International Trade Committee on May 10th, 2021

[The Chair (Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)), Liberal, Judy Sgro]

I'm calling the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 30 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade.

Today's meetings is webcast and is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. Pursuant to Standing Order 108 and a motion adopted by the committee on Friday, March 12, 2021, the committee will resume its study of Canada's exports of environmental and clean technology goods and services.

Before us today we have from AddÉnergie Technologies Inc., Travis Allan, vice-president, public affairs and general counsel. From Ballard Power Systems Inc., we have Nicolas Pocard, vice-president, marketing. From Opus One Solutions, we have Hari Suthan Subramaniam, chief strategic growth officer. Finally, from LNG Canada, we have Peter Zebedee, chief executive officer.

Mr. Allan, you have the floor please.

[Travis Allan, Vice-President, Public Affairs and General Counsel, AddÉnergie Technologies Inc.]

Good morning, everyone.

Madam Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to participate in your study on Canadian green technology exports.

I know many of you saw me already a few weeks ago at the Special Committee on the Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States. I’m sorry to retread on some of the same territory, but I'll try to keep it interesting.

For those who don't know me and our company, AddÉnergie was founded by our current CEO, Louis Tremblay, in 2009, with a head office in Quebec City. It was the fruit of work that he did as a Université Laval student. Over the last decade, we have grown to be one of the largest EV charging networks and manufacturers in North America, with more than 200 employees. Our Shawinigan plant has produced over 40,000 charging stations for deployment across North America.

We are a company that proudly uses a very Canadian supply chain, with approximately 85% of expenses paid to Canadian suppliers. We've seen significant growth, especially in Canada, and now increasingly in the United States. That's important because the domestic market in Canada is likely not big enough to support the demand needed to build a globally competitive EV charging network and to be a manufacturing leader. That's why access to large, international markets like the United States and elsewhere is critical.

We've made some significant forays into the U.S. market, including deploying curbside charging stations across Los Angeles. We just announced last week that we're starting to deploy stations in all five boroughs of New York City in partnership with Con Edison, and we've also started deploying in the U.S. Midwest, starting in Cincinnati.

There is significantly more opportunity for us in the U.S. market. Recently, President Biden announced an investment plan for 500,000 charging stations to be deployed in the U.S. by 2030 to help support the American target of halving its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, along with Canada's enhanced commitment to reduce its own emissions by that date. In order for the U.S. to be able to meet this target, it has a critical need to get quick access to the best EV charging networks, services and equipment. We believe that AddÉnergie can play a very important role in providing these services and equipment to the U.S. market.

That's why, in addition to growing Canadian domestic demand, we've already started making significant investments to expand our own production capacity in Quebec, including our network and R and D centre, and we'll also be significantly expanding our manufacturing square footage in Shawinigan.

At the same time, we are looking at a U.S. plant to help service the U.S. market. Ideally, much as other major manufacturers across North America that make clean technology equipment, we'd like to do that by adding complementary production lines so that we can get those to maximum efficiency in both Canada and the United States. That's the dream, and that's what other major companies like automakers tend to do with their production.

What we're facing right now is a major challenge with the likely implementation of buy America. Unlike our American competitors, to whom we give access to freely participate in Canadian federal procurement, we may not get the same access to the U.S. market, which would of course limit competition.

The possible impact of these challenges is that we may be required to duplicate our production lines, which would certainly be less efficient for the purchasers of EV charging stations. The second possible issue is that we may face significant uncertainty and delay in getting products to market because, depending on how buy America is implemented, it could have significant impacts, not just on the end assembly of clean technology goods but also on their supply chains, which can slow down things including certifications.

If this happens, it's certainly not going to be good for manufacturers of charging stations, but it also will really impact our ability to get this clean technology product to market in a fast way and to help meet those American timelines. I would argue that it's also not very good for the Canadian economy. Being forced to produce entirely in the United States doesn't allow us to leverage some of that great work we've done building supply lines here in Canada. When we're looking at our ability to expand, this is certainly a major point of questions and concerns that we're hoping to see some progress on.

We really appreciate the opportunity to be here today and to share our views on how we believe we can contribute to exporting Canada's clean environmental technologies.

Thank you. I look forward to answering any questions that you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Allan.

