I'll make a brief set of comments, first overarching and then with respect to electricity.
Clearly in energy, as with our economy as a whole, our degree of interdependence with the United States market is extraordinary. We can neither deny it nor would it be in our interest to avoid it. It presents huge opportunities and some challenges, because it is a very large market, with a very large appetite, when it comes to energy.
But we shouldn't forget our dependence on the United States for items like food stocks. If you want fresh fruit in the winter, it doesn't come from the Okanagan Valley; it comes from somewhere south of the border. We can't pick and choose in the relationship that we will only share what we don't care about with our partner and expect them to share with us, in terms of the overall optimization of a North American marketplace. So first of all, we have an embedded relationship.
Second, we'll talk more about energy. In terms of electricity, for instance, we're a net exporter of electricity, but a relatively minor one. It's something in the order of 1% of U.S. needs. What we've seen over the last 10 years is an increase in imports to Canada of electricity, some of it on a business basis, as discussed with respect to Quebec and British Columbia—and to Manitoba, to a lesser extent—since they have storage capacity, and some of it is an investment timing issue.
At one point, the electricity systems were managed on a fairly regulated and generous fashion, in terms of assuring adequate capacity. Part of being more efficient is reducing your margin of surplus to the minimum that's safe, so that you haven't over-invested in the system, but never to be short. That's always critical in these systems.
So the regional linkage of electricity markets has allowed us to tap into the resources of large binational, regional markets, which create economic opportunities in Canada, but also reliability and stability benefits. Quite frankly, when it comes to electricity in Canada, it's a relationship that's extremely positive on all counts.
I'll let others talk about the benefits of this relationship in their particular areas.