Natural Resources Committee on May 22nd, 2018

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I would think so, especially because in northern, rural, and remote communities, I think their percentage of income spent on transportation would probably exceed what an urbanite would typically spend. When you're looking at low-income people, that percentage really becomes disproportionate.

[Theresa McClenaghan]

Absolutely, I agree. Often a vehicle is necessary to get to work, for example, and public transit is not available.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

You also mentioned in your presentation that there were programs intended to alleviate climate change. That's a nice way of saying carbon taxes and I'm sure there are other things. We've been trying to ascertain what the costs for an average family will be with the proposed carbon tax from the current government and we've been unable to do that. We know that it will disproportionately affect low-income folks in the absence of some form of a rebate. Have you done any calculations on what it would cost low-income people?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

We haven't done a calculation on the national programs. I don't have the number offhand, but I can get a reference for the committee. We have done submissions as both CELA and the Low-Income Energy Network to the Ontario Energy Board around some of the implications of cap and trade on the natural gas sector, for example. We did specifically single out the necessity to look at the impact on low-income consumers as that program rolls out.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Very good.

In your experience dealing with low-income people, when they have an opportunity to make energy choices that would reduce a carbon offset or a carbon footprint that could negatively affect climate change, do you find that people in the low-income bracket are able, or willing, to make those decisions that would reduce their energy consumption?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

Yes, we know that there is high willingness. For example, some of our colleagues at other organizations in Toronto were part of some of the tower programs there, looking at educating tenants about the importance of reducing energy not only for their own comfort but for climate change. The willingness to participate was very high.

We want to make sure there aren't barriers to that participation. Because some types of energy sources end up being priced based on the pool of remaining users, if low-income consumers are left out of the climate mitigation side of the ledger, they're using more than they ought to and then they're paying more of the remaining electricity or whatever it is. We need to make sure that there aren't these indirect inequities as well.

Yes, there is high willingness. There's no access to capital without special programs. That's something we've advocated for repeatedly in policy work at the Ontario Energy Board, making sure that as the programs, the latest exciting green widget, become available, there's also access to those programs by low-income consumers.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

What data would you like to see collected, and by what agency, to better help you make recommendations that would tailor these kinds of things?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

As I said, some of the data is collected by Statistics Canada, but if the national energy agency of some type is going to be collecting specific energy data, we would like them to be looking at participation rates by low-income consumers and families in the climate mitigation programs.

We'd like to look at the impact of the climate programs on low-income consumers: whether there are inequities, and whether those are adequately set off by any policy choices, refunds, or otherwise, and make sure that there isn't differential participation, on a kind of percentage of population, by high-income and low-income families in the kinds of measures that reduce energy use and benefit climate.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you very much. I think my time has just about lapsed.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have 20 seconds.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you for coming to committee.

[Theresa McClenaghan]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Cannings.

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

Thank you for being here before us.

I just want to expand on the topic of these programs that have been brought in to encourage people to use less energy and some of the unintended consequences around that. In my riding in southern British Columbia, the local electricity provider, Fortis, brought in a two-tier system to encourage people to stay below a certain point, and it adversely affected people who heated their house with electricity. Most people in my area heat their house with natural gas, which is relatively inexpensive, but people in rural areas, who didn't have access to natural gas, and low-income people, who couldn't afford to convert to natural gas, were seeing huge electricity bills.

Now, Fortis has agreed to roll that back over five years. I'm just wondering if you could talk about those unintended consequences. It had another unintended consequence. If we're going to try to reduce our carbon footprint, the obvious thing is to move from natural gas to electricity, and nobody wants to do that in my riding because it costs twice as much to heat your house using electricity. I just wonder if you could comment on that and perhaps tell us if there are other examples across the country that you know of.

[Theresa McClenaghan]

First of all, on the question of unintended consequences, that's true in many parts of the country. There was quite a push here too for social housing and many forms of housing to be heated with electricity back in the seventies, for example, when it was perceived that electricity was a very cheap form of power. Again, access to natural gas is very differential. In Ontario, a lot of rural and remote communities do not have access to other fuels and do heat with electricity, so we have seen the same thing here where I live.

As a result, the Low-Income Energy Network has argued for a multi-tiered approach to that. One thing we did argue for here was a specific low-income program dealing with a range of issues like conservation, building retrofits, building envelope retrofits, better access to emergency funds, no charges for disconnection and reconnection for low-income families who get into trouble with their bills, and importantly, quite recently, the Ontario electricity support program. Part of the way that program helps support those families is to take into account whether the family heats with electricity.

