Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources
Issue 10 - Evidence - April 1, 2014
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 1, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met this day at 6:04 p.m. to study the current state of "One Call'' programs that identify critical underground infrastructure in Canada.
Senator Richard Neufeld (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
My name is Richard Neufeld. I represent the province of British Columbia, and I'm the chair of this committee.
I would like to welcome honourable senators, any members of the public with us in the room, and viewers across the country who are watching on television. As a reminder to those watching, these committee hearings are open to the public and also available via webcast on sen.parl.gc.ca. You may find more information on the schedule of witnesses on the website under "Senate Committees.''
I would now ask the senators around the table to introduce themselves, and I'll start on my right.
Senator Day: My name is Senator Day. I'm from New Brunswick.
Senator Massicotte: Paul Massicotte, Quebec.
Senator Wallace: John Wallace, New Brunswick.
Senator Black: Doug Black from Alberta.
The Chair: I would also like to introduce our staff, beginning with our clerk, Lynn Gordon, to my left, and the two Library of Parliament analysts, Sam Banks and Marc LeBlanc.
Today we are continuing to examine the current state of One Call or Call Before You Dig programs that identify critical underground infrastructure in Canada.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome our witnesses this evening, from Canadian One Call Centres Committee, Sher Kirk, Chair; and from Ontario One Call, Lloyd Chiotti, Interim Executive Director, and Ben Hamilton, Special Advisor.
Thank you very much for being with us tonight. I apologize on behalf of all committee members for being an hour late, but the chamber didn't adjourn until a few minutes ago.
I believe you're presenting together. After your presentation, we will go to questions and answers.
Sher Kirk, Chair, Canadian One Call Centres Committee: I was wondering in the interests of time if you just wanted me to hit the high points.
The Chair: Whatever you're comfortable with. We're fine however you want to do it, what you think you have to do to get your message across to us.
Ms. Kirk: In two minutes or less. I'll talk really fast and you'll miss everything.
Senators, I wanted to say thank you very much for allowing Canadian One Call to appear today and for giving us a chance to have commentary on this important issue.
As Senator Neufeld introduced me, I'm Sher Kirk. I am the Chair of the Canadian One Call Centres Committee. I'm also the operations director of Alberta One Call and I've been working in One Calls for 14 years, so I have some background to help you out with information.
Just a little bit of background on what the COCCC is; that's my organization. We represent all six of the active One Call Centres in Canada. We try to be the voice of the One Calls on international or national issues that affect damage prevention. Our purpose is to form a strategic partnership among the One Call Centres. We can share technologies, strategies, promotional partnerships. Basically, we support simplified access to the One Call Centres together. Anything that has a joint awareness campaign or initiative to promote safe digging, we go in together and we represent the One Call voice.
The COCCC sits on the board of the Canadian Common Ground Alliance, which I believe spoke to you already, and we also represent One Calls on the Canadian Standards Association's technical committee for CSA Z247, which is the standard for damage prevention for energy and utility networks. I sit on that committee.
I will give you a brief overview of the history of One Calls in Canada. I've paid close attention, obviously, to this committee's activities and I wondered if I could help clear up some of the misunderstandings or grey areas about what One Calls are, what we do, where we come from.
Basically, what we mean when we refer to One Call service, it's a communications service and it receives information about planned excavations or ground disturbances. We then identify registered facility owners with the buried asset in the vicinity of that excavation, we take that information and transmit it to the affected members. Basically, as a registered member, it's the only way we would know if you're in that area. A registered facility owner is someone who has provided information to the One Call Centre about the location of their buried infrastructure and who receives notifications from us when there's an excavation in the area of their assets.
I know Mike Sullivan talked about damage prevention process when he was here, so I won't go into that in too much detail, but I can explain more about the process itself. It's triggered when the excavator contacts the One Call Centre and they can contact us through phone, fax, website or in some places already an app. We ask for them to give us specific information about the contact information, about who's doing the work, what kind of work they're doing and where they are doing it, basically.
The contact centre agent or the excavator themselves if they're online in some cases will draw a polygon — this is where things get a bit convoluted — on a map that represents the dig area as described to us, and that dig polygon that we draw is overlaid on top of the assets of the members. Anything that overlaps, if the dig site overlaps anybody's asset, then we know that we have to contact that facility owner with that information about that particular ground disturbance. I did put a picture in your files there so you get an idea of what it looks like when we do that process. It's figure 1.
Once we know who we're going to contact and we know the information about the dig site, that information is automatically transmitted from our systems to the members affected. That can be transferred by FTP, fax, sometimes a callout if it's an emergency, it depends on the situation, but the ticket itself becomes a traceable legal document, something that we can trace back that represents the due diligence of the excavator who has made a request to have locates done before he digs.
The member's responsibility is to then contact the excavator and to either provide a clearance to that excavator that their assets are not going to be affected or to provide a locate which, in the standards world, is a physical marking on the ground that represents the horizontal alignment; we don't say how deep it is but will tell you where it is on the ground horizontally from where you are.
In addition to providing a communications link between facility owners and excavators, provincial One Call Centres are also mandated to prevent damage to underground infrastructure through education, advocacy and public awareness. We spend a great deal of money on advertising billboards, bling, as we like to call it, things to hand out to our members to give out to excavators. We go to a lot of trade shows. We educate people when they call in. We put a lot of information on our websites about safe digging so that people understand the process better and what to expect when they contact us.
