Natural Resources Committee on April 26th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today.

Witnesses, we appreciate your taking the time to be here today to talk about a very important subject, one that's of great interest to all the members around this table.

The process for the day is that you will have up to 10 minutes to make a presentation, following which we will open the table up for questions from members. You have translation devices available to you if you need them. You're welcome to deliver your remarks in either official language, and anticipate that you might get questions asked in French and/or English.

I will open the floor to you, Ms. Leach or Mr. Cameron, whoever wants to start us off.

[Tonja Leach, Managing Director, Operations and Services, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow]

Thank you very much, I'll start off.

My name is Tonja Leach, and I'm the Managing Director of operations and services with QUEST. I'm just going to tell you very briefly about QUEST and then I'll pass it over to my colleague.

QUEST is the voice of the smart energy community's marketplace in Canada. We help all three levels of government, including indigenous governments, utilities, energy service providers, the real estate sector, and solution providers to understand their role and help them to capitalize on the opportunities to succeed in the smart energy community's marketplace in Canada.

I'm now going to pass it on to my colleague, Bruce Cameron, QUEST's Senior Associate, to share the current and future state of energy data in Canada.

[Bruce Cameron, Senior Advisor and Consultant, Quality Urban Energy Systems of Tomorrow]

Thanks very much.

Many of my remarks are based upon our recent experience working with a number of governments and utilities in Atlantic Canada on a project we call the Atlantic Canada energy data roadmap. Basically, the situation across Canada today is that Canada is very good at documenting the production of energy. We know what a well is producing. It's reported. We know when gas is exported to the United States. We keep track of all of those things very well.

What we're not very good at is documenting how we use energy. That's the real gap today. It's fragmented, incomplete, and in fact, even where we are successful in capturing energy data, those datasets can't talk to each other. We're not using common definitions. We're going to a lot of work to collect things for one purpose and we can't use them for another.

We focused on what the energy information needs are for tomorrow. We need to have data that has a lot more information attached to it: information about when it's used, where it's used, and what kind of a structure it is used in. If it's for heating a building, we need to know about that. We need to look at the various building types. We want to have much more information on whether it's energy being used in a home that is two storeys and built after the war or before the war because this starts giving us information on what we need to do about that building. We also need to have more timely energy data reporting.

Often datasets in this country are reported up to five years behind. In a rapidly changing world, we need more accountability and better decisions. Five years is too late. We also need to know more about what energy is doing and the energy sector is doing, in terms of socio-economic impact.

A number of things are really driving the change today. They are obvious. We need more data for climate change management, understanding, and accountability. Efficiency programs need to know where we are to understand how much change we've introduced. Communities—and everyone—else are looking for more accountability, so they can celebrate progress and understand where we're going.

All of this flowed into the Atlantic Canada energy data roadmap. Four governments in Atlantic Canada supported the work we did, either morally or in actual cash, as did utilities and the Government of Canada through ACOA. We had a lot of advice and a lot of experience in the region from academics, from people who are involved in utilities and the energy sector, and from ordinary citizens who were just concerned. We had forums in four provinces. We also received a lot of advice from outside the region including from B.C., which has done a lot of work in this area, as well as Ontario and the U.K.

We came up with a vision for an energy system over the next five to 10 years that would end up being a much more robust system that could do many more things and help us make better decisions.

We found that what we needed to address through the process was that we must be able to make better, more thoughtful decisions. Having the data is having the evidence. Just think about it that way. Data is really the evidence that will allow you to say that this was a good decision and look at what happened or, we think this will give us a better decision, based on our experience and the data we've collected in similar situations.

Privacy is paramount. Nobody needs to have that deeply embedded, but I want you to know it was one of our founding principles. When we looked at these systems, privacy had to be paramount.

Also, the consumers have the right to decide what happens to their data. It may be inside some secure place where personal information is managed, analyzed, and associated with other useful business, but if it's to be put out in a public domain, the consumer needs to make the decision whether that's going to happen. We need new tools to enable them to make that decision in an informed, secure, and simple manner.

Technology solutions need to be developed and there needs to be agreement across the country to have those common standards, so that we don't duplicate by collecting information for rate-making and then doing it again for another purpose for energy information. Collect it once and collect it at the same standard all the time. We need technology that's going to improve the operations of those energy providers. All this data is useful for them in making their planning decisions and their operational decisions for the benefit of the ratepayers. There also needs to be national and regional co-operation.

