Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning. My name is Niall O'Dea. I'm director general of electricity resources for Natural Resources Canada. It's a pleasure to be here with you today to launch you on this component of your study and to provide testimony on Canada's nuclear indus

Natural Resources committee  I will be pleased to be the first to answer the question. You would probably need to ask the provinces, which make those kinds of decisions. As for Canada's nuclear situation, we saw real growth and development in the construction of reactors from the 1970s to the 1990s. That wa

Natural Resources committee  Sure. Thank you for the questions. I see two questions, one about the relative costs of energy from nuclear and other sources, and the second about cost management in the context of the nuclear sector itself and refurbishments and things of that kind. To answer in terms of the

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Tan. To start, I think I would say that the government clearly places the absolute highest priority on public safety and security and environmental protection in all its nuclear activities. That is a key motivating force for us in how we approach

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question. First, I think it's important to note that CNSC is an independent regulator that reports to Parliament through the Minister of Natural Resources and, in that respect, has independence from our department. I think the key for us in our support of the m

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Strahl. The federal government does support work on innovation in nuclear technology and research through Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and AECL's federal nuclear S and T program, so there is work going on to support nuclear innovations through t

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Niall O'Dea and I'm the director general of the electricity resources branch at Natural Resources Canada. I'm joined today by two members of my team, André Bernier and Darcy Blais. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about this matter. I'll s

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Arsenault. That's a good question. The carbon pricing regulations will significantly help the entire country make progress in reducing greenhouse gases, especially since the regulations apply to the whole economy. However, in the initial years, the basic pricing

Natural Resources committee  That's another good question. I think Canada's strength lies in the diversity of the technological options, which enables the country to address this challenge. Obviously, Canada has a number of hydroelectric resources and a good capacity to develop this type of technology. In

Natural Resources committee  Yes, certainly. It's obvious. That's why we're currently conducting a study. For Canada, the future will be the combination of distributed clean energy systems and centralized systems. When distributed systems are connected to centralized systems, the system becomes more flexibl

Natural Resources committee  Yes, certainly. I can give you a few examples, and I'll then ask my colleagues to give you other more specific examples. I can talk about Pikangikum and the interconnection I mentioned earlier. It's an interconnection in northern Ontario that will connect the indigenous communit

Natural Resources committee  I don't know whether my colleagues have other examples.

Natural Resources committee  That's a very good question, and I will seek to unpack it. I'm certainly happy to provide further context on the studies that are currently ongoing. I didn't cover it in my presentation, because I wanted to cleave to our 10-minute time limit, but on slide 14 of the deck we have

Natural Resources committee  I'd be happy to offer commentary on that. I think this question of regionalized versus localized is a key question. The regional electricity corporation and strategic infrastructure dialogue and studies that I spoke about are focused on looking at that regional picture. But they

Natural Resources committee  The smart grid is absolutely critical to both in fact. At the localized level, at the level of distribution to individual households, smart grid technologies are critical to doing things like being able to plug in your electric vehicle at night and have it be used as a battery fo