Debates of May 21st, 2013

Natural Resources—Main Estimates, 2013-14

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, when was the protocol on the relationship between the scientists and the media developed? I would like a short answer.

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, a number of years ago.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, has this protocol been made public?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, I can check, but I believe so, yes.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, does the minister control what scientists can say to the media about climate change and the oil sands?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, the very short answer is no.

As I said, Natural Resources Canada is proud of its scientists and encourages scientists to share their findings with interested parties by publishing articles and conducting interviews with the media.

In 2012, Natural Resources Canada scientists participated in approximately 550 interviews with reporters to discuss scientific results and findings. On average, every year, scientists publish approximately 500 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, that is absolutely ridiculous. We know that the Conservative government continues to muzzle its scientists.

However, let us move on to cuts to the department. As one of the largest science-oriented departments, Natural Resources Canada plays a key role in supporting economic development in the natural resources sector. Before the cuts made in recent years, the department had 3,000 employees who supported science and technology activities.

How many of them will be left after all the cuts have been made?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, it might be worthwhile to talk about the amount our government has invested in scientific research in the member's province of Quebec. We have invested $1 million in intelligent net zero energy buildings, $3.3 million in electrical vehicle charging station networks and $4.7 million for efficient carbon capture from oil sands operation.

Why does the member ignore our government's support for these projects? Perhaps it is because she voted against providing SDTC with $325 million over 8 years. Does the member continue to oppose development at every turn? Why is that? Does she know that—

[The Assistant Deputy Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. The hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, Canadians want answers, not propaganda.

The government still refuses to be transparent regarding cuts that target scientists and science and technology. Before the cuts made in recent years, the department had 18 major laboratories all over Canada.

How many will remain?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, it is not propaganda that 80 Quebec companies are suppliers to the oil sands. We do not know why the NDP keeps on opposing projects that result in job creation throughout the country, including, of course, Quebec.

NRCan is a results-oriented science organization with national presence. It has 19 major research sites across Canada, including the north, and more than 2,300 scientists, researchers, technicians and support staff delivering science and technology activities. Expenditures were $582 million in 2011-12 and $554 million in 2012-13.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, for the Conservatives, it is the oil sands or nothing.

The minister said that certain radical environmental groups were trying to block Canadian trade and hurt our economy. He said, and I quote, “Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade.”

Can the minister name a single group that is trying to hurt Canada's economy?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, first of all, it is not a choice of oil sands or nothing. With the NDP, it is nothing.

Who has opposed it? Well, I have to look across the aisle. For every single major project that we have been proposing for the benefit of Canada, Canadian jobs, Canadian economic activity, for billions of dollars of revenue to governments to support critical social programs, whether the projects are going west, south or east, the NDP is in opposition, yet the NDP members get up and talk to the government as if they are on the side of jobs—

[The Assistant Deputy Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. The hon. member for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, on the contrary, the NDP is in favour of sustainable development. However, the minister continues to make ridiculous statements. He said:

They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources. Finally, if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.

Can the minister give an example of this approach and name the groups that have used such an approach?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, I do not know where the hon. member has been.

Every single major resource project since I have been appointed minister has been opposed by several environmental groups—every single one. If the member opposite has been paying attention, she would know that.

I cannot say that the NDP has opposed every one, but it has opposed every one that I can recall, or every important one.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, I can assure the minister that I have spoken with environmental groups, and they are not part of the jet set.

I would like to quote something Preston Manning said:

It goes without saying that, with respect to any energy production, it is important to determine the environmental impact it will have and the cost of risk management, in order to include it in the price of the product.

Does the minister agree with this statement?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, of course, and that is what I have been saying repeatedly. We will not go ahead with any project unless it is safe for Canadians and safe for the environment, but if it is, we will certainly go ahead, and we will, therefore, create the million jobs in the next 25 years, the $3 trillion to $4 trillion in economic activity and the hundreds of billions of dollars to support social programs. We believe that our resources can be developed responsibly and we intend to pursue that objective in the interests of Canadian prosperity and security.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Chair, if the minister agrees with those statements, what measures has his department taken to assess the environmental repercussions of current resource development projects?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, as I said, the regulatory system analyzes each project scientifically in order to protect the environment and Canadians.

[Laurin Liu, NDP, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

On the contrary, Mr. Chair, we know that the Conservative government gutted the environmental assessment process last year. However, I would like to talk about cuts to the department.

