Episode 133: The State of the Canadian Electricity Industry 2026 with the Electricity Canada Executive Team

[MUSIC] And this idea that we can build big things in Canada that are success stories that are first of their kind stories. And so we use this image that you actually took Francis to also highlight this idea of ambition in Canada. [MUSIC] Francis here from electricity Canada. Welcome to another episode of The Flux Capacitor, a podcast about the future of electricity. This is number 133 episode 133 of The Flux Capacitor. I've been chatting with the industry's business leaders, thought leaders, new market players, and stakeholders. I've built this as an opportunity for you, the listener, to get a sense of the conversations that are taking place in the sector in hallways over coffee, outside of parliamentary committees, in airport lounges and at industry events. My guests plural on the podcast today are Julia Mugridge. >> Chana Puerra, Mike Powell. >> The members of my executive leadership team, all three vice presidents here at electricity Canada, joined me for a conversation about the 2026 state of the Canadian Electricity Industry Report on the eve of its release. We discuss the context of the report, the principle themes, including the challenges of getting projects built to people, supply chains, financing the integrated grid, resilience and security. And recommendations to address these challenges. We close the conversation with three book recommendations. Here is my conversation with Julia, Chana, and Michael recorded on Zoom in late January 2026. [MUSIC] Julia, Chana, Michael, welcome to the podcast. We're here to talk about our 2026 state of the Canadian Electricity Industry. And I want to have a conversation about what is in the report itself, essentially describes. Where we see the industry at this particular point in time, and what some of our prescriptions are in recommendations for the future prosperity of it. But I thought we'd start off with maybe let's chat a little bit about where we are at this particular point in time. How much things have changed really? Because this is an annual report, you three are the principal authors this year of the report. But when you were putting together the material for the report this year, did you reflect on how much the world has changed broadly and how much our businesses changed since this time last year. Maybe Michael, why don't we kind of kick off with that from a political standpoint, right? We're in a very different place today than we were 12 months ago in Canada and North America. Yeah, so I think if we were to have this conversation this time last year and project what the world might look like in 2026, I think that you would have a very different outcome. This time last year, we had no Prime Minister or Prime Minister on the way out. We had a President that was two days in to, you know, we weren't sure what that would look like. And we are here today with, well, the same President, a different Prime Minister than perhaps would have thought of. And very different assumptions about how the world works than would have been the case last year. The Prime Minister was at Davos at the World Economic Forum last week and had a speech which was unique in a lot of ways and maybe the most unique was that the rest of the world actually paid attention to it. Because it said that the world that we lived in is over and that middle powers like Canada have to work and band together. But it's funny, we talked about how the world has changed and some of the assumptions that we think about are different. But the prescription for our sector and when we look back to when we first put a state of the industry together in my tenure here at the electricity can in 2019, we were talking about the urgency to get building and make it more straightforward to add energy and capacity to the electricity system. We have to struggle with affordability and to balancing the needs of growing the system with making it affordable. And you look two, three years later, we talked about the need to build it and on a moment where it seems like we're at a global inflection point, we are here and saying this is the moment and we don't have any time to lose. We didn't have time to lose before but the urgency of movement is even more that if we have a desire to be an energy superpower, if we're going to make sure we can compete in a world where the Prime Minister said if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. Then the solution to that is to make sure we have the energy, we need to make sure that we can power and grow our economy. And if we're going to meet the needs of electricity growth and we're going to do it affordable and reliably, we have to get building, we have to make sure that permitting is a process that's predictable and quick, we need to make sure that we have the financing tools that can make sure our members can get the approvals that need and then move stuff for. We need to make sure we have the people and the things to build it and then we need to keep it secure, whether it's physical or environmental or cyber threats, all those are things we have to do and we can't look forward seven years from now when some version of us are writing the same report and say, well, man, this time is the year because we don't have the world has changed around us and so we have to change to meet the need. I think that's what we're saying today. Yeah, so we're going to unpack a lot of the things that you said and talk a little bit about some of the recommendations that we've had in this space, but we've seen a lot of change in the past year, but some of the fundamentals haven't changed to tall, right? I mean, for example, and maybe Julia, you can comment a little bit about on this, the customer expectation hasn't changed the customer is still critically important. Is increasing we're still looking at a future where the demand for