Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
As an Albertan, I'll preface my remarks by saying it has been a long time since I've been employed in the oil and gas sector directly. Albertans love their clean open spaces. We love our rivers. We love our lakes. We love our forests. I've seen many fantastic things in Alberta's landscape from the floor of a drilling rig and from the floor of a service rig in my employment. I've been amazed since the nineties, when I was working out in the patch, about all the remarkable changes that have happened to date.
I do want to explore some of these questions with CAPP or with PSAC. When it comes to investments and your partnerships with academic institutions, whatever the case might be, how do you go about those partnerships? I know that your organization is coming together, and it sounds as if there is some harmonization or some cooperation in exploring technological developments that will further enhance everybody's outcomes, whether it's through the environment or whether it's through production outcomes. What's the primary motivator there? Is it a social push from the population at large, or is it a regulatory push from provincial and federal governments? Where is your push coming from, and how are you meeting those demands and challenges?
My second question will be this. When you have a private sector, there are a lot of entrepreneurs. There are several in my riding that have unique and innovative ways of extracting either oil or bitumen, without using SAGD or toe-to-heel air injection. They've got different technologies and they're looking for doors to knock upon. How do you guys accommodate those kinds of entrepreneurs and take a look at their technology and see if it's worthwhile pursuing tests and trials to make sure we get the best technology possible doing the job?