Thank you.
Monsieur Lavoie and Mr. Telford, you have also made it clear that there would be a real benefit to having these pipelines built sooner rather than later.
There is an additional problem—and this was something that was discussed at the meeting of this committee of the NATO parliamentarians—that if Canada doesn't get access, especially when it comes to liquefied natural gas, if we don't get involved quickly we could lose out entirely and simply not have a market for our liquefied natural gas.
Australia is a huge player. The United States has already applied for export licences, and I believe they've received one. That was the information we got at this meeting. They will become exporters.
The problem with natural gas even in the United States is that to change one of their import terminals to exporting requires about a $10 billion investment. In Canada it will be more than that. These are huge investments. So what we're probably going to see is the countries that want to buy the gas investing in exchange for long-term contracts, possibly 20-year contracts. You can see what is happening here. As other countries sign these long-term contracts, Canada could lose out.
One of the added benefits of Canada exporting gas, for example to China, is that we'd be replacing new coal-fired electrical generation plants. So it would be a good thing for the environment if we could export as well.
The time is almost up. Obviously I'm not used to this.
If Canada doesn't get its export plants built soon, will we miss out entirely on exporting? At the least it might make it more difficult for us to find the markets that we need.
I'd like your thoughts on that, Mr. Lavoie and Mr. Telford.
There's still almost a minute.