Natural Resources Committee on April 30th, 2026

[Claude Guay, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Côté, let's continue on this subject.

We just talked about network interconnection, which is important if we want to increase exports. A lot of electricity is exported to the U.S. You participate in the Northeast Network Planning Forum, so you know that.

Tell us about renewable energy and the role it can play, particularly in the northeast. I'm thinking of projects like Wind West, in Nova Scotia, Boralex and, now, Hydro-Québec, in Quebec. Tell us about the projects you find encouraging or that you'd like to see happen so we can export more and meet the demand related to the development of Canadian production.

[Frédéric Côté]

Thank you very much for your question.

Basically, when we talk about the new capacities that will be added over the next few years, I'd say over the next 20 years, the new electricity generation capacities will essentially be wind and solar generation. We're fortunate in eastern Canada to have a very high-quality wind resource, which really sets us apart in North America. Looking at things a little more closely, you see that this high-quality wind resource is correlated with demand. For example, in Quebec, electricity is used a lot for heating, and the wind resource is stronger in the winter. This means there's a good correlation between demand and production.

We see a golden opportunity to position Canada and eastern Canada in the wind energy field. There's also an opportunity to continue strengthening Canada's know-how and its capacity to produce components for Canadian projects, but also for exports, since we've seen in recent years Canada's capacity to export not only electronics, but also Canadian know-how and technology.

[Claude Guay, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Côté, I have one more thing to ask you. I'd like to hear your vision on interconnections, particularly in the east, and how important they are to Canada's exports.

[Frédéric Côté]

There's some paradigm-shifting work to be done. Historically, development in Canada and the provinces has followed a north to south logic to promote exports to our American neighbours.

However, there's really a need to strengthen east to west interconnection between Canadian provinces. This would also make it possible to increase the resilience of Canada's networks. Geographically, we see, for example, that in Nova Scotia, there's a very high-quality offshore wind resource; in Quebec, there are hydroelectric reservoirs that can be used as storage batteries; and in Ontario, there's a nuclear vision, so they're developing a significant nuclear capacity.

I think by promoting better integration among the provinces, we'll be able to better coordinate these different profile resources.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you.

Mr. Simard, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am not a witness, but I want to take a moment to answer my friend, Mr. Martel, who asked earlier if it was possible to make batteries in North America, particularly in Canada. He should remember that First Phosphate produced a lithium, iron and phosphate battery made entirely in Canada. We have all the minerals, we're not dependent on the Chinese, and we can make batteries. We have to develop the sector.

Mr. Côté, I'm glad you're here. I've visited your facilities. I've often repeated what you told me, like a parrot. It allowed me to sound smart a couple of times.

I still want to come back to a fairly important point you made in your opening remarks.

We need an industrial electrification policy. Earlier, my friend, Mr. Guay, asked you about the federal tax credit. However, in my discussions with certain stakeholders—namely you and Normand Mousseau of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier—I got the impression this industrial electrification policy doesn't exist.

Can you tell us what first steps could the federal government take or how it could intervene to facilitate the implementation of this type of industrial policy?

[Frédéric Côté]

Thank you.

Obviously, we know regarding industrial policy and electricity that the main responsibility lies with the provinces. There's always a balancing act between federal intervention and the respect of provincial jurisdictions.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

It's always surprising for someone from the Bloc Québécois to receive a lesson on this. Thank you.

[Frédéric Côté]

Of course, I'm not telling you anything new, but I'd say there's an important role to play, because there are three things to remember when it comes to electrification.

First, the driver for electrification had changed in recent years and is no longer just energy transition; it's also data centres, artificial intelligence and digital sovereignty. Electrification is therefore an important strategic element when it comes to industry and safety.

Second, we need the capacity to export our green and inexpensive electricity, but we also need to rethink trade to ensure it's multidirectional, meaning it takes place both between homes and public infrastructure, and between the north and our neighbours to the south. We need to push electricity south, but we also need to welcome electricity from the south for storage, something similar to what the witness from Hydro‑Québec explained told you.

Third, we have to think about developing Canadian expertise, know-how and technology. I think that's a very important element because, although exporting electricity is strategic, we have to develop a complete value chain and rely on Canadian technologies and manufacturers to meet the needs. We know we can double the size of our electricity grid over the next few years, but we can also export this know-how and these technologies outside Canada.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

I'll continue with you, Mr. Côté, but I'll also direct this to you, Mr. Pivnick, if you can answer the question I'm about to ask.

There's clearly a link to be made between electrification and critical minerals. I think those two sectors require two federal government strategies that will go hand in hand. Both of those strategies involve the development of storage systems.

