Natural Resources committee  First of all, I'll make maybe just a quick comment on your very first remark. I think there is this sort of belief by some that there is a diminishing demand for oil in the world. The U.S. energy department just released statistics about two days ago, and it said that the usage

Natural Resources committee  I guess it depends on what your description of “anti-oil sands organizations” is. There are organizations that have expressed concern about the development of the oil sands, such as the Pembina Institute, which I believe is based out of Alberta.

Natural Resources committee  I don't know that.

Natural Resources committee  I'm going to relate this a little bit to health care. Everybody agrees we need to change how we deliver health care, but when we come down to the really serious discussions on specifics that we need to change, then we start to run into issues. I think everyone can agree that we

Natural Resources committee  You can have a national strategy that clearly protects and respects provincial and territorial jurisdiction. That's easily accomplished. Let me just conclude by saying this. I actually believe we need a continental energy strategy, because so many issues that develop in the Unit

Natural Resources committee  I can only tell you what we're doing in Alberta. As I explained earlier, we have the fund that does exactly that. I believe Canadians want us to invest more in research and development into alternate technologies. I don't think that's much of a dispute.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, to be short.

Natural Resources committee  I don't have in front of me.... First of all, I'm not the Minister of Environment, but we could spend a lot of time here, and I could debate an awful lot of the comments you made in your preamble, and just about all of them I don't agree with you on. We have a significant track

Natural Resources committee  My answer is very short: absolutely. I attended my first ever federal-provincial-territorial energy ministers meeting last September in Montreal. I wasn't all that impressed with the content of it. I sat down with Minister Paradis and said that for our conference next year in A

Natural Resources committee  To some degree, that was one of the reasons why we felt it was important to appear before this committee. In some ways, it's my understanding that what this committee is considering here is an extension of that. I go back to my first comments. There are clear jurisdictional res

Natural Resources committee  At the end of the day, there is only one taxpayer. So if we're going to have duplicate efforts, I don't think that serves the taxpayer well. I'm not being critical, but in your question you referenced independent monitoring. Although the Energy Resources Conservation Board repor

Natural Resources committee  I'm not entirely certain. I think the mandates are somewhat different. I think the timeframes are quite a bit different. I know our environment department officials are working very closely with federal officials. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing to happen. The

Natural Resources committee  As I said in my remarks, we're the only province that has a carbon tax right now. It's $15 a tonne. The funds go into an arm's-length fund. We have what would be sort of considered as a private sector board of directors that administers the fund. It's outside of government. The

Natural Resources committee  First of all, there are lots of implications. Implications don't necessarily always relate to fact. A recent one was a national CBC report, which said there was leakage at the CNRL tailings pond. We strictly monitor that. Our regulator, whom I referred to, had been out monitorin

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, Chairman Benoit. And good morning, everyone. I will try very hard to stay within the five- to seven-minute presentation time, but we're politicians. We'll do our best. It is a welcome opportunity to appear before the committee today. The Government of Albe