Natural Resources Committee on April 4th, 2022

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us today for this conversation, which is so important. I think all of us around the table can agree on that.

Part of the problem with going so late in the rounds here is that a lot of what I wanted to ask has already been covered or is close to having been covered.

[A voice]

Not as well as you would ask.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

That's a good point by my colleague here, my neighbour from northeastern Ontario. I'm going to ask my questions anyway. I suppose I will be directing them to Natural Resources, but if anyone else wants to jump in with comments, please feel free to do so.

I'll pick up on a comment by my colleague Mr. Bragdon around rural communities, and I will extend that to northern and remote communities. What actions is the government taking to ensure that specifically northern rural communities aren't going to be so badly displaced by this transition, given how much those regions rely on sectors like natural resources?

[Debbie Scharf]

Perhaps I'll come back to the principles on which we're trying to consult here on the just transition. It's really about how we should guide the kinds of decisions we will need to make and the kinds of actions we will need to take as we move to a net-zero future, in terms of both getting workers ready and minimizing impacts on communities and workers. We need to understand what the guideposts are for us to know how to make the best decisions and what the best actions are to take when these types of things happen or how best to prepare for the types of jobs and activities we need.

That's really where we are right now, and that includes Canadians from coast to coast to coast and communities from coast to coast to coast.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that.

I don't remember if it was you, Ms. Scharf, but somebody mentioned that, I believe, there were 17,000 submissions throughout the consultation. Do you have, or are you able to provide to the committee if you don't know off the top of your head, a geographical breakdown of those submissions? I'd like to see how many folks in northern Ontario, for example, have been consulted so far.

[Debbie Scharf]

I'm not sure if Roisin has any of that information off the top of her head, or if it's something we'd have to get back to you on or it will be summarized in the “what we heard” report.

[Roisin Reid]

It will be summarized in the “what we heard” report, but we can probably get back to the committee sooner than that. Our mailbox submissions period will end April 30, so we can do a summary of what's there now.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that. Thank you.

I have another similar question. Mining is very important in my region in northwestern Ontario, and I think many folks, including the Canadian Climate Institute, have identified mining as a key industry that is transition-vulnerable. Is there an estimate at this point of how many workers in the mining industry may be displaced as a result of the just transition?

[Debbie Scharf]

I don't have a particular answer to this question, unless my colleagues from ESDC are able to offer any insights into that.

Perhaps there is one comment that I would like to make.

I know there's a question about displaced workers. I also want to emphasize that there are going to be new clean energy industries and associated industries that are built as part of the transition to net zero. A fantastic example in the mining field is critical minerals—which other colleagues around the tabled asked for some information on earlier in the meeting—where we see a significant opportunity for growth. There are going to be shifts that happen, and in those shifts, there will be a need for similar skill sets and sometimes different skill sets. That's what's really important to understand so that we have the workers ready for the jobs that are to come.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

I appreciate that.

To pick up on that, I think a lot of the training that comes with mining is very specialized, very specific. You mentioned critical minerals. That's obviously a very important opportunity. Are there other industries you see—and I'll open this up to anyone who has a comment—as an opportunity for folks who are displaced from the mining sector specifically?

[Andrew Brown]

Thanks for that question.

I'm going to turn to Chris to see if he can add anything else on that.

[Chris Bates]

Overall, I would say that Canada is very well positioned in the mining industry. We're likely to benefit from things like renewable energy, transition to electric vehicles, and production of graphite, lithium and cobalt, which are all expected to increase as we make that transition.

I don't have any specific data with regard to the mining industry as a whole. If we look at the forestry industry as well, that might be one that we would expect to grow. I think that's a whole part of it. It's really hard to predict some of the data for these specific industries.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We're out of time on that one.

We're going to move over to Ms. Dabrusin.

You have five minutes for your discussion and questions—whatever you'd like to do with it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's been interesting to hear all of the different ways that people are coming to this question. It's a big study for us, an important one, and I think it's one that Canadians care about deeply, as to how we're positioning ourselves as we transform our energy towards clean energy.

One question I have, speaking of clean energy, is based on a bit of my experience in Ontario. We switched from coal-fired electricity, and that meant we went from having literally 50 smog days a year on average to none. It's hard to really remember what it was like. There were days when you couldn't go outside if you had asthma, and now people can go out.

Our government did work on the transition towards sustainable jobs for people who worked in coal-fired electricity. I'm wondering if you could speak about the lessons learned from that, and how that projects forward into the work we're doing when we talk about sustainable jobs now.

