Canada Energy Regulator – 2020–21 Departmental Results Report – Results: what we achieved

Energy Adjudication

Description: Making decisions or recommendations to the Governor in Council on applications, which include impact assessments, using processes that are fair, transparent, timely and accessible. These applications pertain to pipelines and related facilities, international power lines, offshore renewable energy, tolls and tariffs, compensation dispute resolution, energy exports and imports, and oil and gas exploration and drilling in certain northern and offshore areas of Canada.

Results

Crown Consultation Process

The CER consults in a way that is fully consistent with Canada’s obligations under the Constitution Act, 1982 and the Government’s commitments to advance Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. We undertake and coordinate federal Crown consultation with a goal to fulfill the Crown’s duty to consult, and where appropriate, accommodate Indigenous peoples, as well as to support meaningful two-way dialogue.

The CER’s new Crown consultation responsibilities are part of project reviews and support the Commission’s hearing process for new pipelines, powerlines or offshore renewable energy projects, as well as for activities the CER regulates over the lifecycle of energy infrastructure. The duty to consult and, when required, accommodate, is triggered when there is a potential impact to Indigenous or treaty rights and where a decision of the Government might adversely affect the exercise of those rights.

The CER tailors the federal Crown consultation^Footnote 7 activities to the scope and potential impacts of proposed projects and the needs of potentially affected Indigenous peoples. The CER Commission’s hearing process is a key component of CER-led Crown consultation approach and activities. For projects where the Commission is the final decision maker, the CER’s intent is to fulfill the Crown’s duty to consult through the Commission’s regulatory process. The Commission has the technical expertise and mandate to consider and address project impacts, including those affecting the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples. For projects where the Governor-in-Council is the final decision maker, the CER will carry out additional Crown consultation activities that support the Commission’s hearing process. As Crown Consultation Coordinator, the CER will also work as necessary with other federal departments to determine how any issues or concerns raised by Indigenous peoples that may involve other areas of federal responsibility can be addressed.

In 2020–21, the CER delivered Crown consultation activities with the guiding principle of advancing Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. For the team, this meant emphasizing early and collaborative exchanges with Indigenous peoples based on a recognition of rights and enhancing the transparency of the Crown consultation process. The CER’s Crown Consultation Team consulted Indigenous communities in relation to several applications throughout 2020–21, including:

• ITC’s application for a variance to the ITC Lake Erie IPL^Footnote 8 certificate sunset clause,
• TC Energy’s NGTL application for the Westpath 2023^Footnote 9 pipeline project, and
• Trans Mountain’s West Alternative route variance^Footnote 10 application.

At year-end, these review processes and corresponding Crown activities were still ongoing. As the CER implements its Crown consultation role, it will look for opportunities to continually improve its approach – listening and learning from Indigenous peoples.

Improvements to the Participant Funding Program

The CER administers a Participant Funding Program^Footnote 11 to facilitate the participation of the public – in particular, the Indigenous peoples of Canada and Indigenous organizations – in public hearings and any steps leading to those hearings.

In 2020–21, a gap was identified in the Program whereby the CER was unable to provide participant funding for CER-led hearings of non-designated projects conducted under the Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act^Footnote 12 and the Northwest Territories Oil and Gas Operations Act^Footnote 13, which could create a legal risk of the CER failing to fulfil the duty to consult.

CER staff worked with colleagues from several federal government departments to assess the gap, identify options and obtain support across government to amend the Participant Funding Program’s Terms and Conditions to allow the CER to provide participant funding to Indigenous groups for such hearings. The CER is offering participant funding to Indigenous groups for two project application hearings in 2021–22: the Inuvialuit Energy Security Project^Footnote 14 and the Norman Wells Waste Management Facility.^Footnote 15

Orphan Pipelines

The CER Act introduced provisions for dealing with pipelines where the company that holds the pipeline certificate is unknown, insolvent, dissolved or cannot be located. The CER established a Designated Officer and can now take necessary measures to abandon an orphaned pipeline, if required.