As you have the information and we're a bit behind, I'll briefly cover the history of One Calls in Canada. I'll keep it to a minimum.
One Calls in Canada started in the 1970s when oil and gas really started to take off in Alberta. There was a lot more going underground and there was a lot more risk. More lines, a lot of near misses, and in 1979 there were 8,600 damages alone in Alberta to pipelines underground. That caught everybody's attention.
The United States had One Call service that started in the late 1960s and was gaining traction down there. They were using this to coordinate the locates so that the excavators knew who was underground and the facility owners knew who was digging. That seemed to be a good way of keeping the damages down and it seemed to be effective. They were paying attention to it. They put a committee together to go down and investigate, and that led to a One Call group being formed in Alberta to investigate.
Then in 1979 in Mill Woods, a suburb of Edmonton, there was quite a large accident involving a propane line that was damaged, not reported. The worker was significantly injured and more than 18,000 people were evacuated from their homes. That caught everybody's attention and, as usual, unfortunately, it takes that kind of negative event to be the catalyst to cause something to be done. That became Alberta One Call's catalyst. We took our first call in 1984, so we have been operating for 30 years in Alberta as of this year.
As the people who formed One Call in Alberta went into other provinces and said, "This is what we're doing, this is what you should get done,'' that started to grow. Quebec came in 1993, Info-Ex, as it's called. Then BC One Call in 1994, Ontario in 1996. Sask 1st Call came in 2003 and the latest is Manitoba. Click Before You Dig Manitoba started in June of last year and it's operating out of the Alberta One Call contact centre right now.
Each One Call Centre has developed in different ways. There are similarities and differences in how each of them operates. All of the centres have some things in common. They all operate as not-for-profit entities. They're all governed by a board of directors and a lot of other people now, in Ontario. All centres provide a free service to the excavators, and the cost of providing that service is recovered from the registered facility owners who pay a fee for each notification, or there are some other ways of collecting the fees.
Basically, they pay for the notification to come to them. It's a relatively small amount in most cases. It's $2 or less, depending on how many notifications you're sending out. In Alberta, it started out as $6 for every notification and now we're on a sliding scale, but $2 per notification is about where we've landed now.
All centres take direction from their members about the information they require in a ticket and what the business rules are going to be around that. All centres serve the same purpose. They share similar procedures, but each centre is unique in how it operates and is in very different stages of development at this time. Sask 1st Call, for example, operates out of SaskEnergy's contact centre, so they're not on their own. They're their own entity but they don't have their own centre. Quebec's Info-Ex is a private corporation like Alberta but they have merged with the Canadian Common Ground Alliance partner, APISQ, in Quebec, so they are now one entity. Ontario operates right now with a vendor managing their contact centre, and Ontario One Call employees handle all the administration at their end. Manitoba, as I mentioned, runs out of our contact centre until they can get a centre of their own in their own province.
The point is that there's no one right answer to what's the best way to operate a Canadian One Call Centre, because they are all efficient in their own ways, but they're all slightly different in how they operate. There has been one right answer so far as how you get a One Call Centre started in Canada, and the answer is that you need a coalition of the willing to make it happen. Every One Call in Canada is built by regulatory bodies, agencies, individuals, associations that know that having a One Call Centre is critical to reducing damages to buried infrastructure to enhance public safety. Anyone in the pipeline industry will tell you that everyone has known for years that the leading cause of damage to their pipeline is third party damage; it's excavators doing work.
In our world, we say industry professionals know it's simply the right thing to do to get involved with the One Call Centre. Unfortunately, goodwill can only take your damage prevention so far. If we look at the six existing One Call Centres at their current levels of growth, you will see that it's quite challenging to get participation to 100 per cent across the board. You would think in some ways that it seems obvious. Why wouldn't you want to protect your line? Why wouldn't you want to know who's digging around your line?
But it's not that obvious. Alberta One Call, as I said, has been around for 30 years. We have 740 member companies, and that includes telecoms, pipelines and energy companies, but if we look at those 740 members and the regulated pipelines that were supposed to be on board, there are just over 900 of those companies in Alberta alone, so we don't even have all of those on board.
We process about 400,000 locate requests in Alberta. There's a chart here. You can see how busy everybody else is. Ontario, with legislation coming in, is going to be very busy this coming year. They'll tell you all about it when they have their chance.
By comparison, BC One Call has been operating for 20 years, so 10 years difference. They only have 265 members signed up on board. If you look at Sask 1st Call, which is another 10 years difference, so we're 10, 20 and 30, but after 10 years they only have 57 members. If you look at it, the 130,000 requests in Saskatchewan are more than the 127,000 requests in B.C. The excavators are there, but the members aren't. Interesting.
We have made significant effort to get membership over the 30 years. Progress has been steady but slow, and it seems to have plateaued. In any of the places where One Call has been around for more than 10 years, I would say anyone who's going to get on board is on board. We're reaching out and getting who we can. I think that whoever is going to be there is already there.
Several regulatory agencies have done a lot of work to mandate their members. The AER has done it, and oil and gas in B.C. has done it. There are regulations that are helping to bring people in. You will see little jumps in membership when that happens, but it's not enough to get 100 per cent. Just those regulated ones come on board.
The most important point I want to make is that the effectiveness of a One Call Centre is dependent on the level of participation by all the stakeholders in the damage prevention process. If facility owners aren't registered and excavators aren't calling, then there's no point in having a One Call service. It's only as effective as the participation level.