[Debbie Scharf]

I want to start with one particular distinction between the coal phase-out and where we find ourselves today. I often hear cod and coal mentioned side by side. The idea around coal was that it was something that a regulation was going to cause the end of, or cause something to stop. That is one particular context for which there was a task force, a series of recommendations that the government considered, and $185 million of funding was put forward to help address some of the impacts associated with that.

In the case of the energy transition, it's much, much more complicated, as you noted. Not only is it complicated in that it's bigger, but government is not the only actor in the economy making decisions. The government may be writing policies or regulations that will have impacts on the economy, but private sector investors will also be making decisions that will have an impact on the economy.

While I think that the just transition task force on coal did provide some good recommendations that the government considered very carefully, in this particular case we have to see it as quite a bit broader. It's not solely focused on stopping one thing; it's transitioning from certain things to other things, or perhaps doing things slightly differently, and reacting to a lot of decisions being made but with a lot of independent players, actors, and governments domestically and internationally, because the decisions being made internationally are also going to impact Canada.

There's a lot to learn, but we also have to be careful to make sure that the conditions of today are well understood as we go forward.

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

I don't know if someone from ESDC also has something to add to that.

Mr. Brown, did you have something that you were going to add?

[Andrew Brown]

I didn't particularly have a response on what has been learned to date. I was just going to say that in terms of supporting workers I think that's really the focus we have, being able to provide them with training, with re-skilling, to be able to take on the new jobs or to adapt to the new jobs in the cleaner economy.

That's really where our focus is, and I really wanted to emphasize the fact that it's not something we do on our own. We also work with provinces and territories. In fact, we provide about $3 billion annually to the provinces and territories to support training within their own jurisdictions, and that allows them to tailor the responses to employers and workers in their own jurisdictions in a way that the federal government might not be able to do.

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

Thanks.

I don't have much time, but I'll go back to Ms. Scharf, if I could.

You mentioned how we have a large diversity of players that comes into play on the decisions that are going to be made on how things go forward. How can we look to bring people together in different regions from different industries and different positions to be able to help inform what we'll be doing going forward?

[Debbie Scharf]

Thank you for the question.

In addition to all the things I've talked about today around just transition and the emissions reduction plan, we're also taking a perspective as we move forward from the emissions reduction plan to look at what regional economic opportunities we have around the country that we can leverage to grow new industries, taking a bit more of a place-based approach.

This is another perspective that the federal government, in partnership with the provinces and territories, would like to explore, so that we can be laser-focused on building those economies of the future, where every region has a comparative advantage, and then to be able to line up behind that what sustainable jobs will be built from those sectors and those industries, and then how we bring to bear the types of programs that ESDC and others have to get those workers and communities ready.

That's another thing we're looking at, to really look across the country and look regionally at what can be done for our economic advantage.

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

Thank you.

That's all my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

All right.

We'll go back to Monsieur Simard for two and a half minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Scharf, my colleague, Mr. Maloney, said earlier that it was unrealistic to think that we could do without oil. I don't want to put words in his mouth. However, I think that's what he meant.

Yet we know very well that some sectors were left out in the cold because they had too much of an impact on public health or on the environment. I'll simply give you the example of the asbestos sector in Quebec. This sector was abandoned because of its impact on the health of individuals.

When speaking about a just transition, a number of environmentalists are making it clear that we need to plan to stop oil sands production, or at the very least, stop the increase in production.

Are you thinking of including this consideration in the upcoming bill?

[Debbie Scharf]

Thank you for the question.

I think plans like the emissions reduction plan, which has a number of measures and activities that will give us pathways to net zero, and the work we'd like to do on place-based strategies regionally, which will help grow new industries, this is all the type of intelligence—it has been asked where those new jobs are going to be—that will help us understand the directions we need to take.

Then, the just transition legislation and the work we're doing will help bring the types of principles and approaches that we need to consider to make decisions on how to bring the right skills and the workers to the jobs of the future. That's really how the two pieces fit together.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

The statistics show that Canada is one of the G7's worst performers when it comes to renewable energy investments. It ranks high in oil and gas investments.

I don't see how we can plan a just transition and create jobs without supporting low‑carbon industries.

Is this also part of your thought process? Wouldn't you benefit from providing much stronger support to economic sectors that have a low‑carbon footprint?

[Debbie Scharf]

Thank you for the question.

The work we're doing around just transition is really focused on how we make sure we have an equitable and prosperous future as we transition to net zero. There is also an emissions reduction plan that provides a blueprint sector by sector for how we're going to get from here to our 2030 climate targets and sets us on the path to net zero.

The just transition is really about how we make sure that we have the right skills and the right workers, and that we're minimizing the impacts on communities and helping to bring everyone along as we're making that transition to a net-zero economy, which is outlined in the climate plan that we have available.