Thank you for the question.
I'm in Alberta. I obviously work in oil sands. I work in oil, but I do a lot of work in renewables. To me, it's not necessarily about the source. I need an end product. I need electricity. I need something to run my car. Where do I get it from? Where am I? I'm a fan of investing in all forms, depending on where you are and what you actually need.
I think wind is a very good source. There are some limitations with regard to when the wind blows. Where the wind actually is strong, for example, in the province of Alberta, is down in the southwest. It's not practical to have long-grid transmission losses to actually get the wind energy up to the oil sands, for example, because it fluctuates. There are problems with the grid and the way the grid is managed and the harmonics injected into the grid.
If I look at Canada as a whole, I can't think of one energy form we have that can't be used effectively. So I agree. I look at the International Energy Agency's statistics on energy investments by the governments of Canada, federal and provincial, and I look at how they have morphed over the last 30-odd years. You can see swings. Different groups have different reasons. They'll say we're going to have bioenergy as a topic today and oil as a topic for tomorrow, and you can see the swings. Nuclear is there as well.
My only concern is that we don't do what I would call “flavour of the month” research. Research has a long-term agenda, normally. If I take it cradle to grave, from an idea in a university to effective field implementation, if you want, in oil sands, you know, it takes 15 years. You need that long-term agenda. If I switch it on and off every three years, I'll never get to the actual mission and the actual end prize of actually doing it. You do need consistency.
So I come back to the provincial groups. I come back to groups such as the National Research Council that can weather the different regimes within the governments and actually do the right things in a long-term, sustainable manner.
But I'm an advocate of all forms of energy, for the right reasons in the right areas.