Natural Resources Committee on May 28th, 2026

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

Do you have any suggestions, Mr. Powell, on which areas we as a country should focus on developing? Is it energy storage? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm interested to know.

[Michael Powell]

I'd look at where we have success already. Canada has real success in developing and integrating hydroelectric systems and nuclear systems. We have companies that produce transformers of all types. We have systems integrators. Those are areas of strength where we can start. We can also look at areas where we can attract new companies, leveraging the.... The $2 trillion of spend is a lot, so how can we identify those and build?

We're doing some work through our supply chain committee, looking at high-voltage breakers. I'm not an engineer; someone else could probably speak to what they do, but there is a shortage and an opportunity. We're working with our members and looking at areas where there are opportunities for partnerships with suppliers to build those. We've already seen that happen in the transformer space in Ontario and elsewhere, where local Canadian companies are looking to expand their systems and where partnerships with our members and governments of all types have allowed growth to happen. We've seen that grow from there.

We should seize this opportunity. It's a real export chance beyond what we have here as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

Thank you. That concludes your exchange.

We'll now move to Mr. Simard for six minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Breton, I'd like to come back to something you said in your opening remarks, but which I think is still important.

You know the federal government has reduced the target for 2035. It won't be 100% ZEVs, but more like 75%. Some grieving minds say that if we meet these targets, we're going to significantly increase the peak period in Quebec.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that to dispel the myth that a massive deployment of electric vehicles could lead, particularly in Quebec, but perhaps in the rest of the country as well, to availability and grid congestion issues.

[Daniel Breton]

You're absolutely right. The idea that the grid will literally collapse if the number of electric vehicles continues to increase, whether in Quebec or Canada, is a persistent myth. We often hear that, even elsewhere.

I'll give you an example. People often don't differentiate between electric vehicle sales and the electric vehicle fleet. In Quebec, in March 2026, EVs accounted for 22% of vehicle sales, which represents 7% of the fleet of vehicles. That means the number of electric vehicles on the road doesn't directly correspond to the sales of electric vehicles.

When I was in Norway four years ago, EVs represented 23% of the Norwegian fleet. That corresponded to an increase of 1.4% of the electricity demand. In other words, people have this idea that it's directly related, but in fact the relation is not that direct. Moreover, [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

He ran out of power.

Mr. Clerk, can we—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

Colleagues, we'll suspend for a moment while we figure out our technical challenge and then give time back.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

We are very hopeful, colleagues.

What do you think about just continuing with your round, Mr. Simard? We'll see what we can do.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

We can come back to Mr. Breton. We want to make sure interpretation is working properly.

I want to take advantage of your presence here, Mr. Powell.

The people from Electricity Canada appeared before us not too long ago. They did a proper review of the issue and told us about the priority zones identified to set up networks.

Earlier this week, Professor Pineau came to see us and insisted on the idea of moving from a north-south network to an east-west network. He said it would be beneficial for the country to be more interconnected.

Then, I remembered something and I asked Mr. Pineau about it. In one of your documents, you identified some intensification zones where development should be prioritized before really thinking about an east-west interconnection.

I don't know if that rings a bell. If so, it'd be interesting for you to table that document with the committee.

[Michael Powell]

There are two things. One, the future is more of everything. It's more east-west, but I think there's a reason that provinces like Quebec trade north-south. There are advantages. The electricity system in North America is a North American electricity system. I guess what we're hoping to see is that we have a better Canadian electricity system within a North American system, if that makes sense.

We see opportunities in the near term in areas where there's already collaboration between jurisdictions that we can leverage. Mr. Milligan talked a bit about opportunities that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have in building an intertie that adds reliability. We've heard some conversations about opportunities with Newfoundland. Ontario and Quebec have a power swap under way. I think there are opportunities in other jurisdictions as well, including Saskatchewan and Manitoba and then Alberta and B.C. I know that the MOU includes some of those things.

The right way to do this is to work with provinces and to work towards a better regional planning system. See where there are opportunities where adjacent jurisdictions can work together, which will allow us to maybe build less capacity than we would need to individually, and then work towards that. What we've seen in both the work we've done and the electricity strategy is that the future is about collaboration and leveraging near-term opportunities so that you can grow into something that's more durable in the long term.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Powell.

Mr. Breton is back.

Mr. Breton, we were talking about the pressure of electric vehicles on the grid.

[Daniel Breton]

In fact, when we look at the calculations done by electricity providers in Quebec and Canada, we see that, by 2050, the increase in electricity demand will come mainly from GDP, meaning population growth, not from electric vehicles. Not only won't it come from EVs, but EVs will help mitigate the increase in demand for electric vehicles, because EVs are the more flexible when it comes to charging.

