Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to speak in favour of the motion. Although I agree with the premise of the bill, and feel the bill has its heart in the right place, I have to support the effort to set it aside.
Referring to Mr. Warawa's motion, I'm going to particularly comment on points one, three, four, and five, as it relates to my area of the country, in Atlantic Canada. I was very happy to see Mr. Eyking here today because usually I'm the only member of Atlantic Canada on this committee.
As you might know, Atlantic Canada is probably the most economically depressed region of this country—in fact it is--and one of our great hopes is in the production of clean, green, perpetual energy and exporting that energy to the eastern seaboard of the United States, as well as using that energy to power our own businesses, homes, and other areas for which we need electric production.
Prince Edward Island has a huge initiative in the area of wind production. Of course Newfoundland already has a huge hydro industry, and it is looking to expand that with the development of Lower Churchill Falls. New Brunswick is working on nuclear energy production.
In Nova Scotia, particularly in my riding of Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, we are producing tidal power, wind power, and geothermal power, and we are looking to expand on that. Currently in my riding we have a wind project where 23 windmills are going up. We have just had an announcement of a $23-million undersea cable for tidal power in the Bay of Fundy, which will produce up to 64 megawatts of power. It has the potential to produce enough to power every house in the entire riding.
Last week the Province of Nova Scotia and the Province of Newfoundland announced a $6.2-billion deal to run an undersea power cable between Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. The deal is between Emera and Newfoundland's crown corporation of Nalcor.