We looked at the balance between making sure that there is privacy for the individual user and that we get enough information and manage to collect it and report it in a useful manner. We came up with some principles and tools that will help government and society make that decision and maintain that balance.

One of the big things that the governments will have to do is make a decision as to what degree all of this needs to be embedded in law. There is a lot that can be done in a voluntary society, where individuals and organizations can come together and agree to provide information on a voluntary basis. However, we're dealing with a very complex agenda. The more parts of this country that we have involved and the more players that we have, the more difficult it becomes for many of them to say that they are going to voluntarily provide their information and be at a competitive disadvantage. Putting it in law may be the way to level that playing field. When the legislation does happen, if it does happen, it needs to be a staged implementation, so that we can make sure that people are able to upgrade their information systems on their own upgrade cycle, and so that it's a cost-effective and efficient way.

There need to be new applications developed. Apps can give much more useful information to consumers in a simple way.

I spent a good bit of time working with the Province of Nova Scotia in energy. I had a team of policy analysts and a bunch of engineers. The engineers had all the facts, but they needed to be able to communicate them to others. We have the technology and the tools to have that happen.

We're looking at a world where some of this is going to have to be organized, particularly on a national level, but even at a regional level there are all sorts of players here. There are utilities. There are governments. There are efficiency agencies. There are lots of organizations that have experience in managing data. At the end, we determined that there may be many appropriate roles, but first of all, there has to be trust. Whatever organizational structure, existing or new, has to have everything in place to say that I'm dealing with data here that sometimes is sensitive and therefore, it needs to be a trusted organization.

The outcome from all of this will hopefully be a world where the rights and obligations of everybody, when handling energy data, are fully recognized, respected, and managed through regulatory processes or government legislation. There has to be that flexible, staged implementation to take into account different readiness. We have to have governments and regulators doing that standardization. That is absolutely critical.

I was speaking to some colleagues in Yukon and Prince Edward Island yesterday. They were saying that the small provinces in this country have different needs. They need to be respected, in terms of the challenges that they have and the different circumstances when it comes to standards, and those standards have to be developed with their buy-in as well.

We also need everybody doing the most efficient thing and often that will be delegation to others, rather than trying to do it all yourself.

In closing, I just want to note the federal role. It must be obvious to you. I know that there have been others who have come up and spoken on this agenda in the last little while. A number of federal agencies have a long track record and have done a tremendous job in collecting data in the past.

When we come to the new energy needs, there has been a statement through energy ministers that they wanted it to be a collaborative process with both provinces and the Government of Canada involved. There is work under way now. I've been asked to build on the work that we did on the Atlantic Canada energy data roadmap and work with the provinces and the Government of Canada to identify the capacities and things that are being done on energy information today to help the ministers understand where they might be able to direct what the needs are for the future. I'm helping them do that. The outcome should be timely, detailed, and useful.

I want to really emphasize at the end the need to do useful things to help people make better decisions.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harvey.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you to both our witnesses for being here today.

QUEST recently signed a contract with FCM to deliver some services to small Canadian municipalities, some of which are in my province, like Saint John, Tracadie, and Campbellton.

Could elaborate on how those services will help those communities reach their climate change goals on a very micro level and how that translates into the bigger picture within the province or within Atlantic Canada as a whole?

[Tonja Leach]

The work that we're doing with FCM is really centred around adaptation and helping the communities move forward on their adaptation goals. At QUEST, we do a lot of connecting and facilitating conversations. We'll be helping those communities connect with their utilities and other service providers in their communities to help them move forward with their plans on adaptation.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Touching on something that Mr. Cameron said, you were talking about the role of government in ensuring that data becomes uniform and that it's done in a very structured fashion and mandated. I get all that, but at what point do you feel government oversteps their bounds? What is the threshold for what government can impose upon industry leaders as a maximum amount of disclosure? Is there an endless stream of asking that we can put upon industry, or is there a threshold as to how far we can ask industry to go in terms of the feasibility for industry bearing that cost?

[Bruce Cameron]

First of all, there's an un-level playing field today in terms of energy providers. Utilities collect information and report it. They have regulated rates and go through regulatory processes, so what's happening is very transparent. A main issue with electricity is making sure that you can provide that information on a community boundary. Sometimes electricity is not properly measured. With new technologies and new processes, if New Brunswick goes through with the advanced meter infrastructure, it should be able to report on a community level what the electricity consumption is.

