Canadian Energy Reliability Council

INTRODUCTION

On May 28, 2026, the Canadian Energy Reliability Council (“CERC”) convened an Energy Reliability Summit in Ottawa to discuss the reliability challenges facing Canada’s energy system. The Summit brought together industry leaders, policymakers, reliability experts, and energy-sector representatives at a time when reliability is being tested by environmental change, aging infrastructure, supply-chain constraints, cyber threats, electricity adequacy challenges, geopolitical uncertainty, and the pace of net-zero policy.

Two panels explored energy reliability challenges from various perspectives. The first, which was made up of Bob Larocque, President and CEO of the Canadian Fuels Association; Brad Herald, Senior Special Advisor of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers; Paul Cheliak, Chief Operating Officer of the Canadian Gas Association; Shannon Watt, President and CEO of the Canadian Propane Association; and Michael Powell, Vice President of Government Relations of Electricity Canada, provided their insights into energy reliability issues, the risks and challenges industry faces in maintaining that reliability, and how they can best work together to address those challenges.

The second consisted of Jim Robb, President and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation; Robert Johnston, Director of Energy and Natural Resources Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary; Tonja Leach, Executive Director of QUEST Canada, a national organization advancing efficient, integrated, community-scale energy systems; and David Marshall, Director of Station Operations and Customer Connections for Enbridge Gas. It further explored how reliable Canada’s energy system is and how we can maintain the reliability critical to our economy, our way of life, and our health and safety.

A central message emerged from the discussions: reliability is not simply a technical attribute of the electricity grid. It is a public policy matter that affects economic security, affordability, health and safety, emergency preparedness, and public confidence. It must therefore be considered alongside affordability and decarbonization, not treated as an assumed outcome of energy policy.

This article summarizes the Summit’s key takeaways and explains how CERC is beginning to develop an action plan in response. The initiatives described below are not presented as a completed workplan, but as the principal areas of follow-up now under consideration: public engagement, reliability principles, tabletop exercises, a possible joint industry response to federal energy policy, broader participation in CERC, and greater transparency in energy modelling.

OVERALL SUMMIT TAKEAWAYS

The Summit confirmed that energy reliability is not just a narrow technical issue. It is a national economic, security, affordability, and public-safety issue.

Several core messages have emerged:

First, reliability must be addressed across the whole energy system, not electricity alone. Electricity reliability is critical, but Canadians also depend on reliable natural gas, gasoline, diesel, propane, petroleum products, district energy, and related infrastructure. A reliability discussion that focuses only on the grid risks missing the interdependence of fuels, infrastructure, seasonal demand, emergency response, transportation, food supply, heating, and industrial activity.

Canada’s energy system is becoming more interdependent. Electricity reliability increasingly depends on natural gas availability, cyber resilience, supply chains, critical minerals, skilled labour, communications systems, and transmission/distribution infrastructure. Likewise, liquid fuels, propane, and gas networks are essential to backup power, emergency response, logistics, and resilience during extreme events.

Second, reliability requires investment before a crisis occurs. The Summit theme recognized the need for long-term investment, better data, improved regulatory flexibility, and integrated planning across energy sectors. A recurring issue is that reliability is often valued most after it fails, while the investments needed to preserve it must be made years in advance.

Third, the public policy conversation may be underweighting reliability. Policymakers often speak in terms of emissions targets, affordability, and energy transition objectives, but reliability is sometimes treated as an implicit assumption rather than an explicit design consideration. CERC has an important role in making reliability more visible, measurable, and understandable.

Fourth, there is a need for better public engagement. Reliability is not always front and center — until there is an outage, a shortage, a price shock, a fuel disruption, or an emergency. A key CERC opportunity is to communicate reliability in terms that are meaningful to households, businesses, Indigenous communities, municipalities, and public officials.

LESSONS FROM THE SUMMIT

The Summit succeeded in creating a cross-sector conversation rather than a single-fuel or single-technology discussion. The invitation itself included a broad coalition of energy organizations, including gas, fuels, petroleum, propane, electricity, and reliability organizations, which helped reinforce the message that reliability is a whole-system issue.

The second panel brought together expertise in electricity reliability and security, geopolitical and market risk, community-scale integrated energy systems, and operational gas reliability. That combination allowed the Summit to move beyond slogans and into the practical realities of maintaining reliable energy service.

The Ottawa setting was also valuable. Holding the Summit in Ottawa allowed the conversation to be positioned as a national public-policy issue, rather than an industry-only technical discussion.

