Evidence of meeting #8 for Natural Resources in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was communities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Speaking as the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, United Steelworkers and steelworkers have been the backbone of Hamilton's economy for decades. It's good to have our guests here as a backbone of the mining sector as well.
I think we have a shared interest in getting projects to development faster and to production faster. That's a shared interest between government, industry and also workers. Unfortunately, what I think we've heard today and what we've heard previously in this committee from our Conservative friends is that this often means “cutting red tape”. What we've heard is that means cutting regulations, removing protections for the environment, removing protections for climate change and removing protections for workers.
Conservative
Shannon Stubbs Conservative Lakeland, AB
I have a point of order, Chair. If we're going to do this, we are going to get into a debate because nobody is going to put words in my mouth or misrepresent our position.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Terry Duguid
We're not allowed to use that word, as you know.
Please let Mr. Danko proceed. He did offer you that courtesy as well.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
As I was getting to my point, we've seen the fundamental Conservative anti-union bias on display, where the fundamental rights of workers are seen as red tape. I would like to give our United Steelworkers guests an opportunity to respond to the role of union workers in critical mineral development.
Thank you.
Assistant to the National Director, United Steelworkers Union
Thanks.
I am hearing the repeated term of “anti-competitive decade” or whatever and then concerns have been raised about, for example, workers having the right to strike and the need for reforms to the Canada Labour Code. We want the Canada Labour Code perhaps reformed in a different way—one which protects our constitutional right to strike. That's something we don't take lightly.
I think that Canada's advantage is, in fact, that we do have strong workers' rights. Our members in mining are some of our highest-paid members and they've fought for that over decades. They have high health and safety standards. We think it is important, when we're developing our critical mineral sector responsibly, to use this to our advantage.
We do think that it can take too long to get a mine from its initial stages into operation, but it can't be at the expense of workers' rights, the environment or consultation with indigenous peoples. There are likely areas where things could be streamlined a little bit. I'm not denying that.
Ultimately, we think it's really important that we're ensuring that we're actually using to our advantage the fact that mining workers are highly unionized and well paid. These are community-supporting jobs. It's essential, as part of a critical mineral strategy, to really leverage that as much as possible.
Then also, as we expand mining, ensure that workers are involved and identify training needs. Ensure that we have essential infrastructure, not just in terms of the roads, rail and things like that, but in communities where mines are expanded, have adequate health care, child care and schools. That's something we hear from our members when new mines open up: They don't necessarily want to move to a new community if they don't have essential services, schools and things like that.
This is the importance of having a comprehensive strategy that isn't just getting things done faster at the expense of the environment, at the expense of workers and at the expense of indigenous peoples.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Thank you.
You spoke in your opening statement and just now about the importance of bringing on workers in the skilled trades. That's beyond just the mining and critical mineral sector. That's important for Canada as a whole.
I wanted to give you an opportunity to expand on how the unions, whether it's steelworkers or unions in general, can be involved in training and getting more workers into the skilled trades to participate in the industries that are critical to Canada's economy.
Assistant to the National Director, United Steelworkers Union
Yes, I think the skilled trades are important. I will also point out one of the initiatives that our union is taking on, particularly in western Canada. It's not just a matter of identifying the skilled trades and ensuring that there's union involvement in identifying where there may be gaps or where workers are aging out of the workforce. It's also about production workers and other jobs that are in mines.
We are actually trying to develop some mining schools where we are directly involved in recruiting and training workers. We are not a construction union, that's been a model that has existed in other types of unions. We haven't done that so much. That's something we're really looking into and looking for funding for as well. We think we can play an essential role in identifying the needs of the existing and future workforce, not just in the skilled trades but also in other jobs that are needed.
Liberal
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Gingrich, since we have you and your colleague here from the United Steelworkers Union, I want to take this opportunity to talk a bit about aluminum. You mentioned it in your presentation.
If I remember correctly, the U.S. consumes four million tonnes of aluminum per year, and about 2.8 million tonnes of that comes from Canada. A key consideration that often comes up in the discussion on critical minerals and metals like aluminum is the supply chain. From the conversations I've had with your steelworker colleagues, I learned that Canada has never had a strategy to build that supply chain. Neither has Quebec, whose government I rarely criticize.
Today, the big aluminum plants are entirely reliant on the U.S. market. With the Midwest premium, they're able to pass the costs on to the next link in the supply chain, even if it creates problems and distortions.
Nevertheless, there's never been any interest on the government's part to tie financial support to local processing. With that in mind, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea of creating an aluminum supply chain.
