I want to thank all the witnesses for their participation. I know it's a bit frustrating to be brought in at the last moment and then given an assignment that may not play to your strengths or interests.
When we originally drew up our work plan, we thought that it would be useful to have a session that dealt with three things.
One was the various mechanisms for reaching targets. That would be things like market trading systems, carbon trading systems, and so on.
Another issue we wanted to think about was the challenge of target setting. If the way in which we went at target setting the previous time wasn't effective, what would be a better way? How do we then relate the anticipated effectiveness of the various mechanisms so that we can actually make those objectives the targets? We've had some discussion on that.
Finally, the third issue we were talking about was modelling. In this case, I think modelling was really seen as a kind of projection into the future of various impacts. I suspect we've had a fairly good discussion on that by previous witnesses who have basically told us the modelling is getting more and more sophisticated and more refined in terms of what we can expect by way of impacts, and so on.
What I'd like to do, in a way that leaves the witnesses comfortable and not stretching into areas that don't match their expertise, is talk about target setting and mechanisms. I realize people want to talk about other things like adaptation, but that's not really what we're talking about and it's not what the bill is talking about.
As I think Professor Sauchyn indicated, the bill is designed to address a very specific problem, which is the short-term target setting for Kyoto. I think the assumption is that if we can't meet the 2012 targets, how should we recalibrate those targets in a more realistic fashion for the remainder of this period? How do we relate the measures we're going to take with the results we expect?
If I can redirect the witnesses to the question that we're trying to look at today along those lines, I would start with Professor Sauchyn and Dr. Burton. Do you have some reflections on a more realistic way of target setting? How can we relate that to the expected yield from certain mechanisms?