Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to see you in the Speaker’s chair. It is a pleasure to rise today and speak to Bill S-3, an act to amend the Weights and Measures Act, the Electricity and Gas Inspection Act, the Weights and Measures Regulations and the Electricity and Gas Inspection Regulations. Now, those here in the House today may not think this is the most exciting topic, but I could probably speak on this topic all day long. This topic affects every sector in Canada and is incredibly important. The laws governing how measured goods are bought and sold were enacted in 1970 and 1980 and have not been updated since. They do not reflect the current market environments in the digital business age. Moreover, the acts are not all aligned, so there are discrepancies and inconsistencies in their operational and enforcement-related provisions. The proposed legislation would create a framework that is flexible, agile and more outcome-based. It would help reduce barriers to business, remove impediments to innovation, protect consumers and allow the government to deliver services effectively. In terms of the sectors that are impacted by this legislation, there are many, including forest products businesses, oil and gas, and natural resources. I will try to provide some examples as I go along. We can think about how this affects people in their everyday life. When someone fill their tank with gas, there is a measurement there of how many litres they get. Those measurements are controlled. The meters are calibrated and verified. There are a lot of standards that have to be complied with to make sure people get the right amount that they pay for. I have a lot of experience in this area over the years. I was a chemical engineer for 32 years, as many know, in different industries. Trucks that are taking products and services across the country have to go on weigh scales. I have actually constructed and implemented weigh scales, so I can tell members that there is a lot of technology that goes into that. It is incredibly important in commerce to have exactly the right knowledge of how much weight is in that truck or that rail car. These are practical examples of where these kinds of things are important. I was also director of engineering at a Suncor refinery. As with many refineries, there are pipelines taking raw materials backwards and forwards. They are shipping products out. There are a lot of meters there to look at what volume has actually gone, so they know how much money has to change hands between those selling and those buying. All of these things are legislated. Measurement Canada has a whole army of people who are then responsible for making sure things are calibrated, inspected and audited. If things are failing, there is some kind of investigation. There is a whole process behind all of this. As members can appreciate, with the electricity standards we are talking about today and the government’s new electricity strategy, there are going to be huge changes in the amount of electricity we are going to build. Members have heard about the Churchill project. Let us think about the number of devices that will need to be calibrated and audited, etc. It is a huge thing. We are doing all these nation-building projects, and every one of those is going to have things that fall under this act, which has not really been updated since the 1980s. Technology has moved on. At the same time, we are going to want to do business with more and more other countries as we diversify our trade. Every country has developed its own methods for sampling and its own methods and laws to talk about how it measures things. How we do things is not necessarily going to be harmonized with how they do things. Today, there is no flexibility in complying with what is here. One thing in the legislation that I think is really important is the ability for the minister to give somebody temporary permission or a temporary exemption, if needed, or to allow a different technology. All of these things are going to be very important as we see technology increasing over time. At the same time, there are going to be improvements in productivity and differences in the way countries do business. To start off talking about some of these things, I think members should know a bit about what Measurement Canada does. Every year, it approves about 300 new prototype measuring devices and technologies. It also certifies about 1,529 standards of mass, volume, temperature, electricity and gas, as well as test equipment to certify measuring devices. It accredits, audits and oversees 230 authorized service providers and 700 registered technicians to inspect and certify about 95% of the measuring devices used in trade. In addition, it conducts about 10,000 inspections of measuring devices. It is also involved in auditing and investigating when there are failures and, when people do not comply with legislation, enforcing those rules with consequences. It is responsible for a lot of things. The innovations that are currently being limited are many. I will give one example from my riding. I have a dairy farm in my riding, Forbesvue Farms, that is very well known. The owner owns Blue Water Milk Transport, which transports 19% of the milk used in Ontario. It is a substantial operation, but right now, under the requirements that exist today, it is only allowed to use these two-inch lines and a really manual sampling method that takes a long time. There is a development using a three-inch hose and meters to sample the milk, and it would like to implement that. It would save a huge amount of time and a huge amount of money. We all know we want to bring the cost of everything down, so it would be a great thing to do. Today, with the lack of flexibility in the regulations and the law, it cannot be done. The changes in Bill S-3 would allow the minister to grant permission to try this out and, if it works out, to actually be able to put it in place full-time, and also to remove the permissions to do it if it does not work out or if there is some level of concern. That is just one of many examples of why we need to have this. In terms of the need for flexibility, one thing I saw very often when we were trying to ship to other countries or bring things in was a different level of specification. There is no way to really resolve that because countries have their laws and we have our laws. It takes a long time to change the law. We can think about how long it takes for a bill to come through the House, with first and second reading, committee, etc., and then over to the other place for consideration and, finally, royal assent. It can take 18 months to two years. It is not a flexible process. With the rapid pace of technology, especially as we start to see artificial intelligence coming into play and we see changes and advances in digital technology, all of these things are going to cause us to need some flexibility, and not just flexibility but agility. We have to do it faster. We are talking about doing things at speeds never before seen, but in some cases, the laws and the regulations are tying our hands. The electricity plan is going to involve a lot of different locations where we are going to be building new capability in electricity of different kinds. These regulations were put in place before green energy was a thing. We need to think about all of the different technologies that have come forward that have devices associated with them that are not covered in the existing legislation at all. We definitely need to update this to put it in line with our plans to electrify the