I see more and more initiatives. I'm thinking of people I visited recently who are offering storage solutions. I see these initiatives developing, but I don't know how, at the public level, we can support people who have storage projects. Earlier, you talked about wind and solar energy, which do indeed require storage strategies. However, I don't know how the government can support these people to make it easier to implement these storage strategies.

To reconcile with my friend Mr. Martel, I would say that, indeed, most of the batteries currently used by people involved in storage come from China. That means a production line will have to be developed in Canada.

If you have any advice on that, I think it would help the government.

[Frédéric Côté]

In terms of storage, I think one of the first elements is the view on the added value of storage. Recent battery strategies, including the ones we saw in Quebec, were essentially strategies that enabled or targeted the integration of the automotive value chain. That means those strategies had more to do with the automotive sector than the electricity grid itself.

I think the first step would be to recognize the value of storage in the electricity grid, that is, stationary applications, to facilitate the integration of renewable energy in areas that can't have large reservoirs, as in Quebec. There's still a need to work on that.

From there, I think there are two aspects.

First, it's necessary to support innovation and companies' capacity to innovate and develop batteries and products tailored to Canadian needs and the reality of operating in Canada, whether that's the cold climate or the presence of critical minerals on Canadian soil. It's also necessary to be able to develop those minerals.

Second, we're talking about an integrated strategy, from mining to recycling. I think it would be really important to maintain the full life cycle and ensure that there's a coherent vision, which not only helps guide investments, but also provides a narrative that will facilitate the social acceptability of projects. We know that these are all projects that have to be deployed in communities, and that a clear vision and an overall picture will promote communication with the communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Pivnick, I'll give you a few moments in my next turn.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

We can come back to him.

Mr. Rowe, we're going to start the second round with you for five minutes.

[Jonathan Rowe, Conservative, Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to talk, today, about clean energy.

I was at an energy conference a few years ago, where a very wise CEO came out and said, “We cannot miss out on having a better tomorrow because we're fantasizing about having a perfect tomorrow.” That stuck with me. A lot of times, we Canadians sit around boardroom tables and talk about cutting down the forest and having solar panels. We almost have a dream of running the world off smiles and fairy dust. Until we figure out the technologies they use in the Monsters, Inc. movie, we're going to be a long way from that.

What we need to do is take a very common-sense approach. If we want to get serious about transitioning globally, we have to sit down and address what the low-hanging fruits are for that transition. That's a common-sense approach. We eat the elephant one bite at a time, and we pick the low-hanging fruit.

The world's demand for coal is still increasing, as far as I know. The answer, every year, to “what year has the most amount of coal?” seems to always be “last year”. In Canada, we're doing a very good job. Alberta has phased out most of their coal, if not all of their coal. I believe most of it is gone now. Although coal has a very important role in steel manufacturing, it is not the cleanest form of energy. What we're seeing globally is the use of coal still increasing. We have two issues happening. We have the third world coming online and getting electrified. We also have an energy race that needs energy to power AI. We are kind of entering a cold war AI race. It's among the geopolitical superpowers of the world. We come here every week and talk about how energy demands are growing and growing. We need to focus on the small steps we can do.

I would like to know if Mr. Pivnick could elaborate on how much better our oil and natural gas are here in Canada versus the oil and natural gas in other parts of the world.

How can we use that natural gas to mitigate the coal requirements of the global economy?

[Evan Pivnick]

I'm not an expert on comparing oil and gas environmental footprints. I was not, in my remarks, trying to make a zero-sum argument that we need to choose one or the other, here in this moment.

The global trends are clear, as I mentioned. For every dollar the world spent this past year on energy, two dollars were spent on clean energy. The investments are happening globally. If we think about the energy export markets that Canadian companies and workers can try to feed into, that's the trend line. This is true across our allies. That's not to say that oil and gas will disappear tomorrow. Certainly, when it comes to coal, it's not to say that China isn't, overwhelmingly, the largest user.

All that said, if we're trying to have a conversation about where Canada can make investments to position itself for the long run, electrification is coming. The exact speed of it is something we should continue to debate, but the trend line is constantly in one direction. We need to make sure Canada and Canadian exporters are positioned to play into those markets if we want to have competitive industries and be able to continue to export in a world that is rapidly accelerating into an electrified energy system.

[Jonathan Rowe, Conservative, Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, NL]

Absolutely.

Part of that is about going in and electrifying Canada. You said, “electrification is coming”. That is one of our low-hanging fruits. We want to have green energy. We want to have energy across Canada, but how do we do that without interties? It's been recommended in this committee, in the past, to have interties. We had a Liberal government in the past that was very adamant about increasing green energy, yet nothing was done.