Natural gas is in the same world. It's not a big fuel, in either your province or in mine, but it is an important part of it nevertheless.

The third thing that people use a lot of is home heating oil. In that case, there are a lot of individual companies, with dozens of very small players. In our report, we recognized that some of these very small players may, in fact, fall into a burden that's not worthwhile trying to get them to report in detail. They're not operating in a way... Technology may develop in the future, where somebody could meter it off the truck and so on.

We know who the big players are. There should be a way, over the time of refreshing their information systems, that they can get to a world where they're able to provide more information in a secure and respectful place. At the end of the day, the disclosure by large energy providers of what they're doing, in the interest of society, may very well balance out their desire to keep everything a secret all the time and tell no one.

There are many cases where society has decided that it needs to collect information because it is in the national or in the provincial interest. I note that yesterday, there was a story about collecting information on empty homes in British Columbia. Government is continually in the world of deciding that it needs to require people to report a little bit more, in order for it to make a good public policy decision. Then you get into the details of how much disclosure there is and whether you're giving an advantage to a competitor.

I had a conversation at one of our forums in New Brunswick, with somebody about an apartment building. I said, “Do you want to disclose the information about your energy consumption?” She said, “No. I'd rather not.” I said, “In Ontario, they're forcing all large companies to disclose.” She said, “Well, if everybody is doing it, then I don't have as much of a concern.”

I think there's a conversation that needs to be had. We started a conversation through the work that we did in Atlantic Canada and I think that conversation needs to continue.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

You touched on New Brunswick's smart metering program that they've been working on with Siemens. I know from conversations that I've had with senior officials at NB Power that they feel, over the long term, that could actually be transformational to NB Power's entire structure. It could eventually turn NB Power from being an energy producer to more of an energy provider, especially as more embedded generation projects come online, whether it's through wind or biomass cogeneration.

As we see the shift over the next 30 or 40 years, do you think that those large energy providers will become the major data hubs and will be responsible for the collection of the data from the smaller providers? Is that a part of the solution?

[Bruce Cameron]

I think that the technology has evolved to a point where there are many models that can develop. There is a technology called blockchain, which is able to securely, efficiently, and effectively embed transactions, so that they can be done on a very micro level and in a cost-effective way. There are many who are saying that maybe we'll get into a world where you'll actually be trading with your neighbour on electricity, so that, literally, you have a plug-in vehicle, while they have a need for some electricity right now and they can draw from your battery just across the fence. That is one end of the world.

There's another end of the world that's going to say, “Yes, but you have transmission and generation from large hydroelectric-installed infrastructure”. Churchill Falls, for example, is 5,500 megawatts of electricity, for what, now two-tenths of a cent? You're going to have to go a long way to be able to compete with that, in terms of the new infrastructure.

A report was done by the Rocky Mountain Institute a few years back that really struck me, when I was taking a look at the Nova Scotia electricity system. Where does this all end? Where it ends is that it will be different in different regions. Where somebody has access to that kind of really low-cost hydroelectricity legacy that can beat any price at any time, even if it needs to beat itself down to 5¢ instead of 10¢, it will do it, and then other places won't be as well-connected. They may very well have tremendous resources from solar. They may have batteries that are going to become more and more cost-effective, so they might be much more local and distributed.

In Canada, we're likely to be well-connected and better connected over the next number of years. There will be all these local balances and a dynamic where the information and data needs to be shared, in order to adapt to this very new dynamic world. Someday I may be taking from the grids, and another day, I may be taking it from my battery storage, and another day, I may be giving it. That's a very dynamic world and it's one that everybody needs to prepare for. The only way you can make it work is if you have the systems and the data that can drive all of this. The data and information is the foundation.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

I'm going to have to interrupt you, Mr. Cameron. I'm sorry.

[Bruce Cameron]

Sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

That's okay. I lost track of time myself.

Ms. Stubbs, we move over to you.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Right now, I'd like to move the motion for which I gave notice on Thursday, April 26, to ask our committee to undertake an immediate study and assessment of the crisis facing the Trans Mountain expansion.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We do have committee business at the end of the meeting, would it be appropriate to do it then, so we can carry on with the witnesses?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

I'd rather take the time to do it now because of the urgency around the pipeline expansion. I want to apologize to the witnesses. I hope that there will be time to continue to hear from you either later today or in additional meetings on this energy data study, which is also important, but not as urgent or as crucial—I think we can all agree—as the crisis around the Trans Mountain expansion right now for Canada. Can I proceed, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Yes.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you.