grid and to provide different sources of green energy as we lead the world in that sector. At the same time, we need to think about all the growth in oil, gas and LNG. All of these things are going to have more meters, more things to calibrate and more things to inspect, and we have a limited resource. With all of the things that Measurement Canada does already, we need to think about increasing that load hugely. How are we going to do that with the existing number of people? The easier answer is that there are other organizations and companies across our country that do these types of activities as well, and currently, the law does not allow the government to get them to help out. That is one important thing to note. If we are going to service all this extra growth, we have to be able to certify other services that can calibrate, audit, inspect, etc. Another thing that needs to be looked at is the fact that right now it is all 100% inspection. That is sometimes warranted. For example, in the businesses I have been involved in, there are types of welding where 100% X-ray has to be done. It would be catastrophic if there was a failure. As one can imagine, anything could cause an explosion if there was a leak. These kinds of things demand 100% inspection, but not everything demands 100% inspection. As such, there is an opportunity for this government, under this framework, to look at a risk-based approach and do 100% inspection where it is needed, but to reduce inspection in other areas to free up resources to try to address the capacity issue that is being faced. At the same time, we have to make sure we protect consumers. One thing about doing change more quickly is trying to make sure there are safeguards in place so that we do not do something that has an unintended and harmful consequence. There are measures in Bill S-3 that talk about the protection of consumers. Some of the protections are to align with the Criminal Code today regarding inspectors. Sometimes people who are not complying with the law want to prevent them from accessing their property or inspecting their device as needed, so there are measures in Bill S-3 that would allow people to enter properties, but not without a judicial warrant. There are some good safeguards there. If people suspect that there is a compliance issue, there are powers in the bill for the inspectors, but all of them are in line with what would be required by law. There are some other updates in the bill that I thought were pretty interesting. In the existing legislation and regulations, inspections have to be done in person, and we cannot do anything else. There is no telecommunications capability allowed. How many of us FaceTime with people who are across the country, or try to inspect something while somebody is on the phone asking us to take a picture of it and send it to them or show them what it looks like? The bill would allow access by means of telecommunication, which I think opens up some efficiencies and cuts down on the travel back and forth. There was one other thing that I thought was quite interesting. I actually read the bill. Some people may not find weights and measures super exciting. If someone has problems with insomnia, they may want to turn to Bill S-3 and read it very carefully. One of the other good things in here is trying to make sure we do not get ourselves in another situation where the law and regulations have not been updated since 1980. Think about that. That is 46 years ago. There is a provision in here that says that every 10 years, the minister has to look at how things are working out and table a report here in Parliament so we can keep an eye on whether this thing needs to be reviewed and updated again more quickly. That is an excellent measure as well. At the end of the day, this is about the balance of power of the inspectors, the amount of inspection we are doing, the use of new technologies in the way that Measurement Canada conducts its work, and the flexibility that would allow a greater number of innovations to come forward. It would allow us to more rapidly accommodate trade differences. Those things are all important in this bill. We must also look at aligning all of these regulations. There are a lot of government regulations and laws, as members may be aware. This is a Senate bill, and somebody from the Senate meticulously went through and collected all of this information on things that have been outstanding for years and put it together in one bill. I want to thank them for bringing this bill forward, because although not everyone is interested in the bill, the good that it would do for every sector across the country is quite impressive. There are some amendments that are interesting. The bill would provide a temporary permission for organizations to introduce emerging technologies to market without delay while awaiting approval. That is another good thing to build speed. The bill would also allow for sampling as a means to inspect devices, thereby increasing the efficiency in the oversight. The bill would create exemptions from burdensome requirements for small and seasonal businesses that sell electricity and natural gas. As we can imagine, for the programs that have to be put in place, to have records for calibrations, inspections, audits and everything else is an onerous bureaucracy for a very small business. There are permissions to exempt people, as we do not have to inspect and audit people all the time, especially when they have shown good behaviour. I think that is a good measure. One amendment would allow for preventive control plans to help prevent non-compliance. If businesses start to see that new technology has been implemented, and there are rules in place regarding that, but there is no compliance, and that non-compliance is chronic in that they are seeing a lot of examples, this bill would allow them to put together a preventive action plan so they could fix the problem. Some of the sectors involved in this bill are the following: electricity and natural gas, and we have talked about those; retail; food; retail systems; wholesale petroleum; fishing; forestry; grain and field crops; mining; and construction. Let us think about the breadth of what this legislation will do when it is applied to all of those businesses and starts to free them up to introduce new technology, become more productive and become more competitive. That is what Canadians want. Certainly, that is what we want. Some of the technologies that are described in the existing legislation are obsolete now, so we have an opportunity to do a little cleanup and get rid of all of the things that are mentioned that no longer exist or are used. I think that would be important for everybody. In summary, Bill S-3 intends to take all of these different acts and align them with all of the things Measurement Canada does to give some power to allow the minister to make temporary exemptions and introduce new innovative technologies. Plus they could make them permanent if the technology works out. At the same time, there are protections in here for consumers. There are guardrails to make sure that the inspections that are done are aligned with the risk of not inspecting, and there is some flexibility in the bill. In addition, we are going to make sure we review the situation every 10 years with a parliamentary report. That is going to be critical with respect to identifying when it is time to update it again so we do not get ourselves back in a situation where it is more than 40 years and we have not updated the regulations. With that, I would be happy to take questions.