Gender-based analysis Plus

There are GBA Plus requirements for assessment in the CER Act. Section 183.2 (c) of CER Act outlines what factors need to be considered in Commission recommendations to the Minister.

Filing guidance has been issued on assessing GBA Plus requirements in applications and staff have started assessing applications using this guidance. These actions support the Minister’s mandate^Footnote 16 to apply GBA Plus in decision-making. The CER has continued to provide staff with training on this topic to ensure that people are competent and qualified to provide those GBA Plus analyses.

In 2020–21 all applications submitted for physical projects were assessed against the new guidance.

Experimentation

The CER continued its partnership with the not-for-profit Code for Canada^Footnote 17 to update our public regulatory document system, REGDOCS. The team implemented incremental design changes in REGDOCS, including descriptive text and improved document access, to better align the repository with the Government of Canada’s Web Experience Toolkit principles of accessibility, usability and interoperability.

The CER is also progressing on work to create analytical metrics to understand variables affecting application processing times. In the summer of 2020, the CER partnered with the University of British Columbia to deliver two prototypes for meta-tagging data in high-value regulatory documents: a dataset of facility and short pipeline applications, and metadata from letters of comments, including main topics and feeling patterns, which can improve insight for future engagement. This work has paved the way for broader metadata-tagging initiatives in REGDOCS to improve the searchability and usability of historical data documents at the CER.

Results achieved

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Financial, human resources and performance information for the CER’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.^Footnote 18

Safety and Environment Oversight

Description: Setting and enforcing regulatory expectations for regulated companies over the full lifecycle – construction, operation and abandonment– of energy-related activities. These activities pertain to pipelines and related facilities, international power lines, offshore renewable energy, tolls and tariffs, energy exports and imports, and oil and gas exploration and drilling in certain northern and offshore areas of Canada.

Results

During the course of the year, the CER undertook over 50 Compliance Verification Activities on TMX, covering pipeline integrity, safety, environmental protection, damage prevention, and emergency management. The activities included 32 inspections, two emergency response exercises and 20 compliance meetings.

Tragically, a contract worker was fatally injured in October 2020 at a Trans Mountain construction site in Edmonton, Alberta. Later in December of the same year, another contract worker was seriously injured on a Trans Mountain construction site in Burnaby, BC. CER Inspection Officers were deployed to the field to oversee company investigations and conduct regulatory oversight at both worksites.

An Inspection Officer Order was issued during the course of the CER fatality oversight work which focused on Trench box operations and competency and training of Trans Mountain Inspectors. In light of the incidents, Trans Mountain voluntarily halted construction on the pipeline in mid-December 2020. Construction was restarted in mid-January 2021.

Trans Mountain later submitted their root cause analyses for the incidents, which included – but were not limited to – issues stemming from inadequate supervision and oversight of field level work activities, inadequate hazard identification, risk assessment and safety communication processes and ineffective assessment of supervisor competency and training programs.

Subsequently, CER safety oversight activities have focused on high-risk construction activities and Trans Mountain contractor oversight and supervision. Further enforcement action, such as AMPs, are currently being evaluated.

• Enbridge Line 3 Replacement Project

Construction on the Line 3 replacement project^Footnote 20 was largely completed during the 2020–21 fiscal year, therefore the CER’s compliance oversight in that time focused on post-construction operational matters. Compliance Verification Activities on Line 3 were carried out in the field with Indigenous Monitors and were informed, in part, through feedback from the Line 3 Indigenous Advisory Monitoring Committee.

• CER Oversight of Keystone XL

Construction activity on the Keystone XL pipeline^Footnote 21 occurred in the latter part of 2020 and during that period, the CER conducted operational oversight activities on the line with the assistance of Indigenous Monitors. In January 2021, the United States’ federal government revoked the Presidential permit for the Keystone XL Project. TC Energy began winding down construction activities in Canada, officially suspending construction in May 2021, while the CER continued its regulatory oversight activities.

