Natural Resources Committee on April 26th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We will vote on Mr. Harvey's motion.

(Motion agreed to)

Debate has now been adjourned. We will get back—

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

I would like to give notice of another motion that I was going to give earlier, but I was denied that.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'm not sure now is the time to do it. Next time you have the floor, you can....

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

This will take one minute.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

All right, go ahead.

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

I promise I won't go on.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

It's not that we don't like hearing from you, Mr. Canning.

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

It's relevant to what we've just been hearing.

It's a notice of motion, and the motion reads:

That, in light of the allegation made by public servants from multiple departments regarding the instructions that they received from Erin O’Gorman asking them to find a way to approve the Kinder Morgan project before the consultation with indigenous communities and environmental assessment process were completed and that they were never asked to provide advice to support a possible rejection of the pipeline, the Committee invite Erin O’Gorman – former associate deputy minister of the Major Projects Management Office – to appear before the committee and that a representative from Major Projects Management Office, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, Health Canada, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada and Natural Resources Canada appear before the committee by May 31st 2018 and that the meeting be televised.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Okay. We are going to get our witnesses in for the next panel.

By video conference, we have Mr. Griffin.

In our presence, we have Mr. Layzell.

Thank you both for joining us. Our apologies for being a little behind schedule. I will turn it over to you. You each have up to 10 minutes to do a presentation, then I will open the floor to questions from around the table.

Mr. Layzell, since you are here, perhaps you can start us off. If the rest of the room could keep their voices down so we can hear the discussions, we would be grateful for that too.

[Dr. David Layzell, Professor and Director, Canadian Energy Systems Analysis Research]

Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

I would like to make a few comments initially about why we need energy data. I would argue that we need it because we live in a world of very rapid change. In most cases, these changes arise from outside of government as the result of technology, business model, or social innovation. Sometimes governments work to drive systems change in order to address socio-economic or environmental challenges, and climate change is one of those challenges. Either way, we need high-quality, comprehensive data to carry out the critical analysis and modelling that are needed to inform policy and investment decisions.

In the next nine minutes, I'd like to identify or address three questions. The first is what kind of energy data we need. I would argue that we need data that will allow us to fully understand all parts of the numerous energy systems that link energy resources provided by Mother Nature to the energy services that humans want and need.

Some of the energy data already exists; it is provided by Canadian agencies and is easily accessed, but there are currently serious shortcomings in the completeness and quality of the data. I've handed out a briefing note where I've identified some of the shortcomings, but I don't have time today to discuss each point individually. You'll be thankful for that.

However, I will mention one. Our current thinking about human and anthropogenic energy systems only tracks the flows of energy and carbon through fuels and electricity. It does not consider the flows of energy and carbon that are associated with our food and fibre production. Work we have been doing in the last few years has shown that the annual flows of energy and carbon through Canada's agriculture and forestry sectors is about the same size as our national oil industry, including all of the Alberta oil sands, yet we ignore it. In a world concerned about anthropogenic climate change, I would argue that this is short-sighted, and that there are opportunities within agriculture and forestry to address our environmental issues.

The second question I'd like to address is what useful products energy data can support. The first and obvious one is for forecasting future energy systems based on existing policies and programs plus assumptions about population and economic growth. The second, of course, is to inform government policies by assessing the effectiveness of past and ongoing policies and programs. Energy data is important for that. Perhaps one of the most important is to predict the likely outcome of various new policies for reducing emissions: carbon pricing, clean fuel standards, renewable energy initiatives, etc.

The third product, which I'd really like to focus on today, is to allow us to explore transition pathways. I would argue that Canada desperately needs credible, compelling transition pathways for energy systems that are actually capable of achieving the target we've agreed to in the pan-Canadian framework, which is for large greenhouse gas emission reductions while enhancing economic prosperity.

Despite the fact that Canada has been making climate change commitments for the past 20 years, we have never before defined transition pathways for how we could successfully reach those targets. Perhaps it's not surprising, therefore, that we failed to meet both our 1997 Kyoto commitment and our 2009 Copenhagen commitment.

