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.

Honourable senators, the time for Question Period has expired. I know you will wish to join me in thanking Minister Wilkinson for being with us today. Thank you, minister.