Natural Resources Committee on April 30th, 2019

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

On the large emitters of carbon that are being exempted with the 95% rule, you've obviously done some calculations. Can you tell me how many tonnes of emissions have been exempted?

[Christyne Tremblay]

The same answer goes for that question as well.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay, I'll go to something easy here.

Let's talk about the spruce budworm. What are the objectives and expected results of phase one of the spruce budworm early intervention strategy?

[Christyne Tremblay]

I am very pleased that that question has been asked, Mr. Chair. With your permission, I will yield the floor to Beth MacNeil, our assistant deputy minister for the Canadian Forest Service.

[Beth MacNeil, Assistant Deputy Minister, Canadian Forest Service, Department of Natural Resources]

I'm not sure whether the question was about phase one or phase two, because the early intervention strategy is actually phase two. Could I get some clarity on that?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Yes, sorry, I meant phase two.

[Beth MacNeil]

The Government of Canada allocated approximately $74.5 million for phase two. We are just beginning year two.

I'm very happy to report that early signs show that this is very successful. Many of the resources are going to spraying operations to attack hot spots as well as to monitoring. Since 2014 we've seen a reduction of 90% of the spruce budworm populations in New Brunswick. We believe if we're successful there, it will not spread into Nova Scotia, P.E.I. or Newfoundland and Labrador.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have 20 seconds.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Yes, I have questions; I just might get an answer sometime.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Okay, that will take us to Mr. Cannings.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here.

I'm going to start with a question that I meant to ask the minister, but I ran out of time because I rambled on too much, I guess.

A few weeks ago, I was here in this room, or a room very like it, listening to the commissioner on the environment and sustainability give her final report of her tenure here. In that report she said, “For decades, successive federal governments have failed to reach their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the government is not ready to adapt to a changing climate. This must change.”

Part of the report that she was presenting at that meeting was about fossil fuel subsidies. I don't have the quote right in front of me, but one of the breakout headlines of that report was to the effect that this government, after four years, couldn't even define what an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy was, yet it went on in the next breath to say that we don't have any.

I remember being in Argentina with the former minister when the big topic at the G20 meeting was about whether this government would commit to removing all subsidies for fossil fuels and instead put in significant incentives for renewable energy.

I'm just wondering if Mr. Khosla or somebody could....

[Christyne Tremblay]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

A clean environment and a strong economy go hand in hand. There is a lot of work that is being done on inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and I think it's very key to understand and highlight inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. We believe that what we're doing in Canada doesn't fall under this, but we agreed to conduct a peer review with Argentina. The Minister of Finance is responsible for that.

Recently, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change launched a consultation. She appointed a commissioner who is going to consult Canadians about fossil fuel subsidies. There are some definitions that exist that can be used and are referred to in the discussion paper that's being published at the same time as we launch this consultation.

If you want to speak more about this definition, I would turn to Mr. Des Rosiers, who is in charge of this file.

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Maybe I'll just add that the purpose of that consultation is precisely to see the views of Canadians and parliamentarians, should they have views in terms of what should be involved or not. There are lots of definitions out there.

In Europe, they have adopted some model within the European Commission. The commissioner actually referenced the multiplicity of definitions present and captured it in that consultation paper, which is fairly thorough.

The government wants to have that open dialogue with Canadians to seek their views on it.

Michael Horgan, former deputy minister of finance is involved in this consultation. He's a very respected senior official. Their work has just been kicked off recently. We look forward to hearing Canadians' views.

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

Moving on then, there was a brief discussion of electric vehicles. Mr. Schmale tried to make the point about how expensive they are for the average Canadian. From the studies I've seen, if you take into account the very little money you spend maintaining them and fuelling them, it works out to be about the same.

My first question is, because I have the figure of $10 million written down here and I fear it might be low, how much money is in the budget for building charging infrastructure across the country? Is it $10 million or $100 million?

[Cheri Crosby]

According to the budget 2019 announcement, there was an additional $435 million, of which $130 million comes to NRCan over five years, with $10 million this year.

Our package in terms of building the infrastructure will be closer to $130 million over the five years, but in the main estimates this year, it will show up as $10 million.

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

Getting back to my point, we have to be bold with this. By my calculations, $10 million will build about 100 charging stations if they're the fast-charging stations that people would want. We're already getting reports in cities like Vancouver of people waiting a long time because there are.... If you can imagine, 100 gas pumps across Canada wouldn't fuel too many cars.

I would urge the government to put more effort into that department. That said, I'm glad there are charging stations out there now. If I did buy an electric car now, I think I could get around my riding with that.

Coming back to the retrofits, I wanted to try to get some more clarity on that about this new program. FCM, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, has now been given $300 million for home retrofits for private homes.

How can Canadians get involved in that? Do they have to contact FCM? Do their own municipalities have to get involved? If they're not in a municipality, how can they access that? Is it this year, or is it last year?

[Christyne Tremblay]

If I may, Mr. Chair, I will give a partial answer before I hand over to Mr. Khosla.

Your first concern is correct, Mr. Cannings. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, or FCM, is a national voice and has been our partner since 1901. So we are used to working with that partner. It is established in large cities, but also in small municipalities and rural communities. We are going to be working with 19 provincial and territorial associations responsible for reaching out not only to the major centres, but also to small towns and rural municipalities.

The envelope even includes an amount for community action and for work with not-for-profit organizations in small communities so that investments can be made in public buildings. The FCM and its affiliates therefore allow us to ensure that the program will not simply be deployed only in major urban centres.

I will now give Mr. Khosla the floor so that he can explain the program itself.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Very, very quickly.

[Jay Khosla, Assistant Deputy Minister, Energy Sector, Department of Natural Resources]

Okay.

I don't have a whole lot more to add, but to come to the question of retrofits and whether there are residential retrofits contained within...first of all, there's $1 billion that's going to the FCM.

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

Oh, I know. There's $300 million for residential retrofits.

[Jay Khosla]

I would say it's closer to $600 million.

We can come back on the figure, but there is retrofit money in there and it's going directly to housing.

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

I'm more concerned with how that rolls out to people who don't live in Montreal or Vancouver.

[Jay Khosla]

I understand—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'm going to have to interrupt.

I gave you some of that three minutes you got last time but didn't think you did.

Mr. Graham, it's over to you.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

If you'd cut me off with three minutes left to hand it over to Mr. Whalen, I'd appreciate it.