Natural Resources Committee on Dec. 7th, 2010

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

There's more to this than just environmental issues.

[Ezra Levant]

Absolutely.

It's an ideological agenda. It's a foreign policy agenda. I wish that everyone from Greenpeace to the Tides Foundation to the Suzuki Foundation, which has taken $10 million from these guys, would have to register as foreign lobbyists, because they're taking foreign cash.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I'd like to turn it over to Ms. Gallant.

But I notice, Mr. Lepine, you seem to be agreeing with Mr. Levant.

[Lionel Lepine]

Yes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Chairman, our opposition colleagues allege the Canadian mining companies use substandard employment practices in other countries but deem it perfectly acceptable for foreign oil companies to oppress their workers in favour of Canadian oil. Even here today we hear the inaccurate juvenile slur “tar sands”, as opposed to oil sands.

Mr. Levant, what's behind this contradiction? Are there outside or foreign entities influencing our legislators in some way?

[Ezra Levant]

Some of it is Nimbyism. I think there are some folks who don't want to see any environmental side effects in Canada, but they don't mind if Nigeria has 2,000 toxic waste dumps. They don't mind if women are oppressed in Saudi Arabia because they don't have to see it.

A few weeks ago 230 ducks were killed when they sat down on our tailings ponds. Mea culpa, that's terrible. I'm not going to call it a tragedy, though, because there really is blood oil out there--300,000 Darfuris. Maybe if those 300,000 Darfuris were ducks, Tides Foundation would give a damn, but they don't. And do you know what? I think we should always improve in Canada. Frankly, I agree with some of what Mr. Cullen says about constant improvement and constant self-criticism. And I think I actually agree with Mr. Lepine on that.

But what we're seeing instead, instead of focusing on improving, this Nimbyism...the people who say they would rather buy misogynist, terrorist Saudi oil or they would rather buy Russian military dictatorship oil, invade Georgia, than have it here.... And do you know what? I discovered this after writing the book; I didn't discover it until afterwards. Half of Canada imports its oil. We're exporting the oil in the west, but folks in the Atlantic, even in Montreal.... There are tankers of OPEC oil flowing into this country. I bet you most folks in Montreal don't realize that when they turn on their car, they're burning oil from Saudi Arabia, where women aren't allowed to vote.

I say let's pull the camera back and think globally and act locally. If you're okay with buying conflict oil from Sudan, go for it. But I just--

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Sorry, Mr. Levant, your time is up. And unfortunately our time is up for this panel.

Thank you you all very much for your presentations and for answering questions. This was a very informative panel.

We'll suspend the committee for two minutes, to change panel members. We'll do that as quickly as possible.

Mr. Lepine, do you have a short comment?

[Lionel Lepine]

I want to ask just one question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Sure.

[Lionel Lepine]

I've been asked to ask you if this committee is going to make a strong recommendation to ensure the safety of the woodland caribou, buffalo, which are now endangered, and other animals, to minimize further destruction in that area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

After discussion among committee members, the report will be determined. So I can't comment on that with any certainty. But certainly the committee members have heard your plea.

[Lionel Lepine]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you all very much.

We'll suspend for just a couple of minutes, and then come back with the second panel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

We're here for our second panel, continuing our study on energy security in Canada.

We have on our second panel, from the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures, Ian Potter, chief operating officer. Welcome. We have, as an individual, Vivian Krause. Welcome. And we have, from HTC Purenergy Inc., Jessie Inman, executive director, corporate development. Welcome.

We will have the presentations in the order listed on the agenda. We'll start with Ian Potter, from the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. Go ahead, for up to seven minutes.

[Ian Potter, Chief Operating Officer, Alberta Innovates Technology Futures]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be here today on behalf of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, that was the original Alberta Research Council. We restructured on January 1, 2010, as part of the provincial restructuring of the innovation system.

This is a wide-ranging and complex field. To my mind, I'm a simple guy. My wife says I'm a simple guy. So I'd like to bring it back to simplicities. The question of energy security is wide-ranging; even its definition can be challenging. You'll find numerous definitions. I'm sure you've heard several during your work. But simply put, average Canadians want electricity when they flip a switch, hot water when they turn on the water faucet, and gasoline when they go to the gas station. Unfortunately, they want it all at a reasonable price, whatever that means nowadays. They also want energy extraction methods to be environmentally sound—as long as it doesn't cost any more.

