House of Commons Hansard #238 of the 36th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was preclearance.

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Natural GasPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Gerald Keddy Progressive Conservative South Shore, NS

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to debate Motion No. 292 put forward by the member for Churchill River: that the government provide initiatives to deliver natural gas to unserviced regions, to address environmental concerns and energy costs.

I listened to the other speakers, as well as the member for Churchill River, and I think he should be congratulated on an excellent motion. I also listened closely to the government's answer thinking that much of what the government member said was true. However, this was before the government signed the Kyoto protocol which will very much change the way we look at energy and the way we use energy.

We signed a commitment to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2010. We knew, the G-8 countries knew and the industrialized nations of the world knew when they signed that commitment that they would not be able to meet that commitment. I do think the countries signed the commitment in good faith and that they meant well. However, I am not sure they are willing to put their money where their mouths are.

The member for Churchill River raises a point that many of us who represent rural ridings face. We have significant areas in our ridings that are now serviced by fuel oil, diesel fuel, electricity, coal-fired electricity and various sources of energy that are fairly expensive. If we could reduce the cost for our industries in the ridings we represent, that would certainly benefit our position as MPs and we would actually be able to bring something back to our ridings. We would actually be able to deliver a service.

The member for Churchill River discussed the various energy plays that are occurring in Canada at this time and the amount of natural gas which is abundant in this country. I am discussing fields such as Venture, South Venture and Thebaud off Sable Island. I am also talking about fields and potential fields in the Laurentian Channel and the Sub-Laurentian basin, exciting new discoveries in the high Arctic such as Fort Liard, and a lot of natural gas exploration in northern Alberta and northern B.C. now which will be put into the alliance pipeline and sent all the way to Chicago.

We are becoming major exporters of natural gas to other places on this continent. The Sable fields will go to the maritimes northeast pipeline. Much of it will go into New England. I have seen the plans put forth by the present provincial government in Nova Scotia but I am not convinced it will service the rest of the province. I am not convinced that P.E.I. will be serviced at all. I am not convinced that some of the exciting natural gas discoveries off Newfoundland are going to put natural gas into Newfoundland.

Perhaps now that we have entered a new era and have signed a protocol which is going to force us to use cleaner sources of energy, it is time for the federal government to look at assisting rural areas in provinces that are not now serviced by natural gas to provide service to these areas.

The member for Churchill River should be aware of the flaw that is within the system on the east coast. Many households in the rural areas are now heated by fuel oil. The oil delivery people and the Canadian Oil Heat Association of Nova Scotia have never been subsidized. They put those oil furnaces in the homes and the people bought them with their own dollars. There were no subsidies. We are now talking about putting in natural gas, which is subsidized, and giving the natural gas distributors an unfair advantage.

However, that does not mean that we cannot find ways to overcome that or that we should stop looking at this very good motion put forward by the hon. member.

There are several other areas that we need to look at, but the most important one is how we go about delivering the natural gas. In Nova Scotia in particular, it is absolutely asinine to discuss natural gas delivery if we do not have a plan to build a lateral pipeline from the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline which will allow a large enough pipe to come off the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline down to somewhere in Stewiacke and into the Musquodoboit Valley area. It should be a line that is at least 18 inches in diameter that can then be split and fed into the urban and metro areas of Dartmouth and Halifax, with another line that will split off and go down into the Annapolis Valley and hopefully into the Yarmouth area and then another line off that which will go down the South Shore.

We have a natural asset in the province of Nova Scotia with our abandoned rail bed. We could lay a natural gas pipeline along this rail bed to service all of the communities along the South Shore area, the riding I represent, and not disturb the road system or the highway system. It would be very convenient and very economical to use that existing rail bed, the railroad that has long since been torn up, to lay a natural gas pipeline. We could continue to use the same bed for recreational purposes and other purposes.

The other asset that would certainly service the South Shore riding would be the fact that we have some heavy industry. We have a hardwood mill in East Chester, a pulp mill in Liverpool, and Michelin Tires in Bridgewater. We also have a number of small manufacturing industries that could be well serviced by natural gas.

There was one thing that I was not clear on and I am not sure if the member for Churchill River mentioned it: Can we use natural gas for refrigeration? Very clearly there are hundreds of fish plants in the South Shore that could easily convert to natural gas and be able to use that to generate refrigeration.

The opportunity for major savings and a major benefit for the majority of the citizens in the South Shore is there, but there is a problem problem for the existing oil heat people who have already been servicing the area for domestic heat. I think the problem can be worked out to the satisfaction of both the consumers who are looking for a cleaner and more efficient source, and the consumers who have already invested in oil heat.

In conclusion, I recognize that the member on the government side said that this was provincial jurisdiction. However, I think that was true before we had a hole in the ozone layer, before we had signed the Kyoto protocol, before we became a major exporter of natural gas, and before much of the world was turning to natural gas. They cannot get enough of it.

The thing that has not been mentioned is the potential for us to bring liquefied natural gas out of the high Arctic. Some very exciting wells were drilled in the high Arctic on some excellent fields. We have been trying to bring more infrastructure, more jobs, more economic opportunities and more industry into the high Arctic. We abandoned the high Arctic years ago when we never should have. We left for no good reason. Now it is time that we went back there and reopened those fields so that we can bring liquefied natural gas out of the high Arctic by containers and use it in southern Canada or use it for export. If we are to meet the Kyoto protocol we have absolutely no choice but to convert to more natural gas use within the country.

Fortunately British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and much of Ontario already have the infrastructure for natural gas. I am very envious of that and very thankful that they do because it certainly helps all Canadians. That does not mean we should not look at some way to service the other areas of Canada that do not have accessibility to natural gas at this time.

Natural GasPrivate Members' Business

2:10 p.m.

Liberal

Ian Murray Liberal Lanark—Carleton, ON

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to address the motion on natural gas introduced by the hon. member for Churchill River.

It is the government's current energy policy not to fund energy megaprojects but to leave it to the competitive market to decide what goes forward and what does not. This is one reason we have difficulty in supporting the hon. member's motion.

This policy has not resulted in a stalled natural gas industry. Far from it. The result has been some very exciting private sector driven developments including the expansion of natural gas distribution and production into new previously unserviced regions.

From an energy policy point of view it would not be sensible to depart from the basic principle that the market must decide where laterals are built. However, for other non-energy policy reasons there may be programs in other departments which seek to achieve economic development or environmental or other goals through the subsidization of laterals.

I repeat what my hon. friend from Halton said earlier, that the western economic partnership agreement was a possible avenue for some federal government support in this area, but the NDP government in Saskatchewan turned it down.

I understand the hon. member's desire to ensure an environmentally friendly and secure energy source for his region. That is what Canada's approach to the complex evolving global challenge of climate change is all about. We see it as a challenge that is both environmental and economic.

The Kyoto protocol in December 1997 reaffirmed the conviction among some 160 nations that the six commonly identified greenhouse gases are accumulating in the world's atmosphere at such a rate and to such an extent that they are putting the world's future climate at risk. For Canada this could mean more severe and more frequent weather disruptions, more inland floods in some areas, more droughts in others, rising sea levels and flooded coastlines, more wind and hail and ice storms, and greater threats to public safety and economic security.

The vast majority of global scientific opinion suggests that human conduct is certainly contributing to the problem and making it worse. The protocol involved a commitment on the part of the industrialized world to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. This action is much like an insurance policy against those future risks, and just like buying insurance one cannot get the coverage one should have had after the fact.

For Canada, our Kyoto target is to get our emissions down by the period between 2008 and 2012 to 6% below the level they were at in 1990. It will not be easy. Canada's northern climate and vast distances, its increasing population and increasing reduction, and its resource based and energy intensive economy all make our commitment much more difficult to meet. If we just carry on from this point forward with no changes, business as usual, by the year 2010 Canada's greenhouse gas emissions will rise to about 25% above our Kyoto target. We obviously have to slow that trajectory, flatten it out, and then turn it downward to reach our target within about a decade.

Where we will be when it ends will depend upon how astute we were at managing our domestic climate change challenges in relation to the rest of the world. We need to marry strong environmental performance with a strong economy.

About 85% of human made emissions are related to the way we produce and consume energy. The more energy efficient we become, the fewer emissions we generate. The more we achieve in this regard through greater energy efficiency, the less we will have to rely on other means to satisfy our Kyoto protocol obligations.

Across our entire national economy, in every sector and in the individual behaviour of each one of us we must achieve energy efficiency excellence. From a government policy perspective we have thus far used a variety of tools to achieve greater energy efficiency.

For one thing, we have tried to improve our own operations within the Government of Canada. We are on track to slash our emissions by more than 20% and to reach that goal by 2005.

Another tool is the provision of accurate information with which people can make informed decisions about energy use. The EnerGuide label is a good illustration. A third tool is peer group challenges like VCR Inc., the voluntary challenge registry program where industries and businesses pledge to improve their performances and report their progress in a tangible and public way.

There are incentives like Natural Resources Canada's commercial buildings program which is putting up some cash to encourage developers and builders to incorporate best practices from the ground up.