Excavators often feel that they carry more of the damage prevention burden — this is something I've heard for years — because they're required to notify all underground facility owners, but there's no corresponding requirement for the facility owners to register with One Call. There's an imbalance. It leaves the excavators with the onerous task of trying to figure out what's underground. There are several lists you can go through. There are 13 or 14 ways they can find out what's under the ground where they're digging. One of them is One Call, and the rest of them are land titles and talking to the landowners, et cetera. It's an onerous task. You don't know what you don't know. You can only call the ones that you know exist and, from there, it's a guessing game.
When you figure out what's under there or what you think is under there, then you have to figure out who to contact at those companies. What's the number? Who do I talk to? What department? Excavators are under a lot of pressure to meet deadlines in most cases, and they seem a lot less likely to cover the full checklist of possible identifiers of underground assets, and that result could be disastrous if they're not waiting.
If the One Call service can provide information about some but not all of the facilities, then that process for the excavator remains exactly the same even after they contact the One Call Centre because they still don't know what's not there. We can only tell them what we know is there. Partial participation in One Call exposes every person performing a ground disturbance to increased risk. Excavators have no desire to damage a buried facility or expose their employees and the public to risk, but they have not been provided a complete tool to help them approach their excavations with confidence.
For facility owners participating, the benefits are many, including increased damage prevention for their assets, supporting a culture of safety, positive public image as a good corporate citizen, economies of scale because everybody's doing the same advertising for the One Call Centre, reducing administration costs, having statistics and a paper trail of damages, having advanced notice of those excavations and being able to plan with the excavator for safety's sake. Those are all benefits of being on board with the One Call Centre.
I did note that some senators have expressed a desire to understand why a facility owner would choose not to participate when you consider the benefits of membership. Over the years, I've heard a few common reasons over and over again that some facility owners give for not participating, and I will give you a few of those so you have some idea of why people wouldn't be there.
The first one is, "We didn't know there was a One Call system,'' or, "We didn't know that we could join the One Call system.'' Ignorance of the existence of a One Call system is prevalent where the One Call is new or when the company is new to the industry. If there's no regulation that mentions One Call, they tend not to know it exists. They know as an excavator that it's there, but they don't know that they're supposed to be there on the other side of it. They just think it happens automatically. "I registered my pipeline with the AER; I thought you had the information.'' It happens all the time.
"Our company has established its own internal process to handle requests for locates.'' This is a common one as well. They have something set up on their own. "When someone is going to dig around our line, they're going to call us. We've got a sign up. They know that it's there.'' Okay, but once we demonstrate to those organizations the disparity between the number of locate requests that we're getting around their asset and the number that they've processed in the same time frame, they usually get on board pretty quickly after that. An recent example is the City of Airdrie. They have their own process. They have something internal. They don't really see the point in a One Call service. They told us they're getting 200 locate requests last year that they had to process. We in the One Call Centre had over 2,000 for the same city in the same year, so they're missing 90 per cent of the excavators.
Moving on to the next reason, "We don't have the resources to support the One Call notification process internally. If you're going to give me that many more notifications than I'm getting now, I don't have the resources.'' Municipalities are common on this one. When you look at the operation, it's usually determined that the One Call membership will result in savings in administration costs because everything is coming from one place. They can actually bypass and send those notifications directly to their locaters or techs in the field, so that can eliminate some of the process internally for them. If it doesn't, it generally means that the current resources they have allotted to damage prevention in the organization are insufficient to provide protection of their assets regardless of where that notification is coming from, whether it comes from us or through the phones. It means they don't have enough people to protect their assets. They do not have enough locaters to go out and respond to the number of requests they're getting.
That decision to join is based on financial restrictions versus safety, which brings us to, "We're not required by our regulator to join. We don't have to be there in the One Call.'' Preventing damage or responding to damage is the choice that companies are left to make on their own. Each company has to decide internally whether an analysis of the monetary cost really has a place in a discussion of public safety and the protection of essential services. Yes, there's a cost to preventing damage to facilities. There's also a cost to not preventing damage to facilities.
We believe, as do the companies that join the One Call voluntarily, that it is in the best interests of the public and public confidence to take every measure possible to preserve the integrity of infrastructure that provides our essential energy and communications services to businesses, to emergency response and to the general public.
Allowing some non-regulated companies to opt out gives them an advantage over their competitors. In some industries, a direct competitor is voluntarily joining the One Call service to be a good, safe corporate citizen and protect their assets. However, their direct competitor is not a member of One Call, so you have created disparity and a competitive imbalance where someone is paying a cost that another company is not because they're not regulated to be there and it's voluntary.
The other element is data-related. It's too costly to create those electronic maps that the One Call system needs to give our facility locations to the One Call Centres. Simply maintaining accurate records of the location of your assets is in the best interest of damage prevention. However, it is quite common for records of older infrastructure to be incomplete, old water and sewer. There is a lot of telecom underground that people are not sure where it went in because it went in so fast.
One Call Centre is obligated to accept information from members in our view as the One Call Centres in whatever format it can be provided. In some cases we can map files directly, we can create maps internally. The member can come in and show us where the lines are and we will draw the maps for them. In other cases, we can direct them to places that can help them do that.