The reality of energy security for Canada is very complex. We are both an importer and an exporter of energy in all its forms. Some is raw material such as oil, coal, or uranium. But we also have electricity, an energy vector that we communicate with the U.S. and across provincial boundaries. We live in a huge, sparsely populated country with amazing extremes of temperatures. Building the infrastructure required to exploit and provide energy to Canadians was historically one of the most ambitious and complex engineering endeavours of all time. In my opinion, we were very lucky to have had people who took up that challenge and had the internal energy to do it.

Looking at energy security in a wider manner, I agree with the recent 2009-10 Capstone seminar student report from the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa that there are eight interdependent factors that constitute Canadian energy security: diversity of Canada's energy mix, the level of market transparency, investment, the free market nature of the Canadian energy sector, energy infrastructure, energy intensity, environmental considerations, and geopolitics.

But in my opinion, there are other more complex issues that muddy the waters of energy security and the role that governments need to play in sustaining it. First, there is risk management. Our role as government is to manage the risk, understand the risks. We may not know the issue to the nth degree, but we can manage the uncertainty and mitigate the risks as a continuous process.

Second, there is sovereignty. One example is the Arctic—there are sovereignty issues in the Arctic territories. Whose is it? Where does it belong? Where's the dividing line?

Third, and this is my belief, we need to assert world leadership in energy and environmental stewardship. Are we an energy superpower or just a commodity trader? How can we be acknowledged as an energy superpower, rather than just claiming to be one?

Fourth, there is the cause-effect challenge. In many cases, the energy developed around the world is huge. The environmental consequences are also huge. But there are other challenges that seek the heart of the social and economic well-being of communities.

Lastly, there is innovation. There is an unmet desire that all the preceding issues will be managed and understood if only we could innovate in areas such as technology development, policy frameworks, and health management. In my opinion, innovation strategy is central to energy security. The recent work by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is one example of possible options in the innovation agenda. There's always another conference just around the corner on innovation, where previous innovation agendas have failed. When Herb Dhaliwal was the Minister of Natural Resources, I remember him saying that the discussion on innovation was hampered by a translation gap. Government is innovating, and industry is innovating. But how do we get them innovating together?

Why did we fail? First, I think the science and technology agendas that have been enacted haven't really understood and embedded the longer-term thinking that innovation requires. Second, I don't think we're asking the right questions. What is innovation? What are we trying to do with innovation? Is it environmental? Is it economic? What is it? How are we trying to get a grip on this major area?

A third area, perhaps the most important, as with any strategic agenda is leadership or lack thereof. We need a champion to move this agenda forward. It won't happen overnight, and probably not within a couple of electoral periods, but we need the long-term commitment to make sure that an innovation agenda, feeding into an energy security agenda, can be acted upon.

In Alberta, many of the recent recommendations from the CCCE, such as nurturing start-up companies, improving business academic links, building talent pools of highly qualified personnel, and reshaping policy frameworks in developing newly formed companies, are actually happening. My new company name is as a result of that restructuring of the innovation system, myself, and three sister organizations around health, bio-industries, and energy.

On the federal side of innovation, the ability to focus the agenda is paramount. The complex agenda is maybe limiting the ability for federal policy development to learn from the science and technology agendas and move forward in support of the energy security challenge.

We need to ask the basic questions: what needs to be done, who needs to do it, when does it need to be done, what resources do they need to execute, and how do we keep them accountable?

The natural long cycle of innovation, although complex, needs to feed from the universities and groups such as the National Research Council, where the big science can happen under a national focus, but collaborate in regional frameworks by linking with the various provincial research entitles, such as the New Brunswick Research and Productivity Council, Saskatchewan Research Council, Manitoba Industrial Technology Centre, CRIQ in Quebec, and my own group, the Alberta Innovates Technology Futures. Here, we understand the jurisdictional advantage for energy in the environment and we can directly support companies to drive the economy but also understand and support the well-being of all Canadians in our own provincial areas.

I'm an optimist, and I firmly believe that the challenges our forefathers overcame in the early days of Canada's energy growth are the strength and resolve that we need to move forward in today's challenges and turn them into tomorrow's opportunities. Canada's energy resources are central to development as a country, but with these resources come responsibilities.

Governments in Canada must supply good management and leadership to develop policy and fiscal frameworks to assess when or if these resources should be accessed and under what terms. In my opinion, the regulatory system in Canada is robust, appropriate, and accountable, but it can be improved. We should always look to improve our systems, always questioning whether we're doing the right thing for the right reasons, and improving all the time.