Hand in hand with these tools we must achieve a faster rate of new technology development and timely deployment of new technology. This is a key underpinning for everything else.

Consider an innovation like the Solarwall developed by Conserval Engineering, a new solar based energy saving technique for large building ventilation systems. It requires modestly increased construction costs one time but it generates significant savings in ongoing operating costs year after year, a more efficient ventilation system, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and a growing market across North America and around the world.

We must build our capacity for efficiency innovation within government labs, in academic institutions and in the private sector and we must put that new knowledge to work quickly in the marketplace. For our part federally, we are moving in that direction, specifically in each of our last three federal budgets.

Within Natural Resources Canada about $100 million each year is normally invested in the search for climate change solutions. Other federal departments add another $50 million annually. The 1998 federal budget contributed a further $150 million over three years to our climate change action fund. Altogether the annual federal financial commitment is now at $200 million.

There is no one single silver bullet solution to the global climate change challenge. We cannot expect to get everything we will need from energy efficiency and technology alone. Among other things, we must take greater advantage of the diversified mix of energy sources with which we have been blessed, such as hydro, solar, wind, earth and bioenergy. We need progress on a range of other issues such as recycling in the metals industry, municipal landfill management, and biotechnologies that can save energy and agriculture.

We need to strongly engage the enthusiastic participation of the average Canadian consumer. Taken together our collective behaviour can make a big difference. We need to focus on how to get more and more people to think globally about a profound problem like climate change and act locally to do something meaningful about it through their own energy efficiency.

These and a host of other issues are currently being assessed through our national climate change consultative process. It is a very transparent and inclusive process involving more than 450 people representing every dimension of Canadian life working through a series of 16 issue tables. We will start to hear their detailed advice this summer.

The bottom line of all this is there is no one answer.

As we open the 21st century we must establish Canada as the world's smartest natural resources steward, developer, user and exporter, as the most high tech, the most socially responsible and environmentally friendly, as the most productive and competitive. With respect to energy in particular we need to be the very best, the most intelligent, innovative and efficient at finding, developing, producing, delivering, consuming and exporting the world's most sophisticated and diversified energy products, skills, services and science.

I believe that is a worthy Canadian ambition.

Natural GasPrivate Members' Business

2:15 p.m.

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to get involved in this debate. I compliment the member for Churchill River for raising this issue for two good reasons. It touches on two things people think about a great deal: one, saving operating costs for homeowners, businesses or property owners; and two, saving our environment.

We obviously have to do something about the urgent issue of greenhouse gas emissions. As much as the Reform Party denies it is an issue, we know it is an issue. We know that the hole in the ozone layer is growing. We know that Canada has an obligation to do something, to do all it can to bring down harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

I used to work on the oil rigs. I used to work in the oil patch on oil rigs, on those big triple rigs we see. There is something I am kind of ashamed of. I was always mystified frankly, but for the industry's sake I am ashamed of it, that every time we hit gas everybody would curse “Oh no, more gas”. We would cap off the well, tear down the rig and move to another hole.

Sometimes that gas had such force, there was so much of it. It had such force it was actually dangerous to cap it off. It was very difficult to contain what we had tapped into. There were these huge massive reserves of natural gas, a precious energy commodity like that and nobody could have been more disappointed. The driller would be dejected and the engineer would probably be fired for putting us into an area where we would hit gas again. I just wanted to share that story.

That has been the attitude about something the rest of the world considers absolutely precious and we in this country do not take full advantage of it. It is our most abundant energy resource, yet we choose to heat our homes, businesses and factories et cetera with other more expensive means of energy.

Unbelievably, in much of Atlantic Canada homes are heated with coal thermal generated electricity, the most wasteful, expensive and polluting way to generate electricity. Some of these people have heating bills of $900 a month I am told. I have never lived there but apparently $800 or $900 a month is not unrealistic. Imagine a working class family living in a harsh climate and the best system their government can think of to provide energy to heat their homes is thermal powered electricity. It is unbelievable.

It raises the question, should the government be involved in the distribution of natural gas? Should it ever be involved in it or should it be left up to the private sector? I would remind members that one of the most famous debates that ever took place in this House of Commons was the great pipeline debate in the late 1950s. It is legendary. I still hear stories about it from the veteran parliamentarians who relish telling the story about that great debate.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and we did build the trans-Canada pipeline. We did build a national infrastructure. Frankly the plan then was how to sell our resources. It was not so much as how to distribute them in Canada. I am suggesting we need a whole new national pipeline debate.

