I just note that we are spending $4 million to $5 million here — possibly more — on establishing and maintaining and replacing tank farms.
This is a very costly procedure; the
petroleum stored there is toxic and so on, so there are stringent regulations for how we store fuel. It’s a very costly process. I believe this is handled by the petroleum products division of Public Works. I think there’s a real opportunity here for savings if we can switch to non-toxic forms of fuel, which also have other benefits. I think in particular it’s been demonstrated in the North.
We heard discussion from the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs the other day that we can
do things quite a bit differently in ways that save both on our capital costs and with environmental and socio-economic benefits, local economic benefits. So I’m wondering whether there has been serious consideration, rather than pouring all this money, tens of millions of dollars annually, into these assets to store possible fuel and so on, if in fact we’ve been looking at other ways of doing it — particularly, perhaps, changing the petroleum products division to the pellets products division, or something like that, and really getting at these savings that are waiting there for us. I recognize that we are taking advantage of those in a number of cases, but here’s another opportunity.