Speech to the Community of Federal Regulators - Regulatory Excellence Awards
By Peter Watson, Chair of the National Energy Board
Ottawa, Ontario
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
Check against delivery
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you all today. I am finding that themes of this event today are really resonating with me: Regulatory excellence has been top of mind for me and for our organization lately. I have recently been travelling across Canada, engaging with people all across the country and especially in areas with NEB-regulated facilities: I have heard plenty about the issues, and about ways that our organization could improve its work. It was important to hear that and we are going to take action on that- but I’ll say it is really refreshing to have an opportunity to reflect on the stuff that we - and the other federal regulators - are doing right! Canadian regulators are doing tremendous work all across the country, and it is great to hear some of the specific examples.
It is important to take time to reflect on our work. Easier said than done, I know. We all have those days when it feels like we are simply running from issue to issue, problem-solving on the fly or just trying to keep pace with the speed of the world around us. As regulators, especially, we have to be responsive to so many differing pressures - from industry, from the public, from local governments, to name a few - and I think it is easy to feel a little bogged down at times.
Events like the Regulatory Excellence Awards give us the space to not only celebrate the good work we have done, but to also think about being even better and how to lead excellence in our field.
The work we do is critically important. I believe that regulators are in very privileged positions - positions that actually drive improvements to lives of Canadians every day. Think about that: what a great place to be, to have direct impact on things like safety, security, innovation, justice and prosperity for Canadians. We have the ability to look at systems, to test their quality, and to lead improvement. We can lead changes and make things better. This is powerful.
And in being regulatory leaders, we also have the tremendous responsibility to never let our vigilance down, because a lot is riding on the work we do every day - even those days when we feel like we can barely keep up with the emails and the meetings.
It is important not to get stuck in the transactional aspects of our work. I think it’s easy to put our heads down and focus on our particular tasks - but what we need to do is also stay aware of the bigger picture of what is happening around us and what we will do about it.
Leading regulatory excellence is about responding to the inevitable changes that take place in society. Responding to change is something that the NEB, as the national energy regulator, has gotten a crash course in recently. I have likened it to being in the eye of a perfect storm, with changes coming from all sides in how Canadians feel and talk about energy infrastructure, what they want to know about the energy industry, and what they want to know about us as the regulator.
After many years of quietly regulating pipelines, the NEB found itself in a situation of increased scrutiny. People were scrutinizing how we processed project applications, how we inspected facilities, how we communicated with companies or with landowners, how we were funded - we were suddenly answering hundreds of media calls rather than dozens, and called to appear before Parliamentary committees.
Quite a change for us, working away in Calgary, as I said, on what we saw as our critical regulatory tasks - hearing applications and inspecting pipelines, and doing a good job at it. But that was no longer enough to convince Canadians that we were, in fact, on the job and keeping pipelines safe. It forced us, as a regulator, to sit up and look around and say “okay, what is driving this, and where are we at, exactly?
We started with engagement. We decided we had to hear from Canadians, directly, about what they felt they needed to know about us, about the regulatory processes we use, and about public safety around pipeline and energy facilities. And at the same time we wanted to take an opportunity to go out face-to-face with groups of people and actually talk to them about our role, our processes, and what we saw as our priorities.
In the six months of this National Outreach, I, along with some NEB staff, travelled nearly 40,000 km and attended more than 70 meetings in 34 cities across 9 provinces and two territories.
The NEB also launched an online forum that garnered over 27,500 views.
During these meetings there were three key themes I consistently heard all across the country: how are we protecting water resources, how are we protecting lands, and are we as an organization good enough to do the job especially if there was an emergency.
I have to say, some groups would be skeptical of us at the beginning of the meeting, but by the end we had their full attention and in most cases their support. Increasing public confidence in what we do was one the key drivers for the initiative and I was pleased to see that it began to be realized as we met with people during our travels. That’s not to say we are done with engaging Canadians, but we certainly accomplished what we set out to do.
And, more importantly, it has given us the tools we need to better respond to the changes facing us, as a regulator. We have a sense of what is driving the change at the ground-level, and we are creating strategies to address it. We are opening regional offices in Montreal and Vancouver. These are key regions impacted by energy infrastructure, and we will be able to be there to engage with them, right in their communities.
At the beginning of the month, the NEB hosted a Safety Forum, which brought together industry, safety and environmental protection specialists, environmental and landowner groups and representatives from municipalities, to talk about what Canadians want from us as the regulator and from the broader energy industry, and what we can do to go about fulfilling that.
We have initiated consultations on some aspects of our safety programs, notably around emergency response planning and fostering safety culture, to improve how we communicate those critical aspects of pipeline safety oversight in a more tangible way to people who want and need the information.
We have, in a sense, gotten ourselves “unstuck” from a way of thinking that had hindered us from asking the question: so what can we do better, and from talking openly and transparently about the issues with the public.
And now that we feel “unstuck” from some of our former patterns of thinking, I think we as an organization are feeling a lot of excitement about the possibilities ahead of us. We are asking ourselves, “What does regulatory excellence mean to us”? What are we going to do to achieve it, to be leaders in it?”
A lot of thinking and work needs to be done. Certainly none of this is simple, or easy, or a quick process. But the momentum is there, and it is being fed by the understanding that - wow, we can really have an impact here that will directly improve the lives of Canadians. We can make things even safer. We can help people feel more confident about energy infrastructure. We can help communities understand and prepare for the risks that they worry about. We can and we will do more, in the public interest.
When I look around at my colleagues here today - and, in particular when I look at the achievements of the next set of leaders - like Mr. Corey Dekker, who is doing tremendous work at the NEB - I really do feel inspired. And privileged to be in a place where I can lead, and work with people like you, who lead, all towards creating a better country for all Canadians.
Thank you.