electricity really hasn't shifted that much in fact, it might be even more so from our vantage point today than it was a year ago. Yeah, it's it's more of the same with different leadership in Canada in terms of customer satisfaction. We're actually doing really, really well. Post COVID our customer satisfaction scores have gone up and this is really good for our sector because when customers like their utility, it means that we have social permission to build. So we have customer satisfaction is actually increasing, which is great. Otherwise, it's it is a lot of the same with a new government that is more ambitious than the last in terms of building. And one of the other things that hasn't changed and that I know you've been talking about for quite some time it's been a significant issue is with respect to regulatory particularly rate regulatory Michael talked about permitting and we're going to jump into permitting, but just again, I've kind of level setting at the very beginning one thing that hasn't changed and probably hasn't changed since what early 1960s is how rate regulation works. We've been talking about this for a long time, but that's still a significant outstanding issue right. Absolutely. Francis red regulation continues to be a difficult issue to deal with. Principles of regulation that hasn't changed like we said from the 1960s and but many of those principles can now be used in a way to advance innovation and the kinds of investment that we can we need to undertake. The regulators are still concerned about the rate impact the impact on the consumer. I think what we need to be thinking about is ensuring that customer for the ability is at the center of policymaking right it shouldn't be an afterthought part of the challenge we have is we look at we wait for the customers to push back and say we want change we cannot afford. We want to have more investment and having to pay more for the basic energy needs. So I think the most central thing we need to understand the never ratemaking processes. Understand the customer rate implications and ensuring that the policy that design in a way to mitigate the impact on the on the rate pay. Okay. And the last thing from a level setting standpoint would be it's still with us as a significant issue and probably more acute we're recording this on a day when we're all receiving notifications about extreme weather and extreme weather event that's going to be blowing into the middle and the eastern part of the North America really this weekend. So weather continues to be a significant challenge and and a top of mind issue for everybody. Well, I thought maybe you know next let's talk a little bit about sort of the thematic approach to this and Michael you mentioned you know some of the some of the things that we were focused on previously but like Julia when you were looking at what the theme should be this year. thought it was interesting, you know, we've gone through a bit of an right? We went from Bill did in 2023 to getting to yes in 2024 to electricity is essential in 2025. So what's 2026? Yeah, and maybe I'll quickly talk about electricity is essential, which was last year's report. Yeah. And the purpose of that report during such a tumultuous period in Canadian politics was just to remind the federal government that they can't forget about us. And so that report had a very different tone than this year's report. So it was it was gentle. It was educational and it was just a reminder that electricity needs to be reliable and affordable for Canadian customers. This report and the tone is a lot more ambitious and we use the word ambitious in the introduction to describe and try to connect the dots between our sector and the federal government. And there's something we heard a good panel all of us collectively at our powering partnerships event. And David Lebiter actually said what happened to ambition like this is the time that we really have to build. And always with the frame or under the context of affordability. So we wanted to highlight in this year's theme that you have to balance ambition with affordability. And we also used a trip that all of us also went on with our board of directors to the Robert Brasadam. And there was a moment back in June where we were looking at this dam. And I think all of us were just blown away by the size and scale and magnitude of this dam. And this idea that we can build big things in Canada that are success stories that are first of their kind stories. The title forging Canada's electricity system just gets down to that pretty need to build now. Almost like Lord of the Rings type like that was the imagery that we used throughout this report. It's beat on the ground and we talk we'll talk a little bit more about supply chain truly, but it's it's labor. It's having the materials and putting all of that together to help deliver on this ambition. So I think that set the tone for like a much more ambitious state of the industry than last year when we were just whispering electricity is important. And we don't forget and this year we're like, Hey, you didn't forget here we are and here are some very strong recommendations to set your government up for success. Okay, well, let's let's jump into some of those recommendations. Maybe you know the first area of focus. And it kind of reflects back on some of the previous themes, build it for example in 2023. And the last theme in that year, the report talks about the complexity of actually getting projects built. I know there's a there's a case study in there with respect to you call an energy, but maybe Michael can you drill down a little bit for the for the listener about really how complex is it to get projects built. And then we have a lot of recommendations that we have in this area. I mean, it's very complex. And I think that that's part of the challenge. And some of this is is logical, right? Like if you are building a hydro facility