Natural Resources committee  Yes. Canada has lots of sunshine, and we've sold systems as far north as Alaska and Nunavut, and of course as far south as you can go. There's a lot more sunshine available in Canada than you might imagine. So sunshine availability is not the limiting factor for us at the moment.

Natural Resources committee  I think part of the beauty of solar is that it's a technology that lends itself to both small-scale and large-scale applications. You'll still see lots of residential applications of solar projects, as you do in Europe. If you want to look towards our future in the ten-year timeframe, I think that looking at Europe today would be a pretty good model for it.

Natural Resources committee  I think the biggest barrier to all renewable energies--and it's no different for us--is that you have an upfront investment for a long-term payoff. The length of the term of that payoff is gradually shrinking as the technology gets better and costs come down. And as the cost of conventional energy goes up, that payoff goes down.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not suggesting the government should finance it. The problem is in principle it's easy to do calculations to show that it should be able to be financeable, but it's complicated. Because you have federal regulations and provincial regulations and municipal regulations and sometimes utility incentives, trying to package all of that together, even though the numbers make sense, is complicated.

Natural Resources committee  That's my guess, yes.

Natural Resources committee  The $850 million for carbon capture doesn't mean a lot to me on its own, as a stand-alone number; it's rather in the context of the total investment portfolio. If it's $850 million being spend on carbon capture out of $900 million, I'd say that's a wrong priority. If it's $850 million being spent on the long-term development of an important technology out of $100 billion, I would say that 1% of our investment in renewable energy on carbon capture might make sense.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not going to try to second-guess the government's decision.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, so I'll give you a first guess, and understand that I'm saying this as an eternal optimist. My eternal optimist says that the Government of Canada will hopefully understand that there are places where investment in renewable energy makes sense and that what we're going to do is take a very broad program, the previous program—a lot of that investment was really spent on doors and windows and furnaces for people's homes under the ecoENERGY heat program—and take the money to focus it on renewable energy generation, which is the long-term investment that Canada needs to make.

Natural Resources committee  I think the question was answered already.

Natural Resources committee  I'm happy to comment on that. From my perspective as a business person, it's about the best investment of our dollars, and in particular our taxpayers' dollars. So I would look at all the renewable energy technologies and ask myself, in spending x number of dollars, how I would create the most jobs and reduce the largest amount of carbon dioxide?

Natural Resources committee  In solar hot water, the market in North America is still very small. The market in Europe today is about $4 billion a year. North America's market is $100 million, so it's 40 times difference in scale with a similar kind of population base. The market in North America is now beginning to grow at about 50% to 70% a year.

Natural Resources committee  Typically, solar hot water projects return for the customer, whoever that is, a return on investment in the 12% to 15% per year range. From that perspective, we're the best investment. I haven't done the calculations the way the wind guy did his calculations, but there's a lot of independent research that shows that solar hot water is a less expensive form of renewable energy than wind, typically by about 50%.

Natural Resources committee  We know we produce renewable energy in the form of hot water at less than half the cost of energy produced by wind and about one-fifth the cost of energy produced by photovoltaics. Those aren't my numbers; they're other peoples' numbers. However the math gets done, we're going to be better.

Natural Resources committee  Oh yes, absolutely. Personally speaking, I'm recruited on a regular basis from states in the U.S. to pack up my business and move it to the U.S. I'm doing everything I can to resist that because we want to build these jobs here.

Natural Resources committee  There's absolutely no doubt that it will have an impact. This is still a relatively early stage industry. We provide a very good return for our customers on their investment, but at the end of the day, it's really about convincing a homeowner to spend money now to save money later.