Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming forward.
I would like to read a quote that I received from the Library of Parliament. It says, “Canada could not conceivably meet its emissions reduction target through domestic measures alone without essentially bringing its industrial economy to a halt.” The chief economist for the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers agree. Does anybody here disagree with that? Great.
I think everybody agrees that we want to have cleaner air for Canadians and get rid of some pollutants. Obviously, Bill C-30 goes beyond GHGs, which is all Kyoto deals with. It deals with indoor air, which is amazing, actually. It's an amazing step by any government. But there's a balancing act: economy versus cleaner air.
I want to go on to the cost of meeting Kyoto, just very briefly. I was doing some calculations. I asked the Library of Parliament to do some research on what it would cost for a Kyoto commitment--and just to buy credits, not to meet our domestic changes, and they actually come out to say that the president of the Greenhouse Emissions Management Consortium says it would be a minimum of $26 billion to $38 billion. It could cost up to $38 billion over the Kyoto time period of five years. That works out to $2,500 per taxpayer, or something in the neighbourhood of $5,000 per home.
We heard evidence from people from Quebec who the Bloc brought forward—one particular gentleman was very impressive—that for infrastructure dollars invested, you get a huge return in benefits in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and emissions generally. And $36 billion, quite frankly, could buy a lot of infrastructure in this country, where we're in a deficit position. It could also buy a lot of technology that we could sell internationally to people so they could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Gentlemen, would anybody disagree with that?