That's exactly where I wanted to take you next, Mr. Scholz.
The American chamber of commerce's 21st century research institute on energy is now advising both political parties on Capitol Hill that the United States is going full steam ahead into natural gas, including shale gas and shale oil.
The Chinese have found massive deposits of natural gas in the southwest. They are building pipelines to their cities on the eastern side of the country.
I wanted to ask you about the need to address natural gas, and about how we can do that if we don't actually have an adult discussion in Canada right now about a national energy strategy.
For example, we don't know how fossil fuels will connect to renewables, which will connect to hydro, and connect to nuclear, and connect to biofuels going forward. We don't know, with regard to the existing fiscal measures that are in place, what the net effects will be on our energy future. We don't know what the programmatic expenditures are having on our energy future. We certainly don't know how any of this is connected to Mr. Harper's promise to reduce greenhouse gases by 17% in absolute terms in the next 13 years.
Now, we're way behind every other OECD country that we've looked at. How do we do a natural gas strategy in the absence of a more fulsome national examination of what our energy future is all about?