I'll just give you a quick background on myself.
I left home when I was 16 and joined the merchant fleet with Shell Oil before joining the Royal Navy as a marine engineering officer and then going into academia and getting my doctorate in mechanical engineering, focused on power systems and submarine design. Submarine design in the prairies is pretty unique, unless you live in West Edmonton Mall.
For the last ten years I've focused my efforts on climate change. I was the first manager of the climate change group of the Alberta Research Council. I moved into sustainable development more broadly, dealing with things like LOR acclimations, soil amendments, and manure to energy. For the last five years I was the vice-president at primarily the hydrocarbon group before taking my existing job as chief operating officer.
I've been involved in every road map, I think, Canada's ever done in the last ten years on hydrogen, oil sands, oil, and renewables. The ability of Canadians to catalyze around a road map is amazing. The ability to move beyond that road map to action plans lacks leadership.
I believe there's a thirst for doing something. I believe there's a thirst, an entrepreneurialism in Canadians, and the yearning to do the right thing for the right reasons. So I believe there's a huge momentum underlying, which is waiting to come out to address these issues.
Is one technology going to be the silver bullet? No. We have such a diverse country, such a diverse environment, such diverse energy sources that we're going to need a whole suite of technologies. We need to go through the various sequences of development from lab, to company, to field implementation, to pilots, to demonstration on a scale that will reduce the investment risk.
Investment risk is the critical thing here. Having a policy framework that supports that investment risk is critical.
So there's a lot of connectivity here, but I believe that underneath it, Canadians like the challenge. I like the challenge. It's what actually drives me to go to work each day.