International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. It is the critical question, absolutely. When we look at a future that will require two to three times more electricity to be able to meet our 2050 target, how are we going to do that? How are we going to achieve that? The short answer is yes, absolutely, there is a critical role that the federal government needs to play.

International Trade committee  Yes, I would agree. Without a clear idea and without a clear plan, it's difficult to see how we will all arrive at that destination, which is again why we've been asking for several years now for a national electrification strategy that we can all get behind—

International Trade committee  Mr. Gorman and I are on the same floor in the same building. The same things keep me up at night that keep Mr. Gorman up. I think everybody in the electricity sector is very concerned about our ability to meet those commitments. It's why I continue to talk about how many days there are until the end of 2035.

International Trade committee  We recognize the urgency in this, absolutely.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank the members of the Standing Committee on International Trade for inviting our organization to take part in this important study. My name is Francis Bradley and I am president and chief executive officer of Electricity Canada. Electricity Canada is the national forum and voice of the electricity business in Canada.

Environment committee  If we have additional comments, we'll provide them in writing. Thank you.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. Those kinds of determinations are made in each of the jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction has a different approach to it. Some provinces have integrated resource-planning processes. Some provinces have an independent system operator that is charged with undertaking those sorts of studies.

Environment committee  Yes. Thank you for the question. As a representative of a national association essentially representing an industry that is principally provincially based, this is what we do. We spend the bulk of our time trying to bridge those divides. As a country, we've been successful in the past at having federal and provincial co-operation in areas that are principally a provincial responsibility.

Environment committee  Well, within our association, we have both the incumbent utility companies and the largest independent power producers. They are members of our association, and they are also active participants in the discussions that take place among the CEOs around the boardroom table about the policies for the electricity sector writ large.

Environment committee  That's a terrific question. I think what we're seeing, and what we're going to continue to see, is two forces happening at the same time—both expansion and contraction taking place at the same time. To be able to meet those long-term targets that we have with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to have to significantly increase our grid-connected and grid-level power, but we're also going to have to massively ramp up what happens at the individual consumer level and at the community level.

Environment committee  In one word, it is foundational. Absolutely.

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. It is going to be critical that we have co-operation and collaboration between different levels of government, between different stakeholders. The energy and resource round tables have the potential, I think, to be important and critical as we move forward.

Environment committee  I think those kinds of approaches are going to be critical. We're talking about—particularly with the larger projects—assets that will last for decades. To be able to make investment decisions on assets that will last for decades, the certainty with respect to the business environment within which you're operating needs to be beyond the medium term.

Environment committee  The requirement to make investments in the order of—as was said earlier—somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion requires a level of certainty that we don't have at this stage. That is what we're looking for. We need certainty in the ability to move projects through to completion.

Environment committee  I thank the member for the question. There are different approaches that need to be taken for different circumstances. I mentioned there are 10 provincial and three territorial electricity systems. To the member's point, there are significant differences in the requirements for rural, remote and indigenous communities.