The motion I moved asked for the Standing Committee on Natural Resources to do the following:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Committee immediately undertake a study to find solutions to the obstacles facing the approved Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion; that the Committee consider factors such as: (a) the May 31st deadline issued by the proponent, (b) the potential economic, socioeconomic, investment, and government revenue losses, and impacts on market access for Canadian oil, related to the potential cancellation, especially on Indigenous communities, (c) municipal, provincial, and federal jurisdiction as it relates to the project, (d) potential points of leverage between the federal and provincial governments, (e) potential fiscal, constitutional and legal solutions; that the first meeting take place no later than May 3rd, 2018; and that all meetings be televised where possible; and that the Committee report its findings to the House.

Again, I apologize to the witnesses for interrupting the second day of the energy data study. I want to say in advance I trust that every member at this committee will know the deep concern and profound frustration, particularly among the people I represent in Lakeland, but also for Canadians right across the country, and why it's important for our committee in particular to prioritize this study and to do whatever we can to contribute to solutions.

I hope this motion will not undermine the good working relationships that we have on this committee, Chair. To my NDP colleague, as you said in the House of Commons yesterday, I trust in good faith that every single one of us values responsible resource development and energy development in particular, and that we all have a deep understanding of the wide-ranging impacts and benefits of energy investment in Canada.

I hope you'll forgive me for moving this motion at this time, and that ultimately you will agree with me that we need to prioritize this issue as members of this particular committee. We all agree with the overwhelming consensus from energy proponents, business leaders, banks, and investment firms that the ongoing delay and obstacles facing the approved expansion and the risk of Kinder Morgan abandoning the multi-billion dollar crucial infrastructure threaten Canada's national interests, as a witness said earlier, and will have wide, broad, and long-term consequences for energy development in Canada now and in the future.

The Trans Mountain expansion is in serious peril, and the situation is urgent. That's why I'm proposing that our committee immediately prioritize and focus our work here on the Trans Mountain expansion. As you all know, this is an emergency because Kinder Morgan suspended all non-essential spending on the pipeline and set a deadline of May 31 to remove roadblocks, legal challenges, and political obstacles, after which the proponent said it will no longer bear the risk and costs associated with delays and is likely to abandon it completely.

Just a week ago, again to impress upon you the timely and urgent nature of this issue, Kinder Morgan warned that even events in the past 15 days confirm that it may be “untenable” to proceed with the expansion. That's several warnings during the past few months, and given the deadline a little more than a month from now and still no concrete plan to ensure that the expansion will go ahead, I'm confident that everyone here agrees it should be a priority for us, particularly as members of this particular committee.

Certainly, its emergency status has been reinforced in Parliament, with an emergency debate in the House of Commons on April 16 and an earlier emergency debate in the Senate on February 6, as well as a self-described emergency cabinet meeting on April 11.

As to whether we in this committee should deal with this urgent issue, I refer to the April 19 meeting of the finance committee, where a Conservative MP and our colleague, Tom Kmiec, moved a similar motion. He said if the Liberals adjourned debate, he would take it as a vote against support of the Trans Mountain expansion, and in defence of adjourning the debate, which they then did. Liberal MP and fellow finance committee member Jennifer O'Connell said the finance committee shouldn't do the review because it's “a process that the natural resources committee would have looked at.”

Of course, the fact is that our committee hasn't yet reviewed the process or the related economic and interprovincial crisis, and I presume other Liberal colleagues agree with her, so I think we can justify undertaking this work immediately, here in the natural resources committee, no later than May 3, given the urgency of this issue.

Again, I beg for your forgiveness in advance, and I hope you'll grant me the time here to make a comprehensive and compelling case that this work should supersede the existing and planned work of our committee and begin immediately.

Certainly, Conservative members agree unequivocally that the Trans Mountain expansion is vital to the Canadian economy. It's a $7.4-billion infrastructure investment that would create 15,000 direct jobs and thousands more indirect jobs, and will help sustain hundreds of thousands more jobs in the energy sector right across Canada and in all the other sectors that depend on thriving Canadian oil and gas.