With the above said, I believe that government's fundamental role in energy security is leadership on the provincial, national, and international stage. That doesn't mean always being at the front, but it does mean understanding the risks; managing them; nurturing when needed with fiscal and policy support; effectively communicating with stakeholders to understand their concerns rather than just transmitting at them; advancing future policy development based on sound science and engineering; knowing when to pass on that leadership; showing innovation to capitalize future action and good management. But above all, as we hold politicians accountable by our votes, you need to hold us accountable, as industry and research groups, for our actions and inactions.

Thank you once again, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear. I look forward to the questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Potter, from Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.

We now go to the second presentation, Vivian Krause, here as an individual. Go ahead, please, for up to seven minutes.

[Vivian Krause, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'm a resident of North Vancouver. I have a master of science degree in nutrition and I have worked most of my years with the United Nations Children's Fund, six years in Guatemala and five in Indonesia.

For the sake of time, I won't go into how I went from UNICEF to salmon farming to an extensive review of the more than 6,000 pages of the U.S. tax returns of the charitable foundations who are funding a campaign against Alberta oil. But I would like to say from the outset that I am not funded by anyone, and I am not part of any industry or any political party.

I would also like to acknowledge the much-appreciated contributions of my colleague, Rob Scagel.

I'd like to focus my remarks on the foreign funding, by American charitable foundations, of what I call the “demarketing” of Alberta oil. Demarketing is reducing demand or shifting demand away from something. We don't hear much about demarketing, because marketing is mostly about selling more, not selling less. But when it comes to Alberta oil, demarketing is precisely what Canadian environmental organizations have been paid to do by American charitable foundations.

Alberta oil isn't the only or first important Canadian export that's been demarketed by million-dollar American-funded campaigns. The same thing has been done with Canadian forest products and farmed salmon. If every negative thing said about Alberta oil were true, I would agree it should be demarketed. But as we heard in the previous session, some of what is said is flagrantly untrue.

So I believe the question needs to be asked, is there a sound scientific basis, a sound case for the demarketing of Alberta oil? And if not, then why is it being demarketed?

According to my analysis of U.S. tax returns, American charitable foundations have granted at least $18 million specifically for the demarketing of Alberta oil and thwarting of the Canadian oil and gas industry. By the way, that figure is up by about $3 million from the $15 million that I reported in an op-ed piece in the Financial Post in October. Some grants were specifically aimed to thwart the Canadian oil and gas industry. For example, in 2006 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund paid $200,000 to the Pembina Foundation and West Coast Environmental Law “to prevent the development of a pipeline and tanker port...”, among other things.

In 2009 the Bullitt Foundation paid the Tides Foundation to get the Dogwood Initiative “to expand outreach campaign to mobilize urban voters for a federal ban on coastal tankers...”. And the Brainerd Foundation, another American foundation, paid the Dogwood Initiative “to help grow public opposition to counter the Enbridge pipeline...”. They're doing what they're paid to do.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund granted at least $105,000 specifically to the first nations who are right at the mouth of the Douglas Channel, right where oil tankers would need to load if they were export-bound for Asia. That included $70,000 for an anniversary celebration in 2004 and $35,000 for a ceremonial event in 2006. Now, of all the aboriginal people in the world and all the places in the world, why does the Rockefeller Brothers Fund choose to pay more than $100,000 to the first nations at the Kitimat village right at the mouth of the Douglas Channel?

I can see that what they are doing is protecting the environment. I can also see that what they are doing is protectionism in the name of the environment. I believe it's important to look at the campaign against Alberta oil within the broader context of the initiatives that American foundations have funded in our country.

According to my analysis and preliminary calculations, over the past ten years American foundations have spent approximately $300 million on conservation initiatives in Canada and the so-called reform of our resource-based industries—forestry, mining, aquaculture, and oil and gas. About $50 million of that went straight to first nations, especially on the coast of British Columbia, including, for example, one grant for $27.3 million. That was a single grant.

Roughly 80% of that $209 million came from five foundations: the Hewlett Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. These are the foundations I have referred to as “The Big Five”. They have $22 billion in assets. They give away $1.2 billion every year. Their CEOs earn $600,000 to $700,000 a year. Their senior environmental staff are paid in the $300,000 range. Some of these professional environmentalists are paid more than the Prime Minister of our country.

In my remaining time I would like to share with you the three most important conclusions that I draw from my research and analysis.

First, there is no doubt that environmentalists care profoundly about the environment, but there is more to it than that. Some of the same foundations that are funding the demarketing of Alberta oil have made grants that specifically mention reduction in the dependence on fossil fuels as a matter of national security. So obviously this isn't purely about the environment; there are other interests.

