Thank you very much to our witnesses for being here with us today.
Your timing is excellent. Certainly over the last several months my Alberta colleagues and I, including Ms. Stubbs, did an Alberta jobs task force. One of the ones who spearheaded that was the member of Parliament for Edmonton Riverbend, Matt Jeneroux.
We had a lot of discussions and feedback from that. One of those topics that came up a great deal was diversifying Alberta's economy and creating jobs. One of the things that Mr. Jeneroux really pushed forward was the potential on the geothermal side. Actually well before the budget, he had tabled Motion No. 122, which was asking the government to support regulations and policy changes to encourage geothermal development in Canada.
I recall Matt actually saying we're one of the only...or maybe the only Pacific Rim country that doesn't produce electricity from geothermal energy, which I should have known. We should have known that, Alison.
What Matt was talking about and what we heard from a lot of our constituents during the Alberta jobs task force round tables was about the ability or the potential for geothermal to address the more than 80,000 plus abandoned oil wells that we have in Alberta as a way to potentially turn them into electricity-producing projects or some ways to address that, create jobs and also maybe address an environmental concern. You didn't have a chance to talk about that. Is that a potential there, Ms. Thompson? Is that something that geothermal can do?