Thank you, Chair.
It's great to see you, Marty, and great to see my colleagues today.
It's ironic that the Conservatives would bring up the issue and talk about division on a day when Canada announced that it would be sending 225 of our Canadian Armed Forces members over to Europe to help train the Ukrainian soldiers to fight Putin's unjust, unwarranted, unprovoked war against the Ukrainian people. We will always stand with the Ukrainian people shoulder to shoulder and side by side as we continue this journey together. It's going to be a long one.
I use the word “long” specifically because I do wish to talk about.... On July 16, 2022, Josep Borrell put out a blog. He is the high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy. In his blog, he commented about the need for strategic patience—that is, the need for Europe to transition away from Russian energy dependence, whether it's oil and gas and even, to a certain extent, coal, and to transition to alternative suppliers, including many countries in Africa, the Middle East, including Kazakhstan as well, for some energy consumers, including Italy and Germany, and also for Canada to play a role in that obviously green transition.
I do wish to ask Minister Wilkinson first, how is Canada—I don't want to say “positioning itself”, because it has been doing so for many years—specifically aiding Europe on the LNG front in its transition to more secure, democratically oriented suppliers of energy and also to the transition to green? I'll then have a follow-up question for Minister Joly, please.