Thank you very much.
I'll just speak very openly. First and foremost, what we need is a relaxation of the very intense and often quite hostile rhetoric across this country on the part of certain provinces towards the western producing region in Canada and, indeed, from the leaders of the national parties. That in itself has created a real problem.
Our investors are saying to us that they believe Canada's energy sector faces a unique structural risk, which is that it's under-represented in national policy and related decision-making. They can invest elsewhere. They can invest into companies within the oil and gas sector that are in the same business and don't have that kind of risk. That's a point we've heard over and over, unfortunately. Eighty per cent of our investors are in fact international and are some of the largest and highest-quality investors in the world, and they are incredibly discouraged.
One other point I'm going to make, which few people are really aware of, is that the entrepreneurial and independent sector in Canada has been crushed. In 2014, there were 139 listed public Canadian independent oil and gas and energy companies, and about one half of them are going through some form of insolvency event. Another 20% are getting close to that. There has been a $100-billion loss of value just in those companies alone. These are companies that are run by Canadians, and many of the investors in fact are Canadians. There really has been a wipeout.
Your question is a fantastic one. Quite frankly, I wish I had my five very specific recommendations to really turn around the oil and gas sector in Canada. There are a number of things, but we have to let go of the hostility. We need to find a unifying vision. We need to understand that the energy transition we're in is long-term, over multiple decades. We need to see the importance of Canada's energy sector to all of Canada, and we need to preserve it in a competitive position, which means, as some of the other witnesses have been saying, that our regulatory decision-making needs to be fair and efficient.