Natural Resources Committee on May 3rd, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have one minute.

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

Could any of you comment very quickly or provide any specific examples of unnecessary confidentiality? I ran into it a lot in my previous life.

[Patrick Brown]

Sure. From the perspective of a local distribution company, matters of confidentiality arise, first and foremost, when customer information is involved. I can give you a specific example that we've been addressing with Statistics Canada for several months. The nature of the request was such that there didn't seem to be an understanding of the sensitive, confidential nature of the information they were requesting. It was the names of specific businesses, their locations, their individual consumption, and their points of contact. We tripped up over that significantly, and that's continuing.

Companies like ours understand that there's a public interest in sharing our consumption and delivery information at an aggregate level; there's no quibbling about that. We get hung up with customer information. It seemed like, in this and other instances, that Statistics Canada was not sensitive enough or attuned to that particular principle and prerogative. It would be helpful if we were engaging with folks from federal agencies who already had that type of understanding. Perhaps that comes with a better expertise in the industry and how it operates.

That's one example for your consideration.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Tan.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I will be sharing my time with my colleague, T.J., so I will ask just one question of the Canadian Electricity Association

Mr. Bradley, in your statement you mentioned the importance of having access to effective energy data and the importance of sharing data. I want to ask a question about data from another angle: the quality of the data. In a white paper called “Data to Wisdom”, published by your association together with some other firms, your association notes that poor data has impacted virtually all companies, including utilities, The paper indicates that poor data quality costs U.S. companies over $3 trillion annually and that in Canada alone, bad data may cost organizations about $300 billion every year.

If we consider that our annual GDP in Canada is $1.5 trillion, this $300 billion represents almost 20% of our GDP. I'm not trying to question the accuracy of this number, but it is a big problem. How do we address this problem? In your opinion, do we have the resources and a strategy to address this problem? How can we make sure that the accuracy and independence of the data are maintained?

[Francis Bradley]

That is a terrific question. It is central. The short answer is, no we don't have the capacity to be able to fix data quality—certainly not specifically in Canada. This is a universal problem. Every jurisdiction and economy has to deal with it, and is dealing with it. As for what you can do about it, we sponsored this paper and continue to sponsor other work in this area to try to improve data quality. I'd have to go back to the authors on the specific cost that was cited in the paper, but there is no doubt that poor data quality already is a problem and that as we move increasingly into a more digital future, the importance of data quality is only going to increase exponentially.

This is also one of the reasons we've included that concern about data quality if we move forward, potentially, with an agency in this area.

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

Thank you.

T.J.

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

I want to touch on something that my colleague, Mr. Falk, had mentioned earlier. I think we have a shared background of being in business. In business, data is key to everything. For small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large-sized businesses, data is your most important point. You're never going to grow without accurate and timely data.

It always baffles me as why municipally, provincially, and federally it's such a challenge for governments to deal with this data issue, because companies deal with it on a multi-billion dollar scale every day and control it and utilize it to their advantage to help grow their businesses.

My first question is for Mr. Egan or Mr. Cheliak.

Do you believe that an independent agency like the U.S. Energy Information Administration would be a more appropriate tool to deal with data collection on a Canadian scale? This would be a made-in-Canada approach to dealing with data collection across the energy spectrum. It would ensure not only that we're getting the appropriate data in a timely manner, but also that we're able to utilize that data to make conscious decisions about how our energy strategy moves forward over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It would take into account the fact that we have provincial jurisdictions that we need to recognize and honour, and that to give that broad, overarching support to the provinces, we need to have a unified approach to data, one that recognizes that industries from across the spectrum will benefit from having accurate and timely data, and that we are not pitting one part of the energy sector against the other, but allowing all of them to flourish through the use of appropriate data.

[Timothy Egan]

I think the short answer is yes.

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

That was what I wanted.

[Timothy Egan]

There's a lot behind that as to what the entity would look like, how it would be structured, and how you would hammer out the details and description of the assets and resources, and so on. These aren't necessarily easy questions. They're different analyses that are brought to the table, but, yes, we need to do this.

I would argue that it's fundamental to competition to have this. Right now, to speak from a very selfish perspective of my industry's interests, Canadians have very little understanding of the value proposition of natural gas. If there are better datasets out there that are seen as independent and credible, I think it would deeply improve that understanding.

I appeared before a Senate committee a couple of years ago, and the chairman of the Senate committee that was doing an energy study asked me why I was appearing. He said he was a member from the province of Quebec and Quebec didn't use fossil fuels, that Quebec was dependent on hydroelectricity. I had to point out to him at the time that a majority of Quebec's energy came from fossil fuels. We have challenges.

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

Just to that point before I run out of time, you do agree or you do believe—and I'll ask this of Mr. Bradley as well—that an arm's-length organization that specializes in the collection and maintenance of that type of data would probably be a more appropriate tool than utilizing an existing entity?

[Timothy Egan]

I do.

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

Mr. Bradley?

[Francis Bradley]

Yes. Agreed.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Bernier, you've got just less than five minutes.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Merci. Thank you very much.

On that idea of how a new entity could deal with this challenge, as you know we are in a federation and we have to collaborate with provincial and municipal jurisdictions. What happens right now, I've been told, is that the entities that are in charge of collecting data have mutual agreements between each other to have more data or to be able to share the data that they have at the provincial level with the federal level, or vice-versa. Do you think these existing agreements to share data between organizations are working or that we can improve them instead of having only one agency to will deal with it?

[Timothy Egan]

I refer to it as an independent capacity. I haven't used the word “agency” for that reason, because I'm not going to commit to a particular entity as the sole vehicle. I think that capacity needs to be independent, if I've picked up on Mr. Harvey's point. I think it needs to be separate from some of the other federal agencies, again to pick up on his point.

Mr. Bernier, if there's a means to expand existing agreements to ensure that this capacity is more robust, then we're certainly prepared to entertain that.

Again, I highlighted the need to respect the jurisdictional authority and existing roles of the provinces in this. What needs to be done, though, is to make every effort to ensure that the various bilateral agreements are as consistent as possible so that we are dealing with a uniform series of definitions, uniform terms, etc. If we don't do that, then we have a series of very different conversations going on about data.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

The best solution would be to have a private sector entity collaborating with provincial and federal organizations with a strong mandate from the federal government.

[Timothy Egan]

I see no reason why this enterprise couldn't be a private sector enterprise. We haven't committed to a public or a private entity, but there's no reason this couldn't be a private entity.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

If it's private entity, must it be funded by the private sector, or also by the government?

[Timothy Egan]

Insofar as we're subject to a host of federal and provincial regulations and policies that compel us to present information to those federal and provincial agencies, there should be some corresponding underwriting of the cost of data collection, because there's a public interest dimension to it. It doesn't need to be exclusively a public sector cost.

[Maxime Bernier, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Long ago, the National Energy Board recommended that the federal government create an independent Canadian energy information agency. This goes back several years. I imagine that you are in complete agreement with the idea of having an independent, perhaps ideally private agency funded by public or private funds. Is that correct?

[Timothy Egan]

Yes.