Natural Resources Committee on Sept. 23rd, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Once again, that was an option I had. The clerk has told me that we should have gone right to a vote. I did allow members points of clarification because there was a misunderstanding on what we were voting on, and why.

I want to be clear once again, colleagues, that what we're voting on is that the motion be allowed to be placed first. We're going to go to a vote on that, and if that passes, we will go to the motion itself. It can be amended, changed, or voted upon to pass or not.

I do want to go to a vote to allow this to occur, because I think it is clear now. Let's just get it over with. There's an understanding, it seems to me, with committee members, so let's go to that vote first.

Mr. Falk, is it a point of clarification? I do want to go to a vote.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

To help the committee understand, if we can get unanimous consent to bring the motion back on the floor, the intent is not to further debate it but to actually have a vote on the motion. We can bring it back on the floor, and then have a vote.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

The challenge is that there may be amendments.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Colleagues, we need to vote, because there's a vote on the floor. We need to vote, and it depends on how the vote goes. If you guys need a few minutes, we will see how to proceed after that.

Let's begin the vote, please.

[The Clerk]

If you vote yes, you vote to resume debate on the motion. If you vote no, you vote against resuming debate on the motion of MP Stubbs that was presented last Wednesday.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Clerk, more importantly, we're voting on whether or not to bring ministers to committee.

(Motion negatived: nays 7; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

The motion is defeated

I will suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We are back, and I will go back to Mr. Patzer for about five minutes.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to start with the Indigenous Clean Energy witness. Toward the end of your remarks, you referenced how there were some regulations that had been unchanged since the 1950s.

We're quite focused on updating regulations—in some cases eliminating barriers and maybe eliminating regulations, or at least just trying to make a regulatory environment that better suits the labour force, the workforce and particularly natural resource development.

Could you elaborate on what you were referring to when you talked about some regulations that hadn't been updated since the 1950s?

[James Jenkins]

Yes, I'll be happy to do that.

I was primarily referring to the regulations from both the utility and the regulator at the provincial or territorial level, and with respect to smaller, off-grid, rural and remote projects. In many cases, it concerns rate and rate inflexibility. What we found in many cases was that the proponent at the local level—a municipal government, in some cases, or a first nation—takes on the bulk of the risk if there is an issue with overall cost. We have seen some flexibility with rates in other kinds of technologies, but for renewables, we found this to be a challenge in many of our projects.

Basically, what I was referring to is this: In most cases, the regulator and the utility are still very much providing oversight on these projects, so the ability to have a viable project has to fit within those regulations. In other sectors, we've seen more flexibility that allows projects to proceed. I think there's some more work that needs to be done—primarily at the provincial and territorial levels—when it comes to regulators and utilities for rural and remote projects.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

This is for Electricity Human Resources Canada.

We have clean electricity regulations that are going to require that all power be generated from non-emitting sources by 2035. Today and in previous committee meetings, we've heard a doubling of electrical capacity alluded to. Given where we are right now and where this government has us headed, do we have the labour force to double electrical capacity today? Where are we today? Can we hit that target?

[Mark Chapeskie]

I'm probably not the one to comment on clean electricity regulations specifically.

Do we have the workforce today? I would say no. One thing you probably noted in my comments is that we're going to have to start working on growing our capacity to train that workforce.

I was speaking with one of your colleagues over here. We mentioned that it takes four to five years for any of the technical roles in this industry to come to full competence, whether it's skilled trades training, engineering or information communications technology. Those are engineering programs, skilled trades programs and technician-technologist programs. We need big investment, really, if we're going to do that for the youth.

There are interim pathways we could look at, such as foreign credential recognition for folks who are not working in the domain of expertise they worked in overseas, for example. We could be drawing them in faster with appropriate programming to ensure they meet the requirements of the Canadian standards for those occupations. We would have to spend some time building out pathways to help those folks enter the industry. That would be my suggestion.

The last piece is that “workers in transition” piece—folks exiting other industries who could join our industry and who have similar skill sets. With some upskilling, you don't have that four-year or five-year talent block on new entrants who have never worked in a technical role before.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I'm going to jump back to Indigenous Clean Energy quickly.

In Saskatchewan, particularly northern Saskatchewan—though it's true in southern Saskatchewan, as well—natural resources are some of the biggest drivers. Well, they are probably the biggest drivers of our economy, and I would suggest more. It would be on par with agriculture, particularly in the north, where 50% of Cameco's workforce are indigenous.

I'm wondering if you can talk about the importance of natural resources to indigenous communities and their employment.

[James Jenkins]

Absolutely.

Natural resources make up a large portion of many economies in indigenous communities, particularly in the northern parts of provinces and in the territories.

In Saskatchewan in particular—I mentioned different energy mixes—about 50% of projects with indigenous ownership or co-ownership are solar, but we are seeing quite a few projects that combine heat and power, hybrid projects and some biofuel projects coming online that are fully indigenous-owned.

You're absolutely right in terms of the importance of the indigenous workforce in the natural resources sector. As we see energy demand increasing, it's going to put further strain on that workforce. I agree with you there.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

We'll now proceed to the next speaker.

Go ahead, Ms. Lapointe, for six minutes.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

My questions are for Mr. Chapeskie.

Can you elaborate on the strategies that are needed to create stronger collaboration among provincial governments, industry and educational institutions to ensure that we have that alignment between workforce development programs and sector-specific needs?

Of course, I'm speaking here specifically about the electricity sector and about post-secondary institutions.

[Mark Chapeskie]

We've spent a fair bit of time on that particular question.

