Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 5th, 2020

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Yes, but debate is not part of speaking time. Usually, we stop the timer.

[The Clerk]

No, not when it is a motion. He used his time to present his motion. So he used up all the time he had to discuss the motion.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you. I will not question this decision, but I'm convinced that debate time must not be counted in the time allocated to a member.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Madam Clerk, can you confirm how much time Mr. Lawrence took to introduce and speak to his motion before we opened it up for debate?

[The Clerk]

I can only say that it was more than five minutes because I put the timer on for five minutes at the beginning of the questioning time and it had expired. The alarm sounded during the discussion. It was probably less than a minute after that.

Certainly, it's at the discretion of the chair if you want to give Mr. Lawrence more time. Normally, the only thing that stops a member's time is a point of order like this. I stopped the timer when Mr. Berthold began to speak. If the committee wishes to give Mr. Lawrence more time, that's at it's discretion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. I appreciate the explanation on how we should proceed.

Mr. Berthold, to address your point of order perhaps, knowing that the majority of Mr. Lawrence's time was taken up with his reading of the motion into the record and providing some rationale for it before the debate began, I am prepared to give Mr. Lawrence a minute and a half to continue with his questioning.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Not to further complicate things, but could I cede my time to Mr. Webber?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Yes, this time is yours and you can share it with whomever you would like.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Len, you don't want it?

Then my question will be relatively quick. I just have some concerns about what happened with Trans Mountain and the loss of life there, and I'm wondering if there is any additional information that our witness, Ms. De Silva, could provide on that. Obviously she said that in reading media reports she thought there might be signs of a contravention.

Is there any other detail she can shed on that at this point?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Madam De Silva.

[Gitane De Silva]

Sorry, I was on mute.

Thank you very much for the question.

Of course, the CER expects to have zero incidents from its regulated companies, and, as I said before, safety is really at the core of everything we do. We did deploy two safety inspectors to the site immediately following this tragedy, and then further to their inspection we did issue an inspection officer order, which requires Trans Mountain to comply with a number of issues.

I could perhaps pass it to my colleague, Sandy Lapointe, who is the head of our regulatory section, who could give you more specifics on what that inspection officer order entailed.

[Sandy Lapointe, Executive Vice-President, Regulatory, Canadian Energy Regulator]

Thank you.

Alberta Occupational Health and Safety is taking the lead on the fatality from that perspective. We oversee the regulated company, which is Trans Mountain, and the order is issued to Trans Mountain, which has authority over its contractors for their conduct and how those contractors comply with the requirements.

The order deals with making sure that immediate issues are fully addressed and that any hazards associated with the trench box involved in this case are immediately taken care of. It also addresses system-wide potential issues—so it addresses direct issues and system-wide issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Ms. Lapointe.

We will now move to Mr. Fergus, for five minutes.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Chair, I have a very brief question for Mr. Keenan and Mr. Hayes. Then I'm going to yield to my colleague from Nova Scotia, Mr. Blois.

I had the privilege of visiting the town of Lac-Mégantic with Mr. Berthold—it is in his constituency—after our government took office in 2015. We visited the site and spoke to the people, who were really affected by this tragedy. I know this issue is very important, not only for the people of Lac-Mégantic, but for all Quebeckers and all Canadians.

Mr. Keenan, in point eight of his testimony, the Commissioner stated that the department had not verified whether companies had taken corrective action to return to compliance in 30% of the violations reviewed. I guess his office did not look into all violations. You talked about the steps you have taken to rectify the situation.

If the auditor came to your department today, would he see that the 30% rate has been significantly reduced?

[Michael Keenan]

I can only agree with you and the minister from the region on the impact and the devastation of the tragedy at Lac-Mégantic.

In terms of this issue, you are absolutely right: the CESD did note it was 30%. That is too high. If he examined that today, he would find a rate that is way below 30%. It's not quite at zero, but we're getting it close to zero. By early 2021, we'll have a system in place that requires that rate to always be at zero.

I would add one more point about the effort, because you speak to the need to increase and accelerate our progress wherever we can. One area where we did manage to accelerate progress in the protection on dangerous goods was in the phasing out of lower quality railcars for tank cars. In 2014 we phased out the DOT-111s and had a phased schedule for going to the highest safety ratings on the so-called 117s. We accelerated that three times in the intervening years. Some of the medium- or intermediate-quality tank cars that were supposed to be on the rails until 2025 have already been removed from service in Canada.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I yield my time to Mr. Blois.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Fergus and Madam Chair.

I'm going to ask my question of Ms. De Silva, but I'll make a comment to Mr. Keenan, and perhaps he can address it in his remarks at some other time. It concerns how you actually get the data and the compliance information from the companies and whether or not Transport Canada has enough resources in regions. Is it about having enough personnel on the ground? I'll let you address that another time.

Ms. De Silva, you mentioned in your remarks that one of the priorities for the energy regulator is being globally competitive. I assume there's a bit of a tension between creating the certainty that's needed for companies to invest here while obviously not compromising safety but making sure that we have a regulatory system that is clear. In your mind, how do we go about creating that global competitiveness such that we can draw investment to our country?

[Gitane De Silva]

You are correct that our legislation does, in fact, explicitly state that we have an obligation to enhance our global competitiveness.

A few of the things that we're doing in that regard are to increase the transparency and predictability of our various processes. Part of this includes putting increased information online. We also have a commitment to provide energy information and analysis, so we're working right now to put about 60 years' worth of data—which we have currently in binders and PDFs—online and accessible to people. We're also working to automate some of our simpler application processes to decrease the timelines involved in them, and also to help people better understand where they are in the process.

We also regularly engage with industry and a wide variety of stakeholders to understand where the challenges may be and then incorporate that feedback. One of the things we're doing at the moment is looking at our onshore pipeline regulations and launching a review of them. We are looking for input, because we are very focused on this point, and as you said before, we are looking to enhance global competitiveness while always putting safety first, protecting the environment, and advancing reconciliation, all at the same time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Madam De Silva.

We will now move to our 2.5-minute round, starting with Monsieur Joncas.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. De Silva, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is underway, and the situation concerns me, particularly when it comes to emergency preparedness.

In 2015, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development's report on monitoring pipelines under federal jurisdiction made some rather striking observations. It noted room for improvement in the review process for company emergency manuals, using the most recent audit as a benchmark. A third of the manuals reviewed still lacked key information.

The Pipeline Safety Act took effect on June 18, 2016. What is happening with the Canada Energy Regulator in this regard?

How has the situation evolved since 2015 and since these new regulations came in?

[Gitane De Silva]

Thank you very much for your question. I will ask my colleague Sandy Lapointe to respond.

[Sandy Lapointe]

Following the 2015 audit and the recommendations made by the CESD, we put an action plan into place. We've posted that action plan on our website and have completed it. We did follow up and provided that assurance to the CESD following that audit.

Specifically, with respect to the emergency manuals, we have put in place robust guidance for our staff as well as procedures to review those manuals. Today, those manuals are reviewed. We have also made the percentage of manuals that are in compliance a measure as part of our departmental results framework, and we post those results publicly as to where we're at. Our manuals continue to be reviewed as changes are made and companies have to file them.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Lapointe.

I have a question about the CER, which gives the public access to information on pipeline incidents—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

I'm sorry, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, but you have about seven seconds left. Perhaps I should move to Mr. Green.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

I will be brief.

Does the Canada Energy Regulator currently provide access to information on incidents occurring outside its jurisdiction? I am talking about on-line maps of spills.