Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson, P.C., M.P., Minister of Natural Resources: I will take your suggestion away. I don’t disagree with you. I do think it’s important that it’s more visible for Canadians.

In terms of nuclear power, I would say that we’re moving toward a future that must be much lower-carbon, and that, from my perspective, means that all non-emitting forms of energy have to be very much on the table. There are some provinces in this country that are in the very beneficial situation that they have large amounts of hydro. That would include Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. You have a big storage battery, which enables you to potentially use more intermittent sources of power like wind and solar and to be able to balance that out.

But in provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the baseload power is provided primarily by coal and to a certain extent by gas, the choices are more challenging with respect to baseload perspective. I would say that at the present time, it would probably be nuclear energy or natural gas with a good carbon abatement and, potentially, in the future, hydrogen. The choices are not inexhaustible, and the idea that you can build a grid solely using wind and solar with some kind of storage is, certainly technologically, not there. Cost-wise, it is probably not there.

In that context, I think nuclear is a real option from a non‑emitting perspective. It is a technology that I think people would say is very safe. There clearly is an issue with waste. We have to get Canadians comfortable about how we’re going to manage the existence of nuclear waste. I think we have to have an adult conversation with Canadians about how we’re going to do that. Let’s be clear. A significant part of the electricity for the province of Ontario comes from nuclear power.

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