Environment committee  A reminder to the committee that you are the Canada research chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan. The floor is yours for five minutes.

Environment committee  In our mining project, obviously, we don't see acidification as a big impact. Your previous comment on drought and climate change is very interesting in that one of the key components of our regulatory review is the impact of climate change on our project. Echoing some of the other comments, we will need to look at not only drought but also increased precipitation—rainfall and snow, of course.

Environment committee  In our audit of scientific activities in selected water basins, we found that Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada were moving in the right direction in terms of collaborating on scientific activities. However, we found that their work could have a greater impact on improving water quality if they further coordinated their scientific efforts.

Environment committee  Canadians have a lot on their plates. They are concerned about the cost of living, and rightly so. But climate change makes these issues worse. The cost of inaction is stark. If we ignore climate change, by 2025 we could see a $25 billion annual slowdown in our economic growth, according to Canadian Climate Institute.

Environment committee  The situation in British Columbia is very problematic. The entire winegrowing industry was hard hit by climate change once again this year. The effects of climate change on the agriculture sector are getting worse every year. And yet the Conservative Party's response is to create more pollution and to make it free, to have more climate change and effects of climate change, as well as eliminating assistance programs for agriculture.

Environment committee  Yes, it was the notice of motion from March 19 that the committee order the production of “Environment and Climate Change Canada's provincial-territorial computable general equilibrium model”, with a whole bunch of technical stuff in it.

Environment committee  The modelling is available and demonstrates that pollution pricing is working. Surely, the Conservatives wouldn't be moving this motion if they didn't believe that climate change existed or that the emissions are coming down. Perhaps this is progress on behalf of the Conservatives. Maybe next they'll also admit that they're cashing their rebate cheques. I'm happy to let this go to—

Environment committee  Thank you to all of our witnesses and experts for attending today. This is a really remarkable panel. My question is related to water scarcity and climate change. As the weather changes and as the climate warms, and as we've seen in southwestern Ontario and Alberta this year, there are water scarcity concerns. Oftentimes, around this time of year, we see really elevated water levels in the Great Lakes and the tributaries that lead into them.

Environment committee  We don't see them, but they have a really negative impact on our natural environment and on climate change. PFAS are the worst of both. They're invisible, they have a really negative impact and they're much more difficult to clean up. They may be as hard to clean up as CO2 is to remove from the atmosphere.

Environment committee  I know you have a study coming up in 2024 on fertilizer emissions, but you also mentioned the coordination between Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture Canada in particular. Having worked previously in agriculture, I thought back to the time when we had the environment department show up in black SUVs and trespass to take water samples.

Environment committee  We disclose on our website what's coming in the next couple of rounds of reports, including this spring's, which is about agriculture and climate change mitigation. That's the focus of that report, although nutrients from agriculture were one of the key foci of the water basins report that we spoke about just a few minutes ago. That upcoming report will not look at the interaction between nutrient runoff and water because we did address that in the water basins report just two years ago.

Environment committee  This includes methane and a variety of ones relating to land use, land use change and forestry, including agriculture. All I can say is to please stay tuned for our spring report on agriculture and climate change. We do look at the trends in emissions in that sector. It's not as important a sector in terms of total emissions saved, for example, compared to oil and gas or transportation, but it is still a significant contributor.

Environment committee  As you said, 2024 may be the hottest year ever. We know that farmers are on the front lines of climate change.

Environment committee  We know that coral reefs are being heavily impacted by climate change. There are a number of initiatives that Canada is broadly supporting here, obviously, in terms of nature-based solutions.

Environment committee  The Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimate of the GDP impacts did not compare the GDP impacts of carbon pricing to an economy facing climate change without the carbon price. It compared the impact of carbon pricing on the economy to an economy with no carbon price and no climate change, so it was an unreal comparison.