If there's no data available at all, we would bring them on board in a wide area. We would notify them province- wide if necessary. If they've got that much coverage in the province but they don't know exactly where the lines are, we will tell them about every excavation going on in the province, then they can figure out from there what they want to respond to, but at least we get to tell the excavators that they're there. At least they know there's a chance. They have to wait to hear from whoever it is, company A, before they can dig, to make sure that that person is clear.
In some cases, we can negotiate price fees down to make it more palatable to somebody who doesn't want a notification everywhere in the province, because you pay for every notification, but if that means getting you on board and getting you out to the public, that we know you're there, then we will negotiate a fee reduction. If you're not there, we will credit back to you what you're not there on. You still only pay for where you are.
The cornerstone of One Call service is the belief that damage to underground facilities is preventable and that damage prevention is a shared responsibility. There's a core group of dedicated safety oriented organizations that support damage prevention in Canada, and the culture of safety has never been stronger in our country.
The spirit of the cooperation and good will of the damage prevention community has taken One Call to its current level, and has created awareness equity in the Call Before You Dig or Click Before You Dig calls to action. We, as the committee, have created a simplified one-window approach to accessing any provincial One Call Centre through the clickbeforeyoudig.com web portal. It can take any new centres coming on where there are gaps right now.
I say the time has come to support these efforts through legislation in every province to balance the responsibility for preserving the integrity of our infrastructure. Ontario has found its coalition of the willing and led the way by passing their act. The remaining provinces continue efforts to achieve legislation for their One Call services. To level the playing field among stakeholders, there must be 100 per cent participation in the One Call system without exception.
A true One Call would eliminate confusion and reduce risk in the field. Excavators would be assured of complete and consistent information and supports for their efforts to perform safe ground disturbances. Registered facility owners who promoted safety and environmental responsibility through the One Call system would no longer bear a burden that some of their competitors currently do not.
Fees for registered facility owners would be reduced. The more notifications that come into a centre, the less you have to charge, because you're all not-for-profit, cost-recovery. Each Canadian One Call centre would then be operating at the same level instead of smaller centre, larger centre. That allows everybody to have the equal resources to put into promotion education and awareness, something we don't have now. It is not equitable.
So we urge the Senate, in particular this committee, to show leadership in damage prevention by recommending provincial legislation for One Calls. We have studied the way One Call legislation came through in the United States. We know the high points and the low points. I will let you read about those. I won't go into them.
I provided a report from the PHMSA in the United States that shows the impact of having One Call legislation and the drastic reduction in damages that they have seen through the One Call services.
The DIRT, the Damage Information Reporting Tool, of the CGA that started in the United States and is now available in Canada as well is starting to pull in more statistics. As the numbers become available, again the DIRT report for 2012 — and I think this says it all really for me — concluded that when the One Call process is triggered, damage to a facility is avoided in 99 per cent of excavations. It just makes sense.
I believe there is a role at the federal level for the Senate to encourage more to join the coalition of the willing. Require federal regulators to follow the lead of the National Energy Board and recognize that a damage prevention mandate should be required by any federal body responsible for the critical underground infrastructure that provides Canadians with essential services. Address legislation gaps that allow federally or provincially owned facilities to be exempt from registering with the One Call service.
I would ask this committee to facilitate the legislative process by stating clearly that there's a need to protect the infrastructure and that full participation in the One Call system by all parties is the most effective way to achieve that.
In closing, on behalf of the Canadian One Call Centres Committee, I thank you again, the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, for the opportunity to provide commentary on this critical examination of One Call and damage prevention best practices.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Kirk. We will now go to Mr. Chiotti.
Lloyd Chiotti, Interim Executive Director, Ontario One Call: Thank you for letting us come and share the story of Ontario One Call with you. Sher has done a comprehensive job of painting the broad landscape of One Call systems across the country. We thought we would follow that with the very specific example of Ontario One Call and the unique example, because it is the one system that is now legislated.
Before I get into that, perhaps I might just comment on my title as interim executive director. You might be wondering about my qualifications to be here today. The former executive director of Ontario One Call retired in January. The corporation is in the process of going through an executive search and I was asked to come on board and hold the fort for them because we are going through a very critical time with the regulations that were only approved by cabinet yesterday.
I have only really been with Ontario One Call since January. However, I recently retired after 34 years with Enbridge Gas Distribution, the largest gas distribution utility in Ontario, so I do have quite a bit of background on what the One Call concept is all about.
In addition, I brought my colleague Ben Hamilton with me. Ben has been involved in Ontario One Call almost from its inception, and has been particularly instrumental throughout the legislative process. I thought it would be good to have him here in case you have some detailed questions that Ben can help me answer.
With that, let me turn to the slide deck that we presented. Certainly, Ontario One Call's vision is consistent with what you heard from Sher. Our raison d'être is to reduce damages to underground facilities and to promote safe excavation practices through the operation of a state-of-the-art One Call centre for all facility owners in Ontario. As I mentioned, we are unique in that we're now legislated.
We are taking a multifaceted approach to our One Call system in Ontario. There's a strong focus on the members of Ontario One Call, and the legislation is now required that all infrastructure owners that have infrastructure in the public right-of-way have to be a member of Ontario One Call.
We see this as a member-driven organization. In fact, in our not-for-profit status, and we have just adopted the open model of a not-for-profit organization, all members vote on key decisions that are made that affect the operation of the organization.
