No, that's fine.
I will note one more fun fact. There were 25 million trees planted by the major energy producers over their eight years there.
I think you were asking about some of the other clauses in the bill, and one of them specifically talks about tree planting. I feel like the industry minister must have many files that are very urgent and important and take up the ministry's attention. I don't think tree planting should be one of them, because—good news—Alberta is planting a whole lot of trees all on its own, without a new department needed to track how many trees are being planted from the industry ministry. I'm sure there's another one in the environment ministry as well.
But there are a few good clauses in here. Paragraph 3(3)(f) talks about “preparing infrastructure projects that facilitate adaptation to climate change and mitigation”. I think that's something the government should focus more on. It's like maintaining infrastructure; it's not very fun. I guess in this one you would get to cut a ribbon, but it's something that tends to go by the wayside, and it costs us all in the long term. Those are, again, things that should be happening all over the country, I would hope.
The other one is integrating clean energy into agriculture, forestry, transportation and manufacturing. This is worth doing, and it is happening at a considerable rate. Some of the concern I have with the bill, generally, is.... If we needed the government to pay attention to these things, this might be worth the added red tape and forcing the minister and all of his department to come up with reports on progress. But I feel like integrating clean energy into agriculture, forestry, transportation and the energy sector is one of the biggest concerns that this government has, so I really feel like it is redundant to add more and more reports on things that are already happening, sometimes quite aggressively.
I mentioned the tree planting. When it comes to management of the boreal forest.... The boreal forest is one of the world's largest carbon sinks. The oil sands cover.... It's a fairly big operation, obviously, but it's 0.02% of the boreal forest, and all the companies that are working there have strict legal requirements to reclaim that land. I don't know, again, what more reports on how we're managing the boreal forest from the industry ministry, on top of all the other ministries that are surely tracking that, as well as all the companies and the Province of Alberta, which is legally binding them to reclaim those forests....
Paragraph 3(3)(a) is concerned about the “non-existent transportation options in small cities and communities”. The reason there aren't lots of transportation options in small communities is that there isn't much demand for them. I really worry about big federal government plans to somehow develop transportation options in small towns. I'm quite confident that things like autonomous vehicles, or even Uber, are already starting to fill that void in lots of communities. I really would prefer the private sector to meet the demands there, instead of large, expensive programs that take away from other priorities.
The biggest concern, which I focused on earlier, is paragraph 3(3)(b), which is talking about retraining in traditional energy industries. Someone earlier talked about the transition causing a demand for things like rare minerals. Yes, everybody wants to have some more electric batteries for all kinds of purposes. They are very intensive on minerals and, of course, it's an energy-intensive operation to do mining. The Prairies and Ontario are great places where that should be a new industry, a new source of energy. It's more about energy diversification and supporting all the kinds of energy that Canada can produce for the world, and not doing it at the expense of, and with an eye to shutting down, the one that makes us the most money and the one the world needs the most right now.