Natural Resources Committee on May 5th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

You have two minutes and 30 seconds.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Perfect.

I'll follow up on that, because you mentioned training and apprenticeships. Of course, our government has just launched a $6-billion investment in training the next generation of workers in the skilled trades. We were at Mohawk College in Hamilton last Friday, seeing their training centres. There's a lot of support in the skilled trades for that.

How would your members benefit? What's your opinion of that program and the government's investment in the next generation of workers in the skilled trades?

[Lana Payne]

What we saw in last week's economic statement around this investment in skilled trades and in upskilling is very important, because what often happens.... We've seen and we've been a big part of this when we do collaborative work with public colleges around the kinds of skilled trades we require.

For example, to give you a sense, we had a number of our members who were retrained out of the auto parts sector to work at the NextStar battery plant. We worked with public colleges to make sure that they were getting the skills they needed to transfer and transition from one area of the industry to the other.

When we talk about skilled trades, yes, it's about apprenticeships and, yes, it's about making sure that employers are investing in these apprenticeships, but as much as the government will put investments into the training side of things, we also need employers to be welcoming and have apprenticeships as part of their continuum of how we train workers. Often, we can see that side falling down.

Anything we can do—whether it's unions or the government—to work with employers to encourage apprenticeships across the system is incredibly important in making sure that we have a trained and skilled Canadian population.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

You have 30 seconds.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

My last question is on buy Canadian policies. What do we need to do as a federal government to strengthen and enhance buy Canadian to make sure that our investments in infrastructure are benefiting Canadian workers, Canadian suppliers, Canadian materials and the Canadian economy?

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Give a quick answer, Ms. Payne.

[Lana Payne]

I'm a big fan of buy Canadian. Let's see this in all the places in which we can do it.

We can build the new Via trains that are currently being considered. We would love to do that in our facility in Thunder Bay. We can look at the cars that we build in Canada. Governments can buy the vehicles that we build here and make sure that they're part of government fleets and municipal fleets. We build transit buses all over this country, from Winnipeg to Quebec.

Let's make sure that we're buying Canadian, using Canadian steel and Canadian aluminum to do all of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thanks for mentioning Winnipeg. Thank you, Ms. Payne.

Mr. Simard, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd just like to take three seconds to make sure that our lovely guest can hear the interpretation.

Ms. Payne, can you hear the interpretation?

[Lana Payne]

Yes. Thank you.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Payne.

Your opening remarks were very interesting, as was the discussion you had with my colleagues. One thing stands out for me: You said that the energy sector is a money-printing machine. I couldn't agree with you more. Now, it remains to be seen what these companies do with that money.

I'd like to bring you back to a correlation you made, which I don't think we're exploring enough. What's the current ratio of workers to oil production? If you have data on that, or if Unifor has data on that, I would very much like to see it.

I'll finish my thought and then let you comment. What I understand from the big oil companies' comments, and what we're currently seeing, is that they don't want to take on the risk of infrastructure investments. It certainly gives them some flexibility to move toward automation, but if I understand you correctly, their responsibility is to invest in their infrastructure. However, they have the money. If I look at the profits from 2021 to 2024, oil companies made $131 billion in profits. Given the current geopolitical situation, I also know very well, as does everyone else, that they're making record profits with a very high price for a barrel of oil.

I'd like you to share your comments with us. Don't oil companies have the flexibility to invest more in their infrastructure? In your opinion, is it the government's role to invest in this infrastructure?

[Lana Payne]

Thank you very much for both of those questions. I will definitely get you more data on the ratio of workers in oil production to profits, because I think our research team would love to put that together for you.

I would say that they should absolutely be required to invest in infrastructure and to maintain infrastructure. The reality is that these resources are public resources. We allow companies to explore, exploit and make profits from them. From that, we need to get a couple of things in return, which are well-paying union jobs that are safe and infrastructure that is safe, because, of course, it's really important that we keep communities safe all across this country.

Part of doing that means making sure that we are maintaining infrastructure and not allowing it to deteriorate, because this also has an impact on our environment. A lot of this can be taken care of through proper regulation and making sure that we are holding these very large companies accountable, and there is more we can be doing on that front.

We have made a number of submissions around how we can improve regulation and oversight so that, once the facilities are built, we are doing everything possible to keep them safe and to employ energy workers. The reality is, with all the automation we are seeing, we are displacing workers out of the sector. What we need to do, if that is true and technology is doing that, is to then, on the other side, get a return. I would say that second to that return is what we do with our royalty regimes in this country. How do we make sure that we are getting a fair share of the return of these profits back to Canadians and to Canadian governments so that we can reinvest them in other parts of society?

