In terms of an energy use perspective in British Columbia, electricity is $40 a gigajoule and natural gas is $19. There's an important price difference. That's why many households in British Columbia heat with gas where the infrastructure is available.
In the north, there's a lot of natural gas infrastructure for transmission to markets and other places. To build it or to build the processing infrastructure so that you can have household natural gas in Blueberry River First Nations or in the Nisga'a costs money, and it's money that cannot be recovered by rates because of the population in those communities and the inability to share that cost across all of the rate base in British Columbia. Ontario has solved that problem with their program of a dollar per ratepayer.
There are federal programs. We identified about $14 billion in federal programs for community energy and these kinds of things that are out there, but they really don't support this kind of project.
I think what we're saying is that at the household level, there's a real benefit to filling this gap. The resource is there. Part of the infrastructure is there. We just need a resource. There are federal programs out there. They just don't really address this to close that infrastructure gap so that these communities can have that affordable energy access. That gives them way more options.
