Natural Resources Committee on April 24th, 2018

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

Okay.

[Drew Leyburne, Director General, Strategic Policy Branch, Strategic Policy and Results Sector, Department of Natural Resources]

I will just add that, to aggregate some of the data sources, there are a few tools that have emerged over the last few years that we are taking advantage of. We mentioned machine learning and artificial intelligence, which can do a lot of that crunching of the big data and process it, so humans can more easily access it.

We also have tools within the federal family that Laura alluded to earlier, like the federal geo-spatial platform, which takes the geographical information, whether on pipeline infrastructure, electricity grids, boreal forest habitat, or species at risk, and puts it into a single portal. It's called Open Maps and anyone in the public can access it. It can help people navigate the various layers of information that are sometimes really difficult to process when they're independent datasets.

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

I'll ask another broad question of all of you here. It comes directly from the following statement by Positive Energy. One reason I think we're talking about this is that energy information is crucial to developing good policy. We have different groups from various angles coming at this.

One of the paragraphs here says:

Credibility is the key criterion for a functioning energy information system. High quality, credible energy information must be relevant to users' needs; accurate and reliable; timely and punctual; coherent and comparable; accessible and clear.... Furthermore, to avoid political bias, energy information systems should operate at arm's length from the government.

I'd like to ask for your thoughts on that last statement especially.

With regard to the business of the Canadian energy system as it stands now, most people I talked to at the meeting last night said they just go to the U.S. Energy Information Administration or to the IEA, to get their information because it's so much easier and more comprehensive.

To me, it's a worry if we're going to the U.S or international agencies for information on our own system. That and this arm's length aspect, I wonder if you could comment on that.

[Jim Fox]

From the National Energy Board standpoint, we do operate at arm's length from the government. We're an independent agency, a creature of statute. We take our energy information mandate from our legislation and provide it. I can say there's no influence that flows from the government itself to the NEB. We consult with government agencies when we're creating our outlooks and our program about what their needs might be, but we don't take direction from them on either the products or the outcomes we have. We feel that information we have is independent from government.

In terms of reliability, we often do hear from people that we should emulate the EIA because their site on Canadian data is better than ours. Indeed, it's probably better than any one of ours, but in the collective sense, Canada's energy data is robust. It's a bit difficult to find, and that's an issue we should address, but I don't believe that either the EIA or the IEA have better data on Canada than Canada does.

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

I was talking about the ease of use.

[Jim Fox]

It's possibly easier to use their sites. I don't actually use them. I have Dr. Bhargava here.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Cannings, I'm going to have to stop you there.

Mr. Whalen, you're up last. You have three or maybe four minutes.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

That's a shame, because I have 50 minutes of questions. I might resubmit them some other way.

For years I've been getting weekly and daily reports from the Energy Information Agency in the U.S. It's part of my daily routine to check that. Ironically, on April 18, “U.S. imports of Canadian crude oil by rail increase” was the title of their weekly petroleum report. It's great, it's a good site, and it seems as though a lot of the data is there, but maybe not enough.

Come on now, guys. I don't have a lot of time.

We have the information. If I have one question, it is this: who would pay for a portal and how would a portal be funded within an independent agency of government so we can get this data together and get it out, essentially in the same form as either the International Energy Agency or the U.S. Energy Information Administration, horribly close acronyms, so that people don't have to learn how to use a new GUI, it's the same type of data information, and we're just copying what the best are doing? Who would pay for that, and where would it reside?

I put that to Laura and to Jim.

[Laura Oleson]

The fundamental question is, do you believe energy information is a public good? If it is, then I would say governments would pay for it. I do know, and perhaps Jim and Statistics Canada can elaborate, that they do have some pay-for-usage models where there is a commercial value to it. The provinces, territories, and utilities all have an interest in this data as well. I certainly can't speak for them, but I think this would be something of interest as well. However, that hasn't been determined.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Jim, you already have a www.neb-one.gc.ca data exchange portal, but it's really not to the same standard as the rest.

[Jim Fox]

I disagree that it's not to the same standard. It's intended for a different purpose. As I think I mentioned earlier, we have developed our methods and our standards for the purposes set out in our legislation, that we have to do energy information. We monitor markets, we track supply and various developments, and we also use our energy information program to support our regulatory mandate.

Doing analysis of that type of information gives us the skills and ability to look at, say, an applicant's business case for their pipeline.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

How do we get from what you have to what you assess?

