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.

[Translation]

Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson, P.C., M.P., Minister of Natural Resources: Thank you. That is a very important question.

People often focus on transportation, or oil and gas, or buildings — all of which are important in terms of reducing emissions and building an economy for the future — but they often don’t talk about the grid. The grid underpins the entire thing.

Having a robust grid that has an abundant supply of non‑emitting power is critical to phasing out coal and to eventually phasing out unabated natural gas, but it’s also critical to being able to reduce emissions from transportation. If you’re electrifying all the cars, you need more power. If you’re electrifying home heating, you need more power. It’s critical to the future of our economy.

Many battery manufacturers and, now, car manufacturers are locating in Canada because we have non-emitting power. At the end of the day, they want products that have almost zero embedded carbon. If you’re burning coal and you’re using electricity, you don’t have zero embedded carbon in your car. To grow the industrial base in this country — whether it’s hydrogen, biofuels, critical minerals or car manufacturing — we need a lot more. We will have to double or triple the amount of electricity generation in this country over the course of the coming number of decades.

The federal government needs to be part of that solution. From a financial perspective, I often say this is the railway of our century. It is fundamentally important. It is also important that we are working with provinces and territories, while respecting their jurisdiction, on ideas about how we can do this better and faster. That’s the role of the proposed national grid council — namely, to try to think about outside-the-box ideas on the regulatory regimes to enable us to move in a manner that will meet the needs of the energy transition and to help us look at best practices.