Industry committee  Thank you very much, MP Poilievre. With regard to the question, I'm going to speak very briefly on an application side and then leave it to my colleagues on the fuel supply side. On the application side, it is important to put the fact out that, despite the high electricity prices in Ontario and other jurisdictions in Canada compared with those of our colleagues in the U.S., when you pump that energy as electrons or as hydrogen produced from an electrolyzer through a propulsion system on a bus, a car, a truck or a train, it is always cheaper than is the diesel or natural gas comparison.

Industry committee  If I may, sir, just as a slight fact check on that statement, I understand it is a common assumption that there is a longer tailpipe on electrified vehicles, in particular where there's coal on the grid or natural gas through peaker plants. In fact, we've completed over 30 mathematical and physics studies across Canada.

Industry committee  Three of our major projects are all focused on standardization and interoperability from a technology standpoint, because the last thing the taxpayer wants at the municipal or provincial level is to be forced to buy stuff that only works with one proprietary solution. That's okay for your Macintosh, but it's not okay when it's a bus.

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Masse. If there's time, I'm happy to answer the auto question separately. On the transit side, I'll say there are three things: jobs, operational savings and market position. In terms of jobs, one of the ways to position the municipal and larger level in terms of adopting these technologies is the fact that we've already identified at CUTRIC that there are over 264,000 jobs in Canada to be retained in the zero-emission transit landscape and another 30,000 to 98,000 to be created, so it's a good jobs story for Canadians to push forward.

Industry committee  I should clarify. I should say not just municipalities, but municipalities and regionalities, since York Region Transit and TransLink are regions. I can't get into the ontology or eschatology of our transit investment. I don't think there's a transit dollar in the history of Canada that has not been politicized at some point in the past.

Industry committee  Will it be effective? Yes, the cities and the regions are the most effective absorbers of the funds and the most effective in deploying those funds if we're serious about climate action. If we're not, spread it anywhere and go through the provinces.

Industry committee  The first thing I would say about that, and I'll give a little example to highlight it, is that the signals going forward in terms of the investment in public transit are critical. They're great, but what needs to be refined out of that? As an example, the real pressure coming from our industry partners and our transit partners is that investment from the federal government needs to be partnered with municipal investment.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Masse. It's a perspicacious question and certainly it's the first thing that comes up when folks think about Sidewalk Labs and that boondoggle and everything that unfolded from that. When we talk about data analytics and the transit and transportation world, whether it's bus, coach or truck, we're really talking about impersonal analytics of the machine.

Industry committee  Thank you very much for the questions, Member. I appreciate it. There are some very obvious opportunities that were articulated as far back as the Speech from the Throne and now are in the budget that has emerged. It's very clear, based on our calculations with our transit agencies, that if you want to get to zero-emission transit technology and get to zero at the municipal level, it's going to cost about $4 billion to get to the first 5,000 and, therefore, about $12 billion to get to all 15,000.

Industry committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I'm Josipa Petrunic. I'm the president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium. It's a long name, but we go by CUTRIC. CUTRIC is a special kind of non-profit organization. I'm going to start off today by giving you a sense of some of the major projects we've launched that have had an impact on the economy and that give us a pathway forward for the green recovery that, as Canadians, we all want.