Natural Resources Committee on May 23rd, 2024

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In Ontario the Independent Electricity System Operator is responsible for ensuring that there's enough power to meet the province's energy needs in real time, while also planning and securing energy for the future. The annual planning outlook by this operator forecasts that Ontario's total electricity demand will increase by 60% over the next 25 years.

Their report states that they do this:

...by balancing the supply of and demand for electricity in Ontario and directing its flow across the province's transmission lines; planning for the province's medium- and long-term energy needs and securing clean sources of supply to meet those needs; overseeing the electricity wholesale market; and coordinating province-wide conservation efforts.

They say that energy storage will power the grid transformation. I'll quote from the report:

After years of stable supply, Ontario is entering a period of need with demand expected to increase by 2 per cent per year over the next twenty years due to electrification, decarbonization and economic growth. Energy storage is well positioned to help support this need, providing a reliable and flexible form of electricity supply that can underpin the energy transformation of the future.

Storage is unique among electricity types in that it can act as a form of both supply and demand, drawing energy from the grid during off-peak hours when demand is low and injecting that energy back into the grid when it is needed most. Storage is particularly useful in supporting the wide-scale integration of renewable resources, like wind and solar, because it can help smooth out changes in energy output caused by unpredictable weather.

Ontario already has one of the cleanest electricity systems in North America, getting most of our power from hydro and nuclear generation. Energy storage can help leverage these existing assets while helping to enable more renewables to ensure clean, reliable and affordable electricity for Ontario’s homes and businesses.

The Crown corporation in Ontario responsible for the safety and resiliency of our electricity grid is urgently and actively working on protecting Ontarians from a failed grid. I think as legislators, we can't delay the important work of hearing from experts who can guide our policy in grid protection. We have to be willing to be able to partner with our provinces, our territories and our municipalities in this important work.

I think continuing—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Ms. Lapointe, we have a point of order. I'll just ask you to hold for a second.

Mr. Angus, go ahead on the point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't want to interrupt my honourable colleague. I do appreciate that she did the shout-out for the Cobalt fire, which was just in my back forty and went from zero to 14 hectares to 164 hectares in an hour during our committee hearings last week. I was paying a lot of attention to our family loading their car up, whereas now I'm trying to really keep my eyes open here—and the fire in Cobalt is still out of control.

I just wanted to ask my honourable colleague, with all due respect, because we have 15 minutes left, if she's planning on talking the clock out. Will there be other interventions?

I could pack my bags. We could do other stuff. Just out of respect to colleagues, I don't know how long the thing she's reading is. Is it 10 minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes...?

If she could just give us a heads-up, it would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Angus, on the point of order.

We do have other speakers on the speaking order as well, but Ms. Lapointe does have the floor. I'll allow Ms. Lapointe to continue as to why she thinks it's important to do the electricity study and the rationale for it.

Ms. Lapointe, go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I am very close to finishing my comments.

I think continuing work to build a reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity system is critical to ensuring that communities will flourish, businesses will have the confidence to invest and industries can decarbonize. We know that a strong and resilient electricity grid is also a matter of national security. Innovation, powerful AI applications and supercomputers all require significant amounts of electricity.

Developing the resilience of our grid is critical. We have witnesses who can share their expertise on developing this resilience with our committee. We had a number of witnesses before us last week, in fact. Unfortunately, we weren't able hear all their testimony.

Ultimately, we can't delay our study on Canada's electricity and grid network. There is too much at stake to allow a less pressing but no less important issue take precedence over our current study.

I want to thank the chair for giving me this time today at committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.

We'll now go to MP Schiefke.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on what we are discussing today.

I want to start, Chair, by sharing with my colleague MP Angus that I don't oppose the study that he's put forward. In fact, I look forward to being a part of that discussion. I look forward to having the testimony before us and studying that. The issue—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

I'm sorry. MP Schiefke, I'll ask you to hold for a second.

We have a point of order from Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I've been on a lot of committees that have been really toxic, and I really appreciate that he reached out. I want to reach across the aisle to him and say that's fantastic. Why don't we put this to a vote?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Angus. I'm not sure that's a point of order, but it's a conversation we're having.

MP Schiefke, I'll ask you to continue where you left off. The floor is yours.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

What I'm going to add, though, is that, unfortunately, even though I agree with the substance of the motion, there's one component that I do not agree with. That is the component that essentially states that this study would supersede all the other studies, including the one that we just embarked on. The reason I can't agree with that and will not be supporting the motion as it is written and amended is that the study with regard to Canada's electrical grid is one that's incredibly important to my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges. Actually, I was very excited, when I got appointed to this committee, to be told that this would be the first study we'd be embarking on.

The reason it's important to my community, Chair, is that my community has experienced, over the last two years, significant and unprecedented environmental events that led to tens of thousands of my constituents being without power, several times, in the midst of the cold winter in January and February, for several days. It brought to light the challenges that remain in Canada, whether in my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges or in communities represented by my fellow members of all parties on this committee. If you're looking for the aspect that's most important to me, Chair, of the motion that was put forward on the electricity grid study, it's the component that deals with the challenges to improve electrical production and distribution across Canada.