A key lesson from the Summit is that reliability discussions are most useful when they move from general awareness to specific outputs: reliability principles, policy gaps, public engagement tools, and practical planning exercises. Future events may benefit from a more explicit statement of desired outcomes. For example, the next Summit could ask participants to produce or endorse a short list of reliability principles, identify specific policy gaps, or agree on a public engagement workplan.

There may also be value in more structured participation from policymakers and public servants. A Summit format that includes moderated discussion, tabletop scenarios, or small-group exercises could help move the discussion from “awareness” to “application.”

The Summit also pointed toward a broader question for CERC: how should a national reliability-focused organization move from convening discussion to shaping practical public policy tools?

FROM SUMMIT TAKEAWAYS TO AN ACTION PLAN

The Summit was not intended to produce a final action plan. Rather, it was an initial step in identifying the reliability issues that require broader public, policy, regulatory, and industry attention. Together with CERC’s newsletter and related outreach, the Summit can be viewed as the first phase of a broader effort to move reliability from a technical concern to a more explicit public policy objective.

The shared commitment of the energy industry to reliability has been demonstrated and key reliability issues have been set out for a broader audience. The Summit also demonstrates that CERC could occupy a valuable middle ground between technical experts, industry associations, regulators, governments, and the public. Its role need not — and should not — be advocacy for one fuel or one technology. Rather, CERC can advocate for the disciplined consideration of reliability in energy policy.

However, an overall strategy within which these initiatives will be executed — if they are executed — is required. The overall themes of the next two phases are:

Phase 2: How is reliability factored into public policy?

This phase would examine the assumptions, modelling, policy drivers, and trade-offs that shape Canadian energy policy. The objective would be to identify where reliability is explicitly considered, where it is assumed, and where it may be underweighted. Issues raised at the Summit — including supply diversity, affordability, community resilience, and the pace of net-zero policy — would form part of this analysis.

Phase 3: What reliability gap needs to be filled, who will fill it, and how?

This phase would focus on practical engagement with policymakers, energy suppliers, regulators, customers, and communities. It would ask what industry is already doing well, where the gaps remain, and what institutional, regulatory, investment, or public engagement tools are needed to strengthen reliability.

To support these next phases, CERC has identified several potential initiatives for further consideration. These are not presented as a final workplan, but as a set of possible activities that could help translate the Summit’s takeaways into practical action. CERC will assess these initiatives as part of a broader strategy, including which should be pursued, how they should be prioritized, and whether they are best suited to Phase 2, Phase 3, or a longer-term work program.

PUBLIC-FACING RELIABILITY EXPLAINERS

CERC could develop short, plain-language explainers on topics such as:

• What does “energy reliability” mean?
• Why is reliability different from affordability?
• Why does reliability require redundancy?
• Why does extreme weather change the planning challenge?
• Why do electricity, gas, propane, petroleum products, and transportation fuels need to be considered together?
• What happens when energy systems become more interdependent?

RELIABILITY PRINCIPLES

CERC could develop a short statement of reliability principles for use in policy submissions and public engagement. For example:

• Reliability should be an explicit objective in all major energy policy.
• Reliability must be assessed across all fuels and delivery systems.
• Reliability requires long-term investment, redundancy, and operational flexibility.
• Reliability risks should be transparent to policymakers and the public.
• Reliability, affordability, and decarbonization must be considered together.

MODELLING, TRANSPARENCY, AND RELIABILITY

The modelling issue raised at the Summit is important. Governments increasingly rely on energy modelling to justify policy decisions, infrastructure planning, emissions pathways, and investment choices. However, many models are difficult for non-specialists to scrutinize. It is often unclear how reliability is represented, and what assumptions are made about demand growth, extreme weather, storage, backup fuel, imports, transmission availability, customer behaviour, technology deployment, and emergency conditions.

CERC could pursue this issue in several ways:

• Develop a reliability modelling checklist.
• Commission a paper on how reliability is treated in Canadian energy models.
• Host a technical workshop with modellers, system operators, utilities, regulators, and industry.
• Ask whether models distinguish between annual energy sufficiency and real-time deliverability.
• Examine how models treat low-probability, high-impact events.
• Encourage governments to publish assumptions, sensitivities, and reliability metrics.

A practical goal is to ensure that modelling used for public policy does not merely show that a future energy system balances on average but demonstrates that it can perform in conditions such as summer and winter peaks and under stress and extreme conditions.