We also have a public education mandate. We work closely with our Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance and other stakeholders, and we are also following the development of various best practices, including the CSA Z247 that Sher mentioned as well.
To give you a bit of history, Ontario One Call was first established in 1986 and it was at that time a for-profit entity. It was established by Union Gas, Enbridge Gas Distribution, the two large gas distribution utilities in Ontario, plus Bell. That functioned for several years. Then in 2011, it was converted to a not-for-profit organization. In 2012, Bill 8 was passed, and Ontario One Call became a mandatory provider of Call Before You Dig services. As I mentioned, we can add to that timeline now that, as of yesterday, all of the regulations that support the legislation have been approved by cabinet and are effective.
The legislation calls for all gas and oil, telecom and electricity infrastructure owners to join Ontario One Call in the 2013 time frame. In fact, their deadline was last June. It calls for all municipalities to join by June 2014.
We have just under 400 members in Ontario One Call today. By the end of our on-boarding process for this year, we expect to be in excess of 600 members of Ontario One Call. We are expecting in the order of 1 million excavator requests for locates in 2014, and that would be up from something in excess of 800,000 last year. From that 1 million requests, we will issue 6 million notifications to individual members to have them go out and either clear the locate request or actually mark the ground to show where their infrastructure is before an excavator does their work.
In total, there are about 85 staff in Ontario One Call. The vast majority of those are in the call centre. Most of those staff are located in Guelph. We do have a smaller office in Timmins as well. In fact, part of our mandate is to have representation in northern Ontario.
The next slide is perhaps the most interesting in the presentation. It is the one that clearly demonstrates that One Call is effective and does work. This graph shows the history of damages in Ontario from 2008 through 2012. The solid blue bars represent the total number of damages, and the red line shows a damage ratio we refer to, which is damages per 1,000 locates. As you can see from both statistics, we have had a steady decline in the number of damages and in the ratio of damages to 1,000 locates for the last several years. We would expect that to continue, particularly as we bring on all these new members to Ontario One Call.
We do think it is very much a win-win solution. Certainly the owners of buried infrastructure have the opportunity to know all about what is being excavated around their buried infrastructure. It certainly reduces the likelihood of serious damage, therefore reducing the risk for workers and for the public at large. Ontario One Call also provides a 24/7 service, which a lot of individual members may not be able to provide for themselves.
From an excavator's point of view, One Call provides a single phone number and a single call, which often replaces a dozen or more individual calls that they would have had to make to all of the individual infrastructure owners before One Call was in place. That's a significant efficiency from their perspective, and fundamentally it makes it easier for them to dig safely.
Consistent with what Sher was talking about, the effectiveness of any One Call system is highly dependent on being able to have 100 per cent participation. So long as you don't have 100 per cent participation, you're not operating your One Call in an optimal manner.
Even in Ontario where we now have legislation, there are still some infrastructure owners that, in fact, do not have to become part of Ontario One Call, such as Canadian Forces facilities and buildings and campuses owned by the federal government. Here again, this can create some ambiguity. We would like to be able to tell excavators, "You literally only have to call this one number and you don't have to worry about anything else.'' Of course, as long as there is not 100 per cent participation, we can't entirely do that. Even in Ontario, we still have that same issue, as Sher outlined.
That's where we are with Ontario One Call.
The Chair: Thank you both very much. We will now go to questions, beginning with Senator Patterson, please.
Senator Patterson: I thank both of our witnesses.
Ms. Kirk, thank you for the comprehensive overview. You spoke about the progress in establishing One Call centres in various provinces, but not Atlantic Canada. We know the Canadian Common Ground Alliance is working with regional partners in Atlantic Canada to set up One Call systems in order to have all provinces served. I wonder if the Canadian One Call centre committee is directly involved or assisting in this effort.
Ms. Kirk: Yes, we are. As a board member of the CCGA, we're obviously involved from that point of view but, in addition, we have two members of the Atlantic CGA who are directly involved in setting up the One Call, who sit on our committee as sort of associate members at this point until they're fully developed. We offer whatever advice and strategic help we can. The tricky part is with the One Call centre, it is not like somebody can go in with the money and start up a One Call. It has to come from that province. It has to come from utility owners in that province. That seed money has to be there.
Senator Patterson: You have encouraged us to support the establishment of provincial One Call centres across Canada. Does this have to happen before a Canada-wide One Call system can be implemented?
Ms. Kirk: I'm not sure that what we're looking for, just to clarify, is a Canada-wide One Call system. We have the portal, but that links individual One Call centres in each province. There are specific differences right now in provinces. Until best practices are harmonized, each province has its own unique set of practices. A One Call centre for all of Canada possibly down the road could happen with base mapping and issues of familiarity with the places. For example, we operate for Manitoba from Alberta, and I think we find that challenging enough, trying to understand their legal land descriptions, for example, and how their maps are set out. Trying to find locations is not easy if you are not familiar or not from the province.
A One Call centre for Canada, yes, as technology gets better, could happen, but I think that's a ways off. Right now, we would like to focus on having one place to contact across Canada, one place to contact in order to get in touch with your provincial One Call. We would like One Calls in every province and territory.
Senator Patterson: That just brings me to one quick question. Is there any talk or action in moving the territories? None of them have this. There's little pipeline infrastructure, but there's other underground infrastructure. Are they on your radar?
