Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the members of the committee for inviting CEA to appear before you this afternoon. I am Francis Bradley, the chief operating officer of CEA. I am joined this morning by my colleague Sarah Nolan, and I am also delighted to be appearing along with my colleagues from QUEST.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. Agreed.

Natural Resources committee  That is a terrific question. It is central. The short answer is, no we don't have the capacity to be able to fix data quality—certainly not specifically in Canada. This is a universal problem. Every jurisdiction and economy has to deal with it, and is dealing with it. As for what you can do about it, we sponsored this paper and continue to sponsor other work in this area to try to improve data quality.

Natural Resources committee  I would agree entirely. For this to work, it's going to have to be done in a co-operative and collaborative manner. We've suggested that there will be a need for formal agreements between the different levels of government, ultimately, whether the tool to move forward with is the EMMC, or some other method.

Natural Resources committee  Sure. It is an interesting dynamic. What it speaks to is the transformations that are already starting to take place in the electricity business. I would liken it to where telecommunications was 20 years ago. Wireline telephone service was a monopoly and it still is today, but guess what?

Natural Resources committee  I am not that familiar with that organization. I understand that there will be—

Natural Resources committee  They will provide information to other agencies as well.

Natural Resources committee  That national level organization is the definitive organization for providing information back out. We're not suggesting that we would create an agency in Canada and that it would mean that we then don't have to report anything, anywhere, ever again. We realize that there are always going to be other requirements.

Natural Resources committee  Yes. Absolutely. What we would have ideally, though, at least is consistency in terms of what the definitions are and consistency in terms of the data, because we don't even have that now. Frankly, we have inconsistencies in the national information provided to and then pumped back from Natural Resources Canada and Statistics Canada, for example.

Natural Resources committee  With respect to CEA's recommendations, we haven't offered an opinion one way or the other. We've suggested that an agency could lean on Statistics Canada as a source for some of the information, or that it could gather information itself. That frankly isn't a concern of ours, so long as the function itself is done in a coordinated and consolidated manner.

Natural Resources committee  We have common members.

Natural Resources committee  That's one of the critical things we would be looking for—this agency or this capacity—to weigh in and balance it to ensure the risk protection of information. Again, it is a balance. There is a limit to what information, and how much information, should be provided. At the same time there is a requirement for information at an aggregate level for purposes of decision-making and public policy.

Natural Resources committee  In closing, as it currently exists, Canada's energy information collection system is inefficient. A Canadian energy information agency could streamline data collection, facilitate greater evidence-based decision making by government and industry alike, and increase public energy literacy.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank the committee for having invited the Canadian Electricity Association to appear before you to discuss this important study on the current and future situation of national energy data in Canada. I am pleased to be joined by Patrick Brown from Hydro Ottawa.

Environment committee  Just to preface it, and Terry can talk about some of the specifics, when you're talking specifically about electricity and about the emphasis on costs and impacts, I would just step back and point out that it was noted earlier that, with Canada's greenhouse gas emissions targets, we seem to be stalled, but that's not the case with respect to electricity.