Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here.
This is going to be an interesting process. Certainly, as a member from Alberta, I'll say that this is something fairly new to us, as we don't have nuclear power in Alberta. It's been a topic of discussion for many years, but for the reasons you've just touched on, it has not come to Alberta.
You've talked about that opposition to nuclear power. In Alberta, we feel much the same in terms of the oil-and-gas side. We have that misperception of the dangers of oil and gas when we know that the safety record is much different in reality, so I certainly feel your pain in trying to promote the nuclear industry.
There are some numbers I found really interesting as I was going through some of the research. We keep talking about opportunities to find more environmentally friendly energy supplies, and nuclear is one that is not very often raised, which I find surprising. We always talk about solar and wind and these kinds of opportunities. In Ontario, you have that great app on your phone, Gridwatch, and I wish we had one for Alberta, but we don't. It's really interesting to look at. Today I clicked on it, and for Ontario, solar is at 0%, wind is at 2.4%, and nuclear is at 60%.
When you look at the cost of those energy supplies, you see that nuclear is at about 5.6¢ per kilowatt hour, whereas solar is at 50¢ per kilowatt hour, and wind is at 13.5¢. That shows you the substantial cost difference in these power supplies. Why are we not talking more about nuclear? I think we all know why, but I would like to ask the witnesses this: how do we change the public perception of nuclear?
You talked about a very vocal minority. We face much the same on the oil-and-gas side. I fear that if we start to talk about opportunities with nuclear, those same people who are opposing pipeline construction are going to be the ones opposing additional nuclear power supplies, even when it makes the most sense. It's economical. I know that the CANDU technology is safer than any other technology in the world when it comes to the safety precautions in there.
How do we change that mindset? Or can we? Is there an opportunity to do this or are we going to be facing the same battles we're having with regard to the oil-and-gas sector? Will we have a government that is going to be more supportive of nuclear than they have been with oil and gas? Do we have an opportunity here? Or is this an uphill battle? Mr. O'Dea is talking about exporting our technology to Romania and China, when we could probably be using it right here at home.