Mr. Speaker, this is an area of interest for my colleague for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. He does great work on energy efficiency and other energy issues. He asked a good question.
I will reflect on some personal experience of mine in Nova Scotia. The most success that we in the Affordable Energy Coalition and community groups that were working on energy issues had was in working with a corporation. We were asked by Nova Scotia Power to be consultants and stakeholders in helping to design energy efficiency programs. I was involved. Large industrials and manufacturers were involved. A consumer advocate was involved. Municipalities were involved. We worked together with some experts to design the programs.
On the face of it, it does not make a lot of sense that this corporation would ask an anti-poverty group to help design the programs. They were mandated by the utility and review board to bring down their energy use and implement energy efficient measures because it would save money. This means that the electricity users and consumers would save money. They were mandated to do this work. They realized that there is a lot of expertise in our community in Nova Scotia. They brought in some folks from the eastern seaboard of the United States where they are doing amazing work on energy efficiency. They are absolute role models.
For all of us to sit in a room, to have people from the pulp and paper company sitting in a room with people from the anti-poverty organization, it worked. We came up with solutions. We designed these programs. They are being implemented in Nova Scotia and government is sitting up, paying attention, listening and realizing that this is a process that works. Perhaps it missed the boat and should have gotten on this earlier. We have a government agency, Conserve Nova Scotia, that has taken quite a few of those programs. They are the administrator right now.
We are really proud of what is happening in Nova Scotia. As I mentioned earlier, we are definitely leading the charge when it comes to low-income energy efficiency in this country.