Thank you very much, Chair.
What I'm going to add, though, is that, unfortunately, even though I agree with the substance of the motion, there's one component that I do not agree with. That is the component that essentially states that this study would supersede all the other studies, including the one that we just embarked on. The reason I can't agree with that and will not be supporting the motion as it is written and amended is that the study with regard to Canada's electrical grid is one that's incredibly important to my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges. Actually, I was very excited, when I got appointed to this committee, to be told that this would be the first study we'd be embarking on.
The reason it's important to my community, Chair, is that my community has experienced, over the last two years, significant and unprecedented environmental events that led to tens of thousands of my constituents being without power, several times, in the midst of the cold winter in January and February, for several days. It brought to light the challenges that remain in Canada, whether in my community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges or in communities represented by my fellow members of all parties on this committee. If you're looking for the aspect that's most important to me, Chair, of the motion that was put forward on the electricity grid study, it's the component that deals with the challenges to improve electrical production and distribution across Canada.
Distribution, for me, is key. Last January—January 2023—we had yet another ice storm in Canada. It was the second-worst ice storm in our history, second only to the one that we experienced in the late nineties—and my honourable colleague from the Bloc Québécois will remember this well—when several hundred thousand Quebeckers, thousands in my own community of Vaudreuil—Soulanges, were left without power. The reason they were left without power was, for the most part, that extra weight was put on the transmission lines that either weren't supported by the existing infrastructure or were damaged by falling trees. In some cases it took up to six days to restore power, while we had temperatures overnight and in the evenings going down to -15°C or -16°C.
It got to the point that not only did my municipalities have to open up emergency centres.... Community centres had to be turned into emergency centres. Seniors or those who didn't have access to some form of generator had to go into those community centres overnight, return to their homes during the day and then make their way back to the community centres overnight. Something else that compounded that while all of this was going on was that, as elected officials—I as the federal member, the two provincial members Marie-Claude Nichols and Marilyne Picard, respectively, and the mayors—we didn't have access to any way of communicating with one another. What happened when we lost electricity was that the telecommunications system in the province, particularly in the south, was so heavily affected by the loss of power that we couldn't even communicate our collective response to the tens of thousands of our constituents we needed to respond to.
The discussion that we've been having since then is what needs to be done to the grid to make it more resilient and to support the needs of our constituents as we make our way into the new world, which is a new world that's addressing climate change. Prior to embarking on this important study, I reached out to my mayors to ask them if they had any questions they wanted me to ask on their behalf, and I put forward my own questions that I wanted to ask. However, just before being able to ask those questions on behalf of the elected representatives I work very closely with in my community, we had this motion presented by MP Angus—whom I admire and respect greatly.
This is a motion that, as I said, I support in substance, and I'm looking forward to getting to that, but before we get to that, we have a pressing issue for members like me. I'm sure there are other members in the committee for whom this is very important. We want to get to this. We need to address this issue. We need to talk about not just expanding and meeting the needs of Canadians tomorrow and figuring out how we're going to provide Canadians with that clean energy we need to provide them with because our population is growing, but also how that energy is going to have to be clean energy and how we're going to go about doing that—