Public Safety committee  I'm not sure about the potential conflict between the different levels of government. I can give you some very specific feedback on the issue of exercises and training, particularly exercises in the area of infrastructure protection in which the Government of Canada has become more active over the last couple of years, most notably with the lessons learned workshop that occurred following the 2003 blackout, and then the Silver Links exercise that was held a year later.

Public Safety committee  Probably the companies here can respond to their specific circumstances. I don't want to make it sound as though we think everything is going to be solved by Bill C-12. There are some very significant issues and there will continue to be significant issues in terms of improved coordination, improved communication, and we can always do better.

Public Safety committee  I haven't looked at the legislation in that light and I'm not certain if there is indeed a requirement to have some kind of standardization across the country. There certainly are differing circumstances. We don't have a uniformity in terms of the plans of the utility companies themselves, because of the differing circumstances.

Public Safety committee  Yes, absolutely. There are a number of avenues to access that sort of information. The electric utilities in this country spend a significant amount of effort on the IT security side to do precisely that, both through the association itself, where they use it as an opportunity for information sharing, and also through a wide variety of other methods.

Public Safety committee  I'm sure some of the other members would be able to respond in some specific instances, but I don't think they'll get into too much detail, of course. I think generally for our members across the country the short answer to the question would be yes, we have that, and we continue on an ongoing basis to constantly review it.

Public Safety committee  We have looked at that. We have some concerns not about the legislation, but generally about the Patriot Act and its impact on a variety of initiatives, including the Homeland Security Information Network, HSIN, and frankly we were a little concerned. We would like to see some kind of Canadian system we would be able to report to.

Public Safety committee  Yes, we do.

Public Safety committee  We haven't had that specific discussion. The other side of the coin is that there is certainly going to be information we share with government authorities that will have to be shared with our partners in the States, and that we hope they currently are sharing. So our concern at this stage is not so much a worry about inappropriate information being shared.

Public Safety committee  We didn't provide a brief because in fact our message is, I think, fairly concise and very specific. We don't have any comment on the first seven clauses of the bill because it talks about how the government is going to organize itself and how it's going to deliver its services, the responsibilities of the minister, responsibilities of the ministries, and so on.

Public Safety committee  I am sure Mr. Davis would be delighted to discuss this, but first I'll just point out that although you are quite correct that this is certainly an issue for Ontario because of the number of nuclear stations in that province, it is not unique to Ontario. There are, of course, nuclear generating stations in two other provinces, in New Brunswick and Quebec, although the preponderance of nuclear energy in this country is found in Ontario.

Public Safety committee  I would imagine my colleagues from Ontario would want to reflect on that in their particular circumstances. Certainly in any situation in which our members have been involved, you're quite right, the critical delivery mechanism is often at the municipal level. Perhaps either Mr.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. We have actually been consulted fairly extensively in the development of this. As I mentioned, it's an issue generally that we raised, likely first in the first meeting we had with the CIP task force all the way back in March 2000. It's an issue we raised subsequently in 2001 and 2002, both in face-to-face meetings and in correspondence we had with the head of the CIP task force and then subsequently the deputy minister.

Public Safety committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for this opportunity to meet with you to discuss Bill C-12 and to inform you about the viewpoint of the members of the Canadian electricity sector. My name is Francis Bradley. I am Vice-President of the Canadian Electricity Association, which represents all electricity-related areas of activity in Canada, including production, transportation, distribution, customer service and electric energy marketing.