THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY, THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, September 27, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources met with videoconference this day at 6:30 p.m. [ET] to conduct a study on emerging issues related to the committee’s mandate.
Senator Paul J. Massicotte (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Honourable senators, my name is Paul Massicotte. I am a senator from Quebec, and I am the chair of the committee. Today, we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. Before we begin, I’d like to remind witnesses appearing virtually to please keep your microphone muted at all times, unless recognized by name by the chair.
Now, I would like to introduce the members of the committee who are participating in this meeting: Margaret Dawn Anderson from the Northwest Territories, Michèle Audette from Quebec, David Arnot from Saskatchewan, Frances Lankin from Ontario, Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec, Judith Seidman from Quebec, Karen Sorensen from Alberta and Josée Verner, P.C., from Quebec.
I would like to welcome all of you. Welcome fellow senators, and welcome viewers across the country who may be watching.
Today, we are meeting to continue our study on hydrogen energy.
This evening, we welcome by video conference Julia Levin, National Climate Program Manager from Environmental Defence Canada; as an individual, Robert W. Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology, Cornell University; and Debbie Murray, Senior Director, Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Association of Canadian Port Authorities.
Welcome and thank you for being with us. You each have five minutes to deliver your opening remarks. We will then move into questions and answers.
We will begin with Ms. Levin, followed by Mr. Howarth and Ms. Murray.
Ms. Levin, you now have the floor.
[English]
Julia Levin, National Climate Program Manager, Environmental Defence Canada: Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee as part of your hydrogen study. Renewable hydrogen has the potential to help decarbonize a limited number of sectors; however, oil and gas companies are using hydrogen as a way to delay a true clean energy transition and lock in more natural gas infrastructure, which is completely incompatible with ensuring a climate-safe future. Only renewable hydrogen aligns with a climate-safe future; so-called blue hydrogen is not a climate solution.
The former head of the U.K.’s leading hydrogen industry association stepped down from the role, stating that he would be betraying future generations if he remained silent on the fact that blue hydrogen is, at best, an expensive distraction and, at worst, a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use. The emission abatement potential of so-called blue hydrogen relies on carbon capture and storage, a technology that despite having been around for 50 years, has a track record of failure. Even if carbon capture was able to perform as advertised, it only captures a fraction of the emissions associated with the production with blue hydrogen. Investing in fossil hydrogen, blue hydrogen, would lock Canada into a future of fossil fuel use and methane emission leakage. There is no room for blue hydrogen in a climate-safe future.
Last, hydrogen itself acts as an indirect greenhouse gas — and a very powerful one — no matter how it is produced. Given how prone to leakage hydrogen is, we must be cautious about the type of hydrogen infrastructure we build.
Furthermore, the oil and gas industry is using hydrogen to distract from proven effective and affordable climate solutions. For example, we already have all the tools to electrify home heating and cooking, yet gas utilities are lobbying for the use of blended hydrogen in the gas grid, claiming a nominal reduction in carbon emissions as an excuse to keep building new pipelines and power plants, all the while pushing back against electrification — a much better option for decarbonizing our homes and buildings.
Switching to the economics, more and more analysis predicts that renewable hydrogen would be cheaper than even unabated grey hydrogen this decade due to dramatic decreases in the cost of renewable energy and electrolyzers, while blue hydrogen costs are not set to fall. There’s a huge risk of blue hydrogen investments becoming stranded assets even before projects are completed.
Building out renewable hydrogen systems requires a huge amount of energy. It is always more efficient to use renewable energy directly than convert it to hydrogen. Therefore, electrification and energy efficiency will always beat out hydrogen as the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet our energy needs.
Hydrogen may have a role to play in sectors where electrification isn’t an option, potentially some types of transportation, shipping, some heavy industry. However, the most urgent use of renewable hydrogen should be to replace grey hydrogen, which is currently used to upgrade heavy crude oil and produce fertilizer with huge emissions impacts. We must not be distracted by many of the hydrogen uses being touted by the gas industry, like blending a small amount of hydrogen into natural gas grids.
