Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Why is it important? Vertical farming is just one aspect of food security. All I'm trying to make the point on here is that, if we even talk about the intersection of food and energy security and about food and energy sustainability, the amount of energy we are going to need is not going to be two to three times. It's going to be four to six times. If we don't act today and focus on exploring ways to generate, transmit, distribute, store, manage, optimize and exchange energy now; make the investments of nearly $80 billion a year; find incentives; look at social impact and policies; and start working with provinces on how, through interprovincial agreements, we can ensure that security, which comes with reliability and access, and make it affordable and adequate, we'll miss the boat.
One of my colleagues across the way talked about the fact that we did a study in 2017, and, “Well, nothing happened, so let's not do anything about it.” Well, it's not 2017 anymore. It's 2024. I believe that, when we talked about it in 2022 and 2023, and now in 2024, the world is moving in a very different direction and is focusing on generating clean electricity. Each one of these industries is flourishing: High-capacity storage, transmission, modelling and management are all flourishing. Why? It's because everybody feels that sense of urgency, and it is that sense of urgency that I think the amendment is really ignoring.
I believe that was already said when we agreed with the concept of doing the study, but superseding this, when we have only a short runway of 25 years, $80 billion and all of those elements—