Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2009

[Patrick Lamarre]

This is a nice question.

At SNC-Lavalin, we're involved in pretty much all fields of supply, including coal, wind, hydro, and nuclear. We strongly think it's good to have a balanced mix of energy that includes hydro, nuclear, coal, wind, and solar. Unfortunately, we don't think the percentages for wind and solar can be that high, due to the requirements for redundancy and the requirements to make sure hospitals stay on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But we think in the years to come the systems will greatly improve. Wind will become more efficient, and so will solar power.

But then if we look at the natural resources in Canada, hydro is a big one. We need to continue developing hydro projects, expanding them, and making them more efficient.

Nuclear is a great mix. Ontario has 52%. It has low-cost electricity as well as a reliable system and a reliable grid.

In terms of coal, I wouldn't even stretch myself to say who's going to capture most of the CO₂ as well as the sulphur components. Clean coal is another source we cannot dismiss in the future, just because we have so much coal in Canada. The price of electricity from coal is affordable; therefore, it has to be part of the mix.

To be a strong country, to be strong provinces, to have a strong economy, all of these sources of energy have to be blended, depending on the province, depending on the location. They provide what engineering companies, construction companies, and suppliers in Canada need to export internationally.

If we reduce one line of the business, if we reduce one scope of supply, we would become dependent on the future. And maybe that's one of the concerns of solar and wind. Their components come from overseas, which means that afterwards, even if we were to buy a lot of wind, if we were to install a lot of solar, we would never become a great exporter of wind or solar technology.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen, for the final question for these witnesses.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like a quick clarification from Mr. Fugère on the document on phasing out nuclear power in Canada. I'm interested in a couple of charts here that talk about electricity in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. They show some pretty significant reductions under a nuclear/coal phase-out by 2020, indicating Ontario's demand for electricity would go down by about 50% and New Brunswick's by about 60%, based on those numbers. Is that how I should read those charts based on that phase-out?

[Michel Fugère]

Yes, true.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay. So if that is the case, I guess I.... There's no one here from New Brunswick, so I can't ask that question. But I think that's a pipe dream.

I will ask the question from the Ontario model. What do we believe the power production requirements are going to be in Ontario, even in the next 10 years? It seems to me we're going to need baseload plants to meet the electricity demand, because we have an insatiable appetite for energy that's not going away in the next 10 or 15 years. Can you comment on that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. MacKinnon.

[Don MacKinnon]

It's an excellent question. In my career in the industry, which spans 38 years, I've seen this issue of surplus baseload generation come up three times. We've gotten into periods where we've had more than enough generation capacity for the load. It goes up and down. But when it's down, it always comes back. Although we're at a low point right now in Ontario, because of loss of manufacturing, it will recover. It will return. When that happens, you will need large baseload generation.

Today in Ontario the only things that can fill that load requirement are coal and nuclear and a fair bit of water. But we've run out of the river. We can't hold water behind dams in Ontario. Coal is being phased out. The Ontario government has decided that coal generation will be shut down by 2014. That leaves us with very few options, and that's the reason for the urgency surrounding new nuclear. As the existing units come to the end of life, we will need to build new units or refurbish our old ones. The load is going to come back—it always has. And we're going to need to be able to fill that requirement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you.

We are out of time. In fact, when I end the meeting in a few seconds, I will ask the witnesses to leave the table fairly quickly, because we have to go in camera. It takes about two minutes, and we can still get out of here by 5:30 if we deal with the spending motion quickly.

My thanks to all of you for your presentations. They were interesting and very helpful to the committee.

We will suspend for two minutes to go in camera, and then we will come back to deal with the single issue we have to address.

[Proceedings continue in camera]