Natural Resources Committee on May 14th, 2019

[Chris Evans]

As I said, we continue to work with stakeholders on the analysis. A lot of them are looking at understanding the impacts this standard may have on their industries. I can't give you technical details here on the structure of the analysis that's been happening, but we are continuing to work with these interested parties to make sure that we understand their perspective and that we're looking at what we understand it will mean to the industry. We're making sure that ECCC is aware of that in shaping the final standard.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

The mining executives I met today reminded me of how many investment dollars have left our country when it comes to development of more metal mines. Does the department have an analysis on what the prognosis is, going forward?

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Our colleagues from the mining sector, which is part of NRCan, are certainly attuned to that. You may have noted that we most recently published a mineral action plan for Canada in conjunction with our provincial stakeholders, which is precisely meant to address that very point about making sure that Canada has an agreed-upon game plan that is accepted and supported by all. I must say that the degree of support around that mineral action plan was extraordinarily high, including from our colleagues from the Mining Association of Canada, along with a large number of stakeholders. It was presented at the PDAC, which as you know is the Prospectors and Developers Association's meeting, gathering tens of thousands of players from Canada and around the world. The work will carry on over the coming months to shape up the various components of that action plan. But we're working very actively on that very point.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

If I heard you correctly, you said earlier that we will require additional pipelines to be built to meet up with production. I'd like you to clarify that.

[Chris Evans]

I only commented on the National Energy Board's forecast for production growth and on the nameplate capacity. I am not stating an opinion about public need. That is for another organization. That's part of the National Energy Board's review process, and that will be part of the impending decision of the Governor in Council. It's not appropriate for me to comment on that.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have 20 seconds.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

What do you see as the major impediments in fast-tracking the TMX?

[Chris Evans]

That, I think, is sort of a question that would be beyond the scope of what I'm really to opine on.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Hehr, we'll go back to you.

[Kent Hehr, Liberal, Calgary Centre, AB]

I note that you brought up towards the end of your presentation the government's $100 million investment in CRIN and that a group of people came from Calgary to Ottawa to discuss this initiative. You say that the group has been collaborating for the last year. Can you shed a little more light on it and tell us what this group is doing and what outcomes we can expect?

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Sure.

Recognizing that this is led by industry and universities out west— I don't speak on their behalf, and I certainly haven't been directly involved in it—I'll perhaps ask my colleague Dr. Cecile Siewe, who is part of the governance of the CRIN, to add to my remarks.

We do have, thanks to this network, both Canada's oil and natural gas producers coming together to really make sure that the ecosystem is efficiently managed. They have established a number of working groups and focus areas, which touch on water technology, which we talked about, novel extraction technology, which we've talked about just earlier. They are looking at novel production and end use, cleaner fuels, methane. There are number of domains that are under consideration, and they want to make sure there is clarity in terms of what is needed from the adopters' perspective. So the oil and gas companies, in this case, are making sure they communicate that clearly to people like Dr. Cecile Siewe in the national lab, to colleagues in universities, to small firms, so that they know exactly what they're looking for.

Is that correct?

[Cecile Siewe]

Absolutely.

One of the rationales for CRIN was really developing that ecosystem in the energy industry to minimize duplication, just increase the level of awareness, build a network of the different parties working in that space—what is going on, who is doing what, what gaps the different parties are trying complete—and create that degree of leveraging of effort so that you can both accelerate the pace of development toward getting commercialized solutions and create synergies between what has already gone on in the different companies in actually addressing some of those gaps.

[Kent Hehr, Liberal, Calgary Centre, AB]

This is an exciting project that, hopefully, will wield some excellent results.

Here's a follow-up question to your presentation. You were saying that much work has been done on tailing ponds.

I was actually in the Alberta legislature in 2008 when there was an incident where ducks were migrating and they perished in the tailings ponds. I think at that time it was highlighted, and we faced a lot of pressure from not only Canadian citizens but the international community to try to do better in terms of environmental protection and things of that nature. Could you give me an update on where we are on that and what types of technologies we're using to reduce tailings ponds?

[Cecile Siewe]

I will take that in three parts.

