Thank you very much.
Thank you for the invitation. I'm honoured. I regret that I was unable to appear before you in person.
I want to go back to the bill, which is certainly relevant but still contains a number of inconsistencies. The bill aims to add the management of offshore renewable energy licences to the already existing management of offshore oil licences.
As we heard earlier, technologies for generating electricity using offshore wind turbines are already available. It is therefore essential that the federal and provincial governments in Canada adopt the legislative tools to support the development of such projects, but they also need to facilitate the rapid implementation of projects to increase renewable energy production in the Canadian energy system. In that regard, this bill is relevant, appropriate and necessary.
Nonetheless, I see two significant issues. First, it's somewhat inconsistent with climate targets. Second, there's a lack of integration with other jurisdictions when it comes to renewable energy production, which is different from oil production. I'll come back to that in a moment, but first, I'll address the inconsistency with climate targets.
The bill, as presented, will treat fossil fuel extraction and renewable energy production equally. That's incompatible with what we know and with what international organizations are promoting. They're clearly saying that, if we want to reach the climate targets adopted by the signatories to the Paris accord, the development of new fossil fuel deposits must be prohibited. However, the bill doesn't do that; rather, it promotes both types of activities equally.
In my opinion, the bill should include a deadline, in the near future, after which no new licences for fossil fuel development will be granted or, at the very least, the bill would trigger, say, every five years, a review of the relevancy of continuing the exploitation or development of new offshore fossil fuel deposits.
In that context, we can say that the short title of the bill, which simply mentions the renewable energy aspect in relation to the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord, does not reflect the nature of the bill in its current form, since fossil fuels get equal treatment. However, if the amendments I'm proposing are made, that title can be retained. That said, the title is a secondary issue.
Now, let's talk about how to prioritize renewable energy projects. It's important to understand that transporting renewable energy presents different challenges from those associated with transporting oil and gas. The bill refers briefly to green hydrogen. However, green hydrogen and its derivatives, such as ammonia, are still far from constituting a real market for renewable energy production, despite the visibility these molecules have been given.
This means that most, if not all, offshore electricity produced will need to be transported to the coast, and then to market. We cannot really consider offshore projects as being strictly offshore. They need to be integrated into a market connecting the provinces and other markets.
Furthermore, the current bill does not define potential upstream collaboration or an order of precedence, for example, in order to accelerate approval of projects that aren't limited to wind turbine construction. The transmission lines between provinces and more remote markets are needed. Therefore projects should instead be considered in their entirety, and an attempt should be made to create mechanisms to ensure more comprehensive approvals and consequently reduce the time it takes for projects to be assessed so they can get under way faster.
In my opinion, it would be better for the bill to recognize that putting oil in a ship for transport is quite different from the production of electricity, which requires transmission lines and more complex market integration with various levels of approval. Some thought needs to be given as to how to simplify that and allow the acceleration of renewable energy projects.
Those are my main comments on the bill. I will be happy to expand on them.