We’re in the middle of a climate emergency. What’s needed is strong leadership to move us away from dependence on fuels that are causing the crisis. Unfortunately, we’ve seen the federal government cave in to the oil and gas industry and put forward a national strategy that exaggerates the role for hydrogen, is not strategic in its proposed application and leaves too much room for fossil hydrogen.
In addition, Canada is trying to push internationally for a definition of clean hydrogen and emissions-intensity threshold that leaves the door open for blue hydrogen. This is an irresponsible role for Canada to be playing internationally.
We know what the solutions to the climate crisis are: electrification, renewable energy, energy efficiency. Focusing on hydrogen helps oil and gas companies green wash themselves but it won’t help us make the deep emissions cuts we need to tackle the crisis. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr. Howarth, the floor is yours.
Robert W. Howarth, David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology, Cornell University: Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight and interact with you. My comments will be brief.
In the past hydrogen has not only been a source of energy, but rather just an industrial source material for making synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and for use in oil refineries and plastic manufacturers. Hydrogen can play an important role in our energy future but it is not a new source of energy — that’s important to recognize. It’s a storage product from other primary sources of energy, whether they be renewable or fossil, and it’s inherently inefficient to make. Today, 96% of hydrogen in North America comes from converting the methane in natural gas into hydrogen. It comes with huge greenhouse gas emissions and it’s quite expensive, and it will only become more so as the price of natural gas goes up.
Now, over the past four or five years, the oil and gas industry, through the creation of their Hydrogen Council, a product of TotalEnergies, Shell, BP and Exxon, has been promoting blue hydrogen very heavily as a product that is sometimes called carbon neutral or low emissions. Blue hydrogen is a hydrogen made from natural gas but with some capture of the carbon dioxide.
Mark Jacobson of Stanford and I published the first peer-reviewed analysis on what the life cycle assessment of blue hydrogen was just 13 or 14 months ago. Our conclusion, which I think is quite robust, is that blue hydrogen is far from a low-emission fuel. It’s actually a very high-emitting fuel. It’s partly because carbon dioxide capture is far from perfect, as Julia mentioned. After 50 years, the industry doesn’t have it down. It’s a very difficult product. It’s also because you cannot use natural gas, which is the feed product and the energy source for blue hydrogen without having some unburned methane emitted into the atmosphere. Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas. The latest report from the IPCC tells us that 45% of all global warming to date is coming from methane emissions. We need to be cutting that down. Blue hydrogen increases those emissions.
In the notes I sent along to the clerk yesterday, I included a figure from our paper showing the emissions. The emissions from blue hydrogen are worse than if you simply used natural gas for fuel, so it’s a terrible idea.
As Julia mentioned, hydrogen also contributes to global warming directly. It’s actually not a greenhouse gas, but the more hydrogen in the atmosphere, the more other greenhouse gases, including methane, water vapour and ozone influence us. So leakages of hydrogen are a big problem. Even green hydrogen, which would be the hydrogen made from 100% renewable electricity, has a climate consequence. It’s not as bad as blue hydrogen or fossil fuels, but it’s not carbon neutral, so electrification is surely the way to go.
The other materials I sent along to you yesterday are a table outlining why we should never be putting hydrogen blended with methane into natural gas systems. I won’t go through that. You can ask me questions about it, if you like. I think the table is quite clear, and you have it.
Fundamentally, the natural gas system was not built to handle hydrogen; it doesn’t handle it well. Adding small amounts of hydrogen into that methane stream would have negligible reductions in overall greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, yesterday, the Electric Power Research Institute, together with the New York Power Authority, issued a report. I hadn’t seen it when preparing my testimony or else I would have added a figure for you, but it turns out that you need to have about 80% or 90% hydrogen blended into that stream before you get a major decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. At that point, it’s not a good use of the resource.
The oil and gas industry is heavily promoting this use of hydrogen, including green hydrogen, for home heating. We’re far better off with beneficial electrification. With the same resource of renewable electricity, you get about 6 to 10 times more heat energy in a building when you use the electricity directly with heat pumps as opposed to converting it to hydrogen and taking it to the building with all of the inefficiencies in there.
So I agree with the language Julia used. This is greenwashing, pure and simple.
