Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witness.
I think there have been some questions here that are not within the focus of our study, which is supposed to be on economic development north of 60. I'm going to try to bring it back there, in one sense; in another sense, maybe I'm not.
This government has decided to focus on the north a lot. We've had some very significant expenditures north of 60, including hydro, the Mayo B project, and the linking of the two grids in the Yukon. We've put a major expenditure into northern British Columbia, extending hydro transmission from Terrace up to Bob Quinn Lake, a distance of about 335 kilometres. All of this means that we're getting to a point at which it would be not that great a challenge to hook up British Columbia to the Yukon grid and the Yukon grid, potentially, to Alaska, which would accomplish a pretty significant thing.
I think it's important to recognize that we are also investing in some very significant infrastructure needs--perhaps not transmission, but highway infrastructure and work that will lead to highway infrastructure in NWT. We have invested a lot in energy-efficient housing in the north, particularly in Nunavut.
All of this is on the wavelength, I think, that energy conservation is important. Canada is a young country, and we're a large country. We have a lot of geography and not necessarily the infrastructure and transmission facilities in place that we need. From what I gathered from the early part of your presentation, you often have to have a grid in place to maximize efficiency from renewables.
With those comments in mind, do you see that this is going to be a major long-term benefit to achieving that goal?