Finance committee  Thank you, MP Morantz. Is private capital for beneficiaries, fiduciaries, investment managers, pension fund managers and so forth, who have an overriding duty to maximize risk-adjusted returns, or is private capital actually semi-socialized capital that should be used to deliver public policy objectives?

Finance committee  Yes, I think you've put your finger exactly on the big issue with ESG investing and the commingling of public policy objectives, or political objectives, and the financial interests of beneficiaries. This is a problem. You have to pull the two apart. There's a role for government, and there's a role for private capital, and you don't want to commingle them.

Finance committee  Well, I think you can look to Europe to see the dangers of not having natural resources and being quite energy intensive, particularly to Germany, which is one of the world's largest industrial exporters, with an economy that made itself very dependent on supplies of Russian gas.

Finance committee  The answer is no, it would be an act of economic suicide. With that, unless demand for oil and gas falls globally, all you're doing is transferring wealth, effectively, to other players across the world, particularly in the Middle East and Russia.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. The IEA in its “World Energy Outlook 2022 ” would completely agree with you on the point that demand reduction has to proceed faster than reductions in supply. If you don't do that, you will have higher prices. It's obviously a serious problem at the moment across western economies.

Finance committee  That's correct. I'd also add that it inevitably involves having lower wages. The wages in the hydrocarbon sector are higher than in the renewable sector. It's as simple as that.

Finance committee  Yes, it will make Canadians poorer. There are also big macroeconomic impacts from the energy transition of a big structural cost-push impact on inflation. If, again, you're looking eastward across the Atlantic, the one country, I think, that Canadians should look for inspiration is Norway.

Finance committee  I would just say that her qualification of what is material is doing a lot of work because material is something that shifts over time. I would also point the committee to Tim Buckley, chief executive officer of Vanguard, who expressly rejected the view now being advanced by your colleague.

Finance committee  Certainly, sir. If you look at the IEA's net-zero road map for the energy sector, it forecasts that by the end of a period, OPEC will have a 52% share of the oil market. If you then assume that western oil companies, the west, conforms with net zero but the rest of the world doesn't, that market share rises to 82%.

Finance committee  Yes. This leaves, I would suggest, very little for ESG investors with respect to oil and gas companies, as their only lever is to embargo capital investment in new oil and gas fields. Thank you for your indulgence.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I'm sorry. Zoom just collapsed on me. If you have a moment, can I—

Finance committee  Yes, I can hear you rather clearly, Mr. Chairman.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, sir. Financing the energy transition can be broken down into two capital flows: increased capital into renewable energy generation and capital outflows from sharply reduced investment in the oil and gas sector. Much of the purpose of transparency and disclosure of climate-related metrics is with a view to influencing these two flows.

Finance committee  I'm Rupert Darwall from the Realclear Foundation. [Technical difficulty—Editor]