Nicolas Pocard for Ballard Power Systems, please go ahead.

[Nicolas Pocard, Vice-President Marketing , Ballard Power Systems Inc.]

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Nicolas Pocard. I'm the vice-president of marketing for Ballard Power Systems.

Ballard is a company based in British Columbia. For the past four years, we have been developing clean zero-emission hydrogen and fuel-cell solutions. As a technology developer, we are bringing zero-emission engines to market. Today more than 3,500 buses and trucks are powered by Ballard technology globally.

From day one of its life, Ballard has been relying on the export market because of the lack of domestic markets. We're been relying solely on exporting our technology. As of today, over 98% of our revenue is from exports. We have many working in the U.S., Europe and China. Today we are seeing really a growing demand for technology as part of the efforts by different countries towards lowering carbon emissions and towards carbon neutrality. In the transportation sector, which has a significant impact on emissions, different alternatives are being deployed in order to reduce those emissions.

Hydrogen and fuel-cell technology is now being recognized as an important part of this effort towards decarbonization. Even in Canada, at the end of 2020 the federal government published a hydrogen strategy, done by NRCan, recognizing the key role of hydrogen in the decarbonization of our economy, especially for heavy-duty mobility. When looking at applications like buses, trucks, marine and trains, this is where hydrogen and fuel cells provide the most attractive path to decarbonization.

Today at Ballard we employ around 950 people, the majority at our headquarters and production engineering facility in Burnaby, British Columbia. In addition to that, we have probably around 80 people based in Europe, with some R and D and production facilities in Denmark. We have around 10 to 15 people in the U.S., with an R and D office in Bend, Oregon. We have around 15 people in China, in our Guangzhou office.

International growth has been absolutely paramount to the success of Ballard. We have been investing in that development and the export of our technology from the birth of the company. We have worked very closely with and would like to take the opportunity to thank the support we got from the network of trade commissioners worldwide where you're active—Japan, Korea, China, France, Austria, Germany, Denmark and Norway. We have worked very closely with that network. The trade commissioners have helped us to better understand the market conditions, have provided support at events that Ballard has organized by bringing in customers, organizing one-to-one meetings or introductions, and inviting us to events for our industry. I think that has been a really important part of our growth. Even today, we continue to leverage the network with the trade commissioners. We would really like to thank them for their support and for being very proactive and very professional and very knowledgeable, especially when it comes to clean mobility.

As was highlighted by the previous speaker, we are also facing now in many different jurisdictions local rules and regulations. The U.S. is one of our biggest markets. Buy America, as was mentioned earlier, is today threatening to really challenge our cross-production efforts. Today, as a new technology, our key focus is to drive down the cost. We need to be able to drive down the cost to use the local-global supply chain and be able to manufacture at scale. Most of our core technology is made in Burnaby, and we need to scale up. Having delocalized plants and smaller plants doesn't enable us to drive down the cost. It's an impediment to cost production. It's actually increasing the cost.

Requirements like buy America are forcing us to actually increase the cost of our product, which is slowing down the adoption of the technology. We see that not only in the U.S.

In China, there is very stringent regulation in terms of localization. The number of components that need to be produced in China is forcing us actually to enter joint ventures and to produce our product in China for China.

Now we're starting to see the same level of protection rising in Europe in order to have access to some of the programs of development. We need to be able to show that we are producing our products and technology in different geographies.

As we are trying to lower the cost to enable wider adoption of the technology, this comes as an impediment to that growth.

This just provides a bit of a perspective from Ballard. I thank the members of the committee. I would be very happy to answer your questions.

Feel free to ask any questions that you may have.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Pocard.

We'll move along to Opus One Solutions, with Mr. Subramaniam, please.

Evidently, he's still having difficulty.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Christine Lafrance]

We will have IT call Mr. Subramaniam.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We will go on, then, to LNG Canada, with Mr. Peter Zebedee.

The floor is yours, sir.

[Peter Zebedee, Chief Executive Officer, LNG Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak to you here today on behalf of LNG Canada on this important subject.

We fully support this committee's efforts to examine how the export of Canadian clean technologies and products can help shape and support a low-carbon future. I'm happy to talk to you this morning about how LNG Canada fits into that strategy, both here at home but also abroad.