Obviously, one of the first things for us as an organization that specializes in the labour market is work-integrated learning. When I talk about work-integrated learning, I'm referring to co-op, internship and apprenticeship programs across the board, but expanding them.

Right now, as we look at our current workforce, about 5% are under the age of 25—new entrants—but about 15% to 17%, depending on which province you're looking at, are over the age of 55. Basically, we're looking at a number of exits. We need to invest in youth, but that's also putting pressure on the middle management positions. We're bringing people up faster than perhaps historically they have been. There's less time to focus on supervisory, management and leadership skills and those competency developments. We have to put more time into that as well. I've heard some people refer to getting to 2050. Everything's on the table, all generation mixes.

I think of the workforce in a similar way. We have to do a little bit of everything to get us to where we need to go—for example, collaborating with our labour partners and ensuring that collective agreements meet the new technologies that are being introduced into the workforce.

I talked a little bit about iterative training. That's going to be done by both the post-secondary institutions and employers as new technologies enter the workforce as well. New technologies bring not just renewable or non-carbon emitting sources of electricity; there are a lot of productivity gains or efficiencies to be had in the deployment of new technologies and better grid management over time.

It's deployment of new technology and upscaling and training across the board. Also, as I mentioned to your colleague across the floor with regard to foreign credential recognition, we need to do a better job of pathing folks into this industry, because we don't currently do it well in Canada.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

In your opening statement, you mentioned an interactive map in classrooms. Can you elaborate on this program?

Can you perhaps provide some other examples of effective programs that currently exist for recruitment efforts to attract young talent and under-represented groups, from elementary school all the way to post-secondary levels?

[Mark Chapeskie]

I love the map. That's one of my favourite programs that we run at EHRC. It was actually funded through NRCan's SREPS funding.

The initiative fundamentally.... When we started out with it, as a sector we were looking at our own talent pipeline and we realized that very few Canadians think about electricity. The reason is that we do a very good job, most of the time, of keeping it on. One of the things that we did was realize that people start to choose a career path as young as grade 6 or grade 8, and we targeted the map at that particular demographic group.

It comes with a series of teaching resources for teachers. They can teach to the map. On the map, as I mentioned, you've got all of the transmission lines highlighted. Obviously, it's a map of Canada. You've got all of the major generation infrastructure, whether it's a hydro dam, a small solar farm or a wind or nuclear facility. We even have our coal mines and coal production facilities, as well as lithium mines, mapped on the map as well.

The last piece of it, of course, is the careers, with 70 people talking about what they do in the electricity industry and inspiring that next generation. One of the things that we found really interesting is that while we didn't specifically target what I'm going to call a “hope message”, a lot of the kids who are really feeling desperate and have poor mental health associated with all of the messaging around climate change see hope in the map. They see an opportunity to participate. They see that their parents and our industry are working on something, and that gives them the message of hope. That's the map.

We've done a number of youth camps across Canada to inspire youth in STEM specifically to stick through beyond grade 10, because we know you don't always have to complete grade 12 math and science in order to graduate from high school, but we do need folks to finish those credits in order to get into many of our industry programs.

We need more work-integrated learning, as I mentioned, or learning-integrated work, so that students are exposed to the sector early and are retained over the longer term.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

We've talked about recruiting. Can we talk about now making sure that we are paying fair wages? In your opinion, what type of system would be required in order to have good, competitive compensation strategies across the sector, particularly in regions with differing economic conditions?

[Mark Chapeskie]

That's a complicated question to answer in under 30 seconds, but I'm going to do my best.

Obviously this is a highly unionized industry, for the most part. As you get into the independent power producers and the electrical contractors, those are not always all unionized.

It's actually a sector that pays pretty well today. We have pretty good retention today. We took a bit of a backslide after the pandemic, as most industries did. They saw people job-hopping from one industry to another or just retiring early. This is a sector that actually does have good compensation for the most part, and because the independent power producers and the electrical contractors compete with their utility peers, you tend to see better compensation than perhaps in other industries as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Monsieur Simard for six minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much.

I hope you can hear me, Mr. Callahan and Mr. Chapeskie.

In your presentation, you talked about the challenges related to jobs in the electrification sector. I'd like to make a connection here to what was done in Bill C‑50 with sustainable jobs. It includes an agreement between Quebec and the federal government on workforce training, but unfortunately we weren't able to draw on that agreement to ensure that the funds go to existing institutions devoted to training the workforce in Quebec.

I believe Mr. Callahan stated that we wouldn't be able to address the shortage of skilled labour through immigration alone, and we would therefore need our own strategies. I know that's a tall order and that we have existing structures. I'm thinking, for example, of the Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Québec, or IREQ, which provides training and does research.

However, I'd like you to tell us whether you feel the government's approach is flexible enough to meet our future labour needs as we move to further electrify our economy.

Mr. Chapeskie can answer first, then Mr. Callahan.

[Mark Chapeskie]

I'm perhaps not the best-qualified person to speak specifically to the Quebec-federal government agreement on funding to institutions. What I can say is that across the country, we are facing a financial challenge with our post-secondary institutions' ability to develop new programs or even to expand existing programs.

There are a number of underlying reasons, but fundamentally, inflation over the past number of years has driven delivery costs up for post-secondary institutions, and funding mechanisms have not kept pace, whether those are federal or provincial, in order to meet the requirements of what happens. Also, in some provinces, there are tuition caps on domestic students who are coming in, essentially.

All of those are downward pressure mechanisms that are not allowing the expansion of existing programs or the development of new programs beyond that.

Does that get to the crux of what you're asking?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Yes, thank you.

Perhaps Mr. Callahan can give a brief answer.