Over roughly the same period that the Hewlett Foundation and the Packard Foundation--two separate foundations--granted $83 million for environmental initiatives in Canada, they also paid more than half a billion dollars to the ClimateWorks Foundation and the Energy Foundation.

The Energy Foundation has a clear agenda “to create a robust solar market”. Since 2009 the Energy Foundation has made at least 33 grants to reduce market barriers to solar development; support utility-scale solar power; design solar policy; and support regulatory interventions, long-term transmission corridor planning, and solar finance models.

Growing a solar business takes more than sunshine. It also requires shifting investment capital away from competing industries, especially oil. Sunshine may be infinite, but capital isn't, and scaring consumers, voters, and investors--which is what campaigns do--is a way of swaying investors and their capital.

So the Hewlett Foundation funds the Energy Foundation to create a robust solar market and thwart the coal industry, at the same time that the Hewlett Foundation funds the Tides Foundations and Tides Canada to demarket Alberta oil and thwart the Canadian oil and gas industry.

As I see it, the demarketing of Alberta oil is part and parcel of Hewlett's huge, heavily funded initiative to shift the energy market away from fossil fuels and towards renewables.

The problem with demarketing is that you paint yourself into a corner, because if you've positioned your products and services as being better than those of the competition, which is bad, and all of a sudden you start changing what you're saying about the competition, in the marketplace that changes not only what the market thinks about the competition, but what they say about you. So you have to stick to your positioning, and that's where you're painted into a corner, because even if your competitors reform and improve, you're stuck with de-positioning and demarketing them, which is what we're seeing.

My second point is that environmental activism isn't what it used to be. The new factor is money--millions and millions of dollars. As long as environmental organizations are paid to run multi-million-dollar campaigns, I think it's unreasonable to hope that they won't.

My last point is a suggestion. Considering that American foundations have spent upwards of $300 million in our country--especially $120 million on the Great Bear Rainforest initiative and the boreal forest initiative--it's pretty clear that they're serious about what they're doing. So my hope is that the leadership of government and industry will speak directly with the CEOs of these foundations.

The development of Alberta oil is a billion-dollar opportunity, and I hope we will make the most of that opportunity by minimizing the risks to a level that Canadians can accept. Both at home and abroad we could do a lot of good with that, and in terms of energy security. My hope is that we will.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you very much, Ms. Krause, for your presentation.

We will go finally to Jessie Inman, executive director of corporate development for HTC Purenergy Inc.

Thank you very much for being here. Go ahead with your presentation for up to seven minutes.

[Jessie Inman, Executive Director, Corporate Development, HTC Purenergy Inc.]

Honourable members of the natural resources committee of the House of Commons, Mr. Chair Leon Benoit, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today.

I submitted a paper to you before coming into this session, and it is too long to read in seven minutes, so I'm going to pick out the highlights from that paper. Hopefully, you will have a chance to read it later on.

The people of Canada are very blessed. We're endowed with such a vast natural resource space, and we have a relatively small population in such a very large land mass. We use 2.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent per year at this point in time, and that will grow by 34 million barrels of oil equivalent by 2025, taking us to 2.9 billion barrels of oil that we will need in equivalency by 2025.

We have this incredible standard of living because we are such a blessed nation. We have it because we have the resource for ourselves and have sufficient resources to export to our neighbours. So Canada is a very blessed country, but this doesn't mean we can sit back on our laurels and say, this is fine, and we have a very rosy future in front of us. We can't do that.

We have to do exactly what this committee is doing right now, and that is trying to understand and plan and manage a reasonable and sustainable mix in our energy supply for the future. Currently, we're using approximately 30% from oil, 27% from natural gas, approximately 8% from coal, 6.5% from nuclear, and 28% from hydroelectricity. You can see from those numbers that 65% of our energy is coming from fossil fuels.

The fact of the matter is, to make this sustainable we have to increase our renewable resources. We're very blessed with the hydroelectricity that we have, but we have minimum ability to increase that hydroelectricity. We're working very hard on our solar, but we only have 120 megawatts of installed solar power at this point in time. Even in wind, on which we're working very hard, we have 3,320 megawatts of wind. That is only 0.2% of our energy requirements in the country. It is very small. We also have ethanol as an alternative, at 5.8 million barrels of oil, which is 0.27%.

If you took the total of wind, solar, and ethanol and said that you were going to just supply the increase in demand from now until 2025, you would have to increase these by 300% every year until 2025. That's an incredible investment in renewable energies that we have to make in this country. Clearly, we need to do something about fossil fuels as we go along that path towards a renewable society.