Assistant to the National Director, United Steelworkers Union
Thank you for your question. I understood everything, but I'm going to answer in English.
I think this is true. In Quebec, you developed a way to create the cheap energy that's needed for aluminum and to send it to the United States. Americans rely on that aluminum because they can't really produce it there. It does highlight the need in Canada for more comprehensive industrial strategies so that we're actually able to use the products that are produced here in value-added manufacturing, creating those good union jobs—not just resource extraction and then shipping it off but actually having incentives for buying Canadian-produced aluminum, the aluminum that's produced in Quebec by our members. We need to ensure that we have incentives there. If public money is going to projects, it has to be tied to using that aluminum or other materials that are produced in Canada. I think it is an essential component of this in a larger critical minerals strategy to have that industrial strategy that links all of these different parts of the supply chain.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you very much to our witnesses.
We talked about the Conservative position to our union friends today. Our position is that we want projects to go ahead. We would like the insane Liberal policies to be rolled back—policies that have hurt us for 10 years—so that your workers can get to work. That is what the goal of our Conservative position is. I think that's why a majority of the private sector members voted for Conservative members in the last election.
Liberal
John-Paul Danko Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
I have a point of order, Chair.
Could the member stick to relevant questions?
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Chair.
It is relevant because we lost a whole decade. There are countless projects....
We heard earlier from first nations people of hundreds of mining projects that have been shelved and killed because of Liberal policies that have kept them in the ground, and how wrong that was for first nations across Canada because of the powerful paycheques that those families could have earned so that they could provide for themselves.
Do you feel that some of your members would share that...and voted Conservative in the last election because of a disdain for Bill C-69, which has kept projects shelved for too long?
Assistant to the National Director, United Steelworkers Union
I'll just say that our members have voted for every political party across the board. They pretty much mirror the general population of Canada.
Of course, our members want to see good jobs and the expansion of good jobs. There's no doubt about it. They don't want to see it at the expense of health and safety. They don't want to see it at the expense of their communities. Whatever happened in the past 10 years, I think looking forward is most important here. We're in a moment here where we can really develop and create a critical mineral strategy where we are taking advantage.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Unfortunately, the same government is now carrying on with these disastrous policies. I too want environmental, sustainable projects that make sense and have that first nations involvement.
Some of the most successful projects in Canada have been found in northern Alberta. I would say that those first nations are the most progressive, most successful people in North America because of those projects that were approved well before the Liberals took over and caused this lost decade. To clarify, that's our Conservative position.
Moving to Dr. Exner-Pirot, we talked about the importance of critical minerals to the defence of Canada. We have lost a decade where, instead of nation building we had a decade of weakening our nation. Can we hear more about how critical minerals could help in the true building of Canada and the defence of our nation?
Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
Certainly.
I want to point out I'm not anti-worker. My husband is a mining worker. He's up in the Northwest Territories on a two-week shift right now, and I'm very concerned about him having access to market for the products he helps produce.
In terms of the security aspect, obviously we're all looking for economic growth. Everyone's aligned on that. Our allies are asking us almost daily for access to more critical minerals and trying to reduce their dependence on China. China has been very forcefully and muscularly using and manipulating markets, putting on export restrictions in the last two years and affecting supply chains here in North America.
What can we do to adjust that? Canada is in a unique position in the G7 and in NATO, as we are an export country when it comes to minerals. We are not a net importer. We import some products, obviously, but on the whole, we export. We have more than we could ever use ourselves, and that's not true of the United States and it's not true of almost every one of our European allies. They can't go and mine something else or get a by-product of an existing mine like we can. Where we do have that capability—especially for things that are on either the NATO defence materials list or China's export restriction list—we should be doing so very quickly and urgently.
Again, this is not tending to be opening up a greenfield mine, where you have to go through 15 or 18 years and get fresh consent from indigenous communities. Oftentimes, it's just about processing what we already produce at these mines and we already refine and taking out some products that just wouldn't be economic if you left them on their own.
Germanium, gallium and some rare earths would be at the top of the list, and antimony and tungsten would be at the top of the list for us to start developing urgently to supply defence needs.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you so much.
Earlier, you made comments about how, unfortunately, in the world we are surrounded by wolves, and the Liberals have made us into sheep, as a way of putting it. I want to unpack a little bit your beliefs about how to get us back on our feet. We know it has taken this government 10 years to get us into this terrible position. How many years do you think it would take to get out of it?
Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
All of this is to say we're producing a lot of things already. There is investment that wants to come to Canada. There's not a long list of great jurisdictions to put mining money in. A few policy tweaks or a few signals to the investment community that we really are open for business in the next two months would be fantastic.