Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Natural gas is central to Canada's energy mix, meeting approximately 30% of the country's energy needs, more than electricity. Well over half of the Canadian population relies on natural gas for heat and power in over six million homes, apartments, businesses, hospitals, schools, and other facilities across the country.
Today an average natural gas bill accounts for approximately 0.6%, or six-tenths of 1%, of household spending. That's one-third the money spent on electricity and one-seventh the amount spent on transportation.
This is a significant value in difficult economic times. Add to this the versatility, reliability, safety, and environmental performance of natural gas and you get a significant competitive advantage for Canada in our resource and the infrastructure delivering it.
These key facts provide some context for our responses to the five questions the committee is asking witnesses to address.
When you ask about our thoughts on the challenges of economic recovery and growth, or about the productivity challenge, we believe our product is key to our response. Natural gas, because of its abundance, affordability, versatility, and reliability, is enabling recovery and growth, and delivering on productivity. Backed by a remarkably robust transmission and distribution system of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of pipe in the ground, we're a key part of the economic recovery and growth and productivity solution.
When you ask us about job creation, we have two points to make. First, natural gas resource development is a significant job creator across the country, and a growing one as the abundance of the resource becomes more evident. But there's another job creation benefit that's arguably much greater still. Investors look for the best return on their dollar. Affordable energy helps create that return, so investment often goes where there's affordable energy. With that comes the employment that investment creates as businesses and industry locate to affordable energy markets. Canada, because of its natural gas resource and its safe and reliable infrastructure, is one such market.
When you ask about the demographic challenge, I've little to say here beyond a reiteration of what I know you are hearing from many: the workforce is aging and we need to attract skilled talent. The case is the same in the natural gas industry, and the concern a serious one. Our industry, like most, is prepared to work with government in addressing it.
But on your final question, about other challenges, I wanted to speak in slightly more detail about three we face as a country and about the opportunity we believe the gas industry, working in partnership with the government, has to address them.
The first is with respect to the development of remote and northern communities. This development is increasingly important for realizing the promise of our natural resources, for sovereignty, and for the social and economic well-being of aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians in the communities.
CGA would like to work with the federal government to assess how natural gas can reduce the energy costs and improve the environmental performance in such communities for the heating and power generation needs. Together we can leverage investment by Canadian utilities and others to fund infrastructure. We can bring high-efficiency and natural gas technologies, such as combined heat and power and biogas energy systems, to reduce energy costs and the environmental footprint. We can support an information-sharing program that facilitates the development and implementation of community energy systems.
The second is with respect to the broader societal need to drive innovation and efficiency. This government has highlighted these as priorities and is seeking ways to trigger more activity to keep Canada's economy as innovative and efficient as possible.
As global leading energy producers and consumers, we've often been at the forefront of energy, innovation, and efficiency. CGA wants this trend to continue for the gas industry. In this regard, we're extending an open hand to government to cooperate with us on our energy, technology, and innovation Canada initiative to mobilize strategic investment in the demonstration and commercialization of natural gas technologies.
Second, CGA member companies have a long history as leaders in driving energy efficiency. We continue to do this, but now also work with new ventures like QUEST to deepen the understanding of efficiency in order to ensure better delivery of infrastructure. We believe there's a role for government to ensure its efficiency programs are working as closely as possible with utilities and ventures like QUEST.
Third, with respect to transportation, I know you heard yesterday from my colleague Alicia Milner of the CNGVA. As she will have noted, Canadians are significant travellers. Geography, a thinly spread population, and the nature of our economy all help to account for that. Effective transportation is dependent on energy, and natural gas has historically played a very small role in transportation in Canada. The opportunity exists for that to change.
Natural Resources Canada worked with a number of private sector stakeholders to complete the Natural Gas Use in the Canadian Transportation Sector Deployment Roadmap document, which shows that the medium and heavy-duty vehicle subsector is a good starting point in terms of where natural gas can offer significantly lower fuel costs, operating costs, and emissions.
CGA supports the concerns expressed by the CNGVA. We believe the Government of Canada should act on the full set of recommendations in its road map, and partner with industry to determine how to ensure that Canada retains a competitive position in the North American marketplace.
Mr. Chair, we believe that natural gas is smart energy and it is growing in popularity because of its versatility, reliability, affordability, safety, and cleanliness. We believe that CGA's natural gas distribution utilities and natural gas, the commodity, can support the government's economic, energy, and environmental objectives going forward.
Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee.