Environment committee  Thank you very much. It of course depends upon where you are in the country. There was mention of the Circuit électrique in Quebec, and in Ontario and British Columbia, but if you are in parts of Newfoundland, for example, depending upon where you are, it is certainly more challenging.

Environment committee  I don't think anybody's calculated exactly what that increase in demand would be. The challenge, of course, is when that demand would occur and what impact it would have on the system. The challenge is to make sure that we have a smarter grid and smarter systems so that we can, in fact, optimize our networks and charge them off-peak.

Environment committee  Yes, the system broadly can. At a local level, when you're talking about individual feeders, that's where there are challenges at the distribution level. At the same time, we're also looking at greater systems and technologies in place, so that we can manage when we're going to be charging those vehicles.

Environment committee  Well, I mean, overall we're looking at upgrading systems throughout the network. We're looking at $350 billion in investment over two decades to make sure that the system we're building for the future will be more efficient and able to meet our requirements in the future. Yes, technology from the 1950s and 1960s is not as efficient as the technology that we would be building today.

Environment committee  It's a question of physics, quite frankly, and there are different technologies. You see an increase in use of direct current in long-distance transmission because the line losses are not to the same degree as you would find in AC systems. There are a lot of technological fixes that can occur, but quite simply, it is a matter of the physics of moving electricity over long distances.

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely. That is the future. When I talk about areas of regulation that need to be updated, the electricity regulatory regime that you see across the provinces does not take into account the two-way flow of power, for example. A lot of these are currently running as pilot projects, but again that's the kind of regulation that we need to update for the future to be able to allow this two-way flow of power.

Environment committee  It's an interesting question. Thank you very much for it.

Environment committee  Okay. I can't comment specifically about the particular cases within B.C. and at the BCUC, but generally with respect to electricity generation, much as I was saying with respect to metering, we have a regulatory system and a regulatory compact that was developed for the industry as it was in the 1960s rather than in 2020.

Environment committee  Yes, that's correct. Right now, in theory, for fairness, every electric vehicle is much like every street lamp, which is another separate but very similar issue. Every street lamp has a meter. It is metered. We're in the world of LEDs, where the use of electricity by an LED street lamp is so small that today you can't justify the cost of a meter on each and every one of those, because so much less electricity is being used today than when we originally figured out that technology and began using it.

Environment committee  Oh, yes, absolutely. It's something that we're in active discussions about with the departments, with Measurement Canada. We've developed some very specific recommendations. As I said, we'll have included those in that information we provided to the clerk.

Environment committee  Certainly. Thank you very much for the opportunity to touch on that. As I said, this is maybe not as interesting. It's more down in the weeds, but these are the sorts of things that will have to be addressed for us to be effective over the longer term. We essentially have a regulatory regime that was designed for the 1960s.

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Good afternoon to the committee members. CEA, the Canadian Electricity Association, is the national voice of electricity. Our members operate in every province and territory. The association includes generation, transmission and distribution companies.

Finance committee  The principal obstacles right now are essentially in the provincial capitals. On the one hand, this is a question of what the relative priorities are in the provincial capitals. On the other hand, there are also very active discussions that are taking place now between a variety of provinces.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for two very interesting questions. On the first one, there are and have been very active discussions with respect to connecting grids within specific regions. Talking about a national grid the way we over 100 years ago talked about connecting Canada from coast to coast by rail is, frankly, just impossible because of the geography, and there are other challenges.

Finance committee  I would be delighted to talk about carbon capture and utilization. First off, as you noted and in the material we circulated, we have some real global leaders here. We have some groundbreaking work that is taking place in Alberta by Alberta companies, as well as by the universities in Alberta.