[Jim Fox]

We get from what we have to an excellent system through co-operation between all the different agencies and organizations that have energy data, and through agreement on a collaborative way forward to produce, daily or weekly, whatever reports are necessary for Canadians. It's about focusing together on a larger challenge that is not the responsibility of any given agency.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

How much of your department's resources are dedicated to the data exchange portal right now?

[Jim Fox]

To the data exchange portal, I can't tell you, but I can tell you that our energy information writ large has about 30 staff members, from about 500.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Perfect. Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you all very much for joining us today. I'm sorry that we're short on time, but that seems to be the case with every set of witnesses. We come in here and could take much longer than we have, but it's been a great start to our study.

We will suspend now very briefly.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We'll resume our second hour. Thank you to our witnesses for joining us this morning.

I know that you heard part of the earlier presentations, so you understand the procedures, but I'll go through them quickly. Each set of witnesses has up to 10 minutes for their presentation, following which there will be questions from around the table, in French or English.

Let's jump right into it, since we are running behind.

We'll start with the Department of the Environment.

Ms. Gonçalves.

[Jacqueline Gonçalves, Director General, Science and Risk Assessment, Department of the Environment]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. I'm going to share my time with my colleague, Mr. Mr. Mr. Derek Hermanutz, from the Department of the Environment. We're primarily here today to speak to you about our use of energy data. We are consumers of that data, so we'll be speaking from that perspective.

Every year, Environment and Climate Change Canada obtains statistics on fuel consumption from our colleagues at Statistics Canada. These statistics are a critical input to our annual key deliverables, namely, the national inventories of sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, and of the emissions of air pollutants, and black carbon.

The inventories that we produce fulfill a number of domestic and international functions, such as meeting the international reporting requirements and setting the official benchmark for actual emissions in Canada since 1990.

The national greenhouse gas inventory is perhaps our most visible product. It's updated every year and published on an annual basis, and the most recent one was put out only about 10 days ago. It's published every April. Based on the latest published data, anyone reading the report will see that fuel use in Canada represents approximately 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This means that over three-quarters of the greenhouse gas emissions cited in Canada are based on the fuel statistics that we receive from our colleagues at Statistics Canada.

There's been a long-standing and well-established process through which our two departments closely collaborate on the quality control of these fuel statistics and how we use them. Certainly the provincial and territorial stakeholders scrutinize the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to their respective jurisdictions and will alert us when they identify any inconsistencies or unexpected emission data. In turn, we work directly with those jurisdictions and with our colleagues at Statistics Canada to resolve those issues.

Fuel statistics provide the solid basis for our GHG inventory. While it's a well-established process, there are, of course, continuing improvements that need to be made and that we continue to work on. For example, reducing the variation in the quality of the data between jurisdictions is an important issue for us as we produce national inventories. Certainly emerging issues like biofuels are an area that we continue to need to improve the statistics on, and, of course, minimizing any revisions from year to year because we are collecting data on a long trend line, and that information is updated on a yearly basis. We do sometimes pick up issues that affect the longer trends of previous years. That's why revisions and minimizing those disturbances across the trend line are very important.

Environment Canada also recently launched an expansion to its own greenhouse gas reporting program, which collects greenhouse gas emission data from facilities directly, across Canada. That expansion will allow it to feed facility data directly into our greenhouse gas inventory. While there is currently very limited duplication between what Statistics Canada collects and what we will start collecting, we will obviously work together very closely to ensure that there is a minimum of duplication in terms of data collection for those purposes.

I'm going to pass it over to my colleague, Derek, who will also talk about the products that he's involved with.

[Derek Hermanutz, Director General, Economic Analysis Directorate, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment]

Thanks, Jacquie, and my thanks to the chair and the committee members for inviting me here today. I'll just build on Jacquie's remarks on the national inventory report, which looks at the historical emissions, and some of our UNFCCC requirements for reporting on projections.

A major UNFCCC report, the national communication on climate change, is due every four years. We just published one in December 2017. In the interim, there are also biennial reports, which are abridged versions of the national communication on climate change, and they are submitted every two years.

The UNFCCC has developed reporting guidelines and a rigorous review process for these reports, and according to the guidelines, these reports also include a chapter on GHG projections among other reporting elements.

The department has committed to publishing updated projections annually, and we've been doing that since 2011, so in between the biennial reports the department publishes a standalone report that focuses on the GHG projections. In order to develop these projections, we rely heavily on the historical energy data from Statistics Canada, as well as oil and gas price and production projections from the energy futures report prepared annually by the National Energy Board.

