Thank you very much.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and Madam Chair.
I want to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to appear and give testimony to this committee on behalf of myself and on behalf of Regina's HTC Extraction Systems. They are a superlative carbon capture company that I'll tell you more about in just a second.
It's been my previous honour to testify to the Standing Committee on the Environment regarding Canada's greenhouse gas strategies, and on behalf of the Government of Canada to the U.S. Department of Energy on developing resource energy conservation technologies. I'm considered an expert in a field of science referred to as gas treating. I'm a proud second-generation oilman. I've dedicated my career to creating superb environmental technologies that have been installed on five of the world's continents.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm absolutely delighted that our Canadian political leaders have expended significant effort to bring this massive potential of continued free trade between Canada and our friends in the United States and Mexico. With this initiative we're truly blessed, but we can never forget that we live next door to the largest, most competitive economy on the planet. They are 10 times our size and their economy exceeds that by an order of magnitude. When it comes down to it, we also have to be very mindful of our Mexican friends. As we heard in the previous testimony, they have a skilled workforce and are prepared to work for wages that are half of what ours are.
If we, the Canadian people, are to truly gain from this free trade relationship, we must think and act strategically. We must reflect on the consideration of public policy and taxation strategies that perhaps our trading partners have no intention of adopting. We must consider the impact on our ability to compete. Our economy, our municipalities and our businesses must be competitive in order to fully benefit from this free trade relationship. We must create foundations so that we can effectively compete.
Ladies and gentlemen, we need to talk about the elephant in the room, which of course is Canada's global warming concerns and our nation's strategies and their potential impact to this competitiveness. We must find an effective balance; indeed, I know we can. Prime Minister Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland have recently stated publicly that even if we eliminate all sources of carbon from coast to coast in this country, we will not move the dial internationally. I believe they're both absolutely right. I believe that the best Canada can do is to develop and fully perfect technologies that the rest of the world can confidently adopt.
Canada has provided this leadership before and it was a glorious success in both our environmental and our trade relationship with the Americans. There's some grey hair in this room and there's some not-so-grey hair, but some of us will remember yet another existential threat to our well-being and the environment. It was the threat of acid rain. In the 1970s, this environmental threat was truly horrific and it was immediate. In essence, pollution from industrial factories was causing acidified rain, which was rapidly killing North America's lakes and water bodies. At that time, the Canadian government, together with the United States, created public policy through clean air legislation, which mandated industry to fix this problem. They did fix the problem. They turned this environmental threat into a technical and entrepreneurial success story. Most importantly, this was accomplished rapidly and without punitive harmful policies that harmed society's competitiveness. Our free trade agreement must consider this.
The analogy then is the exact analogy today, in terms of solving these problems. At the end of the day, as a society, I know we can do it.
Bear with me. On February 12, a press release announced that the United States led the world in carbon dioxide reduction while, at the same time, it became the world's leading hydrocarbon-producing nation. They accomplished this environmental miracle without punitive taxation. We must consider similar strategies.
If Canada were to focus its efforts on the creation of public policy that would unlock the technical and entrepreneurial capacity of our nation, there is nothing that we could not accomplish. We could cure cancer. We cured polio. We could cure Alzheimer's and we could most certainly create superlative environmental technologies to solve the environmental challenges without harming our economy. As a result, we could be competitive in this North American free trade agreement that we're considering today.
I also believe that we cannot solve these problems at the household level. In the same manner by which acid rain was solved, we must look at this from an industrial perspective and we must engage our free trade partners in the pursuit. Indeed, we can profit from this under free trade and we can lead the world in environmental technologies.
This is one example of many. On December 2, 2017, the Saskatchewan government signed an accord with the governors of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota for the further development of its CCS EOR initiative. This initiative has removed three million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of taking 750,000 automobiles off the road. President Trump referenced this in his 2018 state of the union address.
With respect to free trade and our environmental commitments, it was announced on November 8, 2019, that United States shale oil production has peaked. That production miracle had allowed them to become the world's largest crude oil producer. They are now in decline. What that means is that Canada's oil and gas are about to become strategic to the United States again, and that will happen sooner rather than later.
Our oil and gas resources represent one of the greatest sources of wealth our country has ever been blessed with, and we must embrace this for the benefit of all Canadians. We understand that there are some in society who feel this is directly opposed to our environmental commitments. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing could be further from the truth. We've shown leadership before. We can do it again and we should do it again.
I previously worked with SaskPower on the CCS EOR project, and I'm currently working with Regina's HTC technologies. Our team has some of the most dedicated individuals you'll ever meet. We are creating superlative technologies that capture CO2 at an industrial level. We've been selected by the Alberta government in its quest for the world's best carbon-capture technology, and we're proud to be part of the team that is vying for the environmental XPRIZE.
Free trade between Canada, the United States and Mexico truly represents a glorious opportunity for all regions of Canada, but for it to truly work for all of us, we must think and we must act strategically.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you very much. I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. We must—while we're looking at North American free trade—have a commitment to fully ratifying section 121 of the Canadian Constitution, which, of course, is dedicated to interprovincial free trade. This is a major strategic problem for Canada that must be fixed. I would say that this should be the first priority, rather than a free trade deal with the United States and Mexico. We have to get our own house in order so we can compete in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.