Natural Resources committee  I can't give you a specific timeline that we could generalize across all regulatory applications. Some are more complex than others. At the National Energy Board, we've seen that simpler and smaller regulatory applications can be decided within a certain timeframe. Larger, more c

Natural Resources committee  More certainty and shorter timelines are important, but the most important thing is to establish a regulatory process that accurately and effectively brings in the input from the applicant as well as the various stakeholders, deals with it efficiently, and is known and certain to

Natural Resources committee  The $60 million I referred to was the annual property tax payment that Spectra Energy makes in British Columbia. Those property tax payments generally find their way back into the communities through which our facilities run. As a result, those moneys go back into local infrastru

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Pipelines are designed based on the properties of the natural gas they transport. In other words, a different type of pipeline will be required, or a different type of pipeline design will be required, if the pipeline has liquids associated with the natural gas or if

Natural Resources committee  It's a good question. We certainly see circumstances in which natural gas and electricity from hydroelectric resources compete. For example, in heating applications, just to name one example, you can use either natural gas or electricity. I think in other circumstances, as we l

Natural Resources committee  Well, corporate taxes are an important part of any company's investment decisions. Higher taxes reduce the economics of investing in a given play. Our view is that it's very important to ensure that in Canada we have a very stable and competitive fiscal environment, as well as en

Natural Resources committee  Could you help me with what you mean by monitoring? I'm just not sure I'm following.

Natural Resources committee  I'll just speak to my own experience here. I'm not familiar with the report you're referring to, but we have a pretty demanding regulator in the National Energy Board in terms of the regulations that we're held to. On the pipeline side, there are the onshore pipeline regulations,

Natural Resources committee  Well, there's always a risk that we become uncompetitive or that rigs and capital move elsewhere. As we know and as we often say, capital is ultimately very mobile, so investment decisions really track the opportunities that are in front of companies. Over the last couple of year

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. I'll start by saying I'm not personally familiar with the situation in Quebec and some of the issues you refer to. I can speak about the kinds of things we do in our business. In many cases we expand our infrastructure in areas where we haven't had natural gas gather

Natural Resources committee  Okay, let me try to....

Natural Resources committee  I'll give you an answer. Hopefully it matches up with the question.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. We've seen what's really been driving the expansion of our business. Our business is a gas gathering, processing, and transportation business, so we are the connection to the supply--which in our case is in northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta--and markets. What'

Natural Resources committee  In some basins it is more cost-competitive than conventional gas. It's hard to make a generalization like that, because each basin and each producer has a different cost situation, and supply basins are different. That said, what we've seen, not only in the basins that we connec

Natural Resources committee  Thanks--