One of the most important data sources coming from Statistics Canada is the “Report on Energy Supply and Demand in Canada”. It's the cornerstone for the development of our projections and contains information on historical energy use by sector and province. We also use a number of supplementary data sources in the preparation of our projections, including electricity capacity generation and oil and gas production.

In addition to developing projections for greenhouse gas emissions, we also prepare projections for air pollutants based on the same energy dataset. These projections are used to assess progress towards Canada's climate change targets, through the international reporting, as well as to inform internal analysis during the policy development stage and provide the foundation for the cost-benefit analysis that is done for regulatory impact analysis statements for proposed regulations the department is setting forward.

Our publications on projections are used widely by the public, non-government organizations, and academics in their analysis and research.

I'll just close by saying that in the preparation of our projections we consult quite closely with provinces, territories, and other third parties to make sure there's sort of a built-in peer review process.

I'll thank you again and I'll turn it over to Greg.

[Greg Peterson, Director General, Agriculture, Energy, Environment and Transportation Statistics, Statistics Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Coming from Statistics Canada, any morning when we get to discuss data is a good morning, indeed.

My name is Greg Peterson and I'm the director general responsible for agriculture, energy, environment, and transportation statistics. I'm joined by René Beaudoin, the assistant director responsible for the energy statistics program.

I have brought a series of slides and I'd like to go through these very quickly.

The energy sector is very important to Canada's economy. I've presented a few stylized facts on slide 2. I'm not going to read numbers out to you. The key is that energy is important to Canada's economy, society, and the environment. Canada needs good quality and reliable energy to support decision-making, policies, programs, and investments. We need this information also as a feeder into other broader areas, such as estimates of gross domestic product as well as the emissions data that are produced by our colleagues at Environment and Climate Change.

However, this need occurs in an environment where data are ambiguous. They're produced by both the public and private sectors. It occurs in an environment where machines and sensors are producing petabytes of data that are ready to be subjected to visualization, modelling, artificial intelligence, and other data science techniques. Organization of this information is important, otherwise we risk being a country that is data-rich but information-poor.

The third slide in our presentation presents a schematic of our current statistical framework for energy in Canada. Much of the data are collected and disseminated by our energy statistics program in Statistics Canada. In the schematic, that's illustrated by the box is shaded in blue. The data that we produce focuses on the production, transformation, distribution, and consumption of energy.

I'd like to note that the data that we produce are harmonized with international standards for energy data so that we're coherent with other countries. However, there are many other players that are involved in the energy statistics field. We heard this morning about some of the good work that's done by the National Energy Board and our friends at Natural Resources Canada. There are provincial and territorial bodies that collect information for regulatory purposes. Industry associations collect information about their members. There are other areas of Statistics Canada that collect information about the energy sector even if it doesn't relate to energy production, like labour force statistics or information on science and technology.

We have a broad community of data producers and we also have a broad community of data users. My colleagues from Environment and Climate Change have described how they use the energy statistics we produce. At NRCan, our data are used for the production of energy efficiency indicators. We provide information to Global Affairs Canada and have had to help with Emergency Preparedness. We have a broad community of users in the academic community, and, of course, this information feeds into international bodies such as the IEA.

I would argue that currently we already have a solid base and broad range of energy statistics available for Canada.

However, as slide 4 indicates, we don't live in a bubble. We listen to feedback from our users and from other stakeholders. It's clear that Canada's energy statistics are not perfect. From what we've heard, there are a range of challenges on several fronts that probably need to be addressed. In the area of collection, there are many organizations that are gathering energy data for their own purposes, which could create a duplication of effort, additional costs, and an additional burden on respondents. Having these multiple sources of information could occasionally create confusion for users as to which data are official and which ones are the best to use.

Having multiple data sources can also lead to concerns about data that aren't necessarily coherent or of comparably good quality. Then there are some gaps. The energy sector is rapidly evolving. With the advent and growth of new sources of energy, such as renewable energy and co-generation, the environment is changing. We need to keep on top of these changes, and the system has to be able to react.

Finally, there are barriers to access. One important feature of the energy sector in Canada is that it's dominated by a small number of large players. From our perspective this leads to issues of data suppression in order to protect the confidentiality of individual respondents. At Statistics Canada we recognize the need to work to find better ways of getting more data in the hands of users.

These are the issues that we face now, but if we think about where we're going in the future we've moving to an environment where there's going to be a larger quantity of sensory and administrative data available. This will give us great improvements in order to make significant improvements to the energy statistics system, but it creates additional challenges and it will require better coordination in the acquisition, curation, organization, integration, and modelling of these types of information.

