Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
I will offer support for this motion by our colleague Charlie. Before I get into the topic of TMX, I will be offering a friendly amendment to the motion to have this study supersede all the current work of the committee.
Clearly, there is still a lack of certainty and clarity on the government's requirements for urging proponents to meet its goals on electricity decarbonization, even though, as all of you have outlined numerous times, Canada's grid is already almost 90% clean. I think if you had a chance to answer, you probably would have said that your proponents and workers would have continued on that innovation, that even without the CERs, you probably would have hit 90% very rapidly. I'm going to take a gamble that that might have been your answer. You're certainly welcome to expand on that in your written submissions.
To all colleagues here, the reason Charlie's motion must supersede our existing work is that this government has promised ITCs for a year and a half and has not delivered. ITCs have been deployed in the United States for three years, and this federal government has talked a big game about caring about Canadian businesses, Canadian workers and Canadian taxpayers, saying it wants to compete with the United States. Of course, every single Canadian here knows that we cannot compete with the United States in a dollar-for-dollar subsidy race to the bottom of the barrel, because it is not affordable.
What we can do is compete in every possible way, and we can control our domestic policy and regulatory and fiscal agendas. That means actually working with the private sector to establish realistic targets with realistic timelines that are affordable, economic and possible with current technology. It means caring about where the generation comes from and the supply chains for materials. It means thinking about Canadian energy security, affordability, reliability and liability. It means contemplating national security on energy security.
It means not putting the cart before the horse, which this government has clearly done. It hasn't figured out, as all of you have called for in different ways, how to accelerate the recovery of resources that require it to meet its endgame and where they're all going to come from. We must contemplate that this work should be done by Canadians businesses, Canadian workers with Canadian technology, Canadian supply chains and Canadian products to protect Canadian security and pursue energy security with our North American partners and free and democratic allies around the world.
What's also clear is that there is no federal regulatory process right now. The cornerstone regulatory framework and initiative by this government was found to be largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada six months ago, and they've done nothing. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance now talks a big game about how this summer she's going to suddenly accelerate major project approvals and back the private sector and other proponents to get things built. Well, for 10 years, their track record of results shows that it's all false. We're sitting here with private sector proponents and developers asking for clarity and certainty on fiscal and regulatory regimes, and right now they're completely broken. There is no certainty or clarity at all. That's a direct result of this Liberal government, but also with participation from the NDP, the Bloc and the anti-energy activists who got us here. However, I digress, and I don't want to undermine the spirit of co-operation here with my colleague Charlie.