I think it is worth addressing one comment that you've made and that the chair made earlier.
Last summer the Government of Canada—the finance department—consulted around Canada's approach to border carbon adjustments. I think that it's quite legitimate for the stakeholder community that's trying to navigate and understand where the government may go on this to think that this may be something that Canada is considering doing. I think the last thing we saw, effectively, from the finance department was a consultation asking if Canada should do this. I want to acknowledge that.
One of the good things that this study has done, I think, is remind all of us that Canada is not an island. What we do in Canadian agriculture is part of a global system. That level playing field and that need to be competitive, both from an environmental and from an economic perspective, are really important. Therefore, I do think that we need to be a lot more thoughtful around what are we doing today to prepare for that changing landscape in the future.
There is a potential that carbon is part of it. Biodiversity is something that gets talked about. The reality is that for all of that talk, the action continues to really be around subsidies, which we're largely not being competitive on, or there's very little effective action at all.
I think we're all trying to navigate this. How do you deal with this kind of rhetoric around the need to take action and the reality that Canada has been one of the countries that has been more aggressive? On the carbon tax and its impact on agriculture, it's important to keep in mind that Canadian agriculture is one of the few agriculture systems around the world that is paying a price for carbon that way. That is one of the differences there.
We really do need to be a lot more thoughtful about the fact that this is a complicated, changing landscape, and the landscape is going to change in the future.
We should show leadership around what solutions look like. The world is in need of creative thinking and new approaches that reconcile economic and environmental sustainability, and that improve our sustainable food system while ensuring the profitability and livelihoods of farmers around the world. A lot of the instruments that are available today are pretty blunt and not very effective. I think Canada could do a lot more to say, “This is what our made-in-Canada approach looks like.” I don't think we see Canada leaning into that as much as it could.