In recent years, before the cuts, the department published approximately 900 scientific publications per year. How many publications were released last year?

[Joe Oliver, Conservative, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Chair, I provided those numbers. Responsible resource development will enhance environmental protection by putting more emphasis on large projects that are more likely to significantly affect the environment, by imposing heavy fines on companies that break environmental laws and by setting out new measures to ensure world-class safety measures for pipelines and maritime safety.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the opportunity to engage in this debate tonight.

Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—it is forgotten that the purpose of the House is to engage in substantive debate on substantive issues. One of the things we need to realize and grasp about the Canadian economy and what is important to Canadians is the importance of the natural resources industry. When we look at our industries that export and create jobs, the natural resources sector, particularly in certain areas of the country, tends to be dominant. We also need to grasp and understand that many of the jobs in the service sector in places such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are based on the natural resources industry.

Tonight the specific aspect that I wish to concentrate on is what mining means to this country in terms of the Canadian economy and jobs for people all across this country.

I have a particular interest in this subject that has to do with my occupation prior to being elected to the House of Commons. I was trained and proudly graduated from the University of Saskatchewan as a geophysicist. This was in the era when there was $20 oil and the price of gold was considerably lower. Now we talk about how the rich oil and mining companies make money, but there have been years when it has been fairly tough to make a living in this industry.

I worked and got great experience in northern Quebec, our three territories of Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, and of course Saskatchewan and the neighbouring province of Manitoba. This personal experience in the industry impacts to this very day how I approach policy issues and my understanding of the various things that impact and affect mining and natural resource development specifically. Let me give an example.

Frequently in the House we have dealt with legislation that has to do with the regulatory impacts, meaning regulation and what it means to mining. We in Canada should be proud of our environmental record on mining. There have been grave problems in certain instances, but in general we should be proud.

I think of a specific time when I was working as a junior geophysicist in northern Manitoba and was talking with a senior geologist, a gentleman with close to 20 years of experience.

Geology is one of those occupations that cannot be learned in the classroom. It takes a certain maturing and a certain degree of field experience. It does not matter how long one spends in the classroom; one cannot overestimate the value of that experience.

However, this senior geologist, someone with 20 years of field experience, was explaining to me that more than 50% of his time was spent dealing with regulations and permits, things that, while necessary, were not fundamental things for which his experience as a geologist would be of most use and impact.

That, to this day, has impacted how I think about the industry. There is so much productivity in our mining industry and in our workforce, but we do things to hold it back and slow down what we have there.

We need to grasp who it is that works in the mining industry. We know about the financial sector in Vancouver and Toronto, which I will talk about, but in areas of northern Canada where the aboriginal population in places like Nunavut does not have to this day a very strong, functioning economy in the historic sense based upon trapping and the various traditional arts, mining has in many cases been the only economic driver.

We see that in Nunavut and in northern Saskatchewan. This is an industry that does not pay poor wages; it pays top-dollar wages, not just for highly skilled tradespeople such as electricians and people who work some of the equipment but for miners, because it is tough work. These people very much deserve the wages they receive, and they are very productive because of the high capital put into it.

Coming from Saskatchewan, I can ask what mining fundamentally means to my home province. For people listening tonight, the answer is that Saskatchewan is the province most dependent on mining in the whole country on a per capita basis. It is one of the reasons that Saskatchewan is, per capita, also the province in the country with the highest degree of international exports and the least dependence upon the U.S. market.

Potash in our province is a $7-billion-a-year industry. It has attracted some very large companies. BHP Billiton, the largest company in the world, is looking at building, in the corner of my constituency, an approximately $10-billion mine, give or take a few billion dollars. That is the sort of impact it has in areas such as Saskatoon. Other companies, such as Mosaic and PCS, a Saskatchewan headquartered potash giant, the largest in the world, are from Saskatchewan. Along with Vancouver and Toronto, Saskatoon is becoming the third capital of mining in Canada.

What does mining mean, and not just to areas in the remote north, not just to places like Baffin Island, where we are looking at a brand new iron ore deposit, or places like northern Ontario? I see my hon. friend, who is a big fan of the Ring of Fire and the potential development there. What else does it mean to places like Toronto or Vancouver, places that we do not always automatically connect with the mining sector?

Let me throw out a few facts from the TSX Venture Exchange mining stocks. The percentage of the world's public mining companies listed in Canada: 58%. The ranking in the world for publicly listed: number 1. The number of listed mining companies: 1,665. The number of companies that have mines in production or under development: 326. The numbers go on and show how important mining is to Canada.

