Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here and for being here in person.
I'd like to start by making sure that our witnesses understand that this study was initiated to look at what competitive position the Canadian agriculture sector would be in if the EU or the United States continues to go in the direction of carbon border adjustment mechanisms and expand that to agriculture.
We've heard that you don't think that's very likely. I appreciate that.
I just also wanted to go back to some of the original things that were mentioned in terms of vitamin C and scurvy. It sounds like a nuclear winter kind of scenario again.
When we had another study, I remember somebody came in and said that the increase in the price of, for example, orange juice and oranges or produce was largely due to climate events. It was the drought in California or in Florida, for example, or the diseased romaine lettuce that had caused great spikes.
I do recall, Mr. Charlebois, that you talked very much about the fact that price volatility is the problem. That seems to be more a factor of droughts and other climate events than it is of a regularly scheduled increase in a price on pollution. I'm very glad to hear you say that you only speculated, that there's no proof and that there are a lot of other factors contributing to this.
I would like to ask this in terms of the point of this study, which is the possibility of the CBAM. We're not looking at introducing one. We are trying to assess what our competitive position would be if other countries put this in place.
Given that and what we know about our Canadian agricultural sector, and in particular the organics, do you think that Canada would benefit competitively when we compare Canadian agriculture practices to those around the world if the EU or the United States were to put in a carbon border adjustment mechanism on agriculture?
Perhaps we could start with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.