The completion of the Trans Mountain expansion offers significant benefit and revenue opportunities for governments. The Conference Board of Canada reports that the combined government revenue impact for construction and the first 20 years of expanded operations is $46.7 billion including federal and provincial taxes, which of course could be used for public programs and services such as health care and education. British Columbia will receive $5.7 billion, Alberta will receive $19.4 billion, and the rest of Canada will share $21.6 billion of that revenue, so, just as the Liberals said when they approved it, and the Conservatives wholeheartedly agree, clearly the Trans Mountain expansion is in the national interest.

Municipalities will benefit directly too, of course. Tax payments before adjusting for inflation total $922 million to British Columbia, and $124 million to Alberta, over the first 20 years of expanded pipeline operations. This pipeline is crucial to oil and gas workers across the whole country, to the Canadian economy overall, to the 43 first nations communities that have benefit agreements worth more than $400 million, and all the first nations communities that are directly impacted by the expansion and within a 10-kilometre buffer zone around it, that all support the Trans Mountain expansion.

It's important to provincial economies and governments, and to municipalities, and the project has completed years of the most comprehensive and rigorous regulatory process with the highest standards in the world, as well as additional consultations, additional information, and additional facts, undertaken by the Liberals since the last election. This has further increased the evidence and the consultation that led to the political approval from Canada, and although the regulators' recommendation declared it to be in the national interest more than a year and a half ago, the expansion has faced continuous obstacles and roadblocks, and remains at risk right now, today.

Canadians even learned yesterday that their tax dollars are going to fund an organizer to assist the network of anti-energy activists explicitly to “stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline” in the coming months. Clearly our committee should give the Trans Mountain expansion the due focus and consideration it deserves, because it is obviously going to keep facing challenges, even though it is a federal project approved under federal processes in federal jurisdiction by both the federal regulator and the federal cabinet in the national interest.

It is particularly urgent that we come to a resolution on ensuring that the Trans Mountain expansion can proceed, given the fact that the other approvals that were made around the same time are facing challenges. Line 3 is facing challenges in its approvals in the U.S. Although it has recently been given a conditional green light, it still faces barriers, and of course there's the approval of the Pacific Northwest LNG project, on which Conservatives again supported the Liberals wholeheartedly, but which was cancelled a few months later.

Oil and gas proponents are the most heavily regulated industry by all three levels of government in Canada. They say in these cases that these were business decisions. However, the fact is that the delay that held up the approval of that project meant that contracts for export to the Asia-Pacific were missed, and that's why the Pacific Northwest LNG project was abandoned.

We must do everything we can to ensure that this remaining approval from that period can go ahead. As Conservatives, we want to contribute in any way we can to support the Liberals in ensuring that this expansion can proceed.

The length of time during which Kinder Morgan has pursued the expansion of this crucial energy transportation infrastructure, working and wanting to invest billions in the Canadian economy, committed to seeing through this major and long-term initiative, but now leading to the proponent concluding that the risk and the costs may be too much to bear, is a very important context as members of this committee deliberate and determine whether to support this motion.

It has been six years already since Kinder Morgan announced sufficient interest in greater volume—beyond the existing pipeline capacity—from oil shippers, established 15- and 20-year commitments, and then applied to the National Energy Board to approve the overall contract and toll structure.

A year and a half later, Kinder Morgan filed its 15,000-page expansion application with the NEB. The NEB then responded, as you know, with a list of over 1,500 participants for hearings. Hearings got under way, and Kinder Morgan responded to more than 400 questions from the NEB and more than 17,000 questions from the hearing participants, which of course is a hallmark of Canada's track record of consultation and public engagement on major energy projects, and it's a track record of which we should all be proud and should champion. Of course, a key component in 2013 was the contribution of traditional indigenous knowledge in submissions.

Twenty-nine months later, in May of 2016, after a thorough and comprehensive scientific, technical, and environmental assessment, the National Energy Board recommended approval of the expansion, declaring it of national interest, contingent on the successful fulfillment of 157 conditions that apply to every aspect of the pipeline, before and during construction, through operation, and eventually, to abandonment.