As you know, LNG Canada is a joint venture with five international partners: Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Kogas from Korea. While we here at LNG Canada are proudly Canadian and I myself am Canadian-born, -raised and -educated, we do indeed have a very global outlook.

To start with, we began with a very bold vision. That was to set the benchmark for economically, environmentally and socially responsible LNG development in Canada, working collaboratively with first nations, indigenous groups and local communities, non-governmental organizations and local, provincial and federal levels of government.

Our liquefied natural gas and export facility is now in its third year of construction in Kitimat, British Columbia, and is located on the traditional territory of the Haisla Nation. It represents the single largest private-sector investment in Canadian history, and it has already begun to benefit communities and provincial and national economies with meaningful, lasting employment and social investment. To date, the value of our awarded contracts and procurement in British Columbia alone is worth more than $3 billion.

Revenues from our project will start flowing to governments as we enter into production and are delivering low-carbon LNG to customers. These will reach tens of billions of dollars over the course of our 40-year life, and we are on track to deliver our first cargo by the middle of this decade.

LNG Canada will provide a security of supply for global LNG markets that rely on Canada's natural gas reserves to advance their economies and to reduce global GHG emissions, as natural gas replaces such higher-emitting sources of energy as coal. This is important in the context of commitments that Canada has made to reducing GHGs, while helping our international partners meet their own climate change commitments.

While we'll be the first major LNG company in Canada to export internationally, we're entering a highly competitive global market looking for low-carbon energy.

Our project is advantaged by access to low-carbon natural gas right here in British Columbia. We're located in a harbour that is ice-free year-round. It's at the end of the Douglas Channel in Kitimat, about 650 kilometres north of me here in Vancouver. Our shipping distance to north Asia is about 50% shorter than that from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and it avoids the Panama Canal.

Together with our EPC contractor, JGC Fluor, we designed a project to have the lowest carbon intensity of any large-scale LNG plant anywhere in the world, and the GHG emissions from our Kitimat operation will be lower than those from any facility. That's a full 35% lower than the world's best-performing facilities and 60% lower than the global weighted average for equivalent plants. This is all underpinned by our use of energy-efficient gas turbines and the latest methane mitigation technologies, and that's what is going to help us reach our low emissions standards.

LNG Canada will use B.C. natural gas that is produced with the highest standards and compressed using renewable energy from the B.C. hydro grid. A good example of putting these standards into practice is provided by Shell's Saturn gas plant. Located in northeastern British Columbia, it is fully electrified.

As I mentioned, natural gas is displacing coal for power use and production in cities with air pollution problems, where renewable resources are limited and where consistent energy supplies or firm power is required.

We know that future population growth and development around the world will require more energy with fewer CO2 emissions. To that end, LNG provides CO2 emissions 50% lower than those from coal. That's really the big reason that LNG is displacing coal in so many places and why this represents an opportunity for Canada, which has an abundance of lower-carbon natural gas.

Demand is indeed growing in places such as China, where natural gas is expected to almost triple by the year 2040. LNG from all sources, including ours, will make up 60% of China's demand for imported natural gas, and global LNG demand is expected to hit 700 million tonnes by the year 2040. According to Shell's latest market outlook report, that's up from 360 million tonnes in 2020, so it's almost double. Asia is expected to drive about 75% of this growth as LNG substitutes for higher-emissions energy sources, and that's going to tackle items like air quality concerns while at the same time meeting emissions targets.

Of course, this isn't to say that LNG will displace more carbon-intensive forms of energy all on its own. You've already heard how the clean-tech sector in Canada is an increasingly busy place with hundreds, if not thousands, of companies driving innovation and finding new export opportunities. We believe that LNG is but one tool in the low-carbon tool kit, and that tool kit obviously includes renewables. While natural gas complements renewables as a baseload power due to intermittencies in energy supply, it is not likely to displace it fully, nor is LNG going to slow the build-out of renewables in electricity sectors in countries such as China. Mostly that's due to pricing. Renewables in the long term are less expensive than natural gas and LNG.

