Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure for me to be here. I'm here as a guest, you might say, just filling in for a colleague, but I find it a very interesting topic, and in some ways I wish I were part of this committee.
As a novice, when I look at the witnesses here, it's obvious that you represent well-managed, very forward-thinking, well-established companies, and I commend you on how effective you've been in meeting your targets. But I can't help thinking about the companies that aren't in your enviable position.
There was a recent quote in a newspaper by Professor Mark Jaccard from Simon Fraser University. His assessment was that you would have to destroy one-third of the buildings and equipment in your economy in the next four years to meet the Kyoto target. Some people might think he's a gentleman who has that opinion in isolation. But further on in the same article they quote Buzz Hargrove. I guess he's not NDP anymore; he's a Liberal spokesperson. But he said it would be devastating for the whole community; it would be suicidal for our economy; you'd almost have to shut down every major industry in the country, from oil and gas to the airlines and the auto industry, and that just doesn't make sense.
Mr. Fraser, I understand your point of view so well, but it just doesn't make sense to me that you would set those hard targets right away, and if you couldn't meet those targets, people who buy your product would have to find it somewhere, so they would go offshore to buy it. We would lose employment. When I first read the professor's quote, I thought maybe that was a bit much. But then Hargrove substantiated it.
What is your opinion? Do you think it would be that devastating?