• NGTL 2021

Construction activity on the NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. 2021 System Expansion Project^Footnote 22 began in early 2021. At that time, the CER put in place a process to ensure the involvement of Indigenous Monitors in its regulatory oversight work of the Project.

Gender-based analysis Plus

The CER conducts a GBA Plus analysis pursuant to the Cabinet Directive on Regulation for its regulation development projects. The CER continues to strengthen its regulatory framework by assessing the impact that proposed regulations could have on Canadians from identifiable groups. This year, the CER has further developed our GBA Plus approaches to assessing regulatory framework changes by developing a template and work instructions to incorporate GBA Plus into regulatory development. The CER will use this template in upcoming planned regulatory reviews over 2021–22.

Experimentation

The CER, through years of collecting environmental and socio-economic assessments (ESAs) from our regulated companies, has amassed a great deal of raw data that can be used by researchers, scientists and academics in many fields.

In 2020–21 the CER initiated work on a newly created data bank with information on communities, the environment and the economy compiled from ESAs received between the years 2003 and 2019. BERDI, which stands for Biophysical, Economic, Regional Data Information, supports our mission to provide relevant energy information, and aligns with our strategic priorities to increase trust and confidence and advance data and digital innovation. The new interface is expected to launch publicly in the 2021–22 fiscal year.

The CER also initiated work on a database to capture environmental data from post-construction monitoring reports (PCMRs). When developed, the PCMR database will show trends in post-construction issues in relation to land uses and ecological components and enable a visual interface for data interactions. The project will allow the CER to evaluate outstanding environmental issues and trends after pipeline construction, informing future improvements to data collection and compliance verification.

Results achieved

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Financial, human resources and performance information for the CER’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.^Footnote 23

Energy Information

Description: Collecting, monitoring, analyzing and publishing information on energy markets and supply, sources of energy, and the safety and security of pipelines and international power lines.

Results:

The increasing pace of change in Canadian and global energy markets and climate policy suggest that the need for up-to-date analysis on energy trends is greater than ever. The CER plays a vital role in conveying objective and neutral information to Canadians and is at the forefront on energy markets monitoring and analysis. Staff work feeds into regulatory hearings on pipeline projects in Canada, provides analysis on important policy developments, models Canada’s energy supply and demand projections, and provides Canadians with reports and dashboards to help make informed choices on energy matters.

• Informing Canada’s Energy Conversation

• What is in a Canadian Residential Electricity Bill? Report^Footnote 24, released in July 2020, is an analysis of electricity generation, consumption and cost. The report included provincial and territorial information on electricity generation and consumption and details on electricity providers and energy charges for each jurisdiction. The report included an interactive tableau component where users could calculate the cost of household appliances and electronics based on the amount of usage and the province and territory of residence.
• Energy Futures 2020^Footnote 25, released in November 2020, is the CER’s long-term energy supply and demand outlook. The report introduced a new scenario that explored Canada’s energy transition and examined the opportunities and challenges for Canada associated with net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
• Canada’s Renewable Power Report^Footnote 26, released in March 2021, is an overview of electricity generation and capacity. The report included a short-term outlook of capacity changes in Canada and illustrated the path forward for the decarbonization of Canada’s electricity grids.
• Provincial & Territorial Energy Profiles^Footnote 27, which was developed over 2020–21 and released in April 2021, is an overview of energy production, transportation and trade, as well as consumption and GHG emissions. The report included all sources of energy, from crude oil and refined products, to natural gas and LNG, to uranium and renewables. This year’s release included a modernized layout and “look and feel” of the product, expanded content, and engagement with provinces and territories in the review process.

