That's a challenging question.
I could go on at length, and I have—I give student seminars in which I do go on at length explaining to people the unbelievable myriad ways that access to affordable and abundant energy benefits them, whether it's their cellphone and their ability to call the paramedics when their grandmother is feeling ill, or the refrigeration that keeps their insulin ready for them to use, or the energy that allows them to clean their clothes and keep the burden of disease down in their houses, that allows us the medical treatments we need, which are highly energy intensive.
Unfortunately, the narrative in Canada is still several years behind the times in some ways, particularly the one about green energy. Actually, if you look at the world leaders who have tried green energy in Europe, they're now backpedalling furiously, having found that they bought themselves into unbelievably expensive, unsustainable forms of wind and solar power generation that generate power when it's not needed, that are unreliable, and that have to have backup power, which is 100% duplicative.
We just did a study at the Fraser Institute of the GEA in Ontario, showing the same thing. Under the GEA, power prices in Ontario have shot up tremendously. They're expected to go up another 40%, 50%, or 60% in the next couple of years. That's going to slam manufacturing and mining very hard, in terms of attracting investment, because they'll be less and less competitive with other jurisdictions.
So there is a need to update the narratives here in Canada on green energy, and on greenhouse gas emissions as well, and on the centrality of energy to our lives. Will people get it in time? That really depends on whether enough voices can counter the narratives that are misleading them into thinking that we can replace our hydrocarbons with wind and solar power. Really, hydrocarbons are mostly used for moving things—they're transport fuels—whereas wind, solar, and hydro generate electricity.
I think there's a long way to go before the public is going to understand this, but when they get the bills in Ontario, they'll start to understand.