Thank you very much for your questions. There's quite a bit there, so if I miss something, please come back.
First, there are three things I'll touch on.
In terms of public opposition to wind energy projects, I think it's fair to say that it is emerging as more of an issue, but from our perspective, it's simply emerging as more of an issue because the number of projects is also increasing at the same time. As a percentage of the projects that are actually being produced, it's not actually increasing. The vast majority of projects across Canada, I will say, still have very strong community support. In fact, that partially explains why last year was very much a record year for Canada. We more than doubled the installed capacity, etc.
In Quebec there has been a lot of concern raised by the municipal governments, in particular, about wind development. The situation in Quebec is unique in that in all other jurisdictions, when a wind developer pays property taxes, for example, those go directly to the municipality; in Quebec that does not happen. In Quebec those revenues go into the provincial government, and then the provincial government reallocates them. They don't necessarily reallocate them in the same manner as they actually receive them. Therefore it's not always the case, then, that the municipal governments obtain the benefits in proportion to the fact that these projects are in their area. So as an industry association, we have worked with the municipal associations in Quebec to look at alternative mechanisms for ensuring that revenues actually go to the municipal governments that are hosting these projects. We are trying to work to develop some joint proposals to bring forward to the Quebec government on this issue.
We are working increasingly with municipal governments, I will also say. In fact, in June, in London, Ontario, we'll be hosting a conference on municipal issues in wind energy, where we're expecting about 250 municipal officials to come to learn about provincial priorities, about issues related to wind energy, to hear about some of the successes that have occurred in order to move forward. One of the challenges, of course, for a municipal government is that often when a wind energy developer comes in and says, “I would like to build a project here”, it's the first time a municipal government has had to deal with this. They have no existing by-laws, regulatory controls, anything like that, and so it's a process, in a sense, of learning by doing at this point in time.
With respect to investors in Quebec, Quebec calls for proposals. It's interesting because you described a sort of anarchistic situation that some people have described in Quebec. From our perspective, most of the Quebec process is actually very orderly. Hydro-Québec has identified a request for proposals, has gone out and done that. Now, Hydro-Québec has also signed some contracts outside that process, and I think that's where this perception of anarchy comes from. The Quebec government is the only provincial government at this point in time in Canada that actually requires local content requirements in its requests for proposals. So 60% of the investment associated with a wind energy project in Quebec must be made in Quebec. When you ask who is investing in these projects, it's true that from a turbine-manufacturing perspective, we don't really have Canadian turbine manufacturers at this point, although we now have, in Quebec, two different initiatives to license European technology and to actually manufacture the turbines in Quebec. So that will be a new initiative there in that regard.
In terms of the development, in the first request for proposals in Quebec, the company that won the bulk of the contracts under that is a partnership of a Quebec-based company, Energex, and an Alberta-based company, TransCanada Energy. So there is significant Quebec participation in that initiative.
As Quebec has now issued a 2,000-megawatt RFP, I am well aware that there are many people from outside of Quebec looking at that because it's the world's largest request for proposals, ever, for wind energy, so it's a tremendous opportunity. But there are also many organizations within Quebec who are planning to bid into that RFP, and ultimately it will be those who can provide that energy at the lowest cost who will succeed.