Distribution, for me, is key. Last January—January 2023—we had yet another ice storm in Canada. It was the second-worst ice storm in our history, second only to the one that we experienced in the late nineties—and my honourable colleague from the Bloc Québécois will remember this well—when several hundred thousand Quebeckers, thousands in my own community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges, were left without power. The reason they were left without power was, for the most part, that extra weight was put on the transmission lines that either weren't supported by the existing infrastructure or were damaged by falling trees. In some cases it took up to six days to restore power, while we had temperatures overnight and in the evenings going down to -15°C or -16°C.

It got to the point that not only did my municipalities have to open up emergency centres.... Community centres had to be turned into emergency centres. Seniors or those who didn't have access to some form of generator had to go into those community centres overnight, return to their homes during the day and then make their way back to the community centres overnight. Something else that compounded that while all of this was going on was that, as elected officials—I as the federal member, the two provincial members Marie-Claude Nichols and Marilyne Picard, respectively, and the mayors—we didn't have access to any way of communicating with one another. What happened when we lost electricity was that the telecommunications system in the province, particularly in the south, was so heavily affected by the loss of power that we couldn't even communicate our collective response to the tens of thousands of our constituents we needed to respond to.

The discussion that we've been having since then is what needs to be done to the grid to make it more resilient and to support the needs of our constituents as we make our way into the new world, which is a new world that's addressing climate change. Prior to embarking on this important study, I reached out to my mayors to ask them if they had any questions they wanted me to ask on their behalf, and I put forward my own questions that I wanted to ask. However, just before being able to ask those questions on behalf of the elected representatives I work very closely with in my community, we had this motion presented by MP Angus—whom I admire and respect greatly.

This is a motion that, as I said, I support in substance, and I'm looking forward to getting to that, but before we get to that, we have a pressing issue for members like me. I'm sure there are other members in the committee for whom this is very important. We want to get to this. We need to address this issue. We need to talk about not just expanding and meeting the needs of Canadians tomorrow and figuring out how we're going to provide Canadians with that clean energy we need to provide them with because our population is growing, but also how that energy is going to have to be clean energy and how we're going to go about doing that—

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

MP Schiefke, there's a point of order. I'll ask you to hold for one second.

Mr. Angus, go ahead on the point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Chair, I just want to put on the record that I've been the subject of a lot of love and respect from my Liberal colleagues today, but not one of them has mentioned the TMX pipeline, and that's what we're here to discuss.

I can get by with less love, but I would really like to get something done.

We're now down to six minutes. If you held off patting me on the back and we could talk about TMX, maybe we could get a vote so that on Thursday we could get down to business.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, MP Angus, for your point of order on the rationale.

I believe the main motion is on the TMX pipeline, but the amendment is on bringing this forward ahead of any other studies, so it does tie in to the previous study that was under way. I would ask everybody, as you debate, that you think of both of those items.

I'll let MP Schiefke continue because he's providing his rationale for why that study is important and why we should continue with it.

MP Schiefke, go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

In response to my honourable colleague MP Angus on this, I don't have prepared remarks. For me, this is not a filibuster. I'm speaking on behalf of my community here.

This study is an important one for my community, and what I shared earlier is that I'm not against the study that MP Angus is putting forward. I'm against the idea that it takes precedence over this very important study that we've already started, for which we had witnesses come in, ready to provide their testimony and share their expertise with us, and for which we had prepared questions that many of us had collected from our constituents and drafted ourselves and were ready to put forward to be able to get those kinds of answers.

I just cannot see myself voting in favour of—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

MP Schiefke, once again we have a point of order. I'm going to ask you to hold right there for a second.

Mrs. Stubbs, go ahead on a point of order.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thanks, Chair.

I've just offered to the honourable member a solution for the problem about which he seems concerned. We of course have said that we would resume with the study afterwards, and also, he should know that there's not a single thing stopping him from getting those witnesses to make written submissions, from getting whoever it is he wanted to answer certain questions or from getting certain facts on the record. He can get them to submit that. There's no barrier.

Is the member actually honestly making the argument that the Government of Canada has no grip whatsoever in terms of the current and future electricity generation capacity and distribution except for the requirement of this study with five-minute opening comments from private sector proponents and then six minutes of question-and-answer exchanges? If that's the argument he's actually making, then, oh man, are we ever in a world of trouble.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Before you proceed, MP Schiefke, I would ask colleagues to use points of order for points of order, not for debate and not for Qs and As. You're more than welcome to have those discussions in private or to address those issues during your own debate time, and others can provide comments when they're up for their time.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

We have another point of order here, MP Schiefke. Before I go back to you, I'll go to Mr. Angus on a point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

You know, people, seeing that I've been given so much love, I feel I should share it.

Chair, I think you're doing an excellent job. You've disagreed with almost all of my interventions. I think technically I was probably right on maybe 10% to 15% of them, but I think you've done it in a very dignified way.

I will study your reflections in the blues so that the next time I ask my colleagues about filibustering, I might be able to take it to an extra level. I want to thank you for the work you're doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, MP Angus, for acknowledging the work of this committee.

I appreciate the work all of you do. I think that everybody today has had an opportunity to interject. It's not one member. I think it's been around this horseshoe, and it's been great.

MP Schiefke, we do have a few more minutes, and I know that there are a few points of order, so I want to turn it back over to you. I may ask you to pause at some point when we're running out of time at the end of the committee.

I'll turn it back over to you.