Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to both witnesses. I really enjoyed your testimony. It was very informative.
I just came back from Copenhagen, and over the weekend was at an environmental conference put on by Globe International—it's just weeks away from 192 countries, thousands of people, going to Copenhagen looking for a new international agreement on climate change—and I was very proud of our aggressive targets, a 20% reduction by 2020 and a harmonized approach with the United States.
It was my first time in Copenhagen. I always like to look ahead to see what they're doing. I flew through the night on Thursday, arrived there Friday morning, and Friday spent much of the day on a ship looking at the harbour and the turbines and seeing what Copenhagen was doing. They have a coal-fired generating plant right there in the city, too, also with turbines, so they realize there are some ways that they can clean up.
But I was struck by some of the efficiencies and their lifestyle. It's quite different from here in North America. To buy a vehicle, it's a 180% tax. Let's say you buy a $30,000 vehicle here in Canada. In Copenhagen, you would pay out of pocket maybe $80,000 to $85,000 because of that 180% tax. The sales tax is 25%, and fuel is $2.50 a litre Canadian. It's very expensive.
The targets that are being presented in Bill C-311 are European targets, yet the targets that Canada has set are aggressive considering our circumstances. So I really appreciated your testimony.
Taking this North American continental approach to the clean energy dialogue ongoing with the United States—the Untied States was represented at the conference, too, by the way—to me seems the logical way. In fact, the previous group of witnesses we had were scientists—this was a week ago, Tuesday of last week—and they acknowledged also that it was a good idea to have a continental approach, that Canada, and the United States, and Mexico have similar targets going into the international negotiations in Copenhagen and following.
So my question to you is how important is it that we have a continental approach? If we didn't, if we went the route of Bill C-311 and broke away from a continental approach and broke into a European target, what would that mean to your industries?