It's a very important question. I know, as Mr. Smillie just pointed out, that it is a red flag to some, especially western members.
What strikes me, from listening to what various witnesses have said today, is that we are moving towards an energy security policy for energy exports. You see this in many major exporting countries. A good example is the former Soviet Union, or Russia, in which the Soviet Union at the time, and now Russia, had essentially one market for its oil and natural gas, and that was western Europe, and now effectively all of Europe. The Russians have done what is being advocated. They've diversified to Asia. So now they have, from an energy exporter's energy security view, two markets in which they can effectively play one off against the other, which is more or less what has been suggested by a number of the witnesses.
That being the case, we now have in Canada, surprisingly, the need for energy security to address the energy import issue. As it stands right now, it really isn't being addressed in eastern Canada. We've been told there is infrastructure in eastern Canada to handle the natural gas, because the natural gas will start flowing from the south to the north. This, as it stands right now, is not true. If the infrastructure were there, natural gas would be certainly making larger inroads into Atlantic Canada. It isn't.
We do need a national energy strategy of some sort to recognize that the country is both, at present, an energy exporter and an energy importer. We should be addressing the need for energy security from both the exporter perspective and the importer perspective.
Thank you.