Hydrogen has a role for the future, but it’s not that which is being marketed to you by the oil and gas industry. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to talk to you about it further tonight. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Ms. Murray, please go ahead with your presentation.
Debbie Murray, Senior Director, Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Association of Canadian Port Authorities: Mr. Chair and senators, thank you for asking to hear from the Association of Canadian Port Authorities on the matter of the hydrogen economy and the role of ports within it.
Our association represents 17 Canadian port authorities, or CPAs, that move most of Canada’s international marine cargo. I’m also the co-chair of the national hydrogen strategy’s ports and marine working group with Natural Resources Canada.
The global energy transition is well upon us, and it seems that many countries are knocking on Canada’s door to partner on hydrogen. Decarbonization, market forces and geopolitical upheaval are driving this generational shift. For CPAs, the federally owned ports operating at arm’s length of government, there’s clearly an essential role to play in terms of storing, loading and even producing hydrogen ammonia LNG that foreign markets are seeking.
Ports are enablers and hubs for domestic and international hydrogen and energy uptake, connecting domestic and international supply chains. Now, as the foreign delegations leave and announcements fade, attention is on ports and partners to source upstream energy and downstream partners, and invest in the infrastructure needed to ship and bunker hydrogen. But it will be difficult to meet these aspirations in a timely manner, given the challenges of regulatory uncertainty, financing and project approvals of the port infrastructure needed for the energy transition.
Also important within this, the hydrogen dialogue is embedded in a bigger maritime and port dialogue about the fuels of the future and decarbonization, which in turn is shaping the significant asset investments being made in the very near term in ports and ships that must last 20 years. This quote stated the readiness of Canada’s ports to bunker and export hydrogen is not where it needs to be.
Added to and apart from this global energy flux, Canada’s ports now strive to also meet the competing demands of changing supply chains, climate change impacts, changing environmental regimes, trade agreements, market strategies such as Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy and sustainability imperatives, which also require infrastructure investments. Financing is tight. CPAs must rely on the revenues they generate to cover operating costs and for capital investment, and they can only borrow up to government-set limits that are inadequate for infrastructure demands placed upon them today, as I’ve alluded, never mind our future energy aspirations.
Consequently, ports are limited in how and what infrastructure they can invest in. Promises can be made, but they will be hard to keep unless CPAs are extended financial flexibility to build the required port infrastructure. Otherwise, hydrogen and other energy sources will have to get in line with all the other demands on ports in their budgets.
The government is taking many of the necessary steps, including signing MOUs, implementing the strategy and connecting with industry, but more needs to be done to achieve predictability and the state of readiness needed to move Canada’s hydrogen and energy economy.
First, we recommend financial flexibility and funding. Financing the infrastructure we need is a challenge, so we recommend dedicated and sufficient funding for hydrogen infrastructure. We recommend CPA eligibility for this funding. Often, we have found that CPAs are ineligible for a variety of strategic government funds, including some now assigned for clean technology and strategic innovation.
Second, we recommend project approvals. Building the appropriate infrastructure to get our energy to Canada’s ports is a challenge we need to resolve, and the current impact assessment regime can be long and unpredictable, and interested capital will not wait around while a port assessment takes years for approval. Therefore, streamlining, accelerating and refining the assessment process within the current act is recommended.
Third, we recommend regulations. A moving target, regulatory frameworks for hydrogen carriage propulsion and loading, to name a few, will have to evolve within the next five years as scale and complexity increases. Codes, standards and regulations will have to be co-created with industry and harmonized with global regimes. But small-scale pilots that use hydrogen fuel can pave the way for regulatory development, infrastructure development, partnership and retrofits. The industry can find efficiencies and transitional infrastructure solutions through retrofits of existing assets, such as vessels and tank farms.
Beyond the focus on the hydrogen economy, there is another key mechanism that I wish to bring to your attention that could also better capitalize and enable ports to meet all the demands placed upon it, including Canada’s global hydrogen aspirations. That would be the federal government’s long-awaited ports modernization review, which Transport Minister Alghabra has committed to acting upon and completing before the end of the year. Our hope is that the review will support a national strategy on supply chains and the movement of goods with the production, storage and movement of fuels of the future as a major component.
