Thank you, Mr. Chair.
With great respect to my friend and colleague Mr. Kmiec, I agree that we 100% need to respect provincial jurisdiction, but in this case, Premier Smith actually disagrees that this is entirely provincial jurisdiction. She said that the reason they are putting a moratorium on renewable energy projects is that.... I will quote. One of the reasons they've put a moratorium on this is that “the feds are preventing development of backup generation for renewable energy like natural gas”, which is not a renewable energy
I think he recognizes that you have your hand up.
The federal government does have a role to play here. If she would like to build natural gas preferentially over wind, solar, hydro and nuclear, that may be her prerogative, but as my colleague just said, emissions do not respect provincial boundaries. In 2005, in Ontario, we had five operating coal and coke power plants. A Liberal government ran on a promise to close those down. In 2006, we had 80 smog days in Ontario, and since then we've had less than four. It's because we don't have coal plants anymore.
You said that Alberta's a leader in renewable energy. They absolutely are—because of their progress, but not because of their position. It's because of their rate of acceleration, but not for their current position. Alberta generates their electricity with 90% of their grid coming from coal and coke currently, so we're getting there with Alberta. They have a goal to be off of coal and coke by next spring. However, currently 90% of that grid is electrified using coal and coke.
That's an ambitious target. I respect that. However, putting a moratorium on new renewable energy projects in the province is going to stifle that goal. I have an interest in the respiratory health of Albertans. I have an interest in reducing the amount of energy grid in Canada that's supplied by coal and coke. It was a huge thing for Ontario to get off. Now Ontario's natural gas is the only non-renewable energy source that provides energy to the grid, and it's only 70%. Quebec is by far the best in the country, with 94% from hydro and only 6% from the rest. Ontario uses mostly nuclear. Ontario, B.C. and Quebec are the leaders in this because of our position, not because of our rate of acceleration—