EXPANDING CERC MEMBERSHIP AND SUPPORT

The Summit also raised the question of who should be part of the CERC reliability conversation. Possible additional participants include:

• Customer groups, including residential, industrial, agricultural, commercial, and vulnerable-customer representatives.
• Major industry associations, including electricity, gas, fuels, petroleum, propane, renewables, storage, nuclear, mining, transportation, and manufacturing associations.
• Municipal and Indigenous organizations, particularly where community energy resilience and emergency response are major concerns.
• Emergency management organizations.
• Large energy users, including data centres, mines, manufacturers, hospitals, ports, airports, and food-distribution networks.
• Consumer and affordability advocates.
• Academics and modelling experts.

POSSIBLE FOLLOW-UP EVENTS

A. Ottawa Follow-Up Session

A follow-up Ottawa session later in the year could be worthwhile, particularly if it is framed around specific outputs rather than simply a continuation of the May discussion. Possible Ottawa themes include:

• Reliability as a national policy objective. How should federal policy explicitly incorporate reliability across electricity, natural gas, petroleum products, propane, transportation fuels, and emergency preparedness?
• Reliability under stress. What happens during a multi-day extreme weather event, cyberattack, supply disruption, or electricity adequacy emergency?
• Reliability and public confidence. How can governments and industry speak more clearly with Canadians about trade-offs among reliability, affordability, emissions reduction, and infrastructure development?

B. Provincial Summits or Town Halls

Provincial sessions could also be valuable, but they should probably be focused initially on larger provinces where the energy-system issues are particularly consequential: Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Each province could have a tailored focus. For example:

• Ontario: electricity adequacy, natural gas-electricity interdependence, nuclear refurbishment/new nuclear, industrial growth, transportation electrification, and distribution system readiness.
• Quebec: hydroelectric reliability, export obligations, winter peaks, electrification pressures, transmission constraints, and the interaction between domestic reliability and broader regional markets.
• Alberta: resource adequacy, market design, natural gas-fired generation, renewables integration, extreme weather, industrial load, and fuel supply resilience.
• British Columbia: hydro variability, load growth from electrification and LNG, transmission constraints, wildfire and extreme-weather resilience, and the relationship between electricity, natural gas, and liquid fuels in emergency response.

A useful format might be a half-day provincial town hall with a short framing presentation, a reliability panel, a scenario exercise, and a concluding discussion on practical actions.

TABLETOP EXERCISES

Tabletop exercises could be especially valuable. They would allow policymakers, industry, regulators, emergency managers, and community representatives to test how the system might respond to specific reliability events.

Possible scenarios include:

• A winter cold snap combined with electricity supply scarcity.
• A prolonged cyberattack affecting electricity and gas operations.
• A major wildfire disrupting electricity transmission, roads, and fuel delivery.
• A multi-day urban energy outage affecting hospitals, telecommunications, heating, water, and transportation.
• A geopolitical fuel supply disruption affecting prices and availability.
• A high-load summer event combined with wildfire smoke, cooling demand, and generation constraints.

These exercises could help reveal where planning assumptions are incomplete, where responsibilities are unclear, and where fuel interdependencies are not fully understood.

CHANGES TO THE CERC WEBSITE AND NEWSLETTER

The CERC website and newsletter should also be reviewed as part of the next phase of work. The current website would benefit from a redesign so that it more clearly communicates CERC’s purpose, priorities, membership, and reliability-related resources. Similarly, the newsletter’s format and frequency should be assessed to ensure that it is serving a clear strategic purpose. As part of that review, CERC should define the newsletter’s goals, identify its intended audiences, and consider practical ways to expand its circulation and impact.

CONCLUSION

The May Summit confirmed that energy reliability deserves a more prominent place in Canadian public policy. Reliability is not automatic, and it is not the responsibility of any one sector. It depends on investment, planning, operational discipline, infrastructure redundancy, transparent modelling, and realistic public discussion about trade-offs.

CERC’s opportunity is to become the national forum that keeps reliability visible, practical, and grounded in the real-world functioning of Canada’s energy system. The next phase should move from awareness to action: clearer principles, better modelling scrutiny, broader engagement, and a coordinated industry voice on the reliability requirements of Canada’s energy future.

• * David Morton, Interprovincial Cooperation and Energy Reliability (Canadian Energy Reliability Council, 2025). Morton is a professional engineer with over 45 years of experience in utility regulation and energy policy, including as former Chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.