I want to pause here and just reinforce the vigour, the rigour, and the standards under which the Trans Mountain expansion was approved. I'm not going to just say this; I want to put it on the record, and I just want to ask committee members to note what I am saying here. I don't mean this comment to be partisan. I mean this to bolster the approval and the system under which the vast majority of the Trans Mountain expansion application was assessed and reviewed, in order to assist the federal government to champion its approval, and in recognition of the additional federal report and consultations the government instructed be attached to the Trans Mountain approval.

I want to quote from a WorleyParsons study from 2014. That was before the provincial election in Alberta and the federal election. It concludes, thoroughly and decisively, facts that we all must put on the record constantly and reinforce about Canada's regulator and track record as an environmentally and socially responsible oil and gas developer—literally the best in the world. That has been the case for decades.

In 2014, WorleyParsons issued a report examining the process and policies in place for oil and gas projects in many jurisdictions around the world in order to evaluate Canada's situation and to compare it to its international competitors. The WorleyParsons investigation was exceptionally thorough and evaluated Canada against a number of other countries for performance in areas such as the overall decision-making process; cumulative assessments for regions with multiple projects; and implementation of early and meaningful consultation with stakeholders and indigenous peoples, including the real integration of traditional indigenous knowledge in the implementation of effective social impact and health assessments.

That study benchmarked Canada against nine other major oil- and gas-producing jurisdictions around the world. It was conclusive but last in a series of multiple reports done by experts and analysts that confirm the exact same conclusions about Canada's long-standing track record and the exceptional work of the independent, objective, evidence-based, and expert National Energy Board, the Canadian energy regulator.

I'll quote directly from the report's conclusions so that you don't just have to take my word for it:

The results of the current review re-emphasized that Canada's [environmental assessment] processes are among the best in the world. Canada [has] state of the art guidelines for consultation, [traditional knowledge], and cumulative effects assessment, Canadian practitioners are among the leaders in the areas of Indigenous involvement, and social and health impact assessment. Canada has the existing frameworks, the global sharing of best practices, the government institutions and the capable people to make improvements to [environmental assessment] for the benefit of the country and for the benefit of the environment, communities and the economy.

The conclusions end with this:

In summary, the review found that [environmental assessments] cannot be everything to everyone.

We all know that, and we all agree.

In Canada, however, it is a state of the art, global best process, with real opportunities for public input, transparency in both process and outcomes, and appeal processes involving independent scientists, stakeholders, panels and courts.

That was in 2014. That was the system and the process under which the vast majority of the Trans Mountain application was assessed. Of course, the Liberals then added even more consultation, engagement, and submissions of evidence on top of that already rigorous review. The 157 conditions applied to the Trans Mountain expansion approval address environmental protection, safety, emissions, marine and other ecological protection, prevention and emergency response capabilities, and impacts on the various communities touched directly by the expansion.

Six months later, after the Liberals, as I mentioned, requested another review of upstream emissions, more consultations, and an additional federal report on views not heard during the NEB hearings, the Prime Minister finally approved the project on November 26, 2016. We wholeheartedly supported that approval, and we continue to do so unequivocally.

The reality, though, is that Kinder Morgan has already invested more than $1 billion through years of the regulatory process with the highest standards and rigour for consultation, indigenous engagement, and environmental impact assessments of any energy-producing jurisdiction on earth. Kinder Morgan continues to comply with and fulfill those 157 conditions, to engage with stakeholders, and to address environmental considerations. But it remains at risk, which is why our committee must immediately prioritize an assessment of the challenges continuing to face the Trans Mountain expansion.

It was supposed to have started construction in September 2017. Instead, ongoing delays and roadblocks started immediately. Every month the project is delayed it amounts to $75 million in losses to the proponent; that's every month. It faces highly organized political, legal, and even foreign-funded opponents who promise they will use every tool in the tool box to stop it and who have explicitly said they will attempt to run the proponent off the project to keep it from going ahead. They call it “death by delay”. Using inventive legal obstruction and drawn-out maximum permitting requirements, the City of Burnaby used all its levers to delay the expansion and work on the pipeline expansion [Technical difficulty—Editor] and on the Burnaby Mountain tunnel. The reason this is significant to the proponent is that the city is the permitting authority for certain purposes within its borders, and the terminal enlargement, and the Burnaby Mountain tunnel, is key to Trans Mountain's expansion.

In June 2017 Kinder Morgan applied for the required permits. Finally, in October 2017, it was forced to ask the NEB for relief. Two months later the NEB responded, and Kinder Morgan continued.

