Natural Resources committee  Absolutely. I think you take the point that it really takes a lot of people to put a lot of attention, effort, and profile into a subject that is not going to get high-profile headlines. But it is the right thing to do.

Natural Resources committee  I used the example of Petrinex in western Canada as a place that has standardized all these things. I'm with you entirely on the idea of standardization. In a lot of energy use data, there is an evolving standard called a “green button”. It has a funny name, but it is no different from an ISO-724 or whatever kind of standard.

Natural Resources committee  Of course it would be well spent.

Natural Resources committee  Here's the thing. I have a Nest. If I had ecobee, I would be out there saying, “Here, have my information.” There are a couple of things here, and you've touched on something that is very important. There is the data, and the data is just about energy consumption. What you really need to do is pair the data with an address—that energy consumption happened at that place.

Natural Resources committee  That would be a very good start.

Natural Resources committee  Hear, hear!

Natural Resources committee  If you're going to look at the production of those things, there is a fair amount of reporting on individual wind farms to utilities, and then getting it from the utilities back out isn't too bad. Biomass use at a utility scale, again, it's not bad. How you get at the use of biomass for heating a home in rural Canada is a tremendous challenge partly because of the supply, the input into it.

Natural Resources committee  The general concern about Statistics Canada is being able to get data in a timely fashion. When you look at some of their publications on energy use, for example, the data is two and three years out of date. It is very difficult, when you have that kind of a lag, to understand exactly what's going on in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Natural Resources committee  There's no question that information can be the foundation to start having a conversation about changing behaviour. It's a basis of knowing what's happening in your home, how much natural gas you're using, and how much electricity you're using. You might be using propane for some reason as well.

Natural Resources committee  When I look at the strengths of this country, I look at a whole bunch of things happening in a fragmented way. I think there needs to be some kind of group of people with clear accountability, a framework, and a requirement to do some things. I spent a lot of time in government.

Natural Resources committee  The impediments now are, first off, that we're not collecting data in such a way that it can be used for multiple purposes. They're all fit for one purpose. Environment Canada collects a lot of its data from facilities for the purpose of measuring GHG emissions. It also grabs a whole bunch of other data elsewhere to go into its modelling about the balance of energy, but it seems to me that more effort needs to be made for people to agree that if you're going to collect information, you collect it in a way that it can be used for multiple purposes.

Natural Resources committee  You can't have a smart grid without energy information, and one of the outputs of a smart grid is energy information. It has to collect data in order to inform, even if it's an automatic decision. If we don't enable that data to be collected and used in a positive way, we've probably failed, and sometimes there are legislative impediments to the information to be used in the best way possible, and that's where governments need to examine whether they need to take action.

Natural Resources committee  Thanks very much, Tonja. Thank you, members of the committee, for the invitation to return. I think we're going to end up having more time to talk about it than we would have otherwise, so I'm quite happy to come back and speak again. I'm just going to try to recap, rather than repeat, where we were when we started off last time, about a month ago.

Natural Resources committee  Sorry.

Natural Resources committee  I think that the technology has evolved to a point where there are many models that can develop. There is a technology called blockchain, which is able to securely, efficiently, and effectively embed transactions, so that they can be done on a very micro level and in a cost-effective way.