Evidence of meeting #65 for Natural Resources in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was interties.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
There are maybe 10 people in the world who know about my dad, so thank you for that.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
There you go.
Mr. Hinds, in terms of Canada's priority as a federal government, do you believe that we should focus more on increasing clean electricity exports to the U.S., or should we be focusing more on the interties with the provinces? Can you comment on that?
As an Individual
That's a very good question. In doing what I do—and perhaps unlike Jim—I have to be technology agnostic, because my job is to make sure people's lights go on. I can't fall in love with any particular flavour of the way these things are made. I have a very “technical system operator” point of view on the variety of different sources. The general answer I'm going to give you is completely evasive, but it's true. Every form of power generation has advantages, and every form of power generation has disadvantages.
There I will stop, although perhaps not for the rest of this meeting, as I would like to revisit a couple of things.
Perhaps first is the question on Quebec. Ontario and Quebec get along extremely well. We are heavily interconnected. Quebec is generally an exporter of electrons. They use their own transmission system to do so through the United States. They use our transmission system. It's open. They're free to do that. We have a number of bilateral deals with Quebec on particular power usage things, including a swap with them at their winter peak versus a swap with us at our summer peak. We make emergency arrangements with each other to support each other's systems in times of bad weather events and other things. Ontario and Quebec are perhaps the least of the worries here. We do a tremendous amount of business with them, and the systems are heavily interconnected.
I would like to cycle back to the question that was asked previously and that might pertain to this too.
There are three glaring holes in the map right now.
The first glaring hole in the map is western. Alberta is not directly connected to the western interties. In order to connect to the western interties, Alberta has to go through B.C., and that is a source that's probably worth half an hour of the committee's time at some point in order to understand the electrical issues behind that, and the friction. It means that Alberta is hostage, to some extent, in its ability to get electrons from the western intertie to whatever is going on in B.C.
There's a whole bunch of other initiatives that are currently under way. I won't comment on them, but the other glaring gap is that Ontario and Manitoba are not really interconnected very well. There's tremendous hydraulic potential in Manitoba. Manitoba is spending a whole pile of money on transmission enhancement up and down either side of Lake Winnipeg in order to enable new generation to come online, and really, there's largely an extension cord that exists between Jim's old stomping grounds in the northwest and Manitoba. It's a 115-kilovolt tie-line. In the long-term energy plan that we're about to release, Ontario has been gradually enhancing its ability on the transmission system to Thunder Bay and west. I would expect to see that enhanced in a couple of weeks when this plan comes out.
The third glaring one on this map is that, in fact, Saskatchewan is not really interconnected with anybody. Again, my third major observation would be that, other than work that's already under way, there are no real interconnections of any significance between Saskatchewan and anybody else.
In terms of thinking about how your committee can make a difference and how the federal government can make a difference, I would focus on the three areas where work is not being done, and those are the three areas.
Liberal
Marc Serré Liberal Nickel Belt, ON
Mr. Hinds, you mentioned the important link that Ontario has with Quebec. How has the nuclear sector played a role in that, and in your opinion is there any role for SMRs in northwestern Ontario as far as expanding the electrical grid goes?
As an Individual
Northwest Ontario is our own issue right now because of the potential development of the Ring of Fire up there, and also electrifying some of the communities that are currently on diesel. That's a long conversation.
In terms of Quebec, the interplay between nuclear and Quebec, essentially the marginal cost of an electron made by nuclear reactor is close to zero. The marginal cost of an electron made by Quebec's water system is next to zero. Those two electrons fight it out with each other in the market. I think Quebec has experimented with the CANDU reactor. I don't think it's ever been synchronized with the grid. I think they decided to put the reactor in abeyance and decided not to pursue the technology, and given what their hydrology is I can completely understand that. I doubt that there's a future for nuclear power generation in Quebec.
In Ontario we're refurbishing our reactors, which is going to be a five-decade project, and we're trying to keep them alive. Pickering will be shut down but Darlington and Bruce will be refurbished, and I think they finally got the refurbishment in New Brunswick done of Lepreau. I think it's working fairly well. But I don't think there are many people around who think that nuclear has any new built capability in Canada in the near term.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
We're going have to stop there. Don't everybody rush off as we have some committee business and we'll have to go in camera for a couple of minutes.
Gentlemen, thank all three of you for joining us today and taking time out of your schedule. Your evidence has been very helpful to what we're trying to achieve here. On behalf of the committee I just want to express our gratitude and wish you well for the rest of the day. We're going to let you go and we're going to carry on.
We'll suspend for two minutes and then come back once the room has been cleared.
[Proceedings continue in camera]