I'm battling with this one, because we're trying to keep strong intentions toward making this bill effective and possible, but I still have two problems. One is that as a fundamental, in listening to folks much brighter than I am on how to make this thing possible, the territory approach is not the best approach. It walks us into a conversation and a constant fight between the feds and the provinces, and the provinces and the provinces. If Quebec's industry is performing better than other industries in Canada, a sectoral approach, an industry-by-industry approach, will still do the Quebec industry well. If they're 7% below in all those things Mr. Bigras has said, then Quebec has nothing to worry about.
As a concept, approaching climate change and greenhouse gas emission reductions by province opens this up. I'm not so sure about the constitutionality one way or the other. I agree with you, Chair, that at this table we don't seem to have the current advice to know. If it throws the bill into jeopardy, though, I have concerns.
More importantly, as a theme and an approach to how we're actually going to fix this problem, it feels to me that we'll get distracted by provinces setting limits either in conjunction with the federal government or by themselves, rather than through the industrial approach, which was what most of the witnesses talked about. This allows the cement manufacturers to compete all together. It allows all the energy producers to compete against each other, with hard targets. That was a way to actually move the entire country forward, including Quebec.
I just don't think the provincial approach is one. As much as I'd like to support Mr. Bigras and his efforts, I just can't see approving it.