I think that to look at unconventional sources of supply is very important. Obviously, we have the coal bed methane, which is unconventional, and we have all heard about the shale storm that has taken this continent, and we're very much looking at the fact that we have 160 billion barrels of oil and that approximately 20% of it will be recoverable. There are all the kinds of issues we're dealing with in order to make that happen, with new fracking and other methods of exploiting that resource.

What I'm here today to talk about is what I believe is the incredible opportunity we have in this country to have energy security at the same time as environmental security: that we can use our unconventional resource called carbon dioxide to increase our energy production. I believe that we have this asset called carbon dioxide, which we're emitting to the atmosphere for absolutely no reason. It is destroying our image; it is giving us a dirty-oil image, which I agree we don't deserve, but unfortunately we already have it. It's easily solved by collecting that carbon dioxide from the oil sands in particular. That's what my strategy is for Alberta: to take the carbon dioxide from the SAGD boilers and use it for enhanced oil recovery production from conventional and heavy oil in central and south Saskatchewan and Alberta.

We have 170 billion barrels of oil in the oil sands. It will be produced, as everybody has said around this table today—we all agree it's going to be produced. We're going to be emitting by 2025 more than 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from all of that production. Why would we let that asset go into the atmosphere, when it can be used?

We all know that 80% of the oil sands is in situ production—it's not open-pit mining—and that in situ production requires steam to be injected into one of the horizontal wells, and that it is once-through steam generators that we use to make that steam. Those generators produce carbon dioxide. Those are the emissions I'm talking about.

Why not use that carbon dioxide for unconventional production, which I call enhanced oil recovery? Some people in the industry call it miscible or immiscible flood. Simply, what you're doing is changing the viscosity of the oil so that it will swell and you can recover it.

In conventional oil in Alberta, the estimates are that we could increase our production by 3.5 billion barrels of oil.

On page three of the paper I gave you, I must tell you that I put an “m” instead of a “b”. In this industry you always have to make sure you get your Ms and your Bs straight, because they create quite different numbers.

So it's 3.5 billion additional barrels by using this asset that we're letting go into the atmosphere called carbon dioxide. Why would we do that? It doesn't make sense. We need to collect it and use it.

The same applies to the heavy oil that we have in central Alberta and in particular in Saskatchewan. There's another one billion barrels of oil that we can produce using carbon dioxide by injecting it into those oil fields.

So we have a unique opportunity, and one of the things I would like to bring to the attention of the committee, and I've done that, is that we have a centre of excellence on carbon dioxide in Regina. This is one of a few centres of excellence in the world. I think it's something we need to be very proud of. Our company uses that technology. It can be exploited in Saskatchewan and in Alberta to collect the carbon dioxide from these once-through steam generators and take out this additional oil that Canada can use for our own security.

We need to do the renewables and we need to increase our nuclear capabilities; I agree with that. But there is absolutely no reason that we cannot have clean fossil-fuel production. That can be done by taking the carbon dioxide from the oil sands. It has a high impact on the prosperity for Canada.

I would like to invite the members of this committee to come out to Regina and to look at the centre of excellence we have on carbon dioxide and at how we can make it a real win-win for Canada on all levels.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Inman, from HTC Purenergy Incorporated.

We go directly to questions for up to seven minutes.

Mr. Tonks, go ahead, please.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

I hardly know where to start. This committee has been infinitely educated by the quality of witnesses we have. This is certainly no exception; we've had great presentations today.

Mr. Potter, I have to say, you're far from a simple guy. If I were as simple as that, I wouldn't have any trouble going home and saying it. You've outlined what is the strategic interconnectedness with respect to what you talk about: taking tomorrow's opportunities from today's challenges. You talk about working with the National Research Council and the provincial affiliates to have a jurisdictional strategic policy development entity or regime.

You've heard Ms. Krause, who has described what I am inferring—and this is my own inference—is a conspiracy theory, which in some way suggests that we are not capable of dealing with balanced criticisms that are funded by legitimate entities, and that this conspiracy is in fact going to take us further from what you, Mr. Potter, have described as an opportunity. You've given us a clinical analysis and a prognosis for action.

My question is for you, Mr. Potter. You've heard Ms. Inman, who has also talked about the technology of developing carbon dioxide and using it to come to grips technologically with the issues that are affecting health and creating concerns for Canadians. I'm going to give you the floor now. What is your take? Are you still optimistic with respect to the capacity-building that is needed to generate the solutions that have been addressed by others?

[Ian Potter]

Thank you for the question.

Again, I'll try to keep my answer short.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Shorter than the question.

[Ian Potter]

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.