Canadian-headquartered mining companies accounted for nearly 37% of budgeted worldwide exploration expenditures in 2012. That means that our lawyers, finance people, accountants, technical people, and legal people have good jobs in the service sector in places such as Vancouver and Toronto. The jobs spin out. We see this in things like the quality of our education, such as at the world-class mining program we find at Queen's University in Kingston. We in Canada are proud of this history. We see it in our scientific research as the world's leader per capita, and very close in real numbers, in terms of knowledge and the number of geological papers produced.

At the base of it, mining is important to all of Canada. Twenty per cent of our exports come from mining, and this does not include oil and gas, which is shipped through the pipelines. Mining is good for Canada, particularly northern Canada, as it is often the only thing there for building its economy.

How has the government and the natural resources committee been working and dealing with supporting mining? Earlier this year, we did a report on development in northern Canada. We broadly and loosely defined the term, but again and again, the overwhelming theme that came out was the importance of mining, the importance of connecting what is down in the south with what is up in the north.

A couple of major themes began to emerge in that report, and we see this throughout everything we are doing. The first is that regulatory changes have an impact. They make a difference. We were talking today in committee about another subject. Thankfully, this involved the United States, where it took 14 years to get permitting done for a project that took only 18 months to get into play. We do not see that in the Canadian mining sector anymore. In fact, one of the things that makes us competitive is the way the federal government has been working in coordination with the provinces to increase regulatory changes that make sense. As someone who experienced that as a junior geophysicist talking with a senior geologist, I understand how that has an impact on the ground.

A second major theme we have been noting is labour force changes. It takes a great deal of skill. People often deride Canadians as hewers of wood and haulers of water, as if extracting natural resources is not something to be proud of. Some of the world's most profitable companies today are extracting natural resources. There are major dollars and large incomes. One hundred thousand dollar a year jobs are not uncommon in this industry.

Those are two areas where the government has been working with the industry and the general public to get them involved. It is providing and streamlining regulatory changes and labour force changes to provide a workforce for the industry and better jobs for Canadians.

As I noted earlier, potash is very important to the province of Saskatchewan. We are also fairly unique as one of the world's major producers of uranium. Along with Kazakhstan and Australia, we are one of the big three. The entire uranium-producing industry in Canada is now located in the province of Saskatchewan.

I wish to ask the parliamentary secretary about the government's approach to regulation and the uranium sector. I am particularly interested in knowing about the regulations and the approach we have had to uranium and to the nuclear sector.

Perhaps the parliamentary secretary would also provide a bit of a contrast with the positions the other parties have taken on this issue and explain how this resource is mined safely, what the strict regulations are and what the government's view on uranium and mining regulations is.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources and for the Canadian Wheat Board]

Mr. Chair, again, it is good to be up this evening.

There is an incredible contrast between our position and that of the NDP, the opposition, when it comes to the important uranium resources we have in this country. Our government supports safe and responsible uranium production. We all know that it is a highly regulated industry, and it has been since the beginning. It needs to pass muster with our independent regulatory agency as well. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, of course, is that regulator.

Over the last few years, we have promoted trade in the uranium sector by signing new agreements with China and India, two of the largest uranium users in the world. Those agreements insist that they use uranium for peaceful means and peaceful uses.

This has created jobs. It has created growth, particularly in our province of Saskatchewan but also right across the country.

On the other hand, I need to point out that the NDP has been very clear that it opposes nuclear energy in all its forms. It is frustrating to us. We see the NDP opposing mining. We see it opposing pipelines. We see it opposing oil sands. We see it opposing shale gas. However, it has been particularly vehement in its opposition to the nuclear industry in all forms.

I hear some heckling from across the way. My good friend across the way should listen to his leader when his leader, in 2008, in this very room, said, “I want to be very clear. The NDP is opposed to any new nuclear infrastructure in Canada”.

I do not know if that extends to research in medical isotope production. I am not sure if it does. He maybe could explain that.

Apart from that, there are 23,000 jobs across Canada the NDP is saying no to, on top of all the other resource sectors the NDP is opposed to.

It is frustrating. I know that the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt may have some other comments he would like to make about this.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Chair, very briefly, to the parliamentary secretary, how is the government balancing environmental needs and development needs? How is the government contributing to a more environmentally friendly mining sector?