Reception of the CER’s energy information reports demonstrates their relevance to Canadians, generating considerable dialogue in the media, on social media and with energy experts. The Provincial & Territorial Energy Profiles had the highest web-hits of our energy information products. Within 24 hours of the public release of Energy Futures 2020, there were over 770 social media posts and 450 news articles and broadcast mentions of the report. The release of Canada’s Renewable Power was mentioned by more than 250 news platforms – with a combined audience reach of 240 million people.

• Providing Data on CER-regulated infrastructure

To build the trust in the CER and the facilities it regulates, Canadians need access to accurate and comprehensive data on the performance of CER-regulated facilities. The CER is investing in compiling and releasing as much data as possible on the safety, environmental and economic performance of pipelines and powerlines it regulates. We are releasing the data in various formats to reach a broad range of Canadians, from open data files to interactive visualizations.

Core to this effort is the Pipeline Profiles^Footnote 28 web portal – a one stop shop for detailed information and regularly updated data on Canada’s major oil and natural gas pipelines regulated by the CER. Several new datasets and visualizations, including pipeline incidents and pipeline project conditions were added to the portal. These new sections include interactive maps, summary statistics and trends, and new functionality to locate incidents that are ‘near you’.

The CER also developed its International Power Lines Dashboard^Footnote 29, which for the first time provides a detailed dataset of all powerlines that cross the Canada-U.S. border, accessible through an interactive map.

• Broadening the CER’s Reach

Experimentation

The CER seeks new ways to use data, analytics and information management to improve the accessibility and relevance of energy information products. In 2020–21 the CER undertook a redesign of the Energy Futures visualization platforms. The interface was designed with users to ensure closer alignment with the 2020 report. It is now connected to source data for easier maintenance and includes a new visualization for oil and gas data.

Results achieved

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Financial, human resources and performance information for the CER’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.^Footnote 31

Engagement

Description: Engaging nationally and regionally with Indigenous Peoples and stakeholders through open dialogue, asking questions, sharing perspectives, and collaboration. These activities pertain to all decisions and actions related to the Canada Energy Regulator's legislated mandate.

Results:

Despite the challenges the pandemic brought in 2020–21, the CER was able to engage with stakeholders and Indigenous peoples by adapting its processes to deliver engagement virtually. Over the course of the year, the CER held 110 unique engagement events. In those meetings, the CER was able to identify issues and work to resolve them through communication and coordinated efforts across the organization, with regulated companies and provincial bodies. Despite the limitations from the pandemic, 80% of stakeholder and Indigenous groups who completed the CER’s stakeholder survey indicated they had meaningful engagement with the CER.

Engagement activities were conducted across all CER programs to inform decisions, regulations, products and other work. Feedback gathered during our engagement efforts indicates that engagement is making a difference: our work with partners improves the CER’s products (such as Energy Information publications), processes (notably, compliance oversight joint work with Indigenous Peoples during the pandemic), and programs.

The organization noted that it needs to continue to improve the ways in which it coordinates and aligns its engagement efforts. In 2020–21 the CER focused on its collaborative activities with the diverse Indigenous Peoples and stakeholder groups across Canada. Some of the highlights included:

Gender-based analysis Plus

The CER performs an annual survey with those with whom the Regulator has engaged. The survey checks their self-perception as to whether they have felt meaningfully engaged. The CER collects information on the participant’s general location (keeping the individual non-identifiable) as well as self-identification as an Indigenous person. The CER uses this information to tailor our future engagements to better serve a diverse population.

Experimentation

The CER uses data collection technology to help us better identify and share information at the community level, so that we have the right information when meeting with Indigenous communities and stakeholders about community-specific issues. In 2020–21, the CER implemented a new issues management feature in our Customer Relationship Management tool. Public request case tracking enables us to better monitor concerns and questions from Indigenous groups and stakeholders, as well as corresponding CER responses.

