Transport committee  Oh, that's a great question. Thank you so much for that one. Let me give you this example. There is a locomotive in the U.S. delivering coal to a coal-fired generation plant, and it's running on LNG. It is happening, and there are companies like Caterpillar and so forth that are working on LNG for locomotives.

Transport committee  I think that really is the tool upon which the federal government could make that happen to lessen the burden and the risk on the capitalization.

Transport committee  Yes, and I would support your recommendation. The Robert trucking company, for example, has embarked upon looking at natural gas for the trucking industry. Gaz Métro has been a leader. I would absolutely say yes. I think the federal government, in looking at municipalities, could ease that for municipalities in helping them over that bridge of the capitalization.

Transport committee  Thank you for your questions.

Transport committee  First, let me correct you and say that Encana is a producer of natural gas. To the end that natural gas is available for your barbecues and so forth, it may actually come from Encana. From that perspective, we think there should be some competition in the marketplace with what's there right now.

Transport committee  Maybe I could turn that question back to the federal government to ask why you haven't switched your entire government fleet over to natural gas. Part of it is that the investment has already been made in vehicles. Typically, what you will find with municipalities is that they've kept their buses between 12 and 20 years.

Transport committee  I think there are two elements to your question. One is the infrastructure. Let me tackle that one first. I think you'll find that private companies like Encana and others are building the infrastructure to support natural gas for transportation. We recently opened up a Strathmore compressed natural gas station in September.

Transport committee  Thank you so much. Members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to be here today. I share your interest in public transit, having used regularly the LRT in Edmonton, the GO Train, the subway, buses in Toronto, buses in Vancouver, and buses in Halifax, and once I'm through my residential renovations, I will be using the LRT in Calgary.

Finance committee  I do. I think it should be a parliamentary committee and I think it should be looking at all aspects of the incentives in North America, at what the incentives are that will drive the adoption of natural gas. That kind of committee could then come forward with some great recommendations for budget 2013.

Finance committee  In terms of global threats, looking at the carbonization of the oil sands is a bigger threat than Buy America right now. I think it's vigilant for us as a Canadian population to tackle that issue, because they are certainly not doing the same thing with the Russian oil and so forth.

Finance committee  Thank you for that. It's not my area of expertise, but I will make a comment. I think when you start looking at the whole picture, at the royalties paid by companies--in Canada, it's only for natural gas--at the investments, and at the manufacturing in Ontario, which is directly related to the oil sands and natural gas, it's up to about 40%.

Finance committee  I would like to comment. As the former president of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, I want to say that over the last ten years more and more people, both women and men, have gone into the trades and we've worked hard at promoting that as a great career option.

Finance committee  Certainly the apprenticeship grants and so forth that have come on recently have been very good.

Finance committee  Certainly we heard a tremendous commitment by our minister in regard to looking at Canada's secure natural gas resource. I think his speech was also looking at how we might use that in better ways, such as transportation, power generation, and so forth. For me, it was really good recognizing that we do have a key asset that is secure that we need to extrapolate into other marketplaces.

Finance committee  As I indicated, from what we know now in terms of current demands, we have over 100 years supply of natural gas. If you start incenting more demand, you'll start incenting more exploration. With some of the finds that will probably even grow higher and higher.