Thank you both so much for being here at our meeting. What you had to say really does hit home.
Too many times we point out that the price on pollution is going to cause such hardship for so many taxpayers in our society, but as you stated, our taxpayers are already paying an inordinate amount of money every time we have another fire season in B.C., or Alberta, or northern Ontario or wherever it is, or when we have droughts, giving payouts to farmers and others to bring back their water. There are also floods and the impact we're seeing on health care budgets because of air pollution, which is causing so many problems with the health of Canadians. In essence, we're looking at a cost of billions of dollars that is borne on the backs of taxpayers.
Under a price for pollution, the largest emitters, the wealthiest, who we know on average pollute far more than the less wealthy emitters, will pay more into a system like that. It is in a revenue-neutral system that we'll see our lowest-income Canadians actually benefit financially from this price on pollution, with a pricing mechanism that pays out a dividend to residents.
Have you seen that in studies you've done yourself? I know that the most recent study that just came out a few weeks ago from a past chief policy adviser to the Harper government pointed this out very clearly.