In addition, there are some programs dealing with rural and remote because of differential transmission and distribution costs here. I'm not sure if that's true in British Columbia or not, whereas I know that Manitoba, for example, doesn't have differential distribution costs. Those need to be considered as well.

In terms of what we then do, we definitely advocate for renewables as the way forward. If we can have an electricity system that's highly governed by renewable energy, that's one piece of the puzzle, but the price is also an important piece of that puzzle. We have to be looking at how we're pricing electricity and allowing new generation into the mix while keeping an eye on price.

I know, for example, in the work that some of my colleagues here have done, the price of solar is criss-crossing on the curve the price of nuclear this year. We're excited about the fact that the price of some of the renewable technologies is actually decreasing.

We also advocate for a more distributed, less centralized energy system so that we're not paying and losing so much in great big transmission grids and that kind of thing.

In addition, modular systems that allow quicker on and off as generation needs change in the particular province or region of the country are an important piece of keeping that price down. It's a multi-faceted approach, but as we're pursuing these big-picture solutions, we definitely need to be looking at the impact on low-income consumers, and if we need special programs, then we need special programs to help offset that while we fix the bigger picture.

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

I have one more thing on privacy issues. We've heard about some of the data. We're looking at intersectional data on poverty and energy. Are there any privacy issues in connecting those, having data on family income versus family expenditures and use of energy? Are there any challenges there?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

In terms of collecting data in most regions of the province on an aggregated basis, it's not a problem. Once in a while Statistics Canada, as you likely know, will report that a particular population in a particular geographic area is too small to do that without aggregating it with a larger area for privacy reasons, so they have mechanisms to do that.

In terms of the intersectional approach, though, the multi-fuels approach, that's an important piece of the puzzle. What we have found as programs roll out here in Ontario is that families are asked to consent to the necessary sharing of information—and no more than necessary—so that they can get access to the related programs. There seems to be widespread willingness to do that, and then they get access to the conservation retrofit programs and the terms of service programs with the local utilities that help them out a lot. That's done on a consent basis.

There was a little bit of logistical friction around integrating it with the Canada Revenue Agency, but I believe that's being worked out now and being expedited as well, so that it's no longer signing a piece of paper and mailing it in. It can be done online.

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

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have 40 seconds.

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

Just quickly, if you can comment on the British Columbia example of carbon tax and the rebate in Alberta, it's my understanding that 40% or 50% of people in those provinces actually get more money back from the carbon tax than they're spending, because of their low-income status.

Can you comment on that?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

Yes. For low-income households in particular, we have pointed to British Columbia, California, some of the other U.S. states, and other jurisdictions like Quebec in our advocacy here when we were trying to persuade our province that it needed a low-income-specific rebate or some way of alleviating the actual financial impact. The hiccup here seemed to be that, the way the program was designed, it was only going to be able to be expended on measures that actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We argue that the differential impacts of those programs on low-income consumers should be part of the very programs that are alleviating greenhouse gas emissions and are a justified cost. We agree with that. We also agree that there should be revenue taken from programs like carbon pricing or cap and trade and used to alleviate carbon emissions and housing retrofits that are conservation. We do agree with that, but for the low-income sector we need to also alleviate the differential impact on them.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. Cannings.

Mr. Serré.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the witnesses for presenting their views on the matter before us.

Like you, other witnesses have said that collecting national energy data is important. There are of course considerable costs involved in collecting that data.

Ms. McClenaghan, you have energy data for Ontario, but do you have data for the other provinces? If a national institute were created, how would the data for one province be submitted to create a national database?

[Theresa McClenaghan]

The data we've analyzed the most has been Ontario data in our role as an Ontario legal aid clinic. However, in attending a national energy poverty conference for a few years and working with my colleagues who do reach out to people at Dalhousie and elsewhere, we see there are differences in the data that's collected and analyzed. It was our experience that, until there was actually an intentional focus on energy poverty, the data wasn't being collected and analyzed here either. Time and time again, it's been our experience that energy policy is introduced and even once it's more on the radar it's often forgotten as an issue that needs to be considered, because people might think, well, renewable energy policy isn't about energy poverty, or climate change isn't about energy poverty, or some other aspect. In fact, it's quite important in our experience to always look at energy poverty in every energy policy decision. As noted earlier, some of those consequences are unintended.

In terms of the role of a national institute, we think it's quite important to be doing comparative analysis, learning about best practices, finding out if some of the approaches are more effective than others in alleviating the impacts and whether participation rates are greater in some provinces and territories than others, and then learning from that. We've taken a huge number of lessons from our colleagues in the United States, and one of our consultants who's helped us a great deal has looked at Vermont programs and others, looked at their participation rates, and taken some of their best practices in our advocacy here.