Natural Resources committee  It's a very difficult question. It's a very difficult problem. I don't have a ready-made solution for that. Maybe I could give you a few ideas I have about that subject. First of all, I think we should make sure that we deal with all the social licence problems early on in th

Natural Resources committee  —I think it's very important to understand that social licence does not mean that everyone has to agree.

Natural Resources committee  I think it comes down to that, in the end. We are trying to have everyone agree and it's very difficult. Maybe I can give a bad example. You will not get Homer Simpson to agree with you sometimes. Some people will not agree with you anyway, whatever you do, so we need to thin

Natural Resources committee  I agree. In fact, I think that the biggest problem we have right now is a fiscal problem, especially in light of what's probably going to happen in the United States in the next few months. The Republicans have promised to reduce marginal tax rates for personal marginal but also

Natural Resources committee  I would say that research that's been done, in maybe the last 40 years, in economics has shown pretty convincingly that industrial policy is not a good thing. In fact, the government is not better at picking winners than I am or anyone here is. In fact, the market is a process to

Natural Resources committee  I maintain what I said earlier, which is that the government does not have the expertise to pick winners. Neither do I, and neither does anyone here, because you would need to be able to predict the future. There are many examples of governments making bad choices with an indust

Natural Resources committee  I agree with you. About two years ago, we commissioned a survey. We asked Quebeckers what they thought of the pipelines that carry western oil. A clear majority of people were opposed to them. But when the survey explained to Quebeckers that most of our oil is imported from othe

Natural Resources committee  Quite possibly. The results of the surveys are quite clear. When we explain to Quebeckers that there are refineries in Montreal that would be jeopardized if low-cost Canadian oil were no longer available, they revise their position and become more favourable to western oil. I th

Natural Resources committee  I'm going to answer in French. I think more quickly in French than in English. General de Gaulle once said about something else: “What a wide-ranging program!”. The expression continues to be associated with him. I would say to you: “What a wide-ranging question!”. I think th

Natural Resources committee  I believe it would. Some surveys, particularly those of the Montreal Economic Institute, show that the facts are not well known at all. When we explain to people that Canadian environmental regulations, for instance, are a lot stricter that those in many other countries, and that

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much. My name is Germain Belzile. I'm a senior associate researcher with the Montreal Economic Institute. I'm also on the faculty of the Université de Montréal business school, HEC Montréal, in economics. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Natural

Natural Resources committee  Listen, humanity once lived in the Stone Age, and we didn't go to the Bronze Age because we lacked stones. We did it because we found something better. Eventually we're going to go to different energies, but not tomorrow. In fact, predictions are that we'll still need a lot of

Natural Resources committee  In Quebec we use a lot of hydroelectricity. In fact, we heat our homes with it and it's not very efficient. What would be much better would be to heat our homes with natural gas and to export electricity to other places where they produce electricity with coal or whatever. I beli

Natural Resources committee  I'll give you an example. We've been doing a few polls, in fact, in Quebec and in Canada. When we ask Quebeckers bluntly what they think of oil coming from Alberta, a small majority are opposed to it. When they're told that in fact the quantity of water used to produce oil is dow

Natural Resources committee  This number is not from the Montreal Economic Institute. We simply took a look at the numbers from the companies who did les prospections. I'll switch to French. I can find the right words more easily in French. Some companies have carried out exploration work. What we do know