Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to present a few ideas about energy and the environment. We start from the premise that North America is blessed with a tremendously diverse array of energy assets. ln addition to the traditional fossil fuels, we are seeing growth in a wide variety of renewables—some of the best hydro assets anywhere, as well as uranium, biofuels, wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. That's in fact what the industry is working on right now, a standard. They have best practices on things like disclosure of what's in the fracking fluids. But yes, it is—

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sure Ambassador Jacobson has a thought on this as well, but as I'm sure you know there is an existing Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement that needs to be strengthened and enforced. I don't know the exact status of it, but it is under negotiation. The air quality is actually improving in southern Ontario.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm sure the ambassador dealt with this during his time. There is an existing Canada-U.S. agreement.

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't particularly talk about energy independence because I'm not sure exactly how you would define those words. We have the tremendous opportunity to be more energy self-sufficient in North America. I think two of the biggest obstacles, obviously, are improving the energy infrastructure among our countries, and secondly, getting public support, quite frankly, for the kinds of energy opportunities that we have.