The continued ability of CPAs to make decisions on the right kinds of investments through strength and responsive governance reforms that maintain the arm’s-length government nature of ports, with the appointment of qualified directors in a timely manner and risk-based access supports to private capital. Ideally, instead of borrowing limits, minimum credit ratings and reasonable industry standard debt-servicing metrics could be established for each CPA to permit borrowing within normal market ranges.
Finally, we recommend making the National Trade Corridors Fund permanent and consider other federal funding vehicles specifically designed to support decarbonization of ports, marine and transport, as well as hydrogen, for port CPA eligibility.
In summary, I’d like to say it will be what we do now and next that can position Canada to lead and leverage this demand for its future. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much to all of you. There is much to be understood and discussed.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you all for your explanations. My question is for Mr. Howarth, but other witnesses may have something to add.
On German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recent trip to Canada, he said that he was interested only in green hydrogen, in other words, hydrogen from renewable sources. How does Canada measure up when it comes to green hydrogen sources?
In your opening remarks, you were rather critical of green hydrogen, calling claims that green hydrogen should be used for heating pure greenwashing. Is there or is there not an economic future for green hydrogen in Canada, and can Canada help Germany meet its significant needs on that front? Are we equipped to do that, and does it make economic and environmental sense?
[English]
Mr. Howarth: I don’t entirely understand your question. I am truly sorry.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: On German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recent trip to Canada, he said that he was interested only in green hydrogen, in other words, hydrogen from renewable sources. How does Canada measure up when it comes to green hydrogen sources?
In your opening remarks, you were rather critical of green hydrogen, saying that it had serious limits and should not be used for heating.
[English]
Mr. Howarth: That’s an excellent question. Forgive me again for my poor French and for missing the translation the first time around.
I’m delighted the conversation is around green hydrogen and not blue hydrogen. If we can put any fossil hydrogen in the rearview mirror and recognize that it has no future in North America, that would be wonderful.
As for green hydrogen, I view it as a very precious resource. It’s expensive. It’s becoming less expensive as the cost of renewable electricity comes down and as the cost of electrolyzers comes down. Both of those are coming down substantially, so its cost will come down.
But throughout the world, in Canada and the United States, we’re trying to move away from fossil fuel economy as quickly as possible.
I live in the state of New York and I’m on the commission for the State of New York charged with coming up with a plan of moving us off of fossil fuels very quickly. We’ve been discussing hydrogen in that context, and we have decided that hydrogen should play no role in heating at all. It’s partly because the pipeline system isn’t set up to take it. But it’s also just an efficiency argument.
If you take one unit of renewable electricity, you can get that to a home with pretty high efficiencies. There’s a bit of loss in the electric grid but they’re mild. Then you can use a high-efficiency heat pump. I’ve shown you a figure that I’ve sent along in my notes. The example is not a particularly good heat pump. It has a coefficient performance of three. That’s low. We can do better.
I’m talking to you tonight from my home, which has a heat pump coefficient performance of five, so I know we can do better. Even with three, it’s so much more efficient that we’re getting six times out of that renewable electricity, the same unit, as if we converted it to hydrogen.
So particularly when we’re in this energy transition away from fossil fuels, renewable electricity is a precious resource. We want to use it as efficiently and effectively as we can to move away from fossil fuels, and hydrogen for heating is a very inefficient way to do that. Beyond that, it’s very problematic in terms of putting in pipelines.
The California Air Resources Board issued a recommendation just last month that they not put more than 5% hydrogen mixed in with methane in pipes. That doesn’t do anyone any good.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you think Canada has a future in selling green hydrogen to Germany?
Mr. Howarth: Well, I think, if you have surplus wind along your East Coast — and it’s certainly a wind-rich area — Canada should think carefully about what it wants to do with that resource. If you can get that to market via cable, that’s more efficient than converting it to hydrogen, and you can use it within Canada. I would think that would be to Canada’s advantage.
If you can’t, and you still have the surplus wind power, moving it to hydrogen is not a bad option. If Germany wishes to buy that from you, I think that could perhaps be a good thing. I would hope Germany would use that well and they would not use that for hydrogen. Again, on a global scale, that’s such an inefficient approach.
