Natural Resources committee  I saw that study about two years ago, and I have to tell you that it was challenged pretty quickly. Clearly, any industrial or commercial endeavour has an environmental cost. One of the core reasons, however, that we promote the electrification of transportation and electric vehi

Natural Resources committee  We could find some references, but if we had to compare the system with other economic activities that would achieve the same result, I wouldn't be too worried.

Natural Resources committee  That would require examining each case. Overall, though, Canada's electric grid is in good shape. The issue is how well-designed is it for the future. Yes, Ontario has made significant investments, but so has Quebec. New Brunswick has done a lot as well. Everywhere has. Generally

Natural Resources committee  No.

Natural Resources committee  An incentive could be “if you do well, you get money; if you don't do well, money is taken away from you”. Utilities in Canada right now are all regulated on the basis of what's called the rate-base rate of return. When you put incentive into that regulatory regime, it means that

Natural Resources committee  The industry is evolving very quickly, which, obviously, is an issue when you're talking about infrastructure that takes two decades to build. I think there are three things that need to change. First, we need markets so that a large number of players—consumers, businesses, utili

Natural Resources committee  It depends on where you are. In places like the U.K, where the cost of energy is higher than it is in Canada, it is already cost-effective in some instances. In Canada, where the cost of energy is lower, it's going to take a few more years, at 20% or 25% a year, remember. In thre

Natural Resources committee  I must say that virtually all utilities in Canada are customers of S&C for one thing or another, including Hydro One. Hydro One is a very good customer of S&C. I know Hydro One has programs to improve the reliability of its systems. Hydro One is also one of the utilities

Natural Resources committee  It's always hard to predict the future because it hasn't happened yet. Let me give you an example in a similar industry: telecom. Twenty years ago to this day, I was operating what was at that time the largest Internet telephony network in the world out of Toronto. We were selli

Natural Resources committee  I concur with that. One thing that is quite interesting is the amount of storage in vehicles. Say we convert most vehicles in Canada to electricity. The amount of storage there is going to be very large even in comparison to what's needed in the grid itself. That may create a nat

Natural Resources committee  There will always be a need for large transmission lines, at least over the planning horizon, and probably more in specific locations. However, the advent of storage, if you project the trends over the last few years, will mean that less of it will be required than if we had cont

Natural Resources committee  When you look at an electrical system, historically the generators simply followed the demand: demand increase, generation increase, and so on. The first thing that happened is that people started to build transmission lines. S&C contributed to that a century ago. The reason

Natural Resources committee  This is a great question. A modernized grid is be an essential ingredient for the future. There are major investments being made by all utilities across Canada to improve the distribution grid, and improve the transmission systems as well. Overall, we are privileged as a develo

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for inviting S&C Electric to appear before this committee. My name is Benoit Marcoux. I'm a professional engineer with over 35 years of experience in telecom and electric utilities in various executive and ad