In terms of competencies required to build those projects, the green energy market, so to speak, is exactly the same as traditional energy markets. You still need carpenters, millwrights, and steamfitters, so it's a nice addition to conventional energy employment.
Obviously, when you're building an LNG facility or an upgrader or a refinery, the number of person hours required to build that facility outstrips putting together a few windmills on a wind farm, but granted, those windmills and those wind farms are growing.
We've had mixed experiences with some installations of green projects. Lots of times the big companies from the U.S. come to install the windmills and they want to use their own crews, so even in B.C. we've had difficulties on wind farms when crews come in from other places and Canadians are standing at the gate asking what's happening. For instance, under the Ontario Green Energy Act, some of the solar farms were installed under NAFTA provisions and some of the electricians in Sarnia were left at the gate.
So I agree with you that green energy is an addition to the current work scope, but the person hours required on a conventional energy project are in the millions more than putting up a wind farm or a solar farm. The manufacture of the solar panels itself often doesn't occur in Canada. It occurs offshore, and sometimes the electricians feel they are reduced to being installers of solar panels.
It's a good start. You talked about renewable. I'll include hydro in that. If we're going to build new dams, absolutely, tons and tons of person hours are involved in building new dams. Lots of jobs are involved, absolutely, in building the transmission lines from those dams to market.
We're still waiting to see on some of the other green jobs. The important part is that we have some sort of coordination so we know when projects are occurring where, so we can send the workforce. If we're going to have a large solar installation, say in Kelowna, we need to make sure the workforce isn't doing one in Sarnia or somewhere in New Brunswick.
I sound like a broken record, but an energy plan has to be linked to a labour plan.
I'm sorry, I might be getting off track.