We still have time to meet our Paris commitments, but we need a plan. I would actually argue that we need plans—with an “s”, plural plans—that are credible, compelling, and capable of success. Comprehensive data on energy systems is essential to defining those transition pathways, but it is very important that the pathways be about more than simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To be economically credible and compelling to key stakeholders, the transition pathways must address some of the other major problems that exist in our current energy systems. For example, our transportation system generates over 160 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. That's a serious problem, but it also kills or seriously injures more than 10,000 Canadians per year, contributes to over $30 billion per year in the social cost of air pollution, and creates congestion that reduces productivity in Canada by tens of billions of dollars per year.

Also, personal vehicle ownership costs the average Canadian family about $11,000 per year, but families only use their vehicles about 4% of the time; 96% of the time they're parked on the most expensive land in Canada, with more than four parking lots for every vehicle in Canada. They also make our communities more car friendly and a lot less people friendly, which creates other social problems. Clearly, we need to address these issues and [Inaudible—Editor] could provide the major economic drivers for also addressing the climate change issue.

High-quality energy data is essential to develop collective visions and strategies for building energy systems of tomorrow that are environmentally, economically, socially, and ethically sustainable.

The third and final question is, what should governments do?

My briefing note provides some recommendations for an energy data ecosystem that includes the establishment of two new organizations with very different but complementary mandates.

One is a Canadian energy information organization with a mandate to compile, validate, and make available detailed regional, historic data relevant to the energy supply and demand in Canada. This needs to be closely linked to government departments that actually have the authority to go out and collect that energy data. It needs a governance structure that engages the provinces, territories, municipalities, and industry associations that provide the data, as well as those organizations that are going to be users of that data. The CEIO, as I would call it, must be trusted and fact-based, with the highest standards of quality control. It should be open access, informative, and non-controversial.

The second organization, I would argue, is not as well or clearly defined, but I'm calling it the Canadian transitions pathway initiative. This would be an organization to bring together the innovators and thought leaders across Canada, from industry, academic groups, environmental groups, and municipal governments right through provincial, territorial, and federal departments. Their challenge would be to define the credible, compelling transition pathways that are actually capable of achieving societal goals, including but not limited to greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The governance structure for this organization must be independent, free-standing, apolitical, and with an initial long-term tenure funding period. It's going to take a while to set this up and get it moving.

By defining, characterizing, and critically assessing numerous transition pathways, the Canadian transition pathway initiative would see the spinoff of industry-led consortia that continue to build the visions, develop the technologies, and support the most promising transitional pathways.

In closing, Canada needs to invest in an energy data ecosystem that will not only contribute to evidence-based decision-making but help Canadians come together in support of collective visions for credible, compelling pathways to a better future.

Thanks again for this opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Griffin, over to you.

[Bradford Griffin, Canadian Energy and Emissions Data Centre]

Thank you, and thank you for inviting me to speak before the committee. I would largely echo a lot of what David has just said. The path forward is having a network of data houses across the country.

The Canadian Energy and Emissions Data Centre, which I help run, is a non-profit organization that's primarily funded through government and industry sponsorship, and formerly was primarily focused on industry. The organization was set up by NRCan in 1993, and after 25 years we're still providing data that's a primary resource for many Canadians.

Our initial mandate was specifically for industry. Other data centres were set up for buildings, agriculture, and transportation. We have recently expanded our mandate to be a comprehensive data centre for all sectors. This includes industry, buildings, urban systems, transportation, electricity generation, and biofuels. We're expanding to all the energy sources that are relevant to Canadians for policy-making. We've also expanded to include emissions. As David said, this is one of the primary policy areas that Canada has been working on lately, and it is closely tied to energy.

Aside from providing public access to data, we also perform modelling and analysis for various levels of government, industry, NGOs, and international organizations. Having neutral third party data analysis that is separate from Statistics Canada and other government agencies helps give industry and NGOs confidence in the impartiality and independence of the data. We have a long track record of doing this, while maintaining sensitive, confidential information.

I see this as a complement to ministries like StatsCan that help to confirm and provide data, rather than as an alternative. Our recommendation would be that the Government of Canada help support these third party data providers and build a network across Canada that can support more analysis and all the different objectives that different users have.

