A number of years ago, Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol. Ever since, the direction of the country in regard to climate change has been uncertain. Are we going to comply with Kyoto or not? Will something else replace Kyoto? Will we see a continental cap-and-trade regime with the arrival of the Obama administration? For a number of years now, we have not had much clarity from the federal government on exactly where we're going and what the regulations will look like.
The current federal government announced a couple of years ago their own Turning the Corner guidelines, which started to give us a bit of focus. But of course, with the election of the Obama administration, the direction has shifted to a continental approach. Canada is concerned to make sure we're not on the outside of what could be tariff-like restrictions on Canadian exports of energy and all sorts of energy-intensive exports to the United States.
When you don't know what the regulatory framework is going to be, long-term investments are going to be deferred. Companies have announced that, with respect to some of the long-term oil sands projects, they're not willing to proceed with multibillion-dollar, 30-to-50-year projects without a better idea of what the emissions regulatory framework is going to look like. They need to translate it into costs for their projects. The entire world is groping its way towards some kind of international consensus on this.
I would only urge that the Canadian government understand how much we all depend on the largest private sector investment industry in Canada. It is crucial to our balance of trade exports, the strength of our currency, and our prosperity. We cannot afford to diminish, inadvertently or not, the wealth-generating potential of the oil and gas sector through an attempt to comply with a regulatory framework that is not achievable in the short term. In fact, many advocates of Kyoto admitted it would have a negligible impact on climate change in this century.
If you look out to the year 2030, even at rapid—