Thank you very much.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.
Canada faces a climate emergency that is resulting in more extreme weather—from heat waves to droughts to floods. I was moved by the testimony before this committee last week from Karen Ross of Farmers for Climate Solutions on challenges that farmers face as climate change exacerbates extreme weather events.
The David Suzuki Foundation has long advocated for pricing carbon pollution, and we have played an important role in advocating for B.C.'s precedent-setting carbon tax. We also intervened before the Supreme Court of Canada in a recent reference case. The court affirmed the importance of ensuring carbon pollution is priced across the federation. The court acknowledged that climate change poses a grave threat to humanity's future and described it as “a threat of the highest order to the country, and indeed to the world.”
Why put a price on carbon pollution? As Clean Prosperity explains, putting a price on carbon “sends a powerful signal across an entire economy to reduce its carbon footprint, and unlocks the zero-emissions technologies we need.”
I'd like to acknowledge that we've reached a watershed moment when we have achieved consensus across the political spectrum on the need to price carbon pollution.
However, Bill C-206 would erode the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act. It is the wrong solution. It sends the wrong signal and is likely to create pressure from other sectors to get their own carve-outs.
We appreciate that many farmers are already working hard to mitigate emissions, use soil management practices to help store carbon and rebuild local biodiversity. To stay on course for 1.5° C of temperature change between now and 2030, we need to be reducing emissions by about 7% a year across the economy.
Bill C-206 has been presented as a way to support farmers by reducing their energy costs, particularly grain drying costs, in federal backstop jurisdictions. However, the effect of this amendment is to introduce a new, inefficient fossil fuel subsidy. In 2009, Canada and the G20 leaders agreed to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Adding a new subsidy in 2021 is particularly problematic. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, this fossil fuel subsidy would cost the federal government $47 million in 2021, rising to $60 million by 2024-25.
We note that since this legislation was first proposed, budget 2021 was announced, and it specifically attends to the energy costs faced in the agricultural sector and its unique transition. It provides $10 million to help farmers adopt clean energy solutions and to begin transitioning off fossil fuels, $50 million to help farmers purchase more efficient grain dryers, and approximately $100 million of the money that farmers currently pay in carbon levies on natural gas and propane will be rebated back to farmers.
Such grants and rebates are a better solution than Bill C-206. It preserves the price signal, rewarding agricultural producers and innovators who come up with ways to reduce reliance on fossil fuels in agricultural operations. It will better position the sector to compete as climate ambition ramps up around the world. Bill C-206 may reduce energy costs in the short term, but it doesn't help position Canada's agricultural sector to the inevitable need to ratchet down fossil fuel consumption, improve energy efficiency and switch to clean energy sources.
Replacing a price on carbon with an additional fossil fuel subsidy sends precisely the wrong signal. At a time when all of Canada's main political parties have declared their support for pricing carbon pollution, it is an approach that will add to our mitigation challenge and the threat of climate change. It is also misaligned with our commitment to eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.
In conclusion, the David Suzuki Foundation urges the committee to vote against this bill, the effect of which is to create a new fossil subsidy and erode carbon pricing.
What we've seen in other sectors is that there is this idea that the technologies are not available that would reduce reliance on fossil fuel subsidies or be more energy efficient. We need the price on carbon pollution to create the incentive, and already these kinds of solutions are starting to appear across the economy.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.