Natural Resources

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources met to study how to support Canada becoming an energy superpower, hearing from Lana Payne, National President of Unifor, and Todd Smith, Vice-President, Marketing and Business Development, Candu Energy Inc., an AtkinsRéalis company.

Lana Payne stated that Unifor represents 15,000 energy workers and 120,000 workers in trade-exposed sectors, and argued that Canada is losing domestic capacity in downstream and chemical production while companies prioritize profits over maintenance and workers. She recommended investing in infrastructure and workers through better regulation and oversight, and called for a national industrial strategy for the forest sector that includes federal-provincial collaboration, procurement of wood products, and linking the forest crisis to the affordable housing crisis. She disagreed with the idea that a just transition means moving workers out of the energy sector, instead advocating for moving them to other parts of it, and supported building a west-east pipeline as a long-term solution while also backing interim measures like increasing rail capacity.

Todd Smith stated that CANDU reactors are uniquely positioned to meet rising global electricity demand because they use natural uranium, have high capacity factors, and are built on time and on budget, with the Darlington refurbishment as a recent example. He recommended that the federal government provide government-to-government engagement, competitive financing through Export Development Canada, and long-term policy consistency to enable CANDU exports to countries like Romania, Poland, and Turkey, noting that each export would see 70% of components come from Canada. He disagreed with the suggestion that advances in storage could make nuclear less appealing, arguing that nuclear provides reliable baseload power and that the cost of wind and solar paired with storage is comparable to nuclear when compared on a firm-power basis.

The committee briefly debated a request from Enbridge to substitute its CEO with senior executives as witnesses, with some members insisting on hearing from the CEO directly and others open to the substitution, and the matter was deferred to a future meeting.