Ms. Kirk: They're on our radar. Once we get Atlantic up, I think that's probably next. We have a bit of a joke in Alberta. We got a phone call maybe two years ago from somebody in the Yukon who was looking to come into Alberta One Call and register with us there, so we started to say Yukon 2015 is our call to action there. Yukon could be next and then the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
The Chair: I think that probably happened when an excavator dug up the fiber optics in Yukon and shut the whole of Yukon down.
Ms. Kirk: Quite probably.
The Chair: I happened to be there at the time. Nothing worked for a few days.
Senator Black: Thank you all for your commitment to this program and also for being here today. As a senator from Alberta, I'm very happy to see that this innovation started in Alberta. That is not what I was going to ask you, though. Ever so quickly, summarize tightly for me, please, what role you think the Government of Canada should have in ensuring your goal becomes reality.
Ms. Kirk: Quite tightly, I think the Government of Canada needs to support the initiative through leadership. They have to state quite clearly that this is the best way to protect our infrastructure. This committee's report can give us a launch pad for other provincial legislation to get started. That coalition of the willing sometimes needs a nudge, and I think this committee can help us get them on board by stating that you think it's the right thing to do. From Ontario's experience, the Government of Canada needs to make sure that there are no exemptions for federally operated areas.
The Chair: I would add to that, though, I think the first item would be safety.
Ms. Kirk: Oh, absolutely.
The Chair: And the second would be protecting the infrastructure.
Senator Massicotte: Thank you all three of you for being here. It is very useful. You have real life experience. That's very relevant for us.
When I first started studying this subject, I always thought that the profit incentive for every contractor, every utility, would automatically incite their participation. I gather from real life experience that's not the case. That's the case for probably the pipelines and probably the case for major utilities, but not the case for all of them. You are saying that unless you legislate, unless you force these people to do so, it won't work because if you don't have everybody participating, the value goes way down.
If I was to summarize from your presentation, Sher, in particular, the reason people are not participating, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard you say "uncompetitive advantage.'' In other words, some utilities don't want to bear the costs. It is a cost, in their mind, which will make them an uncompetitive competitor if they don't all do so, which means they see in their situation that the cost of participating is greater than the cost of repairing their lines, I gather. I presume that could only be the case for utilities like telephone, maybe sewer and water, whereby the damages are not significant if you do strike them.
What they're probably saying is, "I'm better off just repairing them when it happens as opposed to trying to prevent it happening.''
The other thing I read is many contractors get irritated with the delays because it complicates their process. I understand the legislation across Canada is that if there is any rupture by contractors, they're held legally responsible for the rupture.
I am surprised that irrespective of their responsibility, and it could be lots of money, they say, "No, the delays and the irritation are so significant I would rather take some risk and not call.''
The other thing you mentioned is that the plans are not exact, and you mentioned it was because they were done too quickly. I suspect they're often inexact not only because they're done too quickly but also because during construction something happened. There was a problem with a rock or something, so that they had to deviate the line a little bit. So the plans are not as-built and they're not as current.
What bothers me is that it looks like it is done in everybody's interests, but it is not in everybody's interests to so apply this principle. Your argument is that safety is paramount, and no matter if it's not advantageous to anybody, they should be forced to do so. I have a problem with that argument. If there isn't an issue of safety — there's not much of a safety issue on a Bell Canada line or even water and sewer — why would they subsidize? Why would they participate if it's not to their advantage to do so? I can appreciate the greater good, but I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that. Would you comment on that?
Ms. Kirk: Sure. Mostly what you are talking about are telecoms in general. Bell, for example, was one of the founding fathers, as it were, of Ontario One Call. Telus is one of our shareholders that started up Alberta One Call. They see a benefit in it for a telecom. The risk is not high for a telecom for injury, but the risk is high for, imagine, if you will, downtown Toronto, and someone cuts through a fiber line that's providing Internet and phone service to hundreds of businesses. That company will be taken to task in the public eye, in the public forum, because they weren't on One Call. And if the excavator does his due diligence and does everything he can and still manages to hit that line, the risk is that they have shown the public that that's not important to them because they can just repair it after.
Senator Massicotte: Why don't they all do it, then? Why the need for legislation?
Ms. Kirk: Honestly, I'm not going to talk about companies by name, but I can give you examples by saying company A and company B.
Company A is a telecom; company B is a direct competitor to the telecom. Company A is part of One Call, believes in it, supports it, advertises for it, puts their money in, and wants to be part of the common good solution. Company B has no damage prevention mandate, believes they will repair their lines if they get hit, but likes the fact that company A is a member of One Call and is providing locates to excavators and can just talk to the excavators who contact them and say, "I'm doing work. Do you have anything there I need to worry about?'' and their comment is we're in the same trench as company A. Company A is now paying for locates to protect their lines, but they're also protecting their competitors' lines for free at the same time.
Senator Massicotte: Any comments, Mr. Chiotti?
Mr. Chiotti: Let me comment from Ontario One Call's perspective. First of all, from the perspective of the excavator, what we're finding is that, by and large, excavators want to see the system, and they want to be part of the system. There are some excavators that are willing to roll the dice, so to speak, and take the risk of potentially damaging something and thereby not have to incur the time, overhead and whatever of getting locates.
The fact of the matter is excavators as a group would prefer that everybody be on a level playing field, be on the system and getting the locates so that there isn't this tendency for some players to roll the dice and, therefore, perhaps have some slight financial or competitive advantage.