that is going to jam a river, then obviously there's a lot of work and engineering and planning that goes into it. And the most clear plan is is literally a nuclear plan that's one of the most complicated machines that people have ever invented the challenge we get into is when we start thinking about the processes that they federal government to provincial governments have to work through to approve these things. And so we have a lot of different levels of government that are duplicative sometimes between different levels of government. They sometimes have unclear routes and processes. It's not always clear that the outcomes of effort are aligned with the risk for need. And then we have a lot of different ways of making a reputation for Canada where it's very difficult to build big projects and that we add is risk and complexity to already complicated projects. So that you don't have to worry just about the technical risk of building something that's first in kind or, you know, whether there will be some other thing outside of your control that may impact the success or timely some project. And then we have a lot of different things that are firmly in government's hands that can take an unpredictable amount of time, which has a cascading impact on on how you move projects forward. And that is for projects that will that you know I have time and delays cost when you think about acquiring more materials. And in some cases it means maybe you will just invest somewhere else where it's a little clearer. And pushing for a long time to have one project when approval and firm timelines. I'm very happy. I think that this government has committed to a two year timeline for for all projects starting with projects to the projects of national interest. The ponies that the ponies that is that is that what we're calling them project of national interests. Well, everyone that the city for everyone wants a pony, but not everyone can have one right. And so what we are seeing here with the major projects office, which was just launched with actually one of our former board members as a chair is that there are a handful of projects that are moving forward. And that's all well and good. But how do we extend that same effort to other pieces. And I think the challenge for government as we look forward is how do we make sure that the regular things not just the ponies that all of us are looking for that aspire to have are able to advance. But because if you look at it, just it's not just big projects that have an impact on risk and challenge. But if you have 100 small projects to take a little longer or a little more expensive because of extra effort from a duplicated replicate regulation. It all ends up on the same bill and has the same piece. And so what we're pushing for is get firm on that two-year timeline by finding ways of reducing red tape and dancing some of the stuff the government's already doing. Aligning better with provincial governments for some of their processes and really taking a look at long standing practice, long standing irritants that we've identified. So things like changing the fisheries act so that it looks more at populations and not just individual fish so that we can operate the hydro facilities we have. Making sure that we have clear rules for engaging with communities as we build things. And then just really setting a shot clock to make sure that government is holding itself accountable for advancing projects through. And it should be on government to make sure that our members are the ones that are moving as fast as we can and not just moving at the speed of government should be a thing which is not like a criticism of being slow but of being just as fast as campaigns. The case study you mentioned is actually a really important one because it's not just about building new things but how we can maintain and operate the assets that we already have. Right so we look at the situation in you can where you know there are it's you can is actually a wonderful case study for a lot of the challenges of Canada's broader grid. It's a territory it's a relatively small system it's on its own but it's seeing extreme growth and load it is has challenges with not having enough power it operates hydro facilities they actually were we're tied on power over the Christmas break because of. You know high demand and well temperatures and so they're seeing it all and in this particular case for our case study is you know three dams per 90% of the renewable energy that the territory uses and they've had to re license and these are dams that have existed for decades. We have a very good sense of where the impacts are in terms of fish population in terms of water management and the process of getting them re licensed for a facility that has existed for decades was onerous and challenging required extra work and labor from staff and all of that for something that has existed before and will exist again in the future and so. Why are we spending staff time and effort to focus on keeping these sorts of things which won't change the outcome for the environment at all but does take away from our ability to focus on other things to build the system and move forward and I think that if that's true in a territory of. 40,000 people 50,000 people that's through across the country as well and I think that that's where we have to remember on these things. So I think that's a lot of the way we want to try and. Yeah as you look at major projects and those big investments I think one of the most important things we should be thinking about is indigenous by indigenous engagement. Companies spend lots of money in terms of engineering studies financial plans and so forth but we tend to spend just a fraction of that in terms of indigenous engagement and building relationship we need to ensure that as we move forward if we want to build these projects within a very short timeline of say one to two