Canada plays a unique role in the global energy system. What are the unique qualities that Canada possesses that, taken together, would contribute to ensuring that Canada becomes and remains a Clean Energy Superpower?

Program

• Official start and welcome by Toby Heaps, Editor-in-Chief, Corporate Knights
• Opening remarks from moderator Evan Solomon
• Panelist presentations
• Moderated discussion on panelists’ ideas with audience participation
• Wrap up with Evan Solomon
• Official close and thanks by Janet Holder, President, Enbridge Gas Distribution

Ralph Torrie
Ralph Torrie is a Managing Director of Navigant Consulting Inc., and leads the firm’s carbon markets and climate change response business activities. He has 35 years experience in research and business initiatives related to energy and environmental issues and has particular expertise on energy demand patterns and related greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions.

Velma McColl
Velma McColl joined Earnscliffe in February 2004. Ms McColl served as both senior policy and communications advisors to federal Cabinet Ministers across four portfolios – Environment, Industry, Health and Fisheries & Oceans. In these capacities, she played a leading role in issues such as climate change, energy, regional economic development, Canada’s competitiveness and innovation challenges, and sustainable development. She has an interest in alternate dispute resolution and has worked to find creative solutions across federal/provincial/territorial and international boundaries.

Don Roberts
Mr. Roberts is a Vice-Chairman of Wholesale Banking, and Managing Director in Investment Banking with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). He is responsible for the bank’s corporate lending, debt and equity financing, M&A advisory and trading activities across the Clean Technology and Renewable Energy sectors, and is also actively involved in the Forest Products industry.

Lawrence Solomon
Lawrence Solomon is one of Canada’s leading environmentalists. His book, The Conserver Solution (Doubleday), which popularized the Conserver Society concept in the late 1970s, became the manual for those interested in incorporating environmental factors into economic life. An advisor to President Carter’s Task Force on Global Resources and Environment (the Global 2000 Report) in the late 1970s, he has since been at the forefront of movements to reform foreign aid, stop nuclear power expansion, save the world’s rainforests and convert free roads to toll roads. He is a columnist with National Post, a former columnist for the Globe and Mail, and author of seven books, including Energy Shock (Doubleday), Toronto Sprawls (University of Toronto Press) and, most recently, The Deniers (Richard Vigilante Books).

Tom Rand
Tom Rand is a venture capitalist and author and currently acts as Lead Cleantech Advisor at the MaRS Institute in Toronto. MaRS acts to support commercialization of Canadian research and development.