As technologies continue to develop and as businesses, builders and homeowners turn to energy-saving efficiencies such as retrofits, energy requirements, in general, will change, and they may even decrease in certain scenarios. We're certainly starting to see those changes in our resource sectors. I already mentioned Shell's fully electrified plant in Groundbirch, B.C. The fact is that we are seeing innovation and advancements up and down the value chain. These are absolutely critical as our sector turns its focus to reaching carbon neutrality.

In the past year, and excitingly so, we've seen net-zero LNG shipments reaching ports in Asia and Europe. We're excited to be entering an environment where net zero can actually be achieved. I think this is critical, because creating space in the LNG marketplace going forward—our project has a 40-year lifespan—really means, for us, identifying those opportunities across the value chain upstream, at the point of production and indeed on the shipping routes.

Picking up on that, I'd like to point out another example that demonstrates how the LNG Canada project is creating momentum towards a lower-carbon future and at the same time creating local opportunities. HaiSea Marine is a local partnership formed between the Haisla Nation and north Vancouver-based Seaspan.

HaiSea Marine has a large contract with LNG Canada to build and operate the escort and harbour tugs required for our export facility in Kitimat. They are going to use battery-electric power and natural gas instead of diesel fuel, and they're going to form one of the greenest tug fleets ever assembled. They are designed by Canadian, Vancouver-based naval architects and marine engineers Robert Allan. These new escort and harbour tugs are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 10,000 tonnes per annum compared to their diesel-fuelled alternatives, with major reductions in other oxides and particulate matter as well.

In addition to creating local, long-term jobs that will benefit the Haisla and other nations on B.C.'s northern coast, HaiSea Marine really plugs into the full value-chain proposition I've talked about: lower-carbon Canadian natural gas; world-leading low emissions at our Kitimat export facility; advantageous export routes to international markets; and markets in countries that are focused on bridging to low-carbon energy sources, and ultimately to all ultra-low and zero-emitting sources.

Together with our partners and with support and encouragement from all levels of government, LNG Canada will play an important role in this energy transition.

Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, sir.

Do we have Opus One Solutions functioning now, Madam Clerk?

[Hari Suthan Subramaniam, Chief of Strategic Growth, Opus One Solutions]

I believe we do, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

There you are.

Please go ahead, sir.

[Hari Suthan Subramaniam]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, members of the committee and my colleagues from industry. It's a great honour to be here to talk about how we may be able to take part and inform the discussion on Canada's export of environmental and clean technologies on goods and services.

I'll take a bit of a departure from my colleagues. I think I'm one of the only software companies to talk about software exports and what they mean.

My name is Hari Subramaniam, as Madam Chair has introduced me. I head up strategic growth and global sales for Opus One Solutions. We believe we are probably a good fit as a litmus test or a canary in the coal mine with respect to how we've been able to garner help from domestic support, from the government's policies and regulations, while at the same time we can give you a sense of the competitive landscape that we and other colleagues in the sector face.

As a quick snapshot, Opus One was Canadian-founded. We have two offices, Richmond Hill in Toronto and downtown Toronto. Hopefully, we will be moving out for more talent across the country. Opus One is one of the few companies that has been named four times to the top 100 clean-tech companies globally. We share that honour with CarbonCure in Nova Scotia.

We started to build our pilot technology in about 2016, really moving to commercialization in 2019-20. We have grown about 500% in employment, hitting well past about a hundred this year, and we've actually grown during COVID, or the global pandemic. That's the uniqueness of the sector that we're in. Overall on revenues we're at about 300% since about 2016, and we're one of the few leading companies from a software perspective to facilitate energy transition. Our customers tend to be utilities, whether they're privately owned or government-owned.

I should probably provide you with a sense of how we segment our customers and how we serve from Canada internationally.

One of our other unique attributes is that we've actually grown into about six to seven countries between 2020 and 2021. We've actually gone international and global during the global pandemic, and 90% of our staff are Canadian-based.

First, I'd love to thank the committee and the governments writ large for the policy framework and the funding associated that have really helped to drive-start our start-up nation, giving birth to companies like ours. We just happen to be in the clean-tech sector. One of the stats that I do not have, and I'm not sure if it's robustly there, is the split between hardware from clean tech; money that leaves us, whether it be renewable developers that are Canadian or are elsewhere; software; and then services in clean tech as an export quantity.

