Natural Resources committee  Good morning, honourable members of Parliament. My name is Shelley Milutinovic. On behalf of my colleague Darren Christie and myself, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. As Canada's energy regulator, the NEB monitors supply, demand, and dem

Natural Resources committee  Exports from the last quarter of 2013 to the first quarter when the shortages were mostly happening, particularly in the U.S., fell almost 70,000 barrels a day. Flows that were going to be exported offshore were called back into the North American market in response to price.

Natural Resources committee  Then for the next quarter they increased again.

Natural Resources committee  When we issue export orders, those are issued for a term of up to one year. So we don't look at them on a day-by-day basis and look at the weather and see what's going to happen. What happened last year was very much a response to weather. It wasn't an issue of insufficient supp

Natural Resources committee  We had high prices last year because going into a very cold spell, we had very low stocks. Part of the reason we had low stocks was that people were expecting.... The weather forecasts weren't anything like what had transpired, but we also had very low inventories because of a ve

Natural Resources committee  There's propane consumption across Canada. Only 9% of propane consumption is actually residential, but of those residential markets, Ontario is the highest and it has about 2% of its consumers. There is a 1% average across the country, 2% in Ontario. To get to market, it can fl

Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure that consumers know that or not. That depends on the communications between the distributors and their suppliers, I think.

Natural Resources committee  I don't have that number off the top of my head. I think for both—and Darren might be able to correct me on this—the total consumption that winter went up 20% to 25% above the previous winter.

Natural Resources committee  Every couple of years we do our forecast out to 2035. When we looked at our last one, which was in 2013, we were projecting steady growth in propane demand in Canada over time—

Natural Resources committee  —as population and economic activity expanded growth in propane markets. It's not a rapid thing; it's just a slow and steady growth.

Natural Resources committee  We have a graph in the report that shows who the consumers are. Darren is just flipping to it. It's agricultural use, industrial use....

Natural Resources committee  Agricultural is at 4% and transportation is at 6%, so transportation is another reasonably sizeable sector.

Natural Resources committee  I think I said 64 to 72 or 76—something like that—averaged over each of the last five years, so it's around 70 to 80.

Natural Resources committee  I think they're spread out through the year as the applications come in, and people can decide when they want to submit an application.

Natural Resources committee  That's right. Any restriction on exports would have to go through Governor in Council, and it has to be subject to the free trade agreement.