I will start with generating the ponds. What we're doing and investigating and working on in collaboration with industry is how we can ensure that less of the material goes into the tailing ponds. This is where new technologies, like using a hybrid, which use a lot less water, or you use no water at all in the extraction process, generates a different kind of tailings that doesn't have as much water in it. It consolidates faster. That is one aspect of addressing the tailing ponds issues.

Then with the material that's already been generated, we are looking at things like the geotechnical stability of the tailings ponds. We work in collaboration with our colleagues in the Canadian Forest Service, CFS. We have to get the ponds stable before we can starting talking about reclamation, so we work in collaboration with them on that.

We also look at things like the GHG emissions from the tailings ponds. How can we mitigate or manage them? How can you also ensure the release of water from the tailings ponds? To what extent can you treat the water that is released so that it can be reused or released back into the environment. It's a multi-faceted approach which is still ongoing.

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Perhaps you know, Mr. Chair, that the ocean protection plan added a $1.5-billion envelope that committed investment in equipment and scientists—like the one that Dr. Cecile Siewe just described—who are able to have specialized equipment. Specialized staff were able to evaluate the kinds of opportunities that we just talked about.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You can have a quick question.

[Kent Hehr, Liberal, Calgary Centre, AB]

Is NRCan developing more frameworks and more robust systems to allow geothermal to happen throughout Canada?

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Yes, we are. I welcome the question, Mr. Chair, about geothermal energy.

I would say that this is the missing link in Canada. If you travel in Europe, if you travel in the U.S. and many countries, you would see its presence. You might wonder why we don't have any more here. It's not because we don't have opportunities. If you look at the geothermal map that we produce at NRCan, you will see that we actually have plenty of resources in the country—in the east, west, south, and in the north as well where we have fantastic potential to develop this.

Perhaps because we have such abundant energy supply in all forms—renewable energy and fossil—it was somewhat overlooked. We really felt it was missing in our game because it was such an attractive proposition. We were very happy to announce recently a project in Saskatchewan, the project DEEP, which is looking at having an industrial-scale electricity generation capacity using geothermal energy.

We just announced a couple of weeks ago another project, the Eavor-Loop. This one, I want to say, is in Alberta, but I reserve judgment on that. Interestingly, it is looking at oil and gas experts, horizontal drillers. Those same people who do horizontal drilling in the oil and gas sector brought their expertise to do two vertical drills and then make a geothermal plate that is even more stable, efficient and productive. This is a world first. We're really pleased to see it. one. We are curious to see how the demo turns out.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cannings, you have three minutes.

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

I'm going to move on. This is something we studied in a different study: the energy data centre, or whatever you would call it. I think in the latest budget there was some money for Statistics Canada to take that up.

Is that where it has landed?

I think a lot of us around this committee and a lot of us across the country would like to have a source of energy data that's open to the public, that's timely, that's transparent and accurate. Then I wouldn't have to ask you all of these questions about things. I'm just wondering if that's where it's landed.

If you know, why wasn't there a separate body created as there is in the United States, where you have something that's truly apart from government that could be seen as unbiased?

[Frank Des Rosiers]

Yes, I certainly welcome the questions.

Do you want to take a crack at it?

[Chris Evans]

Certainly. Following the study that you did, I think from April to June last year, you made the point that accurate and reliable information was important to Canada's energy future and to people having a transparent understanding of the market. Through budget 2019, as you observed, there was money given and, in collaboration with provinces and territories, the government has been working to launch a response to what was essentially the first recommendation in your report, namely, for a virtual one-stop shop to bring together and rationalize information, not only from Statistics Canada but from other public institutions and the private sector as well.

Stats Canada, as you know, has world-class expertise in collecting and managing data, so it provides a hard core to this endeavour. It maintains data sharing agreements with provinces, territories and other organizations and positions them to undertake this work well.

The portal, in fact, is expected to be launched relatively soon, recognizing that this energy information co-operation will be a key area for working with provinces and territories. It will be continued through the upcoming energy and mines ministers conference. It's going to happen in July in British Columbia.

[Frank Des Rosiers]

I just note that the member of Parliament, Mr. Chair, is not alone in looking for this kind of information. That's something we heard a lot during the Generation Energy discussion. People are curious. They want to have the data, the evidence. They want to forge their own opinions. We think that having this portal and this data available will help inform the public debate.