Of course, the B.C. NDP-Green coalition has been especially creative, asking for additional studies about the product that has been in the existing pipeline for decades, that has actually been studied repeatedly and continues to be assessed, as it should be, in ongoing efforts to mitigate risk...and advanced spill prevention and responses.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Whalen has a point of privilege.

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

On a point of privilege, Mr. Chair, it seems we're reaching a point now where....

By the order, I was going to have an opportunity to ask the witnesses some questions. If Mrs. Stubbs is filibustering, that's fine—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

No, I'm not. I'm making the case to the members to support the motion.

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

—but if she is moving the motion, perhaps she can move the motion so that I won't lose my opportunity to ask the witnesses questions. I prepared for the meeting, and I'm not going to have a chance to exercise my rights as a member.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

This is an emergency. It should supersede—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

How much longer do you anticipate being—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—the second day of study on the energy data study. Our witnesses can come back. We can reschedule it.

So I'll continue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The B.C. NDP coalition challenges the federal government's jurisdictional authority aggressively and threatens ongoing attacks and roadblocks through construction. The coalition also confirms that even if the expansion does get built, it will attempt to restrict the volume in the pipeline. This of course would negate the whole purpose of this expansion, which is in the national interest, if successful. But support for the Trans Mountain expansion is growing. It's supported by the majority of Canadians. It's confirmed that an ever-growing and vocal majority of British Columbians support the Trans Mountain expansion too, so we should not confuse the actions of a coalition of anti-energy activists, who are just doing exactly what they promised to do, with a growing majority of British Columbian residents.

The Prime Minister obviously should have anticipated this attack on Trans Mountain, since the B.C. NDP-Green coalition never supported it. They did openly campaign on killing it. But the Prime Minister himself said—this is one of the things that deeply concerned the people I represent in Lakeland—that he didn't bring up the pipeline expansion in his first call with the B.C. premier in June 2017. It's taken 10 months and a full-blown economic and constitutional crisis for him to meet about it personally for the first time, with the project on the line. Clearly, as co-operative and dedicated colleagues and members of this particular committee, we should do everything we can to assist with the resolution of this crisis. The Prime Minister does keep repeating that this pipeline will be built. We hope that will be the case and that it's not too late, but the concern is that he can't say when or how. This is why I'm bringing this motion to this committee and asking for all of us to engage on it immediately.

Even as recently as Sunday, the finance minister suggested that the Liberals will put forward some kind of legislation about it. He said it should happen, quote, “rapidly”, but he couldn't or didn't say when: “We don't have exact timelines.”

A couple of days earlier, the natural resources minister said “nothing has changed” when Kinder Morgan confirmed it may still be, quote, “untenable”. He also indicated that Canadians could expect legislation, except he didn't know when or which minister would bring it forward. The timeline is clearly crucial because of the deadline from Kinder Morgan.

Clearly, our committee should bring our attention and advocacy to this urgent situation in an effort to resolve this crisis and to ensure that the expansion can proceed. Economic opportunities and social benefits for indigenous communities are at stake too. Of course, the incredible innovation, research, fiscal, and technological partnerships between the private and public sector unlocked development of the oil sands along with significant advances in environmental stewardship and energy efficiency in the many partnerships with indigenous communities like the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the Fort McKay First Nation. They've also enabled that resource development, which has long been a major driver of job creation and government revenue benefiting all of Canada. In fact, it wasn't so long ago that nine out of 10 full-time new jobs created in Canada were created in Alberta. That benefits everybody in every part of our country. That was in large part because of Alberta's booming energy industry and the development of the oil sands resource.

Every indigenous community that the pipeline crosses, those directly impacted by it, supports the expansion, and 43 have benefit agreements. They too need us, as members of this committee, to address the ongoing obstacles against the Trans Mountain expansion and to fight for their ability to pursue opportunities through responsible resource development and the completion of the pipeline expansion.

In 2016, when the project was waiting for approval, the former chief of the Whispering Pines/Clinton Indian Band, Michael Lebourdais, said:

I want the money from our resources...so that we can pay for our health, so that we can pay for our education, so that we can pay for our elders, so that we can pay to protect our environment, so we can build better pipes, we can build better bridges, we can build better railways.

