I've had that argument, Mr. Grant. I remember having a very public debate with Jack Mintz, who was then the head of the C. D. Howe Institute. He was telling me that I should prove in monetary terms that Canada's 26% of the world's wetlands had an economic worth. I said to him that they were perfect and free air and water filtration systems. He said that I had to monetize it. I said that was dishonest—not you, but Mr. Mintz and his discipline. Economists have failed us.
I said to Mr. Mintz. “You must prove to me that wetlands are worth precisely zero. When you prove to me that wetlands are worth zero, we can talk. Stop putting the reverse onus on me to prove that this has an economic worth.” We know this is crazy. It's a vicious circle. It's the limited social science discipline of economics that has failed us here.
The challenge about which we now need to hear from you is how we do this. Stop the fiction; stop putting the onus on nature to put an economic evaluation on itself. How do we put an evaluation on it that reflects the fact that if we don't have functioning wetlands, for example, we're not going to have air and water filtration systems? How do we do that?