years. We need to ensure that we get indigenous by and we engage those communities early on and without that engagement it'll be very difficult to meet one to two year timeline to get these projects off the ground and getting approved. I mean you work directly with one of our committees in this space you've seen I'm sure over the last decade a pretty significant change in terms of how the sectors approaching us right now nowadays I don't know of any project that isn't moving forward without some kind of a partnership approach right. I mean, we have come a long way over the last 10 years for sure in terms of indigenous partnerships, one of the main things that member companies are looking at is equity partnerships. And a lot of the communities are interested in that. There are other forms of revenue sharing that companies can look at and we, member companies have been doing that. But I just want to reiterate the importance of continuing to do that and engaging those communities in conversations about what is of value to them. How they can be partnered with us and looking at long-term sustainability. And we need to make sure that once the project is complete, there is a stream of revenue for those communities so that they can continue to prosper over years to come. Okay, so when we talk about the projects that are going to be required to be able to meet, the energy demands, the electricity demands in the future, we're going to require, we're going to have to build a system capacity. In the report, we talk about both materials and we talk about people. Wow, Channa, while you've got the, while you've got the conscious right now, talk a little bit about people. What are the people challenged that we're facing and how are we going to address that? When it comes to people, we have a significant challenge. We are not the only country in the world looking at investing in the energy transition or clean energy or addressing climate change. All of the major economies are looking at the same issue and we are fighting for the same people, the same skill set and the same material. So we have a lot of work to do. And for example, electricity human resources Canada did a recent study which said we need to hire 28,000 new workers to replace and to meet expansion needs by 2028. That's just two years away. And that is one fourth of our current workforce. So that is a lot of people. But then if you look at some of the other plans in play with companies like HydroCouback, major investment plan over the next five years and they will require around 32,000 construction workers. So it is not just the 28 but the 30,000 right there in the province of Quebec. And so one of the things that we need to do is to ensure that there is alignment in terms of workforce strategy and industrial policy. There cannot be on different traps. We need alignment on that and ensure that we continue to invest in workforce training awareness about careers in the energy sector. We need to be providing more co-op, internship, opportunity for young people and also labor mobility. We need to make sure that that it's a potential recognition across the country. And I noticed one of the things in the report was the recommendation that we establish a federal industry workforce advisory council. Right. That is important in terms of bringing all of the key players together. Right now, the collaboration is not at the level that we need in terms of labor market needs, identification, data, ensuring that our curriculum is up to date, that we have partnerships between industry and academia so that what students learn in universities and colleges is consistent with what in the industry need. So there's a lot of work to be done and can be done if we if we are intentional on the environment. Some of those are some issues. Right. And it's not just people. It's also supply chains. Right. Michael, I know you and members of your team have been talking about supply. We but it feels like we've been talking about supply chains since the beginning of COVID. But what's the sort of the state of play and what's our future going to look like with respect to trying to sort of supply chain challenges? I think there's there's challenging opportunity here to, right. I think one of the as the world looks to add more electricity capacity, the stuff to make electricity is an higher demand and it's a lagging indicator for producing some of these things. So yeah, you know, one of the things we've talked about on an ongoing basis was the timeline it takes you to get a large transformer, which could be four years. It can be up to seven years for a gas turbine and it moves on and on. So and that's over and above challenges that you may see for access for even more routine things. So electrical steel, transmission towers, etc. And so how do we make sure that we are building out the the network of materials so that we can have them when we need to get building. So for as a solution, you know, some of the stuff we can do is what I talked about earlier. How can we, you can plan around longer timelines if you can have a pretty good idea when your approvals are going to come. So as you firm up the approval process federally, you can start working backwards and then making putting your orders in earlier. But the world is changing as well. So data center demand and other low growth pieces like that are are gobbling up all of the transformers and turbines, etc. But what is the opportunity for Canada? So we're spending hundreds of, we'll be spending $2 trillion potentially over the next 25 years to replace and expand the electricity system. And that's a real opportunity to think about how we can grow a manufacturing system in Canada so that we can make our so we can supply ourselves and have some of that energy security, but also see the expert opportunity from there as well. So just as the government of Canada is thinking about leveraging defense spending to