Peters First Nation recently sent a letter to the Prime Minister, in which they said the following:

We are concerned that among all of the well-funded and highly publicized opposition to the project, the voice of Indigenous nations that support [the Trans Mountain expansion] has been lost. In our view, the construction and operation of the project will provide significant and much-needed benefits to our membership. We are concerned that these benefits are in jeopardy given recent project delays.

We request that the Trans-mountain expansion project proceed as planned. We believe that—having approved the project—your government now has an obligation to Peters First Nation to ensure that the TMX is not unduly jeopardized. That means working diligently to ensure that permitting is carried out in a fair and timely manner, and that construction can proceed on schedule. We fear that, if your government does not take sufficient action to address these issues, our work over the past years to ensure that the project will benefit our membership will be for naught.

Peters First Nation has lived with the original pipeline that was built over 50 years ago seated at the base of our mountain and above our homes with no worries or incidents. We believe that the TMX pipeline is the safest way to transport the needed natural resources out of our country for the benefit of all Canadians. In saying that we could tell you the statistics of how the pipeline is the safest way, but you've all heard the same speeches....We need to transport this material safely, we feel that the TMX pipeline is the safest option.

Peters First Nation has been in existence since the time memorial and in that time our family has witnessed many changes without our consent or opinion until now. We believe the TMX will not only help us to be more independent but help everyone across the nation. We are not the only First Nation that believes this as 41 other First Nations have done studies and agree with the expansion project including the nine nations that TMX directly impacts and travels through. That is not all, 19 municipal communities that are directly in-line with TMX have seen the benefits of this expansion project as well. This means that over 95% of the route of where TMX directly effects people has been approved by directly impacted communities.

Peters First Nation would like to draw everyone's thought to the positive effects that TMX can provide under the right management. Over three hundred million dollars a year would flow directly into British Columbia alone by way of taxes to the pipeline and agreements signed. In turn that could mean shorter wait times at hospitals, instead of closing schools the government may be able to open a few new ones. Some of those funds could help with our wildfire programs in which we suffered greatly over the past few years with the raging fires or getting a few more police officers out there to protect our people, if you can name a government paying job that does not need funding I would ask you to do so at this time. We would like you to consider the jobs that will be created by this project, not only for the two year construction plan but also the jobs after construction. These jobs are needed in the communities along the pipeline and will create revenue for small businesses and big businesses alike. TMX will give opportunities to people to hone their skills and trades as well, which we need in B.C.

Peters First Nation is giving its full support to the TMX and we have been here since time immemorial, please take this into consideration.

Chief Ernie Crey of Cheam First Nation said:

If the project doesn't go through, it'll hurt our people. It appears Premier Horgan is prepared to actively undermine the prosperity of First Nations in B.C.

He also said:

In my opinion, if Kinder Morgan TMX doesn't proceed, hundreds of millions of dollars will be forgone for first nations all the way along the pipeline route. Why I say this is that, taking my own community as an example, we negotiated really hard, and it was really my young council—they're a little over half my age—that negotiated this agreement.

Don Matthew, councillor of the Simpcw First Nation, said, “If the project does not go ahead, we will lose out on opportunities that we have been working hard at obtaining in the last year or so.”

Of course, opinions of indigenous people are diverse, and everyone has a right to advocate their views and to assemble peacefully. But it is quite the spectacle to see NDP and Green activists outright oppose economic opportunity and security for 43 indigenous communities while seven challenge the expansion in court. These communities need us to prioritize this crisis and contribute to its resolution in any and every way we can. I look forward to the support of all the members of the committee to proceed with this motion, because action is of course long overdue.

The day it was approved, Canada's Conservatives did say that approval is one thing, but getting it built is another. Our leader's first motion in the House of Commons after he was elected called on all members to support Trans Mountain. That was on June 1, 2017. It was defeated. In February 2018 his request for an emergency debate was denied. The next week, on February 12, 2018, my motion on behalf of all Conservatives called on the Prime Minister to give Canadians a concrete plan of action and report it to the House of Commons by February 15, 2018. That motion was defeated after a full day of debate.

The warning by Kinder Morgan that it might be forced to abandon Trans Mountain is an alarming but predictable economic and now political and constitutional emergency. Today this crisis is about more than the pipeline itself. I want to spend some time talking about the real impacts of this expansion continuing to be challenged in the hope that every single member of this committee will agree that we should prioritize this assessment and undertake this motion as soon as we can.