Results achieved

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Financial, human resources and performance information for the CER’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.^Footnote 35

Internal Services

Description: Internal Services are those groups of related activities and resources that the federal government considers to be services in support of programs and/or required to meet corporate obligations of an organization. Internal Services refers to the activities and resources of the 10 distinct service categories that support Program delivery in the organization, regardless of the Internal Services delivery model in a department. The 10 service categories are:

• Acquisition Management Services
• Communication Services
• Financial Management Services
• Human Resources Management Services
• Information Management Services
• Information Technology Services
• Legal Services
• Material Management Services
• Management and Oversight Services
• Real Property Management Services

Results

During the past year, the CER demonstrated the ability of its Internal Service support programs to adapt nimbly and efficiently to the needs of the organization’s greatest asset – its employees – under the unexpected and extraordinary circumstances of the COVID pandemic.

The CER’s Information Technology program facilitated organizational collaboration and work-at-home during COVID via a variety of technological improvements, including Microsoft Teams and scaling of Internet Bandwidth and Remote Desktop capacity. Communications augmented that support by launching a new internal website platform to improve remote accessibility, functionality and design and enable use of collaboration tools available through Microsoft Teams. Successful delivery of IT-enabled business projects ensured seamless delivery of the CER’s core responsibilities.

Bettering its people management practices through training remained a cornerstone of the CER’s Human Resources approach, as the organization developed and offered training on staffing processes, Employment Equity and unconscious bias. The organization also launched a new Harassment and Violence Prevention Policy to ensure compliance with legislative changes to the Canada Labour Code.

In support of its people, the CER enhanced employee engagement opportunities, internal communications and training, while continuing to deliver staffing, compensation, training, awards and recognition programs.

Gender-based analysis Plus

In response to the public health measures required by the COVID-19 pandemic, the entirety of the CER’s workforce was working at home during the majority of FY 2020–21. The CER created a pandemic response team to coordinate the internal response and employee support as well as determine an appropriate return to office plan. The CER undertook a detailed GBA Plus analysis of the impacts of the pandemic on employees. Additionally, the CER began an analysis of the future of our workplace: the GBA Plus lens was explicitly incorporated in that analysis when considering the possibility of increased work at home or remote work arrangements.

As a direct result of the use of the GBA Plus lens in the above surveying, specific measures were implemented to support the diverse needs of employees. This included the following:

• introduction of MS Teams closed captioning, supporting those with disabilities such as hearing impairments;
• domestic violence training for employees and management; and,
• the planned introduction of a trial hybrid remote working model, developed in response to concerns raised by diverse employees. For instance, this included interest by Indigenous employees to be closer to their communities, those with caregiving responsibilities disproportionately indicating their desire to work from home, and those with disabilities indicating the benefits of minimizing commutes.

Experimentation

The CER is committed to increasing the organization’s capacity to use data as a strategic asset. In 2020–21, our Data and Information Management and Information Technology programs explored the use of Near Communication technology, which enables people to access direct information about CER events by tapping their phones at QR barcodes. The technology was successfully piloted at CER Energy Information events.

The CER also partnered with Mitacs (Canadian Science Policy Fellowship)^Footnote 36 to explore delivery of a digital platform that bridges gaps in the Canadian energy dialogue, enabling an information exchange between the CER and Indigenous Peoples, stakeholders, academia, landowners and Canadians. As a part of this project, a grey paper was developed which provided extensive research on two key topics: foundational principles of citizen science, the work of other governments, and challenges and lessons, and a synopsis of the activities of other Canadian government departments regarding Indigenous knowledge, including how knowledge is shared and co-produced, and incorporating principles under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (e.g. Free, Prior, and Informed Consent). The research and project information are potential building blocks that could support the future development of a digital citizen science platform. 

Budgetary financial resources (dollars)

Human resources (full-time equivalents)

Financial, human resources and performance information for the CER’s Program Inventory is available in GC InfoBase.^Footnote 37

Date modified:

2022-08-30