grow that part of the economy, I think there's a real opportunity to build on the electricity industrial base that we already have. And can we talk about, you know, case study with Northern Transformer and one of our members, Pedro one that we've seen others of our corporate partners look to expand in the past few years where they identify opportunities where there's a need in Canada and the ability to build forward. And our members that have medium term plans like Hydra Quebec with our action plan 2035 supply chain and as Channis said, people are some of the limiting factors for them moving forward. So what's the solution in the near term, you know, more predictable timelines will help us plan around it. But I think there's a real opportunity for there to be, we've suggested a Canadian electricity supply chain roadmap. So our members who are in who can help identify projected demand industry on the manufacturer side who can help and then a variety of government programs. So ITCs, GrowthFinds, the BDC and BDC to work together to figure out how we can build the business case and the investing case to start meeting our own internal needs in Canada, creating new jobs and then, you know, maybe finding export opportunities in the future as well. Let's let's follow up on that. You mentioned, you know, to need to invest overall investment in the system, investment tax credits, we finally seen some movement in this space, something that we've been looking for for a couple of years. Where are we now with investment tax credits? And like, well, are we done? Can we say great? We've got clean electricity, ITC, and we can step back and say we've got everything we need and now we're just going to wow forward. It's been introduced. I think that that's a welcome change. It's funny, Frances, you and I had a you know, a conversation with then Minister Gibo in what 2023, when these things were first announced and there was an urgency to respond to the Biden-era inflation reduction act, which had introduced some of these pieces. And we are three years later and the clean electricity ITC, which is the investment tax credit that will apply to the largest electricity operator in seven of 10 Canadian provinces, it's not eight of 10. And the only one that can do anything with regards to wires for inter-national inter-provincial transmission, the only one that does upgrades, the only one that provides corporations hasn't been passed into law yet. And so it's been introduced. I think it'll be good to see when that's coming through, but we got to keep moving. And I think there's looking at it, we can see how we can make those easier to use by simplifying them, removing some of the complications that have been added on things like labor requirements and prevailing wages, which add a complexity and a compliance burden, which don't necessarily create more jobs. And then looking to make sure that they work in the long term, so extending them past 2035, the build out that we are going to have, it's a project that's starting today, like the new nuclear project, large nuclear, the Ontario's envisioning, probably won't get started working until after the ITC is faced out. So let's extend them so that we can do it. And then we have to look at the other financing parts too, so making sure there's low-cost loans, changing the tax rules, like the interest deductibility limit changes, that the IFAW provisions, which make it harder for our members to invest in, they'll have to pass on the tax debt to our tax costs to customers, and really focusing on an investment climate that has the financial tools that are there to help support the build out, so it's not just on the right pair, and also creates the investment climate that encourages companies to put dollars in Canada. China? Yeah, just to build on what Michael said, Francis, we know that capital goes where it is well. for far too long, I think, in Canada. That didn't happen. We had climate policy that I think went too far and too far. And beyond what technology could have delivered. And so, government over the last many years had quite a few punitive type measures. And so, the government did a lot of positive. And the government did introduce budget a couple of months ago in terms of unlocking nearly 500 billion in new private investment. So, I think what has happened is that with the re-collaboration of climate policy, we are in a position today to attract more private capital to invest in infrastructure. And that's something that we can be happy about in terms of where things are going. But a lot of it still needs to be done in terms of ensuring that the regulatory requirements are unclear. So, we need to make sure that the rules are clear, unambiguous, so the private investors can invest in the projects that we want to move ahead. And then, among the investments that we're going to be expecting in the future are, and then we kind of move into this in the report. When we talk about grid and grid investments and the integrated Canadian electricity grid, there's been a lot of talk about East West grid and increasing our interconnections between provinces, as opposed to what essentially has been, you know, principally north-south up until now. Julia, you've been working with one of our board committees and working with external consultants to take a look at interties and what potential opportunities there are in this space. What are the kinds of things that you've been finding when looking at this? And then maybe we can chat a little bit about, you know, what can we do to spur if we want to spur more in this space? Yeah, thanks, Francis. The East West electricity system, we decided it should be a focal point within the shares state of the industry. Back in April, when Mark Carney included it as one of his platform promises, it wasn't new to us, like meetings that we've been in over the last number of years. It's often a question that politicians may