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.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
My first question will go to Mr. Conti; after that I'll go to Mr. Millard.
Are you in collaboration with us here in Canada—with Statistics Canada or other agencies that are collecting data? If you are, what is the credibility of our data in Canada? Is there a lack of information that you wish you could have?
Deputy Administrator, U.S. Energy Information Administration
I don't consider myself an expert in that area, but I believe we work with our counterparts in Canada—NRCan and Statistics Canada—and the information we receive from them has always been of high quality.
The only thing we sometimes wish we both had more of is energy use data. That's one area that probably they would identify themselves as showing a need for information.
In working on this trilateral effort with Canada and Mexico, one thing that came out that people should pay attention to is that we all have slightly different definitions of energy. You have to work very closely with one another in order to overcome that difference, and it's often fairly difficult. If you have one agency that oversees a broader data collection effort, it probably is going to eliminate some of those definitional problems that tend to creep into specific, different agencies.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
That's why you are saying that maybe the best modification we could make to collecting data in Canada would be to have one agency that will have supervisory authority and the ability to collect data from the provincial and other levels of government. Is that your recommendation?
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
Who's paying for the work of your agency in the U.S.? Are you charging people who use your data, or is your funding coming from the government or from the private sector?
Deputy Administrator, U.S. Energy Information Administration
All of our funding comes from the federal government by U.S. taxpayers, and we provide all of our work for free to whoever wants it through our website.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
I appreciate that. Thank you.
The other question is for Mr. Millard.
You're not so convinced that we must have one agency in Canada that will supervise and be in charge of the data collection and dissemination as in the U.S. If I can say so, you think it would be better for us to have a better arrangement with our other agencies in Canada at the provincial levels, and we would be able to be as efficient as we would be if we had only one agency. Can you explain that?
Chief Statistician and Head of the Energy Data Centre, International Energy Agency
Yes. Thank you. I'm very happy to.
My point is that as we deal with countries globally, we see a whole range of different structures. The key feature in all structures, whether there's one agency or multiple agencies, is strong communication through the agency.
The thought of where you are now is driven by those areas where you need improved data, and what is actually going to be the best way of improving that data. Is it going to be trying to reorganize the structure of the bodies involved, or could data be improved by agreeing on the ways of working between the existing organizations such that data gaps can be identified and data duplications can be avoided?
It's not that one model is better than the other. It's actually the need, as you were obviously highlighting, to work to improve data in Canada, an activity that we thoroughly endorse. Maybe if there's greater clarity as to what data is collected at the provincial level, the speed with which that can be shared to the federal level.... StatsCan already collects a lot of the data at the federal level, and they feed it into NRCan, so there is a whole series of arrangements there. There is absolutely no reason why those flows can't be made to work better. That may just be a quicker solution to improve data than would be starting now to establish an overall new agency.
Conservative
Maxime Bernier Conservative Beauce, QC
About the quality of our data, do we have something to improve there? Sometimes it's all about the definition of energy. As somebody said, if the definition is different, the data would be a little bit harder to use for different purposes. Do you think we need to improve the quality of our data in Canada?
Chief Statistician and Head of the Energy Data Centre, International Energy Agency
In every country we work with in the world, we identify areas where data can be improved. In my opening remarks I highlighted a few areas where data could be improved in Canada. Those are all areas we have been working on with StatsCan and NRCan, with regard to some of the comprehensiveness of data, both at the monthly and the annual levels.
I'll say just a word on definitions. I think it's very important to think about definitions. Of course, they are vital in thinking about energy data. One thing we do is to encourage all countries of the world to think about the International Recommendations for Energy Statistics, the UN-endorsed document and, within that, the standard energy classification. The more countries who are using that standard international classification, the easier it is for them to make comparisons among themselves, and the easier it is for us as an international organization to produce comparable data that allows us to really understand the global and regional pictures for energy.
The international definitions are there, and we would encourage countries to adopt these where they have not yet been adopted. Canada will be using the vast majority of them, but in some areas where they are not, we would strongly encourage them to.
Liberal
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you both for joining us today.
I'll start with Mr. Millard and pick up on some of the comments you were just making on the benefits—or detriments—of having a centralized one-stop shop energy data agency in Canada.
Both you and Mr. Conti represent centralized one-stop shop energy data sources for international systems and the United States. I can see why maybe it wouldn't matter to your agencies whether Canada had a centralized agency, as long as the data were credible and good and flowed in a timely manner. I'm just wondering if you could comment on the other side of that: the users who want access to that data, and whether the system would work better if they had one place to go to, one website where they could get the data they needed in a timely manner, and be trusting of that data, rather than requiring professional knowledge to navigate this myriad of data. We have 20 agencies in Canada that produce it.
I'll start with you, Mr. Millard, and then Mr. Conti could comment on that.
Chief Statistician and Head of the Energy Data Centre, International Energy Agency
Of course, to the user there are two aspects here: there's the operational means by which the data are produced, and there are the roles and responsibilities of the players involved, which may be driven by their own legal framework. It may take a long time to unpickle that, so the point of view is how to improve data in the most cost-effective way, which I think is important to all countries.
Within that, it is very important to think about how that overall aggregated information, brought together from the various agencies or ministries involved, is made readily available to everybody. The more that is brought together in a single web platform, with different communication tools for the different sorts of users, the more people will feel engaged with the energy data. That front end of information dissemination, if you like, could be put onto any model, and the point I'm making about the model is, really, you start where you are, not necessarily from a blank piece of paper. If we think about how to improve Canadian data, we can think about the end dissemination through a single portal or a single front end, but the organization behind it could still be across different agencies—or it could be one agency. That's entirely your choice. It's what you might consider the best means of improving the data—filling in the gaps in the data, addressing some of the issues that you know you need more data from—but also making that data available at the national and provincial level. From my understanding of Canada, this, again, is a very important issue.
NDP
Deputy Administrator, U.S. Energy Information Administration
Yes, I could give you a very quick response.
I believe there are a lot of efficiencies and economies of scale in having one federal or national energy agency, and I'll give you an example. Most of our data transfer now happens through an application program interface; most of our sophisticated data users go onto our website and suck 80% of the data off that they need on a weekly basis. I think that would be harder to do if there were a number of different places that users had to go to get that information. I think it allows not only for the provision of data, but also for the provision of information as you begin to pull all of the different sorts of data together, and for the synergies of looking at it in a holistic way.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
If I can just follow up on that, at a minimum we would need one agency to provide that front end, or whatever you want to call it—
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
—and also to be in charge of regulating the form of that data so it's consistent. It's the nightmare of gathering data from across various boundaries and setting up the rules to make people and industries report in a timely manner. To me it sounds like we're getting back to a fairly robust agency, one that would have to oversee all of that.
