Evidence of meeting #95 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was collection.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
I am not that familiar with that organization. I understand that there will be—
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
No, I'm asking about this in relation to your American counterparts. Do your American counterparts only have to provide data to the Energy Information Administration in the United States or do they have to provide data to other jurisdictions? You referenced the CBSA, and the provincial, territorial, and federal levels. Is that the experience of your American counterparts too, or do they just have to provide the information to this one agency?
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
They will provide information to other agencies as well.
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
That national level organization is the definitive organization for providing information back out. We're not suggesting that we would create an agency in Canada and that it would mean that we then don't have to report anything, anywhere, ever again. We realize that there are always going to be other requirements.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Different jurisdictions have different objectives in information gathering. Is that right?
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
Yes. Absolutely.
What we would have ideally, though, at least is consistency in terms of what the definitions are and consistency in terms of the data, because we don't even have that now. Frankly, we have inconsistencies in the national information provided to and then pumped back from Natural Resources Canada and Statistics Canada, for example. We don't even have it at the national level, much less between jurisdictions.
Manager, Regulatory Policy and Research, Hydro Ottawa, Canadian Electricity Association
Thank you very much.
With respect to our counterparts in the U.S., there are reporting obligations to the EIA, as well as other government bodies, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as state utility regulators. Our understanding from engaging with our counterparts, however, is that they do have an improved culture when it comes to sharing information between state and federal level agencies. That's perhaps a practice or a model we should consider emulating here.
Conservative
Conservative
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I thought maybe because Jamie wasn't here, you'd kind of cut me more—
Liberal
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you all for being here today. It's very interesting to hear your points of view on this. I'm actually quite heartened to hear your comments on a central one-stop-shop, easy-access point for data so that we can all have good data we can agree on.
In my previous life I was an ecologist and involved in a lot of provincial, national, and continental-scale ecosystem planning processes that involved trying to get data from all these levels of government and industry. It was a nightmare. I would have thought that something a little simpler than an ecosystem, when you're just talking about energy, would be in better shape. I guess I can understand your and everyone's frustrations frustrations and why we want to move in this direction.
You've outlined how complex the situation is. In Canada we have a federation in which the provinces have a lot of powers over energy, we have regulators who are at arm's length from the provinces, and usually we have industry associations such as your own for individual industries.
We'll have to develop regulations on how the data should look, how it should be collected, how it should be distributed, when it should be passed on to another agency. How complex would that process be? Who would be making those regulations and enforcing them? Is it the federal government? Can the federal government do all that itself, or will it rely also on the provinces and the regulators?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Gas Association
I suggested that a conversation occur between energy and mines ministers across the country, because I think there should be a coordinated conversation on this. I suspect that what will come out of it is some kind of common view about what the capacity should look like, and then policies, regulations, and legislation would follow accordingly, provincially and federally.
I suspect there might be some minimum data requirement provision for any entity that is a participant in the energy market, as part of this. It could be under provincial regulation, or it could be under federal regulation. To be honest, I haven't thought through the specifics of the regulatory framework for designing this kind of thing, but I suspect that there should be something at provincial or territorial and at federal levels.
Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Electricity Association
I would agree entirely. For this to work, it's going to have to be done in a co-operative and collaborative manner. We've suggested that there will be a need for formal agreements between the different levels of government, ultimately, whether the tool to move forward with is the EMMC, or some other method. Nonetheless, the leadership, I think, has to come from the Government of Canada.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I want to move back to Mr. Egan and talk about something he brought up here that certainly surprised me, and may have surprised everyone here.
You said that in Canada we have no shared understanding of how many homes, businesses, and industrial facilities use natural gas. That was a real surprise to me.
I wonder whether you could elaborate on that and explain why that is and where the pinch points are. What's not happening?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Gas Association
We obviously have a good sense of how many customers each of our members has, and we can create a cumulative list from that. There are entities in Canada using natural gas that are not our members. Obviously, we don't have a sense of how much is being used there; we would look to others to find that information.
Where are we going to find it? There isn't a single point for it. In each province it might be collected by a different body in a different way. We can give you a rough, general sense, but we can't be particularly precise. I think we should be able to be more precise than we are.
I can tell you that there are roughly seven million customers for natural gas, and as I noted, it represents a customer base of about 20 million Canadians, because each customer has a meter and we know how many meters our members have.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
This is a case where someone who wanted to do it for a Ph.D. could find out a pretty good number, but it's not easily gathered in our present system.
Paul Cheliak Vice-President, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Canadian Gas Association
May I just jump in to provide a bit of history here. Statistics Canada used to collect that information through a survey. That specific data collection point was eliminated about 18 months ago. We used to collect it but we don't anymore. I think part of the systemic challenge here is that, at times, decisions are made about what energy data we're collecting or not collecting and there isn't necessarily a broad consultation with industry about what we're collecting and why we're not collecting it. Natural gas customers are just one example where we did collect it, but we don't anymore. We're not totally certain why that decision was taken, but that's the kind of thing that an agency like this could help us by avoiding making decisions like that. I say this because now to restart it, it will take a whole other process just to get that survey back up and running.
