Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start by pushing back against some of the assertions that it is irresponsible somehow for Conservatives to be asking questions about what our electricity makeup is going to be in the future when there are more electric vehicles. We're looking at the problem two or three steps ahead of us, not at the problem immediately in front of us.
The fact is that for many decades one of Canada's greatest comparative economic advantages has been our cheap electricity. As Mr. Breton noted, 60% is hydroelectricity, 15% is from nuclear and just about 7% is from renewable power sources like wind and solar. My huge concern is that we've seen a new hydroelectric dam being built in British Columbia, which is now at $16 billion—billions—over cost. In Alberta, in my own riding, shutting down coal-fired electrical units cost billions in taxpayer dollars to bail out the companies that were shutting down their coal and transitioning to natural gas. In the province of Ontario we see taxpayers—due to experiments with developing green energy back in the 2000s—now subsidizing electrical rates [Technical difficulty—Editor] per cent.
To my question, Mr. Breton, following up on Mr. McLean's question, when we see that these electric vehicles are going to create a huge pull on the electrical grid and we've already seen that electricity costs are growing faster than inflation, where is the new electricity going to come from to pay for this? Are we going to see electrical rates go through the roof and make electric vehicles less affordable?