As David mentioned, long-term support for these types of initiatives is very important. There was an initial burst in the 1990s for setting up these data centres. They have all since ceased to exist. CEEDC is the only one that's managed to survive, and that's largely been due to support from industry that's helped carry it. Government funding would be ideal to help us survive.

The committee asked some specific questions about the types of data that would be useful, and about the users. Access to national data is relevant for helping us meet our policy goals. Production and output data and data on environmental impacts like GHGs help us to relate economic growth to energy demand and efficiency. These all feed into our policy objectives on many different initiatives, such as emission intensities, carbon pricing, output-based allocations, efficiency standards, and fuel standards. All of these are tied to a variety of energy data.

Users range from industry, consultants, NGOs, and people who are critiquing policy or making and trying to influence policy, to public individuals and academics who are doing things like long-term modelling or looking at where our pathways to getting to our targets should be, and then to government itself. Government often accesses third party data to help confirm what it's collected internally.

We regularly interact with these users, and those discussions around data needs or data gaps are particularly valuable for finding out where we need to move in terms of new collection areas or strengthening what we are already doing.

The major needs that we see for data users break down to a few categories, but almost always it's for having more disaggregated information. This could be on more types of energy data related to new business opportunities, market penetration, or looking at other jurisdictions.

It could be about technologies. It could be about different new types of energy—wind, solar, and cogeneration, areas where industry or private entities are already moving that we're not yet collecting enough information on. It could be on things like fossil fuels and having more disaggregated information on fossil fuels to help us calculate our greenhouse gas emissions. These are related to our climate change targets. Unfortunately, this information is often considered one of the most confidential areas, and therefore Statistics Canada is not able to release enough disaggregated information for the public to be able to critique different policies.

The last need is for more disaggregated information around jurisdiction. Currently, we have fairly good data at the national level, but as soon as we get into provincial or regional and municipal levels, we start having a lot more confidentiality issues, and it's more difficult for us to do analyses on these areas. Comprehensive energy data, broken down by region and energy type, is necessary for us to help figure out where we're going and where we are, benchmarking our already existing policies in terms of how we're doing and where we're going.

These discussions around new data or data gaps are also extremely relevant for highlighting our social, climate, and economic objectives and how we might get there. These data provide a solid foundation for those discussions. As David said, an impartial and independent data entity—these already exist across Canada; it's just a matter of making them more robust.

Thank you for allowing me this time.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Tan.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you to both gentlemen for being with us today.

My first question is for you, Mr. Layzell. A few days ago, we heard statements from some government agencies—NRCan, the National Energy Board, Statistics Canada, and Environment Canada. The impression the committee had was that while we may not have a very good national energy data strategy, we do have lot of data available, and there are hundreds of dedicated professionals or analysts doing work on the data, to process the data, analyze the data, and then do the modelling.

You mentioned some concerns in your statement. I had a quick look at your website, and under the heading “Visualizing Canada's Energy Systems”, you wrote the following:

Unlike the USA, Canada does not have an Energy Information Administration. While valuable data is provided by government sources such as [the big four], the information is often incomplete and disconnected.

What is your definition of “incomplete and disconnected”? Why do you think our current data is not good enough for us to do the analysis or derive a strategy or projections?

You also mentioned that there are “serious shortcomings”. How serious is this gap?

[Dr. David Layzell]

Thank you for the question. I think it's an excellent one.

As Bradford just noted, sometimes we have data on national information but not down to provincial levels. As we all know, energy is a provincial responsibility in Canada. If we have to engage the provinces in an energy transition, they're interested in the economic benefits, they're interested in reducing the environmental footprint, and they're interested in supporting their industries and creating jobs, etc., so we need that provincial data.

We're a major user of the CDIAC data source. We go and look for data anywhere we can get it. That is one of the challenges. Sometimes you collect data at one location, and then you have other data from another. When you try to put them together and make sense of them, you realize that they don't make sense. Even though they use the same words to describe what the data is, they actually have different meanings. The struggle is to actually go down and understand that this data includes something else that this other data doesn't. We spend literally weeks and months a year trying to actually sort out the data. In the end, we get it for our own research group. It's crazy, because what I really want to do, if we're going to do all that work, is make it publicly available so that other people don't have to go through the pain and suffering. I know that Brad's centre has done some fantastic work in trying to do this and to put this out, but everybody's working on a shoestring and there's not coordination. We need coordination amongst the datasets and we need finer data, down to the provincial level and ideally municipal, because 75% of our greenhouse gas emissions and much of our economic activity is in our municipalities. They have to be at the table as well. We need that kind of data.