Again, I am very proud that the member for Churchill River has brought this up today. Now we have to talk about something even more pressing, which is the distribution. How do we as Canadians benefit from our precious natural resources instead of finding ways to fire them out of the country?

Another thing that was raised was that with the FTA and everything else there are more and more opportunities to get our products on to distribution networks south of the border. I would caution hon. members that when they read NAFTA and the FTA carefully, whatever rate of export we have we are bound to. Even if we run short of that resource in our country and even if we do not have enough fuel to heat our own homes, we are committed to maintain the same level of export that we started. It is a tap we cannot turn off. It is one of the things we have always criticized about the free trade agreement.

The public should be involved in natural gas. It is a special thing and we have the luxury of having an abundance of this resource.

In the province I come from, which has a Tory government, Manitoba Hydro is publicly owned. It is a crown corporation. Centra Gas is a private gas distribution company owned by Westcoast Energy, I believe, or some massive conglomerate out in western Canada that owns all of the natural gas companies.

Just recently Manitoba Hydro, a publicly owned company, bought Centra Gas. It saw the sense in having gas distribution publicly owned because it is too important a thing to leave to the free market. Apart from that we were being jerked by Centra Gas. Being a privately owned company it was making bad real estate investments and then passing on its losses to gas customers. Homeowners were getting jacked up rate increases because Centra Gas made some bad flip on the real estate market.

That is an example and it is a Tory government. It sounds like a socialist idea that maybe we should nationalize the natural gas industry. I am not saying we should go that far, but in Manitoba we just did. In 1999 with a Tory government Manitoba saw the sense in having a government role in the distribution of natural gas. I wish we could convince the members on the government side that there is nothing wrong with that idea.

We seem so afraid to start national projects. Somebody even mentioned that we should not be diving into megaprojects.

In my province we have what we call Duff's ditch. Somebody in the 1960s had the sense to dig a diversion around our town so the town would not flood every spring. They called Duff Roblin a madman for digging Duff's ditch. It was the largest engineering project ever undertaken in the country at the time and it has saved our bacon every year thereafter. It was the best couple of million dollars ever spent. Yes, it was a megaproject and yes everybody dumps on megaprojects these days but it was a necessary megaproject.

We are arguing that government get involved in a natural gas distribution project of this kind. Yes, it could be called a megaproject but it would be spread out evenly throughout the whole country. Every rural area that needs that break and an abundant supply of cheap clean energy would benefit. The megaproject would not be concentrated in any one area where all the jobs would be, it would be all over the place.

The hon. member for Churchill River mentioned the unbelievable job creation opportunities. We could put a generation of kids back to work in the new burgeoning field of rural gasification, if we did it in a big way and not in little minor flare-ups where it was financially profitable.

I really like the idea of one of the Tory members who said we should use the old rail lines. We are ripping up railroads all across the prairies. In every small town that used to have a rail spur they are ripping them up. We could turn something bad into something positive by using them as the road beds for natural gas pipelines.

Imagine the difference it would make if we could reduce the operating costs of our homes and businesses. Every dollar not spent on energy could be spent elsewhere in the economy. We would achieve the multiplier effect where every dollar is spent four times before it finds its natural state of repose. It usually winds up in the pocket of somebody like Conrad Black but it does circulate into the economy many, many times first. That is a benefit. Then there are the jobs.

We are talking about energy retrofitting. We are talking about job creation through energy conservation. The natural gas heating system is only one aspect of a comprehensive energy retrofit.

Let us start with all our publicly owned buildings. There is a good reason right there to bring a natural gas spur line into a smaller community where there might be a federal government building. We could bring down our own operating costs and provide ourselves an energy cost break.

We did a lot of research on this. When I was the head of the carpenter's union we did abundant research on the job creation opportunities in energy retrofitting as opposed to new construction. There is seven times the person years in employment per dollar invested in energy retrofit construction as opposed to new construction. There are the benefits of reducing operating costs by 30% and 40% and creating seven times the number of jobs. It is an absolute win-win situation.

Of course that involves the building envelope and the HVAC system. The heating system is where the natural gas aspect of it comes in.

One of the things industries look for most when they are looking for a place to locate is an abundant supply of cheap clean fuel. The clean is not usually that much of a consideration; cheap energy is what they really want. There is almost the feeling of build it and they will come. If we are trying to expand the economic development in rural and underdeveloped areas, one of the most important things that can be done is to provide a constant supply of cheap clean energy.

I want to thank the hon. member again for raising the issue. I hope we can convince more people in the second and third hours of debate.

Natural GasPrivate Members' Business

2:25 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the order paper.

It being almost 2.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday next at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 2.29 p.m.)