Thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for having me today, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am extremely appreciative of your invitation today to appear.
My name, as mentioned, is Gurpreet Lail. I'm the president and CEO of Enserva. We represent over 200 companies in the energy services, supply and manufacturing sector, and we support hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Our members are the companies and workers who drill the wells. They provide pressure pumping. They complete the wells. They manufacture the equipment. They provide field services. We're the ones who innovate the technologies that help keep production efficient and emissions reducing.
Without the energy services sector, there really is no upstream production. There are no royalties. There's no export revenue, and there's no energy security for our country. We are the companies that help unleash Canadian energy to the market.
As our members have witnessed, we have gone through a lot of issues lately, and we find that Canada has an economic problem. As energy exports are one of the clearest places where we can still act at scale, we just don't see enough action taking place right now.
In 2024, energy products were Canada's largest domestic export category at $195 billion. That's roughly 27% of all domestic exports. That should tell us something really important. Canada already has the resource base, the workforce and the global reputation to compete. What we don't have is a policy framework that consistently lets us win. It's made Canada one of the least attractive energy investment destinations in the developed world, and we hear this over and over again. The consequences of this are being felt in communities, at the dinner table and throughout all provincial budgets.
In 2024, Canada exported over 80% of its crude oil production and 40% of its natural gas production. This sector is already foundational to our trade performance and to the livelihoods of our communities across Canada.
The global opportunity is real, and it's current. The International Energy Agency expects global natural gas demand to grow by nearly 2% in 2026, with Asia-Pacific demand rising by 4%. The IEA predicts oil demand to also grow from its current record level of 104 million barrels per day by another one million barrels a day just this year. Around the world, governments and buyers are focused on secure, reliable, responsibly produced supply, and Canada is ready at the call to supply it for everyone.
With what we're seeing happen around the world right now, the current blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has created a potential global energy crisis that's playing out in front of us in real time. In this regard, I would say that Canada does not have just an opportunity; we have an obligation to our allies, to our friends and to our customers around the world to provide the resources that are required today.
Canada should be answering the demand with confidence. Instead, we are debating whether we are prepared to build the infrastructure and create the investment and conditions to do so. Nearly a year after Canadians were told that this country should become an energy superpower, industry is still waiting for enabling conditions that will make this possible.
Pipelines and energy export facilities do matter, but they are only part of the equation. We also need the production growth that fills those systems. We cannot move more Canadian energy abroad if policy makes it harder and less competitive for us to produce it in the first place.
This is why the policy stack absolutely matters. It is integral to this. The Impact Assessment Act process remains too long and too uncertain. The oil tanker moratorium that was put in place to block options on the British Columbia north coast and the federal industrial carbon price remain in effect. This is all a cost that no other major oil export nation has and that no customer is willing to pay for.
Whatever the intent behind these policies, the investment signal is clear: more cost, more uncertainty and more delay that chills capital, weakens the business case for new production and makes export infrastructure harder to finance.
From Enserva's perspective, our path is clear-cut. First, we need to set firm and shorter timelines for nationally significant energy infrastructure and the upstream activity needed to support it. Second, we need to remove or materially reform federal barriers that directly constrain export growth, including the tanker moratorium. Third, we need to ensure that industrial carbon policy does not hamstring Canadian production before new projects can even get to a final investment decision.
Canada can be a major and growing dependable supplier of energy in a world that still needs more of it, but that's only going to happen if this country chooses to build, chooses to approve and chooses to compete. We have an opportunity to unleash Canada to end global energy poverty, and we need to take it now.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
