Natural Resources committee  It's only four businesses, but we actually highlight a few companies that have been working with the oil sands in other provinces. The main objective is to try and understand how we improve domestic supply chains and how they become successful suppliers to the oil sands. There a

Natural Resources committee  Manufacturing, because it's more tradable than other types of goods and services generally speaking, is one of the products for which we see more trading across provincial borders. I will say there's plenty of opportunity to improve domestic trade ties with the oil sands. We actu

Natural Resources committee  We focus a lot on value added. Sure, I agree wholeheartedly you want to maximize the value we're getting out of our natural resources. We focus too much on the upgrading and the refining. There are a lot of other inputs that go into the industry. It's become world-class at those

Natural Resources committee  A good example would be lots of different types of equipment that go into the oil sands. One of the few manufacturing industries that's been a success story in Canada in the last decade has been manufacturers of oil and gas equipment. So how do we make our businesses successful a

Natural Resources committee  I can't say...we haven't studied...I don't know what the value is of the credits currently in place. We have built models looking at the existing regime, but unfortunately, right now I can't say if you changed the regime what the values would be.

Natural Resources committee  I don't know how to answer that. We haven't done the analysis so I can't really say whether or not.... I don't even know which programs you're talking about so I can't really comment on whether or not they're appropriate.

Natural Resources committee  Just to give you an example, the paper that I was referring to in my piece was written about a year and a half ago. Since then, the price discount has become much more entrenched. It's no longer viewed as a temporary or one-off phenomenon. It's now being built into investment pla

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for inviting me. For anyone who is unaware, the Conference Board is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank based here in Ottawa. We do research in a variety of areas including public policy, economic forecasting and analysis, and organizational performance. My understan

Natural Resources committee  I don't really have much to add. I agree very much on the pipeline deadline. We have a bit of capacity to extend it through rail movements, but there are limitations to what we can do with that. I would say that's really a critical deadline.

Natural Resources committee  Obviously diversification is a good thing. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, to use your expression. What we've seen is that although the Canadian economy is not just about energy or about oil sands, a lot of the growth right now is being driven by our natural

Natural Resources committee  I would say yes, we can be self-sufficient. As we've already mentioned, if you build that west to east infrastructure, we can be self-sufficient in oil. There's no question of that. It's just having adequate infrastructure. When you talk about things like refining, this is all w

Natural Resources committee  I would have to agree. The western approach is shorter and cheaper if your purpose is just to get to foreign markets, but given the amount of oil we're importing and the price differential between domestic prices and foreign prices—because we are importing oil at foreign prices—t

Natural Resources committee  I can't put a precise figure on it. I don't have an exact number in terms of royalties. Different numbers are bandied about. But in terms of oil, which is the commodity that most people talk about right now, depending on when you're talking about it, it's in the range of a $30 or

Natural Resources committee  That's right.

Natural Resources committee  There's no doubt that all of these activities we're talking about are highly capital-intensive. You're talking about billions of dollars of investment even for an individual project, so you have to have access to it. Up until now, there hasn't been a shortage of capital in the