That's perfect. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I might as well finish up with Mr. Bateman, and then I'll ask my question to Mr. Metcalfe.
According to the IESO's August 2016 report on the state of the electricity system, that was the 10-year review, the Province of Ontario is a net exporter of electricity. I think we all know that. Electricity is sold in many cases at pennies on the dollar. We have businesses here paying more for hydro than they should and then subsidizing their competitors across the border.
I looked at your September 16 presentation on YouTube. You're in Alberta. Some of the interesting things you said.... I was struck by your response to a question from the audience about why rural Ontarians pay more than urban Ontarians. Your answer, if I'm quoting this correctly was related to the proximity and the cost of getting power to those rural users. And we often hear that when it comes to the price of a litre of gasoline, it costs more to get fuelled in Haliburton than it does in Scarborough.
Further in your presentation, you speak to the reliability of power and specifically that the concerns regarding the reliability of wind and solar can be mitigated by the sheer number of wind turbines and solar panels that are spread across the province of Alberta. Presumably in Ontario those panels and turbines would not obviously be spread out among Yonge Street and Bay Street, but they would be spread out in rural Ontario. So under the 2009 Green Energy Act, and as pointed out by the Auditor General, Ontario agreed to pay solar power and wind turbine operators as much as 10 times the market rate for electricity they produce under 20-year contracts. Then you spoke to the warranty issue, which I believe is one of the reasons they chose that.
If we're going to put rural Ontarians with the burden of housing acres upon acres of wind turbines and solar panels, in your opinion, wouldn't it be better for all concerned, rural Ontarians, the ratepayers, the solar industry itself, that we hold off on spending money to improve the entire system, a system to sell subsidized power at a loss and perhaps instead focus on investing that money in the technology needed to store? I believe Mr. Robinson, Mr. Metcalfe, and you did too, Mr. Bateman, pointed to capturing that electricity and allowing it to be captured.
Wouldn't that reduce the number of panels and turbines needed and reduce the need for subsidies and make a profit for Ontarians?