It's a great reminder. It hearkens back, actually, to why it is so important to hear from witnesses and then to ask them follow-up questions. After people from one of the parties ask questions, we have several rounds, as you know, Mr. Chair, because you are the person who helps us keep organized on all of that. We go through several rounds of questions. That means maybe one person from one party has six minutes or five minutes—I can't remember if it's two and a half minutes—depending on the different ways we do these things as we go around. That gives us an opportunity to test what was said and to maybe dive deeper. Unfortunately, we didn't have that opportunity, because our panel was cut short. We didn't get the opportunity to ask any further questions to build on that.
That's too bad. I would have wanted more clarity, particularly in light of what we've done over the past several years. I would say that budget 2023 in particular had a massive investment and policy direction on electricity. When we're asked what we have done on electricity, you can look at budget 2023. A lot happened in there.
The Premier of the Northwest Territories was talking about budget 2023 and said:
Building a clean economy is another area of focus in the 2023 federal budget. The Northwest Territories is a jurisdiction with great energy and critical mineral potential but we have a small population and limited financial resources. We can't address our infrastructure challenges alone, and the Government of Canada is a key partner in this journey. Budget 2023 specifically references the ability to support clean electricity projects across the north including the Taltson Hydro Expansion Project.
There you go. That's a regional example of what we're doing when it comes to clean electricity and what has happened in even the past few years.
We can look at the Minister of Finance for the Government of Ontario:
The Government of Canada’s 2023 budget provides significant support responding to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act with investment tax credits in clean electricity, including small modular reactors, and clean technology manufacturing and extraction of critical minerals. We also welcome the federal government’s investment in its Strategic Innovation Fund to support the development and application for clean technologies.
That's an interesting tie-in, because we started off with a study talking about our response to the Inflation Reduction Act. That's something we have worked on here. When we look at what the Minister of Finance for the Government of Ontario said, specifically there was a reference to our investment tax credits in clean electricity. That's some of what the Government of Canada is doing when it's talking about electricity.
Let's go to Alberta. Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said, “Alberta unions have been urging the federal government to seize the opportunities associated with the unfolding paradigm shift in the global economy. And we urged them to keep up with the incentives in the American Inflation Reduction Act. Today, they delivered.” That's quite the shout-out. It refers to the global economy, which is something I talked about when I referred to the International Energy Agency's report. It also talks about how unions responded and saw that we were stepping up and doing the work they wanted to see in that area.
We could have heard more from Electricity Canada, and it's deeply unfortunate that we weren't able to. However, in response to budget 2023, they said, “#Budget2023 makes transformative investments in the affordability of Canada’s electricity system. The new Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit will help Canada’s electricity sector build the clean, affordable, & reliable grid that we need.”
I would have liked to ask about that. When the question about what the federal government has done was asked, Electricity Canada said that we were making “transformative investments in the affordability of Canada's electricity system”. That's what we have done. That's what we have been doing. That is what our focus has been, and it has been developed by listening to stakeholders, people working in the industry and unions working in the industry. We have developed this groundwork, and that is a good example of the type of work we have been doing.
However, I didn't get a chance to ask about any that. We didn't get to follow up on it because the study was cut short. That's why the amendment being proposed by the Conservatives is so troublesome. It just cuts us short, with no ability to follow up on some of these points and see what the next steps are, what other planning needs to be done, where we go from here and how to make sure we set this all in, with our voices—the people at this table—making recommendations as to next steps.
We talked about, as I have been mentioning, the emissions piece. I have been focused a lot more on the affordability piece, but this is also about the environment, as we're talking about electricity and our electrical grid. What did the David Suzuki Foundation have to say about it?