Transport committee  It's a little complicated because sometimes you have to spend a little bit of money up front to recognize that there's a problem, which does potentially avoid a much bigger expenditure down the road. There's obviously a rationale for spending some money on a project if you're goi

Transport committee  That's a complicated question. It requires a fairly detailed understanding of how electricity dispatch works in Ontario and what resources would be available at any given time. The complicating factor here is the assumption that there would be significant surplus generation avai

Transport committee  Yes, I think that's very much the case. There's been quite a lot of modelling done on the Ontario-Quebec relationship and the ways in which that can be optimized. Yes, that would make sense to me in terms of particularly the Canada Infrastructure Bank to be looking at financing t

Transport committee  I would say precisely that. Yes, these things need to be subject to substantial scrutiny to see if they make sense, both in economic terms and in environmental terms. The problem here is that this project was conceptualized at a different stage in the evolution of Ontario's elec

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments were mostly focused on the question of the relationship between Quebec and Ontario. In my view, it would make far more sense to strengthen the interties between Ontario and Quebec for a number of reasons. The principal reason is the nature of t

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Mark Winfield. I'm a professor of environmental and urban change at York University in Toronto. I'm also coordinator of the master of environmental studies/juris doctor programs, a member of the university senate and co-chair of the sustainable

Foreign Affairs committee  I didn't say there would be no geopolitical risk; I said that the European Union is very sensitive to the question of geopolitical risk around energy supplies and other things. The approach around material flows in Europe is very interesting. We actually just published a study

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that's a good question. My political scientist answer, in part, is that they are institutionally embedded incumbents. They have very close relationships with some provincial governments as well. I think the underlying question is very valid, particularly in the contex

Foreign Affairs committee  The question of how to help Ukraine is a complicated and broad one. At this stage of the game, I would suggest that the energy dimension.... The numbers we're talking about represent very small portions of total global energy supply in terms of oil, for example. Probably where

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't control production in that way. I mean, if there's a market there, and a capacity to export, then the commodity is exported—

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a complicated question. Part of the challenge, of course, is that governments are still intervening very aggressively in support of fossil fuels and subsidizing them in multiple different directions. I think there remain embedded policy contradictions in terms of where

Foreign Affairs committee  I think these are very good questions. The fossil fuel sector, at the moment, is very profitable. There are very good questions about the targeting of government support and subsidies and where that is taking us and what sorts of pathways it may be embedding.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are a number of areas where we have considerable expertise, although we've lost some ground not just on energy sources but also on the energy efficiency and energy productivity side. We have some very interesting utilities in Atlantic Canada, of all places, that do very i

Foreign Affairs committee  It's not inconceivable. The Europeans are moving very quickly on, and already have moved on, a very large-scale integration of renewables. You're seeing 40% to 50% of energy output in major European countries coming from wind and solar principally. There are other sources as well

Foreign Affairs committee  I would have to admit that this is somewhat beyond my immediate area of expertise in terms of where the international assistance has been going. In general, one would expect the investments to emphasize relatively distributed resources, because they're appropriate in scale and c