Natural Resources Committee on June 1st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

This is meeting number 25 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is continuing its study of creating a fair and equitable Canadian energy transformation. Today is our eighth meeting with witnesses for this study.

For the first panel, we have the ministers until six o'clock. We do have departmental officials too. I'll check once we get into the questions with the ministers, but the first thing I'm going to start with, if we'd like to get right into questions, is that I'll ask if there's unanimous consent to have the ministers' opening statements read into the record and we'll move right to questions.

Are there any concerns with that? Is everybody good with that?

Larry.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

We're all right.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We will have the ministers' opening statements read into the official record.

[See appendix—Remarks by the Honourable Seamus O'Regan and the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson]

With that, we're ready to go right into our questions.

Just as a reminder, we do have members from the second panel online with us. They've all done their audio checks. When we finish with the ministers, we'll see if we want to continue with the departmental officials for the remainder of the first hour, which would take us to 6:20, or we could end at 6 and go onto the second panel for the hour with them, which will take us to 7 or 7:20, depending on where that goes.

Because we have some outside members, when we finish with the ministers, I'll say a little bit on how to Zoom and those types of details. The one item is simply no pictures or screen shots now that we're in session.

With the official formalities done, let's turn it right over to Mr. McLean for his first question. The first round of questions is six minutes each for the four.

Mr. McLean, the clock is yours. You have six minutes.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome back, Minister O'Regan. It's nice to see you again.

In April 2021, you were the Minister of Natural Resources. You said that the just transition was about lowering emissions, about CCUS, and about blue hydrogen. You reiterated that position in March of this year on a visit to Alberta, notably after Russia had invaded Ukraine and exposed the hypocrisy of European energy policy to a hostile foreign actor.

When Canada could have taken steps over the last half decade to become a reliable supplier of energy to the world, we were nowhere. That's largely as a result of your government's hostility to our world-leading industry.

CCUS, which is one of your solutions, is still stalled. Tell us what's holding up your government on providing what you see as one of the transition solutions to decarbonization.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, Minister of Labour]

First of all, I have to say, Mr. McLean, I have never heard our government characterized, seriously, as being hostile to the industry. That is certainly not how I have been characterized in many quarters.

I'll just speak briefly to it because what we're talking about is, in effect, now the purview of my colleague, Mr. Wilkinson, so I'll throw it over to him.

I think the last budget demonstrated our dedication to CCUS with a clear understanding of its importance to hydrogen and its importance in lowering emissions in our oil and gas industry.

I'll leave it to my successor in the role, Minister Wilkinson.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

That's okay. Thanks, Mr. O'Regan.

I'm just going to be asking questions of you, Minister O'Regan. I'll leave Minister Wilkinson alone today, but thank you.

By the way, Minister O'Regan, I've never suggested you were personally hostile to the industry.

The International Energy Agency has said that the world will be consuming about as much oil in the year 2040 as it is consuming today. Your solutions, it seems, of transitioning Canada out of supplying that oil to the world doesn't really seem that just and doesn't really seem like it's going to be providing any environmental solutions in the world.

Tell us how that actually works. How is transitioning jobs out of Canada to provide worse environmental solutions to the world just?

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Oh, no, we aren't transitioning jobs out of the sector.

To be honest with you, Mr. McLean, our biggest problem is we don't have enough workers. this certainly has been my focus since I've taken on this new role as labour minister and co-leading with Minister Wilkinson our just transition strategy. We don't have enough workers in just about any industry in this country, but most particularly and poignantly, we don't have enough workers in the energy industry and in the oil and gas industry.

In my role now, and in doing the consultations I've been doing.... I've spoken to this committee before about the deep-seated anxiety amongst oil and gas workers whenever the words “just” and “transition” are mentioned. Both Mr. Wilkinson and I have an aversion to to the phrase, but we say it here because we all know what we're talking about. Honestly, we have to keep people in the industry. It was one of the reasons we worked very hard to put in place an orphaned and inactive well program at the height of the pandemic and the oil price war. When things bottomed out in April of 2020, as you will recall, and we had negative $38 oil, we needed to retain workers and keep workers in the industry for what we thought would be a more prolonged period of chaos. Thankfully, it was not, but we needed to keep people in this industry.

My biggest role right now is making sure people are calm and staying—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. O'Regan, thank you.

Let's go to the next question, please. The oil and gas industry is moving quickly, as you know, towards its own solutions, and the industry is identifying those jobs that it sees as part of the net-zero solutions in the green economy.

The provincial government participates in that in all the educational programs, and yet, since 2015—when your government arrived—we've lost 180,000 jobs in the energy industry and about $200 billion in capital projects. So you can forgive me if I say it's a little bit hostile to the industry, and you can forgive me if I'm saying that when I look at you and you say, “Hey, we're the federal government; we're here to help,” it kind of rings hollow here.

So tell us how this just transition isn't just an expensive overlap of jurisdiction.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

First of all, I think if we're going to tell the whole tale, we need to go back to before 2015, when so many natural resource projects in this country were caught up in court cases because we just didn't do the consultations we were required to do by the Constitution, the charter or existing legislation. We just thought at the time—or the government before us thought at the time—that if you bulldozed your way through enough, you'd actually get it done. Court case after court case showed that wasn't the case.

So we had to find legislation that would allow for meaningful consultation and that would work truly hand in glove and nation to nation with first nations, Inuit and Métis communities so that nothing could be done without them. You know what? We've managed to do quite a bit in the interim—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Okay, I'll differ with that, Minister O'Regan, because none of those projects have come back and most of those jobs haven't come back. You say you need them, but they disappeared and they weren't helped.

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

[Inaudible--Editor] I think I've gone through the list at this committee—.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

All of those programs you put in the way for them have actually not delivered any results. We can go through that, but Jerry Dias has actually said—

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I'm sorry. I'm going to stop the clock just for a second. We're down to 30 seconds.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Pardon me, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

It does make it very challenging when we have both people talking at the same time.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

It is impossible for the interpreters to do their job when people are talking at the same time.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

That's what I'm saying. The interpreters can't actually translate with the way it's happening.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, often when we ask questions, we expect the length of time for the answers to be about equal to the length of time for the question, which is the standard we usually use in these committees.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I'm just going to monitor the interactions between all members and our guests today. If somebody's speaking, just let the other person finish their thought, and we'll get through a good round of questions. You have 35 seconds left.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

If I let the minister finish his thoughts, I'd have one question and there would be a six-minute answer, so I do have to interject at certain points of time if you're not going to—

[Seamus O'Regan, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

There are far worse than me, Mr. McLean. Let's be honest.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I know, Minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

There are 35 minutes left on the clock.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

There are 35 minutes. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

I'm sorry. I mean seconds. Carry on.