That’s an ambiguous answer, but let’s use renewable electricity as well as we can, convert it to hydrogen as a last resort and then use that hydrogen as effectively as we can.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you.
Senator Seidman: Thanks to all the witnesses for being with us this evening. My question is also for you, Dr. Howarth. I know you don’t want questions particularly about blue hydrogen, so I’ll just touch on that and try to draw a conclusion and then go on to green, if I might.
Indeed you referred to, I think it was, your paper of April 2021 in the journal of Energy, Science & Engineering in which you suggest that blue hydrogen will not solve our emissions dilemma in Canada because its footprint is 20% greater than natural gas and 60% greater than diesel oil, as well as the fact that there are challenges with the longevity of carbon capture and storage.
My very blunt question is, if you were advising the Government of Canada, would you suggest they stop investing in this technology altogether?
Mr. Howarth: Yes, absolutely I would. I have testified before the U.S. Congress saying specifically that in New York because I’m on the commission for our energy future, and we will not allow blue hydrogen in our state.
Again, there are two issues with it. Our paper was actually published in August, not April of 2021. You’re correct on the statistics beyond that.
There are two aspects to it. Carbon capture is far from a perfect enterprise. There’s always some leakage. We use pretty optimistic values in our paper. We also looked at a wide range of what would be possible. Under any reasonable set of assumptions for carbon capture, you’re still going to have some carbon dioxide emitted. It takes energy to power carbon dioxide. This doesn’t happen for free. We assumed the industry would use more natural gas to produce electric power to do the capture because they’re already using natural gas as the feedstock,and the blue hydrogen plants they have, the pipeline is already there.
The bottom line is you’re consuming more and more natural gas. Even though you’re capturing carbon dioxide emissions somewhat — you’re not capturing all of them — your methane emissions are becoming greater and greater because you simply cannot use natural gas without some of that going off to the atmosphere unburned. We assumed about 3.5%, a really low number. But even if you take it down to 1.5%, which is improbably low, no country does that as far as I know, the methane emissions make it a deadly idea.
Quite aside from that, Julia mentioned the economics. Currently, grey hydrogen, the pure fossil fuel hydrogen, is pretty expensive. Blue hydrogen is more expensive because it takes more natural gas behind that. Green hydrogen is fairly expensive too. The most recent data that I’ve seen suggests that green hydrogen today is already cost competitive with blue hydrogen.
Blue hydrogen is going to get more and more expensive as natural gas prices go up in the future. Green hydrogen is going to get less and less expensive as the cost of renewable energy goes down and as electrolysis procedures become less expensive. So it’s a complete distraction at best. Thank you for that question.
Senator Seidman: Ms. Levin is nodding her head vociferously here.
Ms. Levin: I agree with what Dr. Howarth has said. I would add that the government has a clear commitment to end fossil fuel subsidies, so any public dollars that go toward blue hydrogen is a clear violation of commitment that the government has made.
Maybe to touch on the exporting of Canada’s green hydrogen to Germany and other countries, it’s important to note that of the amount of hydrogen that we’re producing today, the vast majority is used on-site because we have still not figured out transportation. It’s a giant technological problem to solve that we haven’t figured out, and, of course, all of the issues on top of that.
There is vast renewable energy potential in Atlantic Canada, but we’re still using coal power, so we need our priorities to be straight. We need to phase out coal power, use Newfoundland’s and Nova Scotia’s wind capacity for that purpose before we begin exporting it overseas, given those huge inefficiencies in energy loss. Thank you for letting me add those points.
Senator Seidman: Thank you, and you answered the second part of my question. Thank you for anticipating that.
The Chair: Ms. Murray, you talked a lot about hydrogen and how important it is to the industry. You’re basically focused on modernizing your infrastructure to get there.
You have two colleagues who are somewhat negative on hydrogen. What are your comments to those responses?
Ms. Murray: My first comment is that it’s compelling and interesting to listen to their comments. I appreciate that dialogue and the questions.
