Thank you for having me at this meeting.
I will speak in English, although I'm more than happy to answer any questions in the language of Molière.
Let me start with a little introduction about myself. I've been advising on energy issues for 35 years now. The firm I run supports utilities, governments, investors and others across every province and territory in this country and in the majority of U.S. states. I have a team of about 70 experts who work on nothing but energy issues. Over the course of my career, I've had the privilege of sitting on many—maybe far too many—energy policy committees and commissions, including, most recently, the Canada electricity advisory council, which I was invited to chair.
I have a few remarks on the transition. It's been awhile for me. It's been, as I said, 35 years. In that time, I don't think there's ever been a more exciting and, at the same time, a more daunting time to be working in electricity in this country.
The reason is simple. I'm sure you're all very well aware that we are now squarely in the midst of a transition toward electricity. This is a transition that will not affect everything we consume, but it will affect a majority of vehicles, heating systems, much of industry and, of course, the AI revolution that we seem to be in now. It's arguably one of the most wide-ranging, complex, profound and ultimately daunting energy transitions our world has ever known.
In my work, I try to ask myself a simple question, and I ask myself this on behalf of my clients as well. It is, what will things look like on the other side of this transition, when we're through it? There will invariably be winners and losers, as there are in any large-scale economic transition. This will be no different. Those who position themselves in advance, those who focus on their competitive advantages, those who are thoughtful without being slow-footed and those who are proactive in harnessing new technology are the ones who ultimately stand the best chance of winning. Those who drag their feet and wait to see how it all plays out are arguably the ones who will be most likely to lose at the end of the game.
I'm a Canadian. I want Canada to win this race. I think we have everything we need to win it.
A couple of years ago, I was asked to chair the Canada electricity advisory council. It was a one-year initiative—one and done. I like to think that I may have done a bit of the legwork for many of you on this issue. We spent 12 months with a very “Canada-sized” array of energy sector leaders with very different perspectives and very different biases, I'll say. We all have them. We still managed to achieve consensus across the board on what Canada needs to do to win this. I'm not going to have time in these five minutes to go into individual recommendations, but I will share the overarching principles and conclusions that we came to.
Fundamentally, there are two things we need to do as a country. One is grow. The other is clean.
We need to grow the power system. We need to grow it more rapidly than we ever have in our history. That is essential for our economy. It's essential for competitiveness. It's essential for capital attraction. As an aside, it is unbelievable that so many provinces in this country are now short on electricity and are having to turn away business and industry because they don't have the power needed.
We need it for competitiveness. We need it for capital attraction. We need it, obviously, for reliability. We need to keep the lights on. We need to get to a point of being able to say yes, not no.
We also need to do this cleanly. That's important for the climate, of course. That is also important for our competitiveness. It's also important for our ability to attract capital. Leaning into one of our great strengths, which is that we have the second-cleanest electricity system in the G7 and the third cleanest in the G20 at a time when more and more countries are looking to price carbon into markets, is a tremendous competitive advantage that we cannot lose.
Lean into grow. Lean into clean. There are obvious trade-offs between these two. We cannot go too far too fast on the clean lest we slow the growth or harm affordability and reliability. We can't do that.
The reverse is true, too—