Thank you. Thank you very much, Julie. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Julie, Minister Dabrusin, for that introduction for your leadership over the course of this last year and going forward. Russ, I’d like to thank you for joining us this morning with your enthusiasm for today’s announcement, today’s task, or today and tomorrow’s task, and for your workers to deliver, make sure that Canada can deliver on it. And we need to deliver because Canada is facing major challenges from a rapidly changing world.

The United States is radically changing all of its trade relationships, turning many of our former assets into vulnerabilities. War is raging in the Middle East and in Ukraine, which is drastically increasing energy prices all around the world and here at home. The rapid rise of AI is starting to change how we live and work, and is generating an unprecedented demand for power. Climate change is getting worse: storms are more violent, floods are more severe, and forest fires are more devastating. It is therefore essential that Canada increase its resilience and do its part.

Canadians are feeling all the impacts of these big changes at their kitchen tables, at the pumps, on the factory floors as costs rise and uncertainty casts its heavy shadow. The good news is that many countries, unlike many countries, the good news is that, unlike many countries, we can control our future, if we seize this moment. And that means applying several lessons that these big forces have revealed.

First, when the world fundamentally changes, we must respond with new approaches. As the Canadian Marshall McLuhan described 60 years ago, an age of anxiety is caused by trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools and yesterday’s concepts. Canadians get that. Canadians get that, which is why they’re changing how they shop, where they travel, and how they come together. And governments must now follow their lead.

The second lesson is that in a much tougher world, we have to take care of ourselves, and the right path, as this government has stressed, the right path forward is to build big and to build for all, with code, copper, and steel. And to that end, Canada’s new government has been moving fast. We’ve already referred 21 nation-building initiatives to the Major Projects Office. Projects that will connect, diversify, and propel our economy through over $125 billion in new investment.

Last year, construction began on the new Darlington nuclear power plant in Ontario. In March, we began the Contrecœur Terminal expansion project at the Port of Montreal. Forty years after it was first designed, this project was launched just a few months after we formed government. This summer, we will be launching the Mackenzie Valley Highway project in the Northwest Territories, a project I have been hearing… excuse me… a project I have been hearing about since I was a child. And this is just the beginning.

We’ve created a new agency, Build Canada Homes, to drive affordable homebuilding at a pace not seen in generations. Over $50 billion to our Build Communities Strong Fund for hospitals to hockey rinks, and a new defence industrial strategy that will catalyze half a trillion dollars in investment in Canada over the next decade.

Now, the third lesson that we must take from the current rupture is our sovereignty, our sustainability, our prosperity will depend on our ability to supply and control our energy. We have to unlock Canada’s full potential as an energy superpower. As the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, said just last week, Canada has, and I quote, a golden opportunity to build a more sustainable and reliable energy system. This will require bold investments, practical solutions focused on results, not rhetoric, and the full force of a united Canada working together. Working together to build a stronger, more resilient, more independent Canada that works for all. That’s our mission.

And, as the minister just said, central to that mission is more electricity. As our industries expand, our economy grows, AI accelerates, electricity demand in Canada is expected to double by 2050. So, we will double our grid. That’s the headline. Canada will double its electricity generation over the course of the next two decades because the path to affordability is electrification. The path to competitiveness is electrification. The path to net zero is electrification. Electrification underpins everything: our emissions, our environment, our economy.

And in a rapidly changing world, Canada is taking control of its future. Through our new National Electricity Strategy, we will build quickly and at scale to double our energy infrastructure and build a strong Canada that is powered by clean, affordable, and reliable energy.

Over the coming decades, Canadians will use more electricity because many of the things we use every day – the cars we drive, the heaters in our home, the machines in our factories –  are switching to electric power. Doubling our grid to meet that demand won’t be easy. The scale is huge, the timeline short, and the task of getting the right mix of power is complex. If we get it wrong, Canadians will pay higher utility bills. If we’re too timid, Canadians will end up short of power, losing good jobs, and growing reliant on foreign suppliers. We can’t pursue business as usual. We can’t simply rely on restrictions and prohibitions. We must do things differently. Now, with the right investments and electrification measures, 7 in 10 Canadian households will pay less for their total energy by 2050. That’s $15 billion back in the pockets of Canadians. And that’s because electric machines are two to four times more efficient than those they replace. So, as we electrify our transportation, our buildings, our industry, the electricity slice of the overall energy pie grows, but the size of the entire pie shrinks.

Now, Canada starts from a position of strength: we have amongst the lowest electricity costs in the world; our system is already 80% non-emitting. Doubling generation in the next few decades will require those massive investments. It will require the linking of provincial systems. It will require the spreading of costs over time, using our triple-A balance sheet so that ratepayers don’t pay all of the costs of investments today for benefits that Canadians, all Canadians, will benefit from and our planet will benefit from over decades. Getting this right requires permitting reform, new partnerships with Indigenous peoples, and a willingness to use a wide range of energy, including hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, some gas, carbon capture, geothermal, and beyond.

It is important to note that our electricity grid currently emits a little under 50 megatonnes, while emissions from industry, transportation, and buildings are well over 500 megatonnes. The biggest goal by far is reducing emissions affordably through electrification and not absolute purity in production, generation. An ambitious electrification policy could reduce emissions by up to five times – five times – current total electricity emissions.

To repeat, by far the biggest prize is reducing emissions affordably through electrification, not pursuing absolute purity in generation. Aggressive electrification can reduce total emissions by up to five times current total electricity emissions.