At Electric Mobility Canada, we are currently working on a report with the electricity supplier working group, people from Dunsky, and electricity suppliers. This report focuses on integrating vehicles into the electricity grid precisely to optimize the use of electricity at peak and off-peak hours, as we see elsewhere in the world.

This means not only EVs won't be a problem, they'll be an asset, because the investment made by electricity providers will be optimized at off-peak periods, particularly at night. That will help in terms of funding and investments. Therefore, we'll need to invest less per person thanks to electric vehicles.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

Thank you. I gave you 25 extra seconds just to finish.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Could you provide that type of information in writing to the committee? We'd appreciate that.

[Daniel Breton]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

That's the end of the round. All witnesses are certainly invited by this committee to submit written submissions with any extra information, stats or data. Thank you.

Now we will move over for five minutes to Mr. Khanna.

[Arpan Khanna, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Once again, thanks to all the witnesses for coming out today and sharing their individual perspectives.

My first round of questioning is for Mr. Powell.

In your opening testimony, you mentioned a very crazy stat. You said that 84% of Canadians feel that their electricity bills are causing some tension at home when it comes to managing their finances.

For almost the first time in our country's history, in 2024, under the Liberal government, we had an electricity shortfall because we weren't producing enough electricity to support domestic demand. We had to import it from the U.S. We had to rely on the U.S. The government talks about being elbows up, but we had to rely on the U.S. when it came to importing energy.

Canadians paid in the last decade almost 35% more for electricity. How is this sustainable, and how can we fix this Liberal-created mess?

[Michael Powell]

There are a couple of things there. One is to clarify—and perhaps I wasn't clear—that if it increased, 84% would feel it impacts them. It's the same direction. People feel bills. That's the clear take-away.

Canada, as I said, is part of a North American electricity system. On balance, we are a net exporter, though regionally there are times when we rely on imports. Right now, B.C. and I believe Manitoba are in a period of imports, and that is a factor of having a low water year on their hydro fleet. Hydro-Québec has imports and just had two major transmission lines to New York and New England come online. That will add power. There's a commercial advantage to that; it's an energy export.

The key for this is that we have to build more of everything. Working as part of an integrated North American system and having better interconnections within Canada add to reliability, but that also adds to affordability, because we can draw on different resources and then balance peaks in different ways. We're a winter-peaking jurisdiction, or we're a summer-peaking jurisdiction in Ontario. Quebec is a winter-peaking jurisdiction. We can trade capacity when we need to so as to better use resources. There's more of that that we can do as we move forward.

[Arpan Khanna, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

On that point, you said that the solution is to build more infrastructure, build more support there. What is the average permitting time right now to build projects like those?

[Michael Powell]

It would vary from time to time, but as a general rule, we're not alone in thinking it's too long. We would like to see that move down to two years. I know there's a focus on major projects, but that really has to extend to all projects.

The other piece that's sometimes missing in the conversation is that, in our sector, we have a lot of infrastructure that's already built, and there are regulatory processes and approvals that make it harder to operate existing assets. As an example, the Fisheries Act has presented real challenges for existing hydro fleet operators. Sixty per cent of Canada's electricity comes from hydroelectricity. Challenges with getting approvals or even basic maintenance have been real. How do we accelerate those timelines and have more clarity? Ultimately, that reduces costs to customers.

[Arpan Khanna, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Do the delays in permitting make, in essence, the price of electricity higher?

[Michael Powell]

Yes, I think they impact the cost of a system. We should be clear, though, that the nature of how we build out the electricity system is such that when you add infrastructure because of the way the regulation works, it will probably have an increase on bill prices. If you take longer to approve something, it means it's harder to get your supply chain orders in place. It adds inflation to costs just because goods go up. It makes it harder to plan around scheduling. Those are all areas—and this is not unique in electricity—that make it more complicated and more expensive to build projects.

[Arpan Khanna, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

You also mentioned that we're receiving new threats from all around the world. There are global threats. Warfare could be done in different ways, and obviously an electricity grid is a top area of attack.

Do you think Canada is ready to protect our electricity grid with all the attack potentials that are out there?

[Michael Powell]

Our security committee was meeting this week, and one of the main focuses is new threats and new cybersecurity. Every single day, electricity companies are “shields up”. There are organizations like Lighthouse, which is run through Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator, that work to make sure companies in Ontario and the rest of Canada have the tools and information they need to be safe. We have very close collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

Are we ready? I think we're as ready as we can be today. It's an evolving threat landscape. We're probably not worried enough collectively about where that risk can come from. The challenge is a cliché: We have to be right every single day, and the bad guys have to be right once. Part of it is about just making sure that we're using these tools.

We have a very close collaborative relationship with the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, with Natural Resources Canada, with Public Safety Canada and with our partners across North America to make sure that we're aware of all the threats we can be and are as ready as we can be.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Shannon Stubbs]

Thank you.

We'll move over for five minutes to Mr. Kelloway.