From a software perspective, I would think Canada is one of the biggest exporters of clean-technology software globally. How do we help that sector? That's probably why I'm here to share my thoughts.

I'll give a shout-out to a Canadian company that is a little less known, but pretty big here actually, called CGI out of Montreal. They're one of the largest clean-technology services firms globally. I think there's a lot of diamonds in the rough that perhaps through this process we can unearth.

I'll get to the two questions that, I think, were posed. One is, what is going well? I think we've built a great ecosystem for start-ups: the federal agencies, the incubators. We have a wonderful job done with the trade commissioners engaging in a meaningful but also a metric-driven manner to help Canadian companies export abroad. I think from ISED to SDTC to NRCan, they've done a fantastic job with IRAP in terms of how to construct funding or leveraging to help companies grow. I think EDC and BDC have done a good job from a venture cap perspective. I'll give credit to Diana Cartwright from the trade commission for really shaping that organization. We have definitely been blessed and have benefited from that.

There's some great funding with collaboration, the Canadian-Indian industrial partnership, the Canada-U.K. funding in terms of helping Canadian companies enter the market by collaborating with one of their own. I think they've been a big benefit. I would like to commend Amanda Wilson and Cynthia Handler,from the departmental side, for really leading that and paying attention to companies like ours and our growth.

A lot of MOUs that have been signed by the government in innovation have actually helped us, and the same thing with FedDev in terms of scaled and continued growth. However, having said all of that, which has built the ecosystem, one of the things I'd like to share is that I think we've done a great job on start-ups, but I think we haven't really looked holistically at the scale-up of companies. I think there are gaps in the scale-up aspect.

Opus One Solutions is no longer a start-up. We're a scale-up, so where do we go?

There are a couple of things to point out. Every jurisdiction in the world is revolving around clean tech. They want a sector to be grown there. They want taxes to be paid to their jurisdiction. What I would urge departments in the government to do is to actually take a competitive benchmarking. I personally don't think we do that well as a nation.

What I mean by that is that Germany and the U.K. are really pushing in tandem with companies in their jurisdictions to move globally—more, I would say, than we are. In terms of whether it be financing or giving funding to enter the market to do a pilot, I think that's critical for a lot of technologies. The majority of customers for our products or even my colleagues' prefer to have a case study or someone who has bought their product and tested it in their local market rather than having that done in a Toronto, Halifax or Vancouver. It doesn't carry as much weight. Everyone wants to know if you've done it in Illinois or Brazil, and so on and so forth. I think that's a big gap. That's missing.

The other one is in terms of financing or funding as you move towards profitability. I think most of EDC and our venture capital, whether they're government-backed or independent, have a tendency to try to want to deal, so we'd rarely invest in companies that have reached a valuation of $50 million-plus. We are one of the few companies that see, from a Canadian perspective, that there are not enough folks willing to bet on our own companies' growth because our valuation has gone up.

It's very much on start-up, not on scale-up. There we look at financing from other investors, which generally means that over time we will stop being a CCPC. I think that's something we should focus on. How do you ensure that there are more companies that continue to be CCPCs, that continue to apply for IP in Canada and are as Canadian as possible?

The other attribute I'd say that can be improved on is MOUs. Trade relationships are critical. As my colleague said, with buy America and buy Europe, how do we continue as a trading nation be in those discussions and help companies? There's also the fact that, in most of our agreements, we have a reliance on joint research and development. I think we should be cautious in pushing that. As a private entity, I would like to do customization of research to sell my product into a market of choice. I do not want to be beholden to doing research with a third party if there's an agreement or funding attached to that. I think uncoupling some of that would help us move into markets faster.

One of the other things I would also urge the committee to look at is that the goal of the Paris accord is a good one, but if we are to drive clean-tech companies abroad, I would rather that, as a nation, we would have objectives and goals that are audacious. An example of that would be that some of our provinces were chasing solar manufacturing or renewable manufacturing about a decade ago, 15 years after Germany had defined it. Germany defined it because they had an objective or a goal well before anybody else did, and by virtue of that, entrepreneurs came to that segment.

The U.K. and France, for example, have said they will not have a single combustion vehicle on their road by 2050. It's an audacious goal. What it means is that they're starting to think about what new industries have to be born to serve such a market if they're serious about that goal. I would urge Canadians and Canada to have an objective that we're driving towards.

I shall not talk more about buy America, it is of concern for us, especially with cybersecurity and security as an issue as well. I think it was covered by some of my colleagues. Really, what I would ask is to rethink some of our government funding and protocols to play more holistic role in terms of enhancing our growth in exports and paying taxes to Canada and employment in Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, sir.

Before I go on to our speakers, I need the committee to approve a budget in the amount of $1,750 for headsets and phone lines. Are there any objections to that?

Not seeing any objections, I call on Mrs. Gray, please, for six minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the speakers for being here today. My first questions are for Mr. Zebedee.

Thank you for the information that you provided to this committee about how significant LNG is, not only to my home province of B.C. and Canada, but also to the world as a tool to reduce GHG emissions. We heard from another witness earlier on in this study that because of article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which hasn't been finalized yet, countries' work to reduce emissions internationally is not counted towards their domestic reductions.

Obviously, exporting LNG could play a huge role in reducing emissions, so would you say that getting article 6 of the Paris Agreement finalized should be a priority of Canada's?

[Peter Zebedee]

Thanks very much, Ms. Gray.

I absolutely would suggest that. Canada's leadership to establish a credible regime based on not only environmental integrity but a level playing field, and to ensure those credits are recognized and acknowledged should absolutely be a priority of this government.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That's great. Thank you.

What are some of the biggest non-tariff barriers that your sector is facing when it comes to exporting? We heard from a previous witness on this study that the uncertainty and cancellation of pipelines is a significant one.

Would you agree with that, and are there other non-tariff barriers that you see?

[Peter Zebedee]

Uncertainty in the regulatory regime certainly is one of them. We want to ensure that we have a competitive capital cost to construction. That's one of the barriers on which this government has helped support us within the construction of phase one pipelines, and as you know, Coastal GasLink is a single-source gas pipeline into our Kitimat facility. Hopefully it won't be a barrier for us going forward.

Looking at future growth potential, the biggest opportunities are capital cost of production, the certainty in the regulatory environment as it relates to GHG emissions, and then ensuring we have a competitive position within the global portfolios of our five joint venture partners.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That's great. Thank you.

What's the job potential in this sector if LNG Canada has a stable growth environment? How many potential jobs do you see spurred by this growth in Canada as it develops?

[Peter Zebedee]

I can give you an example of where we're at now.

In Kitimat alone, we have just over 3,000 trade craft. At the peak of our construction, which will take place in the years 2022 and 2023, we're looking at up to 7,500 full-time equivalents here in Canada just for construction in Kitimat.

We're looking at just over 500 long-term jobs to support phase one of our operation, and as we look at future investment in phase two, it comes close to double that, so it's around 1,000 long-term positions to support that operation.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

What are the other large LNG-producing countries? Would you say that Canadian LNG is in a position to be extracted and exported in a more environmentally and I believe you also used the words “socially responsible” way? In your view, how does that work on a global scale?

[Peter Zebedee]

We certainly have a very compelling value proposition from all those dimensions.

As I mentioned, our facility will be globally leading in terms of the lowest emissions anywhere in the world, more than 30% better than the next best—so it's by a long margin—and 60% better than the global average. That's going to prove to be a competitive advantage in a world that's clearly changing its societal expectations. There will be value to that.

Our big global competitors in the LNG business are Qatar, which has recently announced a massive expansion to their operations, and Australia is another large producing LNG nation.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

I have one last question here.

Peter Findlay, at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, stated that it's strange that Canada “is frustrating, if not undermining, its own LNG prospects.”

In your view, what changes need to be made at the federal level to ensure increased exports of LNG?

[Peter Zebedee]

Ms. Gray, I will go back to the first question you asked me, which was around article 6 of the Paris Agreement. We need to create a level playing field and a regulatory regime that recognizes the value of carbon offsets and trading. Couple that with offset-type solutions like nature-based solutions so that we have a robust and level playing field to compete in international markets.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Ms. Gray, you have time for a short question.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you very much.

Lastly, this might not affect your industry, but do you see buy America affecting some of the subsidiary companies that you might do business with?