I would say that the ports’ fundamental aim is around sustainability, and building the infrastructure we need might be to support hydrogen exports but it may also be to support other types of exports of energy that are more efficient. Our ports are under tremendous pressure right now to update and build the infrastructure that we will need for whatever path we pick.
That is really the key thing. Currently, we’re talking about hydrogen, but that might not be the path. Regardless of the path we pick, we are going to need to look at the infrastructure we have. When we’re talking about exports, it’s going to go through ports, and right now we’re just not set up for it.
I’m not an expert like they are on some of the technology, so I will not go there; I will just listen.
The Chair: Ms. Levin, I understand your comments very well, but your opening premise is that we can never get it there; we can’t get CCS to be efficient. Your argument is pretty valid. If we look at our Canadian experience so far, it has not been resoundingly positive. However, let’s say we can correct that. We’re hearing, “Don’t worry; we will correct that. We will make it efficient, productive and reliable.” If you make it the premise that we can correct that and they’re telling you that you need to do everything you can. So let’s say we believe our government is doing everything it can, including solar, wind, et cetera and they say that, on an incremental basis, we will reduce CO2, because otherwise it doesn’t get captured. It will be used to produce other forms of energy. So why not support it to the degree that it will be useful, presuming we can correct and repair its serious deficiencies. How do you respond to that comment?
Ms. Levin: There are a few things there. Our government isn’t pursuing all of the above. We know what the best mitigation options are. We know they are electrifying everything and making sure electricity comes from a renewable grid. However, our government puts 14 times more money toward fossil fuels than it does to those proven climate solutions that will do 80% of the mitigation. So there’s that imbalance that needs to be corrected.
We’re nowhere near having this, but even if we had 95% carbon capture — and that’s not where we are. Quest, which is a big blue hydrogen facility, is at 60%. But if you do the whole life cycle analysis, it’s more like 30% or 38%. But even if we could get that to 95%, that ignores the upstream methane emissions that Dr. Howarth spoke about that is part of digging, producing and transporting methane.
We know that methane is consistently under-reported. We’ve known about methane leakage for a long time, and we’re incapable of coming up with ways to produce and transport methane that deal with all of those emissions. It’s a huge climate hazard. So even with perfectly functioning carbon capture technology, it will never be 100%. Even the most bullish industry proponents don’t put it there, and it does nothing about upstream methane emissions, which are so significant.
We know that industry is not putting its own money into carbon capture and storage. Our governments, provincial and federal, have given $6 billion to the sector over the past two decades, and that has resulted in a tiny yearly capture rate; and 75% of the carbon that is captured is used to dig out more oil and gas, so all of that is putting more emissions into the atmosphere through a process called enhanced oil recovery. That’s the only commercial use of captured carbon that exists today.
So on so many fronts, the idea that blue hydrogen can become climate neutral is just inaccurate.
The Chair: Why is the government proceeding as they so plan in light of all these negatives you’re highlighting?
Ms. Levin: Because of the power of the oil and gas industry across this country. Why did we give $18 billion in subsidies and supports to the fossil-fuel sector in 2020, way more than we gave to renewable energy solutions? Because, in this country, the oil and gas industry has a tremendous amount of power.
We launched a new tool that tracks every single lobbying event that oil and gas companies do with the federal government. They’re meeting five, six or seven times each day with Natural Resources Canada and ECCC. That is a lot of power we have given to the sector that is fuelling the climate crisis. We see that in subsidies. Every single environmental policy that has ever been tabled in Canada has been weakened, killed or delayed by the oil and gas lobby.
The Chair: So our government is purposely being manipulated by the oil and gas industry, knowing clear and well that it’s not in the interests of Canada. Is that a good summary of what you’re saying?
Ms. Levin: There is a lot of inaccurate information out there, and there are a lot of decision makers who have bought into a lot of the myths. If we watch what’s happening in the U.S. with the oversight committee and the revelation of decades of lying from oil and gas companies, spending tens of millions of dollars each year with public information campaigns that reach government officials or people —
The Chair: I apologize. Our translation is not working.
Witnesses, we apologize. We have not been able to fix the translation issue. We will have to adjourn this meeting, but we hope to hear again from you soon.
(The committee adjourned.)