Finance committee  Sure. Let me explain it a little in this way. It takes about five years to develop and build a power plant. It's much longer, if it's a hydro plant; that could take up to 10 years or more. It's a long cycle. Like any industry, we respond to price signals. We have a low price signal right now.

Finance committee  Yes, gladly. Thank you. That's a very good question. My perspective is that I don't see the kinds of impacts we've seen in the oil and gas sector in the power sector. In other words, we're not seeing significant layoffs, or anything like that, because the generation that's in place will be needed and will continue to supply consumers for some time to come.

Finance committee  On the future for wind, certainly the wind generation that's in place today will continue to be in place. We have wind across Canada and it's working quite well. The challenge I'm pointing to is that if we see a protracted period of low prices, any form of generation is difficult to make an investment decision on.

Finance committee  No, we haven't.

Finance committee  Thank you and good morning. My name's Rob Schaefer and I'm the executive vice-president of trading and marketing at TransAlta. Thanks for having me here today. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak here about the impact on the electricity sector of declining oil prices.