You're raising an interesting point, because it's clear that one way to ward off some of the pain is clearly to be less dependent and use less energy per unit of production. On that score there's plenty of room for government to provide incentives and expertise, to the extent it can be pulled together, to allow industrial producers to become more efficient. That's win-win-win all the way. If anything, this should be a moment where those sorts of things are being taken forward.
On the east-west grid, what I find amazing about Canada is that we are an energy-rich country, but we don't have an energy policy. Our neighbours to the south need energy, and they have an energy policy, which is essentially based a lot on what we send them. I was amused this past weekend when the Premier of Quebec was boasting, “We can be winners too. We'll export some hydroelectricity.” We too can export energy to the U.S.
Why the hell would you want to send to your competitors down south something that could be the basis of a comparative advantage? Of course you get some revenues out of it, but then again you don't add any value to it. In Quebec the aluminum sector is energy-dependent, but it provides good jobs; it provides spinoffs and all of that.
We need to start pulling those elements together. Certainly the grid should not just be about power. It could be about power, but it could also be about gas and oil and all those things. We need to start a Canada-first thinking about these things, to think of the future, think of what we could do with it. When it comes to gas, we're going to be using gas to get some oil out of the tar sands. We could have many more derivatives from gas than that.
Again that requires a certain leadership and a certain management, a husbandry of the resource. In Quebec, you can bet your pants that if you suggest they ought to send their electricity to Ontario rather than the U.S., you're going to get some resistance. However, you could pull it all together and say “This is going to be a win-win. There will be some oil for you too.”
We have the basis for something that could be very productive and forward-looking, but we don't because we're in Canada.