Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable members, thank you for inviting me to participate in the work of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. There's more information about me and the Institut de l'énergie Trottier in the brief I sent you. Our work is about the energy transition and how to support governments in achieving climate goals.
The United States' 2022 Inflation Reduction Act put pressure on the Canadian government, and the government tried to respond in the latest budget. In addition to that response, Canada is moving forward with its own climate agenda. A few weeks ago, the government tabled regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity generation by 2035. We're also expecting another set of regulations to cap fossil fuel industry emissions.
We need a made-in-Canada approach. We can't just copy the Americans. For one thing, Canada doesn't have the same political and economic structures as its neighbour. For another, the size of the Canadian economy means that we can't throw as much cash at the problem as the United States. That's why we have to focus on our strengths so we can advance Canada's decarbonization agenda and meet those climate targets.
I think the federal government needs to do much more than just give huge grants to foreign investors who bring their know-how and intellectual property. It also has to support Canadian sectors active in developing technology, integrative knowledge and exportable approaches, because the energy transition also has to provide the financial capacity to get the job done.
That's why we need strategic capacity-building approaches to developing scalable decarbonization solutions, not just pilot projects. There are too many pilot projects. We need an integrated approach.
Many sectors are still rudimentary, even at the ideas stage. I'll go over some of them. The first, of course, is a robust building decarbonization policy. That is key. Canada is a cold country, and building decarbonization means getting rid of natural gas while ramping up electrification and other heavy technologies, which require integrative know-how to avoid blowing electrical grids and manage peak consumption.
Since Canada is a cold country, we could develop technology integration and peak management know-how along with other related elements. That know-how would be exportable to the northern United States and other cold countries. We need to tackle that. Canada's diverse energy resources mean we can develop a portfolio of useful solutions that could transfer to certain industries.
We also have to deal with a major auto sector reorganization in which vehicle electrification will result in job losses. We need to use people's know-how to move forward and adopt policies to reskill those workers or transfer them to sectors of crucial importance to Canada, one of which is building infrastructure, in my opinion. I am not an expert in this area, but the energy transition will require massive investments in infrastructure, be it electricity, public transit or other infrastructure. However, Canada is not particularly productive in terms of infrastructure. I think we need to see a focused effort; we need a robust strategy to reduce infrastructure costs and speed up infrastructure deployment. Some of this could be achieved through prefabrication, such as in building and road infrastructure. By developing an infrastructure-related manufacturing industry, we can support the auto sector.
Regarding electricity, we need to dramatically increase production in Canada, but that comes with huge costs, so we also need to develop strategies to improve productivity as we deploy that infrastructure.
There are many other potential sectors that could be used, but for decarbonization, we must move away from traditional approaches or sectors of electricity production to move in the direction of energy demand. In that direction, there are many areas where Canada could position itself ahead of its partners, while speeding up the energy transition.
Thank you.