Natural Resources committee  There’s no question. Someone earlier mentioned that you have to look at it from “well to wheel”, that is, what was the carbon created when you generated that electricity, as well as when you used it? From a Canadian context, when I look abroad to other jurisdictions, 70% of the electric energy in Canada has very low greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural Resources committee  With the electric vehicle, the other thing that's not very well understood is that gasoline engines, even the very best advanced technology engines, convert only about 40% of the potential energy in gasoline to motion. Electric vehicles can do it at about an almost 90% conversion factor, so you're getting twice the efficiency.

Natural Resources committee  The U.S. and Canadian governments have established a strategy indirectly via the regulatory process and the greenhouse gas emissions required by vehicles over the 2012-2025 period. In that regulation certain incentives are provided to manufacturers to develop certain types of technologies.

Natural Resources committee  Infrastructure is the missing link in that strategy, but there is no question that none of these objectives can be achieved without allowing the industry to develop all of these types of advanced technologies. They're leaving it to the industry to pick and choose which ones they want to work on.

Natural Resources committee  From an electric vehicle standpoint, there's no question that the evolution of the battery systems has now enabled us to sell commercially viable vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt. The energy density of batteries has been a limiting factor—how much energy you can put into a certain mass of battery or size.

Natural Resources committee  We have made a specific commitment to the Government of Canada on investing almost a billion dollars in research and development activities on a variety of technologies over a given time period. That is probably not the extent of what we will do. Again, I'll go back to my theme.

Natural Resources committee  There are various programs we've utilized. I don't have those figures readily available but we utilize the NSERC programs—

Natural Resources committee  I'll have to investigate that from a company perspective to see how we could break that down.

Natural Resources committee  I guess in general that's an accurate statement. In the end—in our industry anyway, being a global industry—in many cases the innovative work will be done, but the financial decisions will in many cases drive where it will be done as well. So it's a balance of those two factors.

Natural Resources committee  No, it's more along the lines of its being a multifaceted issue as to the decision process, and it's not one thing, but many things. So it goes from education, fiscal policies, infrastructure policies, etc., that facilitate making some of these decisions in selecting Canada as a site to do that innovative work.

Natural Resources committee  First of all, we were very grateful for the government's action in that stage. It averted some very significant economic devastation that would have happened in a number of communities. In fact, the other OEMs that did not require support also advocated for support because we have a shared supplier network.

Natural Resources committee  The only comment I have is right back to the U.S. policy, where they don't.... It's better to have broad-based initiatives in the area of certain automotive technologies or refuelling, because the dynamics change so often that you need to provide a level of support and let the market dynamics ebb and flow to make the right economic decisions so you have investments that have longer viability.

Natural Resources committee  The lost revenue for not collecting excise tax on alternative fuels such ethanol would be very small, and it's really only required in the early stages to help in the commercialization. I'd also like to add that the whole issue of excise tax on fuel needs to be revisited. The fact is that it is assessed on the basis of per litre.

Natural Resources committee  The reality is you're overcharging excise tax currently on a greener fuel that has 40% lower greenhouse gases, etc. In the near term, I think it would be a very low-cost measure. It would help reduce the cost of these fuels in the early stages so consumers—

Natural Resources committee  We don't believe it would be necessary. Other jurisdictions have definitely not.