Is it because of Bill C-69 and the other requirements there for getting these transmission lines from coast to coast? I would like to know what the hindrance is regarding interties, why this wasn't done already and why we're still talking about it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

You just have 30 seconds to respond.

[Evan Pivnick]

Quickly, the intertie question comes down to a Canadian grid that is truly 10 separate grids. That's not even counting the territories.

We need to have both a provincial and a federal conversation when we're looking at interties. Having inter-regional planning and clarity around a federal government role to help balance benefits among jurisdictions with fundamentally different energy systems will be a really big key. We seem to have more momentum in this moment than we've ever had in terms of an intertie conversation. I think it would be a shame if we missed the opportunity in the next few years to move this tangibly forward, because, as you say, it unlocks a huge amount of opportunity for Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you, both of you.

Mr. Danko, you have five minutes.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Côté, I'm going to start with you. I apologize that my questions are going to be in English. I'm not going to torture you, or the poor interpreters, with my French.

I see in your background there that you have what I think is a heat pump, so you're using a high-efficiency heating and cooling unit. It's electric. We've heard quite a bit about how the entire world is going to electrification. We've heard that quite a bit from other witnesses. We've heard that it's not an ideological choice; it's simply because the technology is better, cheaper and cleaner. It is increasingly becoming the consumer's choice.

You talked about exporting energy and technology. My question is this: When we're talking about the technology side, how important is it for Canada to embrace this electrical transition and to divest from fossil fuels so that we can stay at the cutting-edge of technology and so that the products we're making here, our manufacturing sectors and other high-technology, advanced manufacturing are cutting-edge and are able to stay up to date with the modern trends?

[Frédéric Côté]

Basically, we see that there's a real opportunity to leverage current industries, for example, the automotive industry. We have steel, and we have aluminum. We also have a good electricity industry in Canada. We can build on these to make sure that we adopt the technologies of the future, that we have in Canada the capacity to transform and manufacture the technologies that will be required to have success in terms of energy transition, and that we are able to meet the electricity demands of the coming 20 years.

What we see is that we need, somehow, a shift, because it's really not a competition against any particular conventional form of energy. It's really about efficiency. The more you can use electricity, the more efficient you will be, so you have less heat losses and whatnot.

Basically, we really need to electrify as much as possible. We need to make sure that the technologies used to do so are as Canadian as possible and that we leverage our minerals and the natural resources that we have in Canada in terms of moving forward.

[John-Paul Danko, Liberal, Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Pivnick, I'm going to extend that question to you, and I'm going to use a couple of Hamilton-specific examples because you mentioned green steel. ArcelorMittal Dofasco is transitioning to electric arc furnace steel production. We have cutting-edge research and development here developing electric motors that don't use any rare earth materials—that is in production right now; it's a real thing—as well as developing high-efficiency batteries, high-capacity batteries, that don't use critical minerals. We have cutting-edge technology and global leadership.

It's the same question: How important is it for Canada to be on that technological cutting-edge so that we have these products available for export and so that we have the IP for these products that we can then export around the world? How do we make sure that we have access to global markets in terms of federal legislation—things like the industrial carbon price?

[Evan Pivnick]

I think there's a really tight connection between the deployment and adoption of technologies domestically and our ability to excel in them and export them. I should say that, in Canada, we often get caught talking about goods. However, especially in the electricity sector, in the energy space, the services, the ability to actually package, the management of the integration, the software behind it.... This is a very vital, very real and very large part of the economic opportunity for Canada across the energy space.

There are a variety of different pieces that we could be doing. For a lot of households, the barriers are upfront costs. If we can get over the upfront costs, they are able to experience cost savings in the operation of these technologies. We're able to build experience in how to manufacture, how to employ and how to use. This is where we're going to be able to create new companies domestically.

When we look internationally, we do see, across all of the trading partners we're looking to diversify trade with, that most of them either have carbon pricing in place or are putting in place carbon border adjustments, which are essentially a clean tariff. If your goods are not clean or are not manufactured using clean, they're going to ask you to pay a higher price.

That's the world we're moving into, so when we think about how we manufacture and leverage a clean electricity system that is incredibly low carbon intensity to manufacture, we're opening the door to being able to export it. If we're building that on top of domestic deployment of these technologies and building up the know-how, that's really where we're going to be able to bring these two together.

[The Chair, Liberal, Terry Duguid]

Thank you to you both.

Mario, you have two and a half minutes.