Our partnership with Alberta demonstrates the value of working together to solve multiple challenges. Building on our November MOU, Canada and Alberta have recently signed a cooperation agreement to get major infrastructure projects built faster, and Alberta has committed to reduce methane emissions by 75% over the next decade. We’ll announce tomorrow an implementation agreement, which includes strengthening industrial carbon pricing to send clear investment signals and to reward decarbonization. This is essential to our clean electricity agenda. To create the conditions to build the clean grid of the future, we need a carbon pricing market that actually works. We will also advance potential pipeline to transport at least 1 million barrels of low-emission Alberta oil a day to new markets. As a prerequisite to this project, we’re progressing Pathways, a project that would enable Alberta to export some of the lowest carbon intensity oil in the world while creating an entirely new industry of carbon capture. And we’re both committed to exploring new sources of energy, including nuclear, and a more efficient system that connects with neighbouring provinces.

We need to take the same pragmatic approach of partnership across the country to build new hydro, new nuclear, renewable power all at scale together. That’s hydro in Quebec, Newfoundland, Manitoba, B.C., and the North. Nuclear in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, renewables in the Maritimes and all across Canada. To those ends, Canada’s government is launching today consultations on our new electricity strategy. And over the next few months, we’ll work with provinces, territories, Indigenous peoples, utilities, unions to identify the actions needed to double our grid most effectively and affordably. The strategy rests on four pillars: build, connect, train, and make. And first, as you’ve heard us say before, it is time to build. We need to build more transmission lines, more transformers, more wires, more power.

We are already fast-tracking several clean energy projects that will allow us to add thousands of megawatts to our grid. The necessary pieces for electrification are already in place: refundable investment tax credits, the most favourable investment tax rate in the G7, loans from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and funding from the Canada Growth Fund.

We’re proposing to augment all of these, including by adding a new investment tax credit for interties between provinces and within provincial networks. Which brings me to the second pillar: to connect our power in Canada east-west-north. Today, Canada is powered by many separate electricity grids, most of which aren’t connected to each other. In many cases, it’s easier to trade electricity with the United States than across our own country, and that fragmentation costs us billions of dollars. It means more power outages, expensive duplicative infrastructure, and higher prices for Canadian families. It also means that many northern and remote communities aren’t connected to the broader Canadian grids at all, resulting in energy bills that are 6 to 10 times higher than the national average. Fragmentation means wasted power, about 10 terawatt hours every year. That’s enough to power one million Canadian homes for that year. Connecting grids in Europe is already saving nearly $80 billion a year, and the opportunity in Canada is just as significant. And that’s why, back in November, in Terrace, B.C., our government referred the Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor to the Major Projects Office. This is a project that will generate $10 billion in economic activity, that will connect northern communities, and build a new clean energy corridor for generations. It will link Yukon’s isolated grid to British Columbia’s and the broader North American grid through the Yukon‑B.C. Grid Connect, while creating that potential connection with Alberta.

Interprovincial integration is a complex undertaking. Every province and territory has its own market structure and planning mechanism. In some provinces, like Quebec, this structure is a source of great pride and a driver of economic prosperity. So, our consultations will explore the steps that we can take to build on this success in order to further connect our electricity infrastructure and accelerate the development of essential interties, while always, always respecting provincial and territorial jurisdictions.

The consultations will tackle common barriers to those interprovincial interties. They’ll explore an increased role for the Canadian Energy Regulator, develop standard cost allocation mechanisms to distribute fairly costs across those provinces and territories, will increase data sharing and regional modelling to speed up the intertie projects, and will refer the development of a new, comprehensive Transmission InterConnect Investment Strategy to the Major Projects Office.

The third element of the strategy is to train, attract, and retain new talent. It’s good to see you here, Sean. Sean Strickland here as well is central to it. The unions are central to this. Because doubling our electricity grid will create nearly 30,000 new, as Russ said, high-paying – not just jobs – high-paying careers for Canadians, by the end of 2028; 100,000 more by 2050. Right now, over 80% of employers in the sector are facing labour shortages. So, that’s one of the big reasons why, in last month’s Spring Economic Update, we launched Team Canada Strong, a $6-billion nationwide effort to recruit, train, and hire up to 100,000 new Red Seal trade workers over the next five years. And in the upcoming consultations for the electricity strategy, we’ll build on this momentum to ensure our workforce measures are effectively targeted to the need of the sector.

And the final pillar of our strategy is to make our future. Our new strategy will ensure that more of the technologies and components that are going to power that new grid – smart metres, transformers, wind towers, AI systems – that those are designed and made right here at home. Many of those components are already in short supply globally. And right now, our electricity sector is highly import dependent. So, our consultations will explore how to grow domestic manufacturing capacity, so those components are made in Canada wherever possible. That’s wind towers in Quebec, transformers and steel in Ontario, uranium in Saskatchewan: opportunities are literally pan-Canadian and virtually endless. We come back to affordability because, to be clear, there’s no credible path to net zero without a relentless focus on affordability. And that’s why we intend to adjust the clean electricity regulations, keeping energy reliable and affordable in the short term as we shift to cleaner energy at scale over time. That’s why we will expand support for energy-saving retrofits for up to one million Canadian households through financing, grants, and other complementary measures. And that includes making it easier for Canadians to transition from expensive propane, heating oil, and electric baseboard heating to more affordable electric heat pumps.

In a rapidly changing world, Canada must become the source of our own affordable, clean, reliable power. Because when we master energy, we master our destiny. This is no small feat, no small step for humankind. We can’t use yesterday’s tools or concepts. And that’s why today’s strategy marks an important shift from prohibitions to partnership, from bargaining to building. Yesterday, I had the honour of meeting the astronauts of Artemis II, including Canada’s own Colonel Jeremy Hansen. And their mission, their characters, remind us what we can achieve through teamwork, ingenuity, and boldness. And that’s the spirit that we’re all coming together to launch our mission, to build Canada strong, to power Canada strong for all, and for all generations. Thank you very much for your attention (inaudible). Thank you!