage parliamentarians on issues related to clean technology and natural resources, provide new insights on the government's approach to supporting clean technology, and consider opportunities for natural resource sectors to benefit from clean technology. There are some study questions in there.
The idea was that we could take the last few weeks of sitting and flesh out some of the questions we might want to ask in discussion around how this might tighten up. The idea was that, for this study, we basically break the country up—not figuratively, of course, very poor choice of words—and that we would do the west first, because we're studying oil and gas and we'll have concluded. It seems most appropriate when it's all fresh in our mind.
A couple of the suggestions have come forward, and these are not carved in stone. We're just putting these out for you to think about. What we're looking for today is more of a confirmation on principles that this is something that we'd like to do and we can, as I said, tighten it up.
If you go to annex 2, Jonathan Wilkinson, who is parliamentary secretary for environment and has 20 years' experience in clean technology based out of Vancouver, has given us some suggestions. Some of them come from other places, including our clerk, I believe, about some of the places that we might want to think about or groups we may want to engage.
There's a suggestion that the Vancouver Economic Commission—read their bio and who they're involved with—would convene a round table for our committee where we could actually engage a variety of people in the clean-tech sector.
Then look at doing two site visits, if you will, in British Columbia. One is the NRCan Pacific forestry centre. You can read the bio about them. They're one of five research centres within the Canadian forest service. There's also an LNG facility. LNG is a huge part of what we talk about, and there are some LNG facilities that are really working on some clean technologies that are quite innovative.
That would be a couple of days, and we would then do a couple of days in Alberta. If you flip to the next page, we're possibly looking at an oil and gas round table probably in Calgary. The presentation by COSIA was very extensive, and they've offered to assist us in doing something further. They may be the catalyst for doing that. We don't know; I'm just putting that out there.
There's also an NRCan Canmet energy facility near Edmonton. They're doing some very innovative work with businesses to help them get where they need to be.
The third thing is—and we're going to ask our Alberta colleagues specifically—one of the thoughts was to visit Fort McMurray. We'd like to show our support for Fort McMurray in a variety of ways and visit, if it is appropriate that we go to one of the facilities near Fort McMurray, but again, we don't know, and you know better than we do. We're looking at the last week in August, so it wouldn't be for a bit, and I'm just putting it out there. I think it's important for the committee, but we also realize that there are sensitivities around people trying to get back in their homes, etc., and we certainly don't want to do anything to impede that.
That's what the first leg or part of this would be.
The second would be in October, and we can talk about that in a second.
In the meantime there are two things that we think are important for this committee to look at as we look at the next two segments, the mining and the nuclear. Michael has been in touch with some of the diamond mines in the Northwest Territories that are doing some really innovative things. There happens to be a direct flight from Ottawa, which just makes life so simple. That may be somewhere we want to take a look at. Recognizing our north is extremely important to us and gives us a sense of the accessibility issues and infrastructure, etc.
The other is the energy centre at Darlington. They have a mock-up now of a full calandria for nuclear power that we can tour. I spent seven hours there a few weeks ago. We can tour the waste facility, and there are all sorts of things we can do that will give us a better sense of what nuclear is and some of the innovation going on around that.
You can go on the train free of charge as parliamentarians. We can go up and back in the same day. I'll throw that out, because I take the train every week.
What we do in October is look at the more eastern part of our country and tidal power. I don't know how familiar you are with tidal power. There's some interesting stuff happening there. There's forestry in Quebec and on the east coast. We're still working on a couple of things in the east and Quebec that may be of interest. That's not until October, so we're holding that off for a bit.
That's what it would look like, and of course our analysts and our clerk would help us determine what that would look like in terms of budget and travel. We're looking at the last week of August, just before the Labour Day weekend and the week after Thanksgiving. That's what we're looking at and the other two days to be booked in between.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Thank you for that presentation.
In terms of the scheduling of the balance of the meetings to deal with the report, does anybody have any questions, comments, or concerns on that?
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
I guess we could talk about the parliamentary secretary's suggestion after we finish this, but for Wednesday, the 18th, you were concerned about whether we would go with it or not.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Sorry, I should add I've been advised that we can't start until four o'clock on Wednesday now.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
Maybe Kim could check with the whip. They should know if there are going to be any votes or anything, or if they're planning to bring anything forward. I'll do the same and make sure we're not doing anything. Then you should have an idea if anything's going to happen on Wednesday, and whether to cancel it or not.
Liberal
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
We can't go late on the 30th, even if it's possible. Candice and Shannon have other committees that night.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
If it's just the two witnesses, we should be able to get it done without any difficulty, assuming there are no other surprises that come along.
Other than that, does anybody else have any...? We're good on the schedule? Okay.
That leaves us with potentially an open date on June 1 and 13, and after that.
We're notionally reserving the 13th for a third meeting to deal with the report, so that could be the 15th, 20th, or 22nd.
Let's deal with June 1. Are there any suggestions on how we deal with that date?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
Okay. All right, we have unanimous consent on cancelling the meeting June 1, barring some miraculous effort by our analysts to get the report ready to review.
All right, so that's done. Let's move on to the parliamentary secretary's proposal.
What I understand needs to happen is that once it is defined a little more in terms of dates, locations, and whatnot, then our clerk needs to prepare a budget for us to present. Once that's been dealt with here it needs to be presented to the Liaison Committee.
How do we want to proceed? Do we have a motion that somebody wants to present today in terms of the study? Are there any other comments that people want to make about the proposal?
Go ahead, Mr. Harvey.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
Does somebody have to table a motion before we can have a discussion on it?
