I noticed that both Dr. Aslund and Geoff Hill have mentioned that there are two sides to this issue of what Ukraine is struggling with right now. One is to ensure a secure supply of gas or other fuels, other sources of energy electricity, and the other is energy efficiency.
Some of you may be aware, likely Dr. Aslund is, that the IMF have just declared that they will give $17 billion to Ukraine, and $3.2 billion of that immediately. Those dollars are conditional on a substantial effort by Ukraine on energy efficiency. Certainly that's another side that Canada could readily provide.
One thing that I would add is, I had the pleasure in 2012 of travelling to Ukraine twice, including meeting with some of the local governments. Some of them are particularly struggling with trying to provide jobs in small-scale industries. There could potentially be a lot of job creation through energy retrofits, installing renewable energy, and so forth.
Interestingly, and you wouldn't know this, Dr. Aslund, unless you saw the proceedings, we were fortunate to have representatives from the Government of Poland testify before us on Tuesday. They put forward a number of recommendations. One of them was in keeping with what you've said. Because Ukraine is among the least energy efficient and there's pressure by the EU in that direction, they strongly recommended that they move toward greater energy efficiency. Apparently the IMF is requiring greater energy efficiency, not just for large industry which might be more readily possible, but also for smaller scale commercial and home. They realize there has to be some kind of a social safety net.
I'm wondering if we could hear from, first of all, perhaps, Dr. Aslund and then Mr. Hill, who, to his credit, and we looked at his report, said that part of a national energy strategy for Canada should be energy efficiency, and certainly we have a lot of expertise that we could be exporting to Canada on that.
Dr. Aslund.