ask, like, what about more East West connections or an East West corridor? But this was the first time that it got like national visibility in a political platform. And since then, I know that Michael's team has heard from NRKAN looking for advice on how to move forward. And so we decided to use this state of the industry to our advantage to help redefine an East West electricity system. I guess firstly, just focusing on electricity system rather than electricity grid, because we wanted to make sure that when the government's thinking about the system, they're thinking about the demand side that they're thinking about generation. Yeah. Like, is there energy to flow between provinces at all? So we wanted to first of all, like, really set the stage with a system as opposed to the grid. The other thing we wanted to do was rethink the map. Like, basically, an electron can move across Canada from East to West. There are connection points between all of our provinces. But we wanted to emphasize that a lot of those connection points need to be enhanced. So we engage with the Lloyd over the last couple of months, and we've highlighted some of their findings in our report. And we've looked at current utilization rates of some of the existing intertizing Canada. And we've found that if the government wants some quick wins now, there are opportunities for them to look at some of those existing East West connection points. We highlight those opportunities in the report. And then we also look at some of the future scenarios. So we look at some of the demand predictions that have been presented both by the Canada energy regulator, as well as different provincial predictions. And we've noted that already out to 2040, a lot of our provinces are going to be strained. The demand for electricity is increasing. Without stressing the system at all, I think there are only two or three provinces that are actually going to be fine. But if we add any sort of stress on our system, either through extreme weather events, whether our intermittent resources are up and running, then next thing, you know, every single province in Canada is going to be stressed. So what we've offered in this analysis is that in 2040, if we're not looking at intertized as an opportunity to add reliability for provinces, all of our provinces are going to be stressed. So the report is the Deloitte report that I'm speaking about is now available on our website for review and detail. But we've highlighted a lot of these opportunities and some of these stressors within the state of the industry, as well as some recommendations for things that the federal government can be thinking about when they think about their east west electricity system and that campaign promise from back in April. So this is kind of relates as well to podcast 131 to podcasts ago when Jim Rob from NERC joined me and we discussed the impending release of the long term reliability assessment. So I'm supporting this before the release, the release is going to be in a couple of days, but the heads up that we got from Jim was precisely what you indicated that particularly in events of of extreme weather. There are, he was talking about it from the North American context, multiple jurisdictions all around North America that will be facing significant stress to be able to meet demand in the in the not too distant future. It sounds as though this is entirely consistent with the work that NERC has done as well. Yeah, and I know you also just had Alan Dan Roth from Manitoba Hydro on the podcast. And Manitoba is actually a really good example of a province that has really looked to ensure they have a reliable system through current connections. Most of their current connections are north south. They're part of my so which means that they're already heavily integrated with United States. So Manitoba was one of our featured provinces for like a real opportunity for a connection point with Saskatchewan. So Saskatchewan is exploring all sorts of new generation opportunities. And if Manitoba can take advantage of some of those, I think that both provinces will be better off. It's interesting, you know, the listener can go and take a look in the report on the map. You mentioned Manitoba in particular where the interconnections with neighboring provinces are measured in the hundreds of megawatts and the low hundreds of megawatts, whereas the interconnection to the United States is in the thousands. Yeah, and that's a relationship that obviously continues to be really important with Manitoba. While we look at some of these opportunities for enhanced reliability from an East West perspective, we also know that these neighboring relationships are really important to our members. We're seeing a lot of electricity being traded to the south. We talk a little bit about how this kind of came to be in the last 100 years in the report because we thought it was important to look back like why are we doing so much electricity trade with the south as opposed to East West. We talk a little bit about that, but I think we want to honor those relationships and recognize that like these are long term contracts that our members are in, but then also look to some of those enhanced opportunities for those East West connections. Now, at the top of our conversation, one of the things that I mentioned that had not changed, given that all of the other things that you changed in the past year, was a concern about and focus on climate, the changing climate. And we have a specific section in the report that's talking about wildfires and system protection. So what is, and I know there's a case study there with specifically with respect to Alberta, but China, can you talk a little bit about these challenges and the wildfire space and what it is that we need to be doing to address it in the future. For sure, now exposure to wildfire or if you take extreme weather in general, I think has become