Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting question because we have had discussions with industry on that over the last while. The proposal is preliminary and only theoretical at this time.
For those who do not understand the size and the scope of the resources of the tar sands of northern Alberta, they are immense. They are larger than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Until we embarked on this Kyoto fiasco, the Prime Minister assured President George W. Bush and the Americans that the tar sands of northern Alberta were their reliable, safe source of energy for the future. The Prime Minister supported the development of those energy reserves as quickly as possible so as to supply that energy to the U.S.
However, because they are so huge, it takes a tremendous amount of energy, heat for steam as well as electrical, for the extraction process. If the government allows the tar sands to become fully developed, a huge amount of energy, equivalent to the entire capacity of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline from the Mackenzie Delta to go to Fort McMurray and no further, would be required.
You were with me, Mr. Speaker, and saw what was going on there. That is pretty small compared to what it will be in the future. I know there are others looking at it but it seems to me that we would not send that volume of clean burning natural gas to the Fort McMurray region to develop the tar sands when that clean burning natural gas fuel could be better used in other ways such as heating our homes, producing plastics and medical materials.
A proposal has been put forward that a new generation Candu would be appropriately put somewhere in the northern Alberta, northern Saskatchewan area because it is close to the mining facilities. The fuel for the reactors exists in northern Saskatchewan, and the former natural resources would know that. It is a natural fit. The small new generation Candu reactor would have the capability of providing the electrical energy the industry in the area would need plus huge amounts of heat that would be required to produce the steam in the extraction process.
There may be a future for this new generation Candu arm in arm with the fossil fuel industry, to which I know some of my colleagues would very much object. However the idea certainly has merit if the costs and the construction time and other things can work.