We need to take action on these challenges to maintain and enhance our energy data. Here, Statistics Canada has embarked on a modernization initiative that, among other things, is driving us to develop a more user-centred focus, putting increased emphasis on collaboration and partnerships, and a thrust on using more leading-edge methods, moving away from the traditional survey approach to gathering data, more toward adopting an “administrative data first” approach for information gathering.

Through this modernization lens, we're being driven to do better. In the context of energy statistics, we see three things that we need to do as an organization.

The first relates to improved governance. We need to be more efficient in data collection and data sharing. We need to minimize the burden that we place on respondents by tapping more and more into administrative data sources, and coordinating with other organizations on how we gather these statistics. Ideally, we want to collect once, but use many times.

There are a lot of interested stakeholders in the energy community, and we need to get them more involved. Statistics Canada has collection expertise and infrastructure, but we can benefit from existing subject matter knowledge, both within and outside government. We've already entered into data-sharing agreements with most provinces and territories. We already have data moving between jurisdictions, but again this enhanced co-operation would be a good thing.

Second, we need to improve on data access. We realize this is an important goal. We have to get more data into the hands of users. To do this, we have to do a few things. Users need to be more aware of our collective data holdings. We have to reduce barriers to access. There have been discussions about a single point of access, so we should aim toward a one-stop information hub where users can find the data they need, or links to those sources. We also have to do a better job in providing access to micro data for researchers in a secure environment that respects the confidentiality of our respondents.

Third, and finally, we recognize that we need to improve the quality of the data we're producing. In addition to the traditional objectives of improving coverage, timeliness, and comparability, and filling in data gaps, we have to take a more integrated approach to data, taking advantage of these new sources of information that are becoming available and finding mechanisms of putting them together.

In thinking about governance, the issues that I've just raised are not new to Statistics Canada. We've encountered similar issues in bringing together data from multiple jurisdictions. We've done this successfully for years in areas such as justice, health, and education. Most recently, Minister Garneau last fall announced the creation of a virtual Canadian centre on transportation data. Without changing any of the machinery of government, we started working much more closely with Transport Canada, with both bodies collecting information on the transportation system. We worked on the coordination of the information that we collect with the objective of those Olympian ideals of being better, faster, stronger, eliminating duplication and operating more efficiently.

In the few short months we've been in existence, we've introduced two significant data products: an economic account or satellite account on transportation, and a Canadian trade analysis framework, which we were able to produce for millions of dollars less and years faster than following methodologies that the United States has used in its Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Through co-operation we've been able to focus our efforts on developing new data products that meet the very specific needs of people in the transportation community. At the same time, we've put a single transportation information hub in the field that was released in the past two weeks, which again brings together data from both organizations to a single point of access. The way in which we developed this has been more like a lean start-up where we bring together what we have, but the objective is to bring in information from other partners with the objective of having one comprehensive site that meets the needs of transportation users.

In conclusion, we recognize there's a strong interest in improving energy data. We at Statistics Canada are keen to work with other key players to continue to improve the state of energy information.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Ng.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today, and for the information you and previous witnesses have shared. It will be very helpful to the work that we're about to do here in the committee.

Statistics Canada knows full well that we reintroduced the long-form census, and the purpose of that of course is to continue or resume the collection of very important data that will help governments and policy-makers make decisions based on real data. I think about it in this particular context, and listening to the various testimony today and what you're getting at around some of the gaps. Thank you for sharing that last bit on the work that Statistics Canada has done in the area of transportation.

Where do you see an opportunity to address some of those gaps and to create the kind of datasets and incorporate the analysis that obviously exists in NRCan or in the NEB, and perhaps also in Environment Canada, that can utilize the data? It has to start from a comprehensive or good set of data, or data that isn't in there through new methodology. Can you talk to us a little about what that opportunity could look like, the other side of addressing the gaps you've stated?

[Greg Peterson]

That's a very good question. I'm going to tread carefully so I don't veer into policy.

Maybe I can pile onto the model that I described for transportation. In that instance, we found issues that are very similar to what we're discussing here today on the state of energy statistics. In the transportation model—again, it's very early days in rolling this out—we started working among the federal partners involved with transportation information to first identify where the information lies and exactly who was holding what, and then we worked to eliminate duplicative inefficiencies. We—

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Could you pause there for a second? With respect to the current context of energy data and environmental data, what would you see...? In your deck, you say there are a lot of collectors, a lot of incoming data. On that point right there, where do you see the complexity, the duplication perhaps, and therefore what is actually is leading to the gap? Could you pick it up there?