a really significant issue for the electricity sector. And friends, it's one of the things is it is no longer sporadic right wildfire is now all at the other types of extreme weather is more systemic. And that that's really important. We see more frequent more intense events are taking place whether it's the heat wave. I try to drive wildfires, Ithtones, windstones, tornadoes, you name it right and or in the case of where our office is located in Ottawa, we had two 100 year floods three years apart exactly. So just to provide some context if you look at the last three years, almost every province and territory has been affected because of wildfire and especially BC Alberta. You see Alberta. the sketch one, Quebec and North West territories. And then in 2020, it's really alone. We saw over 5,000 qualifiers that impacted over 17 million hectares of forest cover, right, to put it in contact, that it bigger than Greece, right? That kind of land being impacted by forest fires and again in 2025, we had a similar situation where over 3,500 qualifiers alone in Canada and to put it in contact. In 2025, the land impacted was around 6.26 million, four times the 10,000,000 hectares of 1.38 million hectares. But right, so again, it is really significant issue. And if you were to look at electricity specifically and look at, you know, power poles, if you were to replace just one pole, it's going to cost three to $6,000, Canadian, depending again on the height of the pole, the equipment on the pole, and so forth. So that is a substantial amount that the utilities will have to invest in when these things happen. That the customer will cost the customer will ultimately pay for you. Absolutely. And and also there are the fact it's two. I mean, forest fires can jeopardize public safety communities and other equipment as well. So again, this is an issue where the regulators will have to look at and the government is well in terms of providing financial support or some kind of tax credit to ensure that we can invest in the infrastructure and whether harden the infrastructure we have at the moment. Now, the last topic that I wanted to touch on and there is a brief chapter on this on the report, Michael, I spent 20 years doing our security work working with our security and infrastructure protection committee. It also became an academic pursuit of mine as well, partway through that. But you've been responsible at the executive level now for our security activities for the last several years. The world is changing. It continues to change. It continues to evolve. What's the state of play right now with respect to kind of protecting our electricity infrastructure in an ever more challenging digital age? Well, the, you know, I think we're in ever more dangerous times. And our members have been shields up now for four or five years. And it looks like the world ahead of us is going to be even more uncertain. The government of Canada has identified threats to critical infrastructure, but specifically the electricity sector as being a major cyber risk for half-dose years now. And we knew about it before then. And this is specific and actionable. And it's from criminal groups that might be trying to steal money or information and sell it. And it's also from nation states. It's our, our enemies are thinking about how they can disrupt the power system. And there are, are real concerns around what that might mean in the event of a future conflict. I was actually down in Washington this past week, looking, working with our colleagues, both in the United States and in Canada and with industry thinking about how we can better harden the grid with, uh, evaporating technologies. And so this isn't theoretical. I remember as I've experienced disruptions in the past year on the, uh, information technology side, but there was a risk, of course, for how we keep the system safe. So what are we doing? Um, part of it is constant vigilance and always looking to share information and work as closely as we can with the government of Canada and our partners, uh, on other side, on the other side of the border and in other industries to make sure that we are as prepared as possible. Yeah, but also thinking about what resilience looks like. It is when an event happens, but something will happen at some point. How do we make sure that we are able to respond and keep the system operating or get the system back operating and keep people safe and secure? Uh, because, uh, the reason that electricity is essential, I mean, it's the most important critical infrastructure at power, so light to make sure that we have water, it keeps us safe and move and warm and, uh, we have to make sure that we're ready to restore it whenever we can. Right. Okay. Well, listen, um, I think that that kind of gives the listener a pretty good overview of the report, broadly. Um, now what, Julia, you know, you've been central to these reports over over the years. Um, again, for the listener, like, what do you do with this report? So we, we've got a report. It's, uh, it's on our website. Uh, we, we handed out at meetings. Um, but, you know, what, what is this as a, as a, as a tool? Or the association in for the sector? Yeah. So it will formally be released, um, on Tuesday, January 27th, and we're going to release it to a government audience. I think the focus of the report has always been government. Policy, uh, uh, uh, real policy focus, yeah. There's a real policy, uh, and again, we've tried to change the tone over years, just to reflect, like, even where we launch it, we've launched that glow, we've launched it to, uh, deputy ministers. Um, this one is, is really weedy. Um, it draws on real data that we've worked hard over the last couple of months to collect. And it offers real recommendations. So we're making sure that this is getting launched to the right audience, which is a number of deputy ministers. Um, we're going to go to the parliamentary