That's why you are probably hearing many commentators now talk about how oil is at a very high price. It's likely to go further because of what is happening in the Middle East, and with the U.S. war with Iran, so we have to be prepared. If the price of oil and gas go through the roof even further, how do we capture some of that to make sure that we're making things affordable for Canadians? I can tell you that, from many of the people we represent, things are very unaffordable right now, and I think it's only going to get worse.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you.

You said a little earlier that Unifor had made proposals on how to make these companies more accountable. I encourage you to table those proposals with the committee as well. They can be added to the report at a later date.

I don't know if you have any information on this, but I would simply point out that if you look at the ownership structure of the biggest players in the oil and gas sector, it quickly becomes clear that 60% of those major companies are American-owned. It also becomes clear that, in terms of dividends over the past few years, those companies have sent nearly $80 billion to their shareholders without necessarily investing in infrastructure. That means we're losing about $12 billion a year collectively.

This is what I'm really wondering: Collectively, are we still winners in the oil and gas sector? Isn't there something we're missing when companies are making record profits and Canadians may not be getting their money's worth in this type of investment?

I'd like to hear your comments on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

You have time for a quick answer, Ms. Payne.

[Lana Payne]

I believe there's more we could do to capture some of the massive profits that are there. Also, if that means capturing them and then reinvesting in things that oil companies are not doing, such as renewable energy and those sorts of things, this is definitely something that I believe a legislative framework can get us to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we're going on to our second round.

We are going to start with Mr. Martel.

Mr. Martel, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Payne, thank you for being here today.

I listened to your opening remarks. You talked about how we can help Canada become an energy superpower. How is it that, with the natural resources we have, we aren't currently a superpower?

We don't have a refinery here. We can't export liquefied natural gas to Europe. I'd like to hear your views on that. It seems to me that all of those things should have been done by now.

Today, people are saying that they want to become a superpower. What do you think about the fact that we aren't one, despite everything we possess?

[Lana Payne]

Oh boy, that is a very big question.

Obviously, there were a lot of things we could have possibly been doing differently, but we are now in a place in which we have to do things differently. Looking at building a strategy for our energy sector across the country is incredibly important. That means building critical infrastructure in all the ways we can. I know you're going to hear from Candu Energy in your next session; that's incredibly important. We need a diversity of energy from all sources right now.

I would say to you that we are still at a place in which we import a lot of energy into Canada. We export oil and gas to the United States, and we get it back through pipelines from the United States. We have all of these pipelines running north-south rather than looking at how we make Canada itself more resilient.

How do we ensure that we're not having to import as much as we do, potentially, in eastern Canada? How do we fix these problems? This requires an assessment of how we make ourselves more secure, I would say, in Canada. Yes, part of that is exporting to more places than the United States, but it is also shoring up what we do in our own country and making sure that we're maintaining, protecting and building our own industrial capacity.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

That's interesting.

Would you support building a west-east pipeline to reduce our dependence on the U.S. market and create 100% Canadian jobs?

[Lana Payne]

Pipelines are part of the solution. It takes a long time to build a pipeline. We need an interim strategy as well. One of the proposals that we have put forward since last year, particularly when the trade war started with the United States, is to look at how we can increase our capacity of shifting oil from the west to the east via the railway. We put a lot on the railway right now. We currently transport crude oil from western Canada to Sarnia, for example, if we do it by railway. However, we could increase that capacity, and I think that would help a lot.

There are any number of ideas here that can get us to a better place. Some of them will be interim solutions, and some of them, like pipelines, will be longer-term solutions. Some of them will also be that we have to invest in more electricity and that we have to invest in nuclear. Frankly, we have to invest in solar and wind; we have to do all of it. If we are to be an energy superpower, we can't just be an energy superpower in one aspect of the energy sector. We have to do it in all the places.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

You talk about strategy, and you say we have to build. Do you think it's possible to do that without touching the regulations? When it comes to discussing projects, it's as if we never see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Lana Payne]

Yes, we have to build. There's no doubt about it. I mean, I see it. Sometimes the bureaucratic situation is not catching up with the political moment. We have to make sure that all of Canada is rowing in the same direction, which can be hard.

Honestly, I don't think any of us thought we'd be in the kind of crisis we're in right now in terms of this trade war with our closest ally. That has caused us all to think about things in a different way. It means that we have to, for sure, make sure that our own economy—particularly when it comes to energy, but also with regard to the entire industrial base of Canada—is being protected and that we are building our own capacity here at home.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you both.

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Payne.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Mr. Saini, you have five minutes.