Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for having us.
My name is David Sword, and I'm in the energy field. I'm also here to support the coalition in its overall position on manufacturing and energy in Canada.
There's a strong relationship between energy projects and the manufacturing sector in Canada. When anything energy-related needs to be built in this country, manufacturing benefits immediately and directly. Canadian manufacturing provides the necessary ingredients to help the energy sector both build and maintain its operations.
That brings us to natural gas. It's a vital fuel, and thankfully Canada has an abundant supply. Natural gas is in demand both within our country and worldwide.
That's where LNG comes into play. LNG is liquid natural gas, of course, natural gas that has been supercooled to form a liquid to enable ease of long-distance transportation. Natural gas is being used to help fuel economic growth and replace coal, and it is also a perfect fuel complement to the intermittent nature of renewable energy.
It's valued because of its cleaner-burning aspects in terms of air particulates, but the fuel also contains a fraction of the GHG content of coal. That's a fuel that's in wide use in Asia, and it continues to grow. For example, in China and India they add new coal plants annually, and now Japan is seeking to do the same.
Canada can and should play a vital role, a global role, in providing that fuel of choice to improve air quality and to be a supplier of choice, and also to get the capital investment and jobs that are in the sector and jobs in manufacturing. Doing that would help Canada's overall contribution to lowering global emissions. What goes up must come down somewhere, and it is truly a global issue.
We have to get more projects going. Just consider a tale of two countries, Canada and the United States. We are both rich in natural gas. We have abundant supplies, but the United States has gone from having virtually no exports and being poised to import to being one of the world's top natural gas exporters in less than a decade.
According to the FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, the United States has seven existing export terminals, eight under construction, and 14 that have been approved for construction and are awaiting final investment decisions. Canada has two, and both are experiencing some form of difficulty. So in the LNG hockey game, the score is 29-2 for the United States.
We're a nation of builders, but we simply can't get big projects going well. The path must be cleared for such valued projects. Approvals have to be strict, but there must be a clear path to yes. If a proponent follows a very strict set of guidelines and strict rules, with public input and participation and with reasonable time frames, there has to be a signal to the proponent that they stand a strong chance of success if they follow the rules and the criteria.
We don't seem to enjoy that in Canada. That applies to all major projects going forward, and not just to the resource sector. Changes to major approvals were significant under Bill C-69, so it is our recommendation that the bill be amended with the series of recommendations that were submitted to the Senate during the debate on the legislation.
Virtually all sectors agree that in the absence of such a change, no large-sized project will be advanced, and certainly none will be undertaken, under this set of conditions. We do not think that stopping major projects and resource developments was the intended end result of Bill C-69, but it appears that that is what it has been.
Together, through effort, we can create jobs, improve air quality, have more successful manufacturing, and create an energy and economic future for Canada. LNG and manufacturing want to play that role. Our organization is going to be releasing a more comprehensive list of recommendations to help restart the economy, but this will be a major centrepiece of it.
Thank you for your time.