From the members' perspective, one of the most challenging groups we've had to deal with in Ontario One Call is the municipalities because a lot of municipalities were questioning why they needed to be on the system. The interesting thing that you discover when you are dealing with that situation is that, first of all, a lot of infrastructure owners simply don't realize how much excavation happens around their plant. Because they don't get the calls, they don't realize how much excavation is going around their plant. They don't understand how much risk they are, in fact, dealing with when it comes to damage to their plant.
The interesting thing is once we brought the municipal members on, and we have had some that had the actual experience of having major damages prevented as a result of the One Call system, it suddenly turns the light on for them, and they realize there is a big upside to being on One Call. We can save a lot of money in not having to repair our plant by being part of the system.
Senator Massicotte: With respect to the issue of the plans not being exact, I have been in the development business, predominantly commercial but also residential, and it is not uncommon when you are connecting a sewer or water line to a building, especially in residential from a common trunk, you are getting to the house and you encounter a rock or something. It is not uncommon to deviate the line.
Are you saying that you will force these people, the contractors, to prepare as-built drawings every time? That would be quite expensive, and the municipality doesn't require it. Or is the technology available today whereby, when the locates go on site, they will actually know the deviation and therefore there's no need for as-built plans?
Ben Hamilton, Special Advisor, Ontario One Call: I can take that question, senator. The requirements of the Ontario legislation, Bill 8, state that a locate, if you are not giving an all clear, requires both a physical locate and also the paper document, the planning drawing as you described before.
The important part of the Ontario legislation is the physical locate. Both Ontario One Call and the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance encourage the use of tracer wire, which is wire wrapped around the pipe to easily and physically detect pipes. That's really the combination, both records themselves and a physical locate in the field.
Senator Massicotte: Is the physical locate that exact that they know a deviation of two or three feet on that pipe?
Mr. Hamilton: Correct.
Senator Massicotte: You can rely on that?
Mr. Hamilton: Yes.
Senator Wallace: Ms. Kirk, you were asked a question by Senator Patterson about the Atlantic Provinces. As you point out, there are no One Call centres in the Atlantic provinces. I guess those are the only provinces in the country where that exists. I'm from New Brunswick, so that certainly gets my attention.
I'm wondering if you're aware of any particular reason why the Atlantic region has not embraced One Call. Not to answer my own question, but I say that because in my mind, it's a lesser populated area; the size and scale of operations are less. Is there a feeling that those issues can be dealt with locally by particular companies or municipalities and they really don't need a provincial-wide system? In other words, why is there that issue in Atlantic Canada?
Ms. Kirk: Historically, I couldn't really say because I don't know the people that have been involved over the years. I can tell you that the people involved now believe it needs to be there, and they're doing multiple-province monitoring for Atlantic Canada. It would be New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I.
I would venture a guess, though, that because of the nature of the territory that they are building in, there's not as much underground. It's very rocky territory, so there's probably a lot of above-ground facilities and less underground. St. John's has its own One Call centre run through — is it Enbridge Gas?
Senator Day: Saint John or St. John's?
Ms. Kirk: St. John's.
Senator Wallace: I'm from outside of Saint John.
Ms. Kirk: If you were to go through the Click Before You Dig site, you'll see their phone number is there, even though they're not a true One Call center. It's important for us to get that information out, what's available where.
Senator Wallace: I'm wondering if you're aware, are there any statistics in Atlantic Canada for the number of incidents or disruptions that have occurred to underground services? You have a lot of national stats and Ontario stats, but I'm wondering, is there anything we can look at in Atlantic Canada to get a sense province to province what the experience has been?
Ms. Kirk: Not that I can provide, but I'm sure the facility owners in Atlantic Canada could provide you with their stats, or I could access them through the Atlantic CGA. I'm sure we can get some of those numbers for you.
Senator Wallace: If you could, that would be interesting. I'd appreciate that.
Mr. Chiotti: Senator, I might offer a bit of speculation. I don't think it's any coincidence that One Call centres have founding members who are invariably the gas distribution utility, and obviously that's because they have the greatest to lose; when their plants are damaged, catastrophic events can occur.
Natural gas has been relatively late coming to the Maritime provinces, so perhaps that's one of the reasons why they haven't been as aggressive in establishing One Calls but why they would want to do so now because gas is coming into those provinces.
Senator Wallace: Certainly it has occurred at a later stage, but it has been in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Time passes. It has been there now for 10 years.
Senator Seidman: Thank you. Last week when Frank Zechner from the Canadian Construction Association was here, he told the committee that the Ontario legislation, while a good first step, does not have an enforcement mechanism to ensure utilities comply with the legislation. He mentioned two requirements: reasonable information and reasonable time. I also understand that the U.S. has a system to ensure compliance.
My question for you about the Ontario One Call system is: Was this compliance considered when the One Call was being developed? What are the barriers that may have prevented you from introducing this mechanism in the legislation?
Mr. Chiotti: I know Ben is itching to answer this question, so I'm going to let him do so.
Mr. Hamilton: I'm always glad to hear Frank Zechner's name; he and I go way back to the founding days of the Ontario initiative. I have a high regard for Frank.
On this one, though, he's going to have to take "yes'' for an answer; the regulations passed yesterday by the Ontario cabinet do include the various mechanisms to ensure compliance. I know Bob Bailey from Ontario, the MPP for Sarnia-Lambton, testified here a couple weeks ago.
