Thank you for coming.
My question would be about the message an industry group like yours gives to the general public or to a committee like this, namely that you don't consider other energy too much, except as alternatives. Although there is a sun energy industry, a geothermal industry, and also a biomass energy industry, you don't include them. You see that they're small players and you don't want to bother with them. You call them alternatives.
In all your figures, we don't see those energies, and we know for climate change and other reasons that those energies are major energies. They're the ones that are going to come to last. You say somewhere that 83% of the energy comes from natural gas, oil, and coal. Yes, right now, but for how long? This you haven't mentioned. I would like to hear from you about that.
Don't you think it's a shortsighted view to think that regular energy will be the energy of tomorrow? You say that industry is prepared to step up. I'm sure you are, but still you leave those energies as alternatives. I don't think you'll do much for the future.
I'm very happy that you talk about energy efficiency. As some people said, we know now that it's cheaper to develop efficiency than to produce new energy. But if we only take geothermal energy, there is as much energy in geothermal as maybe there is in gas right now in Canada. I agree with you that government has to take a leading role to make a real energy framework, but when you come here and you don't mention those energies—even the passive solar energy.... I know why you don't talk about it, because it's not an industry, and it never will be, but it's an energy. It's a very important energy.
I would like to ask you one question for which I imagine you will have a good answer for me. As for the alternative energies, I'm not sure you will. You say that Canada is a leading exporter of gas. I don't know where I found that--yes, on your slide 20. What would be your viewpoint, then, on importing liquefied gas by boat from Russia, which is being prepared to be done in Canada, if we already are the second largest natural gas exporter? Do you see any rationale in this?
Nor do you mention stock-outs. Somewhere in your slides, you say that Canada’s energy future must be secured. Canada’s energy future, however, does not rely solely on sustainability, but also on sustainable development. The quality of life of future generations depends in large part on the energy industry. Nowhere in your text is there mention of the energy stock-outs concerned here.
There is also talk of overconsumption. But I did not see that anywhere in your text. I am not talking about energy efficiency, but about overconsumption. There is talk of all the rolling stock that overconsumes, of nighttime lighting. Canada, including Quebec, consumes more light at night than any other country in the whole world, even more than the U.S. There is no mention of the energy wasted in transit in pipelines or in electrical transmission lines, which should be improved, and little emphasis is placed on that extraordinary form of energy, namely geothermal energy.
When it does not mention that Canada has to reduce its unnecessary consumption of energy, the energy industry is not providing a complete picture of the situation.