Absolutely, Mr. Shields, and thank you very much for the question.
It was on February 12, 2017, that there was an accord between the Saskatchewan government—SaskPower—and the governors of Wyoming, North and South Dakota and Montana to proliferate technology that was actually within the Quebec pension plan, technology called Cansolv. It was the first attempt at massive carbon capture from a coal-fired power plant. At the end of the day, this became very interesting to the world, because they took that CO2 and injected it into depleted oil reservoirs. They were thus not only removing massive amounts of CO2 from our environment but were turning it into enormous wealth.
As I mentioned in my presentation, they set a record late last year and have captured three million tonnes, which is the equivalent, ladies and gentlemen, one more time, of removing 750,000 vehicles from the road. This isn't putting a 40-watt light bulb in your house. This is major step change in terms of improvements to our environment and to airborne emissions.
The United States are not going to adopt Paris. They have no intention of doing so. They've made that clear. This does not mean, though, that they have any less commitment to the environment. What I'm trying to get across to this panel today is that perhaps what we should look at is following the Americans' example. Let's work on this from a technological perspective. Let's perhaps expand these types of relationships into other areas. Let these be the directions we're going to go in to solve the environmental problems we believe we have in society.
Mr. Shields, with that announcement—Donald Trump apparently referenced that agreement in 2018 in his state of the union address—they also put $2 billion from the U.S. EPA into this strategic initiative. The Americans are now embarking upon some of the largest carbon capture projects in the world by far.
Canada originally had that. It was originally developed at Suncor Energy up in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and by golly, that's the leadership that Canada can show.
Carbon taxation...? All it does is hobble us. Let's look at the examples of the past: acid rain. Let's look at public policy that deals with this at the megatonne level, rather than at the level of a 40-watt light bulb in your home.
Does that answer your question?