press calorie and, and you're going to make a speech about it. And we're going to do a bunch of ads as well. And then we'll use it over the next couple of months to, uh, inform our different meetings, um, to keep, uh, the pedal to the metal on a lot of these, um, recommendations. And I think an important thing to add is that this, this data, the industry, I would say, is pretty fluid for about six months, because we may hear things in these meetings that, that, you know, allow us to maybe add, uh, more content to a recommendation. So we do small print runs because we always anticipate that there may be, um, throughout the year, an opportunity to enhance this. We know that there may be a spring economic statement. Um, is there a way to enhance our report in advance of that? Is there a way to use this report to bolster our pre budget submission? So it's really a year long report that we stopped talking about probably around October. But until then, we're like, hey, did you grab a copy of the state of the industry as you're leaving our event as you're going into a meeting. Right. And frankly, it's extra timely because the government of Canada is working on an updated electricity strategy that, uh, and natural resources Canada, the Prime Minister's Office, environment Canada, we've been engaging with. And we know that's in the works. We're not sure what's in it. But the, the point of these sorts of conversations is, how can this is what we think a successful electricity strategy would look like that? It has these sorts of parts that help us and our members move forward with, with building more electricity, adding capacity, making sure that it doesn't, you know, break people's bills and that we keep it safe and secure. And so as we look to whatever comes from that, we'll look to on the advocacy side working with our members, make sure that whatever the government puts out integrates these sorts of pieces so that we can work together to build the electricity system that Canada needs. Okay. All right. With that, we'll get to my, my customary wrap up of the podcast. And that's for a book recommendation. And so we'll go around the around the, uh, around the, the, the call and get a book recommendation from each and every one of you. And we will go. Reverse, uh, alphabetical order and start with you, uh, Michael. What would be your book recommendation for the listener? What are we going to add to the? I, I just finished a book called Everything is tuberculosis by a guy named John Green. You probably know him as a children's author, uh, but he actually hosted maybe my favorite podcast ever, which is called the Anthropocene Review. And he's a, a YouTuber that gets into like knowing things. But the book looks at the, the history of tuberculosis, but over time and how it impacted culture. And it looks at it to the frame of a relationship he built with tuberculosis hospital and a young band that, uh, lived there and serially own. Uh, and the, the key thing for probably forget about this in the global north. We don't think a lot about tuberculosis, but it kills more than a million people a year. And it's preventable. It's treatable. There's a vaccine and it ends with the thesis that, you know, it's people don't get tuberculosis. People don't die of tuberculosis. They die of a bad social policy. And so it's, uh, it's a quick read, uh, but, uh, talks a lot about things we know when maybe things we can keep fixing. All right. Okay. How about you, Channa? Yeah. So we talked about major projects and indigenous engagement. So I decided that perhaps my book recommendation is going to be related to indigenous engagement. The book is called indigenous relations inside tips and suggestions to make reconciliation and reality. The book was written by Bob Joseph, uh, with Cynthia Joseph. Um, this is the book. And, uh, highly recommended it provides some practical tips in terms of engaging in indigenous communities and, uh, and getting there by. All right. And Julia. Yeah, I was. I was hoping that they wouldn't give any fiction books so that I could be like the fiction book recommendation. I'm currently reading a book called Intermezzo. It's by Sally Rooney. She also wrote Normal People, which was turned into my favorite TV show ever. And the book is about a chess master. It's very interesting. She writes in a very disjointed way, so takes a while to get used to her style, but she's a great author and a great storyteller. So what's the book? It's called Intermezzo. Intermezzo and the author is Sally Rooney. Sally Rooney. Okay. So we've got Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. We've got Indigenous Relations by Bob Joseph and we've got everything is tuberculosis by John Green, what an interesting collection of books. Julia, Channa, Michael, I want to thank you for taking the time to jump on a podcast on a Friday afternoon to chat about our state of the electricity industry in Canada. Thank you for having us. Thank you. For those that have been with the podcast since the beginning and those that have joined along the way, thanks for listening. Please take the time to rate the podcast on whatever platform you use to listen. And let me know what you think of the flux capacitor. You can find me on Instagram as the Brad Bradley on LinkedIn and through our website at electricity dot CA. The website for this pod is the flux capacitor dot CA and it includes links for this episode on the show page. This being episode 133 and while you're there, check out the book club page which provides info on and links to the books which have been recommended by guests on the flux capacitor, including today's three recommendations. John Green's everything is tuberculosis. Bob and Cynthia Joseph's Indigenous Relations and Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. And let's continue the electricity conversation on our Facebook page on Instagram and at electricity dot CA. (bell dinging)