Natural Resources committee  Then it becomes a question of where you put that risk, as well. There's a lot of instances where the government does make the decision. It's not to say that these are 100% guaranteed investments, but someone has put some due diligence in there. If they're willing to shoulder that

Natural Resources committee  I can't say too much about how much it's going to cost each utility to build, but the point was mainly that this isn't something that the federal government needs to pay for 100% or anything like that. However, if it's actually worthwhile and if this would be a good decision to m

Natural Resources committee  On the cost of interties...?

Natural Resources committee  I don't have too many numbers in the back of my head. We are more on the policy side, but we definitely think that you have to weigh the costs versus the benefits that will come about from these interties. There is a reason why we are not talking about strategic interties to Icel

Natural Resources committee  We could have a much more integrated grid. There are limited interties between the provinces. In western Canada, I believe, there is a small intertie between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and a small one between B.C. and Alberta, but if you look at the map, it's more north-south, be

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I do. Natural gas is the main driver of prices. Down in the U.S. it's very cheap. They do not price in emissions in the United States and that has caused a number of problems down there. We're seeing in New York they are implementing large subsidy programs to keep their nucl

Natural Resources committee  I'm also not an expert on NAFTA, so I won't comment on that, but I will say that based on some of my research there definitely needs to be some conversations. Right now a lot of the provinces have open access transmission tariffs or OATTs that are based on the model that FERC in

Natural Resources committee  I will echo that comment.

Natural Resources committee  Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me to appear before you here today. I'm here on behalf of the Canada West Foundation, where I'm a policy analyst specializing in energy and electricity issues. The Canada West Foundation is an in