Thank you, Chair.
The honourable parliamentary secretary exasperates me. The Conservative Party has so stretched the definition of tax over the years that it has become meaningless. About a year ago, the then opposition critic for the environment, who is now the chair of the environment committee, said we could not include greenhouse gases under CEPA and regulate them, because that would amount to a carbon tax, and now the government is proposing to use CEPA to regulate greenhouse gases in some obtuse manner.
This proposal is not for a carbon tax. I think we have to be clear about that. It is more akin to an eco-RRSP for large final emitters in this country. It is a fund that they can invest in and they can get the money back to invest in high-rate-of-return, energy-efficient projects. So I'd like to simply make that statement for the record.