I think having a data information organization that has the mandate and responsibility and support to actually coordinate and rationalize it is absolutely critical. It would save a lot of time and energy. In my research program and my activity, I see myself not as a data collector but as a data user. However, I'm afraid I spend a lot more time than I'd like to in trying to collect and compile data so that I can use it. It's painful. I would love for somebody else to do it, because we'd like to spend a lot more of our time figuring out how we can take this data, shape more useful products, and identify these transition pathways so that society in general would say, “Let's go there. Let's build a better tomorrow.”

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

You mentioned that some data collection is the responsibility of the province, or even probably of industry and municipalities. You also mentioned that we need coordination. I agree that we need better coordination, but you do the modelling to fill the so-called gap. Why don't you think we should build up this capacity, or build up the resources to achieve the same data quality as the energy information administration's in the U.S., instead of doing the modelling or other things? From your perspective, or from your side, what's the benefit of this modelling? How do you really verify the results and validate the accuracy or correctness of your models?

[Dr. David Layzell]

The quality of a model often is highly dependent on the value of the data that goes into it. What we do is we go back and collect historical data, relying on CDIAC and other organizations in Canada, going back to 1980 or 1990, to look at the trends. We build our computer models to try to actually simulate what's happened in the past. We try to recreate the past changes that have occurred. Our energy systems are always in dynamic change, so we're trying to understand and use that.

Once we can recreate the history with our models, in a reasonable recreation, then we can start to project into the future. But I would argue that in our models, and in the way we look at modelling and scenario modelling into the future, we're not predicting the future. I think you can't really predict the future. There's too much change. What we're saying is that there is an opportunity for Canadians to create the future, so it's actually more about how we create, how we have a vision. We have to take a vision for the kind of Canada we want, the kind of world we want to see, in the next 10, 15, or 20 years. Then let's look at using the modelling to identify and align our policies and investments, and align our innovation and R and D programs, to create the future that will make the world better for our children and our children's children.

That's really the value. It's about creating. We're not predicting the future.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Next, Mr. Griffin—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'm sorry. We're going to have to move on.

Mr. Schmale, at long last.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

At long last, I know.... T.J. was too quick. I'll save my words for another time. I will share my time with Mr. Falk, too, so he'll get a chance to weigh in on this.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your comments. We do appreciate them. One thing that you both seem to be in tune on is the fact that you're looking for more funding for a data centre. I'm just curious: does anyone have a number for what you're looking for in terms of the dollar value?

[Dr. David Layzell]

Bradford, why don't you answer? You probably have a better idea of what the costs would be.

[Bradford Griffin]

It's not so much the amount, but the stability, really. At CEEDC, we operate these days on at most a two-year contract with government, because we're just not a priority. We're not at the top of the funding list, so every year it's about getting another proposal together to keep things going. I don't know if David is in the same position, but that's the biggest problem.

If I knew that I had funding for five years or 10 years—10 years would be amazing—no matter what it was, I could build around that. That's the biggest problem, I think. The ability to hire another couple of people would make things infinitely easier, so that's really what we're looking for. It's knowing that we can plan for the future, start setting things in place, and then slowly build up from there. I don't have a dollar figure to offer you right now, but....

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

If this information is valuable, which I'm sure it is, wouldn't the private sector be willing to pay for this?

[Bradford Griffin]

They do. Industry supports us as well. About two-thirds of our budget comes from the federal government, and about a third from industry. They do see the value in this.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Okay. I'm just trying to get my head around it because, as you know, most provinces and the federal government are running the operation on the credit card right now. I guess as politicians we need to determine if we fund A, B, or C with limited money in terms of the fact that what we're using is borrowed money that will have to be paid back at some time, which means future tax hikes or service cuts.

Unless, David, you want to chime in quickly, I'll move on to my next question.