When we put together what was originally Bill 180, later renamed Bill 8 after an election, the thinking was let's take compliance out of this legislation and worry about it afterwards. At the time, it was a private member's bill and it was focused on making sure the positive aspects were included in the legislation.
I think the thinking shared amongst the stakeholders at the time was, if you put it into the enforcement, that might seem negative, so let's put it on the back burner. In effect, that was deferred to the regulations. That's not something required or inherent in any One Call legislation; it's just how it evolved in Ontario.
One of the other concerns Frank expressed was how to enforce the rules. The rule in Ontario specifically for providing locates on time is reasonable attempts within five business days. In terms of a North American standard, five business days is actually the longest in North America. Most U.S. jurisdictions are anywhere from two calendar days to three business days. The Ontario experience is giving owners and members the largest latitude possible. I think that also comes with a correlating expectation that they will be well-positioned to meet that requirement.
In terms of how compliance works, broadly and briefly, in a lot of U.S. jurisdictions, there are various mixed models. A lot of them rely on what you might call civil enforcement, so police officers issuing tickets or someone can try to bring someone to court or some kind of quasi-judicial body.
In Ontario, the model we chose was basically described as a committee model of enforcement or what might also be described as self-directed enforcement. The enforcement mechanism actually exists within the Ontario One Call compliance committee, and the compliance committee is not a subcommittee of the board but in fact a different committee with different members, representative stakeholder groups, including excavators. Someone like Frank Zechner or someone from his side of the world would be involved in this. They would actually evaluate the performance data of the individual members as well as excavators because they can be subject to enforcement action. They decide how to proceed against members who are not meeting the legislated standards.
That gives One Call as an organization a lot of freedom and ability to chart its own course in terms of how it will deal with compliance and not rely on some external party who may or may not share the same zeal that a One Call organization would.
Senator Seidman: That's very helpful, but could you tell me, then, is your enforcement in the form of financial penalties?
Mr. Hamilton: Financial penalties are really the last resort. There are what are called administrative monetary amounts, so it is possible to issue financial penalties to members. But in the view of One Call and its board, that's actually the last resort.
We have a system of escalating enforcement that starts with written notification, where there's an opportunity for members to work with Ontario One Call to get back into compliance, much like you can ask a prosecutor in traffic court to tear up your ticket. If you take certain remedial actions, it's a similar model to what we envision with Ontario One Call, escalating enforcement and the opportunity for members to get back into compliance.
At the end of the day, Ontario One Call doesn't want the revenue from financial penalties. What it really wants — and both the members and excavators want — is compliance with the act.
Senator Seidman: Sure. I can certainly understand that and understand why you would use financial penalties as a last resort.
Do you think your One Call system could easily be adopted by other provinces as a best practice model?
Mr. Hamilton: In a word, yes. The Ontario bill, Bill 8, supported by Bob Bailey and Paul Miller, the New Democrat MPP for Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, is very brief, in a sense. It's only four and a half pages, and it includes both official languages, but it is also comprehensive; it deals with the key issues around both the owners of underground infrastructure and the excavators. In combination with the regulations passed yesterday, it pretty much provides a complete A to Z model of what a One Call system that's very comprehensive could look like in any part of Canada.
Senator Seidman: Do you still have resistance despite the fact you have this mandatory system? It's fairly new; it was just passed yesterday. Do you still have resistance, groups not wanting to join?
Mr. Hamilton: I would say that certainly as Bill 8 came close to passing two years ago there was a lot of resistance. Since the bill passed, it's fair to say that resistance has melted away. There are a lot of long-time philosophical opponents of One Call legislation in Ontario that have now signed on enthusiastically and participating. They are probably our best and most efficient members.
Once you reach that point of passing legislation, a lot of the resistance they may face in other Canadian jurisdictions will melt away.
Senator Seidman: I saw Ms. Kirk nodding when I asked the question about whether your model could be easily replicated in other provinces. So not only could your model be easily replicated but your experience could be used as perhaps some encouragement to other provinces to replicate it. I don't know if you've thought of sharing best practices. We do that in this country; we share best practices in different provinces and help each other. That is one way to encourage other provinces to replicate what Ontario has done.
The Chair: Thank you. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank all three of you for coming out. Again, I apologize that we were a little bit late, but we appreciate your information. If we have anything else, our clerk will contact you, or if you have anything you want to send to us make sure you send it to the clerk.
We need to address an issue in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee continued in public.)
The Chair: Welcome back to the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
Following a discussion amongst steering committee members, as well as with full committee, and in consideration of the relatively busy legislative agenda for the Senate and, we believe, the committee this spring, a revised 2014-15 budget application for the Northern Energy Study is before us. The principal change in this revision is that it takes what was previously budgeted as two activities and combines them into one trip, tentatively scheduled for May.
Our present poll of committee members indicates that approximately 10 are interested in attending all or a portion of the trip; therefore, this budget reflects this number as opposed to the previous nine.
Should the committee adopt the budget this evening, it will replace the earlier version with the two trips and be submitted to Internal Economy for their consideration. It should be noted that some $11,000 has been saved by combining the trips and adding one senator.
Therefore, honourable senators, is it agreed that the revised special study budget application (Northern Territories Energy) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015, be approved, as amended, taking into consideration the meeting's discussions; and that the chair be authorized to submit the application to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets, and Administration?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)