Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We've been looking at this for a while, and it's of interest if it leads to a polluter-pays principle. One of the fundamentals for us, particularly with the large final emitters, the large polluters in this country, is that a line item will appear in their accounting. They can account for wages, health benefits, and new investment in technologies, but at this point in our economic structure there's no accounting for pollution. There's a cost, and that cost is meant to be dispersed and the burden borne by society as a whole. That's not necessarily fair.
There's one question that was raised by some of the Conservative members, and I'd appreciate an answer from the Liberal movers. It's on the notion of whether this amendment would encourage and allow the creation of a cap and trade system. It's interesting that it came from the Conservatives because I haven't heard them endorse a cap and trade system yet. In order to have a cap and trade you need to have a cap. That means you need to have an absolute limit to what a company can produce, not an intensity-based limit, because that fluctuates. There's no real way to account for that under a cap and trade system; you need an absolute cap.
If the Conservatives have come on to that stream, I encourage it. So that question needs to be clarified for us.
There are two last things. The purpose of this committee was to bring forward new and substantive ideas to the challenge we face as a country around climate change—new ways to generate investment. It's important to us that companies going over their caps are able to draw down on these funds and make the investments right there domestically. The Conservatives, New Democrats, Liberals, and Bloc have all supported domestic investment. In order to spur that investment and encourage those changes we need to have both a carrot and a stick approach. That has worked for us in the past when making changes to our industrial group.
Finally, I'd like to move a friendly amendment that I think would have a greater and far-reaching impact on this. I'll read it into the record now if that's all right. We would add a portion to proposed paragraph 63.1(2)(h). I'll read it in its entirety and we can make copies available to you. It reads:
where funds are transferred out of the green investment account of a large industrial emitter into a green industrial fund, the mandatory expenditure by the agency of those funds for the purpose of furthering the progress of projects to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions in Canada,
This is the new portion:
a target of 50% of which will go into a building retrofit revolving fund program, the remaining 50% to be invested in the greenhouse gas reduction projects
Then it goes on:
with a minimum of 80% of the funds to be spent on projects in the province or territory in which the large industrial emitter is principally situated.
Then proposed subparagraph 63.1(2)(h)(i) would read:
Funds shall be allocated in a manner that maximizes verifiable GHG emission reductions.
First and foremost, this money goes to the companies that contributed to the fund. There's the two-year window in which they're allowed to draw down. Once that large polluter has decided to not access the funds—which would be a curious choice because it would be their money—a portion of them would go into this revolving fund.
This is a model that has been used successfully in conjunction with municipal and federal governments. The municipal green investment fund was one such version. The nature of the revolving fund is really important because it allows seed money to be created and the money to be generated over and over again and to have huge effects. The green municipal funds have been used time and time again to encourage projects that have helped communities right across this country. I suggest that communities in all of our ridings, even of members sitting around the table, have accessed such a revolving fund.
So the amendment we're moving would unleash a little more of the potential of what Canadians deem possible.
We have all heard petitions from various municipal councillors and just from Canadians working on this, that the access to funding for some of their progressive projects to reduce the burden on taxpayers—for example, on energy costs—is there and has been waiting in a holding pattern for too long. This would allow those projects to go ahead.
So I'd be curious as to how that would be deemed by the mover. If this would be deemed as a friendly amendment, perhaps we could go ahead and make that change.