Merci Beaucoup monsieur le president.

Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding Canada's abundance of energy resources, we have a keen interest in energy security in the OSCE area for three main reasons -

* Price volatility in energy is not conducive to sound economic growth;
* We need to protect our energy assets from terrorist attack; and ,
* We have an interest in assisting our friends and traditional allies as they understandably seek to diversify and stabilize their energy sources.

In fact, our southern neighbours in the United States look to Canada's oil, gas and hydroelectric assets as a potential solution to their diversification strategy. Canada's oil reserves, for example, are roughly equivalent to those in Saudi Arabia when one includes our oil sands.

Oil priced at U.S. $50- U.S. $60 per barrel allows for the economic development of both conventional reserves in Canada, and the supplies of bitumen in the oil sands in Western Canada. These oil price levels appear to be here to stay.

Energy security, in today's context, must also be viewed within the context of global climate change. It is no secret that fossil fuels extraction, production and use are the primary source of greenhouse gases causing changes in our climate, and an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters.

The proposed quadrupling of oil sands petroleum production in Canada to satisfy US market demand will result in a corresponding increase in CO2 emissions -at a time when Canada is trying very hard to reduce our GHG emissions. At these rates of growth, CO2 from the oil sands could comprise 20%-30% of Canada's total GHG emissions by 2015!

The extraction and upgrading of bitumen from Canada's oil sands poses other significant environmental and social problems -namely the use of significant volumes of water and natural gas which is used in the production process, and challenges to our aboriginal people and our wildlife. Pressures on local infrastructure and project costs are also negatively impacting the feasibility of further oil sands development.

Given the imperatives of energy security, and the need to protect our environment, a careful balance must be achieved. Energy security and responsible management of our environment must be pursued in a parallel way.

We should start by enhancing global energy conservation and energy efficiency. There are huge gains to be made here. We must also quickly develop renewable and cleaner fuels, together with the needed infrastructure, market signals and policies to encourage their use.
Canada, like other countries, is aggressively adopting ethanol-based bio fuels which are both cleaner and less carbon intensive.

In addition, Mr. Chairman, the development and deployment of technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, and clean coal technologies, need to be accelerated.

While nuclear energy presents unique environmental challenges, production of GHG's is not one of them; therefore, the nuclear energy option should be kept in the mix.

In short, Mr. Chairman, energy diversification will enhance energy security in Europe and North America and Parliamentarians have an important role to play in achieving that objective.

Thank you/Merci.