Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to come back to an issue my colleague raised, namely sustainable resources. I am very familiar with the Brundtland Report. Don't you find it a bit embarrassing to qualify all these resources as being “sustainable”? All the resources mentioned in the report — oil, natural gas, uranium and coal — are non-renewable resources.
Why don't you distinguish between sustainable resources and non-renewable resources? This distinction would help allocate research funding.
You say that the solution lies in technology. However, are your technology budgets based on profitability or on the quantity of CO2 which will be avoided? If it is the latter, let's start with solar energy and types of energy which produce absolutely no CO2.
I was surprised to learn that only about two-thirds of the funding is spent on renewable sources of energy. It has to be embarrassing to continue to develop oil and gas — especially because of the extreme profitability of these types of energy — but even more so to spend money on research in these areas when everyone knows perfectly well that this will only contribute to increasing greenhouse gases. Even if we save that two gallons of water to produce one barrel of oil, the fact remains that we will be emitting even more greenhouse gases.
Therefore, I would like to know why you made those choices and whether you have conducted in-depth studies on liquid gas ports.
I would like to come back to the excellent question on the EnerGuide. A building cannot be considered as another form of investment to reduce CO2, because a building requires a very long-term investment and, generally speaking, the recovery period is always too short for the investment to be profitable.
Is it possible that someone told the minister that the recovery period would be very short and that he in turn responded that this type of investment was not profitable?