Environment committee  If we have additional comments, we'll provide them in writing. Thank you.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. Those kinds of determinations are made in each of the jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction has a different approach to it. Some provinces have integrated resource-planning processes. Some provinces have an independent system operator that is charged with undertaking those sorts of studies.

Environment committee  Yes. Thank you for the question. As a representative of a national association essentially representing an industry that is principally provincially based, this is what we do. We spend the bulk of our time trying to bridge those divides. As a country, we've been successful in the past at having federal and provincial co-operation in areas that are principally a provincial responsibility.

Environment committee  Well, within our association, we have both the incumbent utility companies and the largest independent power producers. They are members of our association, and they are also active participants in the discussions that take place among the CEOs around the boardroom table about the policies for the electricity sector writ large.

Environment committee  That's a terrific question. I think what we're seeing, and what we're going to continue to see, is two forces happening at the same time—both expansion and contraction taking place at the same time. To be able to meet those long-term targets that we have with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to have to significantly increase our grid-connected and grid-level power, but we're also going to have to massively ramp up what happens at the individual consumer level and at the community level.

Environment committee  In one word, it is foundational. Absolutely.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. It is going to be critical that we have co-operation and collaboration between different levels of government, between different stakeholders. The energy and resource round tables have the potential, I think, to be important and critical as we move forward.

Environment committee  I think those kinds of approaches are going to be critical. We're talking about—particularly with the larger projects—assets that will last for decades. To be able to make investment decisions on assets that will last for decades, the certainty with respect to the business environment within which you're operating needs to be beyond the medium term.

Environment committee  The requirement to make investments in the order of—as was said earlier—somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion requires a level of certainty that we don't have at this stage. That is what we're looking for. We need certainty in the ability to move projects through to completion.

Environment committee  I thank the member for the question. There are different approaches that need to be taken for different circumstances. I mentioned there are 10 provincial and three territorial electricity systems. To the member's point, there are significant differences in the requirements for rural, remote and indigenous communities.

Environment committee  That is the challenge of everybody in the electric vehicle space right now: ensuring that we have that infrastructure. So far it's been a combination of private players, commercial operators, the utilities themselves, and governments and municipalities that are building out infrastructure.

Environment committee  We have clarity in some areas. We have clarity, for example, with respect to the price of carbon. That's one piece of the plank. What we are lacking, really, is clarity in some other specific areas. One area where we would like to see some clarity is.... We would very much like to see an articulated national strategy for electrification.

Environment committee  Thank you for your questions. The membership of the association has been engaged in those conversations about the mandates since the very beginning. We continue to engage. The process has certainly not come to a landing. There are a great many challenges as we move forward to the future.

Environment committee  Most of the challenges I'm talking about are not specific to the mandates themselves. The challenges we're attempting to address are more technical challenges that we have with the timing of upgrades to the distribution system, so from a system's standpoint, and increasingly working with customers to ensure that the kind of service the individual customers have is appropriate for what they will require.

Environment committee  I thank the member for the question. As I noted in my comments, if we're going to meet our 2050 targets and if we're going to double or triple the electricity system in this country, we will need an “all of the above” approach. Transmission, and greater regional transmission, will absolutely be required for the future, but it is not the sole solution.