Environment committee  Our colleague Diane Campbell would be interested in a word or two.

Environment committee  Thank you very much for the question. There are various definitions, but an example of an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy would be one that would encourage the production of fossil fuels. You'll see, for example, that one of the subsidies that have been eliminated is around the tax advantage for production of oil from the oil sands.

Environment committee  It hasn't started, except that the analysis is well under way, so it will be ready to go.

Environment committee  I'll take that question, Madam Chair. Tree planting is part of a bigger bucket, which we call nature-based climate solutions. It's about how trees, grasslands, wetlands, agricultural soil, etc. can contribute to the sink that takes carbon. Our colleagues at Natural Resources are leading the work on trees—the Canadian Forest Service, which is part of Natural Resources Canada—and we're working closely with them in terms of some of the co-benefits that the trees could provide to caribou and nature in general.

Environment committee  I can tell you that the program needs money to implement, and—

Environment committee  Madam Chair, I think it may be most useful to the committee if we asked our colleagues at NRCan, who really are most familiar with the details, to provide some information.

Environment committee  That's very kind. I just wanted to say that we are really excited about some sectors of the economy that haven't been superactive participants in the climate change challenge up until now. The one I was going to reference was the financial sector, where there is real interest, real movement and real momentum.

Environment committee  Maybe I'll just add that—

Environment committee  Madam Chair, I will have to defer that to our colleagues in the Department of Finance because they are in fact the leads on the peer review with Argentina. We're feeding into it, but I'm afraid I'm not able to answer that question.

Environment committee  Madam Chair, if I might, I'm going to suggest that our colleague Catherine Stewart, who is the assistant deputy minister of our international affairs branch, could join us at the table.

Environment committee  I am going to turn it over to my very busy colleague, Helen Ryan, who, among all of her other responsibilities, also deals with food waste from a regulatory perspective, working closely with Agriculture Canada. She'll be happy to talk about that. If we have time, I'd be happy to talk about some of the concepts around circularity, of which this is a part.

Environment committee  The issue of fossil fuel subsidies and the examination of them—both from a tax side and a non-tax side—comes from a G20 commitment that was made a number of years ago to identify and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies by 2025. A framework was developed by our colleagues in the ministry of finance to do that analysis, and the application of that framework has led to eight tax initiatives being phased out over the last decade or so.

Environment committee  Madam Chair, those of us at the table will be speaking.